Baby Birds Don't Eat Burritos

I’ve been bewitched by the beguiling cerebral charm of Kansas-via-New York band Baby Birds Don’t Drink Milk before, especially 2013's Think Tone. The band are back with their fourth album, Burritos. For some reason, with a title like that I expect something much more in the vein of Wavves or Black Lips to pour out of the speakers – but the pastoral Animal Collective-meets-Akron/Family-meets-Fleet Foxes on a spectral bender aesthetics at play here are far more mesmeric. Opening track ‘Kid Margot’ floats in and around you, a percolating miasma of cavernous echo and flow. There is hazed acoustic strums, silken guitar washes, haunting-yet-inviting choral vocals, with lots of aural quirks flitting in the shadows, like insects pinging off the window on a tepid summer evening. This is somehow much lighter and freer than previous BBDDM releases, yet just as arresting in its joyous expanse.

Fire Talk are bringing out Burritos in March – you can pre-order it here.

FRIDAY COVER UP - Defending All My Parrots

Haven't done one of these for a while, so why not? Here is a cover of 'All My Loving', a track first blasted out by supergroup The Almighty Defenders (AKA King Khan and the Black Lips) from Madrid punkoids The Parrots. It came out on Record Store Day through Lucky Number and Burger Records as a split 7" with fellow Spanish movers and shakers Hinds (AKA Deers). It is a fitting cover/tribute - their lo-fi garage contusions a fit for the slacker theatrics of Khan and the boys. They are bringing out an EP next month through Luv Luv Luv Records.

Sole Corrections Make For Some Heavy Times

I just got a hold of Chicago reprobates Heavy Times' 3rd record Fix It Alone (out on the inimitable Hozac Records). The breakneck punk that permeates these eighteen tracks hits you like the Ebola virus, but rather than eradicating your immune system, these tracks fortify your soul, line your stomach and heal your liver - who needs diseases when Man's most dangerous predator is himself? Fix It Alone is a finely tuned beast, showcasing rambunctious yell-alongs ('Ouija Board', 'Kidnapped', 'Trouble Walker'), dark lurking sleaze ('Night Looks', 'In My Sleep'), champagne-edition ballbreaking knucklebusters ('Future Creeps', 'Daylight'), lairy sun-drenched good times ('American Love', 'River's Edge')... It's so infectious it should have its own visceral, wretch-inducing label slapped on the cover - for this album is surely more addictive than any other drug placed on this earth. Ramones, Wipers, Black Lips, MC5 - their ghosts (present and past) all knock on the door, desperate to join the Heavy Times party. Cooper Crain (Bitchin' Bajas/CAVE)'s production is excellent, elevating the album yo even loftier heights. Such unashamed punk shouldn't be this pristine - yet in another world Heavy Times would be on the panel of The X Factor. Drunken pop doyens with a sprinkling of barbed wire, Heavy Times are looking good, and with Fix It Alone, are dressed to kill.

Fix It Alone can be gleaned from here. Heavy Times are launching this at The Empty Bottle tonight alongside the excellent Oblivians - if you are in the area, there is nothing else you need to do but be at that show.

Heavy Times - River's Edge

Blow A Hole Throw My Soul

I'm really loving the self-titled debut from Greek garage leches Bazooka that came out a couple months ago on Slovenly Records.  Wavering drunkenly from straight up chugging punk to more psychedelic meanderings ('Mr George', 'Church'), Bazooka is spiked with enough attitude and bluster (and a spattering of visceral pop) to help it rise above most other pretenders - a lot like Black Lips, then. Then there are moments like 'Burn That Dress' which lurks and leers, the fun bleached away, the promiscuity dissipating to true threat - and it actually peaks at being the best track on here.

Full of surprises on each repeat listen, Bazooka could be the best garage rock album of 2013. Grab it here.

Bazooka - Ravening Trip
Bazooka - Shame Take My Brain
Bazooka - Burn That Dress

Darkness Under The Starlington Moon

Fancy drifting off into a dusky, monochrome noir sunset? Let Paper Moon lull you into its husky, sultry embrace. The debut record from Brooklyn's Georgiana Starlington (AKA Julie and Jack Hines of Black Lips/K-Holes infamy), Paper Moon is like listening to the vice and depravity of forbidden desires as voiced by Johnny and June Carter Cash. The fact that these characters have crafted such haunted balladry catches you off guard as much as realising that Hozac Records is responsible for putting this into your sweaty hands. Nothing is as it seems - the tempestuous 'Hard Grave', the maudlin 'Brave Wolf', the echoed sonorous 'The Great Divide' - and is frankly quite brilliant. It's a creeper - you think you've heard it all before, but then you slip down into the murky depth, never to return, and the endless repeats of Paper Moon eternally soothes your shadowy soul.

