VIET CONG - Cassette (12" EP)

While we're waiting for the fully-fledged full-length debut (which we're especially eagerly anticipating if the advance 'rough mix' of "Bunker Buster" is any indication of what's in store), this vinyl-only reissue of Viet Cong's 2013 cassette-only EP is a fine introduction to the band's paisley-stained post-punk, while inevitably also serving to sate those who still wonder what a third Women record might have sounded like.

"Viet Cong is a new project made up of four distinct voices. Matt Flegel and Scott Munro (respective former members of beloved Calgary band Women, and Chad VanGaalen's band) spent much of 2013 in their basement studio with a mess of old and run-down equipment to build a set of fresh material. Joined by bandmates Daniel Christiansen and Michael Wallace, the band completed work on a debut cassette. What emerged from the studio was a mixture of sharply-angled rhythmic workouts and euphoric '60s garage pop melodies, balanced with a penchant for drone-y, VU-styled downer moments." - Mexican Summer

VA - Hello Everyone: Popsike Sparks From Denmark Street 1968-70

We’ve been utterly charmed by this new offering from Cherry Red's psych imprint Grapefruit, a compilation of songs from the short-lived UK label Spark. It’s a psych-pop whirlwind that jumps from early glam (The Baby's "Heartbreaker") to a pair of trippy Donovan covers by the eternally electric actor/singer Eartha Kitt.

"The best of Spark's impressive roster is now collected on CD for the first time on Hello Everyone: Popsike Sparks From Denmark Street 1968-70, which assembles highly-prized, highly-priced 45s from pre-Rare Bird band Fruit Machine, Gene Latter, post-Sorrows outfit The Eggy, The New Generation (subsequently to become the Sutherland Brothers), the Dennis Wheatley-inspired Icarus and both sides of the magnificent and astonishingly rare single by Sir Ching I (only one stock copy known to exist).  Also included are exquisite Brit popsike singles from Timothy Blue, Just William, both sides of the superb John Carter/Russ Alquist collaboration 'The Laughing Man'/'Midsummer Dreaming' and two sensational offerings from Eartha Kitt during her brief and unlikely immersion in late-Sixties hippy-chick chic." - Cherry Red

DJANGO DJANGO - LateNightTales

Eclectic without sacrificing form and flow, Django Django deliver a LateNightTales mix that effortlessly flits from jazz-funk to contemporary bass tracks to sunshine psych to yacht rock and back again, while also introducing us to the stunning "Poor Moon," what must be the most entrancing Blind Owl-sung Canned Heat song we'd never heard.

"At one end of the Django spectrum there's James Last, the terminally unhip Teuton, whose 'Inner City Blues' shows you can never underestimate the Germans, while at the far reaches of the mix, they manage to sneak in Ramadanman ('Bass Drums') and Hudson Mohawke and Lunice collaboration TNGHT's 'Bugg'n.' You can hear the echoes of influences in some of the selections, like The Beach Boys whose peerless 'Surf's Up' makes a welcome appearance halfway through, while Seals & Crofts' 'Get Closer' show what sun-drenched pop can sound like when it's done well.

And because it's Late Night Tales there's a sparkling cover version of 'Porpoise Song,' the theme from The Monkees daffily brilliant Head, an admirably lysergic termination to this waltz through pop's nooks and cranberries. "You should never be afraid to make a fool of yourself for art," Dave Maclean once said. Let's raise a dram to Scotland's favourite fools on the hill." - LateNightTales

VA - Bowie Heard Them Here First

Following up on the soul/girl group focus of the Dusty Springfield edition of the always interesting Heard Them Here First series, this selection of songs covered by David Bowie is an eclectic mix of genres, to be expected given the chameleonic nature of his career. If you thought "Alabama Song" was first performed by the Doors (as I did), pick this up and hear who really recorded it first. The perpetual journey of musical discovery continues...

