Category: Album Review

The New York DIY band Norwood‘s new album, the exciting Lizzy White Doesn’t Give a Fu*k, parties hard with fast-moving, down-home romps contrasted by sad and somber songs.

A commanding violin, played with the spirit of a country fiddle by Ben Sutin, launches the album right into the ferocious title track.

One of the obvious observations right off the bat is the similarity of guitarist Chris Sayre‘s vocals to those of vocalist John Flansburgh of They Might Be Giants. But Norwood has a decidedly different sound with a strong Americana and alt. country flair that may also conjure up bands like Mountain Goats.

Sutin’s violin playing, together with a chugging percussion and ferocious guitars, leads the way for the upbeat opening track. Right out of the gate, the title track opener demands the attention of the listener.

The next track, the depressing, “Dog of Aokigahara,” seems out of place following the roaring opening. That’s mainly because Aokigahara conjures up disturbing images (it is a notorious Japanese forest known as a destination for suicides).

That said, Sayre, Sutin, and Hannah Fairchild, along with drummer Max Maples and bassist Keith Michael Pinault, display their talents individually and as a band, offering curious listeners an original and sincere sound steeped in an earthy, country vibe.
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As a contrast to the fast-moving, violin, percussion, and guitar-driven tracks, the album offers mellow, quiet moments like “Babyboy”, featuring lyrics such as ‘don’t tell me what to do Steve’.

The gloom, if you will, (or so it seems) continues with “Taking On Water.” Then something spectacular happens: the track transforms as it evolves into a sunnier vibe lead by Sutin’s sweet violin solo and the chunky chords of Sayre’s guitar. Fairchild’s backup vocals are fitting with the male vocals as the song evolves into a full-on, rambunctious chorus.

“Rebuttal in #F” is clearly one of the standout songs on Lizzy; it is upbeat, energetic, and even a bit quirky. The chorus belts out: “I will hate myself as hard as I can for you,” accompanied by hand-clapping and the fast-moving instrumentation that is a hallmark of Norwood’s sound.

Next, “Against The Grain,” takes a leap of faith – and a good one at that – into a whole other vibe with the addition of a superb horn section. In fact, the horns are so enthralling that one wishes they were deployed on more tracks.

On “Rock,” the band as a unit re-establishes their trademark – and at times addictive – ferocious sound. But unlike any other track on the album, it is perhaps most memorable for its odd, even psychedelic-like, whispering. (At first, this reviewer – working alone in an otherwise quiet room – thought for a split second that someone was in the room whispering at him.)

The pace slows down again on “Bridge to Home,” a country-rock ballad of sorts featuring hellish lyrics such as: “Every day seems a shallow rotten path/Plagued by bitterness and worry/By sinew, flesh, and bone.”

Interestingly, the character of ‘Babyboy’ is mentioned again on this track too but it’s difficult to discern exactly is going on. The more one listens to Norwood’s songs, the harder it is not to imagine Mountain Goats as an influence on the band’s sound.

“Hey Nana” is another song on the album that doesn’t necessarily sound the majority of the other 10 tracks. “Hey Nana” possesses a poppy beat together with thrusts of hard-hitting instrumentations swirling around Sayre’s regularly strange and poetic songs.

The album closes with the appropriately-placed song, “Last Words” – perhaps the most sentimental songs on an oft-sentimental album.

“Last Words” is simply a sad song lead by Sayre’s reflective vocals, cast in a different register, and Sutin’s weepy violin.

We do not know who Lizzy is, or what she doesn’t give a fuck about, and never could really figure it out. So, who gives a fu*k? She doesn’t (it’s in the album title). But somehow, in the end, she got me to.

One-man alt. rock/grunge/indie outfit Empire of Gold, headed by Portland musician, Michael Jack Dole, has been on our radar for years.

But it was his recent 13-track, one-hour long album, The Devil Is In The Details, that really got our blood pumping.

Fuzzy guitars and drums, such as on the album opener, “Lying Through The Cracks of Your Teeth,” dominate the grungy record from start to finish, featuring dark, moody tracks arranged in interesting cross-genre mixes and overlaps, melodies and melancholy.

The hour-long gritty recording never tires. In an age when 13-track albums are a ballsy move. The vast majority of the tracks, less a couple, do not disappoint. Dole possesses an acute dark rock sensibility informed by his past and his musical influences and tastes.

Following the simmering starter track is the slow-burning dark rocker, “Dust & Bones,” a cathartic reveal of deep emotional memories set ablaze in an orange glow of sonic cider and smoke.

Dole also DIY-filmed an official music video for the track.  “I love the idea of this video having a dark, gloomy look with people wearing masks,” he says. “I didn’t want any faces shown at all.”

“Instead, I wanted images of churches and any religion tied into it as it depicts a person struggling to see any meaning in life – as if all we are is dust and bones,” Dole says.

“I wanted to incorporate ‘creepy’ worldly themes,” he insists.

When the third track, the inviting grunge-pop number, “Independence Day,” rolls around, it sets a different tenor and mood for a bit.

While the first two tracks have a life, and allure, all of their own, “Independence Day” is one of the more melodic and accessible numbers on the L.P. The screeching guitars and Dole’s emotive vocals fit nicely.

The ending of the song flows wonderfully and right into the firey, buzz-friendly, “Girl Like You,” that hits a wall of distorted guitars that is one of the best such walls we heard in 2019.

Following that first four-set of songs to open up the album is the mid-point of the L.P. and a string of melancholic, shadowy, gritty tracks marked with Dole’s buzzsaw guitars; tragic lyrics and versatile vocals, and well-arranged percussions.

