Ryan Davis :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview

The first time listening to New Threats from the Soul, the new album from Ryan Davis & The Roadhouse Band, is an experience in euphoria as well as joyful frustration because you want to stop immediately and text a certain line to a specific friend, but then three more lines fly by that immediately remind you of three different friends. Davis’s lyrics can cause a belly laugh, choked-down tears, or serve as . . .

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Fruit Bats’ Spelled in Bones at 20

Twenty years ago this month, Chicago songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Eric D. Johnson dropped his third album under his Fruit Bats moniker. Spelled in Bones took the charming indie folk melodies and landscape painting lyrics of his earlier work and spun them into a swirling, hook-laden power pop masterpiece. The album, with its sepia-tinged memories of youth and lost love and its apprehensions of fate and the future, found Johnson staring adulthood in the face. Two decades on and it has lost none of its punch . . .

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Dieter Schütz :: Voyage / Inventions

Two reissued albums from Dieter Schütz, an electronic musician who died young, show an eccentric artist turning the future sounds and computer worlds of industrialized Western Germany to his own eccentric devices. Full of heart yet proudly artificial, tropically tinged, loosely lively and factory made, Schütz’s music offers a point of entry into obscure and overlooked corners of the Berlin School and krautrock scenes . . .

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Jimmy Rowles Trio :: Rare-But Well Done (1954)

At a time when the musical acrobatics of hard-bop jazz were in full swing on the East Coast, Rowles showed little interest in the dazzling technical feats or subversion of form that many of his contemporaries were partaking in. Instead, the unfettered Rowles chose to color within the lines, forming elegant arrangements that drift along like blue smoke curling around an after-hours lounge. On his first solo release, Rare, But Well Done (1954), Rowles’ approach is warm and classy, containing the understated sophistication of a well-tailored black suit: no loud colors, garish patterns, or ostentatious branding — just . . .

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Burning Spear :: Marcus Garvey

Of all the reggae cornerstones hitting their 50th anniversary this year, you’d be hard pressed to find another that hit with the same gale force of Burning Spear’s Marcus Garvey. Part reggae master class, part history lesson, Marcus Garvey introduced Winston Rodney’s impassioned wail to the world, establishing Burning Spear as one of reggae’s foremost emissaries and educators. Simply put, this is one of the heaviest, deepest roots sets ever laid down . . .

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Floating Action :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview

Over the last 20 years, Seth Kauffman has quietly released more than a dozen albums of languid, slightly exotic indie rock once clunkily described as “Appalachian Beck.” He plays and sings every note tracked in his basement studio with a DIY touch that renders the hallmark Floating Action sound characterized by slightly-off-kilter groove and woozy warmth. With a new LP dropping next month, we caught up with Kauffman at home in North Carolina to discuss all things Floating Action . . .

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The Aquarium Drunkard Show: SIRIUS/XMU (7pm PDT, Channel 35)

Outré California. Via satellite, transmitting from northeast Los Angeles — the Aquarium Drunkard Show on SIRIUS/XMU, channel 35. 7pm California time, Wednesdays.

34.1090° N, 118.2334° W . . .

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Tom Carter and Pat Murano :: Songs of Eliphas Levi Zahed

Charalambides guitarist Tom Carter and No-Neck Blues Band synthesist Pat Murano have been collaborating for over a decade, Each of their albums tend to find the duo exploring the liminal spaces of spiritual esoterica. Their latest collaboration is devoted to the philosophy of nineteenth-century French occultist Eliphas Levi, who influenced every seeker from Madame Blavatsky to Aleister Crowley and practically invented the modern language of ritual magic. Carter and Murano channel Levi's thought into a searing, beautiful work of psychedelic dissonance . . .

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All One Song :: Steve Shelley (Sonic Youth) on “Vampire Blues”

Welcome back to ⁠All One Song⁠, A Neil Young Podcast presented by Aquarium Drunkard. We’re spending the summer talking to a few of our favorite artists and writers about their favorite Neil Young song. This week, we’ve got someone very special: Steve Shelley of Sonic Youth. Steve spent about 25 years behind the drum kit for Sonic Youth as the band radically redefined and reimagined rock and roll. He’s easily one of the greatest drummers of the past four decades, as heard on such classics as Sister, Daydream Nation, Washing Machine, Murray Street and beyond. His style . . .

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Yesternow: Editor’s Note Volume Three

Volume three of Yesternow. The comments are open. Who are you? Where are you? How are you? Justin runs down some favorites of late including thoughts on the late Anthony Bourdain, Adrian Sherwood's 1997 dub remix Echo Dek, Cold War jazzists, distance running, LA area listening bars, and more . . .

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Sally Anne Morgan :: Second Circle The Horizon

Sally Anne Morgan hasn’t missed with a solo album since her 2020 debut, Threads, and her fourth and latest, Second Circle The Horizon, only further solidifies her position as a purveyor of traditional music distilled through a modern, experimental lens . . .

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Adam Amram :: To The End

There is an indescribably New York character to the latest Adam Amram LP, To The End on California’s Nudie Records. Somehow, the album embodies the easygoing yippee humor of Arlo Guthrie, dry wit of Lou Reed, folk exploration of Richie Havens, and the literary curiosity of Dylan or the like–all without being bound by any of it . . .

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Fortunato Durutti Marinetti :: Bitter Sweet, Sweet Bitter

Fortunato Durutti Marinetti states the sequel to his 2023 jubilant sophomore record Eight Waves In Search Of An Ocean is a homage to Anne Carson's book Eros: The Bittersweet. Marinetti calls this style "poetic jazz rock," drawing on the chillness of Donald Byrd and the expansiveness of Robert Wyatt. We'd call it apocalyptic ballroom indie, or: music to imagine yourself slow-dancing as the ship sinks . . .

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Rebecca Schiffman :: Before the Future

Rebecca Schiffman’s fourth album kicks off with a nine-minute epic — a nervy opening move in these days of ever-decreasing attention spans. But it’s a gamble that pays off beautifully, as Before the Future’s remarkable title track unspools like a bittersweet indie flick from the 1990s . . .

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Aquarium Drunkard Book Club :: Chapter 34

Welcome back to the stacks. It’s Aquarium Drunkard’s Book Club, our monthly gathering of recent (or not so recent) recommended reading. In this month’s stack: author Dan Nadel tackles the weird, wild and complicated life and career of iconoclast illustrator of the underground R. Crumb, Marcus J. Moore's deep dive into the D.A.I.S.Y Age of De La Soul and beyond, Lucinda Williams' secrets, Micajah Henley's 33 1/3 rundown of the Clash's 1980 triple LP, Sandinista!, R.E.M. and more . . .

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