Indierock | Alternative Tape 439 Items

“If rock ’n’ roll’s a dream, please don’t wake me.”

Midwife’s No Depression In Heaven, her fourth studio album, was written primarily in the back of vans while on tour endlessly over the course of the past few years. The record engages with the contemplative spirit of rock ’n’ roll from within a body in motion.

No Depression In Heaven explores themes of sentimentality, the interplay between dreams, memory, and fantasy, and a familiar subject seen throughout all of Midwife’s work: grief. Madeline Johnston takes a look at the tender and transcendent underneath a hard exterior of leather and studs, exposing a different side of the heavy music scene, where Johnston’s project has been living and evolving.

Recording at home in New Mexico between 2021 and 2023, Johnston aimed to create something that was rough around the edges, returning to a free recording process that was less focused on perfection and more attuned to expressing the spirit that lives inside of the songs. The album features collaborations with Chris Adolf and Michael Stein of American Culture, Ben Schurr and Tim Jordan of Nyxy Nyx, Angel Diaz of Vyva Melinkolya, and Allison Lorenzen.

Inspired by ephemeral moments that make up life on tour, the totemization of vehicles, outlaws, and the psyche of America’s underbelly, No Depression In Heaven affirms Johnston’s existential status as a woman of the highway.

The pre-cursor to Mid-Air Thief's cult-acclaimed album Crumbling, Gongjoon Doduk exhibits a distinct universality, merging disparate sounds and styles into a cohesive, electronic-infused folk amalgam that tactfully blurs the lines between organic and synthetic. Listeners are led through enrapturing passages of swirling melodies underscored with eloquent plucks, strums, and bursts of bubbly glitches. Individual phrases drift into one another as if in a dream, cohered by entrancing hooks and vocal soundscapes. Gongjoon Doduk is a compelling accomplishment of both composition and production, bending as it does to its unique contours of consonance and dissonance, always resolving to a place of calm and beauty.

mewithoutYou returns with their 5th studio album. Helmed by producer and friend of the band Daniel Smith (Sufjan Stevens) and mixed by Brad Wood (Sunny Day Real Estate), Ten Stories is an allegorical collection of songs that, at first listen, follows a winding narrative about a circus train crash in 19th century Montana. But long-time fans of this band know that although we are immediately introduced to a talking elephant, fox and tiger, there is always more than meets the eye. The Run For Cover Records reissue of Ten Stories includes reimagined and expanded pack- aging by longtime collaborator Charlie Wagers, as well as new colors of vinyl. Includes download code.

7" and Tape in Gold or Silver with Poster, Postcard and five Poodle Pins. Destiny decides - golden edition comes with autgraphed postcard. Good luck!

'Mei Semones' sweetly evocative blend of jazz, bossa nova and math-y indie rock is notonly a way for her to find solace in her favorite genres, but is an intuitive means ofcatharsis. "Blending everything that I like together and trying to make something new -that's what feels most natural to me," says the 23-year-old Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter and guitarist. "It's what feels most true to who I am as an artist."Plinking guitar tones and asymmetrical time signatures exemplify her forays intoangular indie rock more now than ever before, especially on her debut Bayonet Recordssingle "Wakare no Kotoba"_its wide-interval arpeggios in odd meters being some ofthe most technically difficult guitar work Mei has ever implemented in her songwriting.Translated to "parting words'' in English, the self-described "anti-love song" serves as afarewell to a toxic friendship, complete with orchestral swells and crashing guitars.Originally from Ann Arbor, Michigan, Semones began playing music at a young age,starting out on piano at age four before moving to electric guitar at age eleven. Afterplaying jazz guitar in high school, she went on to study guitar performance with a jazzfocus at Berklee College of Music. College is where she met her current bandmates,including string players Noah Leong and Claudius Agrippa, whose respective viola andviolin add softness and multidimensionality to Mei's intricate guitar work. After releasinga slew of singles and an EP in 2022, coinciding with her move to New York City, Mei andher band have since gone on to collaborate with post-bossa balladeer John Roseboroand embark on their first-ever tour with the melodic rock outfit Raavi.Semones chronicles infatuation, devotion, and vulnerability in her songs, complete withsweeping strings, virtuosic guitar-playing and heartfelt lyrics sung in both English andJapanese, that have all become part of her sonic trademark: ornately catchy, genre-fusing compositions serving as the backdrop to tender lyrics touching on theuniversalities of human em...

