Cable Ties are a fierce, tense rock’n’roll trio. They take the three-minute punk burner and stretch it past breaking point to deliver smouldering feminist anthems. Post-punk and garage rock hammered together by a relentless rhythmic pulse. Jenny McKechnie channels her struggles into songs that resonate deeply, giving voice to feelings often buried in modern life. Shauna Boyle and Nick Brown are a rhythm section anchored in Stooges primitivism-relentlessly hammering out a bedrock for McKechnie’s guitar pyrotechnics and vocal wallop. Three friends summoning a rhythmic tide to deliver anthems that turn latent anxieties into a rallying cry.
CABLE TIES
Cory Hanson’s third solo LP follows upon 2020’s luminescent Pale Horse Rider, upping the heat to molten levels, six strings at a time. In search of further adventures, Cory draws with vampiric glee from the madness coursing through the world outside; a spiraling shitshow that’s reawakened a compulsion in him-an old ambition, even!-to crush brutality and elegance together into a fresh set of rocks to hail down upon us. Western Cum is a high-stepping, hard-dancing, first love/heartbreak, tonight’s-the-night, future nostalgia kind of good time-the sound of guitars through the speakers of luxury cars. Like the dream you had once, alone, asleep in an amplifier, blasting Guns N’ Roses through every last orifice in your body. And it’s coming through! It’s another side of midnight somewhere; high o’clock too, and the dark, cactaceaen fantasias of the previous incarnation have hardened and dried in Cory’s pre-apocalyptic garden of choice, a sun-blinded plain of sedimentary rock. Down the highway, beyond the horizon, through the looking glass, etc-he’s fixed for rough times ahead, a gunslinger/anti-hero of legend/infamy, back in town with axe blazing and a rhythm trio dubbed “Slowhand” walking up the crazy horse he rode in on. Western Cum’s map to the treasure is less about pastiche, though; more toward executing the songs by executioner’s axe, rolling their decapitated rhythm heads and soaring melodies, the panoply of Cory’s melodic impulses with guitars, guitars, guitars. Harmony leads are just the tip of the iceberg, but be quick – the guitars like to melt everything in their path! The eight songs of Western Cum are driven by the stalwart bass of brother Casey Hanson and the drums of Evan Backer with a few passing acoustics from Cory and the intermittent spirit-moans of Tyler Nuffer’s steel guitar. The quartet sound-two guitars, bass and drums-acts as beat-making principle/phrasing device, as well as template for Cory’s layers of six-string and vocal textures. From the rooftop of their musical safe house-the band in their makeshift hut and Cory ensconced in an outhouse-they let loose with a blast both face-melting and mind-blowing: a social service that gives constipation a good name. With Western Cum, this debauched and shameless world is redeemed in the same breath as it is repudiated. A massing of voices and guitars form an almost post-gospel harmony, bright and burgeoning, engorging the thermostat, prising the pressure from your chest before the final wink-out. Maybe it’s a mirage…but those things are just another part of reality, ain’t they?
Describing their music as avant-tard and idiot savant punk rock, the UV Race are an Australian outfit whose music combines the structural trappings of garage punk with a purposefully off-kilter attack that fits somewhere between deliberate primitivism and art-damaged provocation. Formed in Melbourne in 2007, the UV Race features guitarist Alistair Montfort, singer Marcus Rechsteiner, Alex Glazov on keyboards, Georgia Rose on sax and harmonica, Moses Williams on bass, and drummer Dan Stewart. The group played its first show in July 2007 and released a demo on cassette later that same year, with the UV Race displaying a lasting affinity for the lo-fi analog format. After a handful of cassette-only releases, the UV Race moved up to vinyl in mid-2008 with their first 7, Lego Man, issued by the Aussie indie label Aarght Records. Aarght also put out the band’s next release, a split-live cassette with Eddy Current Suppression Ring; Mikey Young of ECSR was an early booster of UV Race and has produced most of their recordings. A second 7, Malaria, was issued by American indie imprint SS Records in July 2009, and the group’s first full-length album appeared later the same year on Aarght; originally distributed only on cassette, it was later reissued on CD and LP. In 2010, UV Race toured the United States for the first time (the itinerary included a stop at that year’s Gonerfest in Memphis, Tennessee), and another 7, I Hate You, appeared on the Fashionable Idiots label in the fall. In early 2011, yet another 7, Acid Trip, hit the racks via Sweet Rot Records, and noted American garage punk label In the Red Records released UV Race’s second album, Homo, in late March the same year. Their next project was filming and recording the soundtrack for a film, Autonomy and Deliberation. It was released in November of 2012, roughly the same time as their next studio album, Racism.
