You are currently browsing the category archive for the ‘stoner rock’ category.
“catchy and poppy math rock / Hangin’ Nothin’ But Our Hands Down is a parallel universe of film noir, circuses, and vaudeville shows. It’s a soap opera for the intelligent ear. Each song has a charm and mystery of its own, embodied in catchy lyrics, foot tapping drums, quirky riffs, stumbling bass lines and spazzing vocals. Harnessed with interesting time signatures and engaging shifts in tempo, the album has variety and vigor. / A picture painted in paranoia, and manic ups and downs, the third song “Lots of Brass” is one of my favorites. Bass and drums drive the Nurses sound, and bellow strongly in this song. “Wait for a Safe Sign” is an engaging and experimental journey with a strong vocal hook. Each song is a single in itself, but the album as a whole is most impressive. A beautiful piece of work for a first attempt.” -absolutepunk.net (rating:91%)
” anachronistic horror-show pop… combination of glitzy cabaret theatrics with a Middle American upbringing… set of eccentricities to justify an otherwise grandiose, ambitious sound… vaudevillian/sharp-edged rock sensibility/minor-key riffs/Southern Gothic macabre acoustic closer” -p4k-isms
“Portland’s Nurses are what I’d like to call pop rock mavericks (not the Palin kind though). Why? Well their debut LP Apple’s Acre has all the makings of a great pop record – innovative lyrics, melody, and of course the hooks and catchiness. But instead of putting these songs together with the standard instruments and ideas, they traverse every road, genre, mood, world, night, day, life, and death to arrive at their new form of stunning pop rock.” / “…tends to lean towards the rustic dance around the yard folk pop tribal explosion of a sound.” – Pastaprima.net
riyl: Blood Brothers / Q&NotU / Maps&Atlases / Young Coyotes / Moros Eros / Oh No Oh My
“Within days of Alternative Press including Censored Colors on its list of 10 Essential Albums of 2008, the members of Portugal. The Man were trudging through the Boston snow to start work on their fourth release in four years, The Satanic Satanist. As John Baldwin Gourley, named the year’s Best Vocalist in that same issue of AP, explains the pace at which his band has turned out any number of the decade’s more inspired moments, “Honestly, I think we should be putting out more music. It keeps you thinking, keeps you growing and progressing. If you stop and let it sit for too long, I feel like you start to lose track of where you were going.”
For 2008’s Censored Colors, Portugal. The Man spent two weeks in Seattle with their friends in Kay Kay and the Weathered Underground making an album Gourley says he wrote in tribute to the music of a youth spent tuned to oldies radio as his parents drove around Alaska. One of his earliest musical memories, finding a tape of Abbey Road in a box of his parents’ cassettes, resulted in Censored Colors’ second side where all the songs are strung together in an epic suite.
For The Satanic Satanist, Gourley and his bandmates – Zachary Scott Carothers/bass, and Ryan Neighbors/keyboards, and the drummer for the album, Garrett Lunceford – flew to Boston’s Camp Street Studios to work with Paul Q. Kolderie, whose previous clients include both the Pixies and Radiohead, with additional production help from Adam Taylor (The Lemonheads, The Dresdon Dolls) and Cornershop sitarist/keyboardist Anthony Saffery.
“People Say,” the lead-off track, finds Gourley speaking out against the human cost of war. On “Lovers in Love,” the band works the groove like Isaac Hayes or Curtis Mayfield in their blaxploitation days, while “Work All Day” could pass for ?uestlove slowing down the beat to “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise).” The Satanic Satanist also finds them working more with loops and samples than they have since their 2006 debut.” – press release
The first EP from ?JeSTEr?, an Italian trio born in 2007 from ashes of ElfoGuelfo and TallGuy, already toured Italy and followed several stoner-rock bands in USA and Europe during 2008. Offering a unique indie-rock sound which embraces psychedelic atmospheres, bold heavy distorted bass guitar lines, catchy and powerful vocals,garage-punk to sludge, they are one of the most original and creative bands on the Italian scene.