Maya Hawke is a musician, songwriter, actor and producer. She has released two lauded albums of music to date, Moss (2022) and Blush (2020), both of which showcase her natural gift for songwriting and storytelling, as well as a knack for striking visual presentation with sleeve designs of her own creation. “Thérèse,” the lead single from Moss, garnered global attention with its mesmerizing Brady Corbet-directed video - and tens of millions of streams - and saw Maya make an impressive network TV performance debut on the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. Maya and her band picked up a slew of rave reviews for sold out shows in the US and EU, as well as support slots for Bright Eyes and Faye Webster.

Now 25 years old, Maya’s third album, Chaos Angel, takes the spare, viscerally honest songwriting she has made her name on and goes deeper and bolder. Both her most sonically sophisticated and thematically nuanced collection to date, it feels like a culmination. Across these 10 songs, Hawke catalogs upheavals, revelations, foibles, and broken promises, all while navigating the patterns we repeat while reaching towards growth, wandering astray, and finding our way back to some core understanding of ourselves.

Chaos Angel is also a document of Hawke coming more fully into her own as a musician. More adventurous in the studio after her previous two albums, Hawke leaned into her ambition. Many of these tracks are still anchored by acoustic guitar and Hawke’s graceful yet conversational vocals, but their surroundings are more intricate and lush than ever before. She reconvened with longtime collaborators Benjamin Lazar Davis and Will Graefe, with Christian Lee Hutson serving as producer.

A great pop record is like a great friend: an intimate confidante, a shoulder to cry on, and a partner in crime when you're ready to get dolled up and dance the pain away under the disco ball (or in front of your bedroom mirror.) That's what you'll find on MARCI, the solo debut from Marta Cikojevic of Montreal soft-rock group TOPS, who steps out on her own in self-assured style with a guileless collection of synth pop songs that brim with unabashed sincerity. The confidence of this debut belies the fact that Cikojevic has never formally written songs before, though she's been a student of melody since her childhood in rural Ontario, when she would sing along to the radio pop divas du jour, perform in the church choir, and participate in piano recitals. The middle child of five sisters, Cikojevic describes herself as a shy singer at home, who would instead seek out secret spots_the forest behind her home or a broken down van on their property were favorites_to practice her singing and record the songs she would make up herself into a handheld recorder. She was encouraged to do so by her grandfather, a refugee from the former Yugoslavia, who would sing and record both original songs and traditional Croatian folk songs on a cassette dictation machine_she still has some of the tapes they made together. Eventually she would make her way to Toronto where she played in several groups before joining TOPS as a keyboardist in 2017 and moving to Montreal. When she decided to make a solo record, it was a given that she'd work with her TOPS bandmate David Carriere, describing him as "a great pop writer" who shared her vision for what she wanted to achieve with her music.Carrierre and Cikojevic approached MARCI with the idea that they wanted to craft hits_songs that were catchy and danceable while still being emotionally honest and down-to-earth. The record was put together over the course of a year in a Montreal apartment reminiscent of a 1993 pawnshop, full of synthesizers and obscure instruments dating back to the...