These include songs like the guitar-layered slow-burner, “Dirty Minds”; the atmospheric mellow haze of the instrumental, “Retrograde,” and the original grungy biscuit, “Sitting On A Shelf.”

In the latter half of the album, the track, “Drunk & Alone,” blazes away precariously and at a smashed-face pace; just what you would expect from the title. It also sounds similar to “Dust & Bones” from earlier in the recording. However, we can’t help but wonder how terrific this track would have been if it had been made into a fast-moving rocker.

The thoughtful and heavily melodic, “These Thoughts I Have,” is yet another standout song and straddles the regions of alt rock and indie. EOG’s music has never been easy to pin to one genre. That’s a good thing. The song also has one of the best vibes, and guitar solos, on the L.P.

The Devil Is In The Details closes with “Words I Sing,” a sad, spacious track, and the most stripped-down, demo-sounding, guy-and-his-guitar recording on the album.

Dole had been in a number of bands over the years from San Diego to Chicago, and Los Angeles to Portland. Many years before all of that, he grew up in Tecate, Mexico until he was eight years old when he moved back to the United States.

Dole describes his childhood as “nomadic.” His lyrics, informed by his experiences as a child and young man are brutally blunt and gristly enveloped in musical expressions of angst and grind.

Altogether, the L.P. is an impressive foray into Dole’s emotional struggles, but more importantly, into his sonic expressions, woven together by a lo-fi style of grunge, alt. rock and punk elements. It’s definitely not your ordinary DIY recording (in a good way). So many albums are standard fare and boring. This one is not.

The album was recorded in Dole’s home studio using Logic Pro X and a lunchbox of pre-amps. Mixing was taken on by Portland engineer Kevin Carafa and later sent to Dirk Steyer of ACSY Sound in Germany for mastering.

Dole’s musical influences include Nirvana, Slipnot, Highly Suspect and Green Day. He was recently accepted to the prestigious Berklee School of Music.

Empire of Gold, he says, is “a concept playing with the thoughts, theories, and fears of human mortality. It plays back and forth with theology and atheist views about our dreams, hopes and eventual reincarnation into heaven.”

It has been a big year for Ashland, Oregon indie rock/power pop trio Summer Colds. The increasingly popular band dropped their debut single, “Whiteout,” last spring followed now by their anticipated debut album, Here Comes Nothing.

For an album with a title that is more than modest, this baby delivers some things – that are 90s-retro in many ways.

It’s hard to review this album without throwing out various subgenres of indie and alternative rock. The ‘throw-back’ DIY-sound of Here Comes Nothing is consistent across most of the tracks, including the melodic fuzzy rock vibe of “Low,” pegged by a neat little hook that’s hard to shake.

The vocals, led by guitarist and vocalist Nic McNamara, will remind some right away of the indie band They Might Be Giants. That’s not an original observation; many who have heard his voice, especially in the context of retro alt-pop, have said the same.

The second track of the eight-track album is the forward-driving song, “Found,” with its adherence to 1990s alt/indie pop-rock ethos.

As it turns out, “Found” is more than just another track on the album. According to McNamara, it is also the sole track on the album that set the tone for Summer Cold’s musical style.

“Found” projects a refreshed take on the 90s southern California alt-pop sound of bands like Weezer. It sports that laid-back slacker dynamic reinforced by Nicole Swan‘s booming basslines, McNamara’s chugging guitar and Claire Burgess‘s bouncy, energetic drumming. McNamara also plays bass and drums.

Actually, McNamara says, the song was originally written a decade ago when he was first starting to record songs acoustically for his former band Black Bears Fire.

As he puts it, the song arrives with even more history than just its decade of ferment. “Changing the song from acoustic to electric was the catalyst for taking a new direction musically and for starting a new band,” McNamara concludes.

The second official single from the album, “Killing Flies,” was written and recorded in its entirety a few months prior to the album’s release.

“I wrote ‘Killing Flies’ in a flash of inspiration,” McNamara says, adding: “triggered by running into an ex-girlfriend who had taken a self-destructive path.”

“The song came together quicker than usual and ended up setting the standard for what the mixing and production of the rest of the tracks on the album would sound like,” he says reflectively.

“Killing Flies” moves even further into this pop-punk mold with a stripped-back set of arrangements and snarky vocals in the style McNamara feels natural with.

Other standout tracks on the album include “Copenhagen,” starting out with a mid-tempo and melodic guitar with the band coming all together in full force at the chorus.

Interestingly, the album’s second half – and its best half – rocks with a punk-inspired verge and urgency. It’s quite a ride for fans punk-pop in the vein of bands like the Descendents.

“Deep End” has a surfy punk-pop vibe, setting up the final two fantastic tracks, starting with the hard-hitting, guitar-frenzied and unforgettable, “Sober October,” followed by the lighter, and welcoming, final touch of “Centipedes,” saving one of the best tracks for last.

The half-hour album weaves McNamara’s dreary and poetic songwriting style with fuzzy pop-rock sensibilities of the 90’s alternative rock era driven by power chords and hooks immersed in the dense imagery of the album’s melancholic lyrics.

Summer Colds does not rely on one genre/sub-genre although if forced, they’d have to put themselves into the power-pop end of the indie rock musical spectrum. They obviously enjoy, and with good results, mixing alt. and indie rock elements with power pop and punk-pop.

After releasing two albums with his former indie band Black Bears Fire, McNamara began a new project, recruited a couple of band members and began writing and recording as Summer Colds to “bring to life a heavier sound than my previous folk-rock project.”

