Eating Cake with Friends - Fork Your Tongue, Hold Your Breath (2015)

I like that despite the fact that I've got more music sitting on a hard drive on my office desk and even without it I have more music than I can ever get to hear merely from submitted albums that I can still lament that a beautiful album is finished all too quickly. Fork Your Tongue, Hold Your Breath provoked this convivially delirious affect in me.

These are songs of a Swedish man opening himself up quite admirably. His submission email was very brief, giving only the details that he recorded to on one track, the microphone was stolen, and that he's had some troubles in life. Haven't we all got troubles? However, he's got some talent to balance it out with, apparent through these murkily recorded songs. Simple in structure, the tracks haven't much more than his voice, an acoustic guitar, and some occasional keys and percussion. Naturally, the lo-fi recording technique adds a warm, cozy buzz. The songs, and especially his vocal delivery, are exceedingly lovely and without need of embellishment. It also sent me back to listen to the music of his fellow Swede, Horrible Houses. They're very much of the same gloomy folk vein. And one could cast back for references to the lauded Nick Drake or the Canadian outfit Timber Timbre, keeping in mind that Eating Cake with Friends is far more stripped down and lo-fi than either.

To be had here:
Eating Cake with Friends - Fork Your Tongue, Hold Your Breath

Steady Lean - Here's Something (2014)

From the Los Angeles suburb of Santa Fe Springs comes Steady Lean. They make an amorphous lo-fi folk rock that can be called by any number of newish sub-genres like gloom pop, weirdo folk, and even alt-country. While the songs aren't the very melancholy and stark sounds of Ellis Swan nor even the more traditional folk of C. M. Slenko, it doesn't reach the uptempo of the Strange Boys or Judas Equus. Hope you've been keeping up with recent posts, otherwise those references are nonsense. In the submission email they compared themselves to Pavement and Modest Mouse, if that's any easier.

Setting comparisons aside, Here's Something is not only a wittily named album, but a very pleasantly enjoyable one to hear. It doesn't have much in in the way of peaks and valleys, instead maintaining a ongoing light jangle with quirky, echoey singing. Steady Lean is the prefect name for such a band, as one can easily picture them leaning back while happily playing these songs. It's a well-composed album that I became increasingly enamored with as I continued listening. By the time I got to the final track "Ladle" I was ready to start it all over again, which is exactly what I did. 

To be had here:
Steady Lean - Here's Something

EP Grab Bag vol. 33

Some of these releases are fully fledged records, but in an attempt to catch up on some of the backlog, here they are in brief. 

Glories – Mother Reverb (2013)

A nice slab of twinkly goodness from Alabama. I think I referenced the Appleseed Cast in another review a few weeks back, but those Low Level Owl records must have made quite the impact on impressionable young musicians some years back. As for this record, you get lots of long songs with dueling guitars picking very pretty yet forlorn melodies that slowly build to an pleasing crescendo. My favorite track happens to be the last one (“Let’s Not Rush Out and Tell Everyone”), as it perfectly wraps up this strong set.

Vacanza – Cancello (2013)

I have been told that cities around Italy have been experiencing some interesting punk sounds for the last two decades, but as I have never been I simply have to take people’s word for it. If I did happen to drop in on some anarchist squat and heard the sounds Vacanza produce come through the sound system, I would be tickled. The group produces music on the screamy end of what we used to call Emo back in the late 90s. You know, lots of Dischord and Level Plane Records influences. I really enjoy that the group sings in their native tongue and doesn’t try to play to a foreign market’s expectations.

Horrible Houses – The Yellow House (2013)

Another great release from Sweden’s best current outsider folkster. Like a lot of outsider art, a lot of these songs sound like sketches produced in the bought of mental illness, drugs, or all of the above. In the case of Horrible Houses, the music has a remote, stoned feeling to it that helps capture in my mind what the frozen wilderness of Sweden must look like in the summer. “The Rebuilding of the Adelphi Rolling Grist Mill” was the track that called out to me more than once.  

Lou Breed – Stoned Out Two: Morning of the Way to Love (2013)

Back to Los Angeles for some more weird pop jams. I came across Lou Breed back in February when someone at Burgerama told me that I would probably like the band, but with all the cheap beer and garage rock I was digesting that night I forgot the band’s name. This is a pleasant but odd surprise. Songs like “Fellow Americans” sound like they could have been on a popular 80s rock station if a few of the song’s elements were adjusted for a mainstream audience. It’s odd, it’s weird, it’s good. 

Czar Rose – The Jet Black Pope (2013)

I generally like to end my listening session with something evil or satanic. You have to keep rock and roll evil kids! Czar Rose is a group from Los Angeles that throw together gloomy, electronically influenced pop songs that are on the light end of psychedlia. The lyrics and synth lines create a chant like result that is efficient in setting the tone the group is clearly looking for. When the demonic vocals come in with a rap cadence on “Music Comes (Alive)”, you know you are entering the fourth level of hell.

EP Grab Bag vol. 32

Some fine submissions from the last two months that I am just now getting around to posting.

Pilgrimage – EP (2013)

Some great twinkly post-rock from Florida.  If you had told me these guys toured with the Appleseed Cast in 2004, I would not have doubted you. These kids could ride that new wave of Emocore that seems to be picking up steam from the East, but without all the residual style crap that modern radio has put on the style. “Police, Don’t Shoot me” is my favorite track off this EP, with its dueling guitar licks and full-throated impassioned growling. 

Dally – The Shine (2013)

On the other coast (and what sounds like another world) comes the LA group fronted by Green Gerry. Dreamy and distant is the order of the day, as these songs sound like they were recorded in an abandoned porn shop with a microphone that was placed in the restaurant next door. It works surprisingly well for this group’s first EP, and helps capture the isolation and disenchantment reflected in the morose lyrics accompanied by surprisingly appealing and clever tunes. 

Treasure of Grundo – Dýsantzú (2013)

I was worried I was in for an audible pummeling when I read this band’s description and saw the cover to the record. Industrial noise is getting less and less play on my turntable in the last few years. Perhaps an effect of growing older and more boring perhaps, but likely that I simply have lost contact with some of the stronger acts putting that kind of music together. But I was pleasantly surprised by what I found on this Netherlands based bands record. This is cinematic stuff that is much closer to gloom-pop than anything I expected to find. “I Karestan” is the standout track on this bad boy. 

Crimes – Thin Sunlight (2013)

Now this is what I’m talking about.  Reverb heavy garage rock with girl/boy vocal harmonious from Minneapolis? Yes please! I am sure these kids are tired of being compared to the Raveonettes, but if you are a fan of that style of garage rock, you have no reason not to buy the vinyl Crimes is selling. The well constructed vocal harmonies separate them from the pack (see the track “Wind Thistle”), and since they are going on tour this summer, you should catch them when they come to town. You know they will have nothing but shitty beer on hand, so help a touring group and buy them some top-shelf shit.