MARGO PRICE - 'MIDWEST FARMERS DAUGHTER'

Formats

• TMR339CD - CD

  813547022653

• TMR339 - LP

  813547022660

Details

First impressions matter. Especially on a debut album. Time and attention-strapped listeners size up an artist within a song or two, then move on or delve in further. Fortunately, it only takes Margo Price about twenty-eight seconds to convince you that you’re hearing the arrival of a singular new talent. “Hands of Time,” the opener on Midwest Farmer’s Daughter, is an invitation, a mission statement and a starkly poetic summary of the 32-year old singer’s life, all in one knockout, self-penned punch. Easing in over a groove of sidestick, bass and atmospheric guitar, Price sings, “When I rolled out of town on the unpaved road, I was fifty-seven dollars from bein’ broke . . .” It has the feel of the first line of a great novel or opening scene in a classic film. There’s an expectancy, a brewing excitement. And as the song builds, strings rising around her, Price recalls hardships and heartaches – the loss of her family’s farm, the death of her child, problems with men and the bottle. There is no self-pity or over-emoting. Her voice has that alluring mix of vulnerability and resilience that was once the province of Loretta and Dolly. It is a tour-de-force performance that is vivid, deeply moving and all true. From the honky tonk comeuppance of “About To Find Out,” to the rockabilly-charged “This Town Gets Around” to the weekend twang of “Hurtin’ (On The Bottle)”, Price adds fresh twists to classic Nashville country, with a sound that could’ve made hits in any decade. Meanwhile, the hard-hitting blues grooves of “Four Years of Chances” and “Tennessee Song” push the boundaries further west to Memphis (the album was recorded at the legendary Sun Studio). • Hometown: Nashville • Recorded at Sun Studios

Tracks

1. Hands of Time
2. About to Find Out
3. Tennessee Song
4. Since You Put Me Down
5. Four Years of Chances
6. This Town Gets Around
7. How the Mighty Have Fallen
8. Weekender
9. Hurtin? (On the Bottle)
10. World?s Greatest Loser

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DEEP THROATS - 'GOOD BAD PRETTY'

Formats

• CF062 - LP

  814867020701

Details

“I was a kid, I took mushrooms to help me ‘ease into things.’ It was a perfect SF night [circa 1999]—warm and dimly lit, shit-and-piss-smelling Clarion Alley. A band took the eye-level built-that-afternoon stage. I had peeked up gender-bent punk’s chicken-leather skirt and into eternity. How old were they? Who were they? How were they so fascinating? “They were blowing my young mind. I remember a show where, for some reason I can’t recall, but probably the cops had shut a party down, they got moved to a friend’s backyard down on 3rd Street. They played in front of a halogen work light on cement and somebody threw a bucket of yellow latex paint into the sky. The show was incredible and unstoppable (until the bikers next door called the cops and broke up the party). I’m not sure how I made it home but the next morning I woke up to strangers sleeping on my living room floor and yellow-paint footsteps covering my joint. I spent the next day gagging on my hands and knees scrubbing paint off the hardwood floor (even the shitty flats in SF have nice floors). Drugs, violence; general snottiness; elastic paranoid guitar; SRO drum kit; coke-bottle specs, sharp bass sounds. “An abstract guitar dance that still I can’t rip off without feeling guilty. Smirking medicated bass player whose heavy glasses slid down his sweating beak. Hot-as-hell and unapproachable drum master Sugar , whose boyfriend at the time I remember as like an extra from Warriors except he rode a BMX and was like 40...bad ass. Then there is Tracy —sneer lip stick smear, ripped stocking high heel in my eye. Tough as nails. Off the rails. A guitar as skinny as a knife, bent on pushing an ideal into your face hole. “I look back on these dark and aggressive times with much fondness. Now, here, we present to you the long-lost final Deep Throats recordings, Good Bad Pretty , on frosted, sugar-injected vinyl. Dig in, kids.” — John Dwyer

Tracks

1. Good Bad Pretty
2. Eyes
3. Way I Move
4. 2 Hot 2 Handle
5. Last Request
6. Invasion of the Body Snatchers
7. Creature Feature
8. Where?s the Party
9. Dirty Secret
10. Prove It

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GUIDED BY VOICES - 'PLEASE BE HONEST'