Honus Honus (aka Ryan Kattner) has devoted his career to exploring the uncertainty between life's extremes, beauty, and ugliness, order and chaos. The songs on Dream Hunting in the Valley of the In-Between, Man Man's first album in over six years and their Sub Pop debut, are as intimate, soulful, and timeless as they are audaciously inventive and daring, resulting in his best Man Man album to date. The 17-track effort, featuring "Cloud Nein," "Future Peg," "On the Mend" "Sheela," and "Animal Attraction," was produced by Cyrus Ghahremani, mixed by S. Husky Höskulds (Norah Jones, Tom Waits, Mike Patton, Solomon Burke, Bettye LaVette, Allen Toussaint), and mastered by Dave Cooley (Blood Orange, M83, DIIV, Paramore, Snail Mail, clipping). Dream Hunting...also includes guest vocals from Steady Holiday's Dre Babinski on "Future Peg" and "If Only," and Rebecca Black (singer of the viral pop hit, "Friday") on "On The Mend" and "Lonely Beuys." The album follows the release of "Beached" and "Witch," Man Man's contributions to Vol. 4 of the Sub Pop Singles Club in 2019. At the end of 2015, Man Man went on an unexpected hiatus, and thus began a period of creative reinvention for Honus Honus. He worked in music supervision and on scores (The Exorcist, Superdeluxe, Do You Want to See a Dead Body?). He acted in the indie film Woe ("I played a park ranger, a nice guy in a sad movie."), So It Goes, a short musical film with Mary Elizabeth Winstead, and starred in the award-winning tour documentary Use Your Delusion. He also developed an animated series, wrote film scripts, a graphic novel, a neo-noir TV pilot, and briefly penned a music column for The Talkhouse all while continuing to work on new music, such as an unreleased kids' record, another Mister Heavenly album, a self-released Honus Honus record, and a conceptual art/noise project Mega Naturals. In the midst of this surreal exile from Man Man, Honus began piecing together what would become Dream Hunting in the Valley of the In-Between. He recruited longtime-collaborator Cyrus Ghahremani to help him produce. Written in a friend's LA guesthouse that had "an old upright piano, a thrift store lamp, and nothing else," it was an arduous, three-and-a-half-year process, "I had chord progressions that looked like chicken scratch and lyrics on pieces of paper stuck all over the walls. It looked like I was about to break the big case, catch the killer," he says, laughing. "There was a lot of self-doubt, fighting the urge to throw in the towel. It wasn't fun but it definitely forced the best album of my career out of me. Sometimes you just gotta tear it all down to rebuild things the right way. Trust the process."

Mal Devisa is the songwriting, liberation, and poetry project of multifarious artist Deja Carr. Starting in 2014 and breaking through with 2016's Kiid, Mal Devisa's work spans a selfmade spectrum of sound from gravitic, soulful rock to soliloquy to unabashed hip hop. Although known for her unmistakable, smoldering voice and loop-based, bass-forward compositions, Carr's talents also extend to reaches of spoken word and production, paralleled by aspirations to start both a youth foundation and Afrobeat orchestra. Such boundless inspiration is a central facet of Mal Devisa's work, whose sonically and narratively unrestrained passages teem with empathy and liberatory visions for a better world.

Access, The Second Album By Major Murphy, Is An Album Born Out Of Being At A Crossroads. It's Also, Without Question, An Album To Blast At An Unruly Volume To Soundtrack An Experience Onemight Have Standing At That Crossroads. It's Remarkably Cohesive - A Striking Relic In An Age Where Ardent And True"Album-Making" Is A Fading Art Form - Full Of Heavy Rock'n'roll Sounds And Textured Atmospheres Fused Withpro-Idea, Hyper-Creative Jittery Warmth. In Nine Songs, It Somehow Takes A Listener Backwards And Forwards Atonce, Reckoning With Intrinsic Anxieties While Conceptualizing A Fantastical And Vibrant Happening, Soothing In Itsfamilia Familiar, Occasionally Childlike Tone.Behind The Sturdy And Poetic Architecture Lies A Story Of New Parents, Navigating Uncertainty And Seeking A Senseof Agency In The New Unknown. Throughout Access, Songwriter Jacob Bullard Recounts Memories Of Teaching Hisyoung Son To Breathe Through His Nose And Laments Missing His Son And His Partner And Bandmate Jacki Warren.On "In The Meantime", Bullard Expresses The Timeless Anxiety Of Recent Parenthood, Written In The Wake Of Theterrifying Experience Of Their Son Suffering From Lead Poisoning. While The Title Track "Access" Is As Much Apersonal Plea For Patience And Humility...

Lutalo's highly visceral folk goes electric on The Academy,the Vermont multi-instrumentalist, songwriter and producer'sdebut LP. Recorded in January 2024 at the storiedSonic Ranch and self-produced along with Jake Aron (SnailMail, Protomartyr, L'Rain), The Academy feels like watchingthe best underground film you've seen in years; establishingLutalo as a singular voice of this generation of indie rock.Lutalo describes The Academy as their "first chapter" - atime capsule of the lessons they've learned in their20-something years of life. "This record is exactly that: a`record' of my early life," they say of their debut album, outvia Winspear. "The experiences, thoughts and feelings I washolding at those times and am currently processing. To me,this is the first big stamp of my existence I'm sharing."While Lutalo's 2022 EP Once Now, Then Again introducedthem as a lo-fi acoustic guitar wunderkind, The Academy isbigger and bolder without compromising Lutalo's invitingsense of emotional intimacy, inspired by alt-rock veteranslike Thom Yorke and Rob Crow as well as electronic greatslike Aphex Twin and Bowery Electric. The Academy'sgrander arrangements are heard in the biting adrenalinerush of "Ocean Swallows Him Whole," or the anti-war jangleof album closer "The Bed." Their lyrics are often deeplyintuitive, flowing as a stream of consciousness, albeit withweighty meanings. With their unique baritone and finessefor lyrical world building, Lutalo cuts to the bone-while onlyjust beginning to reveal the depth of their artistry and vision.