He has opened for a bunch of bands over the past five years, including Slow Corpse, Old Year, Calyx, The Juniper Berries, Yr Parents, and Glacierwolf. Summer Colds’ biggest influences include Weezer, White Reaper, Surfer Blood, Pup, Brand New, and Wavves.

McNamara was born in Johannesburg South Africa where his father, Stevin McNamara, was a recording engineer for Lucky Dube, Brenda Fassi, and Ladysmith Blacksmith Mambazo, and later, Bryan Adams, Tina Turner, Def Leppard, and Michael Bolton. When the Summer Colds frontman was a child, his family moved to the U.K. town of Surrey, England.

In the early 1990s, his family moved to the United States where he continued to study music and recording engineering.

Summer Colds on Facebook

London-based indie-rock singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Vittorio Tolomeo, aka Quarry, has an electrifying, zanny new album, Super Arcade. It’s quite a ride.

The lead single from the album is the title track, “Super Arcade,” which was recently chosen as Song of the Day by Rolling Stone (France).

With a hard-hitting, gritty romp, rebellious vibe, quirky, sometimes creepy, vocals, and fuzzy guitar riffs that are connected to many pedals, it’s understandable that the magazine editors picked this stomping, rocking track to present to its readers. In addition, they created a nifty and artistic music video as well.

“It was fun making this stop-motion video. There are marvelous drawings and the director had a brilliant idea. There are two parallel worlds. I’m based in an ideal environment within the underground world.”

“There is the transition from cartoon to human when I come down from the messed-up world above, through a porthole,” Tolomeo explains.

“Many people asked if we shot the video inside of a boat because of the porthole. But we filmed that in the illustrator’s bathroom where there is a porthole,” he says, adding, “I think that the video conveys the idea of detachment from many unnecessary things of this age perfectly.”

Super Arcade has many other surprises and intriguing moments.

It’s important for context to set the scene that led up to the recording and release of Super Arcade. It was a project long ago planned by the British rocker. We need to go back a bit.

The setting is a quiet warehouse filled with dozens of old pinball machines and arcade games. For Tolomeo, a longtime video and arcade game fanatic, it’s heavenly.

Combining games like pinball machines and music may lead one to think of The Who’s “Pinball Wizard” but that is not what we have here.

While Tolomeo casts himself as “an occasional pinball wizard,” neither his love for arcades and video games, nor music, was the result of The Who. The combination was completely manifest within his own interesting universe from childhood into adulthood.

The master plan for the album started with the idea to construct a recording studio in the warehouse and amongst the pinball machines and video games. Once the studio was set-up, Tolomeo started a musical journey many musicians do not experience.

What followed was years of experimenting with sound effects and compositions.

It was in his new recording studio that Tolomeo found his techniques and skills were improving and maturing the more he experimented. It was the perfect environment for his creativity and talents to blossom.

“For a musician, a place to make music is a continuous journey in unexplored galaxies, it’s freedom, it’s shelter,” explains Tolomeo.

It wasn’t just video games, sound effects and unique compositions that he had on his mind.

“Making the record in such a strange place was necessary to stop time and detach myself from the unnecessary things of this age. I realized that I wanted to express the value of awkwardness.”

“When I think about the invasion of bloggers of nothingness, talent shows, false myths and ephemeral notoriety, I get comfortable with being out of place and out of time.”

Such observations are plentiful on the 10-track album.

Take the second track, “Inside The Morning Light.” It also opines on modern life. The stomping, distorted sound may remind some of the Black Keys or Cage The Elephant. That technique, paralleled with riveting guitars and percussion, gives the track an unmistakable overall ominous vibe. One will notice while listening to the album the effective stomping sounds; techniques Tolomeo employs often and with great effectiveness.

That’s followed by the frenzied song, “Everything And Its Opposite.” The track is a fast-moving, spiraling rocker driven by Tolomeo’s intriguing guitar playing and techniques.

The song presents a surreal, even terrifying, “picture of giant corporate digital monopolies” whose precious algorithms, unfortunately, influence every aspect of daily life. The lazy, mystical track, “Man With The Scars,” pays tribute to David Bowie, he says.

Other tracks like the zany, grooving and rocking “Haters Online” (another hater online/that’s what you’ll find) and “Firefighter,” with its infectious and unforgettable guitar riffs, take direct target at social media and “the border between virtual and real,” Tolomeo says.

Then there is the infectious, oddly-titled visionary ballad, “Sweet Alien On Creamy Skis,” which Tolomeo says celebrates people who still hold out hope that the planet might be saved from visitors from beyond. However, in reality, that’s a bad strategy.

Tolomeo’s vocals sometimes remind me of Tim Curry’s voice in the cult classic, The Rocky Horror Picture Show movie. His voice is often deep and sometimes creepy while at the same time perfectly fit for the sonic landscapes he creates. He can even hit high notes, although he rarely does.

The track, “London Cloak,” creates a strange, almost surreal, vibe, starting out in slow-motion almost, percussions until the track hits the chorus. Then things get crazy musically and vocally. It’s funk and rock mixed with a Frank Zappa-like approach and veins of psychedelic music (that take on so many shapes and textures throughout the album that it truly is amazing). Tolomeo is totally free to create the sound he wants and it’s not your ordinary fare.

Songs like “Longest Years,” have so much going on and so many elements that it would be quite a challenge for anyone to replicate or cover most of his songs. This track also has bongo drums and mystic, almost Middle Eastern like chanting along with a riveting set of electric guitar notes that are fed through a number of pedals and filters.

The album closes with, “Reborn,” a sinister-sounding track with a precious pairing of note changes between his powerful guitar and the bass. As the track progresses it dives head-first into shifting notes, story-telling, and Tolomeo’s distinctive vocals.

