Flowertown – Theresa Street (Paisley Shirt)

This foggy SF duo is back with another beguiling cassette EP. This time the two singers are more fully integrated, trading lines and generally coloring each other’s songs. The murky 4-track sound is intact, but again this is lo-fi done right with plenty of vocals and care taken with the mix. They mostly stick to slow VU-Third arpeggios (100% fine with me!) with low-key vocals, but on their theme song “Flowertown”, they kick up a little indie-rock dust. Flowertown is indebted to the great works of post-Velvets indie: Galaxie 500’s trilogy, Cannanes A Love Affair with Nature, Low’s I Could Live in Hope, ’90-’93 Yo La Tengo, but thankfully they didn’t forget to write songs and find their own voices and charm inside that sound. If you wander the outer avenues out to Land’s End with this in your headphones, you may float away into oblivion. This feels like a band that is about to write a timeless album, and I am more than ready with my PayPal login info.

Smith & Erickson – Blue Skies (Yoga Records)

This is a digital reissue of a New Age cassette supposedly from ’85 that doesn’t really sound like New Age at all in spite of the guided meditation narration that crops up. You’ve got a preset rhythm box clacking away at a minimal beat with some vintage but not too fancy synthesizers playing crude melodies and hypnotic pulses on top. This sound has become ubiquitous, but this is a fantastic warm journey into Another Green World and JD Emmanuel territory. This is akin to one of Chris & Cosey’s early lo-fi side projects spun-off from Throbbing Gristle in the early 80s, with the guided meditation narrator standing in for Cosey’s vocal chants. If you dip into one “New Age cassette” thing this week, it should be this one.

Magik Markers – 2020 (Drag City)

As I prophesied a few columns ago, the MM’s are back with a new LP. 2013’s Surrender to the Fantasy was a bit of a high-water mark, so expectations are up there. Thankfully this crew is on a journey towards deeper art that remains at its core, untamed. Half-assed yet amusing album title aside, things kick off slow with the almost Pompeian Floydian dream-trip “Surf’s Up”, which has no traces of the Beach Boys. Then we are launched into “Find Your Ride”, a Hawkwind-whip that is one of their best tunes ever. This descends into “That Dream (Shitty Beach)”, a jokey Butthole Surfers ’87 jam? Not sure about this one. Mercifully, we move immediately into some gorgeous balladry in the form of “Born Dead”. I love when MM’s do the sensitive ones. They don’t seem totally comfortable on these, and it conjures some weird alchemy as a result. Next up is “You Can Find Me”, a poppy fuzzed one, noisy hook perfection. “Hymn for 2020” and “Swole Sad Tic” are cool but just warm-up for the total rager: “CDROM”. This 7:31 mini-epic is sinister like the best Live Skull and muscular like some Loose Nut/Hot Animal Machine flexing with singer Elisa in the role of Rollins in dolphin shorts spewing dark tales of modern despair. Drummer Pete’s sideways grooves really shine here and bassist John achieves a massive tone. Finally, we land on “Quarry (If You Drive)”, another gentle one that is killing me. Thanks Markers! More albums…need more.

Self-Inflicted Aural Nostalgia: A Fan’s Guided By Voices Podcast

I’m recommending a podcast here for the first time cuz it’s so much in line with FOAP’s agenda. This one is by writer Jeff Gomez. He lovingly tackles almost everything GBV album by album. It’s well-researched and provides fan only details as well as the larger context of Indie music history. I don’t always agree with his opinions, but that’s part of the fun of being a record dork, right? Mix it up and take down some sacred cows. Well, this is almost all positive and easy to digest in 45 min installments. I am revisiting some of GBV’s masterpieces I neglected like Propeller and Under the Bushes, Under the Stars as well as some even deeper cuts. It’s the perfect time to dig deep into the deepest catalog in all of indie rock.

***Stream or subscribe to Self-Inflicted Aural Nostalgia***

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