Tropical Popsicle - The Dawn of Delight (2013)

 

Here's a record from the not too distant past. Now a decade old, this lone full length from a San Diego band called Tropical Popsicle features 13 blissed out tracks that are equal layers psych-pop and garage, with an icing of 80's cold wave.

You've heard it all before, right?

There's something just slightly better about Tropical Popsicle, however, than your average 2000-teens garage revival. The music pushes the nostalgia to include, not just the better parts of 60's psych but also 80's synth pop. The result is both simultaneously recognizable and new... in a different place and time, with the backing of a major label, Tropical Popsicle could have been huge. Maybe the same could be said for anybody. But then, would that anybody also have record artwork nearly as interesting? Ooh-La-La. 

Vinyl also available through Volar Records. $10 frikin' bucks!

EP Grab Bag vol. 82

This here is a clean up Grab Bag, thing I meant to post early, sometimes much earlier yet to do my poor organizational skills on the computer I lost track of completely. I find it ironic that my day job is keeping a warehouse of books, counting somewhere around a million titles, in order and to retrieve them at a moments notice, but ask me to make a logical set of subfolders on my macbook and I fail utterly.

To be had here:

NO/NO - Drag EP (2014)

Sadly misplaced this EP in the shuffle of submitted material from the last few months. NO/NO are from Milwaukee and play new wave inspired post-punk. The bandcamp page is full of wonderful tags like coldwave, dark wave and shoegaze which are more or less unexplainable. What I can elucidate on are the eerie singing, done in a near-falsetto at times and suitably subtle enough to let the instruments shine. The guitar, keys and drums are equally the stars of this EP, really swirling into a most excellent coaction of post-punk glamor.

Creature from Dell Pond - Swamp Cake (2014)

There are but two songs I nearly overlooked on this release but when you listen to it you'll swear there are more. This is due to the shifting tones present in the tracks, which seems to be unified by little more than an awkward bizarreness. The second track is a gloomy folk song that is exceptionally curious after the exceedingly erratic display that is the first song, "Driving Horse (Gluten-Free Listening Guide)." They also wanted to share their EP from last year, Go Exist, that is also very strange and confusingly evocative.

Divine Intervention Now - Mirth Control (2014)

Divine Intervention Now is from Philadelphia and has made a strange EP that is quite suitable after hearing Creature from Dell Pond. It also has some folk aspects, notably acoustic guitar parts, in the mix, and very weird lyrics. All of it is sung in the deep, gravely voice and accompanied by a nice array of guitars, drums, chimes, horns and other wind instruments that make it like a dream one might have after drinking a bunch of coffee, watching old movie clips and passing out. Though the chaotic features appear most obviously, with careful listening there's a firm bedding of distraught cultural catharsis being expressed in the songwriting.

Additionally, there's a little back story as to how I got my hands on this EP. After receiving an email that explain they want to send my a physical copy, which I am totally cool with, but I was surprised to see when I finally got my hands on it that the package had a miniature bible in it with the pages cut out to hold an SD card inside. Of course being a barely functional adult I didn't have a working SD card reader so I hopped in my car and had to ask my friend to tell me what was in this mysterious package. Then I mixed up which of the dozen or so downloads I made there up and could not even recall which came off the SD card, so it was delayed further. How I did so after seeing the album art is beyond me, but I guess better late than never. Sure, I could have hunted it down online from clues and the initial email, but if someone takes a knife to the bible to give you music, you use the fucking SD card.

Scenes Of A City, Vol 4. Lyon, France

If I never mentioned it before I am a fan of learning history. While I own mostly stacks of novels and short stories written by dead old Europeans, strange Latin Americans and tormented Asians I began gathering knowledge of these other parts of the world in the more conventional source of history texts. This lead to a geography fascination, as I poured through the maps and lists of historic events and stored away the important sites of battles, the economic hubs and political capitals of the world. Yet with all my unsophisticated research as a juvenile I don't know much about Lyon, France beyond it being the second largest city in that country. While, a city of that size in such a culturally powerful nation can't be sitting on its hunches, so I wanted to see what music they were playing there other than what I am sure have been at least a half dozen bands that submitted releases from there, as France does like to submit the tunes.

