Innovative Leisure Vinyl, CD & Tape 62 Items

With their dulcet fusion of ‘60s French ye-ye pop, slinky Studio One reggae, and liminal Brazilian tropicalia, Claude Fontaine’s songs embody the best kept dreams of a globally connected world. The second album from the Los Angeles artist reflects the dream of creating the soundtrack for this utopia by the sea. Released on Innovative Leisure, La Mer is a mesmerizing portal. It’s impossible for it to exist outside of the modern moment, but it floats on the gilded dust of the past. At times, Fontaine channels Jane Birkin as backed by Jorge Ben. Francois Hardy locked into sonic reverie with Mulatu Astatke, or Margo Guryan making lovers rock. None of this is a happy accident. For her second opus, Fontaine assembled some of the most gifted musicians of the last five decades. First and foremost is her co-writer and producer, the multi-platinum Grammy-Award winning Lester Mendez, whose resume includes everyone from Grace Jones and Baaba Maal to Shakira and Nelly Furtado. As with Fontaine’s self-titled first album, the legendary Tony Chin appears on guitar, bringing the orphic tones expected from someone who has played with some of the greatest reggae musicians of all-time (King Tubby, Dennis Brown, Lee Perry, Jackie Mittoo, Max Romeo, Sly & Robbie). On bass, there’s Ronnie McQueen, one of the co-founders of Steel Pulse. Sergio Mendes’ percussionist, Gibi Dos Santos, supplies propulsive locomotion. So does Ziggy Marley’s drummer, Rock Deadrick. And that’s just the abridged list of storied instrumentalists who appear on La Mer.

Limited edition of 500 copies, only available at HHV!

The Buttertones’ Gravedigging is more a movie waiting to happen than an album—or a
soundtrack just waiting to inspire a movie, with scene after scene of action, tension and
release set to a sound that takes everything good and true about American music before
the Beatles prettied it up (surf, sweet soul, the boss saxophone-overdrive garage of the
Northwest wailers like the Sonics) and matches it to punk energy, post-punk precision and
the kind of personality that blows the circuit-breakers at a backyard party.
Recorded at Jazzcats studio in LongBeach—home-away-from-home to fellow Innovative
Leisure artists Hanni El Khatib, Tijuana Panthers, Wall of Death and more—in the spring of
2016, the sessions were supercharged with hard-won live experience from endless
street-level shows and relentless midnight-to-six rehearsals at the Buttertones lock-out.
Think of it this way: you might not yet know how the band that made Gravedigging is going
to land—but you know it’s going to hit hard.

180 Gram Vinyl, Tip-On Jacket, Download Card & Printed Insert!

Hanni El Khatib’s first idea for his “Savage Times” project was to do something he’d never done before. Instead, he ended up doing …well, everything he’d never done before. He’d be playing new instruments, writing in unfamiliar new ways, opening himself up to an unrelenting stream of ideas and dedicating himself totally to pure musical instinct. And the result? 19 best-of-the-sessions songs,

Hanni El Khatib’s first idea for his Savage Times project was to do something he’d never done before. Instead, he ended up doing …well, everything he’d never done before. He’d be playing new instruments, writing in unfamiliar new ways, opening himself up to an unrelenting stream of ideas and dedicating himself totally to pure musical instinct. And the result? 19 best-of-the-sessions songs,
destined for vinyl release as a Limited Edition 10” LP Box Set, as well as the kind of creative revelations that only happen when you quit looking around and start looking ahead. Originally, he’d hoped to explode the lingering idea that he was simply a blues-rock guitar player, but that’s why Savage Times touches on everything from garage rock to punk to disco, hip-hop and even some unexpected solo-guitar self-portraiture. But on the way, he also exploded his own idea of what he could do—even maybe who he was, or would be. Savage Times was an experiment as well as an experience, that touched on some of the most personal, social & political elements to date.

Produced by the mighty Dan Auerback of The Black Keys!!

