Tough Love Records | Heartbreaking Bravery

June 9, 2015

Girls Names – Reticence (Stream)

A Brief recap at the top: over the past week and a half I’ve been preparing for a move from Wisconsin to New York, collecting songs as they appeared. Fifteen of the finest from that stretch will appear beneath the embed of the featured song; Girls Names’ “Reticence”. A wiry post-punk number that takes a hairpin turn into something a lot more full-bodied than the opening guitar figure would suggest.

What follows is a brutally unforgiving run through a desolate atmosphere before veering into a sharp left and tapping into outsider pop that leans heavily towards a new wave tendencies. As that section blooms into something otherworldly it refuses to stop unfurling, laying itself out in a tantalizing sprawl before getting cut off at the head. With next to no warning, the track reverts back to the bleak, foreboding section that dominated its first half. As an exercise in dynamics, it’s stunning. As a teaser for the band’s upcoming Arms Around A Vision, it’s enough to elevate the anticipation into the stratosphere. As a standalone song? It’s damn near miraculous.

Listen to “Reticence” below and pre-order Arms Around A Vision from Tough Love ahead of its October 2 release here. Beneath the embed, explore a list of 15 other highlights from the past week and a half.

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Dan Svizeny – Dreams Came True
Lee Bannon – Disneµ Girls
Django Django – Slow West
Failure – Mulholland Drive
The Fall – Auto Chip 2014-2016
Jaill – Getaway
Glint – While You Sleep
Beirut – No No No
Ludvig Moon – Swim Dream
Camera Shy – Colors Radiate
White Reaper – Sheila
Albert Hammond Jr – Losing Touch
Grass House – Learning to Less Feel
Bad Bad Habits – Psychic Reader
Jordan Lane Price – Sponge

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May 26, 2015

Lady Bones – 24 Hour Party Girl (Stream)

Now that the site’s caught up to the current release cycle on all fronts, their may not be as much material in the ensuing posts as some of the more recent entries. Even with that note, it’s extremely clear that 2015’s not going to bother to slow down its astonishing pace in regards to great new releases. While not a lot of publications or bands offered up new material over what seemed to be a slightly extended Labor Day weekend, there were still a few slivers of gold. The music video format found strong representation by way of Mick Jenkins’ stunning “P’s & Q’s” and Skating Polly’s delightfully whirlwind “Nothing More Than A Body“. Single streams saw another compelling duo ushered forth in Terrible Feelings’ new noir-tinged basement pop classic “Black Water” and Drowse’s slowly-unfurling, dread-induced “Melt“.

Full streams were in much larger supply, with no less than six outstanding titles vying for greater attention. Soul Low hit a new career with the surging, shambolic Sweet Pea EP, reaffirming their potential in the process. La Lenguas proved that “Love You All The Time” was no fluke by padding it out with two more stunners on their debut EP, Tears In My Milkshake. Rightfully-vaunted punk label Dirt Cult found another strong release in Blank Pages’ urgent No Reception EP while Heyrocco got their career off to an extraordinarily promising start with the powerful Teenage Movie Soundtrack. Both Communions and Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin exceeded heightened expectations with The High Country and Communions, respectively, to bring everything home.

All of those songs, records, and music videos- as always- are worthy of praise and greater scrutiny. It’s Lady Bones’ latest, though, that earns this post’s featured spot. The band recently began teasing their upcoming Dying with a song, “Botch“, that suggested a bold atmospheric shift. Now, “24 Hour Party Girl” has arrived to confirm the band’s new era. Lady Bones had initially caught this site’s attention by virtue of an incredible split release with Horsehands. Any of the band’s more vibrantly bright tendencies evidenced in that first release have all but vanished, replaced instead with the dour relentlessness that drives bands like their labelmates (and site favorites) Kal Marks.

