[Ed's Note: Due to an unfortunate incident in Austin, TX of which Week In Pop maestro Sjimon Gomper's had his car vandalized and removed of its valuable contents – including but not limited his coveted Week In Pop generator – last week's column is running today. Mr. Gompers was given time to, in no particular order, grieve, file a police report, return to his San Francisco penthouse, and build another generator.]
We know you have plenty to keep on as SxSW and everything is winding down. And because we recognize that not everybody can make it out, we make a toast to the folks that were there in spirit, re-tweeting the #killingitrightnow #tweets, Vine captures and Instagram blasts; we present to you an extension of that spirit of shedding the wasteful wristbands, the hustle, the buzz, and the hassle. Whether you're here, were here or wishing you were here; we love you all the same and give you a weekly unofficial showcase of happenings in the week you didn't pay attention to, and in no particular order.
Taking a trip to NYC last month, Funk Volume's Dizzy Wright teamed up with Joey Bada$$ to dish out a toast to all things surrounding maintenance with the cut “Maintain” from Dizzy's forthcoming yet-to-be-titled mixtape. Produced by Funk Volume's own DJ Hoppa with a kicked back and pitched up Anita Baker vocal cut; Dizzy meets up with Joey, “sharing the same things” and raising some hands for those that deserve another chance, “Attitude and Malcolm X speaking and teaching bravery, violence is only needed when you feel defeated and parents pay attention it ain't cool to raise a demon that's on lock-down, got out and now he's acting hostile”. Dropping some unheard knowledge amid hard times and changes in the game, we can count on Funk Volume and Pro Era maintaining and representing right as times get harder.
Nottingham's Spotlight Kid shines the light on their video for “Budge Up” that features images from Harry Dehal's Oceania. Grabbing their name from a Captain Beefheart record from 1972, Spotlight Kid take on the rough outline of Dinosaur Jr.'s “Budge” and cover it (sort of, all the while expanding in creative lyrical liberties) in new dream guitar stitched cloaks of neon. Emerging from the silhouettes of Dehal's Atlantis creations of blue dipped conflict, Katty tells you coyly to politely move along forward already. “Waste your time going over it again, you won't ever reach the end”. The grunge-gaze-revisionism inquisition has officially begun. Spotlight Kid's single Budge Up is available now from Saint Marie Records while they have a full length underway produced by Boxer Rebellion's Todd Howe.
LA's The Tin Drums dropped the track “Eulogy” from their Before the Evening Falls EP available now on Bandcamp. Steeped in the musical fabric of the Americana landscape, Anna Beth Carson and Jason Diaz are dedicated to the out pouring of encouragement, inspiration and lyrics that are uncommon in rough times where people supporting other people is rarely the order of the day. From hand holding to higher ground, spiritual regeneration is even in the cards with a refreshing cool drink-of-water jubilance. “If everyday you find your soul is through, I will mend it back for you somehow”. Concentrated on constructing a chorus larger than their two selves while reaching for those elevated roads and the level of heroic romanticism that might cause gagging due to the devoted, and unbound commitment sap with a conscious push toward equal dialogues and tambourine waving pop licks like ,”With all my heart I will fight for you as you are fighting to be free”.
Get to know Minneapolis's Web of Sunsets, who dropped a listen to their upcoming single “Fool's Melodies” on 7″ and digital April 16 from End of Time Records. Recorded by Neil Weir at Old Blackberry Way, Member of Heavy Deeds, Robust Worlds, and Vampire Hands is Chris Rose, with Gospel Gossip, Is/Is member Sarah Nienaber, and fellow Heavy Deeds-er Sara Bischoff trade in manners of acoustic, electric, keys and synths without a percussionist to craft cosmic drifting lullabyes. Describing their style as 'acid-country', their sound rises higher than the phoenix shaped smoke from a Joshua Tree campfire as the group's holistic sonics stir from a place that is blooming with an enduring uncertainty and full of the excitement of a group just starting out.
