Sophomore Lounge Vinyl, CD & Tape 10 Items

Quabbin Winter is the latest gently fevered, psych-frayed full length LP from Northeastern America's Spectre FOLK—the now two-decade spanning solo-centric organized noise making outfit & nom-de-plume of Pete Nolan (Magik Markers, Virgin Eye Blood Brothers, et al) and friends. Recorded in late '23/early '24 with the help of Mike Donovan (Sic Alps, Peacers), James Canty (The Make-Up, Ted Leo), and Eben Bull. Cover painting by Pax Peloscia. Co-released with Arbitrary Signs.

"Our Other History is a wonderful new LP by this wandering Berlin-based Melbourne expat. Ned's last album, Afternoon Dusk was an avant instrumental trio outing with James Rushford and Joe Talia, but Our Other History is a return to the delicate, sophisticated song craft of his 2018 masterpiece, Old Chestnut. Ned's approach to lyrics, vocals and music shares a melancholic beauty that is both haunted and haunting. His words are often more impressionistic than overt in their storytelling, but his vocals carry hints that recall those of the legendary Roy Harper. But where Harper's attack was often Dionysian, Collette's approach is Apollonian, and the tracks often have a compositional feel with a distinct taste of Canterbury. The players this time include old hands, like drummer Steve Heather and pianist Chris Abrahams (of The Necks), but there are a bunch of new players on hand, including Melbourne mates Jim White and Mick Turner (of Dirty Three fame) and the folksinger Leah Senior. All these elements (and more) are fitted together with elegance and allowed space to breathe. Collette's music is hard to classify. It exists inside a dynamic flux made up of equal parts post-rock, folk, jazz and avant prog, but it manages to remain plain-spoken and uncluttered regardless of how complex its structure can be when you start parsing it. But why bother? With a record as throughly lovely as Our Other History, the best idea is to just relax and let the music flow. Beautifully.”—Byron Coley, 2024

Ace of Spit has been playing regular gigs around South St. Louis for the last five years. Typically you’d find the band inside a basement, burned-out warehouse, or one of the dive bars that still permits smoking, mangling a Sanford Clark or Link Wray cover – perhaps closing out a punk bill because the city ran out of 80s-style hardcore bands. “Oh, it’s that Spaghetti-Western band again...”

All that went away in 2020, so Ace of Spit hid out in a basement and wrote this, their self-titled debut full-length (following a scant scattering of home-dubbed, hand-distributed demo cassettes in editions of don't-even-try), which probably would’ve stayed buried deep inside The Sinkhole if their cohorts at Sophomore Lounge hadn’t fortuitously (if not bizarrely) decided to take interest in the sessions' unbridled stink 'n' spirit.

The songs on "Ace of Spit" chug with a free-wheeling swagger, swaying loosely on the rails and yearning for a time of tweed Fender amps and warbled tape echo. Dragged through the decades, hamstrung by digital distortion and the band’s musical ineptitude (perhaps "enhanced" with the help of available studio substances), small fragments of these undefined and impressionistic eras still shine through from the cracks in the tracks.

Was any of it real, or just a nostalgic dreamland? Some imagined place and time you long for while being punished by a Dumpers super-fan in the Arizona desert? Dreaming of Apollo Bay as you climb back inside a duct-taped E-350 and drive half-asleep to the next job.

Over the last decade-and-a-half, C Joynes has ploughed a singular furrow through solo guitar, with a body of work incorporating English folk-tunes alongside North & West African music, and lifting proto-minimalist and improvised techniques from the European classical and avant-garde traditions.

His new release, ‘Poor Boy On The Wire’, is his first full album dedicated wholly to the electric guitar. Through a typically wide-ranging set, Joynes exploits the instrument’s potential by placing intricate parlour music alongside overdriven garage blues throw-downs, wiry electric folk and the brittle ringing tones of free improvisation. However, these explorations of the tones and timbres of close-mic’d guitars and amplification retain an overall coherence and unity through the deliberate use of a limited palette of budget instruments and vintage equipment.

"Wren Kitz plants ululating tremors of feedback, and as he beckons them forth and encourages them, he wades in and allows himself to be carried; not away, but in concert with. This is a difficult thing to achieve; most of us, upon eliciting the positive loop gain, have to accept that we have no control, and it often will float away or burst like a bubble. Wren is a surfer, and the best surfers are artists in their own right. He also is adept at speaking to and with old tape machines, threading his effortless falsetto in and out of the adventurous treatments, and coming out on the other side with a song; it's needlepoint really, of the highest order.

Early Worm, his latest effort for Sophomore Lounge, is not a mere example of these aforementioned superlatives, but a culmination of hard work and songcraft. Wren is an empath, from a long line of beautiful big-hearted people, and for him to sufficiently be able to translate his empathy and thoughtfulness into music is nothing short of a gift. As he says within, "...Come in, come in..."; you will be glad that you did."