“24 Hour Party Girl”, like “Botch” starts murky and intent, working itself into a contained furor that seems as if its on the verge of toppling everything over at any given moment. Incredibly dynamic, restless, and unnervingly foreboding, the song’s unavoidable proof of the band’s sudden ascension to an unthinkable level. Coming in 15 seconds shy of five minutes, it hits its fiercest moments in its closing passage, erupting into a bruising, cathartic release. The guitar sings while the rhythm section punishes, bringing everything to an unexpectedly explosive finish, leaving nothing but smoke in its wake. Two songs in and Dying is already looking like a surprise candidate for Album of the Year.

Listen to “24 Hour Party Girl” below and pre-order Dying in advance of its June 3o release date from Midnight Werewolf here.

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December 5, 2014

Beliefs – Tidal Wave (Music Video)

Now, despite all the content that’s already gone up tonight, there’s still a lot that went down over the past week and a half while the site was dealing with technical complications. To that end, the approach in coverage is going to be slightly different this time around. Full streams, single streams, and music videos will all be covered- but they’ll be branched off into categories. Each entry will get a line or two and then when everything’s been accounted for, there’ll be a feature spot granted to Beliefs’ ridiculously entertaining clip for “Tidal Wave”. So, without further ado…

SINGLE STREAMS

Pet Cemetery – Giants: The newest near-perfect post-punk entry into Art Is Hard’s perfect Pizza Club series. | Deer Tick – White Havoc: A fuzzed-out Holiday stomper courtesy of one of today’s more intriguing acts. | Sun Hotel – Tropic of Cancer: An incredibly compelling and slightly damaged folk-leaning exploration. | Abi Reimold – Workshop: A folksy DIY pop masterpiece that doubles as a perfect contribution to a great compilation series. | The Soft Moon – Black: Nightmarishly menacing ambient music that tilts into industrial territory. | Sleater-Kinney – Surface Envy: Video game guitar lines. Corin Tucker’s vocals. Total madness. Sleater-Kinney is back. | Victoria+Jean – Holly: Seductive art-pop that flirts with expectations and capitalizes on tension. | Menace Beach – Blue Eye: An ambient noise exercise that only gains intrigue as it quietly builds towards its finish. | Deerhoof – Exit Only (Perfect Pussy Remix): A terrifying reimagining of an already terrifying song, courtesy of Shaun Sutkus. | Moon Duo – Animal: Menacing and minimal psych-punk that isn’t afraid to bare its fangs. | Grand Vapids – Aubade: Indie pop that isn’t afraid to subvert or challenge aesthetic expectations. | Howlin’ Rain – Wild Bush: A pastoral folk throwback jam that wears its influences proudly on its sleeve. | California X – Red Planet: Another triumphant, scorched-earth preview of what looks to be a career-best effort. | The Sidekicks – Jesus Christ Supermalls: Subtle, stunning, and lovely. The Sidekicks‘ finest work to date. | Seagulls – Swimmin’: Unbelievably winsome and completely enchanting folk-centric indie pop. | Elephant Micah – Slow Time Vultures: Gently gorgeous and effortlessly arresting ambient folk reminiscent of Vic Chesnutt. | Future of What – Daydream 99: Boldly stylish indie pop that crafts its own brand of magic. |

FULL STREAMS

The Goodbye Party – Silver Blues: The latest DIY punk-pop gem to grace the impossibly reliable Salinas roster. | Littler – Get A Life: Relentlessly propulsive weirdo punk. | Bonny Doon – Fred’s House Demo: An impossibly overlooked (and impossibly great) folk-tinted basement pop masterpiece. | School ’94 – Like You: Graceful indie pop with gargantuan scope that still manages to come across as refreshingly breezy. | Forth Wanderers – Tough Love: Defiant and subtly venomous basement pop with an unbelievable amount of inherent charm. | SUSAN – Just Call It: Surf-indebted basement pop with enough punk bite to please a purist. | Githead – Waiting For A Sign: Leftifeld post-punk and new wave from a quasi-supergroup that features members of Wire, Compact, and Scanner. | Furnsss – Silent Gold: Deranged slacker punk and basement pop for the actively lethargic. | Thelma & The Sleaze – Heart Like A Fist: Incendiary basement punk with a heaping of 80’s hardcore influence. | Cave People – Older: Treble-heavy basement pop that leans towards sentiment and presents a genuinely memorable vision. | Terrorista – Purple Tape: Hard-charging basement punk that thrives on the notion that everything could fall apart at any second.