"The latest release in our Heard Them Here First series traces the career of David Bowie via an eclectic selection of the other writers’ songs he chose to record...As one might expect from the chameleonic Bowie, the featured tracks emanate from a diverse array of musical genres, eras and artists, from Lotte Lenya & the Three Admirals' 1930 recording of Bertolt Brecht & Kurt Weill’s 'Alabama Song' to the Pixies' spiky 'Cactus' from 1988's Surfer Rosa. Other unlikely bedfellows: Johnny Mathis and Iggy Pop; Bobby Bland and the Velvet Underground; Jacques Brel and Chuck Berry; Martha & the Vandellas and Jonathan Richman & the Modern Lovers, make for a strikingly wide-ranging programme." - Ace Records

DYLAN SHEARER - Garagearray

As his response at the end of one of the few interviews we've been able to find with him attests to, Dylan Shearer is, in his own words, a "super obsessive music collector," which made complete sense (and admittedly further endeared him to us) upon reading such confirmation, since Garagearray unshowingly and unaffectedly hones in on a particularly early-'70s UK psych/folk slow/sadsack sweet spot, recalling such heavyweights as Kevin Ayers, Syd Barrett and Bill Fay while totally holding its own and sounding fresh and unique. Highly recommended and fully worthy of the attention of more ears!

"If Dylan Shearer's prior record Porchpuddles felt like the warm embrace of the sunniest of psychedelia, his new release Garagearray is the bittersweet glow of the post-trip comedown. Where Porchpuddles still had one hand gently resting on the leg of psych and garage, Garagearray seems to have bid adieu to the whole affair, instead turning in an album of sad, shy folk rock." - Side One Track One             

TEMPLES - Sun Structures

The British group Temples join bands like Tame Impala and Toy with their contemporary twist on classic psychedelia. They throw such influences as The Beatles, Byrds, Love and T-Rex into a sonic blender, and what comes out is one hook-filled trip-fest.

"Temples are four young lads from Kettering who for all purposes sound like they just popped in from 1967 after a short trip on a paisley-bedecked TARDIS. They don't miss a single sonic trick; from soaring 12-string jangle to backwards-tracked guitars, flowing vocal harmonies, swooning Mellotrons, and baroque organ interludes, they know their musical history like they lived through it. Their 2014 debut, Sun Structures, is a nostalgia trip for sure, while at the same time sounding totally modern too. The band's vocalist/guitarist, James Bagshaw, produced the album and he goes for a sound that's happily mired in the past, but has a cleanly scrubbed punch that gives the album some real power." - AllMusic

VA - Warfaring Strangers: Darkscorch Canticles

Practice your binder-scrawl penmanship, work on that twelve-sided dice roll, and grab a seat at the roundtable, because Numero Group has reanimated sixteen tracks of '70s occult American hard rock one-hitters for heathen ears only.

"The sixteen bands featured on Warfaring Strangers are a varied lot, the only thing really tying them together being their penchant for Satanism and the fantastical mysticism found in a Frank Frazetta poster. Some of these bands probably deserve to remain in the shadowed obscurity of Hades, but it's still a lot of fun to listen to. North Carolina's Arrogance offer up a slab of heavy blues with 'Black Death,' but the title is the only thing to fear here...Perhaps one of the more interesting tracks comes from Canton, Ohio's Wrath, although it's less for the music as it is the directness of the lyrics and the fact that guitarist Ralph Minocchi’s wife had to deliver them due to drummer-vocalist Rick Page suffering from laryngitis. It's the stories behind the songs—which are illustrated in the album's liner notes—that make this batch of misfits all the more likable. Most of the bands on Warfaring Strangers lasted barely a year. Hell, the noteworthy black hard-rock band Hellstorm lasted only one show. At the core of it all is the youthful unrest of small-town life and the liberating power—even if it's fleeting—of rock and roll. That's as timeless as it gets." - Paste

THE WAR ON DRUGS - Lost In The Dream

Playing two nights here in Toronto next month to support this new album (the first night of which having already sold out), Adam Granduciel's War On Drugs are a band whose fanbase is growing noticeably with every record, and it seems to be a near-certainty that Lost In The Dream will deservedly gain them that many more new listeners.

"Lost In the Dream is a beautiful, warm and comforting thing, for all the unhappiness that went into it. Picking up where Slave Ambient left off, it sounds as if Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band had made a lost album with Mark Knopfler, sometime between Born in The USA and Tunnel Of Love, but all concerned had been listening to very little apart from space-rock and krautrock. When Granduciel talks about his musical background, you realise it's not that surprising a combination. He grew up in Dover, Massachusetts, listening to classic-rock radio, then had what he calls his 'a-ha moment,' hearing The Perfect Prescription by Spacemen 3." - The Guardian

