It’s that time of month again — no, no, not that time of month! This one involves tears of joy, not blood. Once again, the Drag City word on the street is pregnant with urgency as new releases are discoursed in a decidedly mercenary fashion. O, the irony! The love of our life — music — is methodically broken down into one of its purest forms, the commodity, and literally sold to interested comers, piece by piece. To commemorate such coldly necessary moments as these, what can we do? Roll out the red carpet, natch. Welcome to the party — everybody’s a star! This is Drag City.

If you’ll allow us the indulgence of an introspective moment here — our roster is increasingly well-known (and why shouldn’t it be! Some of these guys have been at their thing for decades! Years, even!), as well as deep and wide with fascination and all varieties of arguable triumph. And right behind the (relatively) big stars and the (reasonably) famous are dark horses, cult classics and personal favorites lurking deep within the labyrinth of titles we’ve built up over the years. There’s a lot to take in when perusing the Drag City menu; some of records we’re frankly still discovering ourselves (let’s face it, the 90s was a not-always-pleasant blur). The point? Next time you’re considering ordering an LP or CD (to say nothing of the occasional t-shirt) from one of your front-running favorites, get lost in the far-flung wonder of the whole Drag City thing. Don’t be a fickle-eared rubber-necker. We’ve laid out the catalog for you — now go deep!

Did someone mention “doing” an “order”? The next order you should consider making is this one: Bonnie “Prince” Billy Lie Down in the Light, out now on LP and CD. Still there? Or is that just a misty shade in front of the computer, as your corporeal form dashes towards the closest local record hut? You’d do well to — why spend another day on Earth without hearing this fine new album? Bonnie “Prince” Billy always surprises us, but sometimes he tickles us beyond belief! With guitars and vocals and a few other instrumental colors, Lie Down in the Light has made people here in the ivory bunker gay and happy — and we’re pretty confident that everyone everywhere is gonna get gay too, once Bonny’s new sounds start pumping into ear holes around the world. The new songs attack his trademark concerns with freshly cut arrows, sure-footed melodies and a dynamic acoustic palette, hooking themselves into you the listener almost impalpably. Then they’re in your mind when you awake again, running behind your eyes, suddenly apparent as a well-chosen lyric phrase resonates in your frontal lobe. Then you laugh, realizing that you weren’t riding alone after all. New songs become new favorites. There’s something tactile about Lie Down in the Light — but then again, something so simple, so vulnerable. And musically, it hits a lot of sweet spots that we don’t expect Bonny to go for. Having heard him do so just gets our sweet-tooth angry for more, and such a craving is a pining, and we pine for what we love, haters.

...I’m rambling, and plus, I don’t want to oversell it. Get Lie Down in the Light, the fantastic new Bonnie “Prince” Billy record, and maybe you’ll catch my drift!

Bonny provides us with the sweet sundae that is new releases in May (actually, it comes out on a Tuesday, hyuk) — but the rest of the new release concoction is sweet cherries and whipped cream, nuts and hot caramel — each one a perfect compliment, or perhaps a pervy mouthful all on its own? Let’s explore...

By George, it’s been a couple of decades since teenage sensation Jim O’Rourke first burst onto the scene, playing improvised guitar around the world with a combination of introspection, violence and humor that defied the improv odds. Since then, he’s moved restlessly through a myriad of musical extrapolations that faced up and broke down genre after genre. We first picked up on him around the time that we started releasing Gastr del Sol records, but even then, he’d already journeyed through improvisation, ambient/industrial, post-classical and God knows what else, and he was on his way through neo-bluegrass, pop, lounge, electronic and of course, rock. It was a heady time, that U.S. 80s-90s. Here in the new millennium however, Jim hasn’t released an album in his own name in over six years, collaboratively using his considerable skills to make others better and working on soundtrack music during these recent years — leaving a generation of kids in possession of the legend without the facts behind it. Since Jim is on the verge of completing a new solo album (set for release later this year), what better for us to do in advance of this momentous, er... moment, than to totally represent by re-present-ing a series of seminal O’Rourke moments in fine new reissue packages? Here’s is a chance for some of you latecomers to the O’Rourke madness to witness his methods in an entirely different context! That’s just what you’ll be able to start doing here in the merry old month of May.

