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It’s been four years since the first Volcano Choir album, Unmap, provided a glimpse into the collaborative mindset between a singer and a band that inspired him. Ideas were minted, written at a distance and realized in the studio; edges sanded back and flaps tucked in, the craftsmanship of the endeavor bearing evidence of the craft itself, and the technology used to assemble it. Unmap strove to find strands of life between the ones and zeroes - a carefully constructive narrative that showed the listener through its darkest passages like a tour guide leading their wards through a cave, with nothing but a slack length of rope and the senses of sound and touch. Just as importantly, it brought these people together, setting an expectation: be your own band. Achieve transference. Learn how to play these songs in the live setting. Tour Japan. Do some dates in America. Pull the life from the record and share it with tiny segments of the world.Repave brings Volcano Choir into sharp focus. The glitch-laden, cautious presentation of the band’s previous work serves as points of both reference and departure across these eight songs, the product of growing conviction and trust, of a fully-operational rock band, gifted in shading and nuance, and rumbling with power. It’s the sound of the creative process as it evolves and ultimately explodes, the seamless interleaving of electronic and acoustic/amplified instruments, multithreaded with the timbre and technology of the human voice as it enters and exits the equation. Moreover, Repave is the sound of confident musicians extending their reach to anthemic peaks and pulling back to reveal moments of real vulnerability, sure enough of themselves to let them stand on their own.

If Repave reminds you of other kinds of records from the past decade or so, it’s done so on the bonds between the members of Volcano Choir, how their friendships were fortified over the years-long process of writing and recording these songs. There is an openness to this work that won’t be taken for granted ? real, moving tales of change, sadness, loss and truth grace the wordplay of these tracks, an account of life between the fringes of poetry and reality. With each verse you can sense that someone, somewhere is listening to this music and getting stronger, feeling better, learning to open up their soul.

Volcano Choir is Jon Mueller, Chris Rosenau, Matthew Skemp, Daniel Spack, Justin Vernon and Thomas Wincek

Lightning Dust's 3rd proper full length finds its inspiration in skeletal synth pop, modern R&B beats, the films of John Carpenter and -- in accordance with Lightning Dust's only longstanding rule -- absolute minimalism. The core of Fantasy lies as much in the songwriting as in its sonics, and begins with tools familiar to Webber and Wells: her acoustic guitar and his Wurlitzer piano. They worked to distill the arrangements to just the few key elements that were necessary to make the feel right, and through countless hours of labor in The Balloon Factory - their Vancouver studio - the songs found their way to a sonic palette more squarely electronic than either expected.

Includes Fantasy on both compact disc and vinyl LP, 17 x 22" glossy poster featuring the album artwork, digital download code for the album (as .zip file containing 320kbps mp3s), redeemable June 11th (two weeks prior to release date). First 200 orders also receive a limited-edition 7" single featuring two new songs, "A Lifetime of Waiting" & "Sunday".

Featuring "No Destruction", a hot slice off the "We Are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace & Magic" pie, and the ostensibly quizzical b-side, "Where's The Money?"

After her highly-acclaimed debut Strange Cacti landed in the hands of listeners, it became very obvious the special presence Angel Olsen offered to listeners. She had a fresh edge to her sound, a warm and wonderful range, and a level of skill and charm out of this world.

Half Way Home is a continuation of her elegance brought forth on Strange Cacti, a collection of both new and old music, honed and matured, thoughts revisited. We're hearing this same beautiful girl with that same beautiful voice, this time brought up to a new level, in no doubt a growth and reach brought on by several roadtrips with the one and only Bonnie "Prince" Billy and crew.

The work of Angel Olsen is entirely her own: a raw, glowing sound that stands out now just as much as it did in 2010. It's an emotional stew with Angel's robust voice up front, bold and engaging, coming out of the background, aching to be heard. With the help of Emmett Kelly (The Cairo Gang) behind the board and playing throughout the songs, Half Way Home is a natural progression showcasing the wondrous sounds of a songwriter with such a voice that is rarely found.

The cover of Brooklyn-based Small Black's second LP, Limits of Desire, features a photo of a man and a woman embracing on either side of a ladder, completely naked, divided by its triangular arc. They're close, but they can't get any closer. It's a moving depiction of connectivity and interaction in the 21st century and it serves as a sort of source code for the record.

