Sic Alps - "Biz Bag" Video

Ye Olde Alps have been doling out these videos over the past few weeks, and in fact their Carrie Jean video is out at Tiny Mix Tapes today as well, but we missed out on this one from a little while back. An optimistic accompaniment to one of the standouts from their recent She's On Top 12" and not at all a bad pairing with the dwindling hours of a Friday afternoon. Pick up the 12" if you haven't already.

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Surf City

There are a lot of times that a band stuns with an opening salvo only to falter a bit on the second step. Surf City's debut EP was a bristling six shot that had an immediacy to it that made their oncoming album highly anticipated. That album, though tenable, cooled a bit of the fire they had lit and met with a proper lukewarm response. However we are strong believers in second chances and on their sophomore LP the band jumps right back into that fire. Album opener "It's A Common Life" is one of the best pop tracks the band has ever laid their hands on, conveying a sense of longing ennui and bored shiftlessness in equal measures all with the propulsive bounce that first endeared them to us in the first place. Over the next few tracks the band continues to mine taught skinned pop that wanders through the current Kruatrock obsession that's taking place in the UK underground and seems to be touching down a bit in the band's native New Zealand as well. Those chugging Germanic grooves are perfectly counterbalanced by their jagged and jangled guitars that feel so unswervingly in line with the South Hemi tones we love so well at RSTB. The band is unequivocally back on their game and pushing pop to corners that are expansive and still accessible. Its hard to encapsulate the sound of a city sighing under the weight of a decade but somehow Surf City have made a record that feels every bit like a mirror of 2013; bright with purpose but fogged by the breath of those sighs. Repeat listening highly suggested.

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Beach Day

Once you get past the name and its connections to a dozen other beach themed outfits that immediately spring to mind, Beach Day's debut is a gleefully charming summer classic. Built on a platform of saccharine sweet garage pop that digs around the Motown/Specter axis well then channels it through the soul-swung stomp of The Detroit Cobras, Trip Trap Attack is as sunny a record as the band's name might suggest. Seeing them live the biggest shock comes from the realization that the record's powerful vocals emanate from Kimmy Drake's slight frame, feeling every bit like your kid sister just belted out a note perfect Adele cover at the dinner table to stunned aunts all around. Said vocals anchor the record, giving it not only that Crystals/Ronnettes timbre but also setting them far apart from a dozen other bands swinging through the girl group fringes. The bulk of Trip Trap flits through hip shaking pop songs that ought to serve a dozen playlists for the rest of the summer but the band wind things down to a plaintive hush on the aching "Seventeen", proving they've got more than a few tricks in their bag. However, the band is at its best when their songs aim to make the listener smile and escape in the flood of harmony and a crush of pop so fizzy it can barely contain itself.

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Joseph Childress

Originally self-recorded in 2005, this album has been a long time coming in an official form and has been one of the major development items over at Empty Cellar over the years. RSTB first got a taste of Childress back in 2009 when the label released a split 7" with White White Quilt that featured the two recoding in an abandoned water tower, the Childress track being an especially fragile and gorgeous highlight of that release. In the intervening years he's garnered a live reputation that's only built clamor for this album louder. The Rebirths wears its humble, bathroom recorded origins on its sleeve, feeling like an intimate performance for an audience of one, but thanks to a proper remastering by Paul Oldham the album's quiet solitude now envelops the listener like wood smoke in autumn. The songs aren't embellished with studio sheen, but little is missed in the production department as Childress' cracked, enigmatic voice and backporch delivery seem to transcend the need for lush surroundings and painstaking polish. There's time for all that anyhow since this reissue is the first of three records from the artist that Empty Cellar will release over the next year and a half. Presumably we'll see what the studio lends in the months to come. For now though, its plenty enough to just sink back into The Rebirths with the sense that Childress is sharing a private performance of soon to be well worn favorites.

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	Martin Rev - S/T Suicide always skated the line between the electronic wave bubbling up under the analog surface of the 70's and punk, though they always seemed to align themselves with the latter even if the audiences didn't take to
their brand of snarling minimal crush. Released in 1980, the same year as their Ric Ocasek produced second album, Martin Rev brought together a collection of tracks for Charles Ball's Lust/Unlust imprint, also home to DNA and Dark Day. There's decidedly less sheen than Suicide's second shot, but in spots the album does embrace a bit more of the pop aspect that bubbled underneath much of their catalog. Though Rev was just as fond of meandering clouds of synth dust storming over a beat so metronomic that listeners can't help but zone out and flow with the tide of his squall and there's a fair amount of that at work here as well. The album didn't make Rev a solo name, and it was certainly overshadowed by the group's main effort of the same year, but it stands as an odd touchstone of the rise of synth pop that rode several waves over the next few decades. Superior Viaduct has recently thrust it back into the spotlight and into the hands of a public that might now be more willing to accept it. Listen: Support the artist, buy it HERE

