Reigning Sound

(Memphis, USA // Merge Records)

The band’s principal songwriter/member is Greg Cartwright, who’s been leading the shifting cast of characters since 2001. You may be familiar with some of the band’s work, as this album is preceded by five studio efforts as well as numerous EPs and live records.

Or perhaps some of Greg’s other projects have been on your musical radar: The Oblivians, Parting Gifts, Compulsive Gamblers, 68 Comeback, Deadly Snakes, Detroit Cobras.

Regardless, as far as Reigning Sound is concerned, this is as good a place to start as any because through many line-up changes and mood swings, the central, constant feature is the way Greg writes songs.

This particular embodiment of the band includes longtime keyboardist Dave Amels, who joined the band twelve years ago when Reigning Sound recorded an album, consisting mostly of Cartwright’s songs, with former Shangri-Las lead singer Mary Weiss.

Dave proved to be key in putting together the current line-up as well. About three years ago, Greg was asked to make a promotional EP for Scion. Recordings were set to take place in Nashville where he had lined up two local friends to round out the band, but as fate would have it, both had to bow out at the last minute. Luckily, Mike Catanese, Benny Trokan, and Mikey Post—Dave Amels’ bandmates in Brooklyn soul group The Jay Vons—were up for the task. The four flew to Nashville, learned the songs, and recorded them with Greg in a couple of days. Thus was born the group that you hear on “Shattered.” They’ve been touring and playing together ever since, and Shattered proves that the musical union is both exciting and consistent for fans of Cartwright’s songwriting.

The album was recorded at Daptone’s Brooklyn studio (where drummer Mikey works in the office) and masterfully engineered by Wayne Gordon. The recordings are warm and punchy, a mixed bag of rockers, ballads, and something in between. There are only 11 songs on the album, but the band reckons it’s just right.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9EMKjZ5h1Y&ab_channel=MergeRecordsonYoutube 

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Pachyman

(Los Angeles, USA // ATO Records )

Welcome to newest signing Pachyman, the LA-based one-man dub band of multi-instrumentalist Pachy García, who will release his new album The Return of Pachyman on August 13. García hails from San Juan, Puerto Rico, where he grew up immersed in the music of local reggae heroes Cultura Profética and classic Jamaican dub records from King Tubby and Scientist. After relocating to Los Angeles, he fell in with the weekly Echo Park reggae night Dub Club and began creating his own dub music, influenced by the Caribbean sounds of his youth, and recording guitar, bass, drums, and piano in his basement studio. García began to organically build an enthused following among the reggae community and was recently given the 2021 Discovery Award at this year’s Latin Alternative Music Conference (LAMC). 

Today Pachyman shares the album’s first summery single “Big Energy” accompanied by a video showing him at work in his home studio. García started posting home performance videos at the beginning of the pandemic and got so many responses from people saying the clips cheered them up that he started seeing the goal of the project to radiate good energy and give his audience something to disconnect from the negativity of the world. García describes “Big Energy” as “Minimalism and repetition. A small moment to reflect about the space between music and listener while the rhythm instruments sparsely introduce themselves. The perfect send off track to the beginning of an adventure. A palette cleanser if you will. An ode to Scientist and Roots Radics, the perfect combination.”

Grave Flowers Bongo Band

(Los Angeles, USA // Castle Face Records)

« With a darkish, distorted sound, Grave Flowers Bongo Band blends the scuzzy psychedelia of the late 60s with the uncooked energy of the scene that birthed the primary punks, then washing it within the sun-kissed leather-based sheen of contemporary L.A. » Castle Face Records

