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STREAM: Animal Collective - Honeycomb/Gotham
Animal Collective’s got a new 7-inch on Domino coming June 26 called Honeycomb/Gotham, which holds two tracks called (duh) “Honeycomb” and “Gotham.” As we’ve come to expect, they’re both sonic Rorschach tests. Though the cool thing here is they manage to capture each end of the band's aural spectrum, whose range swings from rapturous Christmastime-in-a-yurt yelpings to intangible sadsack yowlers where the guitars seem to be committing a long yet honorable psych death. “Honeycomb” is cartoon flip-flop mania, “Gotham,” the sweet, sweet droning crash. Both great, both streaming on the band’s website, both ready for pre-order on iTunes now.
PREMIERE: The Phenomenal Handclap Band - Radio Girls
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What up, Phenomenal Handclap Band? You ready for summer or what? What’s that? You basically made the aural equivalent of June’s green grass and blue skies in “Radio Girls,” the lead track off your new EP? And it sounds like a choir of tambourine dreamin’ kids rocking out on the last day of school with a pop-psych family band hook so smiley and kicky that we’re gonna stop talking right now and whistle along? And we can go over to check more info on your site? Well, all right then. All right.
STREAM: The Men - A Minor
And now, eight minutes of swelling, sprawling psychedelic rockness from The Men with “A Minor,” which purples on for ages with taffy-stretched guitar reverb before the chorus of voices comes crashing in and then leaves once more, submerging us back in the vat of haze. At the halfway mark, the trip turns from downer to upper, with quick picking and drumming churning faster and faster until it’s nothing but ‘70s headbang all the way. Sacred Bones has the release for Record Store Day (with tunes by the likes of War, Crystal Stilts and more), and it is great.
DOWNLOAD: Royal Baths - Faster, Harder
(Photo: Fatos Marishta)
You’d be hard pressed to find a Royal Baths song that invokes the hazy, red-curtained world of the Velvet Underground as much as “Faster, Harder.” From the purposeful drawl bemoaning a damaged girl and the off-kilter opium guitars to the barroom drums and nearly dismissive bassline, the satire outshines the subject. And that’s even before the screeching crescendo end. Something to be proud of: because it’s 2012, and it rocks, and it’s relevant and somehow, some way, these dudes are getting famous by exploiting a fantasy without being reductive. Support them; they’re good, and their sophomore effort, with songs even better than this one, comes out on Kanine in February.
DOWNLOAD: Nurses - Fever Dreams
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Nurses always kind of sound like a team of psych-rock beachcombers yelping from the shores of Cocomo, but perhaps never more than in “Fever Dreams,” which is perfectly named because it’s both deliriously warm and shaky in its bongo drums, bleary guitars and gleeful, tripped out vocals. Listen hard enough to this and the rest of Dracula, and the thousand-day-wait ‘til spring will fly on by.
DOWNLOAD: Gauntlet Hair - Top Bunk
When we saw Gauntlet Hair play a few weeks back in a cold warehouse, the drummer started the set with his shirt already off. He then proceeded to rip it so hard that we began to wonder if he arrived in New York with one in his possession at all. Listening to “Top Bunk,” we have decided that no, he totally did not. This muted psych-rock melody sounds like a lost b-side of the Trainspotting soundtrack—it's that wavy, weird and young-hearted. Of course it’s rock, not electronica, but it’ll make you wanna take your shirt off and sway just the same. More in our bin, and on the Denver dudes’ eponymous debut on Dead Oceans.
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DOWNLOAD: PASSWORDS - Life After Summer + Idaho
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“Life After Summer,” by Canadian young guns and avant psych-rockers PASSWORDS is luxuriant and noodling, with a milky vocal timbre that’ll take root in your psyche, along with painfully beautiful bridges and lamenting lyrics. Even more lush and unassumming is "Idaho." And yet, if you catch these dudes live, they gleefully skitter and crash about as if they’re playing the biggest stadium in town, alternating between melodic English trilling and calling to the crowd to start flailing along in French. Layers! We love to see that. And we will, during CMJ, where the soon-to-be Dan Deacon and The Antlers-supporting band will be working concert-goers into a lather Québécois-style, before they go back to tweaking their textural, guitar-and-keys-driven LP.
PREMIERE: Nucular Aminals - Nobody's Man
Nucular Aminals is a Portland quartet keeping very busy. After dropping its full-length debut earlier this summer on K, the band is back with a follow-up 7-inch out today. While the group usually delivers high-impact psych pop, “Nobody’s Man” slows it down for a moodier spin. Its signature lo-fi finish works well with the change in pace, allowing the track’s finer points—like Erin Schmith on the farfisa—to shine in full force.
Nucular Aminals - Nobody's Man
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