Category: bedroom

TRACK | Nerve City – Sleepwalker

5/5 golden merles

Sleepwalker is an outsized, large thing built of small glories and grace.

The skeletal structure of the percussion never falters as the track progresses down the spine of the behemoth, notch by notch, clacking beyond each reliably subsequent disc.

Somehow all of this is divined by nearly clean guitar tones, a bit of tremolo and the faithful tambourine.

Before the curvature shifts, the song ends. We’re only able to recover a fragment of the fossil that was pulled from the earth.

The rest is left for us to imagine. Scales or feathers, take your pick.

Jason Boyer has exciting materials of various mediums on the big cartel and some highly promising upcoming collaborations. Also check out the full Sleepwalker EP on bandcamp.

TRACK | Steph Green – The Next Place

5/5 golden merles

I found Steph Green’s music through a feature on the very fine audioblog Various Small Flames.

Below is one of the singles, Next Place, off the upcoming release, Thanks for that.

A unique and earnest vocal delivery and phrasing texture the brightly-lit-but-through-a-fair-haze fundamentals.

Easily it is also for fans of Sharon Van Etten, Julie Doiron, Dig Nitty, Alex G, Katie Von Schliecher, Andy Shauf, and these sorts of good, melodic and contemplative things.

Thanks For That releases January 14th.

TRACK | Friendo – Pass Times

5/5 golden merles

Pass Times features many characteristics I greatly admire when done well: some fine, howling backing vocals, symbol splashes that connote momentum in the chorus, reverb that begins to bite on the build, reaching the edge of the expanse and folding back over onto itself.

Listening back to it now, it’s almost as though the people playing the instruments can hear one another and are able to react accordingly, like there exists a framework but also some agency within it.

And though it sounds easy, why don’t more people do it? Maybe it is. Or maybe it isn’t effortless but that which is hard earned.

Plus, despite it’s detestable monarchist nomenclature, I prefer Royal Crown Cola to the other sodas… not that I would ever buy or drink any of those paragons of chemical castration. But if I had to choose, gun to my head, it’d be RC most of the time.

In the last decade since the release of Pass Times its creator, Cookie Brunel, has been making heaps of exciting art, some of which is new music.

TRACK | Lean Year – Come and See

5/5 golden merles

It is within our capacity to build better worlds.

This is a song that encourages this practice, implores a reassessment of unjust hierarchies, and seems to reference one of the greatest films ever made, Elem Klimov’s Come and See.

“Fuck off, the old world.”

With a rich and subtle arrangement, Lean Year provide a good base for reinvention. Like Adam Curtis in Can’t get you out of my head: This entry is not the vision but a request for one.

The song is a precursor to the vision, but nonetheless a necessity, a rebuff, and a necessary bridge to what is coming. A good prompt and great entreaty.

TRACK | DVA – Javornicek

5/5 golden merles

Javornicek is a song…

“sung in a secret language… dedicated to the little kitten Javorníček, who was castaway with its spaceship by Nové Hrady. It spent one day with us, warming up, eating and then continuing its flight to its home planet.”

Are you not sold on this description? Maybe then you are on the wrong trash-rock blog.

It’s a lovely assemblage of field recorded loops and percussive detailing, gravel steps, the pluck of nested ukuleles. And it’s just about mixed better than anything i’ve ever heard.

TRACK | Dirty Beaches – Lord Knows Best

5/5 golden merles

Lord Knows Best is a well calibrated machine of a song. Like clockwork, spiraling gears gracefully align the complimentary melodies while brackets of tones reinforce them.

Full of purpose and with great density, it must be lowered by crane carefully into the heart.

Check out Alex Zhang Hungtai’s more experimental, clamber and field rec’d new stuff as well, Young Gods Run Free.

TRACK | The Baptist Generals – Going Back Song

5/5 golden merles

There are two excellent renditions of this song on No Silver / No Gold. The other is a better single, but the version included below from the end of the album is preferred.

“Has anybody seen my bag / it’s the one I put together for the leaving”

This is what folk/americana could be and should be known as: all the layers of grit, complexity, simplicity, and directness. A unique and passionate delivery, playful and apocalyptic.

And just the one long note on the organ, putting Iggy to shame; making him out to be an overachieving opportunist for all those additional percussive hammerings.

TRACK | Eola – Chaosos

5/5 golden merles

A simple handful of elements combine in this 72 second track to mimic the creation of the universe, and in a pretty flattering way.

Deceptively simple and full of wonder, there are only limited number of components: The 1-2-3-4 scale on the piano, the organ’s repeated quiver, and the various dreamy octave orations.

“Over your shoulder, chaos is growing”

This was the 5th track on a mix I made to drive to NY in 2010. The song was released a few weeks prior. My good friend Larry had moved to Hell’s Kitchen and needed a roommate.

I had my degree. I’d worked on a few failed campaigns. The grandfather I was assisting had died in hospice. It was a good time to move.

Listening to it now I am filled with both great nostalgia and anxiety. I feel like I’m driving a rented minivan in the dark, one long shot from Indiana, a folding bed and a box of clothes rattling around in the cab. stupid, hopeful.

Deliriously tired, when I dropped off the van I forgot the CDs in the cup holder. I know that the first worker who found them rightfully threw them out. But I was also hoping that maybe they didn’t notice them. And maybe the next inhabitant had found them and used them on their trek to LA, or Chicago, or back home, or wherever.

TRACK | Noun Verb Adjective – Goodbye to Summer (Rock & Roll Pt. 3)

5/5 golden merles

Noun Verb Adjective has some wonderfully crafted lo-fi bedroom pop rock.

If you would believe it, Boys in the Sand does have some Beach Boys stylistic parallels. The hooks and layers of vocals carom over one another and the tambourine/snare provides a warm and welcoming hive to orbit.

A superb owl on the cover guides you home. It’s a good, small marvel.

TRACK | Cindy Lee – Heavy Metal

5/5 golden merles

Cindy Lee’s Heavy Metal is an exemplary track for conveying that lo-fi does not have to mean anti-lush or lacking in vibrancy.

There is great richness and subtle hooks everywhere here, built into the vocal melody and the winding bass. The drum fills and phasing between segments are pristine and luxurious set pieces.

It’s all pretty captivating and contorts the space of any room into which it is freed.

Find further spectral ache and alchemy at the bandcamp.