Today's Hotness: Mooncreatures, Tungs, Tapes & Tubes

>> Well, it didn't come as soon as we had hoped when we wrote about the band's first EP here two years ago, but Mooncreatures are indeed back, with another cinematic and evocative collection of heavily vibing ambient dreampop. The London-based duo's new, hermetic EP Gaslamps feels even more of a piece than its remarkable debut, as its six gentle songs steadily swell and breathe into one another. Band founder Rhys Griffiths describes the set as "a northern European night time record," but we'd put a finer point on it: the proceedings would seem to be aural travelogue of sorts, or so the song titles suggest. Opener "Cityscape, Hauptbahnhof" is all gauzy shimmer, as much an array of slowly shifting thoughts as it is cycle of pretty, waivering chords. The reverie is briefly suspended by a stretching tone that suggests a far off police siren, and the listener is suddenly transported to the second composition, the more intently structured dreamer "Tram To Brockenheim." The second half of the EP contains the sort of haunting half-dreams that hang in your consciousness for mere moments upon waking; these come in the form of the 44 second sketch "View From" and its two-minute successor "Expedition To." Gaslamps was released as a digital download March 14 via French label Beko, a concern that has also released music by the previously Hotnessed The Bilinda Butchers, Drug Rug and others. Stream the entire set via the Bandcamp embed below, and click through to purchase the full EP.



>> Earlier in 2014 we deemed Heavy Midgets' superlative LP Super Kings the first excellent surprise of the year, and now the label responsible for it, Richmond's Bad Grrrl Records, extends its streak of hot releases from the area's best DIY guitar bands with a new long player from reliable scene mainstays Tungs. Tungs' weirdly wonderful Not For Grandma finds the trio further pushing sonic boundaries and contorting its influences, as it has since debuting in 2010 with a set called Sleeping. More so than any of its prior collections, Not For Grandma catalogs the band's whims like a mixtape. Surprises abound -- we recommend going straight to the deep cut "Eggsack" and sticking around for the completely demented saxophone that abducts the song in its final 90 seconds -- as each song seems to almost inhabit a separate universe. Single "Roses" is an aggressive, minute-long punker in the vein of early '80s Black Flag, with plenty of palm muting, echoey vocals and a slick delay-time spin in the final seconds as the tune collapses. The threesome shifts gears hard for the following track "Geebus," whose clean guitar chops and falsetto vocals mark it as an R&B-tinged guitar-pop jam until thick distortion overtakes the tune in the chorus. Most impressive is the four-song stretch from "Bone Dry" to the doomy (but strangely gleeful) "Flesh Light," which posits an alternate reality in which punky, Bleach-era Nirvana and the darker, bent string, drop-D-tuned Pac. Northwest grunge were never watered down following Cobain & Co.'s rise to superstardom. All four of the songs revel in the classic fuzz of alternative America's '80s heyday, and the serrated and slack nature (check the goofy closer "Me Fucking You") of it all is as cathartic as it is oddly comforting. Not For Grandma is available from Bad Grrrl now on CD, tape and vinyl via this Bandcamp page. Stream all of the long-player via the embed below.



>> Tapes & Tubes' music is meditative and sturdily constructed, and it has a timeless quality that has a lot to do with great songcraft and probably a bit to do with the manner in which it is recorded, too. The act is the project of Olympia, Wash.-'s Austin Potter, a home recording and analog sound enthusiast whose love for the dreamier and more sedate side of Yo La Tengo (or, by extension, greatly underrated Brits It Hugs Back) is readily ascertained by listening to the recent collection Ebb Tide. Throughout the contemplative, 10-song set boxy, minimal drumming, organ and Mr. Potter's quiet vocals routinely work in tandem to create vividly murky moods and a sense of broad possibility. The collection offers affirmative nods in the direction of Lou Reed and Bob Dylan, in the form of covers of "I Remember You" and "God Knows," respectively. The former is a relatively deep cut from Reed's 1986 set Mistrial, which is widely considered to be, well, the album before the one that had everyone proclaiming (rightfully) that Lou Reed was "back" (that would be the 1989 opus New York). The original has its charms, but Potter's reinvention of "I Remember You" succeeds via its understated restraint: Reed's bouncy guitar is kept, but the awful canned rhythm tracks scrapped. The new interpretation gives a sense of the reasoned smarts Potter brings to a song, and those smarts are evidenced throughout Ebb Tide. "Beginning" echoes to a certain extent Yo La Tengo's masterful "On Our Way To Fall," but Potter's whispered vocals, almost impossibly, feel even more intimate than those of Ira Kaplan. The whirling drone of organ on Tapes & Tubes' "Haunted House" may be a little too perfect, but it goes far toward establishing a sheets-of-rain-down-the-windshield vibe as well as the tune's steady groove. Grooves aren't always a necessity, however: the shimmering ambient guitar exploration "Solo Guitar Two" is pretty and enchanting, and indicates that the music of Tapes & Tubes may be increasingly potent the more minimal its approach. Ebb Tide was self-released last month and is available as a digital download via Bandcamp; plans are in place for a limited-edition cassette release as well. An even newer short collection titled Amplifer is already on offer right here.

