Dead Meadow return with their 5th album and honestly the band have never felt more comfortable. As partial as I am to the band’s heavy, Blue Cheer inspired past there’s just something about the world-weary effect of Old Growth that feels like the band has finally found their true stride. Pretty much all of the shoegazy haze that enshrouded Flowers has been burnt away. Instead the band take a slower, mellower but not necessarily complacent road; boiling with a weariness and dust in throat wisdom that seems much more natural than the haze ever did. Old Growth merges the band’s former murk and growl into a finely tuned balance; finding a way to maintain restrained spacey effects and guitar punch with a much cleaner approach and a heavier emphasis on the acoustic guitar. The results of the balance leave this as the band’s most complete album to date even injecting a shamble of pop into what was once a frustrated haze. Keep your eye out for the album in all its double gatefold glory early next month.

Download:
[MP3] Dead Meadow - Down Here
[MP3] Dead Meadow - What Needs Must Be

Support the artist. Buy it HERE

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	Sic Alps - Strawberry Guillotine 7″ The A-Side is a washed out pop capsule that thumps along with a chug and vigor that could only be Sic Alps. The harried vocals and easy beat of “Strawberry Guillotine” are a sharp contrast to the noise blister that takes shape on the B-side in
the form of Ratroq. Then they cap it off with a quick rock shimmy-shamble called “The Drake”. Every time I get a new piece of the Sic Alps puzzle in my hand it makes me love them more. Download: [MP3] Sic Alps -Strawberry Guillotine Support the artist. Buy it HERE

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Liz Harris, otherwise know to most as Grouper, teams up with sound sculptor Jorge Behringer to combine her usual (but in no way typical) otherworldly vocals with a backdrop of processed field recordings, electronics and viola. The project was released as Eckords and put down on 5″ courtesy of Students of Decay. Harris and Behringer tap the wormhole to oblivion and lay the results down on tape, wavering between haunting and outright floating in a sea of furious haze. Unfortunately it looks as if the run of 200 may be reaching the point of unavailabilty but some poking around a google search might just turn up an errant copy. This just piles on top of the great work Harris has begun to amass.

Download:
[MP3] Flash Lights - Untitled 2

Support the artist. Buy it HERE

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Hala Strana’s Steven R. Smith’s latest solo album casts a huge shadow on the bulk of his previous work. Though wrought from the same broken soul blues mold that much of his work stems from, Owl has a unified foggy desolation that creeps like ice under the boot of Smith’s lonesome guitar odes. I’ve long been impressed by Hala Strana, and Smith has worked alongside a number of great musicians from the Jeweled Antler ranks, but this outing sees him pour more of his being into every strained line and muted shuffle of strings than seems possible. Even at its most restrained Owl cuts like wet wind into the back of your neck, never letting you out of its grasp for a moment of warm comfortability, though as you adjust to the numbness that too becomes a kind of comfort; a constant that calms as much as it pricks.

Download:
[MP3] Steven R. Smith - Whistling
[MP3] Steven R. Smith - O, Blessed Night Your Sunrise Has Burnt Down

Support the artist. Buy it HERE

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