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.

Stroke The Illegal Squirrel With Invisible Hands

Haha, lewd innuendo, always gets the Interwebz a-goin...

Charlottesville pop transgressives Invisible Hand released a cool little cassette a little while back called Squirrel Jail on Funny/Not Funny Records, and I've heard naught about it. A crying shame, because it is 19 songs - that's right, 19 songs - of awesome sonic flavours. What's more, it isn't an album but a large collection of demos and outtakes, on a cassette, so there is no reason why this should be as great as it is. Instead of lo-fi farts leaking out from the bottom of the funeral pyre of a thousand sacrificed vanity projects, we have infectious hooks ('Eating Out'), raucous energy that echoes of the better side of British paisley rock from the 60s on steroids ('Lowbaude'), warped Beatles-baiting psych melts ('Squatters Rights'), broken GBV spits ('Wounded Eels') and languid space-outs performed in aeronautical hangars ('Everything's Fair Game'). Brandon Flowers wishes he had written 'LIES LIES LIES'; Nathan Williams can't muster the warmth of 'Smile Forever' from a million smouldering alien bongs; and closer 'A Song Called Krautrock' has the gall to run almost eight minutes, play loosely with more 60s paraphernalia (this time pastoral psych pop) and be worth every second of the beautifully elongated outro. Stop it, Invisible Hand - it feels too good to be right - but how can this be wrong?

You can still buy physical copies of Squirrel Jail for $4USD here - far too generous of you!

Getting Boned On The Beach, GB Style

It seems that garage punk mania with a predilection for beach and blunt paraphernalia is not prescribed solely by countries with a high percentage of sun. London's Boneyards released their Rest In Beach 7" on Strong Island Recordings back in May (well, the English summer was approaching - not really surf's up though), and it's four songs of fuzz-blown raucous ridiculousness. Regardless of its origins, this sound is pretty hammered, yet intrinsically fun - you can get pretty loose with these tracks blasting your brain matter all over the common. That said, I only really listen to one song over and over - 'Rip It Up', where the yelp in the last third that spits out a frenetic outro is irresistible. The kids'll dig it - the rest'll stay for the leftover beers, bongs, beer bongs and occasional nods to true punk stalwarts. Let's see what else we'll find in the boneyard...

NB - Boneyards just released this dirty shitstorm, 'Vega Chain', today - and the dirtier these dudes dig, the blacker the gold they hit. Fuck Wavves off and mine these shitcore speaker shredders - this is where the winners are at...

Grab Rest In Beach here.

Fangin' For A White High (Metal Postcard Update #2)

You want wonky, diseased stoned guitar slop pop? Portland's White Fang have you covered. High Expectations (out through Metal Postcard) offers shoddy, gif/ppt related cover art, fuzzy distortion, vomit, urine and big swinging dicks, all with the kind of stoner off-handedness that makes you want to give the stuff up forever, even as you stuff your yellow alien bong with an overabundance of purple-veined buds. It remains sharp and spiky, even when phased out closer Far Out Journey threatens to disappear through the temporal hole in the ozone layer. It's the longest song at just over four minutes. And seriously, you couldn't wish for anything more. This is a ride around the neighbourhood, making cocked-up social commentary whilst sequestered away in your mobile dutchie. Above all else, it is surreptitiously addictive - like everything else that's bad for you. Just shut up, breathe in, hit repeat and spin out.

High Expectations can be got at here. Do it. Seriously. Champion Wavves all you want - Nathan Williams is a fucking brand. This is the real deal, and as they say, "you can't deal with being real."

White Fang - Can't Deal With Being Real
White Fang - Christopher's Dick

School Knights Aren't So Lethargic Anymore

I have always been a fan of Colorado boogers School Knights, and their upcoming cassette release Lethargy (out through Bridgetown Records) is no different. In fact - it's the best thing they have put out since their initial Rush SK release when they were just a duo fucking about in 2010, and this supersedes that too. It's sonically brawnier too, straight off the bat - 'Heritage I' doesn't sound like Wavves-lite silliness and skulduggery (not that the now four-piece always did - but the noise pop lived just around the corner). The production on the album is clean and spacious, so that every dip and flow is perfectly rendered, and it really lightens up their sound whilst also accentuating the ever-growing chemistry within the band. 'Low Tide' still holds some of that lo-fi aesthetic, but by actively coming out from behind the (admittedly unnecessary) fuzz and embracing each other's strengths and shortcomings Lethargy sees a strong collection of tracks that bridges the languid pop of Real Estate with energetic noisy breakdowns of the likes of Fang Island or Animal Collective and darker edges of Cursive, sometimes all in the same song ('Silicone Drip') - unexpected, unconventional, and altogether unreal.