Limits of Desire is Small Black's most accomplished album yet. It's a crystalline realization of a sound they've been building toward since their self-titled EP in 2009. Now a full-time four piece, Josh Hayden Kolenik (keys, vocals), Ryan Heyner (guitar, keys, vocals), Juan Pieczanski (bass, guitar) and Jeff Curtin (drums, percussion), the band have moved way beyond the hazy home recorded sound of their previous releases toward a full-fledged, but still self-produced, clear approach. Where 2010?s New Chain was a lesson in maximalist pop, Limits of Desire finds the band trimming their sound to the essentials, yet hitting new and unexpected heights with the addition of live drums, electric guitar and trumpet to the existing Small Black palette. Tonally the songs sweep and glide over lush keys, bolstered by lyrics that illustrate the semi-abstract moments of lost opportunities and misread signs, hinted at by the cover image. The title track whirls softly, and channels luminaries Tears for Fears and The Blue Nile, anchored by Pieczanski's punchy bass as Kolenik sings: "Other lives droned/ far from the grass where I lay/ each eye stared out the opposite way." As much as the record is about looking for deeper connections, it's also about avoiding real life, if only for a moment?getting out of your own head just long enough to calm down and find perspective.

?Free At Dawn? and ?No Stranger? do what fans have come to love Small Black for, only better. They?re smart pop bangers tinged with a specific brand of melancholy that slowly build to night-affirming climaxes. While "Breathless? ups the tempo, over synth stabs, with lyrics that tackle apathy and uncertainty with catchy grace: "I'm standing in tomorrow's way/ future's fine/least it seems okay." It paints a concise portrait of a generation struggling with unlimited freedom and malaise.

The band builds on a rich history of synth pop by making a thoroughly modern album, on both the front and back end. One that seeks out cohesion, connection and calm in a world that won?t sit still. Limits of Desire doesn't attempt to provide any solutions, but coming to terms with not finding the answers feels infinitely more fruitful.

Recorded in an isolated house in the Yorkshire Dales, Fain is the sound of a band at the peak of their creative powers. It?s an honest and natural album that allows its stories and melodies to breathe. The album draws on more traditional English and Scottish folk melodies than anything they?ve done before, but not straying from the drop-out fuzz-rock route they?ve made their own.

Includes Fain on both black vinyl LP and compact disc in 6-panel wallet, 11 x 17 glossy poster featuring album artwork by Joe Hollick, and digital download code for the album (as .zip file containing 320kbps mp3s), redeemable immediately upon purchase. While supplies last, also includes bonus "Silbury Sands" b/w "Dry" single on 7" vinyl!

With Until in Excess, Imperceptible UFO, The Besnard Lakes create a distinct and dreamy headspace, an enigmatic and somehow familiar placelessness. It happens in such a way that both the close and casual listener find themselves immersed in the generous sonic vision, one moment as timeless as the next.

On Naomi, The Cave Singers have charted new territory for the band, both musically and spiritually, while remaining true to their distinctive brand of brushfired folk. After some time in the dark wealth of the unknown, they have returned to the light with a revitalized purpose.

II builds on the break-beat, junk-shop charm the 32-year-old multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Ruban Nielson came to be renowned for following Unknown Mortal Orchestra's self-titled 2011 debut, and signals the solidification of the band's position as an endlessly intriguing, brave psychedelic band. UMO is unafraid to dig deeper than the rest to lock into their intoxicating, opiate groove and bring rock?n?roll?s exaggerated myths to life. Written during a punishing, debauched touring schedule during which Nielson feared for both his sanity and health, II illustrates the emotional turmoil of life on the road, painting surrealist, cartoonish portraits of loneliness, love and despair.

