Philadelphia Collins Is The Sofa Queen

Man, talk about excited. One of the best labels of the last few years has been Boston's Exploding In Sound - mining the rich depths of discordant guitar rock squalls, quirks and tics, they have brought to the world amazing records from the likes of Pile, Ovlov, Palehound, Disco Doom, Krill, LVL UP, Bad History Month, Grass Is Green, Washer, Porches...it's a mighty impressive roll call. So you can understand my unbridled excitement at the unveiling of Philadelphia Collins. You always have to be wary with pun-based bands - although this one isn't as mawkish or obvious as some, and is preceded by the above Trailer Park Boys character - but when the members come from this pedigree (Speedy Ortiz, Ovlov, Grass Is Green) all aspersions are duly cast aside. And when first taster 'Sofa Queen' features the vocals of Palehound's Ellen Kempner - well it's a nobrainer. 'Sofa Queen' is a noisy clusterbomb, imploding on itself in lazy spooling white noise, but it takes its time to unwind, mirroring Kempner's drawled breathy voice nicely before the gnarled edge creeps in...  The track comes off Derp Swervin', where the band employs vocals from other EIS bands such as Two Inch Astronaut and Dirty Dishes. Pre-order it here.

Happily Diving Headlong Into This Big Ol World

Happy Diving are a four piece who believe in opening all tracks with wails of feedback, blasting through pop conventions, mainlining sugar-rush mayhem before fading away like an imploding quasar. Their album Big World is basically one song, repeated ten times. The thing is, this actually doesn’t bother me at all – because their clearly beloved song structure of choice is delivered with such relish and volume, all imbued with amber light, it feels like a bliss bomb that you don’t want to stop tearing your very essence apart. So it can be visceral – but we are talking Whirr/Dino Jr/PAWS visceral – a sun-drenched shoegaze aesthetic adhered to scuzz-pop and hipster noise in bite-size form. This is heightened by Jack Shirley’s touch – with Deafheaven and the aforementioned Whirr receiving his mannered touch-ups, he is becoming the go-to for more angular yet aurally accessible shoegaze gauze. The press release compares the quartet to Japandroids, a band that I obviously like, but I feel the band is more akin to another SM fave, Ovlov, albeit with a sunnier disposition. Big World isn’t so big – it’s brash, familiar, and repetitive – but why get out of the pool when it’s so good?

You can get Big World (out through Father/Daughter Records) here – vinyl variations include oxblood or virgin black, but you've missed out on the oxblood and baby blue splatter on double mint - what a delicious disaster that record would be...

Ex Breathers With Bite

Tallahassee cro-mag men Ex-Breathers release a brutal 7" through Texas Is Funny Records soon (preorder it here). Exbx is great because the bass is so prevalent throughout, never moreso than on excellent opener 'Big Hand' and 'Pocket' before the guitar rips in and flays you open. There is respite - sort of - with the brooding sludge of 'Hang', but otherwise its relentless evisceration. Fucking great.



The genetics doesn't change when in other company either, as their cut from the four-way Community Records split (others featured - Ovlov, Gnarwhal, Woozy). 'Falling Away' shows the larynx-tear but the heart beating underneath. The other tracks are excellent too - you can get this here.

Eating Krill in Spook Houses

I decided to jam these two releases together fairly tenuously (and what's with my needy penchant for East Coast rock bands at the moment?). Lucky Leaves is the new record from trio Krill, and its goddamn rad. It has the Jawa-esque cover art; the band have their own theme tune ("Krill Forever" indeed); Jonah Furman's vocals, whilst quirky and off-kilter, are alluring in their feverish imploring ways; perfect placement of noise and space, time changes and fades, air to breathe and cement to suffocate in; and the basslines are crystal, something you don't always have in these days' records. The drumming serves the songs, not as a driver or a destroyer, but as a guide, showing the guests in the right direction. I'm clearly a sucker for this slightly downer, brooding, off-kilter rock (see - Spook Houses, Pile, Ovlov, Fat History Month...); the Boston region has an abundance of them; and Krill have quite rightly risen to the top echelons of the pack. You can buy Lucky Leaves here (out through Sippy Cup Everything) - I know I am.