Fittingly born at the dawn of the 21st Century, The Intelligence’s brand of art-smarm surf has become a touchstone for with-it rock ‘n’ roll of the era. Perhaps a surprising assertion, especially considering their primitive and personal origins, but one cemented by the dedication and continual reinvention fostered by main-brain Lars Aldric Finberg. For all their longevity and prolificacy, The Intelligence is a restless, ever-evolving vehicle for Finberg, showcasing his presumably patented knack for sharp pop songwriting that rides waves from both the past and heretofore unknown. Before the jets have cooled from the recently released Live in San Francisco LP (Castle Face Records nothing but hits says Oh Sees producer/heckler John Dwyer) The Intelligence have announced their 10th album Un-Psychedelic in Peavy City . Recorded all analog/no computer hidden way up in the northern California woods with Tim Green (Bikini Kill//Wand/Melvins). Building on the newfound freedom of last years Ty Segal produced Moonlight Over Bakersfield , leader Lars Finberg’s oddball solo LP, we find the band unhinged and inspired, stretching out with longer songs even bigger drum sounds and bass as the secret weapon. Here is the Intelligence at their most Devo minimalist giving the tape machine room to breathe in this Pro-Tools wasteland. After the polished decay of 2015’s Vintage Future the band have retired the keyboards and drum machines and moved out of the garage and into the basement and unplugged the lights. Songs like L’apple du Vide and Mute Me are among the bands punkest moments while Year of the Vet and Auteur Detour deliver a new self-described No-Wave Santana vibe. 10 albums into their career the Intelligence have found a way to distill their previous strengths and still move sideways.
For the better part of a decade, LA’s scrappy rock n’ roll mystics Death Valley Girls have used their music as a means of tapping into a communal cosmic energy. On albums like Glow In The Dark (2016), Darkness Rains (2018), and Under the Spell of Joy (2020) the band challenged the soul-crushing banality of modern society and celebrated “true magical infinite potential” through a collage of scorching proto-punk riffs, earworm melodies, far-out lyrics, and lysergic auxiliary instrumentation. But on their latest album Islands in the Sky, Death Valley Girls’ songwriting mastermind Bonnie Bloomgarden uses the band’s anthemic revelries as a guidebook to spiritual healing and a roadmap for future incarnations of the self. And while these may be the loftiest aims of Death Valley Girls to date, the resulting music is also by far their most infectious and celebratory. The seeds for Islands in the Sky were planted while Bloomgarden was bed-ridden with a mysterious illness from November 2020 to March 2021. “When I was sick I had to sleep most of the day. I kept waking up every few hours with an intense message to take care of the island, feed the island…I have no idea why, but making music for the island kept coming up.” Before her illness, Bloomgarden’s primary focus was writing songs to help other people deal with their own suffering. But something in her shifted, and she began to turn her focus inward. “When I was sick I started to wonder if it would be possible to write a record with messages of love to my future self. This was really the first time that I consciously thought about my own suffering and what future me might need to hear to heal. I struggled so much in my life with mental health, abuse, PTSD, and feeling like I didn’t belong anywhere. And I don’t want anyone-including my future self-to suffer ever again. I realized that if we are all part of one cosmic consciousness, as we [Death Valley Girls] believe, then Islands in the Sky could serve not only as a message to her future self but also as a message to anyone who might need it. With the dual powers of Harry Schemel’s guitar prowess and the addition of new bassist and co-lead singer Sammy Westervelt, Death Valley Girls set out to make their most ambitious and exciting record to date at Station House Studio in Echo Park. Islands in the Sky opens with a patient, hazy, aura fueled synth, organ, and Schemel’s dusty guitar twang on “California Mountain Shake”-a love song to our future selves. The slow-burn yields to “Magic Powers,” where Death Valley Girls teach us how to harness the hard times, abuse, and feelings of being alone, abandoned, or powerless in your life into magic powers. This segues into the title track, an anthem fully deserving of having an entire album share its name. Imagine Rush’s “Freewill” without the math but with an even more triumphant chorus and an openness to otherworldly possibilities. Suicide Squeeze is proud to release Death Valley Girls’ Islands in the Sky to the world on vinyl, CD, cassette, and DSPs in early 2023.
Four years after they went all the way to Antarctica, Flat Worms are back in gen pop with the rest of us – but, as intoned on the album opener “Sigalert”, “back again like I never was”. Is this a nod to the way time passes over our sorely vexed synapses? Or are we to believe that there’s hope to be found in this broken world? Kick back with Witness Marks and see what other traces Flat Worms have left us in the dust. The album title alone leaves a foreboding impression. But look closer – “witness marks” aren’t something out of a forensic analysis – they’re actually practical: scratches placed in old clocks designed to aid continued maintenance down the road. Sure, there’s big questions and more on the board; primarily if we’re at all distinct from the absurdity coming down around us, or just another character in the mirror? Flat Worms are looking inward this time, outlining personal space in relation to themselves and others – sometimes, even people they barely know. Among the slabs of slate-grey discontent, the flowers of compassion are blooming, and the simmering power of their trio grows exponentially. Working once again with Ty Segall, Flat Worms continue to find new answers by digging into themselves and playing their kind of rock: hard and flat, bass and drums thrusting stalwartly forward with conviction, guitar twisting and spinning in outrage, deadpan vocals decrying a dire set of circumstances. The democracy of working together, so often messy and frustrating, was found to be a powerful release for Justin, Tim and Will. Acting as one, Flat Worms navigated challenging times by coming together, finding release in the clockwork repetitions of practice and the shared creative space they occupied together against the encroaching world. In the short century of their existence, Flat Worms have agitated against the status quo with a disquieting lyric bent to emphasize the psychosis of the times. Witness Marks surveys an evolving sense of community. Flat Worms are dedicated to persevering and using the power of their collective. Come witness!