Tolomeo’s years of experimenting with sounds in order to make this uniquely sounding, engaging, entertaining and rocking album. It’s not hard to say that it’s one of the best albums we’ve heard this year in as far as musicians who are intent on making rich, ingredient-filled, textured, layered and totally different music by taking advantage of their artistic freedom.

Afterall that’s the greatest aspect of the indie rock genre – that musicians who can’t, or won’t, fit into a nicely formed genre identity, are allowed to experiment and genre-mix as much as they want. And often what comes from such freedom is good stuff.

But no matter how heavy or sarcastic a subject is, the music is infectious all the way through, combining heavy-hitting drums, slashing guitars with melodic hooks, distorted, chunky bass lines with an alternative pop-rock confection.

Tolomeo played all the instruments for most of the tracks on the album. He and his band plan to tour Europe and the U.S. in the spring and summer of 2020.

There have been plenty of strong debut albums that came out this year, but one of the best that went largely under the radar for no good reason is the debut from Chicago artist Pete Cautious.

The self-titled album is blooming with wavy synths, sunny electric guitar riffs and an overall sense of levity throughout, even though the lyrics themselves do not feel as important to Cautious as much as the instrumentations do.

“Most of the album was recorded as a stream of consciousness,” Cautious says.

“There was a bare-bones structure,” he adds, “usually a synth and simple drum track, and the rest I would just roll the tape and see what happened.”

“There’s something a little terrifying about it truthfully, like a tight rope walk without a net.” Because he records solo and totally DIY, “it’s a pretty honest environment,” he says, “I’m never sure what I’ll stumble upon.”

In fact, he cites the dreamy, watery track from the album, “Dreamin’ On a Sunday,” as of the songs that best reflect his ‘off-the-cuff’ style. The entire song was recorded in a day with his wife, Stephanie Koenig, adding the backup vocals later.

“I wrote the lyrics the night before, showed up in the morning, got my head straightened out and went for it. I think of it as Pavement-meets-David-Bowie.”

“Slow Down” was another such track – conceived and recorded quickly. While it’s an instrumental, it really has a cool summer jam vibe to it – “chill and sultry like a little Mac DeMarco, a little Phil Collins,” Cautious says. We dig it a lot and the comparison is not that far off in some ways.

The melodies and interesting vocals of Cautious come through with some distortion on the sunning synths and guitar-driven chords of “You and I”.

Cautious explains that the song “was the most thought out [song on the album] beforehand, and took the most time for better or worse.” He says it is also the most “complicated” song arrangement-wise on the album.

“The chords are really weird, but when you listen to it, it flows pretty easily,” he says.

It has the signature Cautious guitar sound on the opening riff like a bizarro acid-warped Stevie Ray Vaughn. A booming chorus, delays with plenty of definition. His solo vocals are intimate and unconventional at the same time.

The lyrics are also compelling: “A touch of hair/let my hands disappear/beneath your waves beneath your waves tonight/I love this view/oh I love the view/a canopy on top of me and you.” These are indeed some of the deepest and most sophisticated lyrics on the album.

Cautious’ lyrical content is largely fundamental, about love and attraction, perhaps about one girl throughout the recording.

“The Only Girl” is a bright, lumbering guitar track with Cautious’ lazy vocals – a song ripe for a hot summer day by the pool.

And the warm rays of “I’m Your Man,” features treble-heavily guitar notes and drum machine beats together with Cautious’ crooner-like vocals and keyboard taints. “She is Mine” has an especially sentimental feel thanks to high octane infusions of synths and electric guitar.

The track, “Go on Shine,” is a song that differs a bit from other tracks thanks to its New York jazzy saxophone vibe and Cautious’, particularly melancholic vocals.

The album closes with the drowsy. almost bed-time lullaby of “It’s Not the End,” with the final notes ending with an organ outro.

Clearly, his music is based on a propensity for warm, electric songs that are light and which do not follow any particular style as he weaves in and out of spontaneous musical expressions. You almost get the sense that he is playing out childhood fantasies that he can only accomplish as an adult musician.

He plays and layers the synth almost as a child would play a Casio keyboard – the difference is the level of artistic maturity – not expression – but without losing the child-like charm of his songs.

Pete Cautious Official Website

Before you agree that streaming music killed the cult band, consider the strange tales spun in song by Oakland songwriter, vocalist, and musician Richard Shirk.

Shirk’s dreamy, lo-fi, psych-rock new album, Arcadia, has one foot firmly planted in the realm of the three-minute (or less) indie single and the other foot somewhere in a used bookshop in the Midwest browsing vintage Bradbury paperbacks.

AS one listens to the album, it’s evident that Shirk has a good ear for melodies and atmospherics, relying heavily on Casio keyboards, organs and sonic dreamscapes of lo-fi, experimental, psych electro-pop. (Not an easy one to pigeon-hole, nor is it that important)

He likes to describe his sound as “like college radio at one a.m. circa 1982,” and that is quite a fitting metaphor.

He apparently has been influenced by artists like Elliott Smith and Animal Collective. His songs lean towards acoustic, dreamy, experimental electro psych or however you want to string those descriptors together.

Shirk states that one of his favorite songs from Arcadia is “How to Dance How to Waltz.”

“It’s another song that just came to me in the studio and has taken a lot of time to unravel,” he says.

In time for the Halloween/fall season, the track is “a spooky tune in waltz-time about sleepwalking, astral projection, and psychic communication,” says Shirk.

“I’m pretty sure that it takes place in the kind of town that might be in a Borges or Gabriel Garcia-Marques book or short story.”