You can pre-order Lethargy here. They are apparently working on something else already, can't wait to see what that is. They also have some upcoming shows at South By South West (Austin, Texas) on Thursday March 14th @ the Green Room, Friday March 15th @ Hotel Vegas, and Saturday March 16th @ the Reverb Showcase, whilst they are playing the Treefort Music Festival (Boise Idaho) on Sunday March 24th.

Three Ominous Beaches

 

Its been a very hot summer. Best time to be in a country that loves its pools - and even better, that has incredible beaches. It hasn't been the best for me though - in the UK for most of it, then in hospital, then banned from water like a Mogwai. Sigh. The beach holds so many great memories. Here are three beaches though that you should be wary of though - don't go burying your stash in the sand or off into the dunes with a handsome stranger here. Just when you thought it was safe to go into the water etc etc.

  

This first Beach band (and the impetus for this post) had a release out in the dying light of last year, Pacific. Canberra's Danger Beach is the solo project of Lachlan Thomas (formerly of sadly now defunct Assassins 88). His debut record Milky Way was somewhat a hit out there in the global internet ether, whilst the video for the track 'Apache' was nominated as a finalist for the 2012 Vimeo Music Video Awards. Those lo-fi meanderings aren't entirely gone, yet there is a slicker, darker perspective to these tunes that, if the glossy cover art is anything to go by, lurks in that in-between state between dark and light in the city - where the darkness never truly invades, but never truly leaves either. Think of Michael Mann's Collateral. There are sunny moments like 'Bee' or great track 'Idle Hands', but above all the devil is in the twilit details - especially the sirens that light up the stone-cold classic that is the closer 'Dark Blue' - fucking rad. A great album from a great up and coming band, you can get Pacific through Dream Damage here.

 

Whilst Canberra isn't that far from the golden sands of a quintessential beach, there aren't places much further from such a destination as Scandinavia. Yet this is where we find Cannon Beach, and befittingly the Danish/Norwegian duo aren't likely to break out the Shangri-La leads anytime soon. Having met in the countryside of Denmark, the tracks on Concrete, People And Things stem from approaching music from different perspectives (from folk-oriented Americana to ambient compositions and tape manipulations, with a common neutral ground in shoegaze noise). The result is sparse, eclectic, but oft-times electric. Example in point is ‘Sacred Harp’, an instrumental made up essentially of an autoharp connected to a Leslie amplifier, one guitar-amplifier and one bass-amplifer, a drone experiment that bleeds into the moody atmospherics of 'Loki'. Out through Ikenai! Records, you can grab Concrete, People And Things here.

 

Out of these three beaches, Menace Beach probably has the most recognition, at least potentially. A Leeds-based quasi-"supergroup" featuring members of Pulled Apart By Horses, Sky Larkin and Hookworms, I was immediately enamoured by their scuzzy nature, although they are also the closest to beach guitar pop of the three - their PR even pushes references of Wavves and Ganglians onto us. They are not bereft of ideas though, already rolling out a couple of tracks for Too Pure Records' Singles Club to back up their self-titled debut EP. 'Dropouts' sounds as much Breeders territory as anything else, or mid 90s Britpop that flirted with noisier, more whacked-out guitar settings, whilst 'Tastes Like Medicine' comes from the Williams/Cosentino school of shimmering lightweights that still somehow manage to remain fun and relevant. Pre-order this sucker 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

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

School Knights Give Us A Cheeky 666

I know Ive said in the past how much I love Weed Diamond, those Colorado lo-fi slackers who called it a day recently. Thank Jebus then for one of their offshoots, School Knights, who have gone from strength to strength. They are releasing a full length too, All Dawgz Go 2 Heaven, which includes some older tracks off their EP (now with BASS!) plus some great new ones. Sure, there is a lot of Wavves-like sounds here, and sure, its hard to fuck this kind of music up, but these guys do it so damn well that they own it. Get the album here.

School Knights - Prom Queen
School Knights - Jam
School Knights - Bullies

Fun Times With Black Gum

Last week, I came across New York via Texas sludge surfers Black Gum on a random search for something to blast me out of the doldrums of a typically terrible Neck Yourself Tuesday (much more treacherous than Death March Monday...) - and, alongside Fungi Girls' Some Easy Magic, I lived to fight another day. Black Gum's sloppy dirge-like take on the popular surf rock errs on the wrong side of caution - which is why their self-titled cassette (out on Monofonus Press) is so awesome. Whilst production values have done well for the likes of luminaries Ty Segall and Wavves, somehow I feel Black Gum would disintegrate if they came anywhere near a cleaner sound. As it stands, this is dirty without sounding put on, sloppy yet with a clear connectedness, and aggressive whilst ready to give you a bear hug after pummelling you. These are the sharp sounds that give you the warm and fuzzy's.

Grab Black Gum here.

