Today I’ve only had two albums on the playlist for the length of my work day. One album ends, the next one starts and and each time as the second album wraps up, I’ve hovered over adding another album…only to go back and start the cycle from the beginning. Six hours of Woods have kept me in a great mood.

Woods – Time Fading Lines [from At Echo Lake]

Woods – Be All Be Easy [from Sun and Shade]

Woods creates perfect LPs for perfect days. On record the band primarily creates their sounds as a duo weaving drifting reverbed guitar lines in and out of fuzzed soundscapes. Simple percussion drives the album in a forward motion while the duo works in humming layers of meandering psychedelic twang eased with whispered melodies. Their records are consistently some of my most revisited LPs during the spring/summer months. Best on a porch with a beer in hand.

Released by Woodsist Records, At Echo Lake came out in the Spring of 2010, while Sun and Shade hit record players in the Summer of 2011.

RECOMMENDED IF YOU LIKE: Neil Young circa On the Beach and Time Fades Away, early Kurt Vile, Real Estate, Alex Bleeker, Andrew Cedermark, Amen Dunes, etc.

FUN FACT: Woods runs Woodsist Records and Fuckittapes – phenomenal labels.

SATURDAY, APRIL 28TH @ The Pinhook, Durham, NC.
10pm. 6bucks (club info)

PHIL COOK & HIS FEAT (Durham, NC | Trekky Records, BCT)
CANTWELL GOMEZ & JORDAN (Durham, NC | 307 Knox, BCT)
BIRDS & ARROWS (Chapel Hill, NC | 307 Knox)

[ SPLIT CASSETTE RELEASE SHOW FOR CG&J AND PHIL COOK! ]

Tomorrow night we’re looking down the barrel of a split release between an awkwardly unlikely, but highly appropriate pair. When the bands approached me with the idea of this release (after going off on a tangent one day concerning why I was enthusiastically behind the cassette revival), I was too intrigued to say no. While the hyper-active, technical spazz skronk of Cantwell, Gomez and Jordan doesn’t have much to do with the babbling and circular, rustic Americana fingerpicking of Phil Cook & His Feat on the surface, just underneath the two music projects tangle in more ways than one.

David Jordan angles his guitar in attack, jarring the strings into upward motion, splintering Anne Gomez’s paranoia-throbbed bass lines into shards. Dave Cantwell counters laying into the no wave-inspired mess with fractured pummeling so thick his drumkit cranks into a steady, thunderously flinching roll of continuous cracks. It’s an angled approach on the continual development and crossing of rock and free jazz. Phil Cook rolls loose, dancing rhythms off the neck of his guitar in a slow-stomping boogie. His sounds are mesmerizing and meditational reaching far over for slight inspiration into a world of East-bound raga and humming, buzzing rhythms. It’s a bastardized old time sound that was once avant and ideologically confrontational. It’s an angled approach on traditional Americana and pure folk. Both bands play an instrumental-based style that exists 60 years apart, but runs parallel lines outside of time. Both sounds challenge or have once worked to challenge tradition and convention. They don’t necessarily sound like they should buoy the two sides of one release together, but oh, do they belong in the same place.

And in one foul swoop to toss all that intellectualizing out the window on why this split exists – they both pay hommage to Elton John here. Hence, The John Tapes.

CASSETTE INFO: The cassettes are limited to a cool 100 hand-numbered copies. Each cassette comes with mp3 download thanks to Churchkey Digital. The artwork was designed and hand-screened by Chris Williams of Plastic Flame Press. The tape itself is release number one for Bull City Tapes – a subsidiary of the illustrious and ambitious mega-giant Bull City Records corporate label.

THURSDAY, APRIL 26TH @ King’s, Raleigh, NC.
10pm. 5bucks (club info)

WHATEVER BRAINS (Raleigh, NC | Sorry State, Funny/Not Funny, BCR)
BURGLAR FUCKER (Winston-Salem, NC | self-release)

Whatever Brains’ LP2 Release Party!! That’s enough said right there. Go see one of the best manic, weirdo bands of the Triangle play one of the best weirdo, manic shows of the month! It’s no secret they’re a favorite of BCR HQ and I’ll be shouting praises for this band at the sky until it comes falling down on my head. Thanks to Daniel of Sorry State Records for rushing out another full length before the last is even a year old.