“I see the last scene taking place in the town hall (built from stone and about a thousand years old) as everyone gathers and in a mass, a communal psychic trip they dance: in a reverie/while keeping in time/they are holding the trance aloft.’”

The song, “The Goal Keeps Moving,” was partly inspired, Shirk noteS, by a Bruce Lee quote: “A goal is not always meant to be reached, it often serves simply as something to aim at.”

Shirk affirmS that he wrote and recorded the song in less than an hour, and during the same session as the single, “Alarms.” One could say he had a burSt of creativity that day.

“I first interpreted the song on the surface as something defeatist and shelved it for a couple of years,” he admits.

The track, he adds, is about “those times in life when everything is in flux and you think that you know what you want, but, in retrospect, you’re being pulled towards something else entirely. The goal is moving,” thus the track’s title.

The cool guitar noodle that Shirk added to the song is performed by musician Ric Wals-Smith who has performed in Japan with Ryuichi Sakamoto’s Yellow Magic Orchestra.

On the album, shirk plays guitar, keys, bass, sax flute and “spooky tubes, bow guitar, morse code, and wine glasses.” His wife performed vocals, keys, and the Glock on various tracks. She wrote the title track and performS the keyboard riff on her Casio SK-1. bassist and pianist LJ Simpson.

The title track, sporting a neat keyboard riff from a Casio SK-1, was written and performed by his wife Susan Chrsanowski.

“‘Arcadia’ is a place, a feeling, an archetype,” Shirk says. “I grew up in Iowa. Though it was near a college town, it was not near enough. I spent a lot of time stranded just a few miles from somewhere I couldn’t get to.”

The song, Shirk says, reminds him of a more simple time as a teen listening to mixtapes in his basement and “learning to play the guitar,” or he adds, “wandering around my small town at three o’clock in the morning when I couldn’t sleep.” He recalls one night of hiking six miles through soybean fields to a neighboring town.

“I navigated by dead reckoning and by walking towards a water tower all lighted up on a moonless night. I really love the refrain in the song: ‘there’s something all around you.’ I’ve always been interested in people who can read auras.”

Songs like “Prisoners at Zenda” and “Secret policemen” lack a bit of imagination and are so lo-fi that they sound like demos. We understand that is part of the intent, but for a 13-track album, every song really needs to count and stand out from the others to get and retain listeners.

The tracks like “At Esalen,” timing in at less than two minutes, with an organ riff driving it on. Apparently the two tracks under the one-minute mark are both about the second largest city in Texas, “Old Suburban Houston” and “Come on Back to Houston.”

The closing track, “Sleep Studies,” is fitting and the extended psychedelic jam is a nice touch to the end of an interesting and unique album that is quite enthralling too – especially for fans of experimental electro-pop lo-fi indie.

Shirk promotes his second album “as a collection of eclectic pop songs about escape – from small towns (‘Arcadia,’ ‘The Goal,’ ‘Secret Policemen,’) to the stars (‘Prisoners of Zenda,’ ‘Come on Back to Houston,’ ‘Old Suburban Houston’), and out from underneath the confines of conventional attitudes towards the supernatural (‘Inner Star Wars,’ ‘Tiger in the Shadows).”

He maintains, and it’s hard to disagree, that the album “rings and chimes with [Shirk’s] trademark spooky guitar tone, spectral voice, and the fingerprints of a childhood spent with pulp science-fiction and a dusty pile of records and warbling tapes by the Cars, the Ramones, and the Fall.”

With plenty of far-out themes and sounds, undeniably catchy hooks, and a persistent spooky vibe is “like a college radio chart countdown in the Twilight Zone.”

From the midwestern plains arrives the music of the relatively new Kanasan indie band Miles on End.

Their own one-sentence pitch is a damn good one at that:

“From the high plains of Kansas, Miles on End is a groove rock band which has carved an audible canyon through the thick sod with interwoven guitar melodies and funky rhythms.”

Nice, huh?

And the band backs up it up with an eclectic and jam-loving style on their debut self-titled album.

The album opener, “Hit The Heat,” is a chunky-funky lo-fi rock burner with shifting rhythms buoyed by a sweet little jam and guitarist Nathan Engel’s understated vocals.

Following is the slower and more instrumentally-driven track, “Electric Plantation,” which starts out with an interesting garage pop swagger and totally develops into a full-throttle highway rock blazer. The song then slows down again into a Jerry Garcia-like riff-out.

The band’s penchant for jamming to the rafters is not to be overlooked or even underappreciated. In fact, their live shows are famous for long late-night jam sessions.

Engel says the next track on the album, “Flatirons,” is one of Miles on End fans’ favorites at live shows. That’s believable thanks to its bluesy/jazzy intro that transitions smoothly into more alt. rock/garage elements that work nicely and make it one of the strong tracks on the album.

The song was named for the Flatiron Mountain range outside of Boulder, Colorado. The band members had a treacherous and unforgettable hiking experience there which led to the song’s title and lyrical content.

Opening with a funky groove and blaring guitars, together with sick percussions from drums and bass, “Dead Ends,” has a darker appeal than other tracks on the album. But also like so many tracks on the album, it transforms into a full-on jam and emerges from the darkness.

Next is the rambunctious, energy-driven indie-pop piece, “White Walls.” Engel said it is one of the tracks that fans love at shows. It is also, he says, a track that “seems to best encapsulate the band’s diverse groovy dance rock sound.”

“The song is catchy and features a fantastic trance-like instrumental break that really gets a crowd moving,” he says.

