Today's Hotness: Benjamin Shaw, The Sun Parade

>> Our natural inclination is to slag off Audio Antihero for releasing a single for the best song from its recent Benjamin Shaw release some six months after said release, but of course the little London label that could has beaten us to the punch, pre-emptively dubbing the single -- actually an EP -- a "cash-in." Despite the weird timing, the You & Me EP is neither a crass money grab nor a strategic misstep, as Mr. Shaw's stand-out tune -- which we spotlighted in our review of the charming full-length Goodbye, Cagoule World in April -- is supported by three exceptionally good cover versions from others unfortunate enough to be tagged with the descriptor "Audio Antihero artist." Indeed, Shaw's marvelous, wry and jaunty original is complemented by terrific and distinctly different versions from Jack Hayter, erstwhile Bostonian Cloud and Broken Shoulder. One of our favorite musical elements of the original is the burbling synth line, which recalls Hypo's amazing "Nice Day." Cloud has taken that piece of the tune and layered delicate layers of icy guitar and angelic, edgeless vocals over top. Mr. Hayter toys with the meter of the lyrics and renders the tune as a Joe Cocker-esque sea shanty, his papery tenor speeding up and slowing down over alternately syrupy and sticky pedal steel. Experimental droner Broken Shoulder plays to its formidable strengths, rounding out the EP with a strong, other-worldly and five-minute-plus rendering that sounds like the scattering remnants of a dream about the original song. Audio Antihero released the You & Me EP Oct. 6 as a digital download, and we unreservedly recommend it to your attention. Stream the short set via the Bandcamp embed below, and click through to purchase for the ridiculously reasonable price of £1, which you should do, before Jamie Antihero starts talking about shutting down the label again.



>> Oh, how we have forsaken The Sun Parade. The Northampton, Mass.-based quartet's terrifically catchy Heart's Out EP was released a month ago, and the set's immediate and revved-up folk-rock tunes have been in steady rotation at the Clicky Clicky dojo ever since drummer Noam Schatz dropped the record on us a few weeks back. Mr. Schatz, long-time readers will recall, previously detonated the cans for the late, great Mobius Band. Schatz has spent time with a bit of musical this-and-that since the end of Mobius Band, but The Sun Parade is the first touring act he's joined up with since the mid-ish oughts. The Sun Parade was out last month with the popular-with-many-people-and-now-Boston-Calling-veterans Lake Street Dive, and we can't imagine its snappy numbers didn't find favor with the headliner's audience. The foursome's Beatles-fed Americana foregrounds sturdy vocal harmonies in its big choruses, punctuates its point with scads of scritchy rhythm guitar, and applies some pretty ripping lead guitar now and again, too, while all the while Mr. Schatz's physical playing spurs the compositions ever onward. EP highlight "I'm Still Here" works itself toward a frenzy in its final quarter, as does the groovier cut "A Plane To New Zealand," but the former tune's crafty chord changes and fluid harmonies in the chorus make for ready hooks that will be hard for listeners to shake. While out on tour The Sun Parade recorded the obligatory Daytrotter session, so if you chew through Heart's Out and need more music, keep your ears open for that. The act has scattered live engagements during the remainder of this fall, including a show in Providence next weekend, and you can check out all show dates right here. Stream the title track to Heart's Out via the Bandcamp embed below, and click through to stream the whole magilla and to purchase the short set on CD or as a digital download. It's worth reminding you that Schatz isn't the only Mobius Band alum with new music out there: last month we reviewed Cookies' excellent LP Music For Touching right here. That act is led by former Mobius Band fronter Ben Sterling.

