Remember [[[[VVRSSNN]]]]? Well, Adam Forkner has a new album/project called White Rainbow, and the disc, ZOME, is out now on States Rights Records. I just ordered it just now, because I love this track:

::: White Rainbow - Guilded Golden Ladies :::

I am hereby nominating the Joggers not only for “Best Album Title” (”With A Cape And Cane“), but also “Best Song Titles”:

“Ziggurat Traffic”
“Yawning Brahmins”
“Night Of The Horsepills”
“Horny Ghost”

Shal Halperin of Philadelphia’s The Capitol Years decided to see how many Philly band names he could name-drop in just one song. He managed to do 35 of them, in just about 6 and a half minutes. And the resulting song really isn’t the bad, gimmicky, stream-of-conch* you might expect; it’s actually pretty good:

::: The Capitol Years - Tale Of The City :::

(* no offense meant toward INXS’s “Mediate”)

Granted, I did buy that Tortoise record 7 years ago, and I don’t really think Neu! counts, but on the whole, I’d say I’m just not so much for instrumental stuff. So it’s incredibly surprising to me that I find myself unable to resist the charms of Sweden’s Hemstad. Their music makes me smile, and it makes me want to shake my ass. It tickles me in the same way that the Go Team tickles me. There are 12 songs on their mp3s page, and I shit you not, they are all good songs. In the interest of saving space, though, here are just a few to sample:

::: Sommar I Göteborg :::
::: Fyllekärring :::
::: En sång för LKAB :::

Jagjag’s thrown up the detail page (sans mp3s, boo-hoo) for Okkervil River’s upcoming Black Sheep Boy Appendix, out November 22nd. It’s being described as “… a condensed, alternate vision of that [Black Sheep Boy]’s imagery and themes, with the ultimate intent to exhaust and destroy both.” Note too that later this year, they’ll be doing their first tour ever as a headlining act. Unless I’m mistaken, Minus Story will be touring with ‘em.

Boy, that Chad VanGaalen’s a resourceful young chap. He went and wrote that great “Clinically Dead” song, but on top of that, homeboy went and animated a swell video for it, too.

New mp3 from Grandaddy. Sounds pretty Grandaddy-y to me.

::: Grandaddy - Pull The Curtain :::

When I mentioned that new Long Winters EP the other day, was there an mp3 there on that page? B/c there’s one there now, for the title track.

If you’re jonesing for some incredibly earnest singing about the topic of “Love”, you’ll probably really want to go check out Barsuk’s new Nada Surf e-card.

Kathryn points out that this dude recorded a brand new Ted Leo song on his phone, then posted it to his blog.

Our friends over Cornerstone wanted me to let you know that you can see Athlete’s new video for “Half-Light” here, and you can check some streams from the new Stellastarr* record here (”The Diver”), and here (”Sweet Troubled Soul”).

There are a ton of nice people out there who are kind enough to send me
stuff all time, and I sometimes feel bad that so often, CDs can sorta end
up just getting lost in a big pile, and/or e-mails can end up going totally unanswered
or completely lost because I get too busy with, like, real life and other crap like that.

So.

What I did was I ran a search back through my emails for the word “Records”, and I have
collected here (hopefully) most all of the fine *smaller* labels that have contacted me and/or
sent me stuff in the past 6 months.

If you’ve got some free time this afternoon, why don’t you go on and spend some of that time
clicking around here, and see if you can’t turn up something what tickles your fancy.

Abandoned Love Records - Indie-Poppy SF Label, featuring Morning Spy and others.

Agriculture Records - Woody Whatever’s own label.

Boompa - Home of The Ladies and Gentlemen, Leeroy Stagger, Catlow and others.

Brilliante Records - Beautifully designed site from this Chicago-based label. Pretty diverse selection of acts, including indie-pop, hip-hop, and even experimental/lo-fi. Try out Sharks and Seals.

Friendly Fire Recordings - Home to Asobi Seksu and Faunts.

Groover Recordings - Swedish Pop, and therefore, the site is actually in Swedish. Just go and start clicking around, you’ll hit some mp3s eventually.

Hometapes - Florida-based label that’s home to The Caribbean and others.

Ionik Records - Cincinnati-area label ft/ Woody Whatever, The Spectacular Fantastic + more.

KEEP Recordings - Incredibly nicely designed site by Jeff. Home to BMR and many others.

Kringle Recordings - Imprint of Tacoma’s Some By Sea. Their new EP, The Saddest Christmas is out next month.

Popup Records - Another Florida-based label. I’m still diggin’ that Biirdie track.

Powertool Records USA - Bringing quality New Zealand indie rock to the States, including stuff from Robert Scott (The Clean, The Bats).

Sleepsound Records - The Eugene, OR - based home to Testface, Armored Frog, and The Fast Computers.

The Slight Record - One of Kaleb’s 9,386 projects.

Summersteps Records - Check out their Jandek tribute disc, or the latest from Lewis and Clarke. And of course, highly recommended is that new Kid Icarus disc, The Metal West, which just got a writeup in SPIN, btw.

Tract Records - Thomas’ great label, out of Richmond, IN. Lots of good stuff here, including stuff from The Strugglers, Everything Is Fine, and more.

Union Records - LA-based Home to Richmond Fontaine, Goldspot, and others.

I’ve been hearing a good bit of chatter about Oakley Hall of late. Word is, they’re pretty amazing, at least as far as Psych-Country goes. I’m going to agree with that assessment, based on the fact that I can’t get enough of this track from their upcoming disc, Second Guessing.

