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Bad Sports

I love punk rock. I love everything about it. I enjoy it in almost all of it’s forms. No matter how broad my musical tastes have become with old age, when I hear good punk rock I get really excited. Bad Sports is good punk rock. Hailing from Denton, Texas, they do everything good punk bands do, including tight guitars, snotty vocals, and songs about girls. Bad Sports play with serious energy, their songs are very catchy and have an old school vibe to them, drawing comparisons to bands such as the Buzzcocks. “Can’t Just Be Friends”, the track below, reminds me a lot of the Ramones with a little Hard-Ons mixed in. Yes, I just wrote that. Their 2nd LP Kings of The Weekend just came out and it’s really good, you should go buy it.

Bad Sports – Cant Just Be Friends from Kings of The Weekend (2011)

www.dirtnaprecs.com

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Ganglians

Ganglians are a band that I stumbled upon tonight while searching the www’s for new music. They are a four member band out of Sacramento,CA. They take their name from a mixture of the words “gang” and “aliens”. I am brand new to these guys and I don’t know anything more about them.

I was pleasantly surprised by the track “Jungle” that is being shared below. It’s equal parts psychedelic and noise pop, with all the fuzz you can handle, all things that get this listener’s ears to perk up, and when this song came on for the first time, they perked. Their new album Still Living comes out on August 23. You should buy it.

Ganglians – Jungle from Still Living (2011)

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Floating Action

I love having people in my life who are just as obsessed with finding new music as I am. This find comes from my cousin Ben, and It’s a pretty darn good find.

Floating Action is from North Carolina, the band consists mostly of one person, Seth Kauffman, who sings and plays everything except the pedal steel on this, his third release Desert Etiquette. The album was written and recorded in a matter of about 4 days, and it shows, but not in a bad way. The songs are loose, but not sloppy, as a whole the album have a very casual feel to it. Both songs included below, “Eye of A Needle” and “Well Hidden” are both chilled out, and laid-back. So get out your chaise lounge, and put your feet up, grab your favorite beverage, and relax to some smooth indie rock.

Floating Action – Eye of A Needle from Desert Etiquette (2011)

Floating Action – Well Hidden from Desert Etiquette (2011)

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Fruit Bats

Fruit Bats are releasing their fifth album, Tripper, on August 2, 2011. The song included below is a great indicator of another solid release. Please enjoy.

Fruit Bats – Tangle and Ray from Tripper (2011)

 

Shan’s original post from 01.27.2006

I’ve been meaning to post the Fruit Bats for a while now because, well, because they’re as reassuring as a warm cup of tea. The acoustic guitar has a lovely lilt to it. The slight, overdubbed vocals don’t demand attention but get it anyway. And the alternately peppy and melancholy rhythms float on and on and on. All in all, you get the sense that the Fruit Bats respect their mothers, and a little motherly love in our indie pop could do us all some good.

 

 

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Eleanor Friedberger

Eleanor Friedberger is better known as half of the band The Fiery Furnaces; if that doesn’t perk your ears up, hopefully listening to the song below will.

I am not one who usually puts a song on repeat and plays it until the MP3 skips. I’m afraid I’ll get “burned out” with the song. With “My Mistakes”, the first track from her debut solo album, Last Summer, I have completely gotten over that fear. I have listened to this track more in the past week than most other releases this year. It really is an amazing song, packed with a fuzzy bass line, driving beat, just enough keyboard and even a sneaky saxaphone at the end. If there wasn’t already a video for this song (below), I can picture Eleanor cruising around on a bicycle of some sort, on some small town main street, waving to all the passersby as she quietly sings this song to herself. At least that’s what I want to do when I listen to this song. I hope you enjoy this song as much as I do, it is the song of this summer.

