Aquarium Drunkard Book Club :: Chapter 38

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Welcome back to the stacks. It’s Aquarium Drunkard’s Book Club, our irregular gathering of recent (or not so recent) recommended reading. In this month’s stack: William Eggleston’s uncanny visions of everyday America; Brian Cullman’s improbable encounters with Nick Drake, Miles Davis, and countless others; the shifting landscapes of Los Angeles through Gavin Lambert and Bret Easton Ellis; and Art Pepper’s Straight Life, one of the most candid memoirs in jazz literature . . .

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Videodrome :: All The Real Girls (2003)

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In All The Real Girls, first love collides with dead-end roads, textile mills, and the uneasy realization that growing up may not be enough to escape where you came from. Eric Hehr on David Gordon Green's bittersweet masterpiece . . .

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Victor Vieira-Branco’s Bark Culture :: The Giant Is Awkward

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A new voice enters the conversation. Enthralling, mysterious, and beautifully disorienting, The Giant is Awkward finds Bark Culture widening its range and sharpening its identity as pianist Sam Yulsman opens new possibilities within the group's sound. It's a significant step forward for a band already operating from a position of uncommon chemistry . . .

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Boards of Canada :: Inferno

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In our particulate-dense media environment, a decade-plus silence takes on the weight of a gesture in its own right—an invitation to focus, to stay awhile. Structurally, Inferno is less interested in the tension-release of deep raving than in the discursive backroads of a philosophical sci-fi novel . . .

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Box of Stars :: Walnut Street

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Box of Stars sport a mournful air on Walnut Street, their country-folk tinged songs nodding at life's disappointments with gentle resignation. Through spare, rustic arrangements and the ghostly vocal interplay of Macaulay Lerman and Katy Helmann, the band traces relationships, passing years, and ordinary joys that have slipped out of reach . . .

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Simon Joyner :: Tough Love

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On Tough Love, Simon Joyner returns to the unimaginable heartache that shaped 2024’s Coyote Butterfly, though these songs feel less starkly autobiographical and more willing to inhabit other lives and imagined voices. The grief still looms large, especially in the towering title track, but elsewhere Joyner moves through carefully observed vignettes with patience, detail, and a cruel kind of beauty. It’s shattering work, but beautifully presented, with arrangements and performances that never lose sight of the songs beneath the pain . . .

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Anika :: S/T (2010)

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Sixteen years on, Anika still feels loosely assembled, held together by bass, space, and the chemistry between Annika Henderson, Geoff Barrow, and the wider Beak> orbit. Recorded quickly and largely live, it arrived already weathered: post-punk stripped to its framework, with vocals seemingly recorded in an adjoining room . . .

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Bedouine :: Neon Summer Skin

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Described by the musician as her “first album written with a purpose,” Neon Summer Skin moves with quiet confidence through memory, longing, and emotional residue. Reflections on childhood music lessons and formative instruments drift through arrangements that feel expansive without losing intimacy. Rich orchestration and plainspoken storytelling make this a deeply felt return following Bird Songs of a Killjoy . . .

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Robert Wyatt :: BBC Peel Sessions II 1972-1974

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John Peel had a strong case for being the world's foremost champion of musician Robert Wyatt. Both as an admiring fan and personal friend, the legendary BBC disc jockey was always stricken by Wyatt's musical brilliance and singular wit. In addition to the innumerable amount of Peel Sessions with previous pioneering groups Soft Machine and Matching Mole, Wyatt's early seventies solo sets tackle a hodgepodge from his catalogue including charmingly obtuse oddities to the Mellotron aquatic ambiance of 1974's classic solo record Rock Bottom . . .

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Václav Havelka and James Jackson Toth :: In Conversation

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Václav is something of a Renaissance man, a tireless and deeply creative soul whose Zelig-like 20-year career in the arts has included work as a musician, composer, producer, booking agent, festival organizer, and activist. In addition to this, he has worked as driver and tour manager for everyone from the Butthole Surfers to Father John Misty, and with his band Please The Trees, he's opened for everyone from Steve Gunn and Kurt Vile to Smashing Pumpkins and Robert Plant. He joins James Jackson Toth to discuss his new album A Snake Crawling Up a Broken Ladder . . .

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All One Song :: Matt Sweeney on “Barstool Blues”

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Here to help us unpack "Barstool Blues," one of the many classics on Zuma, is Matt Sweeney. Sweeney is one of those guys who is impossible to sum up. He’s a musician who has been a part of so many great bands, projects and records over the years—Superwolf, Chavez, Guided by Voices, the Hard Quartet, Iggy Pop, Current 93, Cass McCombs, Andrew WK…the list goes on and on. He’s a consummate collaborator, perhaps the only person alive to have played with both Johnny Cash and Endless Boogie, with both the Dixie Chicks and Baby Dee, with . . .

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Sam Gendel & Sam Wilkes :: Unrelated

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On their fourth LP together, Unrelated, the West Coast duo trades saxophone and bass for synthesized textures, artificial tones, and strange tropical pulse. A wobbly set that ventures deeper into the Uncanny Valley . . .

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A Barca do Sol e Milton Nascimento :: As Gralhas

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Recorded through the dawn in a single semi-structured session, Milton Nascimento’s lost collaboration with the young experimentalists of A Barca do Sol drifts between theatrical soundtrack, spectral improvisation, and quasi-spiritual invocation. Conceived in 1978 for a stage adaptation of Franz Kafka and thought lost for nearly fifty years, the music now finally emerges from a forgotten cassette archive . . .

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SML :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview

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With Spontaneous Music Live, their new album for International Anthem, SML finally documents that experience in full: two sprawling, unedited performances recorded at Zebulon that capture the band shape-shifting in real time. Ahead of SML’s June 26th and 27th performances at Teragram Ballroom celebrating Aquarium Drunkard’s 21st anniversary, we gathered all five members together to discuss improvisation, groove mechanics, communication, martinis, and more . . .

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Cate Kennan :: Shadows

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On Shadows, Los Angeles musician Cate Kennan draws on the intimate folk of Sibylle Baier and Bridget St. John while sharing an affinity with the more fragile corners of Broadcast's demo recordings. Warm, intimate, and saturated, these songs seem almost covered in fingerprints . . .

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