Looks like Relapse has relinquished pressing rights for Mastodon’s Blood Mountain into the capable and rapacious hands of Warner Brothers. $45 is a swift and well placed kick in the groin for Mastodon fans buying a 2xLP, even if it is cut at 45rpm. I guess we should not complain too much since there is [...]

It’s hard to get excited about expensive reissues whose only justification for an exorbitant pricetag is “audiophile 180 gram colored vinyl”. However, among the seemingly constant glut of Nirvana vinyl reissues that have come out in the past year or two, I have often found this album of b-sides conspicuously missing. Like many other forthcoming [...]

The first She & Him album from M. Ward and Zooey Deschanel was one of the bigger surprises of 2008.  With any luck, this one should probably be pretty great as well.  The lead single (found below) features guest vocals by Tilly and the Wall.  Sometimes it’s nice to listen to music that doesn’t make [...]

Say what?  One of the best indie rock records of all-time has just been reissued?  Yes, my friends, it is all true.   After it skyrocketed to over $100 on eBay for the past couple years, someone at Sony FINALLY had the good sense to repress Modest Mouse’s “The Moon & Antarctica”.  From the looks [...]

Crystal Antlers have been kinda quiet lately, but they are proving that they are a smart, forward-thinking band with this new release.  You can either buy “Little Sister / Dead Horses” on a 7″ slab of vinyl for $9 shipped, or you can download the tunes for free, or you can do both (recommended).  Loud [...]

It’s hard not to mention My Bloody Valentine when writing up a band like this, but rest assured Serena Maneesh bring their own psychedelic swagger to the overpopulated whatever-gaze genre, standing heads and shoulders above their peers and sounding perfectly at home on the legendary 4AD label. This is the second album from these lovely [...]

Thrill Jockey is once again offering a subscription series of great 12″ releases.  Over the next year, they will release slabs by Javelin, Double Dagger, Jason Urick, Future Islands, Jack Rose with D. Charles Speer & The Helix, High Places, and Oval.  That’s a lot of music, and most of it will probably be awesome.  [...]

We seem to get really lucky with the albums we are sent to review, this one from The Most Powerful Telescope in the Universe is a very nice surprise.  It is a melting pot of modern influences – post-punk, space rock, 90’s indie, and post-rock, to name a few.  That probably doesn’t sound like the [...]

After a brief webstore snafu, No World Order Records is once again offering the vinyl pressing of the album Northern Failures from under-appreciated noise rock kingpins Cable. 10 years old and limited to 340 black vinyl copies on heavy-duty canvas covers sewn and screenprinted by hand, this sounds like a release well worth owning for [...]

Thanks to a reader for tipping me off about Deep Space Recordings’ vinyl version of the self-titled album from Bristol’s The Fauns.  This is a beautiful shoegaze record, one that can’t make it through a review without being compared to Ride, Chapterhouse, and Lush.  I’ll take this over most of the modern gaze-inspired stuff anyday [...]

Slumberland Records is about to reissue the complete recordings of the short-lived rock band, Black Tambourine.  Reigning from 1989-1991, this band played reverb-drenched pop-rock.  The canned description always includes a passage about them being influenced by both bands like Jesus and the Mary Chain and Phil Spector 60’s vocal groups.  Here’s the deal, if you [...]

We are always super into supporting our regional labels and bands, and this record comes from Iowa City’s Night People label.  Broken Water’s “Whet” is pretty much what I wish the current garage bands like Vivian Girls and Crystal Stilts would sound like.  This is much slower, much louder, and much heavier, like if My [...]

Broken Circles has posted a preorder for the “Everything Is Alive” LP from Pomegranates.  This Ohio band plays straight-up indie rock (think Modest Mouse, Death Cab, etc), so if you like college radio rock, I’m pretty sure you’ll like these guys quite a bit.  The record comes in three different vinyl colors:  Black (edition of [...]

There is no denying the dark majesty of these early Black Sabbath albums – if you don’t like them then you don’t like Metal and it’s gonna be tough for us to become friends. I’m not sure if these new Warner Brothers reissues will feature the remastered audio found on the recent deluxe CD reissues, [...]

I know Spencer wrote about the Pavement records yesterday, but Matador just dropped a load of other good stuff too.  First up is the new album from Okkervil River offshoot, Shearwater.  “The Golden Archipelago” is another beautiful, operatic piece of indie rock.  If you’re into this sort of thing, it will sweep you off your [...]