Total Hacker

My favourite psychedelic sludge pop band from New York, Total Slacker, released a new song the other day, and it’s a gem. ‘Life on Easy Street (U Could Die In BedStuy)’ is a classic grunge-pop song featuring raunchy guitars and Emily Oppenheimer’s brilliant sleepy sing-along vocals with Tucker Rountree’s weird yet matter-of-fact depiction of New York life. His typical awesome glam-out guitar solo steals the show in the third quarter. It’s a simple but incredibly effective record of a mundane day – “Life ain’t hard, you know it’s really quite easy, you wake up in the morning and you stay inside.” This band’s simplicity made me love them from the beginning, and all their songs are really catchy. From the sludgy, slow and brilliant ‘Crystal Necklace’ to the cute ‘Cops Freak Me Out’ and the jangly, intricate ‘Psychic Mesa’ or the reverb riffs of ‘Video Store Rental Guy’ and ‘Ultimate Party Dood’, the band has created a super strong collection of songs. They’re currently recording their debut album and have their first tour of the US planned for May 16 to June 16 – make sure you head along if you can, and listen to ‘Life on Easy Street’ on their Myspace.

Total Slacker – Ultimate Party Dood: MP3

Total Slacker- Facebook

Posted by Sarah Gooding under Brooklyn, New York, U.S.A
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Like Whales Swimming In Wine

Cassie Ramone (Vivian Girls) and Kevin Morby (Woods) join forces with Nathanael Stark and Justin Sullivan in The Babies, a new garage-pop duo based in Brooklyn, New York. The band released a couple of 7″ singles last year and are about to drop their debut album. ‘Wild I’ is the latest single to flood the airwaves with Cassie’s voice sounding gritty and pure, like raw sugar melting on a hot iron. The guitar playing sits somewhere between Sonic Youth and the laid back vibes of Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti. Much like moments of Best Coast’s critically acclaimed debut Crazy For You, there’s the pain and the longing but it’s more smooth than fractured. The Babies are heading out on tour in the US later this month with another bright young star named White Fence. Check out The Babies’ myspace page to purchase their previous 7″ releases, and to keep up to date with the band’s tour, head over to Woodsist Records’ website.

The Babies – Wild I: MP3

Posted by Nick Fulton under Brooklyn, New York, U.S.A
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Real Cool Time

Taking the sounds of Flying Nun, girl punk and surf music and mixing it in a tidal wave of minimal noise, Coasting is the latest band to come rearing out of Brooklyn’s fertile grounds since forming in October last year. Fiona Campbell of seminal New Zealand riot grrrl punk band Coolies, and Madison Farmer of Brooklyn’s Dream Diary reportedly decided to form Coasting after working together. They’ve swiftly recorded two 7″s for Brooklyn label Group Tightener and M’Lady’s Records respectively and have a tape in the works for Japanese label 16 Tambourines. The accomplished pair are right to be proud that their first ever show was with Ducktails and Best Coast, and that Fiona recorded with a sprained ligament in her ankle. They’ve since supported The Clean in New York, played the Chris Knox benefit show alongside Neutral Milk Hotel’s Jeff Mangum and Yo La Tengo, and scored a slot at the MtyMx Festival.

Madison takes the echoey, ethereal guitar lines from her dreamy new wave band Dream Diary to create a wall of noise in Coasting, where Fiona continues her talents of energetic and relentless drumming that gave the Coolies such a ferocious backbone. Their songs show a talent for dynamics – ‘Snoozefest’ has a strangely rousing vocal harmony driving its tunneling rhythms and spiraling guitar, and ‘Same Old Same Old’ showcases the girls’ vocals. The first 100 limited edition purple vinyl pressing of the Coasting 7″ EP is already sold out, and they have shows coming up with Air Waves, Aa, and Total Slacker. They already have eight songs on their myspace, and their first video made by Alice Cohen. The girls move fast, try and keep up!

Coasting- Kids: MP3

Coasting- Coasting (demo): MP3

Coasting- Myspace

Posted by Sarah Gooding under Brooklyn, U.S.A
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Haunted Dream Catcher

Swathed in glitzy reverb and glimmering atmospherics, Brooklyn band Total Slacker’s recordings are so gloriously DIY you can hear the room they were recorded in. Their name was inspired by the Richard Linklater film Slacker and attempts to reclaim a life of leisurely pursuits.

Singer/guitarist Tucker Rountree met bassist/singer Emily Oppenheimer last year at a laundromat, and the two started hanging out and jamming to old Weezer and Breeders records. Their achievements belie their casual style – Emily is classically trained in piano and guitar and Tucker was mentored by Grammy award winning guitarist Eric Johnson. The pair decided they really liked the songs they’d written just for fun, and tried out six drummers until fatefully nabbing Ross Condon, who went to high school with Emily.