Jonah Yano is an artist’s artist. A producer and songwriter who has collaborated on projects by peers like Fousheé, Mustafa and Charlotte Day Wilson, he’s also co-written alongside Helena Deland, Ouri, Clairo and Monsune on his own releases. On Jonah Yano & the Heavy Loop, his forthcoming record out Oct. 4, Yano has once again upended his musical direction, crafting an experimental, chimerical album with the live ensemble-turned-studio band.

Maria Chiara Argirò's album "Closer" departs from her prior work, fueled by an indescribable, dreamlike feeling. The album's core duality of blurred lines and clarity reflects Argirò's philosophy. A philosophy encapsulated in the urgency of her production process and the unique lucidity with which she weaves ambient, dance, jazz, and experimental pop seamlessly together. The album defies easy definition, emphasising an inner self-discovery process, detached from external influences, not only breaking sonic ground but signifying a deeply personal journey, anchoring Argirò to her creation. Argirò has previously seen critical success with support from Pitchfork, The Fader, Flood, Brooklyn Vegan and Clash Magazine.

After establishing the Serebii project with several albums’ worth of trancing neo-soul, much of it done in collaboration with fellow New Zealander Arjuna Oakes, Callum Mower had no lack of confidence in his musical abilities. But much of Mower’s focus in the past was on instruments and production—swirling, cinematic instrumentals under his own name or funky art-pop jams with others on vocals. On Dime, however, Mower knew he wanted to push forward with his own singing placed center stage.

Dan Tyler and Conrad McDonnell, aka Idjut Boys, are an English duo whose dub-heavy home songs incorporate their playful love of life. The duo met in the late '80s in Cambridge discovering that they shared a passion for similar music. Soon after, both moved to London and established the U-Star parties. The Idjuts' fusion of dub, house, and techno soon caught on and landed them gigs DJing all over the world. McDonnell and Tyler established U-Star Records in 1993, releasing their debut 12" Idjut Boy. They continued releasing numerous 12"s throughout the 90's up to the current period consisting of original productions, along with remixes & re-edits of obscure and not-so-obscure material by other artists and a handful of DJ mixes. A proper Idjut Boys studio album, Cellar Door, was released on Smalltown Supersound in 2012. This was followed by Versions, an album of reworks of material from throughout the duo's career, in 2015. On this 12" vinyl, the Idjuts remix a single, "What's Life" from De Lux's most recent Do You Need A Release.

After the pandemic hit, and the people of the world grew wary and suspicious of one another, Iguana Death Cult, one of Europe’s most exciting rock exports, became more than just a band to its members—it became therapy. “I think for the first ten times we went to jam,” says guitarist/vocalist Tobias Opschoor, speaking about the making of the new album Echo Palace, “we just drank wine and talked about it for hours—and then were like, ‘OK, I have to go because I have to work tomorrow.’”

Taking place at frontman Jeroen Reek’s apartment in Rotterdam, these gatherings slowly shifted from talking about this surreal chapter of their lives—the days of quiet streets and cramped buildings—to making music about it. Armed with the talents of Justin Boer on bass and Arjen van Opstal on drums, and tapping the keys work Jimmy de Kok for the first time on album, the band took their trademark melodic garage-rock style and expanded it to make it vibier and looser, with each member contributing ideas to develop the sound palette in full.

When it came time to record the album, the band headed to PAF Studio in Rotterdam, and subsequently it was mixed by Joo-Joo Ashworth (Sasami, Dummy) at Studio 22 in Los Angeles and mastered by Dave Cooley (Tame Impala, Yves Tumor). The album is a big swing, stretching Iguana Death Cult beyond its garage rock origins and taking them to a new realm. The end result of Echo Palace is an appropriately worldly album from a group breaking past the confines of its home country.

"Dutch band Iguana Death Cult's rip-roaring melodies are built to jettison far beyond their homebase of Rotterdam." - FADER

"Frenetic, intense sonic assaults, they turn psych punk into astonishingly concise three-dimensional documents." - CLASH

The title of the sixth album from Californian singer-songwriter Nick Waterhouse is more than just the name of one of its tracks. The Fooler is both a clue and a red herring. The Fooler is the observed and the observer, narrator and subject, truth and lie. The Fooler is the shadow and reflection of a city the artist knows sufficiently well to wander with his eyes closed, and a place which very possibly never even existed. The Fooler is not so much an unreliable narrator as a constantly shifting perspective.