Pick up Paper Moon here - the soundtrack to those night were fantasy and reality entwine.

Georgiana Starlington - Hard Grave
Georgiana Starlington - The Great Divide

Hippy Hypocrites On Crystal Shipsss

A triptych of warped warbles of varying degrees of low fidelity, here are three releases likely to blow your mind and fill your ears with white fuzz and ear-candy.

Danish-born, Berlin-based psych pop wizard Jacob Faurholt has been on Sonic Masala's radar ever since he entered the fray under the moniker Crystal Shipsss. His Yay release made an impression, and now he (along with a band of willing  wanderers) is back with not one but two releases slated for 2013. First cab off the ranks is this self-titled EP, available on cassette through Three Ring Records, Mouca and Raw Onion. The 5-track EP are scuzzy to the point of obstructive - this is Demo 101 territory, almost to a fault. Yet whether the band are opening up the throttle or quietening down to a soothing idle, Crystal Shipsss is never an easy proposition - a wayward journey into the counterculture of the backwaters of your mind. Yet in the past year they have traipsed across stages alongside TEEN, The Black Heart Procession and Grizzly Bear, and these three best represent where Faurholt and his acolytes are heading. It's a great taster for Crystal Shipsss's next full-length Dirty Dancer which we will see before the year is out.

Another lo-fi gem that struck a chord here at Sonic Masala was Tweaker In The Park, the debut LP by Indiana's guitar-pop malcontents  Hypocrite In A Hippy Crypt. Tweaker Two (out on 12" vinyl through Tree Machine Records) continues the weird themes and tin-cans-and-shoestring budget, yet offers more semblances of spit and polish alongside being anchored in more grounded, maudlin concerns such as fading youth and imploding dreams. Its hooks are surreptitious, then the penny drops - once you are familiar with this world, it becomes a second skin, with all schizophrenic connotations to such a notion held intact. Elliott Smith suspended in formaldehyde, preserved in sepia and seedy chagrin. An addiction worth having.

Finally we have Brooklyn's Hippy. Reminiscent of the nascent garage punk and guitar pop amalgams that the likes of Harlem (seriously, where have these guys gone???) and Black Lips dish out at regular intervals, the trio's new (debut) record Almost Live is in turns buoyant, ridiculous, bilious and carefree - tonguing the power socket whilst outta your gourd kinda fun. Hurts so good (c'mon, baby now...)

It's A Shame About (Mincer) Ray

It's not often that I get a request for beer. Well, that's actually not true - I'm always being hit up for a beer, to buy a beer, to scull a beer, to shout a beer. But it's rare that such a request comes from Germany - yes, the land of the stein. That's what I received today from social reprobates Mincer Ray.

At first I couldn't work it out - the trio (two American, one Brazilian) are in Berlin! You can buy beer 24/7 from your local corner store for one euro (or something similar I'm sure, I havent been there since 2010). Beer in Australia comes at the cost of a kidney and your first born.

But then I played their new EP A Magnate's Reach, and goddamn if I wasn't reaching for the rusty scissors and an ice pack, just to help some brothers out. These five tracks are the right colour of demented guitar pop that sways between Guided By Voices (their moniker is a dead giveaway there) by way of a Jeff Magnum-led Black Lips, or Lee Ranaldo trying to go straight as the new frontman of Pavement. Such disparate swings are achieved by each member singing their own tunes, instruments being flung around restlessly with wanton abandon, all emotions present and accounted for before being discarded hastily like a sweaty condom wrapper, and you are left heaving, somewhat placated and riding the waves of ecstasy whilst still wishing it had all lasted for far longer. And to be fair, after such an effort, a beer probably is in order. The shout's on me, Rays.

Grab A Magnate's Reach here.

Schooling Knights For Free

We here at Planet Masala have championed School Knights since their Rush SK release came out almost two years ago, and what with the current weight of love being poured over surf garage punks such as Wavves and Bleeding Knees Club, I thought that I was on bridge of a ship that was sailing the highest sea of discovery. As it turns out, the Denver based cats are happy to keep bubbling under the surface, which is why when they couldn't find the right way to release the current crop of tracks they had at their disposal, they put them up for free on Bandcamp under the name Fre(E)P.