Jozef Van Wissem

A new offering from Dutch Lutenist Van Wissem, this time without the accompaniment of Jim Jarmsch, sees the classical veteran return to a soft grey palette of bittersweet instrumentals. The album is clouded with the weighted emotional clout that Van Wissem seems to invariably convey in a way that his fingerpicked contemporaries in the guitar circles never seem to quite reach; the tonality of his medieval instrument adding a special bit of somber color to each of his compositions. And though the instrument itself seems like a bit of a novelty in 2013, the instrument's origins never make his compositions feel less modern, they're never weighed down with the kind of traveling bard associations that one usually jumps to when the word lute is mentioned. Instead Van Wissem drafts a soundtrack of heartstrings and long sighs that crash and dissolve beautifully between his plucks. You'd be hard pressed to find another player who wields the instrument with as much grace and virtuosity balancing on a delicate edge.

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Sagor & Swing

Its been a nice bit of time since we last heard from Sagor & Swing around here, most note ably because the band took a hiatus for the better part of the last decade, with Eric Malmberg heading off on his own organ excursions (hmm that sounds dirtier than it should). Still its great to have the team back together as there's been a lack of Middle Earth meets Zelda instrumental albums of late and as such Botvid Grenlunds Park arrives just in the knick of time. Knocking the Zelda appeal up one notch higher with their 8-bit level selection artwork, the music contained inside leaves no disappointments; quickly becoming the soundtrack to whatever epic journey you care to break it out for. The pair are still chasing the down the Shire-pointed rabbit hole towards their hero Bo Hansson's epic 70's sojourns and they come pretty damn close in scope and execution. This one should be filed snugly on the shelf between your copies of King Crimson and Yes, Roger Dean blacklight poster optional but highly recommended.

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Heavy Times

Chicago's Heavy Times return with a dark breath of grunge-throttled garage that's huffing from the same crust that drove Wipers and Huskers alike. The pace is potent on Fix It Alone, but its hard to run with oil in your veins. The constant tension push-pulling the grooves of the record is palpable, a general back-alley grit that cuts like a stick n' poke through the gnarled skin of the songs. Its not all gravel and grist though, there's plenty of melody that breaks through the cracks in the rust to reveal a thriving pop engine underneath that tough exterior. As the album progresses those cracks grow larger breaking wide as it crests to the second side with clean toned anthems like "Trouble Walker" and "River's Edge" bubbling over with a fizzing kind of thrust that fills floors with kids, arms raised to fists and thrown to the whims of the crowd. The record's been a long time coming and its worth it to hear the band careening into their own walls and busting them down with a reckless willingness to let it all crumble down.

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The Cairo Gang

A contrast to Emmett Kelly's last work, The Corner Man, his new EP under the guise of The Cairo Gang is for the most part a lighter, more spirited affair; not hurried, but definitely not as labored upon as some of Kelly's past works. The record was recorded over the course of a week and it has an excited breath of that pacing in the folds of its six tracks. There's a distinct thread of West Coast folk-rock of the 60's vintage on display here that's not often present in The Cairo Gang catalog. And its not just because 12-string guitars tend to leave a taste of Roger McGuinn's Byrds in your mouth, its a perfectly out of time sun-soaked quality that pairs well with Kelley's label mates Cool Ghouls. The breezy, bittersweet tracks are counterpointed by an amazingly sparse and admittedly bitter without the sweet cover of The Boys Next Door's "Shivers", also covered ably last year by Divine Fits. It’s a stomach-clenching tale of relationship addled depression that lands its punches just as hard if not harder under Kelly's orchestration. Some artists seem to find their niche and carve it out deeper and more defined over time, but it seems that Mr. Kelly isn't content to just play the harrowed troubadour etching his wounds in song. Here he's delivered another side to the Cairo coin and its good to hear him soak in the sun once in a while.

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The Hussy - "Woodland Creatures" Video

If you haven't acquainted yourself with The Hussy's new album Pagan Hiss then its damn well about time. The record is the band's best yet and now they've unveiled an appropriately dense, psychedelic video as an accompaniment to the album's most ambitiously excessive track. The centerpiece of the album is here given a treatment of smoke and swirl that fits the track's singed fury. Already on our list of the best of 2013 so you best hit up Southpaw before these run out.

