Bleeding Rainbow

Seeing this band evolve from a two-piece banging out short garage-pop bursts to a fully formed four-piece makes this record all the more fulfilling. Live, the band is grinding out 90's inflected thrashers that combine the brute force of the Wipers with the cleaner pop moments of mid-period Sonic Youth. Now add to that the sonic swirl of MBV's production in the studio and Yeah Right begins to take shape. I believe there's even a pie chart the band made to this effect on their Facebook page. You have to love that kind nerd enthusiasm for breaking down your influences. It seems that thickening out the backline behind the original husband and wife duo of Rob and Sarah has really brought them into a new dimension that picks up where Prism Eyes left off and drives deep into the heart of their rock passions. The album is at its best though when embracing its inner pop heart, like the candy coated fuzz of "Drift Away" or the soft punk punch and bouncy release of RSTB favorite "Waking Dream" that plays with harmonies in a way that recall a much heavier Veronica Falls. Definitely the best the band have put forward and deserving of the subtle name change and split with their past as its certainly the beginning of a new era for them.

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Purling Hiss

Purling Hiss have finally rectified their push-pull with fidelity, power and songwriting to create the strongest and most full on rock record in their canon. Eschewing the scorching solos of Hissteria and the sketched song ideas of Public Service Announcement the band pick up the legacy of their psych roots and run them through proto-metal, classic rock and more surprisingly 90's rock paces along the way. The album opener wakes the ghosts of Motorhead in the very best of ways, acting as a grand opening salvo and a nod to Polizze's love affair with the heaviness of guitar amplification. That proves to be a bit of a red herring as to the album's intentions. From there things mellow a bit but really lock into a groove that reveals a love of Dinosaur Jr., The Replacements and Lemonheads. Based on where the band left off before making the jump to Drag City, this wasn't the move I expected but it’s a damn good surprise of an album and working its way into heavy rotation on the RSTB speakers.

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	Shoes - Black Vinyl Shoes Illinois' Shoes have penned their fair share of power pop classics and their unquestionably great album Present Tense has been written up here as well but their "debut" deserves a shout as well. While its hardly mentionable that a band
home records an album these days, most albums cut to four track in 1977 never made it past being shopped around as demos. However, when Shoes took their 15-track set of demos around they sparked the interest of PVC Records who thought that the album had merit as it stood, and right they were. The recordings aren't as slick as they might have been if they'd had a full studio treatment but that adds to the bare soul, heart-on-sleeve songs that would come to act as Shoes templates. The band was forced to rely on the hooks and harmonies rather than impressing anyone with the flash of recording (though for four kids in a living room this is damn fine work). The record did lead them to a major label deal and the aforementioned classic sophomore album but there's still room on the shelf for the sparkling fun of Black Vinyl Shoes in any power pop collection. Download: [MP3] Shoes - Boys Don't Lie Support the artist, buy it HERE

Warm Soda

After the tumultuous demise of Bare Wires about a year ago, Mathew Melton has picked up in record time and reformed as Warm Soda, softening his garage glare and honing in on a 70's/80's power pop sound that took pieces of The Quick, Milk n' Cookies, The Records, Purple Hearts and The Barracudas and ran them through a bit of Melton's own leather tough yowl for a record that's instantly electric and classically familiar. The record achieves its drive, still wrangling in all the aspects that lead us to Bare Wires in the first place but acting as a power pop compendium that rounds up the aforementioned influences and grinds them to a fine powdered sugar and sweetens his songwriting all the more. For anyone combing through Yellow Pills and its endless tessellating brethren, this will come as a collector's essential filled to the rim with lost love odes, bedroom-belters and clean hip-shakers. As good as the first couple of singles and aching to jump on the turntable, this is a must for 2013.

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Moonrises

Moonrises aren't messing around on their sophomore album and debut for Captcha. The Chicago psych unit, featuring the ever-awesome and always busy Steve Krakow (aka Plastic Crimewave) on guitar, roars out of the gates on Frozen Altars. Built on a tipsy prog tension wire of untethered but skillful drumming, gnarled-string guitar work and tsunami swells of keys, the album plows through any room with a gale force and tears down pretty much anything within its path. Added to the incessant but somehow glorious fury are Libby Ramer's vocals, which add a tremendous amount of heft to the melee. From wordless howls to breathy psych witchcraft her voice is the anchor to the tumult and it galvanizes the band into a psychedelic force of nature. Clear some space on the shelf next to your Wooden Shjips, Can and Hawkwind records because they just got a new neighbor in Frozen Altars.