For Lutalo, creating music is an act of hope in and of itself. Throughout their meticulously crafted folk, rock, and soul, on which theysing and play all the instruments, the Twin Cities-raised,Vermont-based musician embeds golden lines of poetry thatinspire curiosity about the world and empathy for everyone searching for a way through it.After releasing their 2022 debut EP,Once Now, Then Again, Lutaloemerged as a rising talent in the indie world, catching the attentionof Fleet Foxes' Robin Pecknold and Big Thief's Adrianne Lenker,who invited the young musician on tour. Following a vinyl releasewith that breakthrough project, they are releasing its companionEP,AGAIN, on August 25 via Winspear.On the ambitiousAGAIN, a collection of kinetic indie rock tracks,Lutalo makes bold critiques of systemic oppression, capitalism,and the digital attention economy. Though these topics are heady,their writing always sits at an accessible place of personalintrospection. Like on the arresting single "Push Back Baby," whosefuzzy electric guitar lines twist and unfurl in intricate patterns,Lutalo paints a complex portrait of our current reality that's "rootedin the greed or narcissism of capitalists," they explain. "I'm analyzingthose systems and patterns, and also asking, `Can we continue tonot perpetuate this?' Because it's hurt a lot of people historically. I'mjust asking people to question it."Through their music, but also through their lifestyle that's alternative to America's economic and political systems, Lutalo askslisteners to imagine new possibilities. "I want to help people ques-tion the way they're living," they say, "so we can create a betterreality for us to exist in together."

Lucius returns with their highly-anticipated new album Second Nature. Produced by Dave Cobb and Brandi Carlile, the album features ten new songs, with writing contributions from Brit Award and Mercury Prize nominated Jenn Decilveo, amongst others. The new album is a portrait of singer and songwriters Holly Laessig and Jess Wolfe's shared reflection, chronicling each other's seismic life shifts_motherhood, divorce, unplanned career pauses. On Second Nature, Wolfe explains, "It is a record that begs you not to sit in the difficult moments, but to dance through them. It touches upon all these stages of grief_and some of that is breakthrough, by the way. Being able to have the full spectrum of the experience that we have had, or that I've had in my divorce, or that we had in lockdown, having our careers come to a halt, so to speak. I think you can really hear and feel the spectrum of emotion and hopefully find the joy in the darkness. It does exist. That's why we made Second Nature and why we wanted it to sound the way it did: our focus was on dancing our way through the darkness." Recorded primarily at Nashville's historic RCA Studio A, the 10-song album was written by Laessig and Wolfe and features their longtime band members Peter Lalish, Dan Molad alongside Solomon Dorsey with additional contributions from Drew Erickson, Rob Moose and Gabriel Cabezas with mixing by Rob Kinelski and Molad as well as Carlile and Sheryl Crow on backing vocals. Second Nature is Lucius' third full-length album and first since 2016's Good Grief. Widely acclaimed since their debut album, The New York Times declares, "Luscious, luminous, lilting lullabies," while NPR Music asserts, "gorgeous, joyful songs" and Pitchfork praises, "powerful voices and a keen sense of melody." In addition to their work in the band, Holly Laessig and Jess Wolfe have recorded with Sheryl Crow, Harry Styles, The War on Drugs, Ozzy Osborne and John Legend and toured extensively alongside Roger Waters.

