This track went on my Summer mix-tape 2.0 last week. Say what you will about Vivian Girls live show, but for fans of lo-fi pop channeling a bedroom version of the Shangri-Las, last years S/T debut delivered. No frills, simple and concise. The Girls sophomore LP is set for release in September via become a member or log in.
Announced last week, L.A.'s local purveyors of noise-pop, No Age, are set to release the follow up to their 2008 Nouns LP in October -- an EP entitled Losing Feeling. Another sign the CD continues to go the way of the dodo, Sub Pop will . . .
Only the good shit. Aquarium Drunkard is powered by its patrons. Keep the servers humming and help us continue doing it by pledging your support.
To continue reading, become a member or log in.
Beardo. As I mentioned last week while discussing Death's For The Whole World To See, the Drag City label is no stranger to digging up and releasing the long lost and nearly forgotten. In 2005 the label pulled . . .
Only the good shit. Aquarium Drunkard is powered by its patrons. Keep the servers humming and help us continue doing it by pledging your support.
To continue reading, become a member or log in.
While I'm a casual fan of Animal Collective, Panda Bear's Person Pitch LP remains one of my favorite albums of 2007. Panda (Noah Lennox) has tagged up with Bradford Cox on the track "Walkabout" from the upcoming Atlas Sound release Logos. Highly anticipated.
Cox on Logos: "My last album was a bedroom laptop type thing. Very introverted . . .
Only the good shit. Aquarium Drunkard is powered by its patrons. Keep the servers humming and help us continue doing it by pledging your support.
To continue reading, become a member or log in.
J. Neas here, winding up AD's coverage of the Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago. I want to start by laying some serious kudos on the festival staff and planners. Not only was it a breath of fresh air commerce and surroundings wise - from the diverse but non-traditional food booths to the exclusive beer sales of just local, excellent micro-brewery Goose Island to the great and interesting companies, non-profits and charities with booths - but also in the responsiveness to festival-goer comments. When complaints mounted about long lines at bathrooms on Saturday, the festival brought in additional facilities for Sunday. The result? I didn't wait longer than five to ten minutes for a toilet on Sunday, where Saturday had been an average of anywhere from fifteen to thirty. Obviously a festival run by people who, as music fans themselves, get what people want from a festival, Pitchfork is a shining example of what can go right in festival planning.
Today was full of tremendous highs and some disappointments as well. It opened with quite possibly my favorite performance of the weekend, Frightened Rabbit. I'm a bit behind on this band, but I do enjoy getting to have one eureka moment at a festival. I knew nothing of this band other than their name going in and was floored from moment one. Every song was a winner and I literally had chills sitting there listening to them. Strains of Scottish jangle pop and even some things resembling American roots-rock strolled through their songs. Thrilling live, even more so in a smaller setting - go see them if you can.
Continue Reading After The Jump...
Only the good shit. Aquarium Drunkard is powered by its patrons. Keep the servers humming and help us continue doing it by pledging your support.
To continue reading, become a member or log in.
J. Neas reporting again from Chicago. After a bit of late start due to some brunch navigation around closed lines on the L, I arrived at the festival in time to catch Fucked Up. Having grown to enjoy the layered and complex post-hardcore of their recorded material, the live show was a bit simplistic, but still powerful - whether it was lead singer Pink Eyes, ripping beach balls open with his teeth or parading around with a sunflower tucked in his shorts, and his howling menace or the three guitarists, bass player and a drummer behind him pounding out the cadence for his barks. I'm still at a bit of a loss for why they need three guitarists on stage - I couldn't hear anything that lead me to believe much was going on that needed them all - but it was a powerful blast of a show and the front of the stage became somewhat of a pit for the first time all festival.
I had one serious worry about seeing the Pains of Being Pure at Heart. I saw them on some late-night talk show and had thought their performance was somewhat lacking. A bit low-key, not very loud, really not what I was hoping for out of a band that seemed to craft C86 music like nobody's business. But I was completely taken with their performance. It was catchy, loud, energetic and really one of the highlights of the festival. They did a giddy rush through of "Come Saturday" that had people dancing throughout the audience. Best comment, from lead-singer Kip Berman: "We got some great advice from Pink Eyes [of Fucked Up] - he told us we should sound more like Weezer."
Continue Reading After The Jump...
