Right now I’m pretty addicted to Freak City Soundtrack by Material Issue, a 90s power pop band from Illinois. Every song is just killer!
And when I’m in the mood for something a little heavier that still has a poppy edge, I rely on Drug Church for my fix!
Agreed! Good find.
And farewell to Gerry… but I bet they’ll play together again before too long.
Here’s a beautiful track from a new 4-song EP called Visitations 3 by Slow Tree which = Abi Fry and Neil Hamilton of British Sea Power.
On the darkwave/post-punk front, in addition to the House of Harm EP, new Handful of Snowdrops also drops tomorrow. They’ve been around for like 30 years, though always a bit obscure.
This almost makes me want to go back and reconsider the middle third of the New Pornographers discography which I have previously written off as utter dreck. ;)
Is that 3X4 album available?
They were selling the vinyl in record stores on Black Friday, but I’m not sure it’s hit digital sites yet.
Yeah, I see the purple swirl 2xLP (one album side per band) going for $30ish bucks. Guess I’ll exercise discretion but I want to hear this!
Never heard of Handful of Snowdrops…not bad. I’m being dragged to the VNV Nation show (mildly against my will) in a couple of weeks, and this reminds me of them a bit.
Ob. new song…enjoying this band Launder, despite the dodgy name. It’s members of DIIV and Day Wave doing a sort of Radio Dept. type of thing.
Coincidentally VNV’s new album is named Noire, while Snowdrops is Noir. Snowdrops remind me more of Clan of Xymox. VNV put on a decent show, a bit too much much crowd interaction for my taste though. Holygram, one of the openers, were pretty good IMO and worth checking out. The other opener is missable, wish it was still De/Vision on the tour as the third band but ah well.
Xymox live is excellent. I’ve seen them twice now, and they were terrific both time even though I only have a passing familiarity with anything past the 4AD years. I’m sure I’ll get taken along to a HoS show in the future…comes with dating an ex-goth.
Yeah I saw them this year and they were awesome.
On that 30 years old obscure bands front, I’m off to the Curtain Society 30th anniversary show tonight. In addition to their stuff they’ve played as the backing band for Jim Carroll,Mark Burgess (the Chameleons) and Shana Morrison.
Also pictures from that show and others on my instagram
Spent all day listening to the new version of Give Out But Don’t Give Up, which has the original Tom Dowd/Jim Dickenson mixes from the Memphis recordings at Ardent studios in Memphis.
There are a lot of high points to it, even if as a record it’s still super uneven. (If anything, the new mixes accentuate the weakness of some of the material here.) Definitely worth hearing, and definitely takes a record that felt like a baffling misstep when it first came out and turns it into something where you can sort of figure out what the artistic intent was all along. And when it hits well, a song like “I’m Gonna Cry Myself Blind” becomes pretty transcendent as presented.
It also puts some much-needed context onto their brilliant follow-up records, Vanishing Point and XTRMNTR, and is totally worth hearing.
Oh, and if you fancy, here’s an hourlong BBC4 documentary on the Original Memphis Recordings with plenty of Bobby Gillespie, Alan McGee, and a soupcon of Noel Gallagher, Tom Dowd, etc.
Pretty fascinating doc, even allowing for Bobby Gillespie saying utterly daft things throughout.
Noel Gallagher’s story about the first thing Gillespie ever said to him made me fall out of my chair laughing.
A friend recently introduced me to this song. I have listened to it at least 50 times over the last few days. Still makes me tear up:
HOLYSHIT
Boom, so there.
Santa Cruz and SF, here I come!
Seeing a bunch of unconfirmed reports that Pete Shelley has passed away.