One of the surprise albums of last year was the aforementioned New Jersey band Spook Houses' Trying LP. Well the four-piece have some new stuff on the way in the form of a split with the also-aforementioned Fat History Month through Double Double Whammy Records (you can pre-order it here). Here there is a bit of a switcheroo though, with Spook Houses heading down a fuzzier, cozier, quirk-pop spin-out. It's bare, Robert Pollard/Jeff Mangum coaxing stuff - and whilst it doesn't have the hooks in abundance that 'American' used to slay me, it is the perfect curveball that this kind of 7" allows a band to throw. The static intro and the incessant fuzz throughout sits beautifully too when you put the headphones on. Thanks guys.

Rocking Cosmic Exploding Porches

(photo by Jessica Lehremans)

Exploding In Sound are figuratively (and probably literally) blowing up with their recent releases, with both Fat History Month and especially Ovlov offering stellar records of late. That doesn't mean the label has exhausted the coffers however.

New York's Porches. are releasing their debut LP Slow Dance In The Cosmos late August, and it's a corker. Swinging inexplicably between 60s pop rock, maudlin campfire musings, reverb-heavy Casiotunes, wonky slacker euphemisms and a lead in Aaron Maine who sounds like a cross between Mark Koselek and Brandon Flowers (similar to their labelmates Fat History Month - well, except for the Brandon Flowers reference. I feel I should clarify isn't a backhanded compliment - Flowers and his cronies had the inkling of something in those first two albums, which the excellent collab with Lou Reed verified, before they decided they would rather be U2). Intro song and single 'Headsgiving' is fantastic, even though the opening riff sounds not that dissimilar from another (ex)labelmate Speedy Ortiz' 'Silver Spring'. That is part of the charm of Porches. - that despite the genre hopping (the spazz-synth faux RnB of 'After Glow'; the faux MOR ramble of 'Franklin The Flirt' - just a lot of fauxs really, with tongue planted in concrete in the cheek), Maine manages to anchor it into a skewed world where everything is aligned and in its right place, for better or worse depending on the abuse being suffered or inflicted, a tawdry scratched out existence. Slow Dance In The Cosmos is its own beast, inhabiting the same cracked, homespun world that Exploding In Sound seems to be cultivating whilst ensuring their environment is invariably their own.

Pre-order Slow Dance In The Cosmos here - it's a keeper.

Porches. - Headsgiving
Porches. - Franklin The Flirt

I Am Ovlov

I love it when you throw an album on with 0% knowledge of what is about to assault you - and it ends up being mindblowing. Massachusetts label Exploding In Sound have an uncanny knack of slinging unknown entities my way that have pulled the rug out from under me - Pile, Fat History Month and Speedy Ortiz have all graced their stable at some stage. I have been listening to Am, the debut LP from the Newtown Connecticut upstarts Ovlov, for a few weeks, but missed the boat on writing about them before the album was released last week.  The band can't help but wallow in the holy waters of Dinosaur Jr ('Grapes', the crushing 'Blue Baby') and Archers of Loaf ('Really Bees'), melding molten distortion with insidious melody - preternatural pop tunes for those with chronic tinnitus. Come for the noise; stay for the lack of pretension, the weary warmth, the all-you-can-eat harmonic buffet. Abject 90s predilections never felt so right as they do here.

Am is a killer gift that keeps on giving. Have at it here. Ovlov have been playing some great shows Stateside recently, not least with SM faves PAWS and Speedy Ortiz, and seeing as Speedy Ortiz seems about to explode (more on that soon), let's hope these guys follow suit.

Ovlov - Milk
Ovlov - Where's My Dini