Wild Nothing - Shadow

Wild Nothing is indie-bedroom maestro Jack Tatum's fresh take on the classic dream pop formula. His debut album, Gemini, was released on the Captured Tracks label in 2010 and was one of my favorite records of the past few years. On songs like "Live In Dreams" and "Summer Holiday" Tatum wrapped his heartbreakingly melancholy melodies in a comforting blanket of distortion that brought to mind classic shoegazer, noise pop and post-punk sounds without sounding self-consciously retro or overly derivative.

Wild Nothing's second album, nocturne, will be released by Captured Tracks on August 28th. Captured Tracks has made a preview track, "Shadow," available on youtube. From the sounds of it Tatum has chosen to refine (rather than redefine) the Wild Nothing sound for his sophomore album, and in my opinion it's a good choice. I'm looking forward to hearing the whole thing.

The Kids Are Alright: Neo-Shoegaze Edition

No doubt I'm late to the party, but I've been enjoying the work of some of the neo-shoegazer bands that have cropped up lately. I haven't looked at my feet so often since the heyday of My Bloody Valentine, Ride and Lush in the early 90s. Fortunately, I'm still able to see my feet, although I need glasses to properly focus on them these days.

Wild Nothing - "Summer Holiday" from the album Gemini.


Beach Fossils - "Adversity" from the EP What A Pleasure.


Real Estate - "Exactly Nothing" b-side of "Easy" 7" single.

Saturn V

I wanted to follow up on the Razorcuts post from yesterday with some music from singer/guitarist Gregory Webster's next band, Saturn V (not to be confused with the surf rock band The Saturn V featuring Orbit, as All Music has apparently done).

Saturn V released a nice single on the short-lived Shimmy Disc pop label, Koko Pop, and an album on Vinyl Japan in 1993, then disappeared. It's too bad, because the small amount of music they released was quite good, similar in many respects to the Razorcuts, although perhaps a bit less twee.

Both the single, Dominator, and the album Skycycle are well worth tracking down if you can find them.

The Pains of Being Razorcut

My friend Peter recently turned me onto the latest indie-rock hype band, The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart. If someone had told me before I heard them that they had a retro J&M Chain/C86 vibe to them, I might not have bothered to listen to them. I've heard a few bands recently that harken back to that sound, and inevitably, my reaction has been a cynical "been there done that."

But POBPAH (sorry, but their name demands abbreviation) had a different effect on me. From the first chords of "Contender" I got an instant psychocandy sugar jolt that sent me on a nostalgia trip resulting in me digging through my old records to rediscover POBPAH's antecedents (that is, after I listened to POBPAH twice through).

I had to needledrop my copy of Psychocandy (which itself was thought to be a slavishly imatative album on its original release, but holds up quite nicely on its own terms nearly a quarter century later). I also dug out some of my old british "shoegazer" and C86 albums, including a compilation of music by the Razorcuts called Patterns On The Water: A Retrospective. Patterns has been unavailable for so long it doesn't even show up at Amazon. A more recent compilation R Is For Razorcuts, is also out-of-print and fetching megabucks. (The A Is For Alphabet EP is still available on CD and as a download, so if you dig what you hear pick that up).

Fans of POBPAH will likely enjoy the slightly fey and extremely catchy nature of the Razorcuts' music (although it's not as noisy, for that you need Psychocandy).

So okay, I've been there and done that, but POBPAH is good enough to make me want to go back and do it all over again. They deliver what some of these other neo-shoegaze bands don't: excellent songs that transcend the formula. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some footwear to contemplate.

Digging Through the Live Music Archive

In the Live Music Archive there are basically two categories: Grateful Dead shows and non-Dead shows. Most artists in the database are dwarfed by the huge Grateful Dead Live Archive, which covers a 30-year span and has a whopping 2,800 shows. I haven’t downloaded the one and only Dead show I saw which was at RFK in ’86 but my memories of that day are still pretty vivid. It was a wild scene and unforgettable.

Out of the 128 Camper Van Beethoven shows in the archive I thought by chance one would document one of the nights I had seen them in D.C. back in the mid 80’s but most recordings were from 2003 to present - so no such luck. Ditto for the Robyn Hitchcock shows. While much of the archive is devoted to bands I’ve never heard of like the Disco Bicuits which have 700+ shows for instance, there is something here for everyone. Maybe even one of those ‘lost shows’ from your past. I did find two very different but enjoyable live sets.

While probably not new to many fans, Mojave 3’s Black Session from November 11, 1995 has a certain legendary status as being their first live show and is in my opinion on par with their official releases. A set of 8 songs slowly unwinds for the C’est Lenoir radio show in front of a small audience. A charming recording full of first-gig jitters that make it hard not to like.

On a related note, emusic.com now has Slowdive’s last and hard to find out-of-print LP Pygmalion which I’d been curious about for sometime but couldn’t find a copy. Pygmalion further explores the territory of ambient textures and Eno influenced soundscapes.

Getting back to the Archive - The Minutemen were giants of their time and still stand as one of my favorites from the 80’s hardcore scene. Listening to this complete set from March 9, 1983 recorded in NYC does nothing in the way of changing my opinion. Blazing through 38 songs with hardly a pause between for fans to yell “Van Halen!” makes me want to yell "San Pedro!"

The Pale Saints

Today's featured song takes us back in time to the early 1990s when a bunch of pasty-faced Brits managed to temporarily get us out of the mosh pit at Mudhoney and TAD shows in order to more carefully examine our footwear.

The Pale Saints were one of many British "shoegazing" bands, and got lost in the shuffle a bit. The band was less distinguished than their peers My Bloody Valentine (who pushed the sonic envelope so far out on 1991's Loveless that they were never able to create a follow up) and Lush (who had much surer pop sensibilities). The Saints fell somewhere between these two bands; their lush soundscapes were never as adventurous as My Bloody Valentine's, and their songs were not as hook-sure as Lush's. And they had the misfortune of not being as photogenic as the far less interesting Ride. They did however have the good taste to cover my favorite Opal song, "Fell From The Sun," on their self-titled debut.

Their follow-up, In Ribbons, was even more atmospheric than the debut, and featured a cover of Slapp Happy's (via Mazzy Star) "Blue Flower." The band's final album, Slow Buildings, was recorded after the departure of group leader Ian Masters and was unbelievably dull, even by shoegazer standards (whose musical aesthetic has a certain amount of dullness built into it).

The Little Hits website has made the Opal/Clay Allison version of "Fell From the Sun" available if you'd like to do a bit of compare and contrast. One of these days I'm going to get around to ripping my copy of Opal's difficult to find Early Recordings LP, and will post something else from the album.