Black Gum - Single Life
Black Gum - Back To The Beach

Don't Be Buggin On This Total Slacker

I don't know much about New York three-piece Total Slacker, other than they have only been around for about a year and have played some killer shows with the likes of Wavves, and the drummer is Zach Condon (Beirut)'s lil brother. 'Psychic Mesa' is the opening track off their forthcoming LP Thrashin'. Its fucking amazing. And in my opinion, that is all you really need to know. Ill be keeping a very keen eye on these guys and will get back to you post haste, but check out the song below - it's so good.

You lucky London devils will get to partake in slackerdom when Total Slacker touches down in September - 25th at Lock Tavern, 29th at Corsica Studios, and an album release party on the 30th alongside Weird Dreams and Sealings.

TOTAL SLACKER // Psychic Mesa by TheArtOf...

Wavving Away That Trash Talk

What a strange match up. First we have Trash Talk, the bristling Sacramento hardcore band that blew all and sundry away in Australia earlier this year. Then we have Wavves, the perennially stoned Californian noise popsters. The guys from Trash Talk are rad, but I always thought that one cock-eyed comment from Nathan Williams would have them raining down vengeance on his doped-up ass. And yet here they are, splitting this 7" (first made available on Record Store Day). Wavves had already digitally released this track, 'TV Luv Song', but tis good to hear its shambolically rambunctious charms with the crackle and hiss of vinyl. And TT, well its just good to hear them full stop. So if you like either, or both of these dudes, you can try to snap up a pressing, although they are pretty low on the ground. Best just to get em below...

Trash Talk - Thorns
Wavves - TV Luv Song

Total Babes Put Me On Cloud Nine

Dylan Baldi and his Cloud Nothings have been going from strength to strength, yet you cant keep creative people down! Two of the members from the Cleveland garage pop clooective, Jayson Gerycz and Joe Boyer, have joined forces with Chris Brown and Gary Spolarich to form Total Babes, who are relatively in the same vein, just a little thrashier (so a little Wavves in there too!). Which is all good - I love Cloud Nothings' innate sense of overloading you with sugary sweetness without you minding the aural calories! Total Babes' debut album Swimming Through Sunlight is out at the end of August (through Old Flame Records and Continental Mind). If you are in Philly, Brooklyn or Cleveland in the next three days, you'll be able to catch the lo-fi rockers in their element. If not, enjoy the tune below!

Total Babes - Like They Always Do

Imperialist Art For The Suburban Surf Set

Shit its miserable in Brisbane today! All rain and bluster. Thank God then for Toronto's Art Imperial, whose Surf Suburban EP I received recently. The idea of the EP apparently came from having The Mamas & The Papas' 'California Dreamin' on repeat during a long winter period, with the wistful dreaming of standing on a white sand beach, watching crystal blue waves crash against the shore. Im with you there brother... Sure, there are umpteen inferences to other acts here, from pop pioneers The Beach Boys to more recent acolytes such as Wavves, Girls and Beach Fossils. There's even a hint of good 80s new wave under the twanging surf guitars on tracks like 'Bugs Out My Mind' that invokes the cheerier moments of the Raveonettes. All amazing touchstones, Im sure you'd agree. Nevertheless there is a genuine thematic zeal underpinning these six tracks (plus a surprisingly crystalline production) that helps to elevate them above mere mimicry. Dreamy euphoric pop whimsy maybe? Im not sure, but Surf Suburban is doing it for me. And for you folks stripping down as summer approaches, then you have an early contender to crown your seasonal mixtape.

You can get Surf Suburban at Art Imperial's Bandcamp here.

Art Imperial - When Im With You (I Feel Dumb)
Art Imperial - Bugs Out My Mind

Wavves Flooding The Zoo

Nathan Williams and co. are the first in a veritable whose who (Hold Steady, The Clean, Besnard Lakes) to be taking over the Zoo in Brisbane this week, as Wavves brings their shambolic garage punk shenanigans to town, ably supported by the Bleeding Knees Club. Should still be tix left, so if you want to see a highly unpredictable show - or just need to stock up on rolling papers, or your grinder has hit the dust - then drop on in!

Wavves - Horse Shoes
Wavves - Cool Jumper
Wavves - Mickey Mouse

Flinging Horse Shoes

Love him or loathe him, Wavves is everywhere at the moment. With incessant touring, mucking about with stoner 'bestie' Best Coast, marketing drug paraphernalia, developing his own strain of marijuana - for a slacker, Master Nathan Williams is awfully entrepreneurial. But there is still music to be made, and he is pouring into a lot of that too. He's been releasing songs on his own for free, the latest being 'Horse Shoes' - and Im loving it. It harks back to Wavves-era dissonance and malaise, which is what I loved about him in the first place. This track has been kicking around for a while, as it was written some time ago with a Mister Zach Hill helping out on the skins - nice.

