Caught In The Loom

Brooklyn acoustic folk sextet The Loom has harnessed the emotional power and beauty of ensemble vocals and chiming instruments since 2006, drawing large crowds to their many live shows throughout the NY-area.

Now, with the release of its debut EP, the rest of the world can enjoy the group’s rich amalgam of folk and alt-country influenced indie rock featuring male and female vocals, acoustic and electric guitars, French horn, trumpet, piano, pedal steel, bass, drums, ukulele, accordion, and banjo.

The EP, At Last Light boasts soaring and lilting songs ranging from gentle to anthemic and built around subtle, affecting lyrics. The Loom’s sound has often been compared to affecting artists like Smog, Arcade Fire, Fairport Convention and The Waterboys. To me it sounds like The Cold War Kids if they lost power at one of their gigs and had a girl singing from the crowd. It's acoustic grooviness that's as far removed from being uncool as you can get.

Download: Song For The Winter Sun

the Legend of The Happy Hollows

The Happy Hollows is, put simply, transformative. That is, the young Los Angeles trio’s infectious and amorphous sound is one that immediately sticks upon first listen, evoking hints of bands that listeners remember not for the scene that launched them nor the trends of the era, but for the moment at which they first heard its music. Vocalist/guitarist Sarah Negahdari wields ominous riffs and finger-tapped arpeggios with skill reminiscent of Mary Timony of Helium while simultaneously singing and wailing like a hyper hybrid of Debbie Harry, Kim Deal and Karen O. Meanwhile, the agile rhythm section of Charles Mahoney (bass/vocals) and Chris Hernandez (drums) vault and lunge with precision.

The Happy Hollows’ raucous and irreverent noisy-pop sound is influenced by genres as disparate as 90’s college rock, Broadway show-tunes, garage punk, and 80’s pop. The band combines innovative song structures, surreal lyrics, and fiercely adept instrumentation to recreate reality into a jagged panorama of vibrant, kaleidoscopic collage.

Three years into its existence, The Happy Hollows have put forth Imaginary, an EP that is an amalgamation of contemporary alt-rock, distorted atonality, and exuberant yelp. Produced by David Newton (founding member of C-86 legends The Mighty Lemon Drops and producer of The Little Ones), Imaginary articulates the band’s inherent magic.

Download: Lieutenant
Download: Tambourine

I Got A Hundred In My Hands

In November 2007, following a US tour supporting the Boggs' third album, Forts, Jason Friedman and touring-Bogg Eleanore Everdell found themselves in the studio recording a brand new collaborative track without the rest of the band. "In the past, the collaborators I worked with would adjust what they did to fit my vision," says Friedman. "Working with Eleanore it was clear that the time had come to shift into a more equal partnership." the result of this new approach was "Dressed in Dresden", a fractured pop thumper that showed Eleanore assuming full vocal duties over heavy beats and staccato guitars.

In the 10 months since that session, the seven-year-old Boggs were laid to rest, and The Hundred In The Hands were formed. Their debut album, Summer of Fear should be released sometime in the near future. Until then, check out their debut single, Dressed in Dresden.

Download: Dressed In Dresden (zip file)
Download: Undressed In Dresden (zip file)

Kyle Andrews Crawls Out of His Room

After releasing his whimsical debut LP Amos In Ohio and the sad, stripped down EP Find Love, let Go on Badman Recordings, Kyle Andrews has decided to go it alone. It is appropriate that his self-recorded, self-produced Real Blasty should be released independently, relying on Andrews' own imprint, Elephant Lady Records.

Real Blasty takes Andrews’ homespun tunes to a happier place—the words still tell their fair share of sad tales, but the sound is brighter, dancier and crackles with more mature technical dexterity. The opener, "Sushi," has evolved over the years into a fuzzed-out club track; as the emotional intensity rises he implores the object of his affection, "You gonna save me or not?" The irresistible, synth-heavy "Naked in New York" adds a slight edge to the proceedings, as waves of noise crash and recede, revealing a narrator desperate to hang onto an unstable woman. "Polar Bear" tackles life on the road and the people you can't take with you. The ramped-up, guitar-driven "A Constant Wavering Between the Real and the Abstract" gets apocalyptic about love, asserting "Everything special fades away / all hearts will be erased." Standouts "Put Your Hands Up" and "Call and Fade" channel vintage anthemic pop, allowing Andrews to show off his ample skill with pretty melodies and infectious choruses.

Kyle Andrews third release Real Blasty drops Janurary 20th, 2009 and thanks through the miracle of modern technology you can hear two tracks NOW.

Download: Sushi
Download: Wavering Between the Real and the Abstract

Painfully Alone

In support of the just-released The Town Topic EP, original soundtrack to Laurel Nakadate's debut film "Stay The Same Never Change," Casiotone For The Painfully Alone announces a slew of new Fall tour dates.

