It's a guitar heavy week with distortion, noodling, some balladeers, melancholia and some straight out smashing...
 

Hello Friends.

Happy March! With January and February behind us all, 2014 is looking pretty good right? Well the new March Record of the Month sure is. 'Lost In The Dream' is the third album by Philadelphia band The War on Drugs and will be available mid month in STACKS on our counter. If you’re passing, we’ve loaded it up onto the pre-listening station so you can come and hear it for yourself.

March is looking petty spectacular, besides this weeks stellar schedule, this month will see re-issues on vinyl of albums by White Stripes, Swans and David Bowie and new releases from Metronomy, Elbow, My Sad Captains, Joan As Police Woman, Dean Wareham, Perfect Pussy, Hauschka, Tycho, Polar Bear, Fránçois & the Atlas Mountains, Jon Porras, Jimi Goodwin, Cloud Nothings and Liars.

So in addition to those, this week we’ll be talking about Real Estate, Eagulls, Solids, Lorelle Meets The Obsolete, Current 93, a stunning compilation on Numero and The Men.

 

Record of the Week is 'Atlas' the third full album from Ridgewood, New Jersey’s Real Estate. To commence the follow-up to their sophomore breakout, Days, founding members Martin Courtney (guitar/vocals), Matt Mondanile (guitar) and Alex Bleeker (bass/vocals) were joined by new full-time members, Jackson Pollis(drums) and Matt Kallman (keyboard) and producer Schick this past summer at Wilco's Chicago studio, The Loft.  Nineteen songs were recorded in all over a two-week period and the result is the band¹s most collaborative, richly detailed album to date. On the first few spins it’s an all together more melancholic listen, but all the noodling guitar hooks are there and will slip under the covers with you as fast as their previous two efforts, it’s a subtle, measured smasher of an album.

** Whilst stocks last, we have some Real Estate totes to give away with the album on CD, LP and the very few Deluxe LP's we have left **

'Punch to the guts’ of the week goes to the thrilling self titled debut from Eagulls. Eagulls have become synonymous with a discontented, disillusioned kind of anger, moulded into bullets of post punk that’s rife with urgency and aggression. Priase has been heaped on them already, with NME proclaiming that they are “The punk soundtrack for a generation who know there’s still no future”  and The Times applauding their "dark, post-punk racket with echoes of The Stranglers”. They could well end up being massive… whats most exciting is I am not sure they actually give a f**k about all that, they’re most at home causing chaos in small sweaty rooms. Brilliant stuff.

 

 

The Men's new LP for Sacred Bones is the tongue-in-cheek-but-still-auspiciously-titled Tomorrow's Hits. This is their first album recorded in a high-end studio and, appropriately, the result is their most high fidelity album to date. That being said, it is still an incredibly straightforward record. It’s full of genre-bending risks, but it reinforces the overarching theme that has come to define its makers: The Men are a great rock band.

Montreal band Solids went to school with bands from the 90s, like Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr and Superchunk. Formed by Xavier Germain-Poitras (guitar) and Louis Guillemette (drums), the duo have understood that melody never shines as much as when it is forced to fight its way through many layers of distortion and feedback effects. Blame Confusion is relentless at 100mph from start to finish, a hugely exciting listen this.

Keeping things turned to rock, with Warfaring Strangers: Darkscorch Canticles, the impacts of Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath on US shores and heartlands is revealed as a bludgeoning previously undescribed. In this collection, medieval Bonham thunk and febrile Iommi guitar leads crowd out the bluesy Americana that foregrounded those bands, replacing hippie pastoralism with mythology, armored conflict, sorcery, and doom. From legions of occult-obsessive 1970s bonehead teens, we summoned a horde of 16 bands, cloaked in eons of tortured obscurity, whose sole release amounts to a blistering chapter ripped free of rock’s lumbering mythos. As ever with the Numero label, beautifully presented, superbly put together and just way out there.

Lorelle Meets The Obsolete release their third album, ‘Chambers’. It’s a surprisingly direct record which, despite locking into a pulsating krautrock groove on ‘What’s Holding You?’ or getting lost in a fog of white noise on recent teaser track ‘Music For Dozens’, always retains a very human heart and soul. Got some lovely bonus CD's via their Über radical label Sonic Cathederal.

Channelling C93 for this River are: Jack Barnett (These New Puritans), James Blackshaw, Ossian Brown (Cyclobe), Nick Cave, Antony Hegarty, Reinier van Houdt, Norbert Kox, Andrew Liles, Tony (TS) McPhee & Carl Stokes (The Groundhogs), Jon Seagroatt, David Tibet, Bobbie Watson and John Zorn. As dark as you'd expect, but there are some pretty funny moments. Pretty spellbinding once you get in. Have a listen.

Robert Ellis' 'Photographs' was one of our records of the year in 2011, so we're very eager to explore his new LP 'The Lights Of The Chemical Plant'. The songs on the new record, which range from the majestic string-adorned title track to noir pop rock and somber confessionals, both show Ellis' growth and the various sides of this multidimensional songwriter. It's a classic Country record, but there is LOADS bubbling away under the surface. A big time grower for us.

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So all that and loads more to check out both online and especially in the shop.

Plenty of pre-sales loading up as we speak so get listening and get investing.

~ Drift