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The Resonars

Matt Rendon returns for another dip into the past, emulating the very fiber of your memories down to the note. His recent 7" for Trouble in Mind set up a more expansive sound and he runs with it on this new full length for Burger. The record is full of Byrds jangles, British Invasion coos and plenty of West Coast psych touchstones that feel so heartfelt that its obvious that The Resonars are meant to revel in the past rather than worry about anyone's visions for the future. From the 12-string breakdowns to the hip-slung guitar fury that explodes like a late 60's cathartic bomb, the record swings through the best of Nuggets-era maneuvers with the kind of nuance of a hardened fan. Any nerd worth their weight in dusty 45's can play pick the influence if need be while also kicking back and enjoying a distillation of just the sound you've been looking for.

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Colleen Green

Colleen Green delivers a proper album to Hardly Art, following on a single from 2011 and its well worth the wait. Still riding her Nobunny / Julianna Hatfield line of songwriting cues (though claiming plenty of inspiration from Tina Weymouth and Young Marble Giants as well), the album is full of spin-the-bottle strums, diary confessions and batted eyelashes, but the cuteness is tempered with a West Coast slacker vibe that gives it all an effortless cool. It’s a coy album with a chewy pop center that feels the perfect compliment to teenage bedroom dancing and hairbrush sing-alongs. With those 99 cent beats popping underneath, Green's songs are keeping the lo-fi candle burning but she's definitely expanded her reach here with some loping bass, buzzy keys and those familiar blasts of guitar that frazzle and fray under her perfectly whispered coos about boyfriends, best friends, getting stoned and just making it through the day. It’s a sunny day, walk around the city headphone companion and its bound to brighten up at least a few dispositions in these wintery months.

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[MP3] Colleen Green - Time In The World


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	The Shivvers - Lost Hits From Milwaukee's First Family Of Powerpop 1979-82 The Shivvers are one of the great power pop tragedies, shoulda beens that never quite got to achieve what they were destined for. After recording the sugar-pop
blast of "Teen Line" penned by singer-songwriter/keyboardist Jill Kossoris the band sought to record a proper album and move from their hometown of Milwaukee to Boston. Even though Raspberries frontman Eric Carmen offered to help produce, it seemed that the band were destined to be lost to fate. Kossoris fell ill and didn't make the move and the band disbanded. But they left behind more than just that fist single, their were plenty of recorded tracks that should have made for a great album and are all collected here to be given praise far after the fact. It would be no overstatement to say that any power pop collection worth its weight in sugar would be incomplete without at least one track from these Midwest stalwarts. If you're not familiar, its highly recommended you start here and soak in the whole collection. Download: [MP3] The Shivvers - Teen Line Support the artist, buy it HERE

Lenz

Last year Lenz caught our ear with a sharp, New Wave inflected EP that was a synth and guitar tug-o-war and yielded some of the best songs out of Andy Jordan's (Andy Human) repertoire yet. The band follows the EP up deftly with a new album, Ways To End A Day on 1-2-3-4 Go. The album takes the pop craft of their previous output and runs it through an icy strain of new wave touchstones from Echo and the Bunnymen through lesser-known weirdoes like The Twinkeyz. Obscuring those pop references through the veil of gauze and kicking up the fog machine, Jordan and co. make a record that looks back while frosting the lenses of their gaze and refracting the results in prisms of pop that hook in subtly and hold on for the rest of the day.

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	Various Artists - Castle Face Group Flex II: Son Of Flex The Castle Face roster reconvene for another flexible installment of 7"s bound together in nifty and collectible book form. Most of the usual suspects pop up here including new tracks from Ty Segall,
Thee Oh Sees, The Fresh & Onlys alongside offerings from CF newbies like Warm Soda and Burnt Ones. Sic Alps do a Gong cover, the screen printing is whacked out, what more do you want for your money? Ok well, 3D multicolor foil artwork by Joe Roberts, plus a download card and it comes in a specially printed heavy polybag. As usual its limited (and damn if the super-limited "psych version" isn't already sold out) but there are some to be had direct from the label right at this very moment. Damn fine work from those West Coast masters and something to look good on your shelf and keep vol. 1 from getting lonely. Listen: Support the artist, buy it HERE

Föllakzoid

Though they're from Santiago, Chile, Föllakzoid feel beamed in from another plane. To hear them talk about themselves, they seem to think that too, asserting that "there is some sort of gravitational force that makes South America able to dialogue directly with other places, times, and dimensions." Whichever dimensions they've tapped into seem perfectly in sync with RSTB's natural gravitations as well. Their latest, II hums and seethes, pulsates like an organic beast and locks into a Kraut-induced groove so heavy that it seems no fan of the progressive Grerman beat could ever ignore this. It feels stripped out of time and place, as if Ash Ra Temple and Amon Düül sat in as human hued replacements for Achim Reichel's Machines. The songs are, as could be expected, long and winding affairs that tessellate, mutate and decimate the ripples of bass and beat that peak through the prog curtain of keys swaying perilously over the top of the fray. Its been a while since a record created a vortex like this through the speaker cabinets in the ol' RSTB stereo but this one's go the juice.