"Adam Granduciel, the man behind The War On Drugs, has been recording trance-inducing Americana since 2005, and along with his longtime friend and former bandmate Kurt Vile created a whole new style of folk-based rock reverie doused in an ocean of synthesizers. Lost In The Dream is the band’s third full-length, and continues to develop the Tom Petty-meets-Sonic Youth sound they pioneered. On all of the band's previous releases, Granduciel would build the core of the songs himself, playing most of the instruments and endlessly tinkering with the mixes until they'd reached an adequate level of perfection. He's had various musicians play on previous albums but with Lost In The Dream, Granduciel decided to change things up. He recorded the core of these songs with two collaborators, longtime bass player Dave Hartley and pianist Robbie Bennett." - PopMatters

BOB FRANK - S/T / PETER WALKER - "Second Poem to Karmela" or Gypsies Are Important

Light In The Attic follows up a recent first-time vinyl reissue of stone-cold country-soul classic (and staff favourite since it was reissued on CD a few years back) Bobby Charles with two titles (apparently the first in a new 'Vanguard Vault' series dedicated to the label!) that are even more obscure but both just as compelling in their own ways: Bob Frank is a charmingly bawdy set of songs mainly telling tales of ne'er-do-wells and the down and out from 1972, while "Second Poem to Karmela" is Peter Walker's long unavailable 1968 follow-up to Rainy Day Raga, with flute and violin added to tamboura, sarod and guitar, making for an Indian-infused instrumental jam session very similar in sound and spirit to Sandy Bull's "Blend" series and Bruce Palmer's sidelong excursions on The Cycle Is Complete.

MARK McGUIRE - Along The Way

Combining his needly, shimmering, Gottsching-like leads with a slew of other instrumentation that's more layered, nuanced and detailed than previous efforts, Along The Way's continuous suite, while more of an expansion of his palette than an outright departure, somehow simultaneously sounds both more mature and more lighthearted than anything we were expecting to hear on this first for Dead Oceans by the former Emeralds guitarist.

"The first sounds we hear on Along The Way are strummed acoustic guitars, and we hear more of them throughout, but this isn’t a guitar record. Instead, McGuire piles on the layers: Guitars, synths, mandolins, drum machines, sighed vocals, sounds that could be any of those things but could also be bird noises or whatever. It’s a mellow, contemplative, staring-longingly-through-your-window-on-a-sunny-day kind of record, and it’s way too aggressively pleasant for anyone to seriously call it “drone.” When the drum programming clicks in, you could almost be listening to pastoral ambient techno, except that the focus is never really on the beat, or on anything else for that matter. The parts with vocals (processed, flat, multi-tracked, conversational, often wordless) can sound a bit like solo Panda Bear. Other times, it’s like the score to Friday Night Lights if Peter Berg had been into Fennesz instead of Explosions In The Sky. And because it sounds like all these things while simultaneously sounding like none of them, Along The Way practically feels like its own genre of music, a new hybrid that calls out for a name like Balearic Blues or Astral Noodle or Ambient Sunburst Glop, or maybe even something that isn’t terrible." - Stereogum

WARM SODA - Someone For You

We definitely missed Warm Soda's Someone For You when it was released last March, but we've been quickly charmed by its guileless mix of all things '-pop': glam, punk & power! Luckily for us latecomers, they are a prolific bunch and will have a new album out, Young Reckless Hearts, this March 11th.

"Matthew Melton, previously of the spontaneously combusted Bare Wires, has created a lean, mean gang of masterful power pop tunes with just the right blend of studio sweetness, teenage angst, and gritty bubblegum. All killer, no filler." - Castle Face Records

"If you like your music fast and catchy, with a little garage-rock power behind it, then Warm Soda is a band you are going to want to check out. Someone For You, their debut LP, is loaded with sugary power pop jams that will rot your teeth and plant worms in your skull that will be tough to get rid of. Matthew Melton, formerly of Bare Wires, definitely knows his way around a catchy song, and his playing and arrangements put what bands like The Strokes are currently doing to shame." The Fire Note

WHITE DENIM - Corsicana Lemonade

Imagine a slightly more angular Black Keys, or maybe a modern-day equivalent to the likes of Little Feat—better still, stop imagining, take a listen to White Denim's newest, and enjoy the fifth full-length from a band that we've been enthused about for a while now, yet still remains remarkably underheard!

"For White Denim, Corsicana Lemonade (named after a city in Navarro County, Texas) was a chance to make an album which sounded more like the band's live show than anything else. While the band's run of albums such as Workout Holiday, Fits and D were full of complex and intricate wig-outs, the live show was always more about sheer visceral instinct of a powerhouse band making an infectious, fuzzy, stonking racket.