Only the good shit. Aquarium Drunkard is powered by its patrons. Keep the servers humming and help us continue doing it by pledging your support.
To continue reading, become a member or log in.
Saturday, July 25th, Aquarium Drunkard presents Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks at the Echoplex in Echo Park, L.A. If memory serves, this is the first eastside Malkmus show in a long time. Expect a packed house. Tickets are $19 adv/$22 door. We have several pairs of tickets to giveaway to AD readers. Interested? Leave a comment below with your favorite Pavement track, your full name (for will-call . . .
Only the good shit. Aquarium Drunkard is powered by its patrons. Keep the servers humming and help us continue doing it by pledging your support.
To continue reading, become a member or log in.
J. Neas here reporting from Chicago. I'll hand it to Pitchfork - they know how to get a crowd invested in the opening night of a festival. Whether it's been the previous years' Don't Look Back-style album performances or this year's Write the Night theme, they have guaranteed to have an audience who is looking forward, intensely, to what's going on on . . .
Only the good shit. Aquarium Drunkard is powered by its patrons. Keep the servers humming and help us continue doing it by pledging your support.
To continue reading, become a member or log in.
Our weekly two hour show on SIRIUS/XM, channel 26 (SIRIUS), and channel 43 (XM), can now be heard twice, every Friday - Noon EST with an encore broadcast at Midnight EST. Below is this week’s playlist.
SIRIUS 103: Jean Michel Bernard - Generique Stephane ++ Fool's Gold - Surprise Hotel ++ Foreign Born - Blood Oranges ++ Local Natives - Airplanes ++ Dirty Projectors - What I See ++ The Vaselines - Slushy ++ Yellow Fever - Donovan ++ Os Mutantes - Panis Et Circenes ++ Fiery Furnaces - The Philadelphia Grand Jury . . .
Only the good shit. Aquarium Drunkard is powered by its patrons. Keep the servers humming and help us continue doing it by pledging your support.
To continue reading, become a member or log in.
Today, during the second hour of our SIRIUS/XM show, we will air the session with Jason Lytle cut in March, during SXSW, at The Ship's party at Homeslice. Lytle was in Austin in support of his, then, soon to be released solo debut become a member or log in.
Barney Hoskyns, in Mojo magazine, once penned that Todd Rundgren sounds like "the missing link between the White Album and Sign O’ The Times." I couldn't have said it better.
Artistically, Rundgren is indeed a strange beast; his body of work feels schizophrenic, random, rootless, and ironically, in his own strange way, very focused. Focused in the sense than it sounds like he always knows what he is after, what he wants - and if his audience cannot, or will not, keep . . .
Only the good shit. Aquarium Drunkard is powered by its patrons. Keep the servers humming and help us continue doing it by pledging your support.
To continue reading, become a member or log in.
Facts is facts -- in 2009 "punk", as an adjective, has quite the stigma. This is not exactly breaking news. Now three decades into its run, the general populace most likely equates the term punk with that of Good Charlotte, and/or whatever the mall kids are purchasing at Hot Topic this week; rather than, say, the sounds of Johnny Thunders, Hüsker Dü, become a member or log in.
Person To Person is the album I'd been waiting to hear from Foreign Born since first catching their live show in Echo Park three years ago. Entering the club cold, having never heard of the band, I left two hours later a fan. The second time I saw . . .
Only the good shit. Aquarium Drunkard is powered by its patrons. Keep the servers humming and help us continue doing it by pledging your support.
To continue reading, become a member or log in.
Heads up. Magnolia Electric Co. has a new album out, Josephine, their first since 2006's Fading Trails. Tuesday, July 28th, Aquarium Drunkard presents Jason Molina and Co. with guests
Only the good shit. Aquarium Drunkard is powered by its patrons. Keep the servers humming and help us continue doing it by pledging your support. To continue reading, become a member or log in.
If I had an extra minute to spare I would seriously consider starting another blog focused strictly on covering the growing number of on-point reissue labels that have popped up the past several years. One of these, a front-runner I must feature on AD close to six times a year, is the Chicago based Numero Group. At this stage in the game, with the amount of stellar titles they've released, the label's reputation alone sets a precedent for quality even before you open the package . . .
Only the good shit. Aquarium Drunkard is powered by its patrons. Keep the servers humming and help us continue doing it by pledging your support.
To continue reading, become a member or log in.