This month sees the release of Wild & Free, Megadose’s debut full-length album, and the band has unveiled the title track to preview the record. Made in collaboration with Trevor Spencer, who lends Mellotron and keyboard as well as producing, engineering and mixing the track, ‘Wild & Free’ was recorded in the woods outside Seattle during the early days of the pandemic. The circumstances might have influenced the song’s tone and style, the imposed restrictions bringing a love for Washington state and the wider area into sharper relief.

‘Wild And Free’ “serves as a sort of anthem for the band,” Megadose explain. “True to our PNW roots, we adventure all over the state of Washington and beyond, surfing, mountain biking, camping, and getting into all sorts of trouble. These group adventures are a huge part of our group, and the song is dedicated to that spirit.” This sense of playfulness is captured with a building rhythm that seizes the listener and drags them along for the ride, and the result is something carefree and momentous. A cathartic reminder of the joys of life.

Cover design and photo by Kiersten Miller, photograph by Jarita Hui

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Set for release this week, the second CIVIC album Face Blindness has been described as “a collage of inspiration and a response to an identity crisis”—a record exploring the multitude of depersonalising side effects of contemporary culture through a prosopagnosic lens, where the ability to recognise faces, even your own, is lost. This allows the band to prod at the paradoxes of modern life, especially those faced by women, who are expected to seek and receive attention, while at the same time achieve a state of ease or even reticence. CIVIC’s music plays off of such oxymoronic expectations, sounding bright and bouncy while charging at the quote unquote ‘serious’ stuff head on, thus refusing to be flattened into any reductive category of genre or mood.

Following previous singles ‘Selena Gomez’, which saw the Osterling take on the gender-biased expectations of manicured mainstream artists, and the more personal critique of ‘Not For Me’, we’re delighted to unveil the brand new track, ‘Down and Distant’. Playing as a wistful folk rock song, the track is build around, and indeed of, ambiguity—a nebulous collection of vague images and statements that coalesce into something like a reassurance, a long held conviction that doubt and uncertainty might not always be bad things. In this way, the track could serve as an summation for the record, or even a mission statement for CIVIC as a whole, revealing the ironies behind neat categorisation and favouring the less definite, the spaces outside and in between.

“Undone by distance,
obscured by clouds,
there’s nothing you can say
there’s nothing you can shout

You are cold and cryptic,
down and distant.
There’s nothing to worry about”

Photo by Andre Rober Beriau

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If you are yet to climb aboard the Goodman train, latest single ‘Hourglass’ is as good as place as any to hop on and enjoy the ride. Slightly more restrained than the previous singles, the track is cloaked in a syrupy retro vibe, a thick, golden nostalgia made up of twang and reverb that makes even the most cutting sadness and regret appear halfway gratifying. From its languid beginnings, Goodman’s vocals rise in passion and feeling, hinting at the more ramshackle numbers elsewhere on the album, though here (just) remaining contained within the hazy bubble of comfy melodrama.

The Vicissitudes is out on the 3rd February via Invertebrate and you can pre-order it now from the Goodman Bandcamp page. If you are in/around New York, there’s a release show on the 8th Feb at the Knitting Factory, with support from The Shacks, Color Tongue and The Misters. You can get tickets here.

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“It’s clear you’re attempting to erase
things you didn’t mean to say
A fear of truth is going to make a liar out of you.”

The song comes complete with an Adam Curtis-esque video of public domain footage which explores the “ghostly middle ground between reality and fiction” and exudes a strange, unclear sense of importance, the disparate images demanding to be processed and reassembled into some cohesive narrative or meaning.

The EP is out on on the 20th January and you can pre-order it now from The Can’t Tells Bandcamp page.

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Their latest EP, charm school, is the perfect example, a noise pop record that provides all the dynamism and rough edges of a live performance without losing too much clarity, each song feeling unique in the way it catches an ephemeral moment, allowing it to retain its motion long after time has moved on. Opener ‘Ten Year Tenure’ jumps into life with enthusiastic instrumentation, guitars and drums on the perpetual verge of losing control, Zoë’s vocals surfing this clamour with an easy confidence. ‘Vinyl Siding’ is equally rambunctious, the vocals this time edging toward classic punk with a dissatisfied insistence, while ‘Scenes from the Couch’ lulls for all of fifteen seconds before racing back with joyous zeal, the lyrics rotating around two or three lines with only slight variations so that a certain mantra-like quality adds to the momentum.