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Fatal Jamz

Burger's been snapping up the pop gems lately, first Gap Dream and Sam Flax and now the bittersweet bounce of Fatal Jamz. Vol. 1 collects a slew of glam-tipped pop tracks strained through a veil of psych and produced by Dan Home of Beachwood Sparks. There's a good deal of guitar crunch going on but underneath the pop hooks and glam punk moves there beats a real heart to Belle's songwriting that comes shining through in the saccharine urgency of "Another Crystal Morning" and the soft psych-country touches on "Remember Waikiki". Much like labelmate Flax, Fatal Jamz seem to lock into a very perceptible production aesthetic and he riffs off of the 80's pop palette, layering swift nostalgic touches on top of one another and syth-styling glam while at the same time kicking earnest 80's crooners in the solar plexus with a hangover of hip swagger from the 70's. It seems like an album that's built on obsessions and passions equally, a love letter to the past with the chops to pull it off.

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Lorelle Meets the Obsolete

2011 unleashed a hidden gem in the form of Lorelle Meets the Obsolete's On Welfare. Maybe its that people couldn't wrap their heads around the name but the record went sadly unsung into the ether, though it spent a lot of time on the RSTB speakers that year. Hopefully Guadalajara's finest don't suffer the same fates and fools on their follow-up, Corruptible Faces. Still brewing a hot pot of shoegaze and Krautrock bubbled through a psych filter, the band knows how to ride the edge of groove and gently cut back to spacey atmospherics to superb effect. The record explodes their sound in all directions; its spacier, poppier, heavier, headier and far more expansive. Though no matter how close they fly to a pop sun, the band still know how to bring down the veil of ethereal psych like a welcome shroud and for that, we love them. Shimmering vocals bump piano plunks, bass grooves throb and wobble into organ swells and just when it seems like your headphones might not be able to contain the cacophony, it cools out into a welcomed smolder.

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Food Court - "Not Enough" Video

Not to be confused with Parquet Courts, check out the food fight / sploshtastic video for the new single from Sydney punks Food Court. "Not Enough" was mastered by Mikey Young of Eddy Current (always a mark of quality) and its got a huge hook and an even bigger sense of fun. The track, along with the previously released "Going Home," will appear on an upcoming EP due out in April. For now though, you can grab them both for free on the band's Bandcamp. Do it!

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	Jeffery Lee Pierce - Six String Sermon Prior to cutting Fire of Love, one of RSTB's favorite records of all time, Jeffery Lee Pierce cut a rough and utterly raw session of blues interpretations that show where Pierce was coming from but could in
no way give an indication of where he was headed. The tracks are lo in the fidelity department but feel true to their origins as Lomax-style field recordings of blues songs as most of the originals were laid down. The album has been included in box sets and archive recordings in the past but now its being laid back down on vinyl by Spain's Bang Records and included in the packaging is a 16-page booklet that ropes together anecdotes and musings from Pierces bandmates like Kid Congo Powers and contemporaries from Nick Cave, Mark Lanegan, Tav Falco and tons more. Its a fitting tribute to long gone star and a document of the start of an incandescent rock journey about to happen. Limited to 1000 and cut on heavy stock. Nicely done. Download: [MP3] Bill Wilson - Blackjack Davey Support the artist, buy it HERE

Mountains

Koen Holtkamp and Brendon Anderegg have always managed to create achingly beautiful music in their time as Mountains and each new release sees them hone their craft and plunge listeners further into depths of sound. Recorded both live and at Telescope Studios in Brooklyn, Centralia is an echoing, quavering world of synth and sweep augmented by plaintive plucks of guitar and the faint hum of strings. The duo has a superb ability to blend the pastoral with the classical and the traditional with the experimental to create a sound that feels familiar and completely disorienting at the same time. The disorienting effect plays heavily into the mood of Centralia, though it could apply to most of their works, and it gives the album a heady sense of melancholy that hangs like a shroud over the songs. Perhaps not a companion piece to sunny afternoons, but for the cold months ahead Centralia might be just the ticket.