Standish/Carlyon gave their blessing for the White Car “Don't Want My Love” remix of “Nono/Yoyo”, originally off the forthcoming Deleted Scenes album available May 14 from Felte. The “oh oh oh” owl like vocals chirp and bounce like pinballs off the plod stomping beat as the original voices get thrown all over the map while new electrical gadgets take on new lives with loveless synthetics that are hand crafted and created with love.
We recently got hipped to this fan made video for Keep Shelly in Athens' “Cremona Memories” that should inspire everyone to make balearic beat-encoded and encrusted memories of their own. The new “Madmen Love” single is available now on 7″ from Sixteen Tambourines and digital ahead of a new KSIA album arriving this fall from Cascine.
LVL UP dropped “Trial One” off the forthcoming Extra Worlds EP 7″, available April 6 from Double Double Whammy. The percussive energy that slams against the guitars is the garage you have wanted to hear and have spent an entire two years wasting in complaint litanies alone. “Trial One” throws more fuel to the effective power chord appeal from these aspiring heavy guitar hammersmith-ogre-men that hold the potential of tomorrow's new garage-lands. We also continue to keep our ears peeled for further information on the full-length follow up to 2011's Space Brothers.
Quelle Chris is about to school you on comprising one's diet in the video for “We Eat It” ft. Cavalier. Chris's upcoming release Niggas Is Men drops on March 19 from the Mello Music Group. While thinking back to what he ate the night before, Chris lays it down with the following serving. “GMOs, hydrogenated oils in our bodies we cannot dispose-of, when I can just throw some greens on the stove, bruh?”
Peep the Front Lawn directed with cinematography and editing from Tucker Bliss for Widowspeak's live studio session for “Alamanac” and “Ballad of the Golden Hour”. Their new album Alamanc is available now from Captured Tracks.
Our Glaswegian friends The Twilight Sad dropped a listen to their new B-side “Tell Me When We're Having Fun” as they carry on their March US tour with Frightened Rabbit. The b-side was from the sessions of last year's debut album, No One Can Ever Know from FatCat Records, and casts a dark pale with a glimmer of “I never felt so alive” sonic hope amid the outlying dark lands and mechanical drum machine factory houses that belch out sooted smoke from their industrial stacks.
The Cool Kids' cool dude Chuck Inglish dropped a remix of “Back Up” Featuring Travi$ Scott, as he preps his solo album Convertibles dropping on his imprint Sounds Like Fun and Federal Prism. Chuckie shares bars with Scott from G.O.O.D. Music and pushing around some folks with something to rattle blown up subs in the trunk.
In a tribute to the late great Reg Presley; Popstrangers get heavy and all power poppy with a damn tight cover of The Troggs' “With a Girl Like You”. Popstrangers' debut full-length Antipodes is available now from Carpark Records.
Feebzz be making leaps from “Downtown” to uptown with the Blizzed Out produced “Finessa Carlton (1000 Scripts)” in the autotuned 1,000 bars and bricks, making her bad-bitch way through the crowd.
France's LOGO get into feeling their bad selves with the heart-racing-stealer, “Cardiocleptomania” minimix ahead of the EP/single's release March 25 from Kitsuné.
Get a listen, get radical and get with Radical Dads and their new track “Mountain Town” from the forthcoming follow-up to their debut Mega Rama, Rapid Reality, slated for May 21 from Uninhabitable Mansions. With wailing guitars, the Brooklyn trio shows how to get rad and real with enough four quarter time rhythm and squall to scare the squares out of any rural, one horse watering hole located in a mountainous region.
Check The Death Set's Jim Buim directed video for the triumphant and tribute track jammer, “I Miss You Beau Velasco” off their 2011 Michel Poiccard record from Ninja Tune / Counter Records. We all miss you, Mr. Velasco.
Wake the roommates, call the parents and the grandparents, because Natural Child has released their CRS Blues 7″ on Jeffery Drag Records and we got the title track video directed by Beau Welsh for DopeScope. Get in on an intimate saloon sesh with the group as they dish out gritty grinding blue eyed blues frustrations like, “I thought you were gonna love my baby, I thought you were gonna love me, but you forgot and fell asleep”, as they proceed to boogie the house down.
