Bitch Prefect

Largely jumping right into the spaces they left off with Big Time Melbourne via Adelaide strummers Bitch Prefect stay true to their ruminations on weary life and its everyday drain. The real charm here is that they've goosed their songwriting chops up a bit and begun to inject a bit of fire into their tempos. Still plenty of ramblin' jangles to be had for the fans of South Hemi styles but they also come close to the ramshackle punk nods of Eddy Current on "Shipped It." Elsewhere they grind things down to a hush with languid pining for lost love, get twitchy to the point of tipping and beat out a tattoo of hard strums against boredom. All around a huge bump from their last album and pulling them right in line with the pack of Aussie bands you should have your eyes and ears on this year.

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	X-Ray Pop - Pirate! The Dark Side Of The X French synth punks X-Ray pop have begun to reissue their vast catalog via Finders Keepers' more synth oriented subsidiary Cache Cache. The first offering was Pirate! The Dark Side of X a rare release
only available as a onesided cassette run off in 100 copies on its original release. The husband and wife duo scratch the very corners of the punk / synth axis, with scrappy Casio funk run through jerky contortions and wrapped up with Zouka Dzaza's spacey, detached vocals. This version of the band existed before they'd calmed into a more refined entity and it reflects the immediacy of the day long session that spawned it, feeling frantic and loose and vital. This incarnation of X-Ray swerves Stereolab (before they existed naturally) through the tangled roughs of Devo, Silver Apples and Can territory, biting and snarling with a chaser of French cool. The label has much more to offer from the band but this is a nice starting point to jump into their distorted universe. Listen: Support the artist. Buy it HERE

bEEdEEgEE

If you've ever seen Brian DeGraw DJ then the makeup of Sum/One shouldn't come as too much of a surprise. Mixing genres together into a seamless sonic soup that seems to drip from pop to noise with stops through world and abstract electronics as well, the album is a distillation of his approach to mixing others' music. Not the typical offering one expects when an artist has sequestered themselves upstate New York, the album is brimming with the kind of chaotic clatter that would typify the beating heart of the city. Augmenting the melee even further are vocal contributions from Gang Gang friends and contemporaries Alexis Taylor, Lovefoxxx, Lizzi Bougatsos and Douglas Armour who tend to pull DeGraw further into the folds of pop's embrace. The resulting album is dizzying, stretching and squelching and always pulsing with the kind of rainbow-refracted colors its cover would infer. DeGraw has mentioned that GGD have begun discussing new album proceedings after a break in 2013, but until then this gem will have to hold you over.

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The Limiñanas

The Limiñanas return with their intangible cool, trolling through VU standoffs and French New Wave touchstones as they have before but adding a new element of Morricone-eque spacial tension that gives the record an even drier wit than they've held onto before. The greatest asset to The Limiñanas has always been their lonesome otherness, and not having a solid grasp of French, the songs always seem to me as if they're about things you're not supposed to know or that are at least talked about in hushed tones. Though reportedly most of the lyrics here center on songwriter Lio's youth in Spain in the 70's and act as odes to the music, films and books of the era. Even when English pops up, it’s through a veil of smoke and sterility that wafts through speakers with a breathiness that has to be earned, never learned. Three albums strong, the band hasn't lost any of the charms that endeared them to me on first listen. Costa Blanca transports the listener, it melts the mundanity of modern life and adds the distinct feeling of dropping out of time.

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Steve Gunn & Mike Gangloff

Steve Gunn's been a staple around these parts, showing up here twice already this year and defintely pushing into our favorite albums with his Golden Gunn album, but Mike Gangloff (pictured above) hasn't crossed paths with RSTB since the heyday of Pelt. The pair got together in rural Virginia to strip away the distractions and lay down an album of haunting psych-folk that taps into the shamanistic core of the genre. Its exactly the kind of record that results from an intense overnight session of improvisation with the wounded warriors of psychedelic strings. Gunn and Gangloff holed up in the studio with roots music guru Joseph Dejarnette at the boards to divine five tracks of psychic ramble. The duo augment their 6 and 12-string guitars with tanpura, singing bowls, shruti box, and banjo to pull the deep vibrations from pre-dawn hours, hanging like mist in the air and bending the sun off the drops. Three in a row for Mr. Gunn in '13, making him one to bet on any time you see the name pop up. Necessary late night listening here.