The Fooler is the new album by Nick Waterhouse, and it’s a lot. Recorded by Mark Neill (Black Keys; Los Straightjackets; Dave Cobb) in Valdosta, Georgia, it’s a song-cycle of sorts, the arc of the album telling a tale of a city and its denizens.

The result is a record that offers up new riches and fresh perspectives with every spin. From the hidden corners of ‘Hide & Seek’ and the roadhouse soul of ‘Play To Win’ to the primitive, attitudinal, chugging two-chord thrill of ‘Late In The Garden’, it builds inexorably to the drama of the title track and pulsing roll-and-rock of the final pay off, ‘Unreal, Immaterial’. Play it once and it sounds immediately like a collection of great songs. Play it again – and you will – and it feels like a novel or film slowly unveiling its secrets, kaleidoscopic in its narrative complexity. “Especially during this record, I started just becoming what Allen Ginsberg called a pure breath,” says the artist. “I was becoming pure breath with my ideas.”

For RarelyAlways a sense of purpose is rarely far from the surface. That’s been true in everything he’s done, as a musician across a huge range of scenes & sounds, as a writer, as an entrepreneur & youth worker – but now, with his debut solo album Work on the horizon, it’s really coming into focus. With his already broad musical & life experience, he’s in a unique position to offer something entirely new to UK music. Previous support from Billboard, Fader, Wonderland, Pitchfork, Clash & more.

Jimmy EDGAR's latest release for Innovative Leisure, Liquids Heaven, is a psychedelic canvas of future R&B, euphoric bass, mutant tear-the-club-up rap, foundation-splintering noise, and gossamer soul. On a surface level, it is a starburst of avant-garde fusion, collecting a diverse cast of eccentric geniuses and re-configured into an anthology of nü-musique concrete. As with all of his work, there is a deeper and subversive intent. Do not mistakenly believe that Liquids Heaven is merely a technicolor dream of ethereal abstractions. It bangs as hard as anything to ever bump from a subwoofer. Over a polychromatic blast of crunk, 10KCaash and Zelooperz bounce on “Everybody” like a rap rave inside a 31st century space station. “Bite That 2” finds Trinidad James spitting flames over booty-shaking, wall-crumbling bass. On “Ya,” 645ar chirps over a metallic chassis of booming industrial funk. For all the high energy propulsion, there is a counter-balance of melancholic beauty. The album’s opener, “Euphoria” features a Liz Y2K vocal that levitates with plaintive longing. The Milk-aided “Dreams 1000000” sounds like the chimerical soundtrack to a manga utopia that needs to be imagined. Milk also appears on the finale, “Never Leave,” which captures a bittersweet sadness, the wistful emotion of the tide slipping away. Jimmy’s career has been a series of fascinating left-turns. Signed to Warp Records as a teenage electronic music prodigy, his work needs a scholarly bibliography to properly assess. He’s recorded for the world’s most respected imprints (Warp, K7, Hotflush, Innovative Leisure and his own New Reality Now). Raised in Detroit, there have been stints soaking up inspiration in Berlin, Atlanta, LA, and New York. His list of close collaborators includes the most innovative musicians of the millennium, including Hudson Mohawke, Danny Brown, Sophie, Dawn, Mykki Blanco, Vince Staples, and several full projects with Machinedrum as J-e-t-s.

Tim Hill’s sophomore album, Giant, is the result of an upgraded approach to music following his “simple and honest attempt at a first record.” Having driven down the 605 to Long Beach, and set up shop at Jonny Bell’s Jazzcats Studio, Hill played all of the instruments himself, with the exception of two outside players—one for pedal steel and one for violin. The product is a record steeped in affection for artists like Randy Newman, Warren Zevon, and Neil Young, but reimagined through the lens of the modern cultural melting pot that Hill lives in. The first single, “Calico,” is an ode to the festival of the same name put on by the Allah-Las in Point Reyes, CA. It’s a simple anthem for youthfulness and young love. Previous radio support from FBI (AUS), KEXP & KALX (US). Feat. on Dutch clothing brand Tenue de Nîmes' blog.