Eleanor Friedberger – My Mistakes from Last Summer (2011)

<object width="400" height="225"><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /><param name="movie" value="http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=24124179&server=vimeo.com&show_title=0&show_byline=0&show_portrait=0&color=00adef&fullscreen=1&autoplay=0&loop=0" /><embed src="http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=24124179&server=vimeo.com&show_title=0&show_byline=0&show_portrait=0&color=00adef&fullscreen=1&autoplay=0&loop=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" width="400" height="225"></embed></object><p><a href="http://vimeo.com/24124179">Eleanor Friedberger – My Mistakes</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/mergerecords">Merge Records</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>.</p>

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Thurston Moore

Thurston Moore

Thurston Moore needs no introduction, being the lead singer for Sonic Youth and releasing solo albums for the past 20+ years. However, in his long musical career, this is the first time that he has collaborated with Beck and the results are quite spectacular. Both songs below (and the entire album) are full of depth, and quite different from his last, more straight-forward indie rock effort. Thanks in part to Beck’s production skills, great use of strings, and of course Thurston’s incredible talent at songwriting and guitar playing. Enjoy.

Thurston Moore – Benediction

Thurston Moore – Circulation

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Ty Segall

Ty Segall is carving out a big notch in the “neo-psych garage” (I wish I came up with that name) genre that’s been brewing in SF for several years now, alongside bands like Thee Oh Sees, and Sic Alps. Segall has played in, and collaborated with quite a few bands out of SF, such as Party Fowl, Epsilons, and Sic Alps to name a few. Segall’s new album, and first full length with Drag City, Goodbye Bread, comes out today and is definitely an album you need to add to your collection. “You make The Sun Fry”, shared below, is a great example of the album as a whole. Full of reverb, fuzz, thick bass lines, and bashing drums, “You Make The Sun Fry” is lo-fi goodness at it’s best and is another great song to add to your summer playlist.

You Make The Sun Fry from Goodbye Bread (2011)

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Capsule

Capsule is a three-piece, post hardcore, punk rock band that I stumbled across the other night while searching for music. They play hard and fast, almost as if each member is trying to out do the other. “Neuralize So Numb”, the opening track, clocks in at a blazing 1:05. The song is angry, aggressive, and very catchy. It ends almost as quickly as it starts, and it will punch you in the face, so you have to pay attention. I really like this song, and I hope you enjoy it too.

Capsule – Neuralize So Numb

http://www.myspace.com/capsulefl

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The Devil Whale

The Devil Whale is a great band out of Salt Lake City. The music they play is a blend of 60’s and 70’s era folk, garage, and pop. They self-released their new full length Teeth at the end of May. It’s an excellent album as you can hear from the taste provided below, it has been on constant rotation since I got it. After enjoying the song we have shared, head on over to their bandcamp page and give the entire album a try, you will not be disappointed.

The Devil Whale – Standing Stones

http://www.thedevilwhale.com/

http://thedevilwhale.bandcamp.com/

 

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Black Lips

The Black Lips are releasing a new album titled Arabia Mountain with Vice Records on June 7. The new songs they have made available (below) seem a bit more polished than previous releases. Now don’t go and have a heart attack, or start calling them “sell outs” just yet, the cleaned up sound is definitely not a bad thing. They still rock, and sound like they are still having a blast doing it.

Black Lips – Modern Art

Black Lips – New Direction

 

Shan’s original post from 01.05.2007:

Lester Bangs’ favorite song was “96 Tears” the Mysterians. John Peel’s favorite was “Teenage Kicks” by the Undertones. Both were love songs by garage bands that could barely play chords and likely couldn’t read music any better than I can. The message is clear: for the most vaunted of audiophiles, “bad” is the best kind of rock music because the whole point is that it’s supposed to sound bad to somebody, hopefully your parents and/or local law enforcement officials and church leaders. By those standards, the Atlanta group Black Lips is pretty damned good. Granted, their really-old garage sound is slightly more preening than authentic, but that seems to be purely a matter of birthdates. You don’t get the sense that they’re being anything but their goofy-ass selves when they sing about having a bad day or set off on some epic live shows of Brian-Jonestown-Massacre proportions. For that, we salute them.