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	Afflicted Man - I'm Off Me 'Ead Up to this point I'd mostly been familiar with Steve Hall's Afflicted Man from their final album Get Stoned Ezy which is three extended tracks of blown cone psych that act as a blueprint for bands like Wooden Shjips' brand of fuzz breakdowns.
The preceding album I'm Off Me 'Ead is a more desperate and savage entry into what Hall himself dubbed "Hippy Punk". The term is a bit misleading as its no peace and love embrace on I'm Off, rather its a rabbit hole full of blues skeletons clinging frantically to the fringes of punk; punk as it existed as a visceral exorcism of outsider voice. Hall amassed a small and largely unheard catalog of works in his time under the names Afflicted and later Afflicted Man before joining up with The Accursed, a band with ties to the National Front and eventually landing in prisons and mental hospitals and working under the name Called to little success or acclaim. His legacy has recently been revived by a complete collection of works and now some love for the individual pieces like this, his pinnacle of electric contortion and damage. Chicago's Permanent Records has pumped new life into the record with a scant 500 copy run so best act swiftly. Listen: Support the artist, buy it HERE

Dan Melchior

Dan Melchoir is a prolific beast, cranking out records that range from pop masterpieces like O, Clouds Unfold to random noise bursts and fuzz choked blues. His latest straddles the pop and experimental lines, filling in some of the pop shoes again after the acclaim for The Backwards Path. The record alternates between dark and frothing with some sense of grim menace on the instrumental passages to tracks that embrace chipper, if a bit brittle pop. The dichotomy is understandable given the surrounding circumstances. The proceeds of the album go entirely to fund relief for Melchior's wife Letha's cancer treatments; the album itself mirroring the sway of emotions entitled to coping with disease. Through the turbulence the album still flashes with all of Melchior's dark brilliance aided nicely by a mastering job by Australia's garage kingmaker Mikey Young. The album's acerbic qualities pound with the kind of frustration that's universal, if not even more understandable here, and its cathartic to the core. Pick up a copy below to help Dan and Letha's fight or check out more information on the cause HERE.

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Ghost Wave - "Here She Comes" Video

New Zealand's Ghost Wave release the first sounds from their upcoming album Ages out soon on Arch Hill/Flying Nun and its a gooey bit of psych-pop that treads well into the catchy half of that equation. The album follows on a well received EP from last year. Here's hopin' the rest is as good as this pop nugget.

Support the Band. Buy it HERE.

	Goat - Dreambuilding / StoneGoat 7" After a thunderous and engrossing album last year Goat return with a Stateside single on Sub Pop. The band's assault of tribal percussion remains in place as does their penchant for psychedelic fuzz
breakdowns. Just as biting as last years World Music, the single sounds like it could have been remnants of the sessions that bred that beast. The A-side is all voodoo beats and impassioned shrieks and the b-side doesn't stray too far from the palette either. Both are great accompaniments to turbulent summer storms surely on their way. Whether this means its the beginning of a beautiful friendship with the veteran US label or just a one off dance, who knows but its good to have more Goat catalog either way. Listen: Support the artist, buy it HERE

Verma

A departure from Chicagoans Verma's usual Krautrock sympathies here, but a very welcome one as the group expands into cinematic textures on their latest album, Coltan, for Trouble In Mind. The album was written as a soundtrack to VICE's "Guide To The Congo" and it's meant to underscore the devastation of mining Columbite-Tantalite, an ore used in the manufacture of capacitors found in everyday electronics. The mining has devastated the region and fittingly the thrust of Coltan paints a bleak sonic picture, with each of the four improvised pieces displaying a dour edge cut through the band's dark psychedelia. Fraught with a knotted tension and slashed deep with welcome amounts of flashing feedback, on paper the album sounds foreboding, and for the most part it is. As such it makes an excellent accompaniment to its subject matter; but its also an extremely accomplished set of ink black cosmic psych that stands alone from the documentary as a welcome addition to the canon of gathered cloud psychedelia, cinematic psych of the type that sits easily among bands like Barn Owl, Date Palms, Danny Paul Grody and even Gnod in some places. It’s a thunderous work that seems to close in as quickly as the branches of a deep and knotted jungle, eager to swallow whole those who have gutted its precious resources. Trouble in Mind were absolutely correct in their assertion that this needed to be rescued from its original tape run and cut to vinyl.

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Its about the midway point here and that means its time to choose sides on what's been wrangling the most time on the Raven turntable. Below is RSTB's list of the best of the first half of 2013. A damn fine lot of music if I do say so myself.