When it came time to record 5-3-8 - the title being a reference to the lyrical refrain that appears at a few points of the album of “Fifths, thirds, octaves only” - Dendrons decamped to Sonic Ranch in Tornillo, Texas, and did additional recording at Highland Recording Studio in Phoenix, Arizona, producing the album with Tony Brant and Sonny DiPerri. A far cry away from where they started as two friends doing everything themselves, from the recording to the booking to even the graphic design, the band is now an eagerly collaborative project. And they’re already thinking about what’s to come. "You're always gonna leave a record feeling like there is something more to be said," Jarvie says. "I don’t believe in a magnum opus. Art is contextual, and exists for the specific time and circumstance it was created in. Every record is a conversation with the last."

‘Do You Need A Release?’ is De Lux at their poppiest, prettiest, danciest, and also their most abrasive. Built on a hotbed of tension, the songs give release in surprising yet immediately satisfying ways. The verses often pummel you with aggressive beats and grooves only to blossom into open, encouraging, and even angelic refrains. Recorded with their live band at Jonny Bell’s Jazzcat Studio, De Lux give us their firebrand danceable and quirky pop songs with a strong dose of wit, matching the quality and camaraderie of their intense and acclaimed live performances. Their funny and profound sound remains immensely groovy, but the band is more influenced by the fun ‘80s new wave of the Tom Tom Club and the experimentation and imagery of The Clash’s “Sandinista!”. De Lux matters because they make music to dance to and be inspired by.

Limited edition.
Record is slightly warped but still enjoyable.

Roscoe is a road dog. The 14-year-old Boston Terrier has been there for the whole ride of Mapache, Clay Finch and Sam Blasucci's band, which has grown from being the casual project of two longtime buds to one of the most formidable cosmic-folk acts around. "Roscoe's been through a lot of shit," says Blasucci, the dog's formal owner. "He's been all around the country, come on tour a little bit." With some bemused pride, Finch points out that, for a few years, he and Blasucci bunked together in a room in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles that was just big enough to fit two twin beds. "It was the two of us and the dog," he laughs. Naturally, Roscoe has found himself the subject of a good handful of Mapache songs in the past - and on Roscoe's Dream, the band's upcoming third LP of originals, he takes center stage.

Maria Chiara Argiro (pronounced ma-REE-ah key-AH-rah r-gee-ROW) has been quietly weaving her way around the UK jazz, classical and electronic worlds since she moved to London from Rome 11 years ago. A pianist from the age of nine and a key player in the capital's multi-national jazz scene, she's lent her skills to indie band These New Puritans, lush jazz troupe Kinkajous and, more recently, collaborations with Jamie Leeming - their 2020 album Flow was nominated for one of the albums of the year in the Jazz Revelations Awards and was the Guardian's jazz album of the month - and beat-driven duo Moonfish.

But with her new album, Forest City, she finds a glistening thread between these movements: it marks her out as an exciting rising electronic artist, where jazz meets Kelly Lee Owens, Jon Hopkins and Radiohead. It's a concept record, about the "duality of nature and city", and where organic sounds and textures seem to flow above the urban sprawl.

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby was a work so filled with ambition, yearning, and inner contradictions that it came to represent the condition of a nation itself. Yet, at its core, the slim novel tells a story about people and, more often than not, their inability to communicate and connect with one another — forever running on parallel tracks until tragedy finally twines them together. The color green (often in the form of the faded sodium lit dock of Daisy Buchanan) comes to represent longing and unrequited love in an era (the Roaring Twenties) of decadence and spiritual vacuousness. Green is Gatsby’s North Star, simultaneously pointing backward and forward through time toward some unattainable, impossibly balanced version of his own life.

