Go Deep | Heartbreaking Bravery

December 23, 2015

Bad Wig – Bad Wig (EP Review, Stream, Live Video)

[EDITOR’S NOTE: With the site now entering emergency year-end catch-up mode thanks to the cruel, mocking nature of time, tonight’s trio of posts will simply be short reviews of the album(s) in the headline(s) and an accompanying list of records that deserve to be heard.]

Earlier this year Bad Wig were still flying underneath the banner of The Midwestern Charm. Just after signing to Texas Is Funny, member departures and an accompanying shift in style facilitated a name change and the band’s not showing any desire to look back. All of that tumultuous internal terrain’s somehow translated into propulsive momentum and Bad Wig‘s the proof. “Stargazer“, a song that predated the name change and merely existed as a demo for The Midwestern Charm’s principal songwriter, Connor La Mue.

Despite being unattached to any project at the time, “Stargazer” earned a mountain of praise from this site while foreshadowing what was to come. The band’s now a trio and La Mue and fellow Midwestern Charm member Ryan McCrary now share vocal duties, each bringing a fiercely engaging approach that suggests they’ve been spending a lot of time picking up cues from the neighbors in Midnight Reruns and (especially) Tenement. Lo-fi, battered, and gritty as hell, this demo EP- released as a limited-run cassette- is one of 2015’s finest releases.

Listen to Bad Wig below and pick it up here. Below the embed, explore some live videos of the band performing songs from the EP and a collection of some of the best full streams to surface over the past several months.

–

Pouty – Take Me To Honey Island
Vicky Speedboat – Two Years No Basement
☺- Boosegumps
Kississippi – We Have No Future, We’re All Doomed
Pool Holograph – Mortals
See Through Dresses – End of Days
Daddy Issues – Fuck Marry Kill
Adir L.C. – Oceanside Cities
Nigel Hall – Ladies & Gentleman…
Soldiers of Fortune – Early Risers
Crusher – Demo
Intertwine – Goraikoo
chipmunkson16speed – Sludgefest
dæphne – Full Circle
Daniel Menche & Mammifer – Crater
Penny Lame – Penny Lame
Busdriver – Thumbs
Go Deep – Influence
S.M. Wolf – Neon Debris
Keita Juma – Nights In Space A Short Film
KwolleM – Mellow
High Bloom – Haloed
Granny – Egg

3 Comments

October 28, 2015

Painted Zeros – Only You (Stream)

Over the past few weeks, a lot of excellent material has surfaced. Unsurprisingly, the bulk of that material has been singles. Since the time span was so extensive (mostly due to the attention afforded to the CMJ coverage), all but one of those songs have been compiled in a list that will be running at the very bottom of this post. The one exception is tonight’s featured song: Painted Zeros‘ “Only You”.

After being somewhat underwhelmed by Painted Zeros’ set at Alphaville (which, to their credit, seemed to have more to do with the sound setup than their performance), the band knocked me for a loop during CMJ at Aviv. Having already commented on the impressive nature of their quieter material from their upcoming Floriography, it’s heartening to see the trio committing to “Only You”– a clear standout from their CMJ set– as their latest release in the album’s rollout campaign..

Driven by a gentle, intricate bass figure that comes courtesy of Jim Hill (who also plays in Slight, The Glow, and Montana and the Marvelles), “Only You” serves as a showcase for guitarist/vocalist Katie Lau’s more pensive side as well as the band’s considerable growth. Floating along like a fully-realized dream seeped in tranquility, “Only You” far surpasses the very evident promise of S V A L B A R D. Defying any easy genre categorization while flashing hints of the very best elements of everything from dream pop to post-punk, the song finds a soft transcendence and sustains it through its final, fading moments. From start to finish, “Only You” is a lovely, unexpected triumph.

Listen to “Only You” below and pre-order Floriography from Don Giovanni here. Beneath the embed, explore a collection of some of the best songs to find release over the past two weeks.