After decades on the road and the never-ending hustle of life as an artist, Lou Barlow has tapped into a new confidence in the chaos. In 2021, the concept of balance feels particularly intimidating. Now more than ever, it's clear life isn't just leveling out a pair of responsibilities. Instead, we're chasing after a flock of different ideals with a butterfly net. On Barlow's new solo album, Reason to Live, he has come to an understanding of that swirl rather than trying to contain it. As a long-time indie legend, Barlow has found a life akin to a middle-class musician. In recent years, he's moved from Los Angeles back to Massachusetts, where he lives with his wife and three kids. And yet rather than settle into a comfortable malaise or yearn for the open road, Barlow's strengthened urgency finds a way to merge the two instincts. Reason to Live is shambolic and grand yet intimate and doting, warmly acoustic and crackling with grit. "I had been struggling for a way to connect both my home life and my recorded life, but this record is the first time I've integrated that," Barlow says. By folding the many facets of his life into one package, Reason to Live radiates with a renewed balance and calm. That comfort in complexity shines through even in the recording process, with select songs having origins in decades past and others written in the early stages of 2020. The multitude of whirring messages of Reason to Live are united by Barlow's roiling multilayered arrangements and the understanding that change is inevitable - and that it can bring you a new reason to live in the darkest times. "This album is me really opening up, and the album follows that through its many different themes," he says. "Some of my other work could be almost claustrophobic in its insistence on being all tied together but there's space for people to live inside these songs." After albums with Sebadoh, Dinosaur Jr., Folk Implosion, and under his own name, listeners may have felt they knew the construction of a Barlow song, even that they knew Barlow himself. "People have this vision of me as this heartbroken, depressed guy, but this record feels so true to who I am, to this rich life I now have full of people I love," he says. "The songs culminated over the last five years to show that music has returned to its central comforting role in my life. Now I'm home."

Los Campesinos! have become one of the most important and influential cult acts in the UK since they formed in the mid-2000s. Starting out in the Cardiff indie scene and soundtracking Budweiser adverts, the seven-piece’s musical evolution since then has been slow, steady and remarkable. From the frenzied chaos of debut album Hold On Now, Youngster… (2008) through 2010 breakthrough Romance is Boring and the self-mythologising of latter day highlights NO Blues (2013) and Sick Scenes (2017), their discography is an interconnected web of niche references, big swings and unflinching honesty.

Making self-professed sleeper hits for weeping dipshits, they’re as influenced by The Beautiful South as they are US emo, with emotional intensity and connection always at the core. Their lyrics are a treasure trove of football references, tales of romantic woe and painfully frank exorcisms, which have been tattooed across hundreds of fans’ bodies and served as comfort and insight during that break-up you had (there’s a reason the band’s tagline is “your ex-girlfriend’s favourite band”).

Now with the release of All Hell, Los Camp! approach their third decade as a band more brilliant, more potent and more vital than ever.

A camera zooms in without crowding its subject. A song about someone else's damage helps you understand your own, and puts you on to new mysteries. Stars look like grains of sand. On Little KID’s new album and Orindal Records debut, A Million Easy Payments, the urgency in Kenny BOOTHBY's voice matches the stakes of his lyrics, epic ballads and reveries that come at life from all angles and exposures, driving at and a little over the limits of self-reflection. The band's lilting folk rock arrangements carry Boothby's stories, occasionally lifting them skyward with flurries of cello samples, pedal steel, flute, and electric piano. It's a record of depression and frustration that doesn't stew in piety or aestheticize pain, that also explodes with life. Fragile and abundant. It's a record with blood in its veins. Little Kid is a Toronto-based collaborative project that has existed in some form since 2009, and is currently comprised of Brodie Germain (drums, guitar), Paul Vroom (bass), Megan Lunn (vocals, banjo, keyboard), Liam Cole (drums, percussion), and Kenny Boothby (vocals, guitar, piano, keyboards). A Million Easy Payments, like the three Little Kid releases before it, was tracked, engineered, and mastered by Vroom. Vroom's work renders a portrait of Little Kid's twin musical strengths—as a live act, a straight-ahead folk rock outfit, and as a group of creative, independent producers who want to mess things up. To that end, the record features several guest instruments: Eliza NIEMI's cello, ANH PHUNG's flute, Seth ENGEL's percussion, Peter GILL’s pedal steel, and Aaron POWELL’s voice.