LISTEN: Whatever Brains’ Bandcamp.

RECOMMENDED IF YOU LIKE: Good music, local music, fuzzed-out weirdo garage pop.

PRESS: Grayson’s Write-Up For The Indy Week.

Well, shall we just dive right on back into it? Has the dust settled enough from Record Store Day to start thinking about buying records again? I think so! Let’s get dumb.

Mean Jeans – Hangin’ Tuff

Fall in love with the Mean Jeans here. That there is the promo picture for their brand new LP for Dirtnap Records, On Mars. The shot looks like a hastily staged Nickelodeon ad meant to appeal to a demographic of bored (and/or stoned) teenagers reading Thrasher Magazine between 1989 and 1992 – good gawd, would it have worked too! My attention was first snagged with their debut LP, Are You Serious?, but with this new LP I’m completely won over and hooked for as long as I can stay in the party pool.

It’s fun, dumb, packed with late 80s/early 90s pre-teen pop culture references and is spilling over with carelessly flung, righteous hooks. The Ramones influence is clearly there, but this urgent pop punk is also in line with modern fuzz party garage the likes of Personal & The Pizzas, Shannon & The Clams and Nobunny. If you’re in search of a good party or just feeling nostalgic for those awkward green-slimed, catch-phrased, dayglo-mall-pop, jean jacketed teen days, this is highly recommended. Pick up the party and listen.

RECOMMENDED IF YOU LIKE: party garage, pop punk, Marked Men, The Spits, Nobunny, (early) Dead To Me, Personal & The Pizzas, Shannon & The Clams, Bad Sports, Ramones, Descendents, etc.

ANOTHER REASON YOU SHOULD LIKE THIS: There’s a song about 80s freak-fest horror classic Night of the Creeps!

Thanks to everyone who came out and celebrated RECORD STORE DAY 2012 with us!!!

It was greatly appreciated and I hope everyone had a blast! I also hope everyone found some stuff on their lists – what a crazy amount of releases this year! Thanks again, sincerely sincerely so, we would not exist without our regulars and friends.

I am going to go home today and shut down for a day and a half now. See ya back in it on Tuesday!

Daniel from Sorry State Records (Brain F≠, Double Negative, Joint D≠, Stripmines, Devour, Shards, etc) thankfully decided to jump into the chaos of Record Store Day this year and came out swinging with an extremely limited Whatever Brains 7″.

Whatever Brains’s Record Store Day EP Info.

This 7″ is limited to a one-time press of only 220 copies. Yup, that makes it an obscene rarity, but that’s not even the real kicker – this EP is intended only for NC and VA independent record shops and can only be found in eight shops this Saturday. It’s an obscene local rarity bound for future local band lore! The 7″ boasts two cover songs – Wall of Voodoo and Double Negative – on the A-side as well as a demo and drugged out remix courtesy of Waumiss on the flip. You’ll probably need this.

Bull City Records will have 25 on the floor – good luck grabbing one!

Today we’ve got a little teaser from Thrill Jockey Records with their Record Store Day contributions. In addition to a limited repress of Freakwater’s Feels Like the Third LP, limited represses on the first two Tortoise 7″s circa 1993 and a new Black Twig Pickers 7″, Thrill Jockey has geared up a limited amount of…

Hush Arbors / Arbouretum – Split LP Info.

I am extremely excited for this one. It sits near the top of my still growing Want List. After seeing Hush Arbors open for Thurston Moore on Duke’s campus, I’ve been anxiously waiting for any new material he might throw at us. The songs this night were slightly darker and heavier with more of a distorted, almost aggressive tone surging through his meandering psychedelic folk. Pairing his new direction with the brooding, stoner rock twang of Arbouretum is a no-brainer. Their latest LP from Thrill Jockey is a stone-tone mesmerizer. This is one for the list!

See ya Saturday!