Nick Waterhouse, a century later but once again in the ’20s, takes the color blue as his hue of choice on Promenade Blue. In Nick’s musical and lyrical world, blue is a refraction of his life and memories — shadowing a deep, spiritual San Francisco that fostered his musical vocabulary but has now been stamped out irrevocably; evoking the endless tours, marathon recording sessions, and highs and lows of success he’s experienced in his decade-long career; conjuring romances that were doomed, loves that lingered, and hope for future days of parity and partnership; summoning spirits of people who have gone but permeate his mind forever. That’s the world of Promenade Blue — one that is vivid and magnetic, buoyed by both light and density due to Nick’s newfound collaboration with producer Paul Butler (Michael Kiwanuka, Devendra Banhart). It’s not Gatsby’s New York in the 1920s, it’s Waterhouse’s California in the 2020s. Nick makes that crystal clear throughout the record but particularly on “Santa Ana (1986),” where he wryly sings, “Not from New York / And I never was / I’m from California.” With that, he answers all questions about place and setting…but as anyone who’s ever listened to a Waterhouse record knows: time, though clearly pegged to the dawn of this new decade, is a more malleable concept. Where he is is clear. When he is varies.

We can try as hard as we can to make sense of Promenade Blue, but in reality, context isn’t really needed because the music on the album is so damn magnificent. In no uncertain terms, it represents Waterhouse’s finest hour as a writer and bandleader — leveraging the musical partnerships he has built over many years to put something forth that is so fully realized and felt that it sparkles beatifically, reverberating with energy, heart, creativity, and vibe from start to finish. Nowhere is this more evident than on the album’s opening track, “Place Names,” perhaps the most remarkable song in the Waterhouse catalogue.

The tune is a pocket symphony, à la Spector and Wilson, with winding piano lines locking puzzle-like into a whining, weeping string arrangement courtesy of musical blood brother J.B. Flatt. A small cadre of women backing vocalists shout “Never!” and Nick replies “I never cry on cold days / I never mind a trip on the freeway / Because it’s what I know / Never really set for the big change / Learn to let things go / And say blow wind, blow.” The freeways between LA and San Francisco; the memory of spending a teenaged evening in the Vesuvio Café, which looms over the entrance of City Lights Books; the wind ripping through you on a foggy Bay Area morning, cutting into your bones; the pride one takes in his hometown; the distinct life that he has made (or that has made him) — it’s all here in “Place Names” and, honestly, if the album were to end with this one song, Waterhouse would’ve done his service to the 2020s in terms of musical creativity and vitality. Thankfully for listeners, it’s just the beginning.

The album twists and turns from the opening to the close — from swinging, sashaying jazz and blues (“Spanish Look”) to jittering, crystalline doo wop (“Very Blue”) and pure, loose, languid mood music with just a hint of Mulatu Astatke’s Ethiopian modal magic (“Promène Blue”). Most striking, perhaps, is the use of men’s voices as a backing texture, bringing an unexpected thematic unity to many of the songs. Lower-than-low gospel chants and refrains lend both energy and emotional weight to these pieces, conjuring a whole new mythic world for Nick’s compositions. This is a statement album, one to get lost in and rediscover over and over again.

In the Waterhouse catalogue, “Promenade Blue” represents rebirth and reinvigoration as well as a clarity of purpose that elevates it and may one day set it apart as something resembling a magnum opus. It’s his ‘Gatsby’ and it’s also his way of reintroducing himself to a fanbase that has grown by leaps and bounds over the last couple of years. On this record, he paints a mythic picture of his own life — lost in confusion, grating against time, overheated by false memories, being baptized by nostalgia and a vision of the future that is paradoxically both dark and apocalyptic and sparkling with promise. Sounds a lot like America in the 20s to me. Which 20s though? Which color — green or blue? Which author? Try to figure it out for yourself:

“You were smiling at me / Hanging languidly / On your car door window / Very blue / Very green / The ocean breeze / And shuffling trees / Pacific seas.”