To be had here:

Hugo Clarence - The Ocean Tape (2014)

This artist was the instigating factor that caused be to pick Lyon for this Scenes of a City. As Hugo Clarence has a track called "Porto City" and you may recall that was the previously featured municipality. This turned me onto his slightly more recent release, The Ocean Tape. Echoey, psych-tinged naturalismo mixed with bluesy alt country, if you can grasp that. The songs will remind one of style that regained popularity with the likes of Devendra Banhart, who I still enjoy listening to. Plus this includes a sent up to Hank Williams, which is pretty legit.

Ouiouioui - Oui Oui Oui (2014)

With such affirming names it seems this EP was bound to be pleasing. It's electro-pop, as stated on the the gentleman with an eyeball for a mouth's suit coat. Slower in tempo than you may expect, the tracks are sort of simmering just below a boil most of the time with lovely beats and imaginative instrumentation. The songs never reach a fever pitch, instead they keep a wonderful balance between a down tempo and a flashy electronic freakout. Ultimately it has a cinematic feeling, with light tension being a driving element.

Strange Milk - The Odd One Out (2013)

There's nothing about this band that would make one assume they're from France at all. They sing in English and they play like a band from Athens, GA, Austin, TX or name your college town with good tunes of choice. Nonetheless, Strange Milk lives in Lyon from what I can tell, even playing shows with French garage rock favorites, Qúetzal Snåkes. Their charming psych-pop that fits so neatly into what I have been desiring to hear lately I'm have a hard time moving on to another band from Lyon to write about.

MALAÏSE - MALAÏSE (2014?)

An album to shake you out of your complacency from how easy-going everything on this post has been so far. This album is a rather heavy and full sounding post-punk release befitting a band with an umlaut, or more accurately a tréma as they are French. Again, sung in English which I'm told is the language of rock and roll, and who am I to fret over the fact I can theoretically understand what the mighty female vocalist is singing? I can't for the record, it is beautifully washed out with the wall-of-sound and loud guitars. Also, it is another album tagged "cold wave" so I guess I am getting down on that sound.

Stress Waves - Orphic Ruin (2014)

It is nice to see when the Australians are paying attention to the blog, as I never intended for this blog to have any degree of localized scope and I'm genuinely thrilled to get submissions from all across the world. Some of you may recall the post of the very excellent garage rock group, White Lodge, from a couple of weeks ago. That write-up seems to have piqued some interest from follow Queenlanders, Stress Waves. Unlike their geography, their music isn't terribly close stylistically, yet they are very similar inasmuch that they both make very good music.

Orphic Ruin is an excellent name for the album Stress Waves have put together. The very word Orphic summons decadent imagery, to make a literary reference. The songs are gloomy, moaning and intangible. This is done artfully as fuck though, with the snyths really taking a starring role as the sound off against the constant percussion and droning backgrounds of mechanical regularity. Basically, it isn't party music, but it is very emotionally evocative. I have already listened to the album all the way through several times, and each time I find myself picking out more from the songs, as the lyrics are increasingly decipherable and the rhythms more clearly recognizable. I'd liken the experience to spending time taking in a painting, the longer one dwells on it the more there is to like about it and experiences to take away from it. If this is what "cold wave" sounds like then I am one hundred percent on board, but I think that for most of us it'd be easiest to called it post-punk. However you label it, these Brisbane musicians know how to make a powerful sound.

To be had here:
Stress Waves - Orphic Ruin

Henri Claudel - Technology (2014)

You have got to love how open and appropriating the music community is today. When I first started going to metal/punk shows in the 90s, bands were forced to play with relatively similar acts. Rarely would you get any cross-pollination between music communities. Perhaps it is the remix culture that exists today (and discussed in a previous episode of our podcast) that is responsible for this desire to fuse and borrow from just about every sound on the planet.

I don't know what "Cold Wave" is, but this Scottish band is apparently that. All I know is that it is awesome retro-inspired synth pop that clearly borrows from the past and yet still sounds vibrant and fresh. The awesome Russian label Singapore Sling Tapes has put this out on cassette, which fits this style well. Sure everything is better on cassette, but I could totally see Marty McFly blasting this from his Delorean on one of his time traveling trips. Well my friend, he fucked up the past as a result, and now we have this relic of our possible dystopian future. Highly recommended.

Get it here:
Henri Claudel - Technology (2014)