::: Oakley Hall - Landlord :::

New Long Winters EP in October: Ultimatum. Via Kathryn.

Dude, go stream the upcoming Minus Story record, No Rest For Ghosts.

A promo of the upcoming Fiery Furnaces disc, Rehearsing My Choir, showed up in my inbox yesterday. It’s the one where their grandma sings on all the songs. So, what does it sound like? It sounds exactly like the Fiery Furnaces with their grandma singing on all the songs.

::: FF ft. Olga Sarantos - 7 Silver Curses :::

Big congrats to jtb, sf, and co. on the 6-month anniversary of Tiny Showcase. The other day I looked at my checkbook and realized I’ve bought something like 20 prints since they started.

It was over a month ago that I spoke to Andy of Richmond, VA’s The Great White Jenkins, and I’m glad he recently remembered speaking to me, because this week, their new disc, Where Is Thy Sting?, showed up in my mailbox. And dammit, it’s a good one. Because I don’t want to relegate them to just “Folk” or “Folk Rock”, I’ve elected to describe them as a “Jake-Legged, Brokedown, Marching Symphony”. And I mean that as a really really *good* thing. My favorite track:

::: The Great White Jenkins - O Night :::

You can (and should) pick up their disc for a mere 8 bucks right here. And I especially recommend it to folks who dig Royal City, Palace, (Smog), and etc.

I’m classifying today as a pretty big release day. There’s a lot of new stuff out that’s worth checking out:

Subpop’s got that re-release of Chad VanGaalen’s Infiniheart and also the new Rogue Wave EP, 10:1. Merge has that Tenement Halls record, Knitting Needles & Bicycle Bells, plus that great new Portastatic disc, Bright Ideas. And that new New Pornographers‘ album is finally out, and at last, JV’s Pixel Revolt is officially out too. I got the promo of that one months ago, and am digging it immensely. Note that the vinyl version of Pixel Revolt is limited to a numbered edition of 500, so if you’re looking to get it, you better get on that fast. Oh, and also on the vinyl tip, don’t forget that Xiu Xiu/Devendra Banhart split 7″ just came out too.

And don’t forget that Kaleb’s “It’s Meaningless” site continues to churn along. Recent additions include Summer At Shatter Creek and Boy Omega. On a similar note, Frank points out that Copy Comma Right also has a big list of MF cover tracks up right now.

That new Mountain Goats video. If your Mac hassles you like mine did, just copy-paste this link into yr Windoze Media Player:

http://media.theonenetwork.com/vstream34_asx.asp?type=music&speed=300&videoid=u_mountaingoats_thisyear

Merge is streaming the new Portastatic, Bright Ideas, which is out tomorrow. It’s a pretty
damn solid record, you should check it out. It’s one of those albums that your, like, normal,
straight-laced brother-in-law will hear you listening to, and then he’ll come over and ask about
it, and then you’ll suddenly think to yourself that it’s kind of weird that your brother-in-law would
want to listen to the same thing you listen to, but then you’ll get over it, and you’ll realize, “hey,
at least we have something in common now”.

Startime has posted new tracks from dios malos and The Joggers (and that dancey Tom Vek stuff, if you’re into that).

::: dios malos - Feels Good Being Somebody :::
::: The Joggers - Era Prison :::

Alright, so now Cory of Absolutely Kosher has responded too. AK is on that RIAA list strictly due to some fine print in a specific distribution deal. As seems
to be the case with most all of these small labels mentioned recently, no one is, like, a card-carrying,
dues-paying RIAA member or anything. I mean, don’t we all remember how Cooties get spread? You could end up with those just be sitting *next* to the kid that had them.

Also, Jonathan pointed out this wikipedia entry, explaining how Matador got in the clear.

Anyway, one last thing and then I’m done with this topic (maybe): I think it’s worth mentioning that The RIAA Radar still lists these labels as “Safe”, FWIW (though I know that doesn’t change your mind at all, O’ Lords of #IT).

Also, I would be remiss if I talked about Abs Kosh and neglected to point you to the album artwork for Rob Crow’s upcoming “Goblin Cock” project.

I reiterate: when I posted about the indie labels/RIAA thing the other day, I was not making any sort of judgements. I was merely passing along information I was given. In the past week, Chad Crouch of Hush has spoken his thoughts on the matter, as has Chris Applegren of Lookout!, and also, I just got an email from Jeff Price of SpinART, pointing out that they are not members of the RIAA, but are in fact members of AAIM, the American Association of Independent Music.

I was extremely skeptical about the supposed RIAA membership of *all* those smaller indie labels that showed up on the list (Absolutely Kosher? Seriously, how can that possibly be true?). But still, they showed up on the list, so why exactly did that happen? Is it something to do with distribution or something? But then, Matador has a distro deal w/ Warner, and yet they don’t show up on the RIAA list.

???

The thing is, I don’t know. I’m just a simple unfrozen caveman and I don’t understand your shiny magic sound-making discs, or your fancy acronym nomenclature, or your elaborate distribution partnership contracts.

Anyway.

Jose Gonzalez has a band now, and they’re called Junip. The sound is denser and, well, louder. The Black Refuge EP is available next week over at Parasol. The vinyl edition is signed and limited to 500, so get on that one quick if you want a copy.

::: Black Refuge :::
::: Official :::