- Pernice Brothers The World Won't End is officially out today! (aka "Every day is record store day!")
Today is the official street date for the first-ever vinyl release of the Pernice Brothers' classic, The World Won't End. The album has been remastered for vinyl and the early reports give it high marks for the sound quality and presentation (Thanks, early reports!) This is the first in a planned series of Pernice Brothers vinyl releases, so please help spread the word.
The album is housed in a beautiful reverse-board jacket with a lyric insert and download card. The original artwork has been modified for this release.
The World Won't End remains a master stroke of pop songwriting. The album has been universally hailed for its elite-level literate pop and the overall marriage of pathos-laden lyrical content with shimmering sonics.
Joe Pernice's exquisite voice (a mix of Colin Blunstone's raspy croon and Elliott Smith's breathy whisper) and his keen, evocative, storytelling turn tales of love, romantic frustration, and depression into celebrations of real human moments.
Featuring classics songs such as "Working Girls," "Our Time Has Passed," "Flaming Wreck," "Endless Supply" and production which displays a genuine appreciation for the soft-rock textures pioneered by Todd Rundgren, ELO, and 70's era Beach Boys, the album is widely regarded as a high-water mark for Americana and progressive power pop.
"...bringing instruments and melodies together in (remarkably lush) harmony" - NME
"Pernice Brothers could best be deemed a power-pop group, but singer-songwriter Joe Pernice delivers his dark tales with such an overwhelming sense of heartbreak and resignation that the word "pop" sounds inappropriate." - AV club
- Pernice Brothers' The World Won't End: First ever vinyl release of a power pop masterpiece
On November 20th, American Dust will be releasing the Pernice Brothers' The World Won't End on vinyl for the first time ever. This is the first in a planned series of Pernice Brothers vinyl releases.
The album has been remastered specifically for this vinyl release and will come housed in a beautiful reverse-board jacket with a lyric insert and download card. The original artwork has been modified for this release.
The World Won't End remains a master stroke of pop songwriting. The album has been universally hailed for its elite-level literate pop and the overall marriage of pathos-laden lyrical content with shimmering sonics.
Joe Pernice's exquisite voice (a mix of Colin Blunstone's raspy croon and Elliott Smith's breathy whisper) and his keen, evocative, storytelling turn tales of love, romantic frustration, and depression into celebrations of real human moments.
Featuring classics songs such as "Working Girls," "Our Time Has Passed," "Flaming Wreck," "Endless Supply" and production which displays a genuine appreciation for the soft-rock textures pioneered by Todd Rundgren, ELO, and 70's era Beach Boys, the album is widely regarded as a high-water mark for Americana and progressive power pop.
"...bringing instruments and melodies together in (remarkably lush) harmony" - NME
"Pernice Brothers could best be deemed a power-pop group, but singer-songwriter Joe Pernice delivers his dark tales with such an overwhelming sense of heartbreak and resignation that the word "pop" sounds inappropriate." - AV club
- On the road: Matt Baldwin is touring
Matt Baldwin is doing a short tour with stops in Jerusalem and various cities in Europe over the next few weeks.
Here are the dates and venues (sorry, you're on your own for other details!):
March 4th Club Uganda, Jerusalem
March 5th Noon Lecture on New Music at Musrara Art School, Jerusalem
March 6th Levontin, Tel Aviv
March 7th Cave 12, Geneva
March 9th La Chaise, Paris,
March 10th Kunstencentrum Belgium, Hasselt
March 12th Birthday, London
March 16th, The Joinery, Dublin
March 18th, Plugg'd Records, Dublin
Matt's latest record, Night in the Triangle, is available now..
- Garotas Suecas score preparation of blood sausage
This video is awesome. Our very own Garotas Suecas - hot on the heels of their performance at the Primavera Sound Festival - with blood sausage. The song sounds great, and we're hungry.
Garotas Suecas' debut album, Escaldante Banda, is available now.
- Matt Baldwin: New album from the visionary wildcard of modern solo guitar scene.
Night In The Triangle is the new double album by acclaimed guitarist Matt Baldwin, and his second release for American Dust. The project was conceived as a soundtrack for a science fiction film and is Matt’s first extended study for electric guitar and other non-acoustic instruments. Driven by a darker, rawer form of energy than that used in his acoustic work, Night In The Triangle aspires to trance and atmospherics.
Listen to two tracks from the album:
"Sketch for Winter"
"After The Gene Wars"
You can purchase the album over on the Store page or from iTunes.
Upon release in 2008, Matt Baldwin's debut album, Paths of Ignition, was anointed by Julian Cope as Album of the Month on his Head Heritage website. In his review, Cope predicted the evolution that is heard now on Night In The Triangle: "From the very first moment I dragged the vinyl out of its too-tight shrink-wrap cut-and-paste sub-sub-MIND GAMES cover, I knew Matt Baldwin’s take on his role as new Guitar God was gonna be way different to the approach of his acoustic-driven contemporaries. Hell, even the accompanying 24” x 12” poster that fell out with the record was a statement in itself, Matt standing there – all 6’ 4” of him – long-haired, open-mouthed, hands-on-hips, glowering and gormless as Ozzy’s ‘What The?’ pose on the inner gatefold of PARANOID. Sure, the iTunes on my iBook stated ‘Folk’ but the 12” vinyl – in every way – screamed out ‘ROCK!’"
In Matt's work, his role as interpreter is just as crucial as his role as originator. His bold 10-minute cover of Neu’s ‘Weissensee’ and his epic dobro-driven and feedback-overloaded version of Judas Priest’s ‘Winter’ from Paths of Ignition were game changers for a man that felt stifled by association with the solo-guitar purists. On Night in the Triangle, Matt once again expands on the visions of his forebears with daring treatments of songs by The Durutti Column and Conrad Schnitzler.
