Sleepy | Heartbreaking Bravery

April 27, 2017

The Total Betty’s – Stay Here All Night (Stream)

Ending a short recess, the following quartet of posts will feature some of the best songs to emerge from a week to two weeks ago. Following those posts, there’ll be a series of posts featuring the best material that’s come out over the past few days. Kicking things off is a strong showing of tracks from the following: The Side Eyes, Meursalt, Bernice, Pole Siblings, Brainstory, Birdsworth, Fotocrime, Max Subar, Sleepy, and Pinky Pinky (covering Jeannie Piersol). As good as all of those were, it was The Total Betty’s “Stay Here All Night” that ensnared attention the most emphatically.

“Stay Here All Night” actually came out several weeks ago but somehow managed to evade detection, which is a shame and warrants remedying (both here and for whoever else missed this one on the first go-round). The first track to tease the band’s outstanding forthcoming record, Peach, “Stay Here All Night” boasts all sorts of small triumphs and congeals them into something utterly winsome. From the driving melody to the barbed witticisms to the intuitive production, there’s not a false note to be found. “Two guys walk into a bar and I strike out with them both” also might just wind up being the line of the summer.

A basement pop song with heaps of sneering punk attitude, “Stay Here All Night” is an invigorating shot to the system. The Total Betty’s aren’t messing around and when they are, they let us in on the joke. This is a deeply, ridiculously impressive look at what has the potential to be a sleeper hit. Get on board early and enjoy the ride.

Listen to “Stay Here All Night” below and pre-order Peach from the band here.

September 11, 2016

Lost Boy ? – Born 2 Lose (Stream)

Lost Boy ? IV

As this week drew to a close, the final few days offered up outstanding music videos from M.T. Foyer (who nearly claimed this post’s featured spot), IAN SWEET, Lomelda, Sleepy, M Ross Perkins, ANOHNI, Beach Slang, and Merchandise. Additionally, there were all of the tracks that were covered in the preceding post and a small handful of full streams that will be covered in the post that follows this one. While those were dedicated to other quality releases, the focal point of this particular entry in the ongoing saga of coverage falls to site favorites Lost Boy ? who released both a riff-happy new full-length and a track online, “Born 2 Lose”, to mark the occasion.

For years now, the Davey Jones-led project has been releasing astonishing material, including one of the best records of this current decade in Canned. Lost Boy ?’s established, distinctive brand of basement pop is on full display in “Born 2 Lose”, which follows a string of excellent songs to tease Goose Wazoo without ever veering so far into familiarity that it becomes predictable. The ways this project shifts and moves from song to song remains one of Lost Boy ?’s most compelling aspects, furthering a singular identity in the process.

Riding the crest of a mid-tempo pace that manages, impossibly, to come off as both relaxed and surging, “Born 2 Lose” establishes a fascinating tone from the outset and never wavers. Jones’ vocals continue to betray a rotating cast of outsider influences that inform Lost Boy ?’s music in meaningful ways, from form and structure to narrative content.
All of those traits combine into an endlessly fascinating — and ridiculously enjoyable — basement pop track that continues to effortlessly navigate some of the dichotomies that have rendered Lost Boy ? one of the more memorable acts currently operating in the genre.

Don’t miss a chance to explore why this band’s endeared themselves to so many people (a sizable quantity of them being musicians responsible for similarly impressive material). “Born 2 Lose” is an upbeat anthem for the downtrodden, providing empathetic comfort in generous doses. Sometimes that’s exactly the type of thing the world needs and Lost Boy ? continues to deliver in earnest. Make sure to give this one the kind of investment it genuinely deserves.

Listen to “Born 2 Lose” below and order Goose Wazoo here.

July 1, 2016

Happy Diving – Holy Ground (Stream)

happy diving

Omni, Earth Girls, Vanity, Total Slacker, Eluvium, Navy Gangs, Skinny Blonde, Kindling, Few Bits, and Sleepy all released songs in the past two weeks that came incredibly close to being featured on this site. In the end, the featured spot for this post wound up going to a band that’s been featured here several times before: Happy Diving. Following up one of last year’s best 7″ records, the band’s started unveiling incredibly promising pieces of their forthcoming sophomore effort, Electric Soul Unity.

Most recently, they released the surprisingly gorgeous “Head Spell” — which easily could have claimed a feature spot of its own if there were more time — but the spotlight here falls to the first glimpse of the record they offered up to the public: “Holy Ground”. Clocking in at under two minutes, “Holy Ground” hits with all of the unrelenting force that defined their best work but also equips itself with a more nuanced finesse that nicely underpins the song’s more beautiful, if extremely damaged, aspects.

Soaring guitars, swirling feedback, an absolutely vicious rhythm section, and impassioned vocals constitute the foundation of “Holy Ground” and the band opts to not only embrace but emphasize those traits. Everything Happy Diving does exists happily in the red and they’ve figured out how to make that aesthetic beneficial to their compositions. Punishing, unapologetic, and oddly soothing, “Holy Ground” is the rallying cry of a band at the peak of their powers, warning anyone in earshot to either get out of the way or to fully commit to being trampled.

