We rage on with the War on Drugs, check out new left-field punk, sludgy sonic jams, some swooning and plenty more bases covered.
 

Hello Friends

Another diverse bunch of records for the stereo and the wish lists. Our record of the month landed (read on) and promptly sold out… TWICE… but we’ve taken the suitable stock precautions and we’re about ready to start shouting about it’s virtues again. Elsewhere a brilliant outsider punk record, sterling song writing from north of the border, sludgy rock jams across the USA and plenty more musical directions to follow.

The War on Drugs
We are delighted to be able to really open this one up and blast it over stereo, as we’ve been having to be pretty selective in doing so over the last month… you let it play, people queue up and demand a copy... It’s just one of those albums, it feels like it’s been in your conscious for years. 'Lost In The Dream' is the third album by Philadelphia band The War on Drugs, but in many ways, it feels like the first. Around the release of the 2011 breakthrough 'Slave Ambient', Adam Granduciel spent the bulk of two years on the road, touring through progressively larger rock clubs, festival stages and late-night television slots. As these dozen songs shifted and grew beyond what they'd been in the studio, The War on Drugs became a bona fide rock 'n' roll band. Andy Gill brilliantly pointed out in The Independent that lead track ‘Red Eyes’ sounds like both Big Country and Bruce Springsteen. It’s chest pounding stuff but there is so much introspection across the album thats you’ll just keep going back again and again. We don’t want to throw around too many proclamations, but this really is an instant classic.

"The War on Drugs turn 80s arena rock into something more intriguing” - The Guardian

The Ltd LP has now long gone, but plenty of CD & LP copies as of Wednesday lunchtime.

Record of the week ~ 'Say Yes To Love' - Perfect Pussy are one of the boldest and most intriguing projects to surface in recent years, garnering widespread critical acclaim following the release of a four song EP, titled I have lost all desire for feeling. Veiled beneath layers of exquisitely abrasive noise, frontwoman Meredith Graves’ lyrics are disarming, brutally honest and poetic, possessing a feverish intensity that can only be matched by Graves’ electric stage presence. Hailing from Syracuse, New York, the band is comprised of members from the local punk and hardcore community.  Filled with conflict and confidence and despare and desire, these are songs that stay with the listener long after the album has ended. Nice glitter motif on the sleeve to!

“One of the boldest new rock bands” - Pitchfork
 

Still plenty more to cover...

» The long awaited second album New Gods by Withered Hand (aka Edinburgh based folk-rock troubadour Dan Willson). Across the eleven songs on New Gods, Willson deals with the big stuff: love, death, friendship, infidelity, road trips, stargazing and cough mixture abuse. It’s a proper song writers album with loads to keep coming back to on repeat listens.

» For nearly a decade, Tycho has been known as the musical alias of Scott Hansen, but with the release of Awake - his second LP for Ghostly International - the solo project has evolved into a three-piece band perhaps relating closer to post-rock than ambient soundscapes. As ever, the artwork is superb. Hansen is the artist ISO50. Handy!

» Atlanta's favourite sons Black Lips release their first full length in three years, 'Underneath the Rainbow’, recording initial tracks with Dap Kings music director Tommy Brenneck (Cee Lo, Charles Bradley), then decamped to Nashville to record several songs with Patrick Carney of The Black Keys. It’s proper sleazy, great stuff. More superb artwork, this time photographed by legendary photographer Mick Rock (David Bowie, Queen, Lou Reed). Whilst they last we have some great marbled vinyl.

» Sisyphus is the new name for the collaboration between Serengeti, Son Lux, and Sufjan Stevens (formally s/s/s), whose new project under this moniker is a self-titled album partly inspired by the art of Jim Hodges, and commissioned by the Walker Art Center and The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra's Liquid Music series in Minneapolis / Saint Paul. It’s a hypnotic whirl of the romantic stings and catchy choruses from the Illinois era with crazed electronic percussion, melted synths, rapped verses, and auto tuned vocals.

» 'Piano Ombre', the follow-up to 'E Volo Love', is François' first album to be recorded in a bona fide studio (in Entre-Deux-Mers, the 'Between-Two-Seas', region near Bordeaux in France) and with a producer (Ash Workman - Metronomy / NZCA Lines). Lyrically, the album documents another journey, of personal struggle, discovery, conviction and resolution. The result is François and The Atlas Mountains' most sophisticated, arranged album yet.

» My Sad Captains - Like the brilliant 1961 poem by the late Thom Gunn, from which the London-based quartet take their name, a sparingly deployed assemblage of words and emotions shows that less can be so much more. The nine songs that comprise ‘Best Of Times’ have an almost underplayed guitar pop sensibility reminiscent of many classic indie bands of the 80s. 

» Sh*t Robot aka Marcus Lambkin releases his second album ‘We Got A Love’ via DFA Records. The nine-track album includes the killer recent singles, ‘Feels Real’ and ‘We Got A Love’. It has DFA written all over it, from the illustrious guestlist to those irresistible cowbells! 

» Abandoned City was recorded in Hauschka’s home studio in a burst of creative energy following the birth of his first son. “Most of the songs were played on one piano; I was mixing as I played. If I needed more piano, I overdubbed with another twiddling of effects”. There is plenty of control, restraint and measure, but its the odd ghostly moments that really make this such a great listen. 

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Massive congratulations to Metronomy on hitting the top ten in the big charts with ‘Love Letters’ - Totnes you played your part with some very solid sales all week. Talking of the charts, Elbow ended up right at the to of it which is great news. Plenty of CD and Vinyl copies of both of those albums.


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We've put up a whole Record Store Day section on the site here; www.thedriftrecordshop.net/record-store-day

This Thursday night you can tune in live to XFM to hear the official launch via our good friends at Piccadilly in Manchester and Banquet in Kingston.


Have a good read of that new section and get in touch!

- Drift