LIFE are anchored by their hometown; the geography, history and community has always been the inspiration behind their creativity and on their third LP, North East Coastal Town, the band pay homage to Hull and its folk. North East Coastal Town is mature; it finds the band at the height of their powers as they carve-up a wide-screen, brooding body of work that is drenched in a sense of belonging and reflection but still impressively maintains their trademark swagger and ear for pop sensibilities and guitar hooks."Hull and the surrounding area runs through our DNA and has shaped us, weathered us, empowered us, embraced us and made us feel accepted. North East Coastal Town is our love letter to the city. The album is an ode to kinship and relationship with its musical and lyrical spine picking out themes of love, desire, beauty, horror, chaos, pride and most importantly the sense of belonging. Upon writing and recording this album it was important to us that this sense of belonging was also reflected in the album's craft and therefore we used locally based studios, equipment, gear, and the community around us to establish what it means to belong in a North East Coastal Town."When the pandemic gripped the world in March 2020, LIFE were in the midst of promoting their acclaimed second album - A Picture Of Good Health (Sept 2019); they had just completed an arena support tour with Kaiser Chiefs in the UK, a triumphant main stage appearance at Rockaway Beach and flown to New York for New Colossus Festival ahead of a packed SXSW and a US tour with IDLES. They scrambled home on the last plane back from New York on 17th March.The album was BBC 6 Music's Album Of The Day, BBC Radio 1's Album Of The Weekend and was one of BBC 6Music's Albums of The Year; all four singles from the album were play-listed at 6Music, and the band were nominated for two AIM Awards 2020 - Best Live Act and Best (Difficult) Second Album and they played major UK festivals including Glastonbury, Latitude, Reading Festiva...

Hot off the metaphorical heels of our rousing Spirit Phone success, Needlejuice is delighted to bring you another Lemon Demon release. This time around we’re offering Neil’s 2012 Christmas EP I Am Become Christmas. Lightheartedly exploring such dark topics as a government-funded Santa Claus and seasonal affective disorder, this set of 5 spooky holiday songs hinted at the direction Neil was headed toward on Spirit Phone.

The 'Baptismal' project started out when Kramer invited me to collaborate with him on a project, and Itend to think in terms of what the listeners are open to hearing these days. In my mind was a recordingthat let the listeners leave the busy mind generated by mainstream media, so I came up with the idea ofa baptism, immersive kind of LP in which the listener would Become totally present with the music. Isuggested to Kramer the title 'Baptismal', and that the tracks would be called 'Gedunk', a comicalreference to the idea of being immersed in water, my own baptism as a child in the Christian faith, theBaptist church. I started by sending Kramer several tracks of Zither-centric music in the length ofindividual LP sides. Kramer would complement the tracks with plush drones and return it to me. Then wewould discuss. Soon we had enough material to move toward completing the album. I performed withpiano keyboard, ZITHER and voice. We collaborated entirely by sending audio files back and forth viaonline transfer. We haven't had physical contact at all during the project, but it went smoothly with someminor suggestions to help us to shape up our navigation til we finally arrived. The album cover wassuggested by Kramer, which I think is very appropriate. The project started in 2022. Mark Kramer, an oldyoung friend. We connected in New York City when he was here in the 80s.-Laraaji, Jan. 2023I met Laraaji by chance in NYC's Central Park one fine summer day in 1985. I'd been thinking about thewisdom vs. the futility of starting my own record company a lot in those days, and as I walked throughone of the parks many tunnels, I heard what I'd recognized to be Laraaji's 'Day of Radiance' playing onwhat i'd assumed to be someone's beatbox. I thought to myself, "How nice it is to be alive in NYC in 1985on a day like this in Central Park and knowing that someone loves this wondrous LP from Eno's ObscureRecords label as much as I do."But when I emerged from the tunnel I saw not a beatbo...

LAKE's 2009 album Let's Build A Roof [KLP213], produced by Northwest legend Karl Blau, is sweet, funky and nostalgic - a paragon of psychedelic pop. Originally, this landmark album had overlooked sonic anomalies now corrected by REMASTERING. Five bonus songs have been added to the DIGITAL ALBUM, creating a whole new Let's Build a Roof.Let's Build A Roof is LAKE's most popular album with many fan favorites, though every track is unique. After extensive touring in 2009, LAKE entered Dub Narcotic Studio (Olympia, Wash.) to record fresh with their live energy. In the studio they were able to fill out their jingly pop aesthetic, enhanced with the vintage sounds of instruments available at Dub Narcotic and the local community. Blazing synth solos, timpani, flutes, saxophones, cello, and marimba, are just some of the featured sounds on Let's Build a Roof.Some of the album's most requested songs: "Madagascar," a dubby, slow-groove track; "Christmas Island" a surfy Phil Spector-sounding song used as theme music for the television in show Adventure Time; and "Don't Give Up", an upbeat motivating dance song with Blau performing the hook on harmonized saxophones; "Gravel" is the first single and has that a driving intensity that we can all deeply relate to - trying to keep up.

