merge
SEE: Mountain Goats – ‘As Many Candles As Possible’: monochrome prophecies from their second of the year
PRODIGIOUS and fiercely loved East Coaster indie-folk outfit The Mountain Goats have announced their second album of 2020, Getting Into Knives, an album which they describe as “ … perfect … for the millions of us who have spent many idle hours contemplating whether we ought to be honest with ourselves and just get massively …
SEE: Sneaks – ‘Mars In Virgo’: lofi astrological rave rhyming
LET there be no doubt: Sneaks, known to friends and family as Eva Moolchan, is COOL. Last year’s Highway Hypnosis album for Merge wended through seductive, deconstructed electro; leftfield, whispered lofi soul with an eerie undertow; almost nursery-rhyme incantations, stripped back grooves. I mean, she wears yellow Cons too. This a woman you can trust …
EP REVIEW: Wye Oak – ‘No Horizon’: boundless folk-rock choral vistas
WYE OAK have never been a band to stand still; to let the silt of being typecast, the ploughing of the same groove, hem them in. Debuting for Merge back in 2008 with If Children, they brought a real US alt.guitar edge to folk. Or was it a folksy edge to the alternative guitar sound? …
ALBUM REVIEW: William Tyler – ‘Music From First Cow’: chiming soundtrackery from Tennessee gent
IT SHOULDN’T really come as a surprise to anyone who has followed William Tyler’s solo career, or heard him give the background to any of his seductive, chiming guitar odysseys, that the day would come when he moved into soundtrackery – and perhaps particularly, the soundtracks for a well-made film about the old Americas. He has …
See: Wye Oak’s ‘AEIOU’ spells out the inadequacy of language
BALTIMORE’S Wye Oak are on a real creative roll. The stylistically free-grazing duo of Jenn Wasner and Andy Stack have released a video for “AEIOU”, a taster for their new EP for Merge, No Horizon, which is due out on July 31st. It’s composed of a beautiful animated line drawing to convey the lyrics, put …
SEE: Archers of Loaf shuffle forward a new 7″
THE BEST made plans of mice and men: this year has seen everyone’s diary go into the shredder. US alt.rock mainstays Archers of Loaf are no exception. With Record Store Day at first postponed, and then chopped into three, the planned RSD-only release of “Raleigh Days”/“Street Fighting Man” has been delayed and delayed and finally …
Album Review : Wye Oak’s ‘The Louder I Call, The Faster It Runs’
I came across Wye Oak around the same time I came across Phantogram. I’d heard their album The Knot right around the same time as I’d heard Phantogram’s Eyelid Movies. I was impressed with the whole guy/gal dynamic in both bands. They weren’t doing the whole garage rock thing which I really wasn’t into. Wye …
Album Review: William Tyler : Modern Country
William Tyler doesn’t make music as much as he paints aural landscapes. There’s a vast space within his records as a solo musician. The former Lambchop guitarist -over the course of three studio LPs- has created a musical world of dusty fields, endless horizons, and open roads that seem to never end. On his newest …