Music, musings and miscellanea

In case it hasn’t been made clear through some of my recent posts, I’ve been really digging the resurgence in interest in distorted, heavy guitars in underground circles. This shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, given that I grew up a riff-obsessed teenager in the 90s post-grunge distortion-a-thon.

But bands like the Men and now Amherst, MA’s California X harken back to the 80s American indie underground, as glorified by Michael Azzerad’s influential book, Our Band Could Be Your Life.

Their debut single “Sucker” an epic riff fest, was recorded by  Justin Pizzoferrato, who worked on both of Dinosaur Jr.’s post reunion albums Beyond and Farm and Sonic Youth’s The Eternal as well as Thurston Moore and J. Mascis’s recent solo albums. It’s out now on the Sounds of Sweet Nothing.

Check out “Sucker” and its B-side “Mummy” below.

“Sucker”

“Mummy”

Cousins have been flopping around the Halifax DIY scene for a while now delivering some garagey pop gems on a number of releases, including their cleverly named split cassette with Duz He Knew, DUZ/CUZ. 

Sophomore full-length The Palm at the End of the Mind should help raise their profile outside Atlantic Canada. It drops March 20 via Saved By Vinyl.

Check out/download “Jules” below.

Laura Stevenson and the Cans join the most excellent Lemuria on a growing list of indie rock leaning bands putting out records on punk and hardcore labels. Sit Resist, their second disc is out now on Don Giovani Records but is availalbe as a free download all month via their Souncloud (see below). The band will be swinging through Toronto this weekend – you can check them out at the El Mo May 7 with Fake Problems and Into It, Over It.

Laura Stevenson & the Cans “Sit Resist” by Riot Act

That’s right. Three tracks off the uber-anticipated new disc which is coming out May 4 on Arts & Crafts (really, who else would be putting it out). The previously available “World Sick” is now complemented by double-A-side singles “Forced To Love” and “All To All.” Yes, every blog and their dog will have these tracks streaming, but wouldn’t it be more fun to listen to them here?

Also,  Exclaim!’s Vish Khanna recently spoke with Tortoise member Doug McCombs who dropped a funny story about BSS (they recorded the new disc with his band-mate John McEntire).

Well, are you working on new songs now?
No. We were supposed to start…we had a tentative plan to start in December working on some new material but John has a session that’s been going on in his studio that keeps going over. He’s working with a band.

Is it a band we might know? I know he was working on a Broken Social Scene record there for a while.
Yeah, he’s working on a Broken Social Scene record. So, he’s really overworked and so Tortoise hasn’t been able to get in the studio and work on anything. Hopefully we will some time soon.

Are you saying that Tortoise has been foiled by a bunch of Canadians?
Yeah (chuckles), yeah.

I would like to apologize on behalf of our entire country Doug; that doesn’t seem right.
Well, lemme tell you something: Broken Social Scene needs some people to apologize for them.

Is that right? I didn’t realize that. They’re bad guests I guess. I apologize, I really do. I know some of those people and I feel bad that they’re taking up so much of your time.
They come down here, they eat all of our food and drink all of our booze, and won’t leave us to our own.

I find it almost comical that Broken Social Scene is squatting at Soma Studios.
Yeah.

You can read the whole interview over at Exclaim.ca