‘Day Dogs’ tells of post-summer blues through a prism of nostalgia and cathartic energy, before ‘Ice Cream Dinner’ provides the closest thing to a breather on the release, the half-paced instrumentation and crooned vocals eventually rising into a crash of percussion and yelled vocals. Closer ‘Black Dodge’ puts the pedal to the metal once more, the punk vocals coming off somewhere between threat and warning as the guitars swell and attempt to drown out the words.

charm school is out now on Disposable America and Too Far Gone Records, and as a digital download from the Halfsour Bandcamp page.

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Saint Clementine make what they describe as, “powerful tunes…about the end of the summer, complex relationships and teenage anxiety at our twenties”. The first EP, If We Are Falling, opens with ‘Hell Your Home, Death My Bedroom’, which proves a good introduction to the spiky and catchy punk rock that Saint Clementine deal in. Both ‘Tossing & Turning’ and ‘Sunday Night Crisis’ have the scrappy and angular breakneck pace of classic punk, producing something gloriously messy and fun.

“It’s so cool to feel alone
when you’re not on your own
toss and turn, you’re sore, you’re burnt
and there’s no way that you are happy “

Despite the influences, Saint Clementine lack that raw-throated caustic nature of a lot of punk bands, meaning their sound is more accurately described as power pop or simply noisy indie rock. The vocals are relatively melodic, the lyrics not as impossible to decipher as those of many similar bands, meaning we get the best of both worlds – punk energy and understandable, related words.

The second EP, I Wish I Knew What You Did Last Summer, opens with ‘Fake a Smile’, a lean and catchy song which sees rumbling indie rock teamed with dreamy cooing background vocals. ‘Crystal Cassels’ is tinged with an emo heaviness, while ‘The I Can’t Get Over You Blues’ does exactly what it says in the tin, a song about falling for someone you don’t even like. Saint Clementine channel The Smiths on ‘We’ll Fade’, before ‘Movie Night’ packs in lots of film references (14 by my count), and closer ‘I Believe in You’ sends a message to an as yet hypothetical true love.

“I guess,
We won’t meet until we are prepared
So in the meantime I’ll distract myself
With life and thoughts of everyone I know “

You can get If We Are Falling / I Wish I Knew What You Did Last Summer from the Z Tapes Bandcamp page or online store.

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The band have finished recording their debut full-length with Swearin’s Kyle Gilbride (who’s worked with other WTD-favs like Radiator Hospital and Girlpool), and a few of the tracks are available for your streaming please. The latest of which, ‘Tectonics’, was unveiled today. Starting with near Titus Andronicus-style guitars and percussion, Madeline’s half-deadpan vocals carry the song through until it descends into frenzy in the closing portion, the instrumentation accelerating along with the final refrain of “all will change!”

“I want to be good at a lot of things
but I don’t know how to go about that
culture shifts
like tectonics”

Of Wandering will be released on Birdtapes on the 25th March, including some lovely vinyl varieties (with coke bottle green and yellow editions). You can pre-order the vinyl now, or grab a digital copy via the Littler Bandcamp page.

P.S. If you find yourself state-side this Spring you can catch the Littler on tour. Check the dates below:

Photo by Emily Burtner, Artwork by Nathan Zeidman

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“H*ckhound plays like the anxious survivor of some tragedy, troubled but sincere, full of love to give and lose and so desperate to prove it he drags you along by the arm and pleads into your ear in a constant flow”

Now the band are back with a new EP, Words Don’t Love You. After the variation in style across H*ckhound, this release sees the band settle into a groove, peddling a laidback punk rock something like The Strokes playing in your garage. Opener ‘Action Park’ is a perfect example, a jangly summer tune for nostalgic slackers:

“If there was one thing you could never stand about summertime,
it was sitting on your couch with nothing on your mind.
I only wish I could hate those moments half as much as you
but then again, I guess, I got nothing better to do”

‘Boys’ follows a similar vein, making vague statements with a drunken clarity to no-one in particular, while ‘New Jersey Girls’ skirts with a surfy vibe, the gruff, disinterested vocals blurring what is meant and what is not, the sheen of irony a safety net for the emotional gymnastics on show. ‘(When Were You) Dreamin’ is reflective warm evening hit, a streak of defiance and goodwill defeating worry, and ‘Pox’ sees a continuation of this feeling. A mix of bedroom pop and garage rock with a tropical shimmer, the closer is the stand out track, the vocals finding the perfect blend of understatement and intensity, the song building across it’s runtime with notable force.