The visionary wildcard of today's solo guitar music scene, Matt continues to make music that is at once verdant and threatening, comforting yet unsettling. To quote Cope once again, "this so-called folkie Matt Baldwin druid is nothing less than a one-man Heavy Metal Band!...Brothers’n’sisters, it’s fucking heroic. These Great Fists of Matt make Ben Chasny sound like Marge Proops in comparison."
You can find out more about Matt via his website: www.imaginarypsychology.blogspot.com/
- Three years in the making, the Shalants finally present their brilliant new album.
After three years, the Northern California based four-piece, Shalants, have just released their ornate and heartbreaking new self-titled album.
Here's a stream of the track "The Mercury Twins":
You can purchase the album over on the Store page or from iTunes.
Emerging from the same Bay Area psychedelic, garage pop scene that has produced The Fresh & Onlys, Sonny & The Sunsets and Girls, Shalants (pronounced like "nonchalant") produce a distinctly Californian sound. It's a mash-up of Mexican, Native American, Chinese, settler culture and pioneer spirits. The band split their time between San Francisco and the alpine wilderness of Shasta County, and their music is informed by everything between the Delta and the Bay. They recall a bygone era, but their music is not retro.
Miller Carr, Shalants’ chief singer and songwriter, comes descended from the original pioneers that founded San Francisco and the Jefferson State area. His family were gold rush chancers, his great-grandfather a county judge, his grandfather a District Attorney, and his father a liberal free-spirited lawyer turned brandy drinking river rat. The songs on Shalants trace Carr’s own lineage and his bloodline’s collected experience: from sailors and explorers to prospectors and religious asylum seekers; immigrants and ballroom piano players to whores and gunslingers; opium smokers and bohemians to anarchists and the beats; John Muir, Gary Snyder, Kerouac and Emperor Norton.
The band receives inspiration from California’s terrain and topography. Their darkness emerges from the fog and the forests. Their playfulness and curiosity comes from the giants in the Shasta Cascades, their friends in the Sierras, and the rivers and meadows that wind around the canyons. The sea informs their longing and wanderlust. The music they make blows up their journeys and experiences, movie size: the dreamy foggy soundtrack to a lost Terrence Malick film.
But ultimately what makes the band so intriguing, whether it be by their live show or recorded work, is their subtle dynamics, voodoo telepathy, and warlike approach to performing. They will cut you down, but they’ll also bury you afterwards, and make a little cross. The sound they make, like all honest things, is beautiful, meaningful, and harmonious, yet vulgar and dark. And they can play circles around anyone. You’ll have trouble finding another group of guys so young that can play a Cole Porter-like ballad and then swing right into a minimalist Cramps-esque burner at the drop of the dime.
The new album's highlights include the dub-influenced, lyrically dense “Riverbanking,” the urgent propulsive plea of “When It Comes,” the swinging, shimmering voodoo of “The Mercury Twins,” the forlorn waltz of “Black Jewels,” and the gentle melancholy of “The Deserter.” It's an album-length dose of mania and wonder via a cocktail of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Tom Waits, The Walkmen, The Kinks and Neil Young.
The band will be performing up and down the West Coast throughout 2011.
- Garotas Suecas! Album special offer! Press recap!
We really hope you got to see Garotas Suecas live during there US tour last month. All reports point to the whole enterprise being a great success and we look forward to them coming back very soon. As a good friend of ours said about the band's live show, "They are the best Brazilian Brit-pop/60's soul hybrid band around!"
Now, just because the band has returned to their beloved Brazil, it doesn't mean that we can't share in some continued celebration ourselves.
If you order the band's recently released debut album, Escaldante Banda, right here through the American Dust website, you'll receive a free copy of their single "Codinome Dinamite" and a limited edition poster featuring the amazing album cover. This offer applies to either a purchase of a CD or LP (the LP version also includes a copy of the album on CD). The 7" and poster are both limited, so be sure to order soon.
The band also received a ton of great press during their tour. Here are some of the highlights:
- KEXP blog Bumbershoot live review
- Pitchfork Raves Over Archive
Pitchfork gave Department of Eagles' Archive 2003-2006 a glowing 8.1 review. Featuring tracks recorded between the band's debut The Cold Nose and their breakthrough In Ear Park, and around the time member Daniel Rossen recorded the classic Yellow House with his other band Grizzly Bear, Archive is, in Pitchfork's words, "a document rich with revelatory moments and educatory touchstones-- but as an album, it functions even better." They got it just right in our estimation, and again in the review's conclusory statement: "Even when they don't mean to, Rossen and Nicolaus come off as impeccably having their shit together."
Archive 2003-2006 is available now.
- Department of Eagles' Archive 2003-2006 Out Today!
Department of Eagles' awesome collection of lost recordings, Archive 2003-2006, is out today! Consisting of recordings from incomplete album and other recording sessions pre-dating the band's tour de force album In Ear Park, as well as member Daniel Rossen's work with Grizzly Bear, Archive offers a glipse at a brilliant act in its lean, formative stage. Available everywhere, including here.
- Pitchfork "Best New Music" for Department of Eagles' "While We're Young"
Pitchfork gave their "Best New Music" tag to a track off our forthcoming Department of Eagles release, Archive 2003-2006.
The review is great and spot on. Archive, which collects assorted tracks the band worked on between their debut, The Cold Nose, and their magnum opus, In Ear Park, isn't your typical release, but the music it contains is inspired and vital. From the looks of the early reviews coming in, it seems like people are getting what makes it such an intriguing listen.
Archive 2003-2006, released July 20th, can be pre-ordered here: http://www.americandust.net/discography?id=1142