Today's Hotness: Endless Jags, Foam Castles, Broken Shoulder

>> Portland, Maine sextet Endless Jags are back with a new full-length release titled Sell The Banquet, which is notable for big melodies, soulful vocals and a desperate energy. Mid-tempo opener "Boxcutter" smoulders, with DJ Moore's organ tempering a pumping groove and lifting up intensely plied vocal harmonies from Oscar Romero and Tyler Jackson. With so many moving parts (guitar, bass, organ, multiple singers) the act is able to conjure and inject into its compositions compelling atmospheres and textures, as it does with heavily reverbed vocals in the final half-minute of "Surfer," or the patient groove that leads up to the second verse of the brilliant and brilliantly arranged cut "Next Summer On The Ice." The perfectly realized song is punctuated by punches of fuzz bass and layers a simple but potent 3/4 piano figure over the 4/4 chorus at the end (we're a big fan of such polyrhythmic musical voodoo). Another album highlight, "Ready To Die," reveals itself via myriad nifty production touches, from the slap-back on the vocal at the opening, to the rich reverb on the lead in the chorus, to the piano and hand percussion at the three-minute mark. Sell The Banquet was recorded by Shaun Curran at Napoleon Complex, who Clicky Clicky fans will recall was the engineer for Soccer Mom's recent self-titled triumph. Sell The Banquet was self-released June 17 and is available for free download via Bandcamp; stream it via the embed below, and click through to get at the digital files.

We previously wrote about Endless Jags right here in late 2012, upon the release of its eponymous EP. It is worth noting that just as that EP was followed fairly quickly by a release from a related act (in that case, Brenda), Sell The Banquet was available for but a week when a very good related collection, Foam Castles' Through That Door, was issued. Foam Castles features a number of the same players as Endless Jags, but we're given to understand that Foam Castles is primarily the vehicle for the songwriting of the aforementioned Mr. Jackson, and Endless Jags revolves for the most part around the songs of the aforementioned Mr. Romero. Whatever the provenance of its songs may be, Through That Door is gentler, sunnier and perhaps a bit more influenced by classic Southern California folk-rock than Sell The Banquet, but it is no less worthy of your attention. Definitely stick around for the transcendent ballad "Punk Leg," which shows up deep in the collection. The set can be streamed via the second Bandcamp embed below; it is available as a digital download now, but there are plans for vinyl and CD versions, all available here from Teenarena Records.





>> We suppose it is weird to have a favorite thinker of thoughts about electronic music, but nonetheless we do, and it's Joe Patitucci of the Philly-based collective Data Garden and musical project Tadoma. And while this item is not about Mr. Patitucci, it is somewhat inspired by his referring to making music as creating "zones." Which we take to mean something on the order creating atmospheres of consciousness through the transporting power of music. Which makes us think of Japan's Broken Shoulder. When we first turned onto the act a few years ago, it was while being literally transported: we repeatedly consumed Broken Shoulder's somnolent yet stirring debut during regular air travel to and from a long-term work assignment in the first half of 2011. There have been notable Broken Shoulder releases in the interim, and now the act -- the brainchild of Tokyo-based British ex-pat Neil Debenham, formerly of UK post-rockers Fighting Kites -- returns with a new collection on its very own new imprint. The set is called 300 Bicycle Seats and was released in late May on Debenham's label Kirigirisu Recordings, and it contains five compelling instrumentals. The tunes exhibit Broken Shoulder's continued and admirable balance of melody and texture. There is little obvious pop structure, of course, but the modulations and arrangements Mr. Debenham employs imbues even the extended compositions ("Aquiline" eclipses the 10-minute mark, while the transcendent "Rotary Planes/Thirteen More" surpasses 13 minutes) with an oceanic kineticism that makes 300 Bicycle Seats a very engaging listen. The set is available in a limited-edition of 50 CD-Rs and as a digital download from the Kirigirisu Recordings Bandcamp outpost right here. The label already has issued two other releases from a France-based act called France and the rising Fukuoka duo Sonotanotanpenz, and there are plans for a fourth release from American experimental violist/sound artist Jorge Boehringer, who records under the weighty moniker Core Of The Coalman. If you are not certain that experimental viola is your thing, we think you will find this video quite compelling. Stream Broken Shoulder's 300 Bicycle Seats below.