Here they are...
10.10.08 - Northfield, MN - Carleton College
10.11.08 - Iowa City, IA - PS1
10.12.08 - St Louis, MO - Lemp Arts
10.13.08 - DeKalb, IL - House Café
10.14.08 - Chicago, IL - Empty Bottle
10.23.08 - Medford, MA - Oxfam Cafe (Tufts University)
10.24.08 - Annandale-on-Hudson, NY - SMOG (Bard College)
10.25.08 - Ridgewood, Queens, NY - Silent Barn (7pm show)
10.26.08 - Hoboken, NJ - Maxwells
10.27.08 - Providence, RI - Club Hell
10.29.08 - Athens, OH - Crystal Castle
10.30.08 - Cincinnati, OH - Northside Tavern
10.31.08 - Louisville, KY - Pour Haus
11.01.08 - Indianapolis, IN - Locals Only

The Town Topic EP collects tracks from two limited, vinyl-only EPs plus bonus track “Lesley Gore on the Tami Show.” The Town Topic EP consists of thirteen instrumental pieces, book-ended by two vocal tracks. “Ice Cream Truck,” a simulated July soundscape of Mr. Softee jingles, cicadas and trunk-rattling bass from passing cars, tells the story of criminal-minded kids who go joy-riding in a stolen ice cream truck and make other poorly-informed decisions along the way. “Green Cotton Sweater (version),” features blown-out drum machine rhythms, clattering pianos, and loads of vintage amp abuse. Other stand-out tracks include “Town Topic (instrumental),” easily mistaken for the backing track of a long-lost Patsy Cline hit, and “Nashville Parthenon (instrumental),” which re-imagines the original electro arrangement as a lovely and minimalist electric piano lullaby.

Download: Ice Cream Truck

It Always Feels Like...Someone's Watching Me

Ok...so it's not that Rockwell. But hailing from Knoxville, Tennessee, The Rockwells are made up of two sets of of brothers: Fred and Jonathan Kelly, and Tommy and Trace Bateman. They met in high school and started The Rockwells as a long-distance recording project by Jonathan and Fred in 1999, while Fred was working in Memphis and Jonathan had moved to Knoxville for school. Tommy and Trace joined the band in 2000 when Fred moved to Knoxville. After recording four full-length albums and one EP by themselves (on very primitive equipment), the band recorded an EP at Studio 613 with Don Coffee Jr. of Superdrag. This EP was called Tear It Down, since the studio was leveled to make way for I-40 shortly after we finished recording. Talk about omen's.

Their latest album, Place & Time was recorded entirely by The Rockwells in both Knoxville and Memphis, Tennessee. More than half a dozen locations were used, including various houses, a cabin, and local rock club The Pilot Light. The record was mixed by Howard Redekopp, who has mixed such Merge artists as The New Pornographers and AC Newmann (also of the New Pornographers.) He was in Canada at the time, and the band couldn’t afford to go up there, so the mixing process was done almost exclusively via email. Guests on the album include Jeremy Bain (May Gray, Slick) on lead guitar and Christina Horn (Hudson K) on piano on “Knot of Tension,” as well as guest vocalist Emily Robinson (Tenderhooks) on “Hole in the Wall.” Seth Hopper (Christabel and the Johns, Tommy Bateman and the Thunder Thieves) played all the violin on the record, as well as trumpet on “Hole in the Wall.” You mom may have made a guest appearance on the record as well...you'll just have to check the album's credits.

Place & Time is being released December 2, 2008 on Migrant Records.

Download: Microkorg
Download: The Quarterback

High Dials Go To 11

Montreal-based The High Dials make lush, intelligent psychedelic pop; dreamy anthems built on bittersweet melodies, bright harmonies and moody guitar sounds. The band has released two previous records: A New Devotion (2003) and War of the Wakening Phantoms (2005), which made year-end top-10 lists of many critics, including the Washington Post and Magnet Magazine, and won high praise from All Music Guide and Spin. The album also went to number one on Canadian college radio charts.

Notable High Dials fans the band have made along the way include Anton Newcombe of the Brian Jonestown Massacre (who often turns up at gigs, hopping onstage to join in their songs (and then kicking everyone's ass with a series of kung fu moves and baseball bats), Andrew Loog Oldham, original 60s hustler and star-maker to the Rolling Stones, and Rod Argent, legendary songwriter of the Zombies, who performed on one of the High Dials B-sides.

Moon Country was produced by Joseph Donovan (Sam Roberts, The Dears) and is a celebration of the album as an art form in this MP3 age. The album is divided into two sides – Side A and Side B - like an LP, in the hopes that listeners will take it in as a sequenced, cohesive, self-contained piece of music. Parts of Moon Country were recorded in a remote cabin in Ireland (if you listen closely, you can actually hear the fire crackling in the background!), before the album was completed in a studio in Montreal.

Download: Killer of Dragons