The first two CDs in the campaign are Mimidokodesuka and Tamper. The former is credited to Osorezan, and hails from 2006; the latter is a solo O’Rourke work from 1991. Both records explore space in O’Rourkian fashion – the void is permeated with first dramatic, then comedic dynamics (or vice-versa), moving from trance-like beauty to heart-stopping dissonance and crescendo with a fluid anti-logic that is one of Jim’s signatures. Osorezan is a jammin’ band featuring Darin Gray on bass, Chris Corsano on drums and Jim on electric guitar; Tamper is an three-song electro-acoustic piece featuring Jim on cello, oboe and percussion and also featuring instruments played by Warren Fischer, Ken Novotny, Jeff Contazzo, Dave Klinghoffer and Sue Wolf. Mimidokodesuka is a live recording with a pristine mix that locates the improvisations of the trio in velvety blackness. The Tamper sound-screen is spacious as well; compositionally free, the instrumentalists provide color that Jim highlights in slow-motion, glow-in-the dark arrangements — truly sounds for sound’s sake, not to mention an awfully interesting earful from the annals of O’Rourke (check the spelling, people) with plenty more to come before his barrel of lesser-known delights is emptied.

Also incredibly interesting, sonically far-out, completely inspirational and coming to you from the confines of an apparently clueless past is Blue Chopsticks’ reissue of Prehistory, the first album from Circle X. They were first-wave art punks from Louisville who relocated to NYC in the late 70s, took a sabbatical to France and then committed their sound to vinyl upon returning to the states in 1979 — an amazing EP-length howl of post-punk no-wave noise that equally amazingly, came and went without anyone realizing how cool it was or how influential it was going to be. Today it sounds like what it was then — elusive, but hard-hitting stuff! Fortunately, when David Grubbs was doing A&R at dexter’s cigar back in the mid-90s, he engineered a reissue of the “Circle X” EP that is still in print as I write and you read. Did people flip out over that reissue? Mmm — not enough for our taste. The good news is, they still can. And even better news is that as the latter-day organ of David Grubbs, Blue Chopsticks, is taking great pride in this reissue of the Prehistory release. Originally released on Enigma in 1983, Prehistory came four years after the self-titled EP – but that’s nothing compared to the ten years it took before Circle X’s final album, Celestial came out in 1994 — or the twelve wasted years since we first heard the dexter’s reissue. Why wasted, you ask? Because we didn’t immediately go out and grab a copy of Prehistory! It's an amazing record, even more incredible than the EP, with a groove like no others: stiff-limbed dub bass lines accented by clanking percussives, echoed voices from nowhere, Bruce Witsieppe's wicked guitar, a dank industrial vibe and the desperately shredded vocal sound of Tony Pinotti, all rolling together like a pack of Romero-style zombies (aka, no running) through the dead of night. In other words, the sound of the independent 80s in completely unique post-everything mode, awesome! But Prehistory isn’t just for history buffs, it’s a serrated earful for all of you out there who like your music in all the different colors of the subterranean electric rainbow. Go back – to Prehistory.

Wham, bam, thank you world! Following just a few weeks after this Earth-shaking May date is another blast of great music, great personalities and...well, what more do you want? Especially when it all comes fronted by a new Silver Jews musical opus! That’s the kind of people we are — one month it’s Bonny Billy, the next month David Berman and Silver Jews. And in June, no less!

Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea is a new evolution in Silver Jews history. Over the years, Silver Jews records have see-sawed back and forth between urban electric rock trips and country-arsed acoustical rock reveries, with Berman acting as poet laureate/non-denominational rabbi over the whole spread. Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea follows the hot-wire act of Tanglewood Numbers with another healthy dose of arena-ready extra-musical narrative jamm. This is Silver Jews-at-the-newfound-peak-of-their-power kind of stuff, and with another handful of jukebox favorites throughout the album, Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea is destined for a space on the wall of the Silver Jews hall of fame, that much is certain. Beyond that...who knows how much farther beyond the sky the Silver Jews rocket can fly? Yesterday’s provincial indie rock is the root of today’s soulless populism, which leads us to expect Silver Jews to ascend to the concert circuit once trod by Screaming Trees, Afghan Whigs and Dinosaur Jr. – strangers in a strange land, but awesome strangers. And then, lookout everyone.

