Warm Soda

Already racking up a third release under the banner of Warm Soda, Matthew Melton's post Bare Wires outfit continues to master the art of the soft punch. Taking power pop's more velvet touches and running them through some checks and balances from the school of The Quick and Milk n' Cookies, Melton goes plays up the dreamy, pastel capped daydream rather than the jagged edges of the genre. Taking most songs from the vantage point of the lonesome Romeo, Symbolic Dream plays out high school pining with a fast heartbeat a beat up denim jacket and plenty of time spent scrawling lyrics under the bleachers. Fed on junk food, glam radio tracks and stolen beer, there's more of the original thrust in power pop's birth here than just pastiche. As with the past two records, Melton is a scholar of the form and he's seemingly keeping the dial lodged between '79 and '81 until he gets it just right. Always great to hear him pay homage.

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	The Three O'Clock - Sixteen Tambourines The Three O'Clock started at The Salvation Army, until a dispute with the charity organization gave them reason for a change. The new name sprang from their regular rehearsal time and with it came a few new
players including Danny Bonair (Weirdos, The Quick) on drums and Mike Mariano (The Falcons) on keys. On this, their second full release as The Three O'Clock after the well received Baroque Hoedown EP, they stray well into power pop territory but they'd go on to define The Paisley Underground of melding those bright 60's pop with a latter day interest in psych touches. Those touches don't really raise their head here though. Instead Sixteen Tambourines stands as a prime piece of power pop that's sunny with a side of melancholy. The band then took the label track from Frantic to I.R.S. to Warner Bros., ending their trail there with the ill-received (but Prince contributed to) Vermillion. All was not lost as they have since been revived and are playing again. Still, for me, Sixteen Tambourines, though one of their earliest, still holds its charm and effervescence after all these years. Listen: Support the artist. Buy it HERE

Mikal Cronin

With each new release Mikal Cronin has pulled the curtain back further, made the screen wider and sharpened the focus on his pop spectacular. Sometimes its hard to believe that the scrappy psychedelia of his first LP came from the same person. It had hints of what's played out on MCIII, but to say that this is his most ambitious album is more than an understatement. Between playing everything from obscure Greek string instruments to French horns and arranging a full string section, it all sounds overwhelming on paper; but the brilliance of Cronin is that he makes it all sound so effortlessly effervescent through the speakers. Packed with songs that stretch his power pop past into new heights of arrangement on the A-side, things get even more complex on the flip, where he plays out a suited-concept record condensed into a single side. The individual parts all serve as killer songs on their own but the coming of age tale they weave builds a bigger boat to sail this album into ambitious and heady waters. Both bits show a level of mature songwriting and a mastery of his craft, but again, none of the praise matters quite as much as constant humming of these songs over and over that results from just one listen.

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Holly Herndon

Holly Herndon has been slicing through electronic intelligentsia over the course of several releases, including the rather sizable accomplishment that was Movement. But whatever she's done in the past is dusted by the release of Platform, a disorienting, complex sea of voices and electronics that sounds like the brainchild of Prefuse 73, Oneohtrix Poing Never and Katie Gately left alone in a room. Though comparisons only scratch the surface, Herndon is really carving out her own place in high-minded electronic composition and infusing it with a shifted and unshackled pop ideal. She's moved beyond explorations of trance and further towards the avant-garde edge. Platform feels chaotic in a way that reflects society at large, a blur of images, messages, voices and input. Tracks like "Locker Leak" really highlight the over-saturation inherent in everyday life; but she knows that it can't all be overwhelming. The calm and chaos find a strangely sublime balance over the course of the album's run, leaving the listener stunned but not broken.

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Damaged Bug

I'll admit, I was more intrigued than engrossed by the last Damaged Bug album. John Dwyer lone wolf synth project has a nice ring to it but the debut never struck a chord over here. Guess it just took another swipe at the stack because just a year later the sophomore LP makes good on that early intrigue. Cold Hot Plumbs takes that unstoppable Dwyer energy and boils it down to a dry ice simmer. The tracks buzz and snap with analog charm, bubble with Krautrock propulsion and root themselves in some oddly insistent hooks, albeit ones that feel beamed in from the holodeck just in time for freeze dried snacks and Tang. The project lands on its feet from every angle, from the songs themselves to spot-on artwork by Robert Beatty, who gives it a faded psychedelic appeal. This is Dwyer playing with form, keeping the explosions tempered and knowing how to work an aesthetic for all its worth. In the end it pays off quite handsomely, feeling like a well needed blast of cold air after a sweltering year.