_________
ALBUMS
_________

Mikal Cronin - MC II (BUY)
Veronica Falls - Waiting for Something to Happen (BUY)
Camperdown & Out - Couldn't Be Better (BUY)
Cool Ghouls - Cool Ghouls (BUY)
Warm Soda - Someone For You (BUY)
Jacco Gardner - Cabinet of Curiosities (BUY)
Dick Diver - Calendar Days (BUY)
Boards of Canada - Tomorrow's Harvest (BUY)
The Hussy - Pagan Hiss (BUY)
John Roberts - Fences (BUY)
Grouper - The Man Who Died in His Boat (BUY)
The Living Eyes - The Living Eyes (BUY)
Terror of the Deep - Permanent Weekend (BUY)
Tony Molina - Dissed and Dismissed (BUY)
Thee Oh Sees - Floating Coffin (BUY)
Bleeding Rainbow - Yeah Right (BUY)
Date Palms - The Dusted Sessions (BUY)
Endless Boogie - Long Island (BUY)
Colleen - The Weighing of the Heart (BUY)
Golden Gunn - Godlen Gunn (RSD Release)

______________
SINGLES / EPs
______________

Sic Alps - She's On Top (BUY)
Haunted Heats - Something That Feels Bad is
Something That Feels Good (BUY)
Fuzz - Sleigh Ride (BUY)
Proto Idiot - You're Wrong (BUY)
Teenage Burritos - Danya (BUY)
Goat - Dreambuilding ( BUY)
Ketamines - All The Colours of the Heart ( BUY)
The Barreracudas - 7th Time Around ( BUY)
Bloods - Back To You ( BUY)
Winter Bear - Jump In The Fire ( BUY)

Wrekmeister Harmonies

JR Robinson's Wrekmeister Harmonies attempts to bridge the gap between the drone / experimental, the neo-classical and the metal camps, worlds that have been crossed in some forms before to be sure but Robinson gives his forebears a run for them money in the expansive composition department. The album is one long track, 38 minutes split over two sides of vinyl and its original inception was as an accompaniment to a film that Robinson had shot in various locations (Joshua Tree, ruined sections of Detroit) and screened at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. A crack group of musicians from metal's ranks was put together for the live screening, with members from Leviathan, Nachmystium, Mind Over Mirrors, Anatomy of Habit and Yakuza filling out the ranks. The screening was such a success that Robinson took the ensemble to Steve Albini for a proper recording that stands now as You've Always Meant So Much To Me. The result is a harrowing tableau of lonesome drones, hiss, degraded noise and moans that build to a towering schizm of thunder, earth, sky and guitar that feel just as destructively chaotic as the crest of any storm. The lines of classical nuance and metal combustion erode between the overlapping waves of guitar that build to the epic finale. Robinson proves that Wrekmeister are just as at home with the Sunn o))) crowd as they are with Johann Johannsson and the museum set. I can only imagine what a spectacle the piece is live but on record, it’s still a floor to ceiling house shaker and a good way to accompany any storm raging outside your windows.

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Kurt Vile - "KV Crimes" Video

Kurt Vile gets the royal treatment in Philly in the video for one of my favorites from his latest LP. Good to see that through fame and adulation KV still keeps it real repping Philly with a WaWA lunch. If you haven't dug into his latest lengthy opus, its about time.

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	Proto Idiot - You're Wrong / You Can't Hide 7" Following his work with The Hipshakes Andrew Anderson has skewed towards both a twitchy, melodic form of garage pop that's reminiscent of latter Jay Reatard, when he began listening to Toy Love and espousing an obsession
with all things Flying Nun, and strummy 60's janglers that hit the Davies nail on the head. His new single for Trouble in Mind takes those touchstones as jumping off points but, as the label alludes, Anderson ropes in a love for The Soft Boys and Television Personalities to the mix; though its the combination of his past and present influences that makes these two tracks not merely a modern update of either of those bands. Instead its just a pair of hard strummed, catchy-as-hell shimmy shakers that make for damn fine bits of pop fodder in the course of 2013, fizzing like goddamn Pop Rocks in seltzer and scratching that jangle-punk itch. Its hard not to be intrigued by these two nuggets as to what Anderson can do in the longform, so here's hoping its not just a one off collaboration with the label but a taste of what's to come. Listen: Support the artist, buy it HERE

