US indie
NEWS: Yo La Tengo release lockdown EP, stream performances
THEY’VE been quietly releasing a track a day all week over on their Bandcamp page; and today Hoboken’s finest, Yo La Tengo, have gathered all five together for the first time as a downloadable EP, We Have Amnesia Sometimes. A physical release will follow later. But not only that: this weekend Georgia, James and Ira …
SEE: No Age – ‘Smoothie Kings’: abstract shapes and lofi beauty
UNORTHODOX former Sub Pop noiseniks No Age have got through some virusy distribution teething troubles and finally their new album Goons Be Gone, their second for new housekeepers Drag City, is out in the world. And in celebration the duo, Randy Randall and Dean Allen Spunt, have released a rather lovely, abstract and colourful video …
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: Guided by Voices’ ‘Haircut Sphinx’
THERE’S every chance that by the time you’ve finished reading this sentence Guided By Voices will have recorded and released their next three albums, such is their legendary work ethic and productivity. I don’t recall reading a single feature on Robert Pollard which hasn’t focused on this incredible feat of industriousness (107 albums and counting); …
TRACK: It’s Monday, it’s a beautiful third from Bill Callahan – ’35’
IT’S MONDAY: we’re in the groove now, and we know to expect a little nugget from Bill Callahan, as he previews September’s Gold Record track by track on a weekly basis. The third to be released in this way has everything you need from him. “I can’t see myself in the books I read / …
TRACK: Magic Bronson are back and ‘Surfin’
LA’s scuzzed-up alt.pop duo Magic Bronson are back and “Surfin on your brainwaves” with the second single to be released ahead of their forthcoming LP. It’s a slice of West Coast psych goodness, coming at you in a wall of delay and bells and tremulous guitar, all MGMT’s leather-jacketed little bro. “It’s our time, it’s …
TRACK: Bill Callahan reveals second from ‘Gold Record’
AS GOOD as his word, “just like the responsible, trustworthy father you wish you always had” (it says here), Drag City’s premiere gravelly voided heartbreaker Bill Callahan has released the second Monday song from his forthcoming September album, Gold Record. “Another Song” is a wistful call for the real heartwork of love. “Why dontcha come …
EP REVIEW: The Ricos – ‘Spirit State’
PHILADELPHIA’S languid, lofi outfit The Ricos is the brainchild of artist Joseph (Joe) B. Purcell. The band rose from the ashes of Purcell’s past projects with the intention to provide fuzz-ridden indie-pop, on which Joe’s vision is fleshed out by multi-instrumentalist/producer Connor Wynne and local human drum machine Daniel Fisk-Kallish. And their first steps into …
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: Built to Spill – ‘Play the Songs of Daniel Johnston’
DANIEL JOHNSTON’S story is, of course, one of the saddest, yet heartening, to come out of the US indie underground. Taken from us too soon last year at the age of 58, he’d actually begun his recording career at home in the 1970s; by the 1980s, resident in Austin, Texas, fashioning tapes and handing them …