Garage Rock – INDIE ROCK CAFE

One Man Band Series: Virginia Teen Julian Earle’s Lo-Fi Garage Rock Crackles on Debut EP, ‘Eat Me’

Posted on 03/09/201312/18/2019 by Max Hammer

From the bedroom of his parents’ home in the Washington, D.C. suburb of Fairfax, Virginia, 16-year-old DIY guitar-slinger Julian Earle writes and records blaring, fast-driving and heavily distorted lo-fi garage rock with muffled, barely audible vocals. It’s probably unlike anything you’ve ever heard before.

Last August, Earle dropped his homemade debut EP, Eat Me. From the first track, we were immediately struck by the utter rawness of distorted, gritty guitar playing, accompanied by a frenetic, and kinetic, blast of noise. Unrefined and in your face, the untamed track, “Monsters,” is a captivating expression of teenage angst and the often confusing and chaotic transition into adulthood.

Monsters” – Julian Earle from Eat Me E.P

“Monsters,” which is a appropriately named because of its beast-like persona, is basically an instrumental with the exception of a few moments when you can hear Earle almost howling, which instantly reminded us of Brooklyn musician Brad Oberhofer‘s (prior to the formation of the band Oberhofer) first demos that he sent IRC for a 2010 One Man Band profile – months before Oberhofer really took off (apparently partly due to his IRC profile) and started showing up on late night TV shows (like Letterman) and big-name music festivals, not to mention signing with a label and touring endlessly.

While Earle’s songs, including the more tame, but still blazing, track, “All Alone,” reminded us of early Oberhofer, the songwriting, playing and vocal work, as a total package, is uniquely Earle.

“All Alone” – Julian Earle from Eat Me E.P

While there is perhaps room for improvement in sound production quality (or maybe it’s just fine as it is?), the fact that Earle is only 16 years old, totally DIY, has admittedly cheap recording equipment, no outside help, and yet obviously has raw talent and his own style, is all impressive, especially if you like unrefined, full-throttle lo-fi noise.

That said, there are plenty of artists over the years who have started out with rough, lo-fi demos and go on to tour to sold out crowds in venues across North America and Europe. The bottom-line is that more people need to hear these tracks and make up their own mind.

“Overload” – Julian Earle from Eat Me E.P

Earle told IRC: “I am a teenager from around D.C just trying to make my contribution to the garage scene that I love so much. I make lo-fi music in my room.” Hopefully we are not the only ones who see that Earle has already made a contribution to the D.C. area garage rock scene. Perhaps in coming months, the D.C. scene, and beyond, will embrace his sounds and see the potential that we see.

Earle’s musical influences include Jimi Hendrix, Cream, Led Zeppelin, The Smiths, Black Flag, The Descendents, Ty Segall, Wavves, Jay Reatard and The Black Keys. He clearly has good tastes in bands from the classic rock era right up to present day garage rock movement, so it’s easy to see where he gets some of the fury evident in the tracks on Eat Me, which is also available on his Bandcamp page. This is his first profile, that we know of, on a widely-read music blog.

Best New Releases – The Kills, Raveonettes, Cold Cave, Scattered Trees, Maritime, Code Pie, Amores Vigilantes, Cursed Arrows

Posted on 04/05/201107/22/2021 by Max Hammer

While this time of year brings warmer temperatures and more hours of daylight, this week’s new releases are thematically more fitting for the dead of winter – with its unforgiving and bitter cold, asphalt grit and grime, absence of leaves, grass and flowers, and the long, harsh hours of darkness.

On that note, and leading the way for this week’s new releases, are The Kills. Their spectacular new album, Blood Pressures, capitalizes on the duo’s innate ability to craft harsh, gritty, bluesy, dark songs. They are just masters of their domain, and the new LP reaffirms the legitimacy of their reign.

It’s been three years since the release of the last Kills’ album, so it really wasn’t a surprise to the indie press and blogsophere that the official release of Blood Pressures was proceeded by weeks of chatter and buzz around a couple of killer advanced singles, the first being “Satellite.”