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[MP3] Mountains - Living Lens

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	Wet Illustrated - Scorpio Wings 7" January remains a time to sweep up those great tidbits of 2012 that got missed in the last year and one such item is this great single from one of our favorites around here, Wet Illustrated. The band lay this one down for Jeff The Brootherhood camp Infinity Cat
Recordings and its a double shot of their taught guitar rock that's cracked with pop rocks n' soda energy and an edgy tension always feels ready to spill the edges of their nooks and hooks. There exist bands that always seem to boggle the mind how they don't catch on and Wet Illustrated is one of those. Chalk it up to timing. Chalk it up to circumstance but if you missed out on their cracking album 1x1x1 then by all means pick it up now and nab this single in the process. A double A side to be sure and one that probably would have made our best singles list had circumstances put it in our lap in time. Watch: Support the artist, buy it HERE

Plankton Wat

The last Sound of Cobra release that showed up here was an excellently unheralded 12" by Expo '70, a one-sided slice of drone and psych that put us onto the label's rich catalog. In similar form the Berlin based label brings a new offering from Dewey Mahood's Plankton Wat. Acting as a rather perfect follow up to his Thrill Jockey album from last year the 12" is a fiery bit of instrumental psych that brings to mind his work with Eternal Tapestry, though somehow much more personal in scope. A familiar stew of fried string psychedelia, folk tumble and meditative drone, the EP is Mahood at his best, urging the sun down through the clouds and over the distant range in a slowly melting mass of orange. Highlights are the bookends "Pastoral Rejoice" and "Lone Pines," both of which see Mahood adding some hard plucked acoustic touches to his usually ozone soaked guitar leads.

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Bloods - "This Town" Video

Sydney's Bloods have shown up here before with there scrappy single "Goodnight" that gave a grit of garage to the girl group sound. The band returns a bit glossier but no less catchy with the goofy vid for their latest single, "This Town". The song is pretty great though and its definitely gonna help satiate your needs until that Bleached album hits in a few months. Hopefully the trio have one of their own on the way soon, but for now this helps the wait.

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Broadcast

Trish Keenan's passing in 2011 was a tragic loss, but the music left behind in Berberian Sound Studio is a welcome reminder of her talent and Broadcast's legacy. Created in the time before her death with the band's James Cargill, and originally intended as a soundtrack of the film (The Equestrian Vortex) within the film (Berberian Sound Studio), the project expanded to include a vortex of sound and atmospheres that greatly recalls Broadcast's last proper work with The Focus Group. In Berberian the protagonist is a British sound engineer, tasked with scoring a schlocky Italian horror movie, but as the film progresses the monstrous world of sound he creates and the terrifying images on screen drag him further and further from reality. Several of the bits here mirror the knob twisting and jump cutting approach of their work with The Focus Group, but in between those short bursts are some plaintive, hauntingly autumnal pieces that scrape at the bones like wind through stripped branches. As a soundtrack it stands alone from the film to become its own disjointed reality, somehow more than its intention and yet very much a Broadcast album in the vein they were treading at the time of Keenan's departure. It’s a haunting work that's equal to any in their canon.

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[MP3] Broadcast - The Equestrian Vortex

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	Bill Wilson - Ever Changing Minstrel Word has it that Bill Wilson sought out famed producer Bob Johnston to help him out with this record and after a hasty living room session the Blonde On Blonde producer agreed to help
record and even wrangled a few of his high ranking session crew to flesh it out. The album is a stripped and torn bit of folk that's rooted in a blues roux that cooks up nice. The record was released on Columbia (much to Johnston's credit) but never sold. Probably the ugly rainbow massacre of a cover didn't help but it’s too bad as the contents were pretty spot on for the time. Tompkins Square founder Josh Rosenthal, who stumbled on the record in a dollar bin and sought out the rights to bring it back to light, saved the record from obscurity. The record swings well for fans of Dylan, naturally but also Byrds spin-offs like Gene Clark and to a lesser extent Gram Parsons and Townes Van Zandt. Those players may have well deserved their high ranking but Wilson's a second tier runner shooting for their highs while writing about the gutter he's looking up from. Download: [MP3] Bill Wilson - Pay Day Give Away Support the artist, buy it HERE

Grouper

Grouper's Liz Harris never ceases to release quietly captivating music full of perfectly waterlogged electronics and obfuscated strums. Though her last double album of sonic wonder, A I A was sublimely beautiful in its own right, many still hold Dragging A Dead Dear Up a Hill to be her definitive statement and there are two reasons to rejoice in that this year. The first being that Dead Deer itself is seeing another reissue (act quick on that as those never stay in print long) and the other is that Harris is releasing The Man Who Died In His Boat an album recorded during the Dead Deer sessions that evokes much of the same hushed charm and secret world glimpses as its more well known predecessor. Grouper albums always seem to tap into some unknown vibration of the Universe and allow you to slip through the pale for just a moment into the grey and silver gauze that Harris has woven into bittersweet pieces of tessellating ennui. Though her words never quite come through the veil of consciousnesses it always seems apparent what Harris is trying to evoke and The Man Who Died In His Boat is another sweet breath of her emotional vapor. 2013 has already been off to a booming start musically and this is definitely going to end up as one of the essential albums of the year.