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	The Stones - Three Blind Mice The Stones name their band in homage to The Rolling Stones, sought to build a band that sounded like The Clean and ended up emulating neither. Instead the Dunedin trio took another strange bite out of the Flying Nun/New Zealand fringe. Not as jangled and wry as
The Clean, the band had a rough grit approach to the South Hemi DIY that hinges on brittle, chewed tin guitars and Wayne Elsey's nasal lamentations. The band had very little recorded output but track from both the Dunedin Double compilation and Another Disc, Another Dollar EP are remastered and repackaged here alongside some live tracks that haven't seen the light of day. The Stones have often been overlooked in the Flying Nun scene, having been the only participants in the Dunedin Double that didn't go on to much acclaim but this revitalized collection sheds some light on the potential that was captured in those brief moments they found time to lay down. For fans of the period and place, this one's essential. Listen: Support the artist. Buy it HERE

Kara-Lis Coverdale

The musical landscape of Kara-Lis Coverdale treads into the biomechanical. It has a feeling about it that's organic, lush and green but still somehow also a touch antiseptic; the hedges are too perfect to not be milled by machine, if you get my drift. In this respect it becomes a well-suited soundtrack for an air-conditioned future. Her take on classical motif winds through eddies of sorrow and hope then feeds them through analysis and digital tweaking to produces the crispest version of each emotion. Synthesized instruments are heightened like food additives and the superimposed image of the orchestra becomes more real than the players ever were. No watermelon ever tasted as intense as a Jolly Rancher. No oboe ever lamented as deeply as Coverdale allows it to. But despite these trappings of manufactured environment, the record is affecting and personal in a way that prods at the heart and tugs at the memory. In her small, mostly cassette output she's hit on a potent brew of symphonic style.

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Moon Duo - "Slow Down Low" Video

Hazy vibes from Moon Duo's latest, "Slow Down Low" video, directed by Domingo Garcia-Huidobro of FÖLLAKZOID and it's a pretty good encapsulation of what's making this last album great. If you haven't already picked up Shadow of the Sun by now, then this stands as a reminder that its about time.

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John Andrews & The Yawns

The Yawns don't exist, at least not out of Andrews' mind, but what they lack in physical form Andrews more than makes up for them in musical presence here, tracking out a pretty full and toothsome album for a one man band. The sound on Bit By The Fang is warm, yet a bit musty, like firing up the radiators for the fist time in the season. Everything feels toasty but there's just a bit of catch in your throat from the Summer's build up. Pull the album tight against the wind and its a pretty welcome friend rattling by like home movies of summer vacations faded to a Kodak burnt umber. Most notable sources will bring up the connection between John Andrews and his stints in Woods and Quilt, two fairly relevant touchstones to be sure, though on this debut solo LP, Andrews takes those familiar psych-country templates and works his own sun blistered mark into them. He's not so much defined by his resume as stepping off into a territory that makes him a contemporary and peer of those bands. Repeated listens only endear the album further, allowing the blurry jangle of Andrews' sighed sojurns to inhabit your consciousness and take root, soothing like a good sipping rye and spreading the burn out from heart to hull. Not a bad way to start off, that's for damn sure.

