Mixtape: San Francisco’s Newest Psychedelic Sounds (Podcast #306)
May 15, 2013
Mixtape: San Francisco’s Newest Psychedelic Sounds (Podcast #306)
It’s almost 18 months since we last did a psych-focused mixtape, which means there’s quite a bit to catch up on. The Bay continues to be a vital source for top-notch mind-expanding bands, whether it’s the heady drones of Carlton Melton and Date Palms, or the swaggering rock of Glitter Wizard and Coo Coo Birds.
Several of the groups included here have new records either out now or coming out soon. Prolific instrumental duo Barn Owl just released its fifth album, V, on Thrill Jockey; meanwhile, cosmic rock group Lumerians is serving up The High Frontier later this year. While we’ve been following some of these bands for years, it’s exciting that they’re joined here by a number of newer arrivals, like Fuzz (a heavy rock project from Ty Segall and Charlie Moothart), Group Rhoda‘s experimental synth songs, and electrified jams from Golden Void and Life Coach (both of which feature the guitar work of Isaiah Mitchell of Earthless).
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Live This Month: May 2013 — an audio guide through SF concerts this month (Podcast #305)
May 1, 2013
Live This Month: May 2013 — an audio guide through SF concerts this month (Podcast #305)
In Live This Month, we sample some of the great local and out-of-town bands performing in the coming month in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Few recent artists have transitioned from lo-fi to hi-fi better than Kurt Vile, whose latest album, Wakin on a Pretty Daze, is another winner from the Philly-based musician, full of long, languid songs that feel spacious but not aimless. A sense of space also guides Clinic‘s psych-pop offering Free Reign; in fact, the group just released an alternate collection, Free Reign II, with the original album’s songs reconfigured in an appropriately mind-expanding fashion by Oneohtrix Point Never’s Daniel Lopatin. More tightly constructed is Shout Out Louds‘ album Optica. The Swedish band’s new release fuses elements of disco and chamber pop into lively, addictive tunes.
Like Vile, Mikal Cronin is also making the move from low to high fidelity look easy. Cronin’s been making great music for a while now, solo and as a member of Moonhearts and Ty Segall’s band, but MCII, arriving on Merge Records, feels like the big screen debut of a real power pop talent. Meanwhile, Sacramento’s Tera Melos just released a new album of frenzied, mathy rock called X’ed Out and are embarking on a US tour to support. With new records also arriving recently from Cool Ghouls and Metal Mother, it’s certainly a busy time for Bay Area bands.
Enjoy the podcast and then go see some shows!
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Mixtape: Bay Area Artists, Remixing and Remixed (Podcast #304)
April 17, 2013
Mixtape: Bay Area Artists, Remixing and Remixed (Podcast #304)
All too frequently, remixes are just okay, but when they are great, they’re really something special. A truly great remix can shed new light on the original artist’s work and stand on its own as a unique creation. That’s no easy feat, either, given the tension between staying true to an original song’s components and a reworker’s desire to create something new and personal.
These days, it feels far too easy to get remix fatigue. Reworkings seem to pop up almost immediately after original songs are released, and they can come in such a volume that it can be a challenge to separate the excellent from mediocre.
This mixtape attempts to do just that, highlighting twenty recent songs showcasing San Francisco Bay Area artists getting remixed, Bay Area artists doing the remixing, or, in most cases included here, both. It’s a freewheeling collection that includes a wide variety of exciting local talents.
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Live This Month: April 2013 — an audio guide through SF concerts this month (Podcast #303)
April 3, 2013
Live This Month: April 2013 — an audio guide through SF concerts this month (Podcast #303)
In Live This Month, we sample some of the great local and out-of-town bands performing in the coming month in the San Francisco Bay Area.
We’re due for an onslaught of anticipated new albums from Bay Area bands, and that outpouring begins this month with a number of the local artists we’ve included in this mix. Both Life Coach and Tartufi have gained members since their last records — Life Coach recently became a duo with the addition of The Mars Volta’s Jon Theodore on drums, while Tartufi gained a third member, bass player Ben Thorne (also of MINOT). On the garage rock front, we’ve included a selection from Shannon and the Clams‘ Dreams in the Rat House, which arrives in late May, and one from Burnt Ones‘ new album on Burger Records.
Plenty of reliably strong live performers are also touring through SF in April, including guitar wizard Marnie Stern, whose The Chronicles of Marnia has great songs as well as the best/most ridiculous title I’ve heard all year. If you’re more inclined toward country rock with an experimental twist, do check out Phosphorescent. I was really impressed by Matthew Houck’s band at South by Southwest; it’s a tight group of musicians who do great service to his rich songs. Finally, Telekinesis knows its way around a great indie pop song, and the band’s live shows find bandleader Michael Lerner drumming and singing with equal vigor.
Enjoy the podcast and then go see some shows!