“Satellite” – The Kills from Blood Pressures

“Satellite” was The Kills throwing a beat-up, but still fresh bone to the junkyard dog. And they left plenty of flesh to chew. The average Kills’ fan appreciates this, and “Satellite” turned out to be the perfect tease for the release of Blood Pressures.

On the surface, “Satellite” sounds like the title of a song that is perhaps warm and fuzzy, an atmospheric tune filled with treble-heavy, spacey synthesizers and peppy surf-rock guitars.

But instead, The Kills’ “Satellite” is industrial-style rocker that swaggers and romps from the start, and grows even more dark and sinister as it stomps along. It’s a powerful track that sounds like it belongs on a mixtape for the younger biker generation, and, in some cases, the tie-at-work-only office dweller who likes to unravel and let it rip and rumble in the off hours.

“DNA” –The Kills from Blood Pressures

The Kills are easily one of the best kick-ass revivalist garage rock duos of the past decade. The duo is American singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and indie A-list celeb Alison Mosshart and British guitarist Jamie Hince. They formed The Kills in 2000 and have released four albums, including their latest. The prolific Mosshart is also a band member of the supergroup, The Dead Weather, with Jack White of The White Stripes, another bluesy garage rock boy/girl duo The Kills are often compared to. However, The White Stripes announced their official breakup a couple of months ago. Mosshart has also been a studio and tour member of The Raconteurs.

The Raveonettes Add More Noise and Synth Pop To The Rock

And as if a new album from The Kills is not enough for fans of indie rock male-female duos, the Danish noise pop and garage rock duo The Raveonettes, dropped their new, and more noise pop-oriented LP, Raven In The Grave, this week. In fact, The Raveonettes’ new album is not nearly as a consistent cut-throat garage rocker as The Kills’ Blood Pressures, but it definitely has its moments.

The first official single, “Forget That You’re Young” is a well-crafted noise pop track and one of the album’s highlights. But, it’s the track “Recharge and Revolt,” that is perhaps the album’s stand out track, yet that’s a bit difficult to say until we listen to the entire album more than a couple of times. “Recharge and Revolt” is an inspiring, uptempo gem mixed nicely with lo-fi guitar strumming, a blazing background, one note feedback riff nearly drowned out by glimmering new wave style synth pop, wonderful reverb vocals and a melodic bass line. It’s The Raveonettes at their finest, and one of 2011’s best tracks.

“Recharge and Revolt” – The Raveonettes from Raven In The Grave (Amazon Exclusive MP3 Version)

The new album is the duo’s fifth LP since their 2003 highly acclaimed debut, Chain Gang of Love. The release of Raven In The Grave marks The Raveonettes’ third LP release with Vice Records.

“Forget That You’re Young” – The Raveonettes from Raven In The Grave (Amazon Exclusive MP3 Version)

Sidebar – Close Lobsters: We couldn’t help but to think of the terrific 80’s post-punk band, Close Lobsters, while listening to “Recharge and Revolt” (above).

So, we’ve included a track from CL for the hell of it. In case you are interested in hearing more from CL, we recommend Foxheads Stalk This Land, (1986).

“Foxheads” – Close Lobsters from Foxheads Stalk This Land (1986)

The Close Lobsters were a Scottish band who were only together for four years (1985-1989). They were instrumental in the C86 movement. On the NME‘s free 22-track C86 compilation, which features some of key bands who profoundly influenced the emerging indie rock genre, especially in the U.K., the Close Lobsters are included among many other great bands like The Soup Dragons, The Pastels, The Mighty Lemon Drops, Primal Scream, and The Wedding Present, among others.

OK, so back to the new stuff. In addition to The Kills and The Raveonettes, the third album out this week that we strongly recommend is the sophomore LP from the experimental new wave/darkwave band Cold Cave. The lead single, “Great Pan Is Dead” is a towering wall of rushing sounds, exploding with immediacy and fueled by high octane synth pop and driving percussion.