That's not to say their 2012 has been quiet - on the contrary, they have supported the likes of Black Lips and Japanther, with shows with Cloud Nothings, White Denim and King Tuff in the works. They just got sick of these songs sitting around and wanted everyone to hear them and love them. As they say themselves, "We want everyone to hear them, so that the next time we release some songs people can go 'Wow, I didn't think it was possible, but this is way better than that free EP they put out.'"


You can (and most definitely should, seeing as it's awesome AND free) grab Fre(E)P here.

School Knights - Powerslut
School Knights - Thanksgiving

Sick Of Your Dancing Black Lips

As if I wasn't going to love this 7" - ever since coming over to the Dark Side of Black Lips, I've enjoyed everything they've laid their sticky palms on. This one offers two cutting room floor tracks from the Arabia Mountain sessions. I'm a bigger fan of the B-side 'Dance With You', but it's all good, shambolic fun as always. Out on Vice Records, I'm led to believe it's already sold out, so scour your local record stores for this one.

Black Lips - Sick Of You
Black Lips - Dance With You

School Knights

Those snotty slackos School Knights have a couple new tunes floating around the ether. After the disappointing news that the fucking rad SK/Night Manager split isn't likely to materialise, it's good to hear these guys are still throwing their shit at their teenage bedroom walls. Take that, MOM! Yeah, these two tracks in particular play the Wavves card, but when the flat-brim cap fits... It's goddamn catchy, a veritable KFC bucketload of fun, plus it's a bit meatier - the duo of Michael Stein and Zack Roif are now a foursome, thanks to Morris Kolontyrsky and Ben Donehower! Radness! And it is honed (as much as this shit can be honed) with some ace tours last year opposite Ty Segall, Black Lips, Cloud Nothings, Vivian Girls and Gauntlet Hair. Yeah, I just came a little too...

School Knights - Present Tense
School Knights - Bender

Backwards Looking Forward - Acid Kicks/Different Skeletons

Another couple releases that should have been at the forefront of your minds before you were lobotomised by Watch The Throne last year...


Acid Kicks are a Philly quartet (three of which play bass, and seeing as I have a distant connection to that instrument I am already enamoured) who put out this EP Life Dreams last year. I have had it floating around for months, and thought that seeing as it plays with me a bit, it should play with you too. It's the typical psych fare that I lap up like alcoholic milkshakes, yet there is a sweaty urgency underneath it all that shakes and rattles the bones. Noisy psych punk with a severe bottom end. Buy the 7" here.


Acid Kicks - Pyramidic Valley


Different Skeletons are a garage rock band from Canada's largest city, Toronto. Their album of last year Secret Jeers was one sloppy, jangly, irreverent jam, Black Lips and the Dirtbombs would be proud.Different Skeletons are delightfully jangled, chanting, and surf-tinged. For all the same reasons I recommended the Bleed Whites I can suggest these guys, especially if you're looking for something quicker and rougher. All and all, a sweet debut album. Plus, it has a great cover (see below) AND is a free download here! Imminently cooler.

Different Skeletons - All Going To Die
Different Skeletons - Samsonite

Blacken Those Princely Lips

Two great shows on tonight kids. Firstly there is the Bonnie Prince Billy show at GoMA for the Matisse Up Late program. Expect some exceptional music coupled with heaps of dicks talking and "being seen". Its a pity that there will be that kind of crowd, but what can you do?

Bonnie Prince Billy - I See A Darkness


Go see Black Lips, that's what you can do! The garage behemoths are bringing their incendiary show to The Zoo, with great support from Tiny Migrants and Cannon (go the Long Gone collective!) This will be the raucous drunkfest that you always dreamed of. And to tie the two shows together in a tenuous fashion...

Black Lips - Modern Art

Beeting On The True Widow

Both of these tracks came up a while ago on the blog merry-go-round - in fact I have so many posts backlogged from past releases they are starting to grow mould - but I couldn't let them slide by, nor could I decide which one to write about to close out this balmy Thursday, so I'm hitting you with both barrels!


First up, it's well known now that I have begun a love affair with Captured Tracks favoured Queens trio The Beets. I love their silly cartoon cover art, their blase attitude, their slacker malaise wrapped up in Black Lips Halloween garb. They released an album at the beginning of the year - Staying Home - which I thought was a lot of fun. Now they are releasing another album called Let The Poison Out (this time finding its home on Hardly Art, still with the cover art though!). I have already gushed over first track from it 'Doing As I Do', but here is another. I'm yet to get my mitts on the LP, although when searching for it down at my local record store (which, after a huge closing down sale and the requisite mass protest, fevered vinyl purchases and gnashing of teeth, is still inexplicably open) I found their first album, Spit In The Face Of People Who Don't Want To Be Cool, so it still kinda worked out for me.