One of the problems with previous recordings, says frontman James Petralli, was that there was no outside voice to say no or tell them to stop. 'When we did all the recordings ourselves, Josh [Block, White Denim's drummer] was the man in charge at the mixing desk, and he'd never say no when I wanted to add a tenth guitar part onto a track...We wanted to make sure [this] record had some of the live show energy and a kind of gut instinct." - The Irish Times

HACKAMORE BRICK - One Kiss Leads To Another

From the streets of Brooklyn came this strongly Velvet Underground-influenced group whose only album unfortunately sank without a trace upon its release in 1970. While recalling the Velvets in their more mellow moments, Hackamore Brick's sound and sensibility also forecast punk pioneers like Jonathan Richman and Television.

"Though Hackamore Brick hailed from the mean streets of New York (as depicted on that striking and hip cover), there’s a beguiling, youthful innocence behind the often-oblique lyrics (that alone differentiates the group from the Velvet Underground!). Darkness lurks around the edges of otherwise-mellow tracks like the album-opening "Reachin'."  [Chick] Newman’s elegiac melody and the ragged harmony vocals contribute to an atmosphere of paranoia...Haunting, spare and atmospheric arrangements color [Tommy] Moonlight’s "Got a Gal Named Wilma," Moonlight and Bob Roman's "Peace Has Come," and Newman's "And I Wonder."  The latter builds to an extended keyboard jam-freakout, and makes it one of the few tracks on One Kiss that seems of its time; others, like "Zip Gun Woman," sound straight out of the CBGB's scene of a few years later." - The Second Disc

MICHAEL FENNELLY - Love Can Change Everything: Demos 1967-1972

As also recently occurred in the case of Drag City's Chris Darrow reissue at the beginning of this year, here's another instance of overdue solo exposure for an underappreciated late-'60s/early-'70s Californian singer-songwriter.

"Hollywood’s Sunset Strip was fertile breeding ground for folk-rock songwriters on the make during the mid-'60s. One of these kids with an acoustic guitar jumped right into a historically important album project within weeks of his arrival. Michael Fennelly quickly became one-seventh of The Millennium, who produced Begin, a lush audio carpetorium of an album that found a cult audience upon its reissue thirty years later. After the Millennium shattered, Fennelly jumped directly into his next effort, the power-pop legends Crabby Appleton. Love Can Change Everything: Demos 1967-1972 charts the development of Fennelly as a songwriter. Starting with his earliest demos produced during the Millennium era and closing with stripped-down renditions of his Crabby Appleton songs, Love Can Change Everything makes the argument for Fennelly as a power-pop legend." - Sundazed

WHITE FENCE - Cyclops Reap

While we've championed Tim Presley quite a bit over his short but prolific solo career thus far, last year's Family Perfume Vols. 1 & 2 might have proven to be too much of a good thing, as we didn't pay as much attention to that double-set as his previous pair, which is why we're especially glad that Cyclops Reap has now reared its ugly eye, reminding us of what's so singular about Presley's one-man psych-pop productions.

"The ever prolific psychedelic wizard behind White Fence, Tim Presley, meant his first album of 2013 to be a collection of older tracks that had yet to see the light of day. Somewhere during the process of picking songs that had fallen in the cracks between albums, he decided to switch it up and Cyclops Reap became a batch of his most recently recorded tracks (barring one that was done way back in 2009) and stands as one of his most cohesive and enjoyable albums." - Allmusic

DARK - Dark Round The Edges

Proto-metal, psych-prog, private-press: if any of these plosive descriptors lead your pleasure center to light up in anticipation, then pay attention to upstart label Machu Piccu's second reissue, an English group whose lone album was originally issued in 1972 in a run of only 50-odd copies (but could have just as easily come out via the esteemed likes of Vertigo)!

"Axeman Martin Weaver from Wicked Lady joined up with the Dark right before this was recorded, so that’s his fuzz you’re hearing, which should give you some indication of what this sounds like. A more sophisticated, proggier Wicked Lady perhaps, a Wicked Lady with more in the way of 'songs' rather than freakout jams, though this gets bluesy/jammy at times too." - Roadburn

"To be sure, other groups may have taken the formulas further or assembled a heavier, freer slab of psychedelic boogie, but concision and melody count for a lot in the lysergic world that Dark inhabited. Although Dark disbanded soon after the LP was published, cultish interest inspired a brief and well-received reunion in 1996. More than four decades after their lone LP was waxed, Dark Round the Edges deserves to be visited anew." - Tiny Mix Tapes

MONOMYTH - King, Does This Not Please You? (Behold The Power)

Halifax-based guitar guys Monomyth have been hoofing it across Canada this summer, and a couple of us Soundscapers were lucky enough to catch them recently in Toronto and grab some CDs that feature their new EP, their old EP and a couple of other tunes. While we eagerly await a full-length release, this compilation flows like it was intended to be a cohesive album, all woozy layers, three-part harmonies and sweet jangly riffs. Sure to please the Flying Nun Records fan in all of us.