We Are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace & Magic is a precocious and cocksure joyride across California psychedelia with a burning, bursting punk rock engine. In the same year as Scott McKenzie the singer of "San Francisco (Be Sure To Wear Flowers In Your Hair)" leaves this mortal coil, Foxygen delivers unto us the dandy Glockenspiel-packing "San Francisco," which both circumvents and dissects McKenzie's tune and its many cousins of the era. "I left my love in San Francisco/(That's okay, I was bored anyway)/I left my love in a field/(That's okay, I was born in LA)" goes the lovely call-and-response chorus, slamming together the archetypal flower children of the 60s and the archetypal ADHD vapidity of our recent generations. Another highlight, "Shuggie," manages to fit all the light bounce of the song's namesake and the climbing choruses of ELO into it's 3 minutes while still filling the tune with imagery of "rhinoceros-shaped earrings" and haunted parlors. Every nook and cranny of the record is loaded with their unflappable, brazen personalities. Foxygen takes "swagger," that as-of-late misused adjective, back once and for all. It's flipping pyramids old and new upside down ? from the miracle demo hand-off to their Richard Pryor-as-Jagger live shows to their singular idiosynchratic vision of rock n' roll.

A List of the Burning Mountains is the latest studio album by Brooklyn psych/noise/kraut godfathers Oneida. It was recorded at the Ocropolis, the band?s longtime studio, and is a powerful, sweeping gesture that evokes the storied history of that space and Oneida?s dedication to a diehard independent music and art community.

Burning Mountains is less a traditional album than a tiny sip from an endlessly roiling sea. Oneida is known for long-form improvisatory performances and collaborations; this release serves as a concentrated blast from a wholly unique band known for 12-hour live, improvised performances and multi-day recording sessions.

To celebrate Sharon Van Etten’s big year in support of her critically acclaimed album Tramp, Jagjaguwar is pleased to present the Tramp Deluxe Edition. It includes the album, demos for each album track, plus a bonus track demo. The physical component is a repackaging including a self-portrait and liner notes about each song taken from Van Etten's journals. Set to memorialize the comprehensive vision for one of the year’s best albums, from earliest home recording to fully realized album version, the Tramp Deluxe Edition is available digitally as well as on compact disc this fall.

Jagjaguwar is proud to present the soundtrack from director Rick Alverson's provocative film "The Comedy." The film focuses on Swanson (Tim Heidecker), who whiles away his days with a group of aging Brooklyn hipsters, engaging in acts of recreational cruelty and pacified boredom. Desensitized and disenchanted, he strays into a series of reckless situations that may offer the promise of redemption or the threat of retribution. A scathing look at the white male on the verge of collapse, Rick Alverson's carefully observed portrait provokes and disorients; a cautionary fable for the autumn of the American Era. With his similarly-minded friends, ("Tim and Eric" co-star Eric Wareheim, LCD Soundsytem frontman James Murphy and comedian Gregg Turkington a.k.a.“Neil Hamburger") in games of comic irreverence and mock sincerity. As Swanson awaits a large inheritance from his father’s estate, he grows restless of the safety a sheltered life offers, and he begins to test the limits of acceptable behavior, pushing the envelope in every way he can.

Alverson worked with Jagjaguwar to create a soundtrack of eerie, bittersweet and mystic pop songs from the "autumn of the American Era," featuring artists from the present (GAYNGS, Gardens & Villa, Here We Go Magic) and the past (Donnie & Joe Emerson, Bill Fay, Amanaz). Markedly, the soundtrack features excerpts from William Basinski's groundbreaking The Disintegration Loops, one of the most powerful manifestations of the inevitable cycle of life ever committed to tape, even as it documents the inevitable decay of all that is committed to tape.

?Beth/Rest" is the fourth single from the Grammy Award winning Bon Iver, Bon Iver. The b-side is an alternate performance of Beth/Rest recorded at Rare Book Room.

Bon Iver, Bon Iver was recorded and mixed at April Base Studios, a remodeled veterinarian?s clinic located in rural Fall Creek, Wisconsin. The main recording space is constructed over a defunct indoor pool attached to the clinic. ?It?s an unique space and destination; it?s our home out here,? says Vernon, who purchased the structure with his brother in late 2008 with the sole intention of converting it into his ideal recording studio. ?It?s been a wonderful freedom, working in a place we built. It?s also only three miles from the house I grew up in, and just ten minutes from the bar where my parents met.? The creation of Bon Iver, Bon Iver was a three-year process, and Vernon says the completion of the studio paralleled the completion of the album. ?I was writing and recording in the windows of time snatched between tours in support of For Emma,? he says. ?When I finally came home to hunker down for a solid stretch there was a feeling of solid ground and an opportunity for liberation waiting in the space for me.?

