Sauna Youth’s press release tells me they are “an evolving band of young future humans making truly irregular punk.” What the hell’s a future human? Anyway, Sauna Youth are great. We saw them a few months back at Camden Crawl (and they also supported Ceremony on their aborted XOYO show back in whenever it was) and they seemed to keep going on forever. That drummer is like a threshing machine (not thrashing, THRESHING, like in The Wurzels song). The albums out in September through Gringo Records/ Faux discx. Should be a good’n.

Oh Susanne is the lead single from Neil Young and Crazy Horse’s comeback, Americana. Neil hasn’t played with the full line-up of Crazy Horse for some time. The video is like a dream. Depressions were much cooler back then.

Here’s the tracklisting by the way:

1 Oh Susannah
2 Clementine
3 Tom Dooley
4 Gallows Pole
5 Get A Job
6 Travel On
7 High Flyin’ Bird
8 She’ll Be Comin ’Round The Mountain
9 This Land Is Your Land
10 Wayfarin’ Stranger
11 God Save The Queen.

Looks like someone has been flickin’ through their songbooks.

You can now rifle through the mans record collection. Today is wasted… Have a look here..

***I HATE THURSDAYS ***

The Black Angels- Watch Out Boy

It seems The Black Angels are dipping their toe into the Spirtualized pool. Strings? Overwrought vocals? Heroin guitar swayings? Atypical Angels. It’s just a one-off for record store day…or is it the foreshadowing of newer artistic explorations?
The Burnt Ones- Meet the Golden One
Is it safe to declare San Francisco ground zero for the best new-old music being made right now? The vortex of garage and good time, thrashing about, pulsating through the wires and machinery of the interweb to tickle your auditory receptors with collective memories of a time long gone and never been? Hailing from that De facto Capitol, The Burnt Ones offer up this T-Rex styled clap-along boogie, for a mere $1 donation on their bandcamp. Perfect accompaniment for wasting away your Friday night, or re-enacting scenes from Dazed and Confused.
Animal Trophies- Epique

And let’s say Lyon is the evil mirror image of San Fran in the world of stellar, kick in the door garage punkage. Visual/Audio evidence A is presented above. Excited for more 1) future output from Animal Trophies 2) French bad kids to spread their catchy brand of youth worldwide via the Azbin label.
The Flying Burrito Brothers- Sin City

Gram Parsons will forever be known as the holy man who married country and rock. Born into a wealthy family of alcoholism, cheating hearts, and depression, he channeled the hard-luck down and out honky-tonking of the rural blue collar into the more suburban sensibilities of the emerging rock culture/music business. The Cosmic Cowboy was also known to team up with Keith Richards to drop acid and wander the desert searching for UFO’s. Legend says that among the decadent drug orgy known as the “Exile on Mainstreet” sessions, Gram is hidden somewhere on the tracks. Drug abuse and bad scenes aside, here is a man who saw American music in a sort of unified light that only made sense to him at the time, and then to everyone else afterwards. Covering soul songs with a country bent, rearranging old standards with a more amphetamine sheen, and taking up the mantle of a “contemporary” songwriter, his vision(s) is (are) eerie with the righteousness of the Lord and the hey daze of the late 60’s. This original number is one of disillusionment with the excesses of LA and the record industry; a vindictive, apocalyptic righting of wrongs in the form of earthquake and fire from heaven for the fat cats. The matter of fact vocal convictions, the beautiful falsetto of the pedal steel, the piano smuggled in, all add up to a truly haunting foreboding.
Bäddat För Trubbel – Snälla, Snälla

About a year ago, these guys were popping up all over the punksphere. If it slipped your notice, consider thyself now hipped. Bare-knuckled, fast and dirty rock’n’roll from Sweden. Should your band completely rip them off, we won’t complain; in fact, we’ll encourage it. Seriously, why are you goofing off with re-doing Joy Division for the trillionth time? Don’t put people to sleep; kick them in the crotch!

Words: Brad Krohe

Choreography by Weird Dreams has earned such adjectives as “dreamy” and “jangly”, which one should just read here as trendy. This is not a dig; it’s an objective observation. Weird Dreams is good in a way that everyone can agree upon. It’s similar in principle to the way David Lynch uses the music that he does in his work; drawing on the familiarity, the cultural association, and the collective idea of what something should be and playing off of it. From the noir inspired snapping fingers of Twin Peaks, to the sweet 50’s innocence of Roy Orbison’s “In Dreams” featured in Blue Velvet, Lynch invokes our individual, yet general associations with the music to bring context to the story.
And this is what I feel Weird Dreams has done. The sounds are diffused; from the high vocals (which are gorgeous), to the edge backed off the cymbals. Even the clean tones of the guitar are slightly softened. This cues listeners in that the music is sincere. A Smiths comparison can be drawn, but it also fits into the larger currents of instagram haze, wayfarers, and endless summer youth forever aesthetics. It’s vaguely familiar ala other bands labeled indie or _______ pop. But the trick is in their appropriation, and this is the solid part. They craft those influences/forces, direct them in a unique way into melodies and tunes and the resulting album. My top pick for the album is “Little Girl”, a shuffling number that conjures up visions of the “Enchantment Under The Sea” dance.
Of special note: the bass parts on this album are great. If you’re using crummy ear buds it’s hard to pick up, so do yourself a favor and crank it on a hi-fi and let it shine.
All in all, some may be skeptic of Weird Dreams (perhaps fairly), but it’s everything that was and is NOW.

Words: Brad Kroe

SEXBEAT have announced they will release Green Balloon, a new single from White Fence, on May 21st. Only 500 copies will be available in the UK so get your pre-order on here. You can stream Green Balloon above. Last chopper out of ‘Nam sort of music.