- Eric Gagne

"The Styrofoam Winos are that band that we love to have in our lives because they transcend the language of music, not by their individual parts, but by their oneness. On Real Time, Styrofoam Winos 2nd full length of originals for the Sophomore Lounge label, you imagine—and firmly believe—that their relationship extends beyond studios and stages. You believe they not only play music together, but eat meals together, live down the street from one another, practice three days a week because it’s fun, read the same books, and that they’ve agreed in some wordless, musical bond that this is who they are. As a listener, and inevitable fan, you wonder if they found each other by a stroke of luck or the hand of destiny. You believe that they can probably read each other’s minds and that their music is as joyous to them as it is to you. After all, this is what we love about early R.E.M. records, the brainier grooves of Pavement, and the discographies of Yo La Tengo and The Breeders. The Springwater Supper Club and Lounge in Nashville has been a dive bar since before a dive bar was a brand; a place where, in the early 2000’s, everyone would wonder if David and Dave (Berman and Cloud) would be sitting at the bar and a write-up in a weekly paper could fill the room. It seemed like everyone that bought you a beer was either in Lambchop or The Cherry Blossoms. This wasn’t a world that wanted to keep great music a secret. This was a world where great music was born and championed, when a community didn’t have metrics or boardrooms. The members of Styrofoam Winos were in elementary school back then, but they carry on this scene’s shaggy-dog torch that deserves a bigger audience. Real Time was cut live to tape at The Bomb Shelter studio by Andrija Tokic (Alabama Shakes, The Ettes, Margo Price) with few overdubs and over just 5 days, whenever the band had enough money to record. The members – Lou Turner, Trevor Nikrant, Joe Kenkel – all make wonderful solo albums on labels like Dear Life, Earth Libraries, and Spinster, as well as excellent self-releases. But unlike most bands where members compose alone before bringing a song to the table, the Winos write the music and lyrics together. Their van life, which has included tours with MJ Lenderman, has solidified this chemistry. They switch instruments in the studio, too, and allow the friend who found the seed of the song to sing the lead. Between the 3 of them (and a couple visits from pedal steel buddy, Will Ellis Johnson), Styrofoam Winos trade off on guitars, drums, bass, synths, vibraphone, percussion, and all the lovely vocals, like they’re on a cross-country road trip, taking turns behind the wheel, and singing along with each other because they all know the words. And Real Time is just that: a celebration of the present-tense and its ever-shifting moments of living. They’re going down the road, not feeling bad, but feeling. On the opener, “Angel Flies Over,” it sounds like the Styrofoam Winos wind-up a melodic memory from their 2020 all Michael Hurley covers album for their own tuneage. And then, a left turn, and the road trip detours into a feel-good head-trip with the Feelies-ish “Magic Mind.” And on “Don’t Mind Me,” the Winos crib a riff from Little Feat to indulge the tempo-shifting storm clouds mid-song. Over the course of the record, the Winos continue to step on the gas and tap the brakes until “Found Round,” an improvisational finale, where they each take turns singing us the summary, “these are the things that we found,” like they forgot we’ve been listening the whole time. And, yes: I’m wearing my bright yellow, size medium, Styrofoam Winos tee shirt as I type this."—Jerry David DeCicca, Bulverde, Texas

GUB—debut full-length from the two-headed beast of Beau Wanzer / Champagne MIRRORS—is a low-boiling cauldron aswirl with glurpy synthscapes, hypnotized rhythms and eerily dubbed-out electronic discharge. A timeless collaboration from two of Chicago’s finest exports.

The duo of Mark Anderson (Bancho Taste / Mysteries of Love) and Mark Sadgrove (Mazda Hatchback / Mysteries of Love) take the wheel and don the louvres to serve up a paean to landlocked listlessness, hoons in souped-up saloons and wide-eyed, drunk teen wandering. Recorded both on the road and in typical bramble-brained fashion at Dom Studious in Koenji (with help along the way from Leighton Craig), this LP was mastered by Forbes Williams and follows on from recent releases on Kasual Plastik, What Lies Beneath and Cost of Living.

The first solo album by Ryan Weinstein (Cairo Gang) is truly a world of its own. Under the name Coffin Prick (the singular version of Coffin Pricks, his group with Chris Thomson), Weinstein has built a musical ecosystem filled with rhyming sounds, hypnotically hermetic production, and a rhythmic gravity that keeps everything in orbit. Crafted entirely at his home in Los Angeles, Laughing is simultaneously isolated and welcoming, as if Weinstein is both reflecting his environment and opening it up for everyone to explore. So many compelling sights and sounds await if you choose to accept Weinstein’s invitation and enter the universe of Laughing. Fiery guitar accents, spaced-out synth patterns, random sounds captured while dog-walking, and the echoey missives of Weinstein’s voice all dart around the stereo space like electrons circling a nucleus. That nucleus consists of his dazzling bass and drum structures, which form the heart of nearly every track here. He consistently finds loops that stick in your brain, sometimes sounding like post-punk from outer space, other times evoking classic dub shot through with helium or doused in gasoline. Take a ride on 'Ricochet in Limbo,' a piston-firing workout in which Weinstein’s slashing guitar cuts through synth detonations like a motorcycle in a minefield. Slide down 'Smooth Rubber Ailment,' a funk-skimming jam whose chilly beat and blurry vocals suggest a haunted house dance party. Climb the rising stairs of 'The Guild of Cowards,' a slow-burning instrumental that evokes the 1980s without sounding the least bit dated. Jump on the swing of 'Laughing,' whose title signifies both the humor of Weinstein’s absurdist soundscapes and the way, as he puts it, laughing is 'a sort of involuntary tell that humans can’t really hide behind.' Humans actually were hiding a bit when Weinstein made Laughing, and in one sense that helped. As streets outside of his apartment emptied, he heard coyotes howling, and those sounds inspired him. As a result, there’s a sense of nostalgia here for open spaces, for places where sounds echo rather than getting drowned out. But ultimately Laughing feels outward and connective. By creating his own musical time and space, Weinstein has given us a new place to hang out."—Marc Masters