They’ve just uploaded the jaunty new demo ‘Creepos’ to their myspace, and say it’s about “the incendiary line of friendly vs creepin’, and weird Facebook friend requests”. Their older songs sound more decadent – ‘Crystal Necklace’ has the kind of shuffling guitar line found in In Utero-era Nirvana, with angelic, totally singable melodies and emphatic harmonies. It’s pushed along by a punchy drum beat and Tucker’s wail that smashes into each chorus like waves on a shore. It’s the most badass song I’ve heard in ages. Elsewhere, Kim Deal’s influence can be heard on ‘Magical Date Night’ (watch the video below, featuring the Madonna pap smear scene from Slacker), with Emily’s sweet vocals chiming in with Tucker’s wordy rambles that climb atop bass and guitar lines. They achieve so much depth of sound in ‘Psychic Mesa’ that they put to shame many other so-called lo-fi bands.

Ross and Tucker collaborate on the hand drawn psychedelic artwork that features on all their individually designed t-shirts and CDs, which they have sold for as little as $1 at their shows. IMPOSE recently put out their debut 7″ and Breakfast of Champions released their split tape with Weekends. Check out this nifty little video interview with the band to see just how amazing Tucker is on guitar. And if you want more, Tucker’s solo project Chat Room continues the awesome vibe using only a ’90s Yamaha keyboard.

 Total Slacker- Crystal Necklace (demo): MP3

Total Slacker- Magical Date Night (demo): MP3

Total Slacker- Myspace

Posted by Sarah Gooding under Brooklyn, New York, U.S.A
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Tap Dancing Beneath Fairy Lights

Twee pop meets 1950′s rock and roll, blending Buddy Holly and Bishop Allen. Grizzly Bear seasoned with Human Highway herbs and topped with Zookeeper sauce. Introducing the adorably cute Family Trees, whose mix of rattly drum beats, sugary guitar chords and deadpan vocals will take you on a swooping roller coaster ride. Ryan Trott, Amanda Finn and Joe Pruitt’s music is soaked in late night wine binges, low-budget supermarket food and bohemian fashion. Some twee pop is about holding hands and walking in the rain but theirs is about friendship and camaraderie. It’s Andrew Bujalski’s Mutual Appreciation all over again, set in the same location but with a different cast.

Family Trees has just become the first band to release a record through the newly formed Californian label Father/Daughter Records. Their debut 7″ titled Dream Talkin can be purchased via the label’s online store.

 Family Trees- Dream Talkin: MP3

 Family Trees- Myspace

Posted by Nick Fulton under Brooklyn, New York, U.S.A
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Pick Up Your Roller Skates

Vivian Girl Katy Goodman just premiered this new track over on Gorilla Vs Bear. It’s from her collaboration with Cat Power’s keyboardist/guitarist Gregg Foreman. The band’s called All Saints Day and the song is titled ‘It’ll Come Around’. It sounds like they’ve both been hanging out in California, reeking of the same tropical sun drenched euphoria and washy Cali’ vibes that Best Coast has been nailing us with. And it’s totally adorable, Katy’s vocal melodies are dreamy, sprinkled with fairy dust, while the guitars and synths are surrounded by a cloud of fuzz. GvB is already spreading the rumour that All Saints Day will be releasing more music, most likely through Wild World Records, Vivian Girls’ own record label.

All Saints Day- It’ll Come Around: MP3

Posted by Nick Fulton under Brooklyn, New York, U.S.A
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Pancake Rock

SCREENS’ press release caught my eye when I noticed that they are touring with another one of my favourite bands, Aa. They’ve also got a whole stack of shows coming up (including SXSW) with Beach Fossils, Vivian Girls, Death Sentence: Panda! and Male Bonding. The four piece, who joined forces in Brooklyn, New York, after playing in various other bands across the US (Apes, The Mall, Medications), make rather fucked up noise similar to HEALTH, but with less gadgets and raw power. They rely on percussion to punch their music into shape, while Casio keyboards squiggle and Breck Brunson sends vocals whistling through a reverb box. Their music gets bent into shape rather than taking an obvious melodic path, running through a gauntlet of flailing fists before reaching its final destination. They have just finished recording their debut album, however its release date is still unknown.

