‘The Bay Area’s Chrystia Cabral is back with a new SPELLLING single, “Boys At School,” from her forthcoming album The Turning Wheel. This follows the lead single, “Little Dear,” which previewed a more upbeat, poppy direction. This new track starts as an eccentric piano ballad with haunting vocals and atmospheric synths, and gradually transforms into an intense indie rock anthem.’
“The prolific Melbourne psych-rock army King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard are famous for cranking out new albums at a frantic, baffling clip. Just three months ago, the band released an album called K.G. When they announced that one, the band said that the album would be “both a stand-alone work and also part of a bigger musical picture.” That bigger musical picture has other parts, too. Last week, the band announced plans to follow that one up with another new companion-piece album called L.W. That album is now out there in the world.”
“The endlessly prolific Australian psych-rock cowboys King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard lost a band member last year, but they haven’t let that slow them down. Late last year, the band released an album called K.G. Since then, they’ve dropped the loose tracks “If Not Now, Then When?” and “O.N.E.” As it turns out, those are the first two songs on another new Lizard Wizard album, and that album will arrive next week.”
“King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard just released their most recent album, K.G., a couple weeks ago. (Technically, they released two albums that day, the second being a live album.) Of course, this is King Gizzard we’re talking about so… they are already back with some more music. Today, the furiously prolific psych-rockers have returned with a new single.”
“Earlier this week the endlessly prolific Melbourne psych rockers King Gizzard & The Wizard Lizard shared the raw files for a new song called “Automation” … Now the official track and its visuals have arrived, along with news of two new albums. King Gizzard’s 16th studio album K.G. will be out next month, and on the same day they’re releasing a live album titled Live In SF ’16.”
“‘Mirror’ is another hard-rocking riff-monster of a song — FUZZ’s specialty”
“Fuzz — the rad LA riff-rock band featuring Ty Segall on drums, Meatbodies’ Chad Ubovich on bass, and Charles Moothart (aka CFM) on guitar — will be back with their third album this fall. Appropriately, it’s called III, and just as appropriately, its lead single is called “Returning.”…”
The initial lineup for the 2020 edition of Burger Boogaloo has been announced. It includes the reunited Bikini Kill, who will play their first Bay Area show in 25 years as part of the fest, and Circle Jerks, who will play their first Bay Area show in 10 years.
Next week, Oh Sees are releasing a new album, Face Stabber. The prolific band has shared a handful of tracks from it already, including “Henchlock,” “Poisoned Stones,” and “Heartworm,” and today they’re back with another one, “Captain Loosely,” a squelching instrumental that feels surprisingly meditative and spacey for the band.
Earlier this year, Bikini Kill got back together and announced their first shows in 22 years. By all accounts, those reunion shows have been great experiences. It’s not easy to stage a nostalgia trip that still feels fresh and vital and important, but that’s been the Bikini Kill reunion so far.
California garage rocker Mikal Cronin has been quiet for a while now. Not counting his contributions to frequent collaborator Ty Segall’s albums, we haven’t heard any new music from Cronin since 2015’s MCIII. Today, that silence has come to an end. Cronin has a new 7″ on the way via Famous Class, and today he’s sharing the A-side.
“There’s no turning back to nobody,” Mac DeMarco sings on the lead single from his new album. “There’s no second chance, no third degree.” The song a low-key lament about the perils of fame, yet from that personal subject matter DeMarco manages to wring universal feelings of longing and regret.
As SPELLLING, Cabral makes music that’s basically impossible to categorize. She plays around with all sorts of dark and vaporous sounds: gothed-out horror-movie synth textures, new-wave bloop-riffs, queasy ambient sputters, bluesy squelches, creeped-out smooth-jazz saxophones, pillowy ’80s-R&B bass-riffs, spindly indie-rock guitar-murmurs. As a singer, Cabral is rooted in soul, and she’s capable of bending notes with astonishing force and conviction.
Bikini Kill are reuniting for a string of shows later this year in New York City and Los Angeles. The lineup will feature the trio of Kathleen Hanna, Tobi Vail, and Kathi Wilcox, along with Erica Dawn Lyle on guitar. It’ll be the first time they’ve played a show since 1997, though last year they briefly reunited to perform one track at a book release party.
“It, too, rips with a house-burning intensity. “Pre Strike Sweep” is a feverish punk-leaning thrasher. Guitars chug and screech behind Shaw’s hoarse barking and Moothart’s restless drumbeat. It kind of sounds like GØGGS covering Show Me The Body covering Dead Kennedys.”
John Dwyer, the frenetically prolific frontman of Thee Oh Sees and all the band’s verious mutations (Oh Sees, OCS) joined Maron in his garage to talk about garage rock.
Thee Oh Sees, or Oh Sees, or OCS, or whatever John Dwyer is calling his band these days, have a new album coming out next month. But today, they’re looking back to this summer’s LP Orc with a colorful animated video for “Nite Expo” from director Alex Theodoropulos.
“… ‘I never thought I would do the music thing. Never wanted to play guitar when I was a kid,” Mac begins. ‘Got a family full of musicians, very unappealing. I was like, screw that, I’m not doing that…And then I picked one up one day while my friends were playing. Turned out I could do it a little bit, it was interesting, right around the same time I got into all the classic rock stuff you get into as a young man. Yeah, got hooked. You start off with the one string thing, it’s like, ‘Aw hell yeah.’ I learned ‘Smoke On The Water’ on just the low E string.'”
“…both in terms of sound and subject matter, the album finds DeMarco beginning to venture beyond the music he built his carefree indie bro reputation on. And it may be an antidote for his goofball exploits if, like me, you often find that stuff obscuring his formidable songwriting talent.”
“…And now, the band has announced plans for the second album in that series. This time, it has the even more excellent title Murder Of The Universe…”
Ty Segall, Ex-Cult’s Chris Shaw and Charles Moothart of Fuzz have shared another sampling of music from their new project GØGGS.
It’s pretty cool when artists actually listen to fan and media grumblings, but Mac DeMarco has gone a step further and given the people what they’ve asked for, even while recovering from surgery in his nether region.
I’ve never been to Australia, but I have seen every Mad Max movie multiple times, which means I find it entirely plausible that the country could support at least one color-coded garage-rock druid-cult.
Ty Segall released the bugged-out psych-rock album Emotional Mugger earlier this year, and last month, he appeared on Stephen Colbert’s Late Show to give one of the weirder, more provocative late-night TV performances in recent memory.
If you want to understand how fluid the genre signifier “psych” can be, consider what a vast spectrum of sounds King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard have explored throughout their discography.
Last night at Brooklyn’s Music Hall Of Williamsburg, genial indie rock everyschlub Mac DeMarco headlined a Planned Parenthood benefit that also included people like Kevin Morby and Mutual Benefit.
“Ty Segall has been keeping himself busy. In the past four months alone, the California garage-rock king has formed two new bands and released a ripping new album with his band Fuzz. But it’s been over a year since his last solo LP, the glam-rock opus Manipulator, which means it’s about time for a new one. And, sure enough, Pitchfork reports that his label, Drag City, has mailed out copies of Emotional Mugger, a new 11-track album credited to “Ty Garrett Segall,” on glitched-out VHS tape…”
GØGGS is a new band made up of Ty Segall, Ex-Cult’s Chris Shaw, and Charles Moothart (also part of one of Segall’s many other projects, Fuzz).
“Ezra Furman has been on a quest to cover some of the most beloved songs of all time, both old and contemporary, and the last one we heard from him was of LCD Soundsystem’s “I Can Change.” Today, Furman’s presented us with his rendition of the Replacements’ “Androgynous…”