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Shannon & The Clams - "Rat House" Video

RSTB faves Shannon & The Clams upped their game this year with a new LP that better showcases the exuberant fun of their live show. Check out the new video for their track "Rat House" featuring double shots of glitter, drumming gorillas and enough wobbly garage to start a party. If you haven't added this LP to your collection then its time to head to the store and do yourself a favor. Treat yo self, Clams style.

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Cheap Time

Cheap Time have continued to evolve from their snotty punk debut, trawling through Dave Davies explorations, toughening back up for a third album of post-glam leather-scuffed rockers and now refining that image into an expansive punk format that seems to be digesting bouts of Only Ones, Sparks and Television; feeling for the higher minded corners of punk's lineage. "Kill The Light" was a standout on the recent Scion garage comp and the band makes good on some of the promises laid down there, including that track in the lineup here and expounding on its snarled new wave crunch all over their fourth album. Adding to the fray is new bassist and Heavy Cream vocalist Jessica McFarland, who puts some tight screws on the bass and occasionally offers up a nice vocal counterpoint to Jeffery Novack, giving songs a new harmonic dimension. Novak and co. seem to have finally found their balance between flirtations with endless deviations on the punk formula and the rail-splitting, sneer lined chuggers that they've always excelled at. Exit Smiles feels like the band becoming more comfortable in their own skin, knowing where they excel and knowing when to push those skills into their personal passions with a newly attuned swagger.

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Super Wild Horses - "Ono In A Space Bubble"

Please excuse the slow flow of posts this week. I'm moving and its putting a bit of a damper on the amount of posts that can go up this week. But in the meantime this witchy new video from Super Wild Horses. The band augments their track "Ono In A Space Bubble" from their excellent Crosswords album with dark dancing and occult citrus. If you haven't had a chance to check out the whole album, now's the time.

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The Hunt

Has it really been 100 releases already? Certainly one of the labels that's gotten the most consistent RSTB love has been Sacred Bones, reaching back to some of their first releases and now the label mark's its 100th with the lost record from The Hunt. The band's single "1000 Nights" was the first release on the NYC label and it sparked the beginning of something that would grow into a singular entity among the new class of independent labels. Since then the band has drifted from NYC to Boston, some members have made their way to the line up of fellow Sacred Boners Cult of Youth, but all along the pieces of The Hunt Begins have taken shape and now they'll see light. The band called it quits prior to this release but they'll get back together for one last show on November 20th. As for the album, its perched on the edge of post-punk with a lean towards driving, anthemic hooks that explode from nests of wiry guitar and coiled bass. Though it took many years to get here, the document of The Hunt's struggle stands as an amiable rock record that thrashes with the passion The Hunt showed in their tenure on stage. Its fitting that they mark this milestone and that they get the recognition that seemed to elude them at the time.

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Food Court

Sydney's Food Court has shown up here before, knocking out a few great singles that showed promise, packed with hooks and hung up on a cross between garage punk and surf flirtations. Now they've wrapped those first couple of singles together with three additional tracks for their debut EP, Smile At Your Shoes. The record proves first and foremost the band has a knack with a chorus, as each track seems to explode with a chewy pop center that makes their songs fun and frothy. They keep things pushing positive and that sense of fun gives the whole EP its anthemic crux. Recorded to tape the old fashioned way and, naturally as all great Aussie releases, Mikey Young mixed it down for that perfect garage sparkle. Well worth the currency conversion and nicely paired with that new Bloods EP I mentioned last week.

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Painted Caves

Consider me a sucker for any release tied to the Barn Owl coven, but I'm all the more interested if it means Evan Caminiti taking the Painted Caves moniker back up again. Following on the excellent Not Here Not There cassette from last year, Caminiti spirals down the dark hallways once again for a proper album on venerable noisemakers Shelter Press. Taking up the John Carpenter haunted dreamscape yoke; he fleshes out a throbbing, scorched soundtrack that leaves little room for air. Its as parched as most Barn Owl works but as is his form with Painted Caves, Caminiti leaves his guitar behind to wallow in the mercurial waters of synth pads and oscillating tones. The results are the hypnotic grooves of Surveillance, tapping out slow steady heartbeats cribbed with leaden footsteps thundering through the listeners head, Goblin-tinged synths percolating to the unsteady blink of damaged florescents and a creeping dread of anything that lies just out of earshot. It’s the perfect debut for Painted Caves and another goddamn feather for Caminiti in his already sterling catalog. Now he's just showing off. Best pick it up because it won't stick around too long.

