Favorite new song alert! As soon as I heard their new single, “Dream About Me,” I rushed to alert my friend Chet who’s a big fan of Ocean Blue and Prefab Sprout and while he hasn’t reported back yet, I expect to hear that The Depreciation Guild is right up his alley. The band’s sound transports me back to the early nineties, the years Chet and I were in radio together. The band takes the lush, dreamy pop sounds of early 4ad bands and distresses them a bit with fuzzy electronics and gentle reverb. Lots of other folks are taking note as well—they’ve sold out of their new single and Kanine records just reissued their 2007 album. Speaking of friends who’d like this band, I’m surprised our own Clay Calloway didn’t beat me to the punch on this one, especially considering two-thirds of the band also play in The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, one of Clay’s recent crushes he’s gushed about on this site. The moonlighters will be extra busy as both bands head over to play the UK later this month. The band has some Midwest and East Coast dates before then, so if you like what you hear do some homework and catch them live, geography permitting.
Hopefully this 3some will become a regular feature here. That’s the plan. The idea is to share more music more often and to do so in fun party packs, organized and gathered around some similarity, theme, sound, or anything else our pea-brains might dream up. First up, three takes on flames, fire and heating up, which the weather in L.A. threatens to do again this week, just as the Station fire is about to be contained. Inevitably, and regrettably, such weather brings out murderous kooks and their matches.
Well if this ain’t the musical equivalent of the Three Amigos. Three musical desperados gathered on the West Coast to create aural havoc and obviously had the time of their lives. The parties involved include: Money Mark, Tommy Guerrero, and Shawn Lee, three “sound scientists” who’ve all made their own marks flying below the mainstream radar, carving out a groove amidst all that is going to be cool tomorrow. Both Mark and Guerrero released music early on through Mo’ Wax and Shawn Lee recorded for Talking Loud and Wall of Sound early in his career. “Dirty Loco” is one of the two songs that serve as the dark heart of the record. The comparison is a bit ludicrous, but it sounds like a track off The Cure’s “Pornography” record if Robert Smith had grown up in Southern California, raised on funk and soul. The rest of the album is full of laid back, easy-listening funk tracks, improvised, trippy, and generally cheerful. Dare I say it, Lord Newborn is a rare-groove jam band that I’d be happy spending a summer or three trucking around the country following their wake.
I feel like a schlub because I missed the screenings of Thomas Campbell’s new surf film 
This song may not have even won my attention during a recent listening binge if my nose hadn’t been buried in a particular book. “Bastard Out of Carolina” by Dorothy Allison is that particularity. An insightful young lady, Ruth Anne “Bone” Boatwright narrates the novel, telling the story of growing up poor in the South amongst a colorful cast of aunts and uncles. The rhythm of the language is pure music, while Ruth Anne’s life is pure hell. Besides a couple aunts who come to her rescue, the closest thing that brings solace to Ruth Anne’s life is gospel music. Julie Peel doesn’t play gospel music in the traditional sense, but her soulful voice, and the deep strains of cello echo the yearnings of one searching for some sort of salvation. I assume Peel’s song “Unfold” is about the loss of a lover, but its lyrics and theme resonate acutely with Ruth Anne’s loss of motherly love. Even though that book and this song are filled with grief, discovering them together has been a pleasant harmonic convergence.
I first encountered Miles Tilmann on the compilation “Six Records Breaks Your Heart Again” (in truth it was the first and last time the label would break your heart, because it was their first release and they haven’t released anything since) and a recent revisit to the album sent me searching around for facts and tunes from some of the artists. Miles Tilmann, pleasantly surprised me by offering up close to 100 MP3s on his site. Tilmann produces a variety of ambient tracks, but the ones I chose to highlight here are more beat driven. Tilmann’s music is awash in fluid synths, deep kick drum pulsations, and well, plenty of ambient sounds. You’ll discover similarities to Boards of Canada and Aphex Twin. Tilmann has been steadily releasing music since 1999 on labels like Sub:marine, Consumers Research & Development, and Toytronic. For his latest effort 
Today we’re happy to serve up a North West smorgasbord. However, unless you can get to the Portland area within the next 48 hours or so, this post won’t do you much good. There are the MP3s. Have at ’em. That’s the reason why you’re here ain’t it? This year marks the fifth time the good people of Portland have put their collective musicheads together for a weekend of free live music. The fantastic thing about the aforementioned people of Portland is that they’re doing this all out of the goodness of their hearts. Bands, businesses, and residents all volunteer their time to put on this grassroots festival which has spawned action packed compilations that help raise money and awareness for the festival. I wouldn’t mind it a bit if I were actually there this weekend enjoying the music, the weather, the wonderful city, and of course a healthy Powell’s browse would top things off nicely. If only… Included are songs from a few bands playing this weekend. And if your attendance is more than my pipe dream, here’s the link to the 
I’m not gonna lie. Hope Sandoval makes me feel old. I can’t believe it’s been 19 years since the first Mazzy Star album. What makes it seem even longer are the eight years that have passed since Sandoval’s last album. Sure, she’s sang on other records here and there, but one-offs are never enough. Once again she teams up with Colm Ó CÃosóig, who admits he holds back on his work with Sandoval, and that the music exists on “the opposite ends of the spectrum” as compared to My Bloody Valentine, his other band. “Blanchard” is the first single from the album, Through the Devil Softly, due out September 15th. Compared to the songs on her last album, “Blanchard” is downright dense and lush. Dare I say, it sounds a lot more like Mazzy Star (who by the way are finishing up another record, but Sandoval told Rolling Stone that she “has no idea what that means.” I love it. She’s still wonderfully reticent). After an eight year absence, it’ll be great to have Hope Sandoval’s still, small voice flowing anesthetically through my brain. If tour dates coalesce, I hope the venues have seating, because while Sandoval’s voice completed resisted deterioration for the past twenty years, my ability to stand during extremely mellow concert sets has not.
This track has become a staple on the ol’