"Easily one of Halifax's best acts, these guys have been on my radar for a while now. Their recordings jump between psychedelia and weirdo-pop; it's experimental yet catchy and accessible...Their latest release King, Does This Not Please You? (Behold the Power) is a four-track masterpiece.. it's surfy, its shoegazey, it's poppy yet complete punk rock." - Londonfuse.ca

RODION G.A. - The Lost Tapes

Crackling with distorted organ, synth, guitar, drum machine and live kit, this archival set from Strut reveals a persecution-skirting hybrid made between 1978 and 1984 by Romania's Rodion Rosça, one that in hindsight can be slotted somewhere between Kosmische prog and the punky sci-fi defiance of Heldon's Richard Pinhas, all while maintaining a degree of regional tradition in its scales and melodic lines, aligning Rosça and band with the psych-rock of their Turkish neighbours just across the Black Sea.

"In the late '70s and early '80s in communist Romania, Rodion Ladislau Roșca and his band Rodion G.A. created a hybrid of electronic music, psychedelics, and progressive rock that, decades later, has revealed itself to be remarkably ahead of its time. After years of obscurity, and only a handful of singles ever released officially, Rodion’s music is finally getting the recognition it deserves" - Wax Poetics

"This is some of the raddest music you’re likely to hear this year: rad in its overall excellence, and radical in its forward-thinking nature, sounding so even today, though recorded at the height of Ceausescu’s suppression and censorship." - The Quietus

VA - Enjoy The Experience: Homemade Records 1958-1992

Running the gamut from oddball entertainers attempting to capture/recreate their live act for posterity to home-recording outsiders hoping to create an LP-sized business card of sorts, this 2CD set documents the US private-press phenomenon in all its strange, colourful, varied and unvarnished wonder!

"[W]hile now one can upload content to platforms where it can be found with little effort by millions for free, from the late 1950s to the early '90s, aspiring stars paid out of their own pockets to press their music on vinyl. And then, without distribution, radio play, buzz or press coverage, their music languished in basements or crawlspaces, accruing dust and mold. It is the spirit of the latter that inspired the art book Enjoy the Experience: Homemade Records 1958-1992, released this month by Sinecure Books in conjunction with New York's Boo-Hooray art gallery, with a companion 2-CD set of some of the choicest bits." - NPR

"Take note: this is not a novelty freak show. Contained in this anthology are examples of some of the most highly regarded rock, soul, jazz, funk and singer/songwriter albums from the '60s through to the early '80s. From the awkward-yet-talented to the genius-yet-bizarre, one thing unites all musicians presented here: they sincerely hoped to become stars, they committed themselves to record, and they left themselves vulnerable to an industry not understanding of nuance, not appreciative of character." - Now-Again

STEVE GUNN - Time Off

A melodiously drony set of boogie-folk by a fellow who's currently turning heads as guitar slinger-for-hire with Kurt Vile and the Violators, after years of plugging away in the psych underground with a discography that includes multiple releases for Digitalis and Three Lobed Recordings. Highly recommended, and likely to appeal across a wide swath of listeners.
 

"Even when Gunn fries up an electric solo on 'New Decline,' the drums are mixed to the back like silverware being thrashed around a bar kitchen. His sly, muted vocals disintegrate and replenish as they please. Dynamics or structure are not a major concern; these songs sound happy to just get the ignition working...'Found a spot to kill time and look around,' he sings, and that's what Time Off sounds like: a resting place, both for the riffs that this sideman needed to exorcise and a comfy little alcove for us to hear them played, with care and patience." - SPIN  

"[Time Off] bathes in gauzy pastoral hues and rippling guitars, and Gunn’s voice is distant and ethereal, but don’t mistake that vibe and the album’s title for some sort of slacker folk. Instead, this stuff meditates and digs, with slow rotations, grinding through the dusty surfaces it creates." - PopMatters