Bon Iver, Bon Iver is Justin Vernon returning to former haunts with a new spirit. The reprises are there ? solitude, quietude, hope and desperation compressed ? but always a rhythm arises, a pulse vivified by gratitude and grace notes. The winter, the legend, has faded to just that, and this is the new momentary present. The icicles have dropped, rising up again as grass.

As Unknown Mortal Orchestra, New Zealand by-way-of Portland songwriter and guitarist Ruban Nielson marries spry, nervy psychedelia with sharp R&B touchstones. Timeless pop hooks are produced with a soft buzzsaw edge so that the effect is akin to Stevie Wonder producing Plastic Ono Band into Nuggets-like gems. It's a one-two punch that has caught the ear of hip-hop community heavyweights (like ?uestlove, El-P) and indie-world heroes (Liars, Toro Y Moi). With bassist Jacob Portrait and drummer Greg Rogrove, Unknown Mortal Orchestra is preparing a full-length for early 2013. Single "Swim and Sleep (Like a Shark)," a bittersweet power-pop romp with melodies more delicate than most approaching the genre would dare, is our first taste from the recordings. It's b-side, "Waves of Confidence," is slow-grind sizzurp psych that, by its end, has built and layered to transcendent heights.

I Bet on Sky is the third Dinosaur Jr. album since the original trio ? J Mascis, Lou Barlow and Murph ? reformed in 2005. And, crazily, it marks the band?s 10th studio album since their debut on Homestead Records in 1985. Back in the ?80s, if anyone has suggested that these guys would be performing and recording at such a high level 27 years later, they would have been laughed out of the tree fort.

The trio has taken everything they?ve learned from the various projects they tackled over the years, and poured it directly into their current mix. J?s guitar approaches some of its most unhinged playing here, but there?s a sense of instrumental control that matches the sweet murk of his vocals (not that he always remembers to exercise control on stage, but that?s another milieu). This is head-bobbing riff-romance at the apex. Lou?s basswork shows a lot more melodicism now as well, although his two songs on I Bet on Sky retain the jagged rhythmic edge that has so often marked his work. And Murph?well, he still pounds the drums as hard and as strong as a pro wrestler, with deceptively simple structures that manage to interweave themselves perfectly with his bandmates? melodic explosions.

After submerging myself in I Bet on Sky, it?s clear that the album is a true and worthy addition to the Dinosaur Jr. discography. It hews close enough to rock formalism to please the squares. Yet it is brilliantly imprinted with the trio?s magical equation, which is a gift to the rest of us. For a combo that began as anomalous fusion of hardcore punk and pop influences, Dinosaur Jr. have proven themselves to be unlikely masters of the long game.

I Bet on Sky is the third Dinosaur Jr. album since the original trio ? J Mascis, Lou Barlow and Murph ? reformed in 2005. And, crazily, it marks the band’s 10th studio album since their debut on Homestead Records in 1985. Back in the ?80s, if anyone has suggested that these guys would be performing and recording at such a high level 27 years later, they would have been laughed out of the tree fort.

The trio has taken everything they’ve learned from the various projects they tackled over the years, and poured it directly into their current mix. J’s guitar approaches some of its most unhinged playing here, but there’s a sense of instrumental control that matches the sweet murk of his vocals (not that he always remembers to exercise control on stage, but that’s another milieu). This is head-bobbing riff-romance at the apex. Lou’s basswork shows a lot more melodicism now as well, although his two songs on I Bet on Sky retain the jagged rhythmic edge that has so often marked his work. And Murph?well, he still pounds the drums as hard and as strong as a pro wrestler, with deceptively simple structures that manage to interweave themselves perfectly with his bandmates’ melodic explosions.

After submerging myself in I Bet on Sky, it’s clear that the album is a true and worthy addition to the Dinosaur Jr. discography. It hews close enough to rock formalism to please the squares. Yet it is brilliantly imprinted with the trio’s magical equation, which is a gift to the rest of us. For a combo that began as anomalous fusion of hardcore punk and pop influences, Dinosaur Jr. have proven themselves to be unlikely masters of the long game.