TUESDAY, APRIL 17TH @ The Pinhook, Durham, NC.
9pm. 7bucks (club info)

CO-PRESENTED BY BULL CITY RECORDS!

SPIDER BAGS (The Triangle, NC | Birdman, BCR, Odessa, Churchkey)
TERRY MALTS (San Francisco, CA | Slumberland Records)
GROSS GHOST (The Triangle, NC | Grip-Tapes)

Terry Malts – I Do

Last October San Francisco’s Terry Malts tore through Durham leaving a lasting impression on the Triangle following an explosive show at La Salamandra with Wax Idols, Spider Bags and Plowman. I’m pretty sure it ranks up there with some of the best punk/garage shows I’ve seen crash through town and it still gets brought up by folks who were there around the shop. Their sound sags with echo, reverb and throbbing, anxious fuzz propelled by heavy, clubbed drumming and hits a height so good and ambitious, it’s worthy of both a Ramones and Jesus & Mary Chain nod.

Gross Ghost opens and Spider Bags headlines. It’s a full, must-see three band bill and Bull City Records is proud to co-present it (and guarantee a good time) along with the Pinhook. Forget it’s a Tuesday night and swing out like you ain’t got sh*t to do tomorrow. If this show itself weren’t enough, I’ve got word that the new sound system is installed and set to go at the Pinhook tomorrow night – can’t wait to hear it! It was designed by the same man who designed King’s system in Raleigh. See ya out!

PRESS: Terry Malts discussed on NPR.

…And the Record Store Day releases start to roll into the shop! Hope you’re preparing yourself for a little baiting/teasing over the course of this upcoming week. Record Store Day is Saturday, April 21st – get ready! Here’s a small preview…

V/A – Never To Be Forgotten: The Flip Side of Stax ’68-’74 10×7″ Box Set.
Lee Hazlewood – The LHI Years: Singles, Nudes & Backsides ’68-’71 2LP.

This lovely picture of an open box reveals Light in the Attic’s two saliva-drawing RSD releases. One a lidded, hand-numbered box set of ten blistering soul 45s and the other a double vinyl set of airy pop masterpieces, both encapsulate riveting sounds from the turnover of a decade and an oncoming bleed into a new musical territory. Click those links above to head on over to the label for more info. I’ve got my own eye on both of these!!

See ya Saturday!

Let’s talk about the Hussy. We’re gonna take an afternoon stopover in Madison, WI to sit down with and get lost in a little Beer State rock’n'roll. This is the Hussy’s second LP, Weed Seizure and it’s as much a rocker – if not more so – as their snarling debut…

The Hussy – Undefined

Tic Tac Totally Records out of Chicago has been a favorite garage label of mine (and the shop’s) since I stumbled into them four or five years ago. They’re consistent, trustworthy, well-run, thoughtful with packaging/design and have always been awesome to work with as a record store. The package I recently received from them went far past a normal order and ended up morphing into a care-package full of amazing stuff (thanks Tic Tac!). Needless to say, my brain got hit hard with the jitters as soon as I heard the Hussy were releasing an album with them.

The Hussy are a hyper, distorted garage duo with rattling hooks so infectious, they’ve been force-contained within walls of fuzz and reverb. Their stomping riffs and flirtation with borderline chaos are reminiscent of Thee Oh Sees, yes, but their version is so pure and electric, it traces back to the noise-addled heyday of mid-90s garawge and reveals a little Oblivians/Crypt Records/eMpTy Records-worship. Wearing a Catholic Boys reference on its sleeve, the band’s first LP Cement Tomb Mind Control helped usher the band into the internet-anchored halls of garage collector nerdom and into hands of garage geeks everywhere. That one sold out. Weed Seizure is a tad cleaner – mastered by Justin Perkins of Goodnight Loving and Jaill – which gives it a finer tuned, more cutting edge.

RECOMMENDED IF YOU LIKE: OBN IIIs, Moonhearts, Ty Segall, The Oh Sees, The Mallard, The Deadly Snakes, The Catholic Boys, Oblivians, River City Tanlines, etc.