Gleemer released a really good album last year. It was called Holyland USA and it made our Favourite Free Music List. If you were a fan then you are in for a treat. The band are back with a new EP, No Goodbyes. As the line of blurb I pasted above suggests, the songs are about a party, or more specifically the end of a party and the unhappy people it leaves behind. The EP sees the Colorado duo reign in their shoegazey atmospherics a little, opting for a more precise brand of grungey indie rock.

No Goodbyes is dark and unsettling, the ghosts of crippling anxiety and alcoholic dads rippling near the surface of everything. The aftermath of this party is not merely a hangover and a vague sense of regret, not some silly tears because Johnny wouldn’t stop looking at Cindy’s legs in that skirt. No, this party ends with dad under the tires of your pickup, with your uncle melting in a puddle of gasoline.

You can get No Goodbyes on a pay-what-you-want basis over at the Gleemer Bandcamp page. Alternatively you can pre-order the EP on cassette via our good friends over at 80N7. Co-released with Gold Flake Tapes, the cassette will also feature Gleemer’s 2013 release, A Brother on the Carpet and a Brother at the Beach, as an exclusive, first-time-on-tape B-side. Order now to get the tape at the start of March.

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The label’s next release will be, Maybe This Summer, the third album from Canadian lo-fi popsters Family Video, an album of lovely, summery pop gems, all shot through with a double helping of casio keyboards and wistful longing. I first listened to this album sitting on a train, and among my scrawled notes and initial impressions I wrote the words “Languid Lethargic Lovelorn”. I think that pretty much nails it.

The album opens with ‘Ten Years Will Pass’, a tale of summer romance which opens with the line, “All I know is ten years will pass so fast, you just wish that you could slow down or stop here for a while”. Next up is’She Reminds Me’, a small-town summertime jam, complete with awkward romance, dreams of moving away and a catchy little woo-ooh chorus. Check it out:

‘Sitting In My Room’ is an indie rock paean to self-doubt and fear of the future, opening with the line “And I think about everything too much all of the time”. Lead Jam King voices this doubt directly in the chorus, singing, “Oh my God, I don’t know, the path of the future and what it holds”. Another standout is ‘Pour Warm Water’, with it’s chorus of, “It’s okay to feel that way sometimes, it’s okay to make mistakes sometimes”.

The band have perfectly captured the spectrum of emotions of long hot youthful summers. At one moment they sound like an exuberant get-together with friends and the next they’re the hazy evening sun slanting through your faded bedroom curtains as you cry into the phone because Johnny doesn’t love you. It’s about being young in the hot eternity of summer, about the joy and heartache that vie for your consciousness as the sun sets and the insects buzz and somewhere beyond your small town, the whole world continues to spin.

Maybe This Summer is due for release on the 1st of September. Pre-order the limited edition cassette via the GoldFlakeTapes. The album is also available for download on a pay-what-you-want basis over at the GoldFlakeTapes Bandcamp page.

P.S. Amazingly, this is the band’s second album of the year (the first already holding a place on the draft for this year’s Best Free Music list). So after you have finished listening to this, check out their previous albums.

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