Review: Heavy Midgets | Super King

We've witnessed countless record promotion tactics over the years,* but none is as pleasurable for fans presently as what could be construed as anti-promotion: the sudden and unannounced album drop. It's been famously done recently by Beyoncé and, a year ago, by My Bloody Valentine, among many others. With almost every aspect of our largely mundane lives memorialized in the infinite sea of data soup that is the Internet, these days real surprises -- hell, even real experiences -- are hard to come by. Richmond quartet Heavy Midgets made life a little more real early this month when it delivered a tingly eureka moment of its own in the form of their stellar first full length Super King. The set was posted to Bandcamp without warning, and the songs contained therein just as abruptly emerged from the foursome's former furrow of lo-fi haze into sharp resolution, carrying with them a renewed and impressive ethos expressed in terms of complex, DIY guitar pop.

The beautifully realized collection impresses with its range and routinely inspired songwriting, which seems to draw from influences as disparate as Aftermath-era Rolling Stones and modern San Francisco art-punk. Super King leads with its best pop song, "Nothing New," a showcase for Heavy Midgets' signature sour guitar dynamics, skittish rhythms, and rich, driving vocal work from one of the band's four singers. Charlanne McCarthy's wonderful vocals echo the affecting, lower-register of Stereolab's Laetitia Sadier, but do so with a bracing punk vigor. The song abandons its verse-chorus structure after introducing a bristling bridge of serrated guitars whose experimental edge will sound familiar to fans of Deerhoof or math-mod rockers Welcome. The dazzle of "Nothing New" persists with notable guitar interplay and, eventually, theremin. "Daylight Savings" follows, and brings with it some surf-punk charm and the telling lyric "some of us won't even survive daylight savings."

Thereafter, the album showcases in turn each of the singers and songwriters within Heavy Midgets. The male voices propound harder-edged approaches within shorter, faster frameworks. "Furry Thing" touts a darker, more reverberated menace, while "Wedding/Bedding" alternates spoken passages and sweetly sung melodies alongside inventive and engaging xylophone. The heaviest impression is left by the sunny pop moves of "Dynasty;" indeed, one might consider it the "Divine Hammer" of Super King -- a bubbling, carefree track that closes with a loud, distorted power chord section and guitar solos that call to mind vintage Weezer and Built To Spill.

With Super King, Heavy Midgets deliver one of 2014's first truly interesting guitar records. Every song transcends their familiar elements to reveal creative and singular compositions welling with both grit and clarity in satisfying proportions. Richmond has made its name in recent years on creative guitar bands, and this crew, as well as the folks at Bad Grrrl Records, can be considered among the vanguard. Super King is available as a digital download now, and will be issued on cassette by Bad Grrrl Jan. 30. That same day Heavy Midgets play a release show at Richmond's Gallery 5, with support from New Turks, Spandrel and Malatese; full deets here. Bad Girl released in 2012 Heavy Midgets' previous effort, a split with scenemates Tungs that we wrote about right here. -- Edward Charlton

Heavy Midgets: Bandcamp | Facebook | Soundcloud



*This discussion always calls to mind Fat Wreck Chords or Epitaph sending an inflatable sex sheep to WESU in the mid-'90s. Yes, we just typed the words "inflatable sex sheep."

