Kayzak

This is good stuff, traditional instruments bent in non-traditional ways, airy vocals twisted into surreal and haunting shapes. The Aquarian is referencing Jim James, but I'm hearing more Stars Like Fleas, Akron Family and Megafaun.

The band leader's name is Peter Frey, there are five other players involved and they have lived in Minnesota (before and now) and Austin (in between). That's pretty much all I know, but the art work is beautiful...one of the main reasons I checked this out in the first place. (Yes, we critics are extremely fickle and like pretty things.) I'm glad I did, why don't you?

This is the album cover.


And here's a video.

Disposition from Kazyak on Vimeo.

I have been working extremely hard...I mean, I often get hired because I'm fast and that means there's a lot of pressure, but this is beyond the usual...five fairly substantial drafts in about a week. If I focus I can make $4500 this week and the same again the next...which will help a lot with Sean's college expenses. Of course, one of the risks is that you kill yourself to make deadlines and then the client stops things dead after D1 because they realize they can't keep up/think they could do better if they slowed down/or some other excuse I can't think of right now but it happens frequently. In that case, you only get half, but even half is pretty good.

So forgive me if I'm not on 30secondsover all the time. I have to put food on the table and money into the college account.

Mood Rings...mine was always black

So, yes, full disclosure...I, too, had a mood ring in the 1970s, back when everyone had a mood ring. I may never have owned another ring until I got married 20 years later, but I had one of those Mood rings, as you might recall, changed colors supposedly to reflect your mood, but really to reflect the temperature of your hands. Then as now, mine were always cold, and so I was in a foul mood, all the time, according to the ring.

Which is actually sort of how I remember the 1970s.

Now there's a band named after these things, and they're not too bad.




VPI Harmony

Mood Rings

Mexican Summer

BY JENNIFER KELLY



Mood Rings, a five-piece out of Atlanta, concocts airy, dreamy, wholly imaginary landscapes out reverbed guitar, synthesizer and blur-edged vocals. Though sometimes tagged with the “shoegazer” label, the band lands at the very softest end of that spectrum, nearer Slowdive than Ride and far distant from the gauze-overlaid roar of My Bloody Valentine. But really, Mood Rings sounds more like last year’s slacker pop (Real Estate, Wild Nothing) or chillwave (Washed Out) than anything historical. These are whispery, wispy bits of romantic melancholia, the fey vulnerability of the vocals backed by surging crescendos of guitar and synthesizer.

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Pedaljets split the difference between Paisley Pop and Mats-style mayhem

Blogged this earlier...now the review, up yesterday at Blurt. I gave it four stars, which is about as high as I go...totally enjoyable, especially if you came up in the early MTV years.

What's In Between
Pedaljets
Electric Moth


JENNIFER KELLY

Pedaljets arose in the mid-1980s out of the same rough-housing Kansas indie scene that birthed The Embarrassment (whose Bill Goffrier came east to co-found the great Big Dipper). The band was, at one time, a raucous r ‘n r contender in the hunt for the next ‘Mats, Husker or Meat Puppets. They shared stages with all these bands. Yet Pedaljets made just two albums in its heyday, the grungy, rackety debut Today Today in 1988 and the rushed and less satisfying S-T in 1989. They split a year after the second record, worn out with touring and disappointed with their showing. The Pedaljets’ sophomore effort apparently rankled so much that the band actually reformed to re-record it in 2006.

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The songs fall out of the air

My interview with Josh Rouse, which apparently took place during SXSW (ahem, more than three months ago), is finally up today at PopMatters. I kinda picked it off the list and ended up not being that crazy about the album (though I like "Julie Come Out of the Rain"), but the interview turned out well, I thought. Anyway, check it out:



The Songs Fall Out of the Air: An Interview with Josh Rouse


By Jennifer Kelly 26 June 2013



“Nick Drake’s ‘Pink Moon’“ says Josh Rouse, when asked to name a great song. “There are hardly any words in that song and it only lasts two minutes. But it balances space and timing and it all works together somehow. I’m sure [Drake] sat down and worked on it somewhat, but it was probably also just kind of a thing that came out,” he adds. “The best songs fall out of the air, and you have to see if you can grab a couple of them.”


Rouse has been crafting his own catchy, melodic songs since the 1990s, mining a soft country rock vein which he first heard on AM radio while growing up in the Midwest. His first full length, 1998’s Dressed Up Like Nebraska celebrated the stark landscapes of the Great Plains. AllMusic Guide called it a classic. He moved to Nashville in the early aughts and recorded Home there, kicking off a string of highly-regarded, urbane pop records: Under Cold Blue Stars in 2002, 1972 in 2003, his tribute to radio-friendly California rock.

Rouse moved to Spain in the mid-00s, met his current wife and recorded three more albums—Subtitulo in 2006, El Turisto in 2010 and this year’s Happiness Waltz, his tenth full-length to date. Along the way, he and his wife moved to NYC then back to Spain and had two children, now aged one-and-a-half and four. When I catch him by phone between SXSW gigs and ask the former Army brat about his newly settled, domesticated situation, he laughs and proposes yet another move.


“Part of me likes being settled down,” he admits, “but then I get bored and want some change. I haven’t figured it out. Maybe I just haven’t found the right place yet. Maybe I should be in Los Angeles.”


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The Mantles

I've been hearing about the Mantles for a while. They're part of that sunny, trippy SF garage scene that maybe started with John Dwyer and Kelley Stoltz and has now expanded to include Ty Segall, Sic Alps, Fresh & Onlys, Mikal Cronin and, I don't know, maybe a dozen others. Their latest album, Long Enough to Leave will come out July 18th on Slumberland, and it's got a very NZ-ish slack-tempo'd radiance ("Brown Ballon" especially, is super-Bats-ish, and they just played a show with the Bats, but you missed it, didn't you?). I'd also venture Woods, the Beets, Nodzzz (who should've been on that SF list above, oops) as relevant comparisons.

So, how about that "Brown Balloon"?

Builders and Butchers

Another in string of muscular yet mournful, raucous yet not entirely celebratory alt-country bands -- I'm thinking Moondoggies, Hiss Golden Messenger, D. Charles Speer and Red River Dialect -- here comes Portland's Builders and Butchers.

Houndstooth

A pretty much perfect balance of the hard and the soft...



From the Willamette Week:

"What I enjoy about Portland’s Houndstooth is the unconventional combination of singer Katie Bernstein’s tranquil, poppy vocals and guitarist John Gnorski’s sprawling, jammy electric guitar riffs. In this town it’s easy for female-fronted indie-ish groups to blend together, but the sprouting Houndstooth is growing into its distinctive characteristics of subtle Southern-fried rock that’s framed by a sweet, unruffled voice." EMILEE BOOHER