The Mantles

The Mantles return with a new album and a concise vision for their jangle-folk focus thanks to some production work from pop miner Kelley Stoltz. The band has always found themselves woven between the lines of the SF garage scene, and though they're not as toughly crusted as many of their brethren, they divine plenty of the city's ebullient spirit; mashing its tradition of paisley strums into a nest of Flying Nun jangles. In fact Long Enough To Leave crunches and swings in a way that puts them squarely in line with much of the current Aussie / New Zealand crop as well, something that can only help to endear them closer to our hearts. The album culls in a couple of early tastes among the ranks here in the form of singles "Rapberry Thighs" and "Bad Design" but they sound fresh and cohesive with Stoltz' pop touch keenly applied. As with the best of their catalog over the past couple of years, the album has a breezy quality that holds onto the past in spirit while knocking out a pop concoction that feels very immediate. Easily one to beat for summer strollin' and sunset peepin'.

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Warm Soda - "Jeanie Loves Pop" Video

Warm Soda continue to stick it to the squares in their latest video from the very essential Someone For You LP. So much gooey power pop you almost don't deserve it, the album is a cheery shot of sunshine rumble to get the summer months started. If we're really nice you think Warm Soda will come and party in the Raven abode as well? Nah probably not. Next best thing though right here.

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Danny Paul Grody

On his third LP Danny Paul Grody (Tarentel, The Drift) expands upon his brand of American Primitive guitar, nuanced not as much by the flash virtuosity as some of his contemporaries, but rather by a sense of floating space that would belie his work with drone based outfits in the past. While Between Two Worlds also utilizes drone in a traditional sense as it unfolds, several tracks have a certain hushed ground to them that drive Grody's gentle pickings along with a sinuous purpose as if insinuating an unconscious grounding tone throughout. Where many from the Fahey school would insert flurries of notes into a given passage to create tension, Grody does just the same by picking only those notes necessary and bending them around an unsettled center that's pastoral but always with a sense of creeping nostalgia and the loom of darker clouds. In fact with his use of quietly loping synthesizer woven between guitars DPG's closest current touchstone might be Barn Owl's Evan Caminiti, though Grody's desert is never quite as vast or as bleak as Caminiti seems to conjure. And perhaps the crux of Between Two Worlds, is Grody bridging the gap between the fluid tranquility of the fingkerpicked style and his past in the complexities of layered synth. It seems he's found the perfect footing here and that bridge turns out to be tumultuously gorgeous.

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	The Plimsouls - The Plimsouls...Plus The band was formed during the new wave rush and benefited from the vocal talents of Peter Case, fresh from The Nerves and heading up the new venture with a swagger that caught on well with their L.A.
contemporaries like The Knack. The band worked up quite a fitting live reputation and after their Zero Hour EP, and they cut this LP for Planet Records. It was supposed to have been huge at the time, again owing to the fact that they stunned live and the fact that Blondie was running a cover of The Nerves' song "Hanging On The Telephone" up the charts at the time. It was big enough to catch the attention of Geffen who signed them for their more well known sophomore album Everywhere At Once before the band folded entirely with Case leaving for a solo career that continued in his stints at Geffen, Vanguard and Yep Roc. Though before completely disappearing the band did release a live document that finally put that reputation down on record. The expanded edition of this debut adds nicely here with the EP and b-sides rounding it out and while their second album had a few more listeners, the more open sound on this debut makes it one of the long lost gems of the new wave/power pop axis. Though if you asked Case, he was always just playing rock n' roll. Listen: [Download] The Plimsouls - Hush, Hush Support the artist, buy it HERE

Alex Bleeker & the Freaks

Bleeker's second solo excursion from the ranks of Real Estate sounds much steadier than his first. Where the eponymous album suffered from a sense of finding himself apart from his day job, lending to the standout track being a cover of his contemporaries and collaborators Mountain Man, here Bleeker seems to find his own voice in that of the disheveled country troubadour. Everything on How Far Away gets a shot in the arm, from production rife with strident jangles and soft steel guitar whinnies, to Bleeker's own voice which is pulled from the instrumental murk of his debut. The album is ostensibly a breakup album, always fine fodder for goading the best out of people, and Bleeker even takes the anti-Carly Simon tact of declaring "I know its obvious my songs are all for you" in "All My Songs." Its a heart-on-sleeve moment among many on the album, but though the subject matter is focused heavily on lost, that doesn't stop the album from attaining a certain buoyancy that propels the songs, alluding to the fact that Bleeker is down but never out. In fact the darker moments are tender enough to endure the listener to Bleeker's plight and each twang addled passage goes down smooth as aged scotch to patch old wounds with a warm comfort in the belly that, though temporary, feels like the answer to better days.

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