News

Who is E.R. Jurken? The mysterious figure looming behind dazzling layers of vocals, his own voice the instrument at center stage, stands ready at last to issue his debut full length, I Stand Corrected later this week. Meanwhile, "John Doe" is the latest single to drop from the roll, airy and fertile, its neo-saccharine sound evoking a bygone daze on its own terms.

 

It's pure pop of the lightest order, with... (read more)

A long era of dull ringing and nothing else in our ears is over. Once again, winds of warm guitar and humid thunderheads of bass and toms rumble all around. With Valdez, Birds of Maya are back in flight. And like the first song title explicitly states, this latest is a soaring blast of riffers, rife with punk rock abandon, sludge, treble, distortion, neck-throttling rock n roll solos, pummeling drums and bass and half-shouted/half-gargled vocals, all of it half on and half off the... (read more)

Standing tall against an open sky, E.R. Jurken and his spectral tenor (refracted via multiple overdubs) move across an oft-deserted soundscape, leaving behind them the footfalls of incandescent orchestral pop music (with the orchestra mostly erased). On his lonesome, Jurken's formidable energy populates the landscape with choruses of vocal color on I Stand Corrected.
 

"Right Through" is an exemplary E.R. Jurken miniature in full band rock mode: a slice of bedroom... (read more)

Mind Maintenance is the new duo consisting of Joshua Abrams (Natural Information Society) and Chad Taylor (Chicago Underground Duo, Chad Taylor Trio). This is where the music begins, but Mind Maintenance can’t be described simply as a summation of it's parts and players. When you put on the sound, you’ll know what we’re saying - you'll notice how immediate and meditative it is; how simple, how "in the room," and how the natural buzz of each instrument sits remarkably well against... (read more)

WANTED: a valid reevaluation of the depiction of life in America's old west! With "Cowboy", a single from Gold Record, Bill Callahan acknowledges the long-prevailing fantasy, now in the province of the late movie, in itself an artifact of a former time. Dryer than a quarter-century of drought, Bill's song echoes the sweet melancholy of that vision, subtly decontextualizing the images of freedom and manifest destiny, allowing us to see them as a fictive projection - one that only exists in our collective mind.
... (read more)

Keys, the forthcoming collaborative album from Bill MacKay and Nathan Bowles, showcases the duo's deep knowledge of folk traditions and their congenial improvisational coalescence. Performing only a handful of times before embarking on this project, Bowles and MacKay together play like a seasoned old pair of pickers, with an uncanny ability to bolster each other's expression through sympathetic and expansively spiritual notes.
 

On the third single, "Dowsing", a favored rural pastime gives this contemplative instrumental its name. The song expands upon an... (read more)

Last month, Matt Sweeney and Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy announced their new album, Superwolves, out digitally April 30th and physically June 18th. Today, they release a new single “My Blue Suit,” with an accompanying video directed by Geoff McFetridge, and announce their first tour together since 2014. The tour will see the duo return to their ancestral lupine roots in Big Sur, the site of one of their first live performances, and beyond.

“My Blue Suit” follows previously released singles/videos “Make Worry For... (read more)

How do you act? Play it coo-ool! The Peacers slide back in the room like they own the place and propelled by the chugging intro riff of "Ms. Ela Stanyon's School of Acting", it's no act! They do.
 

Shimmying up with a stoned swagger, the latest Peacers single is a simple set up: a two-guitar rock and roller – three, with the late arrival of the acoustic – but with close-mic technique capturing applications of distortion (dialed way up when... (read more)

Myths and truths of a country on the way down, viewed through a deep-focus lens trained on the city from the deserts on the east; Cory Hanson's Pale Horse Rider is an ecstatic vision poised in a sonic terminus of unoccupied residential parks and streets, fading into craggy footpaths to nowhere. From this vantage point, our passage is seen as diligent, ephemeral and grotesque by turns, forgiven and made beautiful again by the sound of the music.
 

Cory's... (read more)

Strange vibrations, queer notions - phantom memories of people and places we used to be! We're talking about the debut album of E.R. Jurken, to be released on the debut record label Country Thyme this April!

On I Stand Corrected, E.R. (Ed to his frenz) unravels the gauze from old wounds with delicate pop fingers strumming a guitar and a touch of keyboards beneath a chorale of overdubbed E.R.s, plumbing depths, tickling fancies and reaching for the light. E.R.'s songwriting and voice convey... (read more)