Where does the time go? It's been 14 years since we got the first Joanna Newsom record out, and since then, there's never not been a time when more copies of that record and her subsequent albums were in heavy sales rotation. So it only makes sense that we should break her music out into one of today's most desirable platforms...wait for it - cassette tapes! Back in 2004, we were certain that that particular format was solidly in the rear-view; the sales ledgers for... (read more)

Woo, boy! Summer is finally here and what a time to be alive, in the midst of a streaming roll out for the ages. See, since April, each week has brought another year from the Palace-Oldham-Bonny universe to streaming life chronologically, allowing worldwide streaming audiences the chance to join the BPB congregation en masse. It's a common theme around these Drag City parts ---ye old "Prince" giving and giving, happily bestowing upon your feeble, non-physical-buying, formless being. Just next weekend, he's... (read more)

"Perfume," the brand-new Wand EP, has just arrived, and it is official: its residual touring adventure will waft across an entire ocean plus a channel before the year is out! Currently raging down the back roads and byways of these (barely) United States, Wand have already made a pact among the five-strong in their rolling HQ to keep on Wanding into the beyond - far beyond these flawed and overrated borders! After their currently unfurling, summer-long stint across North America, Wand will manifest... (read more)

This Saturday, June 2nd, Chris Gantry will perform at the Country Music Hall of Fame, for their Outlaws & Armadillos: Country's Roaring 70s exhibit. While we were pleased to release is fully OUT-there, never before heard recording from the 70s, At The House of Cash, Gantry has a long history as a Nashville songwriter, his songs recorded by Johnny Cash, Reba McEntire, Roy Clark, K.D. Lang, Billy Walker, and Glen Campbell to name a few. He was full... (read more)

Back in the late 70s, when Death's visionary music proved to be too ahead of its time for the masses, the Hackney brothers relocated to Burlington, VT, for a fresh start. Spiritually inspired, and led by their elder brother, David, the band wrote a set of songs that could be considered a rock opera of sorts, and it was written for GOD. Re-christening themselves The 4th Movement, their heavy riffs intact and fiery (from the heavens, no doubt!), Death had moved on,... (read more)

That chill in your spine makes total sense. Papa M is back in the room, and like the animal you are, you sense it before you actually know he's there. As the light from the broke moon floods in, you feel that you'll survive - even if you'll never be the same. 2016's Highway Songs brought Papa M back to us, after many years of silence and several harrowing dances with death for his Id-ego/host body, David Pajo. Now, two years on down the... (read more)

The I SEE A DARKNESS session had gone well; not a lot of panic, all of the desperation in the lyric instead of in the room in which it was recorded. As he had done before and would try to do again, Will Oldham attempted to re-create some of the circumstances that helped DARKNESS come to be for the next full-length recording session. By this time, Oldham had moved to Baltimore where his brother Ned lived with his family. Houses were inexpensive there too, and... (read more)

"Perfume" is in the air; so close we can almost smell it! Even with just seven songs, the fullness of the Wand experience radiates forth from this new EP-- a fresh slab of vibrant rock and buoyant and elastic pop. It's familiar and comforting, yet dreamlike; a broadcast that drifts your mind high - so take a whiff, and fill your lungs deep! Let the pheromones paralyze your earthly bodies and the sensory overload quiet your nerves. The change you have hungered for is... (read more)

UNIVERSAL HEARTBURN

Beauty can be sad; we're all proof of that - and when the damage is done, we tend to look back and find the beauty of the meaning in everything that came before. We're just as inclined as everybody else to push the nostalgia button - after all, all our old used-to-be's number in the thousands (of songs)! Why not wander through the past, pausing thoughtfully to touch an artifact here and there? We advocate this activity. And if... (read more)

Drinks are Cate Le Bon and Tim Presley. They've just released their second album, Hippo Lite, and have decided to grace select stages across the USA to perform it. Celebrate! What can one say about Hippo Lite? How about the following: "whirring, eliptical and feverish" (Mojo);"a mini-adyssey in quiet post-punk experimentation, brought to life with playfulness, eccentricity, and sly compositional sophistication" (Pitchfork); "An Absorbing and clever (album) that gets stranger as it goes on" (The Guardian); "a beautifully strange bit of primitivistic... (read more)