“And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby's wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy's dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter — tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning——

So, we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

Meet Jonah Yano, the Toronto based singer, songwriter, whose journey into
music began with recording music using his cellphone in 2016. Having played
piano and guitar as a child, it wasn’t until Yano moved from Vancouver to
Toronto in 2016 that he began putting his songs online, catching the eyes of
Toronto’s thriving local music scene. Spending the next couple of years obsessively songwriting and practicing vocals, and learning technical skills, he
collaborated with Toronto duo MONEYPHONE on the 2018 song “On Lock”
which became an underground success. Shortly after, Yano released his first
solo single “Rolex, the Ocean'' with producer Joseph L'etranger. Once he
began writing his full EP, he was introduced to frequent collaborators
BADBADNOTGOOD, who are featured on the EP’s title track, “nervous.” Yano’s
work has garnered praise in major music publications like The Fader,
Billboard, Complex, and Exclaim and the attention of Virgil Abloh and Gilles
Peterson along with millions of streams on Spotify and Apple Music. Most
recently, Yano released a highly praised cover of the Majestic’s “Key to Love
(Is Understanding)” also with BADBADNOTGOOD, finding himself in the
natural position of writing the feature length album, 2020’s souvenir.
Following a highly acclaimed 2019 which included the release of an EP
nervous, collaborations with BADBADNOTGOOD, MONEYPHONE, and Nono;
industry praise from The Fader, Billboard, High Snobiety, NME, KCRW and
Exclaim — it’s not a stretch to say Jonah Yano’s highly anticipated debut
feature album souvenir took a lifetime to make.
Yano’s souvenir, mixes his soulful, genre blurring vocals with searing, personal
lyrics. With collaborations from talents like producers Monsune ("strawberry!," "delicate"), Leland Whitty of BADBADNOTGOOD ("poor me," "monarch,"
"anywhere"), and Jacques Greene ("what i can do to help"), souvenir touches
on themes of family separation, healing, and reconciling with the past.
With each track delving into Yano’s personal history, the album tells the story
of his parents separation and absence of his father from his life through the
perspective of each of his family members. Following the separation of his
parents in 1998 in Hiroshima and subsequent move to Vancouver, Yano spent
years with very little connection to his father beyond occasional calls and
birthday presents.
Having not seen each other in 15 years, Yano visited his father in Nagato in the
fall of 2019 with the goal of making sense of their complicated relationship
through music. Both being avid musicians, Yano then incorporated some of
his father’s earlier recordings into his own, while making peace with their
past. The result — the album’s final track, “shoes,” featuring his father Tatsuya
Muraoka and written by him about a pair of shoes he purchased for Yano as a
child. Most of the track was recorded live at some point in the 1990’s in
Hiroshima, with Yano’s own vocals filling gaps between his father’s vocals.
Recording the album in Tokyo’s Red Bull studios, a log cabin in Nagato, Toronto’s Studio 69, and his own home — the intensely personal album incorporates
Yano’s unique sound with a deeply relatable concept, making it the natural
follow-up to an already impressive catalogue.

'pinky pinky are the rising queens of l.a. garage rock' - i-D 'It's always exciting when young ones who are way cooler than you'll ever be make music that sounds polished and tight right out the gate' - THE FADERPinky Pinky have good gut instincts. During an era of limitless distractions, societal pressures and sonic trends, the three best friends are focused on being happy and blissfully on the outside of all that noise. You can hear that on their new music which follows two prior EPs & multiple tours straight out of High School which has earned them some early fans with some of Rock's biggest names (Dave Grohl to Brian Bell of Weezer to Albert Hammond Jr of The Strokes).As they gear up to release their debut album this summer, the first single is a patchwork quilt of garage rock and oddball indie with pop sensibilities via Producers Hanni El Khatib & Jonny Bell. It's rooted in classic bass, drums, guitar, but it's bolstered by the perspectives of a trio of LA youths writing about their everyday observations, anxieties and passions. As a result, it's unpretentious, raw and unpredictably zany.

The Tijuana Panthers are back and this time they’re all grown up (kind of). Combining their signature surf rock with new experimentations in sound, Carpet Denim is the culmination of nearly three years of work and the band’s subconscious evolution into deeper, more personal places.

Taking concepts that have long been percolating, this album is the musical version of a beachside, drop-top cruise -- punctuated by deeply human lyrics. Carpet Denim hits deep notes of introspective darkness with songs like “You Died,” a ballad-y jam that delves into the complex emotional wreckage of a father’s passing, and the album’s single, “Path of Totality,” about a close friend of the band’s who lost the fight against alcoholism.