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King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard

Feels like King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard are words I've typed more than any other in the past couple of years, and as the rest of this country catches up to the Aussie band's catalog, they give them more reason to chase. Following on two albums from last year alone, they've already got an expansive EP lined up for the first half of 2015. Quarters plays to the bands more sun-faded soul approach, a side which I happen to enjoy. They recently played a hell of a show up by us in Upstate NY and leaned heavily on this portion of their catalog and with the right kind of day it hits harder than some of their fire and fuzz tracks ever do. The concept here is four songs, each ten minutes, ten seconds long. They bounce from jazz licks to blue-eyed soul and into tropical psychedelia. The results here aren't their most single ready tracks but definitely play out their live prowess, morphing styles and dragging the listener willingly along for the ride. If this is the kind of gem they use as a stopgap, I'm interested to see where the next exit takes them. But for now, it seems the seven-headed beast from the South Hemi has already made moves to make 2015 their own

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Daniel Bachman

Within the critical confines of fingerpicked guitar, Daniel Bachman carries considerable heft, and though his name might not surface so often outside the current of fans of the style, his latest might just change that. Three Lobed, always a name that seems synonymous with adventurous choices, are issuing Bachman's latest album, River, and album that rambles, twists and slides on a slick of oil that feels rooted in the Southern Gothic and dustbowl aesthetics long since forgone by modern society. Opening with a 14+ minute volley of strings, the record doesn't bow in quality and over the course of the next 43 minutes and it never relents on that initial promise of expansive vistas. The title is apt, with many of the songs reveling in a sort of wide open space, rippling notes like the eddies and peaks of a running stream. There's something like a blast of cold air that hits in the middle of the record and its hard to deny that the spring lends itself well to fingerpicked guitar. Those with the works of Sir Richard Bishop, Fahey, Jack Rose and Chasney in their veins would be wise to bend their ear to Bachman's latest opus.

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Houndstooth

It took a while for me to peel back the layers on No News From Home. On the surface the sophomore LP by Houndstooth is a rather pleasant offering of tough, rootsy indie rock, but with more time to sit with the record, more dark corners are revealed, more personal passions peaking through the cracks of its radio ready exterior. Songs deviate from the perceived template, devolving into noisy squalls as on opener "Bliss Boat," chugging hypnotically on the burning "Witching Hour," or dipping into laconic country as on "Spirit." Kate Bernstein's voice has a weariness about it that balances out the dreamy nature that seeps into their songs, lifting what could be ordinary into a territory that feels heavy yet comfortable, like a favorite sweater soaked in the rain. The more listens this record receives, the deeper and darker her wells of sadness seem and the sweeter the relief feels when Bernstein shrugs off the pain without succumbing. All the while underneath her yarns, the band is rifling through a polished potpurri of stylistic riffs with the kind of precision that makes it seem like second nature. Its a record mature beyond its years, and pulling it off so well that its easy not to notice its subtle charms until its got you hooked.

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Day Ravies

I've never been a fan of the transposition of letters in stars' names as a meme for naming your band, but I'll make an exception for Day Ravies. The Sydney foursome have a handle on fizzy pop tunes that seem perched to explode into a cavalcade of 64 count crayons melting on the sidewalk. They have an innocence that seems lost, rooted in the fuzzing 90's tropes that stretch from Yo La Tengo to Sterolab ladled under a ton of feedback, but any way you frame it, the band seem to have a handle on that blissed and blasted sound. The video is a belated take from their recently released 7" on Beko but just in case that only whets your appetite, they've got a cassette EP out for Australia's Strange Pursuits label as well. Both are a jump up from their pretty decent debut LP from 2013, a release that got us clued on the name and wanting a bit more. Seems like the next logical step would be a new LP, but for now these tidbits will have to tide us over.

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Broken Water

Broken Water are no strangers around these parts, but its been far too long since Tempest hit us like a velvet hammer. Jumping back to their roots at Night People after a jaunt to Hardly Art, the band are pummeling harder than ever, digging up the bones in Sonic Youth's backyard and gnawing on them til they bleed white hot magenta. The record is smudged and smeared with the handprints of 1994, tough-skinned guitars and shoegaze grind, but while it certainly brings sense memories of the Clinton Administration, its not just retreading through the murk of grunge. The Olympia band reigns in a clarity to their soft/heavy sound here, bringing on Steve Fisk (Nirvana, Beat Happening) to sharpen the claws of Wrought to a fine point. They feel indebted to the past but ready to beat it into submission with static and garote it with a guitar string. The album is a high point in their catalog, taking the excitement of Whet and giving it a bigger field to play in. A perfect record to get lost in your headphones on a moonless night.

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