Foxygen is the bi-coastal songwriting duo of Sam France (vocals, Olympia, Wash., 22 years old) and Jonathan Rado (guitar/keyboards, NYC, 22). They are the raw, de-Wes Andersonization of The Rolling Stones, Kinks, Velvets, Bowie, etc. that a whole mess of young people desperately need. At the same time, they pull a very Anderson-type move wherein they paint an impressionistic and hyper-real (and instantly recognizable) portrait of specific places and times ? and blurring the lines between time and place. Yet, it never comes across as anything but absolutely modern music. They bring the freewheeling qualities of someone like Ariel Pink to those aforementioned influences to make for one of the most refreshing listens of the year. They are the real deal and total savants. Jagjaguwar is proud to introduce you to Foxygen and their bedroom masterpiece Take the Kids Off Broadway.

It's a difficult task to write about Amateur Love. The band was the singular catalyst in founding Chigliak. What Amateur Love means to the history of Eau Claire music is representative of everything we set out to illuminate with this record label. Our goal is to release records that hold weight in people's hearts. For us, it's notable to point out that one person's favorite record of all time may have only existed in bedrooms that were within 100 miles of each other.

There seems to be a premium on popularity in popular music. When an artist sells records to people all over the world, their music is then validated by a larger social contract. But Amateur Love is the most popular band Eau Claire has ever known, and for good reason. It is not in our estimation that the re-issuing of It's All Aquatic will project the band into that great popularity. No, we just hope to give the music a further chance to live on... for those who adored and those who never had the chance.

Josh Scott was the ambassador of my heart for many years. While both songwriters in Eau Claire, we were close friends and admired each other's music. It was obvious to both of us, however, who the better writer was. Josh was writing songs that were both more mature and masterful than mine. His songs came from a perspective as snarly as Paul Westerberg, as enchanting as Neil Young, yet he wielded power as beguiling and unique as any songwriter I've ever heard. Nestling himself around Brad and Phil Cook (Megafaun) and Brian Moen (Peter Wolf Crier, Laarks and Shouting Matches), who stretched themselves outside their own comfort zones into those of un-tapped electronic pop, Amateur Love became one of the most enigmatic and electrifying bands I have ever known. With local-legend Jaime Hansen engineering, the band was caught at the rise to their peak of musical power on It's All Aquatic in 2003.

What you have here is Amateur Love's one and only full-length, initially only release on CD, now re-issued as a 12" vinyl LP. Included is a special download of unreleased recordings that I have come to know as the Ev Sessions; recorded by Ev Olcott, the great master of Minneapolis studio magic and former member of 12Rods and Halloween, Alaska. Ev produced these sessions after the release of It's All Aquatic sometime in 2004. These sessions are considered 'un-finished' by the band but stand as a fantastic 'what could have been' document.

Amateur Love gets to always live on, thru the grooves on our turntables now. Enjoy. We all did.

Hoyas by S. Carey is a hospitable statement about love, longing and the celebration of knowing it well. You will find the familiar S. Carey modern classical repetition pushed into the vernacular of electronic music and beat making. This is the warmest electronic music you'll ever meet. The beats swing, stutter and pulse while each instrument retains a heightened awareness of its form and function within the larger family of voices.

Hoyas was mixed and produced by the Grammy Award Winning team of Justin Vernon and Brian Joseph of Bon Iver.

It was an idea hatched during a Nov 7th birthday brunch for Kid Millions by Showtime. We would create a Stax-like studio band based around Oneida's now defunct Ocropolis studio. We would record and produce one song each from a list of our favorite local musicians - the sky was the limit. We both realized that we had about 2 years left in our amazing paradise of a recording studio and while we had done a lot... we still hadn't really taken full advantage of the studio. We hadn't made good on our mandate to become a resource for the community of musicians with whom we shared a home. Unlike many of the half-baked ideas which emerge from the Brah Records boardroom - this one had legs. We quickly abandoned the idea of being Brooklyn's backing band and decided that straight recordings - kind of a Brooklyn waterfront Peel session - would be a better and more interesting goal. Bands would be given four hours to set up and record their track and then allotted four additional hours for mixing. Even within the imposed limits on the project, we vastly underestimated the time and resources this project would require. We also kept adding bands; we couldn't say no. After all was said and done, twenty two bands recorded material over the course of three months in 2010. We mixed about half of these and then we burned out. Everything stopped. I can't even remember why - but about 12 sessions remained in the can, untouched.

