2010
Minks – Ophelia 7″ (2010)
20/08/10
Minks penchant for crafting dark pop songs with classic sensibilities sees no end in sight. “Ophelia” finds them in more of a pastoral, reflective mood than the previous single, drawing on Felt/Durutti Column guitar textures and dreamy, whispy vocal melodies. Two more tracks on the B-Side and that’s all you get until the debut LP comes out in the Fall. ~ Captured Tracks
My Rate: 8.8/10
Áudio de “Our Ritual”
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The Jameses – The Haunted Rider & Rat People 7″ (2010)
20/08/10
If there’s one thing I’ve learned from reading Carl Hiassen and Dave Barry novels, it’s that Florida can be a weird place. I imagine that Captured Tracks band the Jameses would agree with this sentiment: They hail from the Sunshine State (Lake Worth, to be exact), and their song “The Haunted Rider” has plenty of surreal imagery and non sequiturs to go around. “Alone in the tunnel with the radio to keep me awake,” singer/multi-instrumentalist Dan McHugh sings, which is normal enough until he follows it up with, “There are dogs to feed/ So there’s not a drop of paint I can waste.” Canines ingesting primer is the least of his worries, though, as he later warns, “They’ll crucify the men for having nothing to say.” Even though the oddness quotient is upped during the chorus (“Hands disappear in thin air/ In the garden, there’s a horse drinking rye”), there’s nothing strange about the way “The Haunted Rider” sounds, although the organ-droned false start might trick you into thinking otherwise. The song’s got a chugging, marshy pace, subtly sweet melodic turns, and a guitar lick or two that is reminiscent of Television, if Marquee Moon had been recorded in a backwoods bar by a couple of Southern rock enthusiasts. Nope, nothing weird about that at all. ~ Pitchfork
My Rate: 7.5/10
Áudio de “The Haunted Rider”
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The Splinters – Kick (2010)
16/08/10
The SPLINTERS may have only been a band since 2008, but the girls actually began palling around four years earlier as freshmen at UC Berkeley. Within a few months of forming, The SPLINTERS found themselves playing a bevy of shows and writing one insanely catchy song after another, their ramshackle rock n’ roll sound and multipart vocal harmonies earning them comparisons to ’60s girl groups like the SHANGRI-LAS, artsy post-punk outfits like the RAINCOATS and the lo-fi grrl-pop stylings of early ’90s K Records bands. The SPLINTERS first full-length, Kick, is a 12-track collection of delectable indie-pop tunes recorded and mixed by MAUS HAUS frontman JASON KICK. ~ Midheaven Mailorder
My Rate: 7/10
Áudio de “Mysterious”
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The Soft City – The Soft City (2010)
15/08/10
The Soft City are a five piece group from New York City: Dora, Jason, Kyle, Turner and Phil. The Soft City is their debut album. They began life as the solo project of Phil Sutton, formerly of British indie-pop types Comet Gain and Kicker. Sutton, with the help of various friends, recorded a three-track EP, The Soft City, released by Cloudberry Records, in 2007. After moving to New York in 2008, Sutton recruited Dora Lubin (vocals) and Jason Corace (A Boy Named Thor) (guitars) to make The Soft City a band. Kyle Forester (Ladybug Transistor, Crystal Stilts) joined the three-piece in the studio to help them record their self-titled debut LP, engineered and produced by Ladybug’s Gary Olson and Sutton. The album, with liner notes by David Feck (Comet Gain), was recorded quickly over ten days in the summer of 2009, and features eight songs by Sutton, and two by Corace. Influenced by past and recent groups (The Go-Betweens, Felt, Belle and Sebastian, Comet Gain) and by the sounds of girl group and French Yeh-Yeh, The Soft City is a classic indie-pop/jangly guitar record with added electric organs. The songs are two or three minutes long, with hooks and choruses, and are about heartache, love, loneliness, city living, friendship, youthful indiscretions, dancing, and falling stars. ~ Insound
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My Rate: 8.8/10
Áudio de “Cold Hearts”
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The Superimposers – Sunshine Pops! (2010)
03/08/10
The record’s title has twofold resonance. First, the chilled rhythms and anthemic chants (like ‘Would It Be Impossible’s “rise in the morning sun” chant) make you understand why The Superimposers have been compiled on Ibiza chillout albums. Second, the title references the infectious melodies of 60s sunshine pop like the Free Design, Left Banke and Curt Boettcher. These songs seem custom-built to soundtrack the current season and become even more fitting the higher the mercury climbs in the thermometer.
The album constantly reminds you of classic pop, with little Northern Soul riffles and echoes of the Isley Brothers in ‘The Beach’, while celestial choruses and harpsichords are much in evidence. You could easily namecheck John Barry and Ennio Morricone while listening and get few naysayers. ‘Seeing Is Believing’ has a 60s pop vibe redolent of the great Emitt Rhodes while the loping rhythms of ‘The Harbour Mystery’ remind you of Harry Nillson. Maybe you aren’t intimately familiar with all those names but it’s a mark of the Superimposers that they are, and have borrowed what makes them so good. On ‘Sometimes’, they’ve even fallen in with master crate digger Jonny Trunk for a sample-fest. But that’s also the downside. They’re so well versed in pop moves that everything seems like a tastemaker’s record, with the right samples and references but lacking something of the creators: plenty of Soul but no soul. I’ve bought Superimposers records in the past and liked the concepts almost more than the tracks. Their methods are impressive and I’d play this record in the heat of summer but I won’t fall in love with it. ~ Ged M, SoundsXP
My Rate: 7.8/10
Áudio de “Where Do You Go?”