I mentioned tours - Wavves is on one in Australia from next week. Next Tuesday (March 8) sees Wavves touch down in Brisbane, dominating The Zoo - this will (hopefully) be an ace show.

Wavves - Horse Shoes

Watch No Joy - Hawaii

My mate Andy sent me this clip of LA/Montreal ladies No Joy for their song 'Hawaii', which you can find on their stellar Mexican Summer release Ghost Blonde. We always meant to cover that album here - we've been fans of their earlier stuff, and Paul called dibs on this album in fact - but for whatever reason it fell by the wayside. So, watch this great (and slightly NSFW) video, and hunt down that album - it is great, really great. They have a busy touring schedule lined up too - spending the best part of this month touring Stateside and Canada as part of the Best Coast/Wavves entourage, before doing a couple of solo shows in London (including a White Heat @ Madame Jojo's show on March 1st - thats 5 quid! Get your tix now!!!), before becoming the support slot for Surfer Blood as they do the UK. Thats about 4 different shows in London, people. Get on it.

No Joy - Hawaii from Salazar on Vimeo.

Sex My Beet Up (Sort of Exclusive!)

Sex Beet is a London-via-Leicester three piece that have been making waves for a little while now (Ive been on them since their great track 'I'm In Love With You (So Shut The Fuck Up)'). They offer up the brand of fuzzed out garage rock that Im a massive fan of, and as the year has progressed so has their confidence, and their popularity. They have their beach pop rock leanings (esp with The Shadows echoing their 'She Don't Surf' track), but Sex Beet have sleazed it up tenfold, oozing the kind of lairy nonchalance that three drunk London 20-somethings invariably ooze. They may not have had a major LP out yet, but are about to end 2010 with a bang, snavvling the support slots of both Wavves in November and Best Coast in December. As both of those acts are hipster cred personified, expect Sex Beet's name to catch a corner of the spotlight by year's end.

Oh, and before all that, if you have nothing better to do tonight (or even if you do), head down to the Old Blue Last. Its a free Halloween rockathon, with Sex Beet smashing things up along with Cold Pumas, Prize Pets and Weird Dreams - its almost a Sonic Masala London showcase! And its FREE.

Oh again. The below track is a sparkling newie, so this is a sorta exclusive - Boo!

Sex Beet - Sugar Water

Weeding Out The Diamonds

So I started off the Bridgetown Records love with Colorado's School Knights, which may have seemed pre-emptive considering that their primo signing as far as blog lovers are concerned is Weed Diamond. Whilst now a 5 piece band, also holding School Knights' Michael, Weed Diamond started as a one man project in noising up the pop, or popping up the noise, a la Wavves' Nathan Williams. The man with the plan here is Tim Perry. He's put out a gamut of releases, mainly splits and 7" on labels as diverse as Bathetic, Transparent, and Half Machine, as well as Bridgehouse. Now, as the 5 piece, Weed Diamond are ready to blossom into the contenders that Perry has always hinted he could be. Using that most loved of the 21st century's effects pedals, the reverb here is wielded with expert abandon, therefore not overstaying its welcome at any given turn. This is most evident in most current release, Carry On + Sweater Kids, which is an amalgam of a new EP and a reissuing of an older cassette recording. There are serious pop sensibilities here, and the beautiful aspect of this release is that it is heightened rather than hindered by its lo fi approach (although the opening track, 'Mint In My Mouth', takes a while to distance itself from its myriad lo-fi brethren...). It reminds me in some parts of Meth Teeth, who I am a massive fan of. Its pretty, and rockin, and amazing. Its pretty rockin amazing.

Weed Diamond - All Of Denver Is Wasted
Weed Diamond - Mint In My Mouth

And an older release from a split 7" with another rad Bridgetown export, Ancient Crux...

Weed Diamond - Nothing To Write Home About

And its a rainy Saturday afternoon, so Ill continue the love - here's a vid!

Weed Diamond - "Carry On" from moogie on Vimeo.

Here Comes Da Boom...

The Boom Bang are from Oklahoma City. They are putting out their first 7" record, Bummer Camp, next Friday through Guestroom Records. Its a tasty 4-track that cleverly showcases both the sound of the band and their temperament also...

SOUND - messy, sloppy, scuzzy, fuzzy, poppy, punky, spunky, funky.

TEMPERAMENT - knockabout, layabout, party-hard, spazztastic.

Their single is, funnily enough, on the B side - 'Run Way Away' - but in my opinion there are stronger tracks on here, including the one I have below, 'We Skeletons'. Its a hell of a lot of fun. Their reference points - from Davie Allan, Dick Dale, and Link Wray, garage bands such asThe Cramps, The Gruesomes, and The Swamp Rats, and contemporay bands like Wavves, The Intelligence, Thee Oh Sees, and Crocodiles - speak volumes.

The Boom Bang - Run Way Away
The Boom Bang - We Skeletons