u guys wanna get high and listen to a sick tribal drumming group from baltimore? this is a recent question i find hard to say no to… i’ve been hooked on these guys for a ‘go-to’, trance-out, herbally-enhanced jamband ever since i saw them open for dan deacon… i was determined to crack into this bands’ genius, and knew it would be equally heady/psychedelic/revolutionary since they were dan deacons’ supporting ensemble/tourmates… anyways, it rules and has infinite replay value… they remind me of yeasayer -vocals, +drone… sort of eastern swirly psych-grooves that shake and shift and mutate to the collective’s improvisational whims… it has the power to mesmerize/sedate/hypnotize… perfect for reading/dreaming/beinghi/replacingsilence/…
” You’ve heard this one before: A group of young (and more than likely college-educated) white people get together, pile instruments in a heap, and share a one-track mind to home, sweet, Om. Teeth Mountain’s mixed-bag lineup doesn’t re-invent the drum circle, but its members–listed as Andrew Burt, Andrew Bernstein, Greg Fox, Greg St. Pierre, Max Eisenberg, Max Eilbacher, Kate Levitt, Grace Bedwell, and Owen Gardner here, not all of whom played on the recording–do it with a sincere appreciation for the woollier end of late-’60s radicalism. Think long-robed cults coming for your children…
…this LP bristles with the meandering abandon of fretful discovery… Teeth Mountain navigates a rhythmic journey through steady-pounding floor toms, space-travel cello drones, and some cosmic-dust dashes of guitars or woodwinds or noisemakers or some other hand-powered sound source. “Black Jerusalem” and “Keinsein” vibrate with reeds ghosts and goblins floating through the background, while “Soft Beast” sounds inspired from any moment off that levitating Velvet Underground bootleg 1966, the one that’s nothing but two side-long instrumental slabs…
…the ‘doing it because it feels good right now’ vibe may be what makes Teeth Mountain such a woozy intoxicant. This is the sort of music that makes people reach for words such as “tribal,” “primitive,” and whatever so-called “exotic” world music is in fashion that hour, but Teeth Mountain couldn’t be more urban and Western if it was making hip-hop. Amorphous, wordless instrumental stew is the basic stock for group disquietude. And while the Baltimore zeitgeist right now may have not formally organized Ausser-Parlamentarische Opposition arm just yet– something about Teeth Mountain’s out-of-body aspirations reek of shared disillusionment, and once the many brains camping out on this mountain begin to see where they want to take their mettle, once they decide to trade the skinny jeans for the leather jacket and start designing guerrilla insignias, watch out. ” -BaltimoreCityPaper
hometown: covered in bbq sauce in austin texas / influences: the only band we like is nirvana. the only album we like is nevermind. the only song we like is smells like teen spirit.
some of Austins’ finest homegrown, catchy-as-fuck garage rock / lofi indie rocknroll… in the future everyone will enjoy Free Drugs…
“…iiiii think you’re beautiful and very smart.”
Worldwild is the culmination of a long Pterodactyl adventure, an art-rock odyssey through lush pastures of layered vocal harmonies, mountainous rhythms and thick, dark forests of fuzzy, piercing guitars. -jagjaguwar
“Here’s the timeless record for 2009. Electric studio (mostly) recordings from Philadelphia’s Constant Hitmaker. New fans of his last CD will cry into their pillows and accuse him of selling out the bedroom rock scene. The initiated few will know he’s been doing it for years – plugging in with a full on rock band called the Violators and gigging in all corners of Philly. With baritone guitar/bassist Adam Granduciel, rodeo slide and fuzz guitar from Jesse Turbo, and perfect percussion from Mike Zeng, the Violators are Kurt’s Crazy Horse, slugging it out with him when he feels like playing with a full band. Oddly pleasant singing, in-the-red fingerpicking, twisting swells of feedback, totally POUNDING drums, and Krautlike-zen fill both sides of this record. Loud and proud, The Hunchback EP looks right filed next to your Neil, Faust, and Spacemen 3 records.” -insound.com
Black Moth Super Rainbow came from the woods of western Pennsylvania. An actual, five-member band without the expected laptops and sequencers, BMSR is a psych-electro group in early-’70s electronic clothing. They’re like sad thoughts on the happiest days. All are lovingly played by real people with real hands.
Some People Ride the Wave 