“The Skirmish of Trinidad” is an interesting instrumental; it opens with soft waves and seagulls and transforms into a chugging rock track that is something of a mini adventure features various transitions that one could say is part of the band’s signature sound. Engel said it is intended to “musically paint a picture of a pirate naval battle in the Caribbean Sea.”

The closing track, also an instrumental, is the funky, riff-driven, “Of Crickets and Constellations.” It is not the campfire song of your parents.

Engel said it came from a book that he cannot remember and symbolizes that which is “all-encompassing; everything in the world, from big to small, from crickets to constellations.”

Miles on End was formed in 2017 by brothers Nathan (vocals, guitar) and Ryan Engel (guitar). Soon after, the band brought on bassist Nick Schlyer, percussionist Keith Dryden, and trumpet master Layne Moe.

The band’s music inspirations are varied and include bands and artists like Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, The Doors, Steppenwolf, The Allman Brothers Band, James Brown, Return to Forever, Herbie Hancock, Grover Washington JR, Miles Davis, Donald Byrd, and Grant Green.

It’s sweet to see an appreciation for great music among young bands since too many of them are trying to do something they think sells rather than do what they enjoy the most and make them stand out. These cats mix all them styles – rock, funk, jazz, blues, R&B – into one good time.

For a debut album by a DIY indie band, this is a solid start. It could have used a bit more polishing in sound quality/production department, but nevertheless, a respectable first outing from a band that has something different going on and who you can tell enjoy themselves.

The LP was recorded at Blue Moon Studios in Mulvane, Kansas and mixed and mastered at Heavy Eleven Studios in Hays, Kansas.

The new album, Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll, from California musician Carol Blaze, sets out to ‘bring back’ those elements of a cultural reference that dates back at least 40 years now, at a time when rock and roll ruled the music world.

“I am disciple of decadence. I happen to believe that most of our problems in the world could be remedied by these three things,” Blaze says.

“I’m annoyed and dismayed at the lack of sex, drugs, and rock and roll in many places of the current USA. It reflects my disdain for an America lacking art or culture and my disdain for the lack of SDRnR in today’s youth.”

The opening title track struts and sways with a more modern mix of edgy rock and darkwave. Therefore, the album title may seem a little misleading to those expecting a classic rock sound.

Aside from that, Blaze and his band chug along intently through the track laying down a hard-edge vibe. It’s a stellar rock track that can grow on you.

Switching it up and keeping it real are important considerations that Blaze seems to understand in a musically savvy sense.

On his Bandcamp page, he describes his music as “darkwave, psychedelic rock created within a world of cyberspace, analog performance, and dark imagination.”

Indeed darkwave blended with rock would be a good descriptor. (Haven’t heard the word ‘cyberspace’ since the early 2000s.  For those not sure what that means – it’s an older word for the Internet, just like another beauty, ‘information superhighway’ . )

The second track on the album, “Trouble,” starts with a beeping, electro psych-pop sound before launching into a full-blown track with blazing guitars, dance-oriented percussions, creepy vocals, and synth sound effects.

It’s no wonder the band made this track their lead single from the album.  The single smokes and should be playing on popular playlists and has become one of our top under-the-radar rock singles of 2019.

That’s our humble opinion, and of course we are basing that on only the tracks we’ve heard in 2019, which must be somewhere approaching 2,000 songs by now.

Other tracks like the late 70s arena rocker, “Fall Away” and “Come With Me,” are fine songs as well. The latter song has a creepy, sinister vibe which is just right for this Halloween season.

The lyrics are particularly dark: “Come with me/and if you dare/I welcome you to my nightmare/you must decide before the killing time.”

Then there is the surprising, and seemingly out of place, track “Passing Time” sounds like an 1980’s-leaning love song perfect for parking the car at the overlook on a warm summer night.

“Passing Time” might remind some of the stellar 1980’s band Big Star. It does have that vibe that is the ‘Alex Chilton’ sound. It’s encouraging that there are young musicians who are still making original pop-rock songs of this quality while also giving a nod to the trailblazers of yesteryear.

The album closes with the gloomy anthem-like “Takako.” This song is cinematic in a sense:  one may imagine hearing it on the play on a soundtrack for a movie or show like Game of Thrones; meanwhile, the camera pans over a large field blotted out by a sea of warriors ready for battle. This is the level that Blaze’s music is at.

Therefore, it is no big surprise that Blaze’s music has appeared on soundtracks for shows such as Disappeared; Deals from the Darkside; True Life; Pros vs Joes; Remodeled, and Last Call with Carson Daly, among others.

As stated previously, the album title is not a match for the music itself because one is expecting a collection of ordinary classic rock songs. And yet there is nothing ordinary about this album. It’s a must-hear if you dig rock, psych and darkwave mixed together in varying hues.

Blaze recently moved to California’s famous (or infamous) Silicon Valley to be “one step closer to being out of the country” but found, to his surprise, a lack of “art music or culture, except as it pertains to rich people.”

“I was surprised at the number of people surrounding me who were lacking any knowledge of sex, drugs, or rock and roll in the artistic sense. What an absolute fucking bore it is.”

“I was dismayed at the lack of musician infrastructure here, and the lack of interest in music. Quite different from my home of Pittsburgh.”

“My music is out of fashion, but its honest and the only thing I can do.”  We’re not so sure we’d agree, per this review, that his music is ‘out of fashion.’

Perhaps Silicon Valley – not exactly known for its past as a haven for rock music and counter-culture, especially compared to the greater San Francisco Bay Area that surrounds it – is the problem and not Blaze.

Blaze, whose real name is A.T. Vish, was the drummer for the popular 80’s Pittsburgh dream-pop band, Lowsunday and for the psychedelic band Thickhead Grin.