 SCREENS- Saturdays: MP3

SCREENS- Myspace

Posted by Nick Fulton under Brooklyn, New York
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Ride The Frightening

Grooms (née Muggabears) from Brooklyn create the kind of hedonistic fantasy grunge that Sonic Youth and Pavement did in their heyday, combining powerful, churning guitar lines and intelligent basslines merging blissfully in a mélange of shimmering, powdery drums and whiny adolescent vocals. ‘Dreamsucker’ is an immediate favourite, with its glistening guitar and bass interplay and intense, cacophonic spurts combed through with odd, whirring synth sirens in the background adding a tangible eerieness. Grooms is truly a hidden gem, a powerful force to be reckoned with. Currently on tour throughout the states, singer/guitarist Travis Johnson and bassist/singer Emily Ambruso met in 2004 in New York when Travis moved there from Texas, having been recording music as Muggabears since he was 19. Travis and Emily recorded two EPs as the duo incarnation of Muggabears, then found drummer Jim Sykes, who has played with Parts and Labor and Marnie Stern. They changed the name to Grooms in the lead up to the release of their debut album Rejoicer on October 20 via Death By Audio. The trio’s natural connection and powerful songwriting has seen them garner favourable press far and wide, with sonic dirges like ‘Ghost Cat’ and the epic asault of ‘Dead Kid Kicks’ in their catalogue showing their maturity in spades. Grooms is a band whose vision is completely realised despite them being relatively young. They also do an amazing shoegazey grunge cover of Chris Isaak’s ‘Wicked Game’ which I urge you to download below.

Grooms- Dreamsucker: MP3

 Grooms- Acid King of Hell (Guitar Feelings): MP3

Grooms- Wicked Game (Chris Isaak cover): MP3

Grooms- Myspace

Buy Grooms- Rejoicer at Insound

Posted by Sarah Gooding under Brooklyn, New York, U.S.A
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I Don’t Care About Nothin’

One of the big things with the internet is that it really opens up the world and removes a lot of ideas about seasonal music. The last few months we’ve been enjoying a lot of sun-inflected blissed-out summer vibes, while shivering through winter. Now though, things are warming up, and The Drums’ music is perfectly suited to laying on the beach, taking in the sun. Distorted bass line hooks, swooping vocals and gang whistles all fall in to place with this 1950s surf-meets-Joy Division four-piece from Brooklyn. I can’t really imagine the band particularly enjoying the American winter – singer Jonathan Pierce and guitarist Jacob Graham met as kids at summer camp, and their debut EP is called Summertime! For goodness sake!

However, The Drums don’t just focus on enjoying the sun (not that that’s a bad thing) – “We only write about two feelings: one is the first day of summer when you and all of your friends are standing on the edge of a cliff watching the sun set and being overcome with all of your hopes and dreams at once. The other is when you’re walking alone in the rain and realise you will be alone forever.” Girls, then. Surfing and girls – summer can last forever.

 The Drums- Let’s Go Surfing: MP3

 The Drums- Myspace

Posted by Nick Fulton under Brooklyn, New York, U.S.A
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 Dollar Bins of the Future

Javelin is the experimental sampled-based music created by cousins George Langford and Tom Van Buskirk who have been making music all their lives, but have been producing music as Javelin since 2004. They have created an interesting live set-up (that has seen them play the Museum of Modern Art in NY), in which they stack up colourfully painted boomboxes (“boombaatas”), allowing the audience to bring their own stereos to tune in to the FM frequency they’re using, “fuelling battery-powered mobile parties”. They mix tape samples with handmade instruments like thumb pianos and wooden recorders and have cutely admitted in interview that they like to hum auto-tune and synthesiser parts while driving alone.

The song ‘Soda Popinski’ stands out in Javelin’s catalogue with its unusual pairing of a sample of a child singing with an amazing electronic symphony of pop break beats and jittery keyboard. Elsewhere they get more ambient and funky, with ‘Vibrationz’, and tropical ringtone pop in ‘TWYCE’, and seem to be heavily influenced by African and South American music, as evident in their screeds of samples and involvement with David Byrne’s ethnomusicological record label Luaka Bop, for whom they’ll have an LP out around March.

Their limited release self-titled 12″ has sold out despite being released less than two weeks ago (although you can buy it digitally), there’s little wonder why it was snapped up so fast. Housed in acquired secondhand record sleeves, some willfully obscure, others deliberately mainstream, with their name screen printed over the top, the record literally and musically re-contextualises and recycles old music. Delving further into their back catalogue, they’ve also released an LP called Jamz n Jemz, an awesome tape called Andean Ocean, and the amazing World Midi Classics Vol 2 mix, both of which you can download at Dollar Bins Of The Future, and a 7″ called Oh Centra on Thrill Jockey, who will also be releasing their next 12″ early next year. They also do remixes, including their popular re-do of The Very Best’s ‘Julia’, and a great Future Islands remix that sounds like Howlin Wolf-meets-Tom Jones-meets-’60s doo wop.

Javelin played the recent CMJ festival and are currently touring the mid West of the USA with Lucky Dragons and playing odd shows with psychedelic contemporaries Rainbow Arabia and Yeasayer.

Javelin- Soda Popinski: MP3

Javelin- STD Fury: MP3

Javelin- Flitter and Flutter (Future Islands Remix): MP3

Javelin- Myspace

Posted by Sarah Gooding under Brooklyn, New York, Providence, Rhode Island, U.S.A
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