MUSIC VIDEOS

Young Statues – Run The River Dry: Visually stunning and endlessly intriguing, “Run The River Dry” shines a bright light on Young Statues’ promising future in the visual format. | Christian Lee Hutson – Late November: A simple concept that becomes a wrenching experience as it transforms into something inexplicably moving. | Flashlight O – TV Time: Staunchly DIY and weirdly hypnotic in its collage-heavy presentation. | Highway Cross – Open Eyes: Furiously paced and brilliantly edited, this is a perfect example of how emphasizing details can pay off in unexpectedly huge ways. | Luluc – Tangled Heart: Beautifully arranged and enhanced with simple, creative effects, “Tangled Heart” winds up feeling like something worth treasuring. | Johnny Marr – Dynamo: The iconic guitarist has always had a visual flair but those tendencies reach new, modern heights with this clip. | Run The Jewels – Oh My Darling (Don’t Cry): Like the group, this is a video driven by outsize personality- it’s unabashedly weird and it’s absolutely glorious. | Bass Drum of Death – For Blood: Bikers and gangs collide in deliriously entertaining fashion throughout this brilliantly executed tracking shot clip. | Blonde Redhead – Dripping: A sensual and highly stylized video that wields atmospherics and soft touches to stunning effect. | Communions – Love Stands Still: Classically composed and unwaveringly endearing; a perfect reflection of Communions’ indie pop. | A Place To Bury Strangers – Straight: A hallucinatory collage of striking imagery backed by one of the band’s most insistent songs to date. | Liars – Mask Maker (Extended Version): Characteristically bizarre and replete with a whole mess of yarn. | Tinkerbelles – When Puppies Cry: Extraordinarily damaged basement punk made weirder by one of the most insanely warped clips of 2014.

TIDAL WAVE

Okay, so the bold font probably wasn’t necessary but it’s late- and this is a really great video. Beliefs first gained an uptick in notoriety when they paired with the similarly-minded Greys for one of 2013’s best splits. Since then, they’ve been on a tear, steadily building a name for themselves on the strength of their powerful new material and formidable live show. If “Tidal Wave” is any indication, they may be able to add great music videos to that list as well. While it mostly finds inspiration in the trends of classic clips from the 80’s and 90’s there’s a certain playfulness here that’s missing from a lot of homage-style videos. That playfulness comes to a head nearly halfway through when they manage to seamlessly work in something genuinely unexpected and ridiculously perfect. It’s too good of a moment to spoil completely but it’s also one of the more endearingly appreciative moments of recent memory. By the time all the effects have worn down and “Tidal Wave” reaches its tongue-in-cheek epilogue, it becomes abundantly clear that this band has big things in mind for Leaper (the forthcoming album “Tidal Wave” is taken from) and for themselves. Beliefs aren’t a band intent to keep quiet and if they keep going at the pace they are, we’re all in for one hell of a ride.

Watch “Tidal Wave” below and pick up Leaper from Hand Drawn Dracula as soon as it’s available.