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Mixtape: Fifteen Highlights from South by Southwest 2013 (Podcast #302)
March 20, 2013
Mixtape: Fifteen Highlights from South by Southwest 2013 (Podcast #302)
As discussed earlier today, we saw a ton of great bands at South by Southwest 2013. Here are fifteen SXSW discoveries from a number of genres. As you’ll see, the first half of the mix (Side A, if you will) includes some of our favorite rock, punk and psych highlights from SXSW. The second half, by contrast, is all about electronic pop. We’d previously covered a few of these acts before, but we’ll be watching all of them closely in the future.
For more about these bands and all of South by Southwest 2013, revisit our review. Then enjoy the mix!
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Live This Month: March 2013 — an audio guide through SF concerts this month (Podcast #301)
March 6, 2013
Live This Month: March 2013 — an audio guide through SF concerts this month (Podcast #301)
In Live This Month, we sample some of the great local and out-of-town bands performing in the coming month in the San Francisco Bay Area.
With South by Southwest leading much of independent music to converge in Austin later this month, tons of bands are hitting the road. All of them, it would seem, are playing in the San Francisco Bay Area in March. Even if you aren’t going to SXSW this year, you can still catch plenty of buzzed-about acts, like Thurston Moore’s noisy new band Chelsea Light Moving, or the experimental electronic pop of Autre Ne Veut. Also touring are Veronica Falls, bringing top-notch jangle pop to the Rickshaw Stop, and Ducktails, the solo project of Real Estate guitarist Matt Mondanile.
Things are a bit quieter on the local front — what with the many bands gone on Austin-bound tours — but there are still notable highlights. Led by Hether Fortune (also of Blasted Canyons), Oakland’s Wax Idols is celebrating the release of Discipline & Desire this month; the album’s coming in April on the always reliable Slumberland Records. Meanwhile, Cruel Summer has been wowing our writers for over a year now, and the band’s prepping for the release of its debut EP.
Enjoy the podcast and then go see some shows!
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Mixtape: Fourteen Songs about Love for Valentine’s Day (Podcast #300)
February 12, 2013
Mixtape: Fourteen Songs about Love for Valentine’s Day (Podcast #300)
In case you’ve managed to avoid this news until now, February 14th is Valentine’s Day, the greeting card industry holiday that can compel even the least romantic to confront the topic of love. Over the past few years, plenty of our favorite indie rockers have explored the excitement and complications of love in terrific songs. Here, we’ve collected fourteen tracks about love’s many facets, including the swooning romanticism of Real Estate, Cass McCombs, and Bare Wires.
Affairs of the heart don’t always end well, however, and the mix also offers some songs that touch on love’s darker side, like the lush melancholy of Chromatics‘ “Lady” and The Antlers‘ heartbreaking “I Don’t Want Love.” We’ve also thrown in a few left turns, Sonny & The Sunsets‘s goofy “Lovin’ on an Older Gal” and Mwahaha‘s heady “Love” among them.
Ultimately, we’ve aimed to a balance the sweet and the bittersweet here, although we’ve probably tipped our hands toward the romantic side with the one-two closing punch of Sean Hayes‘ “When We Fall In” and a live cover of Daniel Johnston’s classic “True Love Will Find You In The End” by the dearly departed Girls. Still, we’re sympathetic to Mwahaha’s assessment that love is “something we’re always doing, but we never figure it out.”
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Live This Month: February 2013 — an audio guide through SF concerts this month (Podcast #298)
January 31, 2013
Live This Month: February 2013 — an audio guide through SF concerts this month (Podcast #298)
In Live This Month, we sample some of the great local and out-of-town bands performing in the coming month in the San Francisco Bay Area.
With the twenty-first annual Noise Pop Festival taking over Bay Area venues during the last week of the month, February is already guaranteed to offer plenty of tempting local concerts. We’ll be previewing Noise Pop extensively on the podcast soon, but this collection of songs shows that there are plenty of good options even before Noise Pop starts.
On the local front, “slop pop” specialists Cocktails are celebrating their debut EP with a strong all-local rock and roll bill, featuring Bay Bridged favorites Warm Soda and DSTVV, while The Stone Foxes are holding free performances on both sides of the Bay to promote Small Fires. We’re also excited to see the return of electronic pop duo Painted Palms, who have a new 7″ coming in March on Polyvinyl, and are performing this month at the Brick and Mortar Music Hall to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the monthly Wood Shoppe series.
Weird-pop titans Unknown Mortal Orchestra return to San Francisco this month, but we’re as intrigued by the bands they’re bringing with them. Especially Foxygen, a psych-pop duo who call to mind UMO with their inventive spirit; the LA band’s new album, We Are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace & Magic, has been getting rave reviews. Also promising is the return of The Ruby Suns, whose globetrotting bandleader Ryan McPhun relocated from New Zealand to Norway to make the rich synth-pop found on Christopher, the Suns’ fourth album.
Enjoy the podcast and then go see some shows!
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