Lael Neale still has a flip phone and there were no screens involved in the creation of her new record Star Eaters Delight. The album is her second for Sub Pop and reveals an expansion of her sonic collaboration with producer and accompanist Guy Blakeslee. In April of 2020, in the wake of transformations both personal and global, Lael moved from Los Angeles back to her family's farm in rural Virginia. Looking at the world from a distance and getting in tune with her own rhythms, she wrote and recorded steadily for two dreamlike years, driven by a need to make order out of chaos. Forged in isolation, Star Eaters Delight is a vehicle for returning, not just to civilization, but to celebration. She says, "Acquainted with Night (recorded in 2019, and released in 2021), was focused inward, amidst the loud and bright Los Angeles surrounding me. It was an attempt to create spaciousness and quiet reverie within. When I moved back to the farm, I found that the unbroken silences compelled me to break them with sound. This album is more external. It is me reaching back out to the world, wanting to feel connected, to wake up, to come together again." Album opener and lead single "I Am The River" melts the ice with a dynamic explosion of minimalist transcendental pop clearly descended from the Velvet Underground's branch of modern music's family tree. Blakeslee's spare yet cinematic arrangements create an ambient space in which Neale's clear and unaffected voice can explore familiar themes in an unexpected way. Subtle but potent references to Shakespeare, Emerson and the Bible (which she hasn't read) swirl together with deeply personal musings and touches of wry humor, always more optimistic than cynical. While this is a record about polarities- country vs. city, humanity vs. technology, solitude vs. relationship - the deeper intention is to heal; to come to terms with our differences and put the broken pieces back together again. Lael's affinity with the Transcendentalists has to do with her quest to hold onto sovereignty over her own mind. In a time when our devices are constantly flooding us with information, opinions and propaganda, Lael is intentional about what she takes in - hence the flip phone and the cassette recorder. Neale identifies as a minimalist "not because I don't like things, but because I value freedom more."

It Is The Simple Thing That Is So Hard To Do. This Is The Paradox That Musician Lael Neale Has Lived Within Throughout Her Development As An Artist. It Is The Reason She Became Enthralled With Poetry. Poems Are A Distillation. Lael Says, "This Challenge To Winnow Away What Is Unessential Is The Most Maddening And, Ultimately, Rewarding Part Of Writing A Song."Lael's New Album Acquainted With Night Is A Testament To This Poetic Devotion. Stripped Of Any Extraneous Word Or Sound, The Songs Are Lit By Lael's Crystalline Voice Which Lays On A Lush Bed Of Omnichord. The Collection Touches On Themes That Have Been Thread Into Her Work For Years: Isolation, Mortalit...

Lacing is a fuzzy, grungy, & dreamy band from Chattanooga, TN. These tapes are professionally-duplicated cassettes w/ 4 panel color printed J-cards, housed in clear Norelco cases. Program repeats on both sides.

Initial run of the LP will be pressed on an Eco-Friendly Recycled Vinyl Mystery Colour! On their self-titled fourth album, La Luz launch themselves into a new realm of emotional intimacy for a collection of songs steeped in the mysteries of the natural world and the magic of human chemistry that has found manifestation in the musical ESP between guitarist and songwriter Shana Cleveland, bassist Lena Simon, and keyboardist Alice Sandahl. To help shape La Luz, the band found a kindred spirit in producer Adrian Younge. Though primarily known for his work with hip-hop, soul, and jazz acts, Younge saw in La Luz a shared vision that transcended genre. "We both create music with the same attitude, and that's what I love about them," he says. "They are never afraid to be risky and their style is captivating. It was an honor to work with them." The result is an album that is both the most naturalistic and psychedelic of the band's career. All the elements of classic La Luz are still present-the lush harmonies, the impeccable musicianship, the gorgeous melodies-but it's a richer, earthier iteration, replete with inorganic sounds that mimic the surreality of nature-the humming of invisible bugs, the atmospheric sizzle of a hot day. After spending the last few years living in rural northern California, Cleveland's lyrics have become more grounded, less interested in traveling to other dimensions than in peeking behind the curtain of this one. With sounds ranging from ghostly electric guitar shimmers, charging fuzz-guitar rock, soulful organ-driven dream-funk, galactic synths, and breezy '70s folk-pop, La Luz is an album that celebrates love - of music, of friendship, of life in all its forms.