Following those experiences, Vish set out on the solo path to create music “filtered through my own sensibilities and limitations.”

The first minute of the opening track, “Races,” on the band So Dirty The Flamingo’s new self-titled debut album, draws the listener in with a comforting slide guitar and an Americana/country-rock vibe.

The Toronto band’s six-track debut, clocking in at some 25 minutes, is a story of contrasts, loss, and regret, set to some of the best DIY Americana/country-rock we’ve heard this year.

The raspy vocals of singer-songwriter Lionel Doe are brilliant – soothing but with an edge that connotes a life of experience, love, and grit.

A melodic chorus accompanied by a soaring desert-rock guitar solo, and the band’s superb timing, make the song a sure-fire hit on country-rock radio (if country radio would play DIY artists).

“Races” draws from roots country and blues, Doe says, adding: “it’s a song about betting it all and losing it all.”

The song, he says, developed initially from a simple drum beat shuffle and a three-chord progression. The ensemble also included the ‘cowboy gang chorus’ and the stellar performance from veteran pedal steel player Steve Crosgrey.

There is a synergy between the pedal steel guitar and Doe’s hollow-body electric guitar leads that sets a beautiful tone for the song.

The Americana track, “I’m Out,” is about growing up in a “tough town” and violence he faced as a youth, singing: “I remember the swinging, I remember the hits, I remember being out of breath. With blood on my hands at the foot of the steps, my sister turns to me and says, ‘kid, I’m out.'”

This is a story that many who left their hometowns can relate to in one way or another.
You know the old saying (from Thomas Wolfe) “you can’t go home again.” That’s true.

Next, the band switches gears completely on the breakup song, “Good Game.” Doe plays all of the guitars and mixed a chord progression with distant feedback to create an effect.

Adam Drury’s venturing bassline steers the song through the various chord changes, while Scott Dunn’s Hammond organ elevates the choruses. Ciara Logar’s vocals imbue the song with a ghostly female presence.

The song “Daughters,” one of a number of standout tracks on the E.P., is a story about ‘crossing over,’ Doe says.

The refrain in the song reveals the bottom-line: ‘Going to meet my maker and make my amends/Going to make my daughters feel pretty again/Gonna bring them flowers from that distant plain.’

The idea for the song came from Doe’s work as a forensic analyst where he was processing the body of a young girl killed in a mass shooting that actually looked like his daughter.

“I have a daughter at home who could have been her twin,” he laments, “so for the first time in my career, I was completely traumatized…I wrote from the perspective of the fathers of the victims.”

The track is also the lead single from the album and went on to rank in the Top 100 of the Canadian Broadcasting Company’s ‘Searchlight Competition.’

“There’s pedal steel, inspired harmonica from Brian Bettencourt, and Devin Jannetta keeping the beat by stomping on a plank of wood, but it’s the chorus of vocals that gives rise to the belief that this song is truly singing to the other side, to that distant plain.”

Acoustic finger-picking from Doe and accompaniment of the Hammond organ with Scott Dunn give the track “Away” its haunting vibe. As Doe says, “Away” is another song about loss and regret, about searching for love, finding it and discovering it is too suffocating.

“If you’re a parent and a songwriter, and you don’t write about what that’s like, somehow, I just don’t understand that. Watching your children grow into a world you know from experience, is the most heart-wrenching experience there is.”

The song features a cello played by musician Mark Wang right before the Mimico Children’s Choir, led by his children, Penelope and Ramsay, sing, “Hold on, kid, let the light shine in, let it fill every room, you’ll blow their mind!”

His children’s voices are singing in the chorus, which Doe says means everything to him. He also wrote “Headfirst into the Sun” about his children.

The E.P. was mixed and mastered by Vancouver producer Paul Shatto who scores many television shows and movies, including Ice, Pyros, The Outer Limits and Freaky Friday.

SDTF has played around Toronto to much success over the next year. Vowing to not just play bars, the band has played in a church choir; a record store; a coffee shop; a billiards lounge; a grilled cheese festival, among other interesting and fun venues.

The band is inspired by Lucinda Williams, Townes Van Zandt, Wilco, Nick Cave, among many, many others.

Most recently, the band performed an all-electric set at The Legendary Horseshoe Tavern.

The album itself started forming years ago. But last summer, Doe was finally ready to record the songs that had been “fermenting in my consciousness” for years.

He set out to put together a band of veteran musicians from the Toronto area, many of them collaborators and long-time friends.

At the same time, his bassist, Drury, embarked on transforming his home basement into a professional recording studio.

They then recruited Devin Jannetta, a workhorse drummer who somehow managed to perform in seven separate bands. Of course, Dunn, the band’s Hammond organist was also enlisted.

Ciara Logar was welcomed as a backing vocalist “to add to what was to be a signature sound.” It was now complete – So Dirty the Flamingos was born along with the new Sodipop Studio.

The recording itself is a big part of the story behind the success of the E.P., Doe contends.

“The arrangements changed and grew,” he says, “prompting the inclusion of additional musicians, and in the end, the E.P. was a full-fledged Americana sonic boon, complete with piano; a Hammond organ played through a Leslie speaker; pedal steel guitar; cello; The Mimico Children’s Choir; cowboy gang vocals; harmonica; bouzouki, and every percussive instrument known to us, including a plank of wood to be stomped on for ‘Daughters’.”

The third L.P. release, Haunt Yourself, from Boise indie band Sun Blood Stories is a mesmerizing recording of palatable experimentations; soaring shoegaze parts; psych-rock melodies and creative infusions of blues and funk.

