Right on time after I posted a live video of the band on Sunday, the Black Lips share their side of a new split 7″ with The Coathangers, due out in November on Suicide Squeeze.
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I’ve enjoyed a few Bat for Lashes songs here and there, but I’m especially excited to see Natasha Khan going all in on weirdness with her new Sexwitch project, which is a collaboration with psych nutjobs TOY.
Mark McGuire definitely has an identifiable sound, that’s for sure. But nobody could accuse him of phoning in any of his innumerable releases. On “Earth: 2015” he runs his smooth synth processed guitar tones through an apocalyptic wringer. It’s a song I could imagine soundtracking a futuristic car chase in some low budget sci-fi movie. And if the song piques your interest but you’re on the fence about actually buying the record, just know that packaging for the Beyond Belief LP is absolutely beautiful:
Been meaning to post this one for a while, even though it features questionable rationing of pizza slices. I’m out of town this week, but Jim will be on the show per usual, playing jams from 9pm til midnight. Streamt it at www.WRCT.org.
Everything I’ve heard from the upcoming Deerhunter album has been fantastic. They seem to be retreating a bit from the 8-track roughness present on Monomania and the result reminds me of a mix of the bedroom experimentation of frontman Bradford Cox’s Atlas Sound solo project and grayscale indie sheen of guitarist Lockett Pundt’s Lotus Plaza. There’s still a weirdness to these songs though, even if I can’t quite put my finger on where it’s coming from. Coming from somebody who revisits Cryptograms more often than Halcyon Digest, that’s meant as a compliment. In the woozy video for “Breaker” above, you can watch Cox and Pundt share vocals on a track I feel comfortable in describing as damn near poppy.
Perfect! Another excuse to remind you to check out Viet Cong’s fantastic self-titled LP that came out earlier this year. Do it now before they make everybody’s year-end lists and you feel like you missed out.
Wildhoney isn’t wasting any time following up on their stellar debut, Sleep Through It, that came out earlier this year. Your Face Sideways is an EP due out in October on Topshelf records, and “Laura” is the first glimpse of said EP that the band has made public. Looking at the tracklist, here’s hoping “FSAII” actually has some sort of relation to Flying Saucer Attack.
The Moonlandingz started as a fictional band, part of The Eccentronic Research Council’s Johnny Rocket, Narcissist & Music Machine… I’m Your Biggest Fan, but they didn’t stay imaginary for long. The “band”, featuring members of the aforementioned Eccentronics and Fat White Family, have already put out an EP and are currently working on a long player. Too hard to follow? Just watch the video for the insanely catchy “Sweet Saturn Mine” above.
Ah, Kim Phuc. Pittsburgh’s own somewhere-between-punk-and-hardcore export that decided to call it a day in 2012 after a handful of singles and one unfuckwithable LP. “Wormwood Star” b/w “Freak Out the Squares” is one of those singles and, for what it’s worth, it’s my favorite of the bunch.
The A-side is built around a bizarro-world Stooges riff before stomping on the breaks for a sludgy bridge, slowly building momentum back up all the way through the end. It’s a great song, and an extended version of it would eventually close out the band’s Copsucker LP. But the real highlight here is “Freak Out the Squares”.
The short intro that leads off the B-side isn’t too far removed from “Wormwood Star”. At 1:15, though, things come to an abrupt halt and, “Hoo-ah!”, we’re off. The next two minutes are a sprint to the finish line. It seems like everybody on record is competing to see who can burn through their parts the fastest. I’d argue it’s one of the best entries into Kim Phuc’s short albeit efficiently fantastic catalog.
You might be hard pressed to actually find a physical copy of “Wormwood Star”, or any other KP singles for that matter. I’d recommend hitting up Mind Cure and crossing your fingers. The band is long gone now, so no more wandering into Gooskis to watch them tear through a dozen songs in under a half hour. If you do get your hands on anything Phuc-related, be glad that you’ve got an artifact from one of the better groups to come out of Pittsburgh in the past decade.
Battles return this week in all of their mathy, jazzy, weirdo glory. “The Yabba” is the first single (term used loosely) off of La Di Da Di, and the band gave the song a video just as slightly-left-of-center as it deserves.