The Beets - Friends Of Friends
The Beets - Doing As I Do


I am a massive fan of True Widow, and their debut album slays me. So when I heard that they already had some new releases coming our way, I was more than stoked. I.N.O is in fact a mixed bag of both leftovers from their impossibly long monikered LP As High As The Highest Heavens And From The Center To The Circumference Of The Earth and brand newies, such as the track 'Bathyscaphe' below. Apart from the title that is at the other end of the length spectrum, it is droning beauty as usual from these Texans. Which means it's crazy good.

True Widow - Bathyscaphe
True Widow - Skull Eyes

NOW do you see why I've included both? Good! Now I'm off to the airport. I will be predisposed for the next few days - not seeing your girlfriend for ten months means there is some catching up to do - but I'm not leaving you hanging! Expect posts about Luke Roberts, Blasted Canyons, a Friday Cover Up, our next Hits From The Box and more!

Mark's Sultanic Mish Mash, Whatever And Whenever He Wants It

Mark Sultan does like to rub people up the wrong way. That said, Ive spoken to the guy a few times and found him to be an ace dude. Fair dues. The fact is, he has been thrashing the garage flag here, there and everywhere for a very long time, and is consistently producing top-shelf stuff. He is releasing two albums, titled Whatever I Want and Whenever I Want respectively. Both will come out on vinyl on In The Red Records. However, you can get a conglomeration of both albums in one package called Whatever/Whenever. Its got 7 tracks from each album, so it's basically a sampler. Really, it is good. But you need to get the albums and hear the 12 other tracks left behind! There are some Bobby Darin/Buddy Holly ghost harbouring on there, alongside many other rad touchstones, and if that sounds exciting (which it fucking should), invest. It covers every gamut of rock music, has collabs from members of Black Lips and The Spits, and promises to be seven shades of brown awesomeness.

Mark Sultan - Let Me Freeze
Mark Sultan - Axis Abraxas
Mark Sultan - Sing In Grey

Flippin' Through Some Old School Charts

Let's start afresh, shall we? Its been a few days since we posted, I apologise. So let's get reacquainted over a new band that revels in the old school house of rock, shall we?

Charts are from Portland, a rock trio that love their rock pretty olde. And their EP Birds And Bees is as indebted to Buddy Holly and the Modern Lovers as it is to Thee Oh Sees; to Eddie Cochran as it is to Black Lips; to to Arthur Lee as it is to The Dirtbombs. This is moreso a garage rock revival sound than most of the current movement, and is refreshing because of this. Six slices of 60s inflected chugging rock n roll - its a hell of a lot of fun, I highly recommend it!

Grab Birds And Bees here.

Charts - The Birds & The Bees
Charts - Slow Down Tiger

There's No Beatin The Beets

The Beets are doing what they do, as is brilliantly essayed in cleverly-titled track 'Doing As I Do.' They are in that Black Lips realm, but a little poppier, thus at times a little nicer - and better than Smith Westerns in almost every way. Still funny kids though, and can totally acoustic the fuck out of their vibe. Let The Poison Out (out on new label Hardly Art) promises to be as good as Stay Home, their album from earlier this year on Captured Tracks. Yep, two Beets albums in 2011. Its good to be alive.

The Beets - Doing As I Do

Those Black Lips Have No Bloody Direction

Its been a fast-rising love affair between Atlantan garage punks Black Lips and me. And it seemed doomed for failure when I found out that Mark Ronson was producing their new album, Arabia Mountain. Mark 'Lily Allen' Ronson? Mark 'Im responsible for Amy Winehouse' Ronson? Mark 'my sister has Lindsey Lohan's pubes stuck in her teeth' Ronson? I turned up on the doorstep in tears, ready to throw their chocolates and flowers in their face and deem them bastards and arseholes and that I never wanted to see them again. But they took me into their arms, dried my tears, assured me that Ronson's involvement was purely platonic, he didn't fuck anything up, and that Deerhunter's Lockett Pundtt was always on hand when need. Finally they played me some tracks off it, including this new one 'New Direction' - and the waterworks stopped. I apologised profusely. We got wasted and revelled in each other's company once more. Now Im just waiting for the rock...


Arabia Mountain is out on Tuesday through Vice Records.