Los Angeles’ Grave Flowers Bongo Band’s sophomore LP “Strength of Spring” is an inverted pyramid balanced on the headstock of an acoustic guitar, a rainbow painted in campfire smoke, an endless staircase circling into the clouds. That acoustic guitar, perfectly captured here by Ty Segall’s excellently sere and close mic’d production, plays skeleton to these conjurors woolly grooves, and singer Gabe Flores’ thousand-yard moan keeps us guessing as to exactly where this wildebeest is headed. He pinions these far out tunes, which burst generously with shit-hot guitar leads, Stoogeseque sax squalls, and a gaggle of great eight-armed drum fills, with a flinty wrist-flicking heartbeat as the band turns from whimsy to nimble riffery on a dime, following that pied-piper six string jangling down many lovely rabbit-holes of melody and exploration. It’s obvious these guys play together a lot (the lineup shares two members with acclaimed space rockers Hoover III to boot) and the telepathy on display here is synapse-snappy. Coursing throughout is that note-pad filling, lighter raising, undefinable black magic that feels so rare these days….we dig it mightily and we think you will too, it’s out on Castle Face Records April 30th.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgblyvM7W10&ab_channel=CASTLEFACERECORDS 

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Cory Hanson

(Los Angeles, USA // Drag City Records)

Lingering at the remains of a campfire before dawn, with the politics of the personal burnt into ash, running his stick through what’s left, Wand singer/guitarist Cory Hanson is reflecting on a series of moments in which he steps farther into himself, finding the ultimate big sky country on the inside of his skull. It’s a combination of songs and sounds that journey through bleak and broken territory and places of sweet, lush remove, and it adds up to the best record he’s been involved in yet: his second solo album, Pale Horse Rider.

Cory’s first solo, The Unborn Capitalist From Limbo, was an intense affair, a grand experiment that pro- duced inspiring, unconven- tional music — but this time around, he wanted to breathe a bit easier, to feel that breath in the music as well. So he and his band drove out to the desert to record in a low-stress environment : Brian Harris’ Cactopia, a house surrounded by 6-foot tall sculptural psychotropic cacti.

They built a studio inside and then they made music and lived off pots of coffee and chili and cases of Miller High Life as they played guitars, bass, keyboards and drums in what seemed increasingly like a living biomech, their tech made out of fungal networks and cacti needles.
It was loose and flowed onto tape well. Recorded by Robbie Cody and Zac Hernandez (who assisted on Wand’s Laughing Matter), the sounds were great from the get-go. First takes were mostly best takes. Fueled with DNA lifted from country-rock cut with native psych and prog strands, Cory guided his craft toward the cosmic side of the high- way, a benevolent alien in ambient fields hazy with heat and synths, early morning fog and space echo spreading the harmonies wide.

Pale Horse Rider’s got a lot to get out of its mind, looking around and seeing that, on the surface, things don’t always look like much. A lifelong Californian, Cory’s naturally found himself standing to the left of most of the country. The west may be only what you make it; these days, the road- side view looks exceptionally sunbleached and left behind.
Pale Horse Rider eyes the city, the country and the fragile environment that holds them both in its hands — a record as much about Los Angeles as it can be with it’s back to the town and the sun in its eyes; as much about nostalgia as new music can be with the apocalypse over the next rise…
On Pale Horse Rider, Cory Hanson moves ceaselessly forward.

The old myths weave and waft, the shadows of tombstones flickering in the mirages and the light that lies dead ahead.

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The Peacers

(San Francisco, USA // Drag City Records)

Combining a psychedelic aural wanderlust with lo-fi pop and a dash of garage punk grit, the Peacers were formed by Mike Donovan after the breakup of his influential garage band the Sic Alps. When the Sic Alps disbanded in 2013, Donovan initially pursued solo projects with guitarist Eric Park before deciding it was time to launch a new band. The initial lineup of the Peacers included Wendy Farina on drums and Ty Segall as producer and multi-instrumentalist, but as the personal relationship between Donovan and Farina splintered, former Oh Sees drummer Mike Shoun became the band’s new percussionist. (As Donovan said in an interview, « [Farina] wanted to take time to concentrate on not being my girlfriend. ») Donovan, Shoun, and Segall went into the studio to cut the Peacers’ self-titled debut album, which was released by Drag City Records in July 2015. The band set out on a joint tour with Elisa Ambrogio and played frequently in the San Francisco Bay Area, but in 2016 Segall dropped out of the Peacers’ lineup. Undaunted, Donovan reshaped the group into a quartet with the addition of Shayde Sartin and Bo Moore, and in June 2017 the Peacers returned with their second album, Introducing the Crimsmen, which was also released by Drag City.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGZ7yrC8aZU 

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