Today's Hotness: Hallelujah The Hills, Broken Shoulder, Soda Fabric



>> We haven't gone through our archives to see how often we've said it, or how consistently, but we've got a standard rap about odds 'n' sods collections. At best, such a collection gathers together relatively inconvenient-to-gather stuff. In the best-case scenario -- and this is certainly dependent on the band -- the stuff evidences exciting chance-taking that presents a broader set of possibilities, or even a broader stylistic scope, than what ends up on a "proper" album by the act in question. [DELETED LONG ASIDE ABOUT PINK FLOYD]. But we're not talking about Floyd today, we are talking about Boston treasure Hallelujah The Hills. Its terrific Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Trash Can, released Tuesday, is an exciting collection of non-album singles, coulda-shouldas and curiosities (the most curious of these is an unsolicited dance remix Hallelujah The Hills received of "Wave Backwards To Massachusetts"). The 21-song set also contains three new songs, including "Confessions Of An Ex-Ghost," which recalls a similarly excellent pop classic from Love As Laughter. It speaks to the overall quality of Hallelujah The Hills' work that its loose ends don't sound like session seconds compared to the new tracks and singles. Hallelujah The Hills' not-so-secret weapon is the facility with which fronter Ryan Walsh's voice conveys myriad emotional dimensions. Compound that with the fact that he's a brilliant lyricist -- clever, self-effacing, often dead-on with a Malkmus-ian deadpan -- and a cracking coterie of collaborators and it's easy to see why there's gold at every turn here, from the spitting vitriol of the overdriven live version of the stomping shouter "(You Better Hope You) Die Before Me" to the breezy and whip-smart strummer "Honey, Don't It All Seem So Phony." Hallelujah The Hills played its last show for the foreseeable future last Friday at the Sinclair in Cambridge, MA, and now intends to turn its attention to writing and recording a new album. The act's most recent long-player was 2012's No One Knows What Will Happen Next. We think you can stream all of Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Trash Can via the Bandcamp embed below, which you should do, as it will make you whole.



>> A couple years ago we were just finishing up a long stint of travel for the day job, which required of us a lot of airplane trips to the center of the good ol' U.S. of A. and back again. We were pretty well exhausted by all of this -- not the travel, but the work -- and one of the rare pleasures of it all was sitting down on the airplane, closing our eyes, and listening to Broken Shoulder's tremendous debut long-player Broken Shoulderrr. The set, still available for purchase via Audio Antihero right here, is a trance-facilitating pastiche of melody and noise, pretty and engaging and just challenging enough but not so much so that one can't listen to it while resting. On an airplane. Over the last couple years the music of now Tokyo-based Broken Shoulder has varied stylistically somewhat on succeeding releases, embracing at times more chaos than melody. We are pleased to hear something of a return to the sound of that debut collection on the band's latest, Title Track. The highlight of the collection is the closing number "What Is Thirteen?," which arranges field recording, droning guitar arpeggiation and other sonic elements into a gently churning aural roux that seems to spread in every direction all at once before receding into an insectoid buzz and urban crowd noise. Title Track is available for purchase as a digital download and CDR via Broken Shoulder's Bandcamp right here, and we've embedded the entire set for streaming below. The CDR's are packaged in a handmade paper sleeve with fancy stickers, if that's the sort of thing you like. The collection was recorded in January 2013 at mastermind Neil Debnam's home in Japan and mastered by the great Benjamin Shaw (who, incidentally, just played what he claims will be his final live gig in London). Stream Title Track via the embed below; whether you purchase a plane ticket as well, well, we'll leave that up to you.