Fuzz is Ty Segall (drums/vocals), Charlie Moothart (guitar/vocals), and Chad Ubovich (bass). They are heavy-rock lifers and three California-bred dudes who have been refining their riffs and getting weird together since high school. Fuzz was formed in/around 2011 as a collaboration between Segall and Moothart. Fuzz have flipped through used bins, hard drives, and record collections of the world, seeking out the finest weirdo cuts.
In 1999 King Khan, Aquarius and founder of the greatest cult phenomenon since the parting of the Milky Way, assembles the 8-piece band called The Shrines. Together they begin spreading their hypersexual gospel around the world, stunning Krauts and becoming notorious for being one of the most entertaining groups since the days of Ike & Tina. Dressed in their ceremonial duds, King Khan and the Shrines, are more than just a psychedelic soul revue, imagine Roky Erickson backed by the Sun Ra Arkestra or Wilson Pickett leading The Velvet Underground, wearing a golden cape that wraps around the world, a Bollywood James Brown reading his self-made tarot cards (WHO DOES THAT!?). As the love child of Anubis and Kali, King Khan & The Shrines have pillaged countless stages around the world and are known to frequently drive audiences into a sweaty orgy. If musical salvation is what you need, if your soul is searching for true absolution, look no further….Let King Khan & The Shrines come into your mind, body and soul to heal your every hurt. King Khan & The Shrines’ first album Three Hairs & You’re Mine was produced by Liam Watson, recorded in the legendary Toe Rag Studios in London and released on Voodoo Rhythm in 2002. A second full-length, Mr. Supernatural, followed in 2004. Their greatest hits, aptly titled “The Supreme Genius of King Khan & The Shrines”‘ came out in 2008 on Vice Records and for the first time their music was widely available in the U.S. Since then King Khan & The Shrines have played at several notable festivals including ATP, Coachella, Sasquatch, Pitchfork and South By Southwest. Furthermore King Khan was invited by Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson to perform at the Sydney Opera House as a part of the Vivid festival in 2010. In 2013 King Khan & The Shrines joined North American cult indie label Merge Records who released the groups 4th album called Idle No More. The single Darkness”, which, as King Khan says, is about the “ugly beasts that must be tamed inside of us all” and also his “attempt to do something as real as Nina Simone”, was premiered by none less than the New York Times. If true or not, one thing is for sure : “King Khan is that fiery arrow shot into the night sky which no one knows how high or far it will travel, however we do know that as that fiery arrow streaks across the heavens, along the way its flames will light up dark places.” -John B. Smith founder of Memphis activist group The Invaders.
Based in San Jose, Costa Rica, Las Robertas is a five piece band (Mercedes Oller, Fabrizio Durn, Russell Davis, Daniela Garca and Felipe Oller) that has developed a sound and style around influences that go from the psychedelic music scene from the 60s, bands like The Velvet Underground in the 70s, to the alternative 90s rock n roll scene. The band started playing in 2009 and since then, have played and toured in and outside Costa Rica numerous shows and tours, including festivals like NRMAL (Mexico), Levitation (Austin, TX), Coachella (Indio Valley, CA), Rock al Parque (Bogot, Colombia), Primavera Sound (Barcelona) among others. The band has released 4 LP’s and 2 EP’s, in the USA, Mexico and Spain, its most recent release “Love is the Answer” was out in February 2023 via Kanine Records (USA). “Love is the Answer” is a compilation of nine songs about love towards the universe, individual freedom and of hope in a time where the world seems ever closer to being consumed in chaos. Some of the band’s influences for this album were The Brian Jonestown Massacre, The Dandy Warhols, The Charlatans, Lush, Ride and The Breeders. The album was produced, recorded, mixed and mastered by the Welsh producer Owen Morris, who have worked previously with bands like Oasis, The Verve, Ash, Kaiser Chiefs and Madness. The band and Owen started working together after they met in Costa Rica. While sharing time together, great chemistry happened between the band and Owen, and eventually ended up collaborating for “Love is the Answer”. The recording of the album started in Hermosillo, Sonora (Mexico) and was completed in Santa Ana, Costa Rica.
“Bayport BBQ Blues” is the new studio album by Indiana’s favorite blues duo Left Lane Cruiser, featuring Freddy J IVon guitar and vocals, and Brenn “Sausage Paw” Beck on drums, washboard and trash kit. The album blends Freddy’scommanding, gritty vocal rasp and positively nasty hoodoo slide guitar work with Sausage Paw’s rhythmic stomp tomake for a heady fire-starter for your house party, backyard barbecue or juke joint get-down. “Bayport BBQ Blues” isdedicated to the memory of the late Chris Jonson, creator of the Deep Blues Festival.