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Woven Bones – In And Out And Back Again (2010)
22/07/10
Obeying the old adage about leaving ‘em wanting more, the Austin trio give us just 9 tracks in 26 minutes – packed with walls of guitar noise, dirty riffs, pounding primeval rhythms and slashing distortion. Taking a cue from the Jesus and Mary Chain and the Velvet Underground (with additional nods to Suicide, The Cramps and the Damned), Woven Bones makes raw sinews-exposed rock’n’roll from blasts of indie guitars (‘I’ll Be Runnin’), primal rock’n’roll drumbeats (‘Creepy Bones’) or extravagantly garagey fuzzrock (‘7 Year Mirror’). They sweeten the darkness, however, with plenty of melody, especially on the 60s garage-poppy ‘Guess You Already Knew’. It’s an outpouring of pent-up passion that despite the fuzz and the crepuscular influences is pretty ecstatic when it comes to presentation. ~ Ged M, SoundsXP
My Rate: 8/10
Áudio de “Guess You Already Knew”
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The Love Language – Libraries (2010)
15/07/10
MERGE RECORDS The Love Language is a fortunate by-product of frontman North Carolina native Stuart McLamb’s rudderless mid-20s, where a tempest of breakup, inebriation, and incarceration found the abandoned songwriter embarking on a storage-space recording project to slow his seeming disintegration. On sophomore effort Libraries, the equilibrium of frontman McLamb’s madness and producer BJ Burton’s discipline has rendered an album in the classic sense, in which no song is expendable and no passage is without purpose. Libraries captures Spector-esque walls of reckless sound, cavernous drums, middle-school percussion, and moody swells of stringed instruments, all decorated hastily with stray leads, which bleed beautifully all over everything.
My Rate: 8/10
Áudio de “Heart To Tell”
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Fungi Girls – Turquoise Hotel 7″ (2010)
07/07/10
INSOUND The unlimited charm of Texas strikes again as Fungi Girls release their first 7-inch single, following up an impressive 12-inch EP debut on Play Pinball! Records, both of which will have you twitching with unexpected enthusiasm. The guys that comprise this power trio are all still barely over the legal driving age, but still not even close to the drinking age, so when the surprising and wise-beyond-their-years modern psychedelic/gaze sounds first bolted from our speakers, we had to do something about it. Their first impression sits heavily on the unique and subdued vocals that seem to lightly hover over the hazy, yet complex arrangements, forming an incredibly atmospheric blast that doesn’t really sound like anything else. These promising teenagers somehow harness the confidence and proclivity to emulate compelling mid-tempo lo-fi pop songs that eerily deliver hooks that stick, and come out with a sound all their own that you’ll no doubt be hearing more of soon. Dive into their world head-first with this seductive single.
My Rate: 9/10
Áudio de “Doldrums”
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Woods – At Echo Lake (2010)
07/07/10
ALLMUSIC Since forming in 2005, Woods have been churning out albums, EPs, and singles at such a brisk pace that it’s not surprising the band’s music changed quickly as well. At Echo Lake is some of the group’s most focused and accessible music — relatively speaking, of course. Woods still love lo-fi production values as much as they love jangly guitars and sweet harmonies, but this time the band puts its pop instincts and classic rock fetish at the forefront. At Echo Lake isn’t just folky rock, it’s straight-up folk-rock in the tradition of the Byrds and early Grateful Dead. “Blood Dries Darker” opens the album with a melody so sunny that it’s hard to believe it wasn’t recorded in California, while “Mornin’ Time” evokes the Dead’s hazy warmth, albeit surrounded by billowing clouds of distortion. If there was any doubt that Woods have the lo-fi aesthetic down to an art, this album proves the band is in control of its noise instead of vice versa. “Pick Up” uses sound effects and subtly static-laden synths to add space and emotion, and the gorgeous, chiming “Suffering Season” shades its pristine melody with almost imperceptible tape manipulations courtesy of G. Lucas Crane, who also worked on the band’s previous album, Songs of Shame. Indeed, there’s something very precise about At Echo Lake, particularly in Jeremy Earl‘s vocals and the arrangement of “Time Fading Lines,” which manages to add a buzzing banjo/sitar without feeling retro. Even when the band channels the Byrds and Sonic Youth on “From the Horn,” which sounds like “Eight Miles High” meets “Dirty Boots,” Woods never come across as overly indebted to their ‘60s or ‘90s influences. Though At Echo Lake recedes into static on later songs like the moody ballads “I Was Gone” and “Deep,” it just underscores that the album’s focus isn’t too contrived. These are some of Woods’ finest songs, and the freshness of their melodies and Earl‘s voice makes them among the most sophisticated and transporting bands of the lo-fi vanguard. ~ Heather Phares
My Rate: 9.8/10
Áudio de “Pick Up”
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The Fresh & Onlys – August In My Mind (2010)
07/07/10
BOOMKAT Last seen delivering top-quality garage-pop for Woodsist, The Fresh & Onlys move over to that other great home for scuzz-rock tunesmiths: Captured Tracks. Expect six songs filled with clattering ’60s psych-pop revisitations and astutely observed, melodious punk-rock detritus. “After some great records in 2009, theres a new album on In The Red due in the Summer, a bunch of super cool 7″s on a wide variety of labels, UK tour in May, ATP in May, 2010 will be the year that F&O broke…amazing stuff from San Francisco, skewed pop, with swoooping choruses and a real “punk” detail, really hard to pigeon hole, draw from all sorts of rock, psyhedelia, even Mid 80′s Australian / US indie rock stalwarts..but a furious brew of their own, 6 tracks on here..every one of them an instant skewed pop classic.”
My Rate: 8.5/10
Áudio de “Garbage Collector”
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