>> This publication regularly decries the glut of contemporary guitar bands that have "discovered" reverb and find the genre tag "surf" a convenient descriptor for weak material, but that doesn't mean we don't ever find a band we like making surfy sounds. Take for example Israel-based guitar-pop unit Soda Fabric, a quartet that recently released a third digital single from its planned EP titled Tears On The Beach. The tune is called "She Hides Her Soul," and in its first moments its splashy electric snare and clean guitars come across as a little too benign. But the song steadily gathers intensity and bursts with a delightfully unhinged mania at each chorus: fronter Moosh Fabric's vocals decompose into throaty shouts, Shachak Fabric pelts the crash cymbals until the din resembles a sheer, but palpable, curtain of white noise. "She Hides Her Soul" was released to the wilds of the Internet April 25, and you can download it from Bandcamp right here, or stream it via the embed below. There is also a kitschy video for "She Hides Her Soul" that features a girl dancing in animal-print underwear and chewing gum at the same time; if that is your thing, you can watch it right here. There is no release date at present for Tears On The Beach, but the art is on display right here along with a pledge that it is "coming out soon," in a limited edition. Soda Fabric is plotting a tour of Germany, according to this post.

Today's Hotness: Fighting Kites/Broken Shoulder, Moody Gowns

>> London-based record label dynamo Audio Antihero ("...we are the best at records.") has a big autumn on tap, not the least of which is the forthcoming full-length from Benjamin Shaw, which will be released in November. But devotees need not wait so long for new music: Audio Antihero's latest money-burning scheme is to release Oct. 10 a split EP featuring tasteful post-rock instrumentalists Fighting Kites and ambient waver Broken Shoulder (which, incidentally, is the solo vehicle of Fighting Kites founder Neil Debenham). Fans may recall the latter act's sublime sorta self-titled effort Broken Shoulderrr from early this year, an undulating box of tone and light to which we listened often while regularly commuting by plane across time zones. Broken Shoulder's half of Split is a bit more tense: while the collection is no less hypnotic, the push and pull of melody and dissonance offers less resolution in the first two songs. "Exciting Times" is cinematically creepy, rhythmically wheezing and drags drones like heavy links of chain. "Organomegaly" is similarly uneasy, but more subdued. The eight-minute reverie "Shark Island" is more of a piece with the music from Broken Shoulderrr, and relies on a determined cycle of guitar notes charting a more optimistic melody across a series of shuddering ripples.

For its part, Fighting Kites defies post-rock convention by not making heavy dynamics the focal point of its compositions (an observation also contained in the press materials for the release; validation!). The North London-based quartet, which formed in 2009, makes music that very well could have lyrics tacked on, but it doesn't lack for their absence either. Fighting Kites has self-released two previous demos, making this split the band's first official release: welcome to the machine, lads! Stream and pre-order the entire EP -- which is being released in a limited edition of 200 -- via the Bandcamp embed below; Fighting Kites' "Wojtek The Bear" and Broken Shoulder's "Organomegaly" are avails for free download should you be inspired to engage in some minimal clicking of the mouse. Fighting Kites will be in session for Resonance FM on Sept. 17. Broken Shoulder will be opening Audio Antihero's Birthday/Benjamin Shaw's album launch on November 25th at The Miller in London Bridge.



>> Sometimes in our doddering dotage we simply lose sight of the email. Which is why we're only now getting around to telling you about Leeds-based indie pop quintet Moody Gowns and their cracking single "Nelson Skills," which was issued July 18. The song, as best as we can tell, has something to do with a cat and a vacation; more importantly, it's got a prickly groove, sweet melodies, murmured verses, shiny guitar chunks and cozy xylophone or something that sounds like xylophone. The sum total communicates like some magical mean of Talking Heads and Style Council, which we think you will agree is a victory for everyone. "Nelson Skills" was released as a free digital download and on a very limited edition CD along with two additional demos, "Warringtonian Heroes" and "Treat Me As You Treat Your Wife," available for two pounds including home delivery to local patrons. Beat that, AmazAppleHMVBestBuy! Moody Gowns was formed in 2008 and its discography also includes two EPs Snakes And Horses and Sincerely Yours, as well as a single "Mr. Money." If Moody Gowns has more like this sitting about, we are quite eager to hear it.

Nelson Skills by MoodyGowns