Formats

• GBVI66 - LP

  655035086613

• GBVI66CD - CD

  655035086620

Details

Robert Pollard wrote and recorded and played all the instruments on Please Be Honest, and when he finished, it felt to him like a Guided By Voices record. He’s not wrong. The songs are compact and tuneful, the playing expertly slack, the production raw and unpolished: sounds pretty much like every review of Bee Thousand. A better cognate, however, might be Vampire on Titus, Pollard’s 1993 pre-Bee Thousand (somewhat overlooked) lo-fi tour de force. On that record, Pollard similarly played every instrument—though his drumming skills then were so rudimentary that he had to record the bass drum and the snare parts separately, which is no longer the case— and as with everything he does, it’s about the songs, man. Of which Please Be Honest has no shortage, fifteen of them clocking in at just over 33 minutes. The point being there’s precedent for a GBV record where Pollard plays everything, and maybe more importantly there’s a reason for that precedent. Robert Pollard is Guided By Voices. This has never not been true, certainly, and is now more true than ever. He delights in confounding expectations, and you have to at least suspect that after over 20 years of making records under any number of pseudonyms, of which Guided By Voices is just one, and maybe not even his favorite one, he chafes at the notion that there exists some Platonic ideal of “Guided By Voices” that isn’t just Bob writing and recording the songs with whatever musicians he wants to use. Guided By Voices’ new live lineup reflects not just a possibly subconscious desire to prove that unalterable fact, but fits with Pollard’s unchanging changeability. He does what he wants. He is who he is. The only “classic lineup” that has ever mattered is singer / songwriter / multi-instrumentalist / band leader / magician / thunderstorm Robert Pollard. Long may he rain.

Tracks

1. My Zodiac Companion
2. Kid on a Ladder
3. Come on Mr. Christian
4. The Grasshopper Eaters
5. Glittering Parliaments
6. The Caterpillar Workforce
7. Sad Baby Eyes
8. The Quickers Arrive
9. Hotel X (Big Soap)
10. I Think a Telescope
11. Please Be Honest
12. Nightmare Jamboree
13. Unfinished Business
14. Defeatist?s Lament
15. Eye Shop Heaven

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KATIE VON SCHLEICHER - 'BLEAKSPLOITATION'

Formats

• BING1012 - LP

  600197101216

• BING1012CD - CD

  600197101223

Details

Released on cassette last year, Katie Von Schleicher’s Bleaksploitation took the tape world by enough of a storm to thunder demand for more formats. Consequence of Sound described her songs as “like ghosts trying to communicate through a cassette deck”; Paste claims they “sound like a vintage girl group playing in the basement of a haunted house.” This is exciting music from someone we’ll be hearing about for a long time to come. Bleaksploitation was recorded in a dark room on a Tascam 4-track cassette machine. The result is hazy, terrifying and playful. This is what happens when well-crafted songs are made in the moment, warped, drunk on themselves. Von Schleicher’s voice sinks like anchors and rises like a phoenix, wrestling its way through its very own form of basement tapes. ’70s piano rock provides the core, sad lyrics form the shell. The LP is limited to 300 copies, with silk-screened covers made by the asshole herself! They also come with liner notes by Jay Ruttenberg.

Tracks

1. Baby Don?t Go
2. Move Through
3. Ronny
4. Everything Ending
5. I?m Not the Money
6. Joanna
7. Denver Tonight

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CALIFORNIA - 'S/T'

Formats

• BB011 - LP

  655035131115

Details

California is the new band featuring Jason White (vocals / guitar), Dustin Clark (bass / vocals) and Adam Pfahler (drums). You know White as the other guy in Green Day and Pinhead Gunpowder. Clark was in Soophie Nun Squad. Pfahler you might remember as the other other guy from Jawbreaker. This self-titled LP is their debut album and was recorded over several months that included the birth of two children, a throat cancer diagnosis for the singer and accompanying radiation and chemotherapy treatments (long story short— he’s fine). California plays power pop, rock, punk. Why California? 

Tracks

1. Hate the Pilot
2. Same Boat
3. Almost Home
4. Cut & Paste
5. Bad Directions
6. Winners
7. To the Airport
8. See Yer Friends
9. Woodson Lateral
10. No Hoodoo

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THE TRADITIONAL FOOLS - 'FOOLS GOLD'

Formats

• ITR284 - LP

  759718528411

• ITR284CD - CD

  759718528428

Details

The Traditional Fools were David Fox, Andrew Luttrell and Ty Segall. They splashed onto the underground music scene around 2006 with a no-frills, lo-fi, fun, sloppy brand of budget garage-surf-punk sadly absent from music at the time. The trio released one cassette, one full-length album, a single and then knocked it on the head. They occasionally still get together for the odd “reunion” show (they never technically broke up) but will only play suitable venues like Permanent Records in Eagle Rock or Don the Beachcomber in Huntington Beach. Fools Gold collects the tracks from their 7-inch single along with thirteen previously unreleased recordings that have been languishing in their garage for years. Taken together, this is a barn-burner for those who can appreciate trash rock at its finest —soaked in reverb, feedback and cheap beer. Cover versions of The Damned, Love, Redd Kross, The Mummies and Gary Glitter stand shoulder to shoulder with the band’s original jams. The Traditional Fools were a party band and this album is a rock ’n’ roll party! “With speed, volume, great riffs, and a sloppy delivery, they breathe punk rock life into surf.” — Pitchfork “Like Link Wray and Dick Dale on steroids, effortlessly marrying sun-soaked surf rock with the dirtier sounds of bands like the Dead Boys.” 