Today's Hotness: Age Rings, Manorlady, Tungs/Heavy Midgets

>> Boston institution Midriff Records will release next week Age Rings' AM/PM EP, a companion piece to last year's best-of-2011 long-player Black Honey. The EP is comprised of songs resected from the Boston-based indie rockers' original, two-disc version of the acclaimed long-player it issued to Kickstarter backers a year ago. Midriff's release of AM/PM is no surprise, as it had been the label's plan since releasing its one-disc iteration of Black Honey last November [review] to release the songs it had excised at a later date. And that later date is May 25, when Age Rings plays a release show for the EP on the occasion of this month's installment of the very successful Midriff Records residency at Radio in Somerville, MA -- but more about that early next week. In a sense, AM/PM is a bin of spare arms and legs. But while the EP doesn't explicitly illuminate any heretofore unrevealed aspect of Black Honey (or vice versa), that perhaps speaks to the deftness of Midriff's curation of the portfolio of songs comprising the original, double-disc Black Honey such that the releases are self-contained collections complete in and of themselves. Indeed, the EP is populated with understated but brilliant rock songs showcasing Age Rings fronter Ted Billings' reedy tenor and wry outlook. Standout cuts include the noisier, heavier fist-pumper "Dreaming Forever" and the characteristically uptempo-but-down-in-the-mouth shuffler "Think Myself Sick." It's hard to know what to make of last week's news that Mr. Billings has converted the ongoing sessions for Age Rings' follow-up to Black Honey into sessions for a solo record Billings characterizes as "a bit of a departure from AR." After all, we like Age Rings a lot. But time will tell. In the mean time, rest assured in the knowledge that AM/PM is a known quantity, six tracks of lean, rootsy indie rock.

>> We were feeling a bit of a darkwave trend coming on when we last heard from Charlottesville, VA's Manorlady. We're not sure that has been borne out, particularly due to the apparent dissolution of the Lehigh Valley's best calling card in years, Soars, whose wonderful self-titled set seemed like another important focal point for the misperceived trendlet. But Manorlady soldiers on, thrives even, and the trio's latest collection Ego Oppressor will be self-released by the band June 18. Ego Oppressor will be issued as a CD/DVD combination; the DVD features an album-length, beat-synched video track to accompany the music on the CD. We don't think this will surprise anyone, but according to Manorlady fronter Aaron Baily, "[i]t's really, really, really trippy." The album remains true to the mid-fi and dark recordings from the band's last record, but the intensity level has increased. More aggressive tunes like the first preview track "Lines In The Corner Of Your Face" rock a little harder, while the dreamier, more subdued songs such as the pensive and nearly still "Sea Beast" -- check the Soundcloud embed below -- are more tightly focused. "Sea Beast," in particular, is exceptionally well-composed and the trio's skillful layering of guitar and synth (and even vocal parts) here hints at wide-open songwriting territory the band will find very fertile. Ego Oppressor will eventually be for sale right here, so keep checking back. We reviewed the trio's prior full-length Home a year ago here.



>> We think it is interesting that the term lo-fi has its heaviest associations bound to Guided By Voices' and Sebadoh's respective brands, while things like early Black Flag and Bad Brains recordings don't get discussed the same way (or at least not anymore). From a production standpoint, Richmond-based quartet Tungs has more in common with the Spot school of audio fidelity, at least based on the band's cracking new split release with scenemates Heavy Midgets, Sisters. There is something like a perfect balance to the overdriven productions contained therein; the split was released on vinyl and cassette by Bad Grrrl Records May 13. The music is boxy-sounding, post-punk that bleeds sizzling cymbals, high-hat and red-lined bass fuzz. The recordings practically throw off sparks due to the barely contained energy of the performances, and the rough edges don't detract from the experience; indeed the gritty power of the music on Sisters is the perfect antidote to the hyperclean, antiseptic recordings from the current crop of popular, smooth-pop guitar bands gracing the pages of a lot of music rags these days. But it's not just the everyman production values that make Tungs and Heavy Midgets stand apart: it's that the bands propound songs with character and imagination. Tungs' "Yossarian's Blues" warrants kudos for its vibrant, bristling take on Joy Division-derived punk. But that song seems almost conventional in comparison to "NewDiety," which touts ghostly, under-fi horns and Alice In Chains-indebted vocal yowling, or the pleasantly dubby wandering of "Bad Information." For its part, Heavy Midgets strike gold with its yearning ballad "Oh Susanna," which ends strong with a vast, feedback-flaring guitar lead, and the stuttering pop of anti-anthem "Come Get Me High," each strong enough to anchor a single in their own rights. Buy Sisters from Bad Grrrl right here or buy the digital version right here. Try before you buy via the Bandcamp embeds below.