Black Lips - New Direction

Natural Child's Not In It - They Live It

I first heard of Nashville's Natural Child earlier this year when scouring the Scion Garage A/V split series and found their 7" collaboration with The Strange Boys (read and check out their track 'The Jungle' here). Well, these retrobates released their debut LP, 1971, last month, and I can safely tell you that they have lost none of the rambunctious, ramshackle blase brilliance that is hinted at in that previous release. The band continues to pipe along on their marriage of blues, punk and garage, embracing Lynard Skynard as quickly as they do Black Lips, and above all waving the flag of getting blitzed like its a commandment from God. Maybe it is.

The album title couldn't be any more apt either - these tracks sound like they've been ripped from the bargain basement of Championship Records. It is definitely adhering to the DIY ethos that is what upholds most garage rock's current recordings, yet it sounds so at home here. This is the perfect soundtrack to a crazy, boozy, drug drenched night with your tightest, and the album to throw on the morning after when reliving those heady highs and laboroius lows. Even when tracks veer away from these themes, such as the Ono-enlivened 'Yoko', with its lurking dirge-like psych riffs, Natural Child hold it all with a sense of jazzed virility that is so potent its hard not to become pregnant with manic expectation - anything can happen, and most probably will. Above all, 1971 just fucking rocks.

1971 is out now on Infinity Cat - get it now.

Natural Child - Makin' It
Natural Child - Beer

Video Vacuum - Black Lips, Wild Beasts, Sun Glitters, Music For Your Plants

OK gang, so you have crawled through the Gauntlet that is the work week, and you are at the final hurdle. So here are some videos that will give you the impetus to make that final push to knock off time and some much needed drunken R & R...

Black Lips have been busy with their upcoming new album Arabia Mountain. Whilst it isnt out til June 7, ">we saw the video for the track 'Go Out And Get It' that they filmed whilst on the Bruise Cruise, and now we have another song to listen to. 'Modern Art' is a real acid trip, both figuratively and literally - and it has me very excited for this release...



Now Im not sure what the regular readers of Sonic Masala think of Wild Beasts, but there is no doubting their popularity further afield, especially after the release of the uber successful Two Dancers LP of 2009. Well they too are prepping the release of their new album called Smother (due out May 9 via Domino), and have a video out for lead single 'Albatross'. Now I thought that the band were ok, but I really like this song - it certainly fit my mood when I was stuck in the house yesterday waiting for my housemate to come back from work to give me my wallet that he "mistakenly" picked up. See what you think...



Here's an ambient trip through National Geographic Peru thanks to Estonia's Music For Your Plants. I mentioned their self-titled EP last year - seems they are re-releasing it with some reworked tracks. This is good news, as Music For Your Plants was a nice slice of DIY groove...



And I thought Id close out the innings with a video I received from Luxembourg spinouts Sun Glitters. The track, 'Feel It', is a three minute slice of blips and glitches that undulates along at a languid pace, with warped chipmunk vocals wafting throughout. Seems like the vid is of a woman orgasming superimposed over two naked people doing yoga... Strange, but the music is nice, and for office workers you only see a couple of bums so there isnt much to be afraid of here...

Sun Glitters - Feel It from João de Almeida on Vimeo.

Now get back to work!

Black Lips, Konkerors and Young Adulthood - 3 Clips To See Us Out

Thought we'd finish Friday with some more clips. Its time we got fucking wasted, and these three vids will definitely help aid that - or at least give you tinnitus beforehand.

First up is the most exciting of the bunch for me, as its a brand new track from the hotly anticipated Black Lips album, Arabia Mountain (produced by Mark Ronson - wtf?!?), called 'Go Out And Get It!'. It was filmed whilst the guys played on the amazing-sounding Bruise Cruise (read more about it here), so there's lots of sun, surf and rockers showing off whiter than white skin. Obligatory Vivian Girls sighting and a turfed in the surf guitar also. Ace of base!

[NB - for some reason the clip isnt working on SM - sorry! - so head over to Culture Bully to check this out...]

Next is MYTY KONKEROR, whose i miss the future. LP of last year (out now on vinyl through Twin Lakes Records) was a surprise sleeper hit, scoring high on many end of year lists. Well now one of those great, raw psych tracks, 'Cell Division', has its own video - in all its 50s B-movie drag racing goodness!



Finally we have Young Adults. The Boston trio put out a killer demo, followed by their debut LP Black Hole, last year. They are supporting Titus Andronicus at the end of the month, sweet gig guys! Off that is 'Let Us Out', typical dissonant guitar wailing from these crazy kids. Gets my blood a-pumpin'...

YOUNG ADULTS - "Let Us Out" from YOUNG ADULTS on Vimeo.

Now go out and write yourselves off, my pretties!