Tracks

1. Milkman
2. Layback
3. Rock N Roll Baby
4. Please
5. Valley of the Jams
6. Street Surfin
7. Stronger Than Dirt
8. I Got My Baby
9. River
10. Surfin? with the Phantom
11. Black Water
12. Do You Wanna Touch Me?
13. Fish
14. My Flash on You
15. Standing in Front of Poseur
16. Party at My House
17. Rumble

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Audio & Video

KING KHAN - 'AMERICA GODDAM / MULE TRAIN'

Formats

• KK0005 - 7"

Details

***KING KHAN returns on his own Khannibalism imprint with two songs from the motion picture soundtrack to The Invaders. Pressed on neon orange vinyl and packaged with artwork by SHEPARD FAIREY/OBEY. Includes a download. We will be getting limited quantities of these

Tracks

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KING KHAN - 'NEVER HOLD ON / A TREE NOT A LEAF AM I'

Formats

• KK0004 - 7"

Details

***KING KHAN (along with ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY) delivers two songs from the motion picture soundtrack to The Invaders on his own Khannibalism imprint. Pressed on military marijuana colored vinyl with download. We will get getting limited quantites of these

Tracks

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VARIOUS - 'BROWN ACID: THE SECOND TRIP'

Formats

• EZRDR065 - LP

  603111700311

• EZRDR065CD - CD

  603111700328

Details

Some of the best thrills of the Internet music revolution is the ability to find extremely rare music with great ease. But even with such vast archives to draw from, quite a lot of great songs have gone undiscovered for nearly half a century — particularly in genres that lacked hifalutin arty pretense. Previously, only the most extremely dedicated and passionate record collectors had the stamina and prowess to hunt down long forgotten wonders in dusty record bins – often hoarding them in private collections, or selling at ridiculous collector’s prices. Legendary compilations like Nuggets, Pebbles, ad nauseum, have exhausted the mines of early garage rock and proto-punk, keeping alive a large cross-section of underground ephemera. However, few have delved into and expertly archived the wealth of proto-metal, pre-stoner rock tracks collected on Brown Acid: The Second Trip. Lance Barresi, co-owner of L.A./Chicago retailer Permanent Records has shown incredible persistence in tracking down a stellar collection of rare singles from the 60s and 70s for the growing compilation series. Partnered with Daniel Hall of RidingEasy Records, the two have assembled a selection of songs that’s hard to believe have remained unheard for so long. “I essentially go through hell and high water just to find these records,” Barresi says. “Once I find a record worthy of tracking, I begin the (sometimes) extremely arduous process of contacting the band members and encouraging them to take part. Daniel and I agree that licensing all the tracks we’re using for Brown Acid is best for everyone involved,” rather than simply bootlegging the tracks. When all of the bands and labels haven’t existed for 30-40 years or more, tracking down the creators gives all of these tunes a real second chance at success. “There’s a long list of songs that we’d love to include,” Barresi says. “But we just can’t track the bands down. I like the idea that Brown Acid is getting so much attention, so people might reach out to us.” One song on The Second Trip actually never even saw light of day, until now. “Bell Park Loon” by Spiny Norman – sounding like Jethro Tull on more acid and heavier cider – languished in a collector’s archives, unreleased for 38 years until Barresi and Hall arranged to license some of the collector’s goldmine. Brown Acid: The Second Trip opens with the squealing guitar harmonies and Sabbath plod of Ash‘s “Midnight Wish.” Sweet Crystal‘s “Warlords” is a fuzzy and fierce Deep Purple/Arthur Brown inspired organ-led anthem. Raving Maniac‘s ‘Rock and Roll Man” is a tight and brash glam-meets-metal tune proving the true potential of a genre later squandered on Sunset Strip poodleheads. “Silence of the Morning” by Glass Sun serves grungy psych while the Volt Rush Band merges MC5 frantic energy with razor-sharp guitar leads. And, Iron Knowledge‘s aptly titled “Show Stopper” features a breakbeat and incredibly infectious detuned bass warble motif that DJs would kill for – had anyone been able to find the tune back in the day. Throughout, The Second Trip is yet another wall-to-wall set of blazing tracks that feels like you’ve uncovered a holy grail. And, in a way, you have.

Tracks

1. ASH -MIDNIGHT WITCH
2. SWEET CRYSTAL ? WARLORDS
3. RAVING MANIAC - ROCK N ROLL MAN
4. CROSSFIELD - TAKE IT!
5. SPINY NORMAN - BELL PARK LOON
6. GLASS SUN - SILENCE OF THE MORNING
7. VOLT RUSH BAND - LOVE TO YOU
8. BUCK - LONG HOT HIGHWAY
9. IRON KNOWLEDGE - SHOW STOPPER
10. SONNY HUGG - DAYBREAK

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