Cut to about a year later, the Ocropolis's imminent destruction looming, and our shame at setting aside the project drove us back into the studio to finish. We had to cut a couple tracks from the comp for copyright reasons - so we're left with 20. All bands generously agreed to donate proceeds from the compilation to two Japanese charities (Ashinaga and JOICFP) picked for us by Shinji Masuko from DMBQ and Boredoms. So welcome to Koozies, Woodies and Beer - An Ocropolis Japan Benefit Project. NOTES: A Koozie is a foam insulator used to keep your beer (or alternative beverage cold). Required for all beers consumed at the Ocropolis. A Woodie is the Oneida name for an electric combo organ from the 60s and 70s. It must contain some wood. The Ocropolis probably contains at least 20.

TRACKLIST: Liturgy - Tragic Laurel // Akron Family - Out To Love // Sloppy Heads - Resistance, Baby! // Knyfe Hyts - We Know When the Sun Goes Down // Fireworks - Sheets of Easter // Noveller - Bleached Beach // Oakley Hall - Puppets on the Wheel // Wingdale Community Singers - So What // Audrey Chen - Squalling // DubKnowDub - Dubcropolis Dub // Zombi - Escape Velocity // Birdlaw - Attention Survivor // Samara Lubelski & Marcia Bassett - Energy Amiss // Chaw Mank - Still Yetting // Mark Morgan - Take It In Trade // Notekillers - Braindance 'Splosion // Red Dawn II - Killed by a Murderer // Christy & Emily - Japanese T-shirt // White Hills - Spiritual Warfare

The lyrical theme of Moonface's With Siinai: Heartbreaking Bravery, recorded with Helsinki prog kraut rock band Siinai, is heartbreak. According to Krug, it was not planned, but became obvious halfway through the writing process. Some recently battered, still mildly swollen heart snuck its way into the first lyrics written, so he went with it. He wrote songs based on his own experiences with heartache, stories told to him by friends, and drummed up scenarios of ill-fated love that were absolute fiction. Altogether, the inevitability of life's flawed and failed relationships, the shitty feelings we feel as a result, and the people we become (ugly, brave, violent, crawling like babies back toward the womb) while trying to deal with those feelings are the ideas explored in these songs. It is not a particularly original theme, but one Krug felt worth digging into, perhaps deeper than he ever has before.

Black Mountain's Year Zero soundtrack is nothing less than the band's full, balls-out glory distilled down to one dense, 45-minute acid tab of music. Featuring five new songs and five previously released songs, the Year Zero soundtrack weaves crunching, analog psych metal; futuristic droneouts; and, somehow, a twisted saxaphone ditty.

Drawing a parallel between Lia Ices and Pink Floyd is much easier than anticipated — they share a love for space that is both palpable and patient. If you've been curious about a starting point with her, please start here. The A-side originally appeared on MOJO Magazine's tribute to Pink Floyd's mighty Wish You Were Here. Lia's take on the title track soars high and quickly nose dives back to Earth. The B-side takes a turn at "Late Night", the closing track to Syd Barrett's solo debut The Madcap Laughs. On it, Lia balances just the right amount of jangle-y brawn and off-kilter poise that one of our best love songs deserves.

Towers is the third single from Bon Iver, Bon Iver, which debuted at #2 on the Billboard Charts. The b-side is a cover of John Prine's "Bruised Orange (Chain of Sorrow)" which was originally recorded for a Prine tribute album, for which Justin Vernon also contributed liner notes.

Leonard is the second single from Tramp, the new album from Sharon Van Etten.

The shimmering sound of Sharon Van Etten’s Jagjaguwar debut album, Tramp, both defies and illuminates the unsteadiness of a life in flux. Throughout the 14 months of scattered recording sessions, Van Etten was without a home -- crashing with friends and storing her possessions between varied locations. The only constant in Van Etten's life during this time was spent in Aaron Dessner's garage studio.

The shimmering sound of Tramp both defies and illuminates the unsteadiness of a life in flux. During the 14 months of scattered recording sessions, Sharon Van Etten was without a home - crashing with friends and spreading out her possessions between various locations. The only constant during this time was when Van Etten returned to the garage studio of The National's Aaron Dessner.

The resulting album is an assured and strident one, and Tramp showcases an artist in control of her powers, incorporating vivid arrangements and instrumentation into the songwriting. It is a startling collection, filled with as much defiant rock as pious, minimal beauty. There are declarative hymns and remarkably sultry numbers