“When you walked away,
you slipped through the cracks.
Who’s left to tell you to come back?
I drove to our place.
I looked for the signs:
the arrangement of things
that you left behind.

And we walk and talk for hours.
And we walk and talk for hours.
And we walk and talk for hours.
Then say that’s all we really need.
That’s all we really have to offer”

You can buy Words Don’t Love You now from the Dicktations Bandcamp page.

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“Best Boy is for the children of the 80s and 90s, reminiscing about the age where entertainment exploded, where VHS tapes and cable TV transformed us into constant consumers… a wistful celebration of what we had [which] presents some convincing reasons for why we feel the way we do”

Pace is back with a double A-side single which may or may not have been recorded at The Rolling Stones Mobile Recording Unit with the help of “a murderers’ row of jazz ­fusion session talent” including Bill “Church” Wellington (keyboards), Du’vel DiGiorgio (bass), Coke Stevenson (trumpet), Tony Kukoc (soprano guitar) and Dan Van Dyke (drums), the non-fictitious Lira Yin (vocals) and producer Matt LeMay. The release sees Pace expand on the new direction hinted at on Best Boy, pushing toward a more expansive, poppy sound. As he explains:  

To paraphrase REO Speedwagon, badly, it was ‘time for me to [spread my wings and] fly, musically. I don’t really play live these days. I have a young family. I exclusively buy bargain bin progressive and AOR records. I recently got really into tennis. In other words, I like to push the boundaries, and I may as well use all of these things to help  inform and craft my new songs.

The release opens with ‘The Flood’, giving the first taste of the new boundary-pushing Child Actors. Opening with sparkling synths, the track develops into a jubilant pop song which finds glory in a seemingly miserable/dangerous life (the opening line, for example: “Here comes the drugs wash over me/their wake will take us out to sea”). Right up to the final triumphant horns and keyboards, the track does not let up in its elation, pushing a Hold Steady brand of transcendental joy/love, the sort which creeps through the cracks of a life filled with high stakes and morning afters.

“Here come the drums, rain over me stuttering start of the daylight dawning
fathers yell and mothers weep crawl on our knees soon enough we’re walking shed a tear at ‘Hey Nineteen’ another love crashed in-between

Open the floodgates, cut us loose then we’ll catch our stride
Close your eyes and stay by my side the realest thing that you can do tonight”

Second single ‘Red Sauce Revisited’ combines the various ingredients of radio hits from through the ages, opening with 60s surf strums and touching upon 70s rock solos, 80s power pop cheese and 90s melodrama to become a four and a half minute singalong homage to the good old FM stations of the US of A.

“Signs are on the ceiling, writing’s on the wall
There’s a terrifying feeling I won’t see you anymore
and I cannot stop the bleeding so I’ll learn to love the pain
I never thought that this is how it ends”

So basically, if you like your music large and loud and lively, the kind of great so-serious-its-not (or maybe so non-serious-its-serious) energy that should be filmed for a live concert VHS-special, look no further. Michael Pace has arrived, and he has company.

The Flood / Red Sauce Revisited is available for download on a pay-what-you-can basis via Bandcamp.

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There are two things to know about O-FACE: 1) their sound is complex and intricate, whirring like a well-oiled machine of cogs and gears which achieves so much more than its composite parts suggest, and 2) they are committed to taking seriously the fact that they don’t take themselves too seriously. Take opening track ‘740 Turbo’ as an example, a song about true love which centres upon the gloriously American image of a luxury station wagon:

“baby you can drive my car;
it’s a luxury station wagon.
you can go wherever you want;
it’s a luxury station wagon”

The track thunders into existence and doesn’t let up until the closing bars, mixing humorous lyrics with sincere delivery and sound to produce something which wins you over instantly. ‘Yolanda’ is begins with mathy guitar before evolving into a bouncy pop song, half-sentimental, half-carefree and wholly fun to listen to. Think the rollercoaster power pop of Fang Island blended with 90s emo rock. ‘O-FACE is Breaking Up’ hits the brakes but ramps up the volume for a pretty epic slow-burner which contains the line “Now I’m dressed up like Davy Crockett trying to grin down a bear”, which is good enough reason to buy the release in itself. Closer ‘Torres’ continues the grand scale, a post-hardcore instrumental which leaves the band’s immaculate arrangements fresh in the mind of the listener long after the final chord.

Mint is out now through Father/Daughter and Miscreant Records.

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