Overwhelmingly melodic and metallic at the same time (a feat very difficult to pull off, even by seasoned pros), “The Great Pan is Dead” has already made its way on to our Best Songs of 2011 (So Far) draft mix, which we hope to have completed and posted sometime in the next seven to ten days. Cold Cave is the musical project of New York musician and Matador artist Wesley Eisold. In live shows, Eisold is accompanied by Dominick Fernow and Jennifer Clavin. Also recommend catching them live when they come around to your city.

“Great Pan Is Dead” – Cold Cave from Cherish the Light Years (Bonus Track)

As we were putting together this weeks’ recommended best releases, we quickly realized that all of the official singles from new albums in and of themselves make for a fantastic mix of superb 2011 tracks. The next two singles from Chicago band Scattered Trees, and the Milwaukee band, Maritime, are easily at the top of this list for good reason.

Scattered Trees’ lead single, “A Conversation About Death on New Year’s Eve” is a mellow and shimmering indie electropop tune thick with synthesizers, mastered vocals, and subdued percussion that builds as the song progresses. Interestingly, the band self-describes their genre on their MySpace page as “glam,” which is sort of close, but an unusual proclamation.

Unlike the other albums mentioned above, we’ve not yet had a chance to listen to all of Sympathy, but would love to hear comments from those of you who have. We were a bit surprised to see that Scattered Trees does not yet have a Wikipedia entry. We can’t imagine that being the case for much longer. Hello Chicago?

“A Conversation About Death on New Year’s Eve” – Scattered Trees from Sympathy

The single, “Paraphernalia,” from Maritime‘s new LP, Human Hearts, is a catchy pop rocker that is not quite the stoner track the song title may imply to some people. In fact, singer and guitarist, Davey Von Bohlen, told Spinner about the single: “This is one of those songs that arrives by almost accident where it becomes a finished song and we all realize it together at some point in the middle of playing it.”

“Paraphernalia” – Maritime from Human Hearts

Awesome Singles from Bands New-To-Us

The string of great singles continues with fresh tracks from new releases by a trio of bands we never heard of (but are glad we did) until receiving the official singles recently from their new albums, out this week.

Although the new-to-us Montreal band Code Pie have been around since 2002, we only heard of them for the first time after they sent the official first single, “North Side City View,” from their third album, and their first LP since 2007.

“North Side City View” – Code Pie from Love Meets Rage

Originally founded in 1999 as Love Vigilantes after the New Order song of the same name, yet another duo, this time from San Francisco, have a new album out this week. Amores Vigilantes eventually changed their band name by simply translating it into Spanish. Little over a year ago, in December of 2009, the band released the album, West Coast Kingdom, from which many of the songs received heavy rotation on college radio, the web and music blogs, and even in Starbucks store playlist. Amores Vigilantes include among their influences – and often sound like – The Stone Roses, New Order, and even Velvet Underground.

“You Can’t Live Forever in Paradise on Earth (Without Me)”– Amores Vigilantes from You Can’t Live Forever In Paradise On Earth (Without Me)

One of the themes running through this week’s Best New Releases is that of grit, darkness and saber-cutting rock.

Add to the list the band Wolf Ram Heart.

They solidified their case for being included among our recommended releases by supplying two tracks from their album Betrayal of Hearts via Sovereign States Records.

“Humming Doves” – Wolf Ram Heart from Betrayal of Hearts

“Viewgirls” – Wolf Ram Heart from Betrayal of Hearts

Husband-and-Wife Garage Rock Duo, Curse Arrows

And now, we’d like to introduce yet another rock duo from Canada. Just in this post alone, we have like four duos, and over the past few years, there has been a virtual deluge of rock duos. Cursed Arrows is one of the latest. The husband-and-wife band hail from Halifax–

via-Ontario, and belt out scuzzy, noise rock, on their new album, The Madness of Crowds, while on other tracks of the LP, they present more poetic lyrics and passionate keys. We’re stoked to be able to present two tracks from The Madness of Crowds, plus a convincing cover of the PJ Harvey track, “Rid of Me,” which is not available on the new album.

Apparently, the album is only available for a name-your-price checkout on Cursed Arrows Bandcamp page. We’ll definitely be keeping an ear out for their head-crushing, kick-ass bluesy garage rock.