Summer, and the time is right to grow your hairs long! Ever heard of a winter of love? Nah! There’s something mystical in the way the warm weather brings us closer to our organic, Aquarian selves and the animal nature just below our rippling grins. This June, we’ve got sound tracks to this re-evolution for sale! Drifting into records stores everywhere alongside the new Silver Jews album (didyouhearit’scalledLookoutMountainLookoutSea), they call to all you Mr. and Mrs. Suits out there. Come back to the planet, save the people! Some of you recycle to help spread ecological knowledge. Well, we put out records to raise awareness! If it costs a forest or two to print them and creates an island nation of plastic in the process — well, we’re working on the mental plane here, people! And records should NEVER be thrown away. After this mote we call Earth is done, there’ll still be man! And we’re betting man’ll still be at war, preferably over these very warm and human releases here.

The big news is an LP/CD called Songs from The Source, created for all of us by Children of the Sixth Root Race. These guys are also known as YaHoWha 13, and their many records first released in the 1970s are celebrated today as part of the legend of Father Yod and his children. Songs from The Source capture the band in expanded form and at a soulful peak in late 1973. Rehearsing a show they’d booked at the Whisky in LA, they taped themselves one afternoon, and judging from the performance here, the show must have been a motherfucker! A surging cycle of twelve songs infused with churchy vibrations and slickly rocking rhythms, the live recording gives the finished product the DYI ("recorded at home") grain that links it to the YaHoWha legacy. Songs from The Source is something different again, and a lost moment from the 70s that still rings true.

Two more releases from the incredibly prolific Language of Stone label contribute to and complete the savage sound of June 2008. Silver Summit’s darkly urban folk-rock paints a picture of NYC that the Lovin’ Spoonful wouldn’t have dreamt of! But they’d probably get off on it anyway. Possessed of heavy dynamics and unafraid to use ‘em, Silver Summit do the duo larger than most. And their self-titled debut comes to you on vinyl as well as CD! Accompanying them into the world is Noa Babayof, a sweet young Israeli singer-songwriter. Backed by a handful of the folk-rock elite of Philly (I think they grow ‘em on trees, there. Yeah... "a tree grows in Philadelphia," that’s got a nice ring to it!), Noa has taken the traditions before her and spun them into her own sound, which is on rich display all throughout her debut album, From a Window to a Wall.

It’s all happening in June. Don’t let your conscience allow you to miss it!

In the name of Lie Down in the Light, the new Bonnie 'Prince' Billy album, we've got a few new Bonnie t-shirts (designed by Mike Aho) remembering the back catalog items I See a Darkness, Ease Down the Road and Master and Everyone. And what better way to showcase these great new shirts than slipping them over a few barely-clad nubile young thangs? Gadzooks, what a marketing breakthrough! If only we could sell records this way... hmm, wait a minute!

The way you choose will decide how we regard you...

All these shirts are available in sizes ranging from extra-small to extra-large, not including extra-medium. Underwear not included (yes!).

Every newsletter, we mention the latest Drag City live events going down all around the world — even though we know that you might just as easily go to the Live Dates page yourself and shuffle through the ever-changing information posted there. We can’t help ourselves — we don’t want to miss a night that’ll never come again. So come on now! Check out the details on tours and dates featuring Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, Singer, Baby Dee, Six Organs of Admittance, Tren Brothers, Faun Fables, Bill Callahan, Alasdair Roberts, Neil Hamburger, The Howling Hex and all the rest! You’ll never regret it — or always appreciate it, depending on what path you take. The future starts there — wherever you are!

Times are changing — and we’re not standing still ourselves! Forever on the march towards new ways of breaking into your thick skulls, we’re ruling nothing out in the days to come. And given that the internet is over (any kid can post something online), we’re combing highways, backroads, alleys and domestic homes for the way in. As you’ve just finished reading, we’ve got a ton of records that defy easy categorization — but demand it as well! For our latest onslaught of all-original promo devices, look to the skies as well as the gutters and everywhere in between — there you’ll find helpful clues about all (or some) things Drag City, if you keep your Goddamn eyes open. And if you don’t see anything, come back here next month, we’ll clue you in as to what you missed.

That’s what we’re here for,

Rian Murphy
Drag City Inc.