These soulful forays are offset by Tijuana Panthers singular, upbeat sound, with the playful jam “Little Pampelmousse” that celebrates fatherhood and refers to Phil’s nickname for his new, beloved baby.

Then there’s “710,” a spirited coast down memory lane that embodies the band’s signature sunniness - all while reminiscing about growing up in Long Beach.

The culmination of the band’s many years on the road and making noise, Carpet Denim falls deeper into their weird and wild tendencies (there’s even a synthesizer that makes an appearance). It’s inspired by everything, from politics to the guys’ personal lives, Haruki Murakami and Twin Peaks. There’s the perfectly dissonant “TV People,” a creepy little number that combines simple guitar with a roving bass to create an abstract jam that’s hard to forget.

This album is the same garage-y Tijuana Panthers you love, but this time, they channel their unbridled energy into a moody maturation of their music. The band returned to their hometown of Long Beach, CA to record Carpet Denim at Jazzcats studio. Unlike earlier albums such as Poster and Wayne Interest - which were recorded in a flash-bang, marathon sitting, the band’s latest album was methodically assembled by Jonny Bell over multiple days. Pouring over production, Carpet Denim is a collective deep breath that weaves together years of songwriting -- all jam-packed with summertime vibes, peaks of punk rock and Tijuana Panthers’ signature oddball adventures.

The Tijuana Panthers are back and this time they’re all grown up (kind of). Combining their signature surf rock with new experimentations in sound, Carpet Denim is the culmination of nearly three years of work and the band’s subconscious evolution into deeper, more personal places.

Taking concepts that have long been percolating, this album is the musical version of a beachside, drop-top cruise -- punctuated by deeply human lyrics. Carpet Denim hits deep notes of introspective darkness with songs like “You Died,” a ballad-y jam that delves into the complex emotional wreckage of a father’s passing, and the album’s single, “Path of Totality,” about a close friend of the band’s who lost the fight against alcoholism.

These soulful forays are offset by Tijuana Panthers singular, upbeat sound, with the playful jam “Little Pampelmousse” that celebrates fatherhood and refers to Phil’s nickname for his new, beloved baby.

Then there’s “710,” a spirited coast down memory lane that embodies the band’s signature sunniness - all while reminiscing about growing up in Long Beach.

The culmination of the band’s many years on the road and making noise, Carpet Denim falls deeper into their weird and wild tendencies (there’s even a synthesizer that makes an appearance). It’s inspired by everything, from politics to the guys’ personal lives, Haruki Murakami and Twin Peaks. There’s the perfectly dissonant “TV People,” a creepy little number that combines simple guitar with a roving bass to create an abstract jam that’s hard to forget.

This album is the same garage-y Tijuana Panthers you love, but this time, they channel their unbridled energy into a moody maturation of their music. The band returned to their hometown of Long Beach, CA to record Carpet Denim at Jazzcats studio. Unlike earlier albums such as Poster and Wayne Interest - which were recorded in a flash-bang, marathon sitting, the band’s latest album was methodically assembled by Jonny Bell over multiple days. Pouring over production, Carpet Denim is a collective deep breath that weaves together years of songwriting -- all jam-packed with summertime vibes, peaks of punk rock and Tijuana Panthers’ signature oddball adventures.

JETS is the collaboration project of powerhouse producers Travis Stewart (Machinedrum) and Jimmy Edgar. On the first single, "PLAY," from their forthcoming full-length album, the duo teams up with boldly pioneering rapper Mykki Blanco. The sparse, yet aggressive beat slaps back and forth between Blanco's playfully sinister vocals.

JETS is the collaboration project of powerhouse producers Travis Stewart (Machinedrum) and Jimmy Edgar. On the first single, "PLAY," from their forthcoming full-length album, the duo teams up with boldly pioneering rapper Mykki Blanco. The sparse, yet aggressive beat slaps back and forth between Blanco's playfully sinister vocals.