“Death Rattle Blues” – Cursed Arrows from The Madness of Crowds

Double-shot: “The Madness of Crowds” – Cursed Arrows from The Madness of Crowds

Bonus: “Rid of Me” (PJ Harvey) – Cursed Arrows

Also, check out these fresh singles from new releases by Glasvegas, Jeff Beam, as well as from solo albums by Bill Callahan of Smog, and singer/songwriter and musician Alela Diane.

“The World Is Yours” – Glasvegas from Euphoric/Heartbreak

“People Places” – Jeff Beam from Venus Flying Trapeze

“To Begin” – Alela Diane from Alela Diane & Wild Divine

“Baby’s Breath” – Bill Callahan from Apocalypse

The following singles require that you click on the single to either listen via Soundcloud or download the single on another page, including Timber Timbre, Blueprint, and Erza Furman & The Harpoons

“Black Water” – Timber Timbre from Creep On Creepin’ On

“My Culture” – Blueprint from Adventures in Counter-Culture

“Hard Time in a Terrible Land” – Ezra Furman & The Harpoons from Mysterious Power

Other New Tracks That Some Folks Might Like

This section includes new singles from new releases that are not part of our recommendation for new albums to purchase, but some of our readers might enjoy these tracks, so we include them for that reason only.

“Time Forgot (To Change My Heart)” – Daniel Romano from Sleep Beneath the Willow

“Steam” – Hammer No More The Fingers from Black Shark

“Usual Suspects” – Ha Ha Tonka from Death of a Decade

The Sunday 25 Mix, Vol. IV: The Strokes, U2, The Rolling Stones, Beirut, Mott The Hoople, The Shins, Adam Ant, Pink Floyd, Pixies

Posted on 12/12/201001/09/2020 by Max Hammer

Yup, it’s Sunday, and that means it’s time to kick back, and read a magazine or book, surf the web, do Christmas cards or tree decorating, and fire up the S-25 Mix. As with all of IRC’s playlists and mixes, just click the first song and the Yahoo media player will automatically stream through all 25 classic songs, uninterrupted, so you can listen while you’re doing other things.

In addition to arranging the song list, part of the S-25 mix is to spotlight one band each Sunday that we just absolutely dig, whether they are well known, marginally well known or pretty much obscure. This week we picked The Strokes. Over the past decade, The Strokes have dug out their place among the best garage rock bands ever. The 10th anniversary of the release of the band’s platium debut album, Is This It?, is fast approaching.

That album catapulted the band to worldwide rock and roll stardom – almost over-night – thanks to its numerous catchy and memorable songs, created by the decidedly 1970s guitar rock and angular riffs of guitarists Albert Hammond Jr. and Nick Valensi; the intriguing lyrics and captivating vocals of Julian Casablancas; the fierce bass-playing of Nikolai Fraiture, and the splendid drum work of Fabrizio Moretti. The band members were barely in their 20’s when their debut album was released.

“Hard To Explain” – The Strokes from Is This It? (2001)

isthisitthestrokes — This is the original album cover for Is This It? release in UK

thestrokesisthisit — The Strokes changed the album art for Is This It? U.S. release in Oct. 2001

Is This It? had a huge influence on countless numbers of bands that have formed since its summer 2001 debut. Interestingly, this NYC band first released their debut LP in the UK in August. Perhaps this was due to the crazy amount of coverage the band was getting throughout the UK months before Is This It? came out. The band and label may have also released it in the UK first because the original risque cover (see above) is more acceptable there than in the U.S.

As a matter of fact, when Is This It? was finally released in October of 2011, not only did they replace the cover (see above), but they also decided not to release the track “New York City Cops” as the B-side for their first single in light of the terrorists attacks on their city the month prior.

“Someday” – The Strokes from Is This It?