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Ty Segall - The Man Man (video)

Ty gets stalked by a gang of masked gunmen in his dark clip for the track "The Man Man" from Sleeper. The album's full of dark vibes and sentiments and this vid does a good job of conveying some of the anger writhing through the track. Plus its just a creepy good time. If you've yet to pick up a copy of Sleeper get your ass in gear and out to the store. Your turntable is angry at you for not allowing it to run through the grooves of one of 2013's best.

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Has A Shadow

Captcha digs up another fine group of psychedelic warriors from Guadalajara, Mexico, proving the city a growing source of jet-black psych bombast. Has A Shadow shares much in common with fellow travelers and labelmates Lorelle Meets The Obsolete, mining fuzz swaddled blasts of dirge rendered shoegaze that explode into full scale feedback takedowns. The record was, in fact, recorded by Alberto Gonzalez (aka The Obsolete) who also added drums to the sessions, further entwining the two bands and giving them a stronger link to their Guadalajara brethren. The album is unrelenting, even in its quieter moments there's a quivering menace that trembles at the edges of the screen, ready to pounce whenever they kick up the tempos and tear an amplifier sized hole in the sun. Sky is Hell Black is aptly titled, feeling like a good entry point to post-apocalyptic revelry, dance music for the last ones standing.

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	The Prefab Messiahs - Devolver Hints at a full retrospective swarmed a few years ago when Almost Ready put out a double shot of the Prefab's recordings and now Burger has made that dream a reality. Devolver collects 27 tracks from the band's run from 81-83,
roping in live tracks, living room sessions and studio takes recorded with Bobb Trimble. Showcasing their wry post-punk meets paisley psych via Xeroxed garage pop, the anthology is a reminder of the very fringes of Reagan-era punk, more underground than most and coming on like The Fugs on a mall tour, set to burn the food court to the ground. The collection puts the Worcester, MA group's offbeat sense of humor on display, wavering between the frantically paced pop gems that skews consumerism, religion and 80's conformity with equal measure with bursts of skit-like rants and short form songs that sketch out ideas. The band had called it quits; with bassist Kris Thompson going on to the most visible career in similarly underground groups Abunai! and Lothars. Now they're reuniting for a new album to be recorded with engineer/producers Doug Tuttle (of MMOSS, Lilys) and Jesse Gallagher (Lilys, ex-Apollo Sunshine, recorded the 1st Quilt LP). Keep an eye out for the next wave of Prefab Messiahs but in the meantime this massive anthology should satisfy any cravings. Listen: Support the artist. Buy it HERE (tape) or HERE (digital)

Nightmare Boyzzz

Trading in power pop that calls out The Exploding Hearts and feels reminiscent of Barreracudas and Gentleman Jesse, Nightmare Boyzzz dig in on their debut LP for Slovenly. The band has knocked out a string of singles that hinted at the kind of elastic pop on display for Bad Patterns and given the chance to flesh it out into a longform bit of bounce and hop, they come through with a collection that fizzes at the brim. Every bit as fun as the best bits of garage punk emanating from the South these days, its unconcerned, uncorked, unrestrained and ready to pick a fight with the best of 'em. Damn fine work and one's to look out for in the next year.

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Far-Out Fangtooth

Far-Out Fangtooth's debut showed the promise of a band locked into a Sonic Youth-indebted raw 90's rock. It was enjoyable but had room for the band to come into themselves as songwriters and that's precisely what they do on the follow up Borrowed Time. Glossing up the production and graduating further into the folds of shoegaze and psychedelia, the album seethes with a dark current that rolls along the surface like fog. They utilize a tightly wound clang and percussive rumble to propel the album's storm of keys and guitars caught in a sonic mesh of feedback and swirl. The overall vicious growl of noise paired with the breathy intensity of their vocal delivery sets the tone for Borrowed Time to build its gothic-psych pillars to new heights. Ultimately the album ends up a rainy day necessity that often trembles with pent up energy and pays off well when it unleashes like a torrent on the listener.

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