Back in October, I wrote about the announcement of the first volume of G Stands For Go-Betweens, a comprehensive box set covering the early years of The Go-Betweens. Shortly after, the good folks at Domino Records sent Sound It Out a digital review copy of the the set’s book and music. Last week, Domino sent out the final product to those customers […]
I’m a total sucker for live-in-the-studio radio performances. For a lot of the music I love, these sessions provide a new perspective on artists and their work. Sometimes the recordings yield results that are sonically “better” than the “official” versions of familiar material, as musicians that otherwise rely on self-recording or tiny studio budgets, or who have suffered […]
Ultimate Painting is the name of the collaboration between James Hoare (Veronica Falls, The Proper Ornaments) and Jack Cooper (Mazes), as well as the name of their album and the first song on it. The duo play a defiantly and aggressively unambitious style that could be called “good taste rock”, eschewing notions of innovation or newness, and simply […]
Dream Boys have posted a video for their latest single “Positive Arguments” (a White Iris Records/Ring The Alarm co-release). The video was directed by Jihae Simmons, former lead singer for both The Royal We and Neverever (her band with husband and Dream Boy Wallace Meek), and it features everything you could want in a rock video circa 2014: colored gels, an 8 mm […]
On December 2, to celebrate the band’s 30th anniversary, Matador Records will release Extra Painful, a deluxe reissue of the 1993 Yo La Tengo album Painful. Painful was the band’s sixth album, and their first for Matador. I was already a loyal fan of Yo La Tengo when it came out, but it was with this album that they became one […]
The Domino Recording Company has released the details of the upcoming Go-Betweens box set, G Stands For Go-Betweens: Volume 1 1978-1984, and it’s a doozy, stuffed with classics, rarities, and previously-unreleased material. It includes four vinyl albums, four compact discs, a 112-page book, a silk-screened promotional poster advertising the band’s first single, and a reproduction of their first press […]
On Our Love, Dan Snaith and company return with the warm, detailed electronica/pop hybrid that listeners have come to expect from Caribou (formerly Manitoba). And just as he’s done on all of his preceding titles, Snaith has conspicuously incorporated new genre influences, and used them to build an overarching, thematic foundation. Previous albums have seen him absorbing Aphex Twin-inspired electronic abstraction, shoegaze, psychedelia, sunshine […]
To mark what should have been Broadcast singer Trish Keenan’s 46th birthday this past Sunday, surviving band member James Cargill posted to Soundcloud two 2004 demos the pair made for songs that ended up on their third album, Tender Buttons. If you’re a Broadcast fanatic like me, you already know that unreleased material, especially from the group’s song-based […]
Legendary New Zealand musician Peter Gutteridge died earlier this week, at the age of 53. Gutteridge was a dedicated musical explorer, and one of the key figures in the development of the “Dunedin Sound” of the 1980s, closely associated with Flying Nun Records. He was a founding member of several of my favorite bands- The Clean, […]
“Call Across Rooms”, from Grouper‘s forthcoming album Ruins, begins with a sound that will be very familiar to fans of Liz Harris’ music: a bed of tape hiss from her four-track machine. But the music that follows signals a new sound and approach. “I have a present to give you, when we finally figure it out”, Harris whisper-sings with […]