SBS’s high desert rock style is a mix of harmonic sonics “distilled into delicate, but always haunting, songs. Sun Blood Stories is dreamy, aware, personal, open, fuzzed-out, and loud as fuck,” says founding member Ben Kirby.

In fact, the Idaho trio started as a Kirby solo project a few years ago. He has since recruited guitarist and bass synth musician Amber Pollard and drummer/keyboardist Jon Fust.

Kirby says the new album “maintains Sun Blood’s core sound and content while simultaneously sounding like nothing they’ve ever created before.”

The band is serious about this release. They’ve pressed vinyl and CDs and also have cassette tapes and digital downloads.
 

 
Sun Blood has recently released a number of singles from the album, starting with the riveting, dark track, “Up Comes The Tunnel.”

The song brews with slowed-down ringing and distorted guitar riffs, haunting vocals, and heavy-hitting percussions.

According to Kirby, the single was the first song he wrote for the album. It came to him, he says, as he was stuck in a daydream with “a psychopomp escorting” him through a “dark tunnel with no light on the other side.”

“It’s about the voice inside your head that tries to convince you that the car in your rearview mirror is actually following you,” he says.

“It’s that feeling of impending doom.”

The listener definitely picks up that vibe listening to the track. It was also a good pick from an album with a handful of solid songs to pick from.

The mood changes on “Everybody Loves You.” The track’s sweet vocals create a Beach House cloudy day vibe that is intoxicating and sad. The refrain “everybody loves you when you’re dead” is ghoulishly disturbing.

The quieter, more introspective, mood created by the song is driven mostly by a lightly-played looping electric guitar, accented by sound effects, including chimes and seagulls.

The song has a beautifully haunting lullaby. Interestingly, it was initially a 20-minute track with more than six pages of lyrics.

The track’s theme is an ode to two friends that the band members lost in tragic events – one friend to military combat and the other to suicide.

That’s heavy stuff for anyone. The song is a fitting tribute and hopefully therapeutic for the band members and their friends’ loved ones.

The fourth track, “See You On The Other Side,” breaks open a floodgate of sonic noise with ringing and buzzing shoegaze-laden guitars; heavy bass lines; sporadic drumming; twinkling synths creating a space rock feel of drifting in outer space.

The song is powerful enough to trigger warm and happy feelings in the mind and body. That’s a powerful thing.

The following song, “Like,” is more down-to-earth but without quite having feet on the ground. Sporting bubbling bass lines and swirling guitars, the vocals are dark and creepy. Goal to creep out has been reached.

On the dark rock-opera-like track, “All the Words in Meaning,” things turn dark and disturbing.

The song is a musical journey that takes the band and the listener through slide guitarist Pollard’s troubled childhood, navigating through the trauma of growing up in an abusive household.
 

 
Like many children from abusive homes, she found a way to escape into music. She says the song is her 10-year-old self expressing her “fear, anger, and yearning to have a different life.”

Clocking in over six minutes, the slow-burning, lazy shoegaze-driven, “No One Can Hear You Dream,” is yet another standout track on the album.

The song is marked by a stomping percussion; a backward tracking guitar part with another guitar ringing in the forefront; chilling vocals and choruses.

Then the orange glow of an Arizona sunset comes alive via the sci-fi-like experimental instrumental, “Smoke.”

The song is very much indicative of the high desert feel; almost spiritual with an uplifting swirl of synths and background notes from acoustic and electric guitars. (Perhaps there was some mescaline involved?)

This song could have been twice as long and all the better for it because the listener – at least in our case – connects with the vibe here and sinks into the song’s warm sonic blanket.

The following track, “Seven Swords,” cuts through the atmosphere with a morbid, banging bassline, moments of dreary chaos and glimpses of anger, perhaps even rage.

This dark vibe continues with the next song, “Approaching Shadow.” It sounds like the two songs were meant to merge and then break apart.

Pollard’s haunting vocals turn more aggressive, repeating “she’s seen God” on the layer of buzzing guitars and wavy bass lines.

The album closes with the mysterious and spacious track, “Shimmer Distant.” It sounds very much like a dream-pop song that got spooked by a ghost. There’s even a cult-like chanting going on. Have witches cooked up a fine brew here?

But wait. Just when it seems that the song was finished it re-emerges again with Pollard’s vocals drifting away into a black hole of distortion and ringing guitars.

It’s apparent here that the band really wanted to end the album with a display of experimental indie rock – spooky voices filtered with haunting effects, sound effects, pieces of other recordings and so on.

The decision to end on this note is interesting, to say the least. At the same time, it is fitting, in some respects, to end the album on a slightly different note than much of the rest of the album.

In that case, the whole ‘haunting effect’ that the band was going for has been aptly achieved.

Kudos do not come easy. These three musicians are a tight unit and it’s apparent that they worked diligently and intently on this perhaps their best album so far.

And that’s saying a lot.

We first came across Sun Blood Stories back in 2015 and published a post highlighting their awesome debut album, Twilight Midnight Morning.

The follow up album, 2017’s It Runs Around the Room With Us is also a solid release.

According to Kirby: “Haunt Yourself falls right in line with our previous albums by picking up exactly where our previous album left off. It’s a search and encouragement for and of hope.”

But then he flips it, stating: “Hope that is quickly admonished, reminding the listener that in the end we all die.”

Geez, lighten up dude. If you dig the tracks presented in this post, we encourage you to listen to the entire album from start to finish.

Sun Blood Stories has opened for bands like Low, Acid Mothers Temple, Wooden Indian Burial Ground, Nnamdi Ogbonnaya, and Like A Villian, among many others.