–

Petal – Silly Heart
Basement Benders – Purple Days
The Gloomies – LSD
Eluvium – Confessor
They Might Be Giants – Or So I Have Read
Holy Esque – Hexx
Kitten Forever – Temple
Matt Kivel – Janus
Wray – May 23rd
The Unspeakable Practices – A Steadying Effect
Soldiers of Fortune (ft. Stephen Malkmus) – Campus Swagger
Brass Bed – I Am Just A Whisper
Free Children of Earth – All Tomorrow’s Plunder
Go Deep – Slumberland
Elephant Stone (ft. Alex Mass) – The Devil’s Shelter
Globelamp – Controversial Confrontational
Tenement – Weakest Ones (Demo)
The Besnard Lakes – Golden Lion
Beach for Tiger – Coco
Le Rug – Bomb
Kindling – Painkiller
Manwomanchild – Return to Ithaca
Bummed – Smoking Jewels
Jaala – Salt Shaker
Cicada Rhythm – The Keeper
MONEY – You Look Like A Sad Painting On Both Sides of the Sky
Human Potential – 105 Pounds of Disintegration
Busdriver (ft. Milo and Anderson Paak) – Worlds to Run
Wimps – Old Guy
Infinite Void – Even Ground
Black Panties – You’ll Never Find My Body
TOPS – Hollow Sound of the Morning Chimes
Earring – Black Chalk
Swings – Dust
Some Pulp – Slasher Nite @ The Showcase East
Florist – Cool and Refreshing
Sam Means – We’re Alone
Never Young – New Villain
Floating Points – Peroration Six
Eternal Summers – Our Distant Bodies
Andy Shauf – Jenny Come Home
Val Hollie – Siberian Summer
William Alexander – Strangest Things
Mitylion – My Yard Is On
Sheer – Cursed Again

2 Comments

September 28, 2015

Midnight Reruns – There’s An Animal Upstairs (Stream)

It’s been a long while since an individual song was featured on this site, a happenstance that’s left the floodgates open and the banks flooded. To that end, there’s a long list of those songs that will be included over the majority of the next few posts- all of those outpourings will, as always, will be accompanied by a featured song. This post’s headlined by a band that’s no stranger to this site but still relatively unknown to the listening world at large: Midnight Reruns.

The band’s sophomore full-length, following an extremely promising debut and a sophomore EP that expanded on that promise, was produced by Tommy Stinson and is due out in a few weeks on Dusty Medical (their first for the label). It’s a hard-charging burst of hook-heavy, punk-leaning rock n’ roll that sounds distinctly Midwest and the assault is led by the surging “There’s An Animal Upstairs”, which– nearly impossibly– also benefits from a genuine sense of breeziness.

Marked by the band’s characteristically formidable dual-guitar attack (something that’s earned them more than a few Thin Lizzy comparisons) and guitarist/vocalist Graham Hunt’s increasingly impressive lyrics, “There’s An Animal Upstairs” takes the already raised bar and kicks it up a few levels. Highlighting this ongoing evolution are the opening lines of a chorus section that floored me on first, second, and 40th listen: “I can feel my proteins burn/and I can feel my atoms/I can feel my stomach churn/and overflow with acid”- a section that hints at what the rest of the album has to offer.

Riding their usual crest of half-drunk Replacements heroics, the song also finds the Milwaukee quartet deepening their grasp on dynamics as well. Everything about “There’s An Animal Upstairs” clicks so well that it practically justifies the awed pre-release compliments its been picking up on its own power. There’s a certain sense of identity that accompanies the song, lending it a considerable amount of power and furthering its immediacy.

Every shift the song takes is maximized for its fullest impact, with each of those hairpin turns navigated with a precision that somehow compliments the songs giddy, shambolic aesthetic. It’s a song of conflicting components that continuously find surprising ways to reconcile and ensure that “There’s An Animal Upstairs” isn’t just great but genuinely memorable. An earworm with an incredible amount of substance, it’s also one of the best songs of the year and should prove more than a little helpful in ensuring Midnight Reruns their proper place on the map.

Listen to “There’s An Animal Upstairs” below, pre-order Force of Nurture from Dusty Medical here, and scan through a long list of some great recent songs beneath the embed.