Controversial album covers and other trivial matters aside, Is This It? was clearly one of the defining albums of the 2000’s. In fact, Is This It was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America in February 2002 for shipments of 500,000 copies in the U.S. Is This It was named the best album of 2001 by Billboard, CMJ, Entertainment Weekly, NME, Playlouder, and Time. The LP was in the top five of hundreds of more such lists published for 2001. The Strokes won NME‘s Best New Act, Band of the Year, and Album of the Year for 2001.

The Strokes set out to prove that they could live up to the tremendous expectations they faced after the success of Is It This? After extensive touring in 2002 with The White Stripes, Weezer, Kings of Leon (who opened for The Strokes), and even The Rolling Stones, the band finally got back in the studio in 2003. The result was the band’s highly anticipated, and yet again, highly acclaimed, sophomore album, Room On Fire, which saw the band incorporate new wave music elements that they pulled off swimmingly.

“12:51” – The Strokes from Room on Fire (2003)

Three years and many shows later, the band dropped their third album, First Impressions of Earth. The album failed to generate the same kind of enthusiasm and sales as the band’s first two albums. In 2007, band members all embarked on other projects, with both Hammond and Casablancas releasing debut solo records in 2008 and 2009, respectively.

Strokes’ fans have been waiting four years for a new album from the band. There have been delays, the band admits, because of their solo work and other commitments, but anyone who’s been following is not crazy to wonder if the band’s heart is really in it. This past summer in a BBC interivew, Casablancas, responded to a question about the status of the new record.

“The first thing is the Strokes thing. Like I said I’m kind of split now, I’ll do other things,” he said. “If I have an idea for something that I know head to toe, I’ll probably do it on my own, and when I have kind of looser stuff I’ll probably bring it to the Strokes. But right now we’re just trying to finish this record, so lets see how this goes.” Umm, yeah. The word now is the album is set to be released in March of 2011; but as far as we know, there are no audio or video samples of the new songs available.

“I Wish It Was Christmas Today” – Julian Casablancas from Phrazes of the Young (2009)

“Where The Streets Have No Name” – U2 from Joshua Tree (1987)

“Sympathy For The Devil” – The Rolling Stones from Begger’s Banquet (1968)

“In Transit” – Albert Hammond Jr from Yours To Keep (2006)

“Round The Bend” – The Beta Band from The Beta Bend (1999)

“A Sunday Smile” – Beirut from The Flying Club Cup (2008)

“Hope” – The Submarines from Declare A New State (2006)

“Last Nite” – The Strokes from Is This It? (2001)

“Rock On” – David Essex from Rock On (1973)

“All The Young Dudes” – Mott The Hoople from All The Young Dudes (1972)

“Weird Divide” – The Shins from Oh Inverted World (2005)

“Sundress” – Ben Kweller from Ben Kweller (2004)

Adam Ant was sort of the pirate version of Billy Idol

“Ant Music” – Adam & The Ants from AntMusic EP (1981)

“Ize of the World” – The Strokes from First Impressions of Earth (2006)

“A Cold Wind Will Blow Through Your Door” – Bill Ricchini from Tonight I Burn Brightly (2006)

“Hey You” – Pink Floyd from The Wall (1979)

“Here Comes The Night” – Them from The Story of Them (1965)

“Where Is My Mind?” – Pixies from Surfer Rosa (1988)

“Strange” – Built to Spill from Ancient Melodies of The Future (2006)

“Toxic Girl” – Kings of Convenience from Quiet Is The New Loud (2001)

“This Time” – John Cougar Mellancamp from Nothing Matters and What If It Did? (1980)

“Razorblade” – The Strokes from First Impressions of Earth (2006)

The S-25 Concept: The idea of what we’ve come to call the S-25 Mix is to represent great music from all time periods, styles and genres of popular music from the mid 1950s to present day. We like to try to create a good cross representation of that includes classic rock, pop, new wave, dance, garage rock, electronica, indie, singer-songwriter, punk, R&B, lo-fi, chillwave, post punk, and doses of blues, jazz, hiphop, country and classical as well. The interesting thing about all of the great music that came before is the huge influence it has had on alternative, and particularly indie, rock of the past two decades, and likely will for a long time to come..mp3″ rel=”nofollow” rel=”nofollow”