US indie
See: King Ropes – ‘Magical Floating Eye’: outta their Montana eyrie with playful alt-rock
BASED in the small city of Bozeman, Montana, in the foothills of the Rockies, King Ropes have quietly going about their particular brand of whimsical, alt.psych rock since their 2017 debut, Dirt. There’s a little of Kurt Wagner’s husky, declamatory warmth and observation to their thang; a touch of the Malkmus absurds, a little Mr …
ALBUM REVIEW: Clap Your Hands Say Yeah – ‘New Fragility’: raging at the state we’re in
On New Fragility, Alec Ounsworth looks at the state we’re in and calls it like he sees it; rage and horror is articulated with poetry and precision and more often than not with you being able to sing along with abandon
Soundtracks of Our Lives: Farmer Dave Scher
FARMER DAVE SCHER may be better known to you from the string of excellent bands he’s both been in and collaborated with down the years. He was a member of the brilliant West Coast country-psych outfit Beachwood Sparks, who took on Sade’s “By Your Side” and completely won (and actually chaps, while we’re here, could …
TRACK: Clap Your Hands Say Yeah – ‘Where They Perform Miracles’: Alec brings the yearn and then some
ALEC OUNSWORTH’S Clap Your Hands Say Yeah are following up the double whammy of October’s twin single drop, “Thousand Oaks”/”Hesitation Nation” (which we adored here) with the beautiful and elegiac “Where They Perform Miracles”, from forthcoming new album, New Fragility. It’s intimate, has that beautiful, tremulous voice and bodes exceedingly well for the album, his first since …
TRACK: New Bums – ‘Billy, God Damn’: a freewheelin’ acoustic slide blues
ONE – and there are many more, but for now, this – one of the many reasons we over at Backseat Mafia love the good folks at Drag City, is that they have a huge roster of brilliant artists who mix and collaborate and create anew; and that DC fosters and releases such new breeds …
ALBUM REVIEW: Dope Body – ‘Crack A Light’: shriekin’ and howlin’ at the altar
Crack A Light really won’t disappoint if you like guitars that shriek and howl in hardcore-stoner distress. A righteous noise purging
TRACK: Yo La Tengo share the warm hush of ‘Bleeding’ from their new EP
AWW, YO LA TENGO, when they’re on (sleepy) fire, you just have to adore them; and they really are, right now. They’ve just shared a second song from their forthcoming Sleepless Night EP, to follow their blissful cover of The Byrds’ majestic “Wasn’t Born To Follow”. “Bleeding” is the only original on the single-sided five-tracker, …
PREMIERE: Fixtures – ‘Five Ft One, Six Ft Ten’: proper scruffy, shredding alt.guitar pop like they used to make
BROOKLYN five-piece Fixtures know how to do a ridiculously fun guitar pop rush. Really, they do. They’ve just signed on the dotted with Spain’s Bobo Integral, and will be releasing their debut EP, Weak Automatic, for their new home in December. We’ve had a little listen, and another one, and another; and it really is …
SEE: Tune-Yards’ ‘nowhere, man’: brilliantly freakish stop-motion and a rousing groove
MERRILL GARBUS and Nate Brenner’s excellent, genre-busting, rousing Tune-Yards have released a brilliantly freakish stop-motion animation for their new track, “nowhere, man”. It’s bright, groovy, offbeat, spacious, eccentrically paced, passionately sung: in short, everything you need a Tune-Yards’ tune to be. And that accompanying video … Merrill and Nate are caught giving it the Chaplin …
ALBUM REVIEW: Bill Callahan – ‘Gold Record’: Bill pans for nuggets and strikes again
BILL CALLAHAN. Question: can you imagine a world where we don’t have his grace, his eye for the humanity of the everyday, his profound bass-voiced grace, those songwriting abilities. Scary thought, huh? There’s been enough to scare us in this ill-starred year of our lord, 2020. So we can be grateful that he’s kinda sprung …