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October 1, 2014

Speedy Ortiz – Doomsday (Stream)

Even on relatively quiet days, there will be things that warrant a paragraph’s worth of fawning. Today, that distinction could have gone to Big Ups’ gnashed-teeth brawler, “Rash“, just as easily as it could have fallen to We Come From the Same Place, a triumphant new record from Allo Darlin’. There were also attention-demanding examples of overblown visual weirdness that covered the DIY-professional production spread thanks to The New Pornographers and Krill, respectively. Even more left-field than those two videos was the video for “Never Catch Me“, the collaborative single between Flying Lotus and Kendrick Lamar off of the former’s upcoming You’re Dead– an easy 2014 highlight. While all were great for an array of (extremely) varying reasons, none of them hit home quite as hard as Speedy Ortiz’s “Doomsday”, a song that continues the band’s growth in mesmerizing fashion.

A lot of Speedy Ortiz’s most stunning material is tethered to a duality of feelings, whether it’s the wistful melodies contrasting the uplifting affirmations in “No Below” or a vulnerable paranoia being met by the relentless aggression of “American Horror“. It’s something the band seems to have an awareness of and likely why both of those songs wound up as singles. For all of Major Arcana‘s successes last year, the band could have easily used 2014 to coast on a victory lap. Instead, they’ve released an incredibly strong EP (Real Hair) an Adult Swim single (“Bigger Party“), and now they’re following those up with a stunning new effort for Famous Class Records’ LAMC series. “Doomsday” is a song that the band’s been playing out for a while and it’s been an easy set highlight each time thanks to the fact that it’s a genuinely great song. Easily one of Speedy Ortiz’s strongest works to date, it retains all of the elements that caused the band to be celebrated in the first place- only this time, all of those traits feel astonishingly complete. After a string of rightfully-acclaimed releases, Speedy Ortiz have found their identity and crafted something that feels wholly their own- and it’s extraordinary. How “Doomsday” can feel so weighted when nearly every small moment of it suggests something lighter is impossibly impressive; de facto bandleader Sadie Dupuis’ grasp on the material, strong enough to ensure that this is a band emerging musicians will look to as an influence in the years to come. If “Doomsday” is any indication of the material the band has in store, their next record could easily wind up being a classic. Until then, just listen to “Doomsday” on repeat and make sure to get out to one of the band’s upcoming dates with Ex Hex- because those shows won’t be worth missing.

Stream “Doomsday” below and order the 7″ (which is backed by a lovely acoustic track from Chris Weisman) from Famous Class’ bandcamp.

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August 15, 2014

Big Ups – Justice (Music Video)

There were a lot of treasures revealed in the weird little corners of the music world this site loves to mine today, including a full album stream (courtesy of Kanine Records) of Beach Day’s Native Echoes, an unofficial video of Ty Segall’s “Susie Thumb“, and an official music video from doom overlords Windhand. Additionally, there were streams for excellent new songs from GAMES, Abattoir Blues, and, especially, Nude Beach. Mostly, though, today belonged to a band who are no strangers to this site: Big Ups.

Eighteen Hours of Static, Big Ups’ most recent record, set the tone for what’s proven to be a tumultuous 2014 back in the middle of January. Since then, they’ve toured fiercely, experienced a growing profile, and quite an impact on this site’s Watch This series. The band also seems to have an eerie predilection for anticipating things on a large scale, something that could serve them very well in the future- and something that made the video they unveiled today for “Justice” so jaw-dropping.

Given the extremely unfortunate events happening in Ferguson, MO regarding journalists and journalistic rights, a video showcasing the plight and persecution of such a figure is not only timely but incredibly arresting. That “Justice” furthers its plot into a torturous state of affairs involving a grotesque allegorical sequence involving a bloodthirsty parasite that only adds to the overall discomfort. As aesthetically jarring that sequence is, it’s worth noting that “Justice” is a visual feast that’s soundtracked by Big Ups’ very peculiar brand of post-hardcore. The whole affair is intense and extremely disquieting, which will likely continue Big Ups’ deserved ascension in name recognition. This is a timely piece of multimedia art that’s worth watching and reflecting on. Don’t miss it.

Watch “Justice” below, read up on the situation in Ferguson, and buy Eighteen Hours of Static from the band’s webstore.

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