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Captured Tracks + Flying Nun = More Vinyl for Everybody

Good news down the pike today as Captured Tracks announces that they're going to put out a string of Flying Nun reissues. If you've been scrolling through the last year or so of re-released posts then you'll no doubt have stumbled on RSTB's love for the Nun and to get some of these gems back in print is great news. They're starting off the collection with the U.S. version of a comp of Toy Love jams that surfaced from record shop Real Groovy in NZ in November. The release includes A & B sides of their singles and a chunk of demos and extras. Hoping that a proper release of the S/T album is imminent, as I've always loved the cover on that one. Good news though, and there are more albums apparently on the way from The Chills, The Clean, Tall Dwarfs, The Verlaines and The Bats. Plus there's talk of some shirts and posters (put me down for a Chills and a Toy Love shirt!). Hell any chance to post a Toy Love video is one I’ll take.

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Goldendust

The new wave of synth is still going strong and Night-People have picked up two heavy new contenders in Goldendust and Featureless Ghost. The former is a duo from NP's Iowa homeland that builds on a steady throb and snap of digital drums and a give and take of sinister keys and catchy exuberance. The duo are indebted to their darkwave forebears but seem to keep the current scene's sense of experimentalism and genre-mashing alive, devolving some tracks into sparse minimalist sine wave sliders and others into heavily hazed dance grooves. The whole of their eponymous album is tied together with a sense of outsider angst and though darkwave has a tendency to feel urban in its aesthetics, they keep a wide-plains feeling of small town isolation on the edges of the record. This has to be one of my favorite synth record to come down the pile in a while and of course, as a Night-People release, its wrapped in Shawn Reed's essential artwork as a bonus.

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[MP3] Goldendust - Forever Midnight

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Milk Teddy - "Going to Sri Lanka" Video

Another great South Hemi video this week in the form of the charmingly adorable video for "Going to Sri Lanka" from Milk Teddy's sorely underrated album Zingers. The children's storybook feel gives the song a whole new life of wonder in a Babar meets Wes Anderson sort of way. If you haven't checked the album out grab it below. Support the artist, buy it HERE or HERE

Veronica Falls

When a band writes a record that you hold in such high esteem, news of the follow-up always comes with a certain mix of excitement and unease. Honestly, up to this point, there has been no record more eagerly anticipated around these parts than Veronica Falls' sophomore LP Waiting For Something To Happen. And the band absolutely nails their second outing. The record is everything that could have been hoped coming off of the debut. Its still perching on the edge of sweet and sinister, the sugary sweetness of the three part harmonies tempered by the sense of unrest running like a fierce current just under the surface. The highs are higher on this outing, following in the steps taken by their recent single "My Heart Beats" (included on the album) and picked up in the bittersweet strums of the title track and new single "Teenage". Plus, a new record means the band hits the road again soon and they're always a treat in the live setting. Put this one high on your pickup list for 2013.

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Boomgates - "Flood Plains" Video

RSTB faves Boomgates (one of our tops of 2012) have a new video out for their track "Flood Plains". Its a bit goofy but still, its a solid track and the video captures the spirit of the song. Support the artist, buy it HERE

Dick Diver

Somehow in our love of Aussie rock around here Dick Diver's excellent LP New Start Again eluded RSTB until connections from a few other lauded acts forced a listen last year. The band includes Al Montfort (UV Race, Total Control) and Steph Hughes (Boomgates) so they've certainly got a pedigree to bear and this EP leaves them in good standing to support any accolades their tangential projects may receive. The five tracks here are packed with enough jangle and twang to please 90's indie fiends and 80's post-punk kickers alike. The double punch of title track "Alice" and "Future Self" leaves this one in the essential pile while the rest of the EP picks up some more stylized trademarks of their influences like some subtle sax skronk and a breezy jangler that lionizes Michael Jackson. Just more great Southern Hemi rock to keep us northerners jealous and waiting for more.

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