Listen to “Holy Ground” below and pre-order Electric Soul Unity from Topshelf here.

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August 18, 2015

Saintseneca – Sleeper Hold (Stream, Live Video)

Now that we’re nearing the final quarter of the year, the already-stacked release schedules are starting to get even more dense as a lot of bands and labels make power play bids for album of the year consideration. One of the titles slated for that wave of new material is Saintseneca‘s just-announced Such Things, an announcement which came with an accompanying single: “Sleeper Hold”. Before getting around to that song, though, it’s worth taking a step back to cover a handful of other notable releases that are well worth your attention.

For single streams, there was Dogs On Acid‘s shape-shifting “Ideal Decanter“, Atlantic Thrills’ surf-indebted (and retro-leaning) basement pop highlight “Bed Bugs“, Connie Constance’s glitchy, slow-burning “Euphoric“, Orchid Mantis’ tantalizing “It Was Gone“, and Century Thief’s slowly unfurling “Pillar“. Additionally, there were outstanding new songs from the likes of Swings, Funeral Advantage, Promised Land Sound, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, and Sea Lion. Full streams, while not even close to matching the numbers of the single streams, unearthed one of the year’s best albums in Pleasure Leftists‘ The Woods of Heaven and another beautiful full-length in Totally Mild’s Down Time. Sleepy’s extraordinary self-titled EP (another potential year-end contender) rounded the category out with style. Two music videos- Ali Barter’s “Hypercolour” and Valley Maker’s “Only Friend“- made sure that the visual format was very well represented.

Back to the feature: Saintseneca’s latest, “Sleeper Hold”, an even punchier take on the band’s Appalachian folk than anything found on their last record, the exemplary Dark Arc. Having just seen the band take apart Baby’s All Right a little over a week ago, the new material that was played live has been resonating for a short while. “Sleeper Hold”, the lead-off single to the band’s forthcoming Such Things, capitalizes on that resonance by virtue of strength and polish. Immediately employing the under-utilized and extremely effective dynamic of a back-and-forth vocal lead between the band’s two primary voices (those of Zac Little and Maryn Jones), “Sleeper Hold” strikes a refreshingly bold look for the band.

All of the hallmarks that made their previous work so compelling are still firmly in tact, from the smart compositions to Little’s twisted, hyper-literary wordplay. Some of the surprising amount of weight to be found on “Sleeper Hold” is due to the conceptual design of Such Things, which largely grapples with the purposefulness of existence. “Sleeper Hold”, in particular, is about the designs of perception and consciousness. For such heavy material, the music itself is impossibly light, buoyant, and deceptively carefree. Every element of “Sleeper Hold” works incredibly well and reaffirms Saintseneca’s status as one of today’s finest acts. Propulsive, smart, and irresistible, “Sleeper Hold” is the perfectly crafted warning shot of what promises to be one of this year’s finest albums.

Listen to “Sleeper Hold” below and pre-order Such Things from ANTI- ahead of its release date here. Underneath the player, watch a recent video of the band performing the song at Baby’s All Right.

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July 30, 2015

Heat – This Life (Music Video)

This summer, Thursday’s have offered up a glut of outstanding material vying for coverage and today’s field was no different. Since there are nearly two dozen titles to touch on, they’ll be listed by virtue of artist and the represented format before moving onto the featured item. As usual, the single streams category proved to have the most productive release slate and included great new tracks from Hazel English, Sleepy, Infinity Girl, The Chills, Dark Palms, Wavves, Night Flowers, Willis Earl Beal, Blank Realms, and Air Waves. Music videos found some entertaining life via clips from Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin, Pet Cemetery, Kalle Mattson, Pink Frost, The Atom Age, and Pearl Charles. Topping everything off was a strong group of full releases that included releases from Worriers, Nice Legs, Fox Academy, Fog Lake, Suis La Lune, and Two White Cranes.

A lot of those band names are new to the site and Heat, who have today’s feature spot, are yet another new addition. Still riding high on the surge of last year’s excellent- and overlooked- Rooms EP, the band are now offering up a stark black-and-white clip for the release’s lead-off track. Using a minimalist approach to the visuals, director Jimmi Francoeur takes a few cues from some of Anton Corbijn’s formative work to create a sleek, engaging performance-sync clip. A room setup that’s clever in both construction and lighting lends an air of sophistication to the visually striking clip, while still allowing the bulk of the emphasis to fall on “This Life” itself, a punk-indebted powerpop number that cribs influences from a variety of other genres and sculpts it into something that manages to be both familiar and refreshing. In short: it’s a knockout from a band that deserves more attention than they’ve received.

Watch “This Life” below and pick up Rooms here.

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