Following up 2011's Lone Sharks, The Doppelgangaz duo Matter Ov Fact and EP are proud to anounce the release of their latest 12-cut full length, HARK available thorugh their imprint Groggy Pack Entertainment. To celebrate, check EP dropping tales of “weedy friends” into EDM while mattter Ov Fact creates metaphors about aging and baldness with logics-stics like, “it's looking like a slower christmas or a thin chanukah, trying to get the bread before we has a skin yamulke”. Just in time for passover 2013 too, ya'lls.
Up and comers, blower-uppers Stone Cold Fox got themselves a stone cold fancy cool video from Kevin Bright for their song “Seventeen”. You can catch them at Glasslands March 22.
We got another episode of H∆SHTAG$ featuring AlunaGeorge, Blood Diamonds, Charli XCX, Katy B, Teengirl Fantasy and more for the episode, “Don't Call It #BlogPop” brought to you from the Red Bull Music Academy. Think outside the blogs people.
To celebrate the hundredth Boysnoize Records Release, get down with 2 -side singles for the price of one with “XTC” remixed by The Chemical Brothers and “Ich R U” remixed by Justice. The Noize hits the Chemicals as the duo flips the cut into the dance & rhythm culture they have been chasing since sometime ago in the early 90s.
Featuring the Speak & Spell making a D-A-N-C-E inducing cameo, get down with Justice's remix of Boys Noize's “Ich R U” that plays with the song title's spelling and pronunciation before the blazing synths fire in. Catch both these remixes on limited 12” wax March 18 from Boysnoize Records.
The oddball childhood adventures continue as Camera2, comprised of Smashing Pumpkins' Andy Chase from Juliana Hatfield, and Stellastarr's Michael Jurin present the second installment from a 9 part series for a forthcoming EP with “Forever Lost”. Following up “Just About Made It“, the song's electro lounge soul croons around a forever young trope that finds the protagonist getting lost in the sea. This is like if those Moonrise Kingdom kids were real drowners.
Get shreddy with Lions in the Streets, rocking out in the dark strobe lit street corners in the Jeff Kinnon directed video for “So Far Away”. Find this off the Lions' On the Lam EP available now from Beverly Martel Records.
Checkout the new “rootstronic” sounds coming from The Courtney John Project that is developing new sounds taken from Jamaica's deepest roots ahead of the album Future dropping April 30 from Fiwi Music. For those that believed in the dub plates of the 70s and pretend that dub step never happened; this is for you.
For some weekly gothed out spoken word, listen to Rebecca Romine's “Tiny Dead Bird” a story that touches on the care and love for humanity and nature in between the waking and sleeping worlds of the living and otherwise out pouring of connections and dialogues that we all have with those not with us, showing us both our mortality and fascination thereof.
Peep the Kickstarter for fresh new kicks upstart, Pioala, currently being sported by local bro Aloe Blacc.
Giving shout outs and props to the Bowery Boys and the 1849 Astor Riots in their moniker; NYC's The Bowery Riots lend a listen to the howl-and-whoa-guitar-grind-and-grit of “Many Ways You're Mine” from their forthcoming Andy Rourke produced EP 7″ that features the B-side “My Time Has Come” on the flipside.
Brooklyn's Avidya and the Kleshas have been all a-buzz with their new single “Body of Lead” from their forthcoming Tree of Series full-length slated for release June 4 via Bandcamp. Stephanie Carlin let's her voice soar above the acoustic strums, keys and percussion, abiding only by the similar physics birds do as they measure themselves for their own courses of flight. Turning life's heaviness and occupied spaces with the levity lyrical search of, “space is a thing to be filled, and the house and the cars and the things consume me, my ears ring, my ears ring…”
Blu & Exile give you the latest visual take from their Dirty Science released album, Give Me My Flowers While I Can Still Smell Them for the sea-coasting video directed by David M. Helman for the cut, “Ease Your Mind” featuring an appearance from the sultry mermaid mirage of Andy Allo. Exile keeps the keys smooth on the gboat's deck while Blu gets the encouragement floating yacht side spilling; “Believe in the me, it's free, indeed,” living the swell life and promising that Impalas will roll down spines.
