Audiopile Review: After a string of digital-only singles (compiled recently by Tough Love), impossible to find cassettes and a highly limited lathe cut 7”, San Francisco group April Magazine issue what amounts to their debut album proper. Despite being a part of the seemingly never-ending supply of great bands from San Francisco and the Bay Area that have been popping up like mad as of late, the group don’t sound much like their contemporaries. Acts like Cindy, Now, Famous Mammals, Children Maybe Later are caught up in a tangled mix of post-punk, power-pop and indie-jangle. But April Magazine have opted to slow things to an absolute crawl, tossing hooks and riffs aside in favour of creating the sonic equivalent of a dreamcatcher. Landing somewhere between shoegaze, dream-pop and ambient, the group get locked in a circuitous path that has the third Velvets album, late-period Spacemen 3, Julee Cruise, Flying Saucer Attack, and Galaxie 500 as touchstones along the way. Pointedly lo-fi, the album is shrouded in a warm hiss that sounds like the group recorded this while smothered in 5 feet of cotton, adding an alluring layer that gives the feeling of being out of time. The guitars are either deployed as slow motion vapours or sleepy echoes that gingerly rise ever-upwards, while the dual male/female vocals are an ethereal drawl loaded with a longing that intertwines perfectly with the faded sonics. The other releases are worth checking out if you get into this album, but this is easily the new high-water mark. A 2024 highlight.

“The wash of flangers & shimmery reverb have been the foundation in Cali psych ever since the Byrds went electric. And while that sound might’ve dropped off occasionally, it never dropped out. The Velvets minimalist stylings were infused into the mix by The Dream Syndicate in the early 80’s & thus a game changer was born. Clay Allison, Opal, Green On Red all took their charge from that current. Then the Shoegaze scene of the 90’s looked at those bands as vectors, things got a little more drenched, so yet more seeds were sown into the fertile terroir. Cut to current climes & the bay area is teeming with the latest iterations: Children Maybe Later, Now, & Cindy easily come to mind. But curiously the band most steeped in the mohair constitution is April Magazine, who (thus far) have been content in the shadows. Up till now they’ve seemed like characters plucked out of a Kazuo Ishiguo novel-mysterious & ethereal-but perhaps this pressing of last year’s cassette only release will flush them out. ‘Wesley’s Convertible Tape For The South’ shows the band defly balancing all those that have come before them while also incorporating flourishes of Les Rallizes DeNudes, Hallelujahs & Nagisa Ni Te into the pageantry . So in a way, April Magazine is transforming the landscape yet again; denser, fuzzier, lush & wistfully challenging. ‘Wesley’s Convertible Tape For The South’ is the band’s 1st vinyl release stateside (an LP of older tracks was released last year via a UK only label) so no import tariffs! What were once whispers are now proclamations. Just because you don’t know them doesn’t mean you can’t love them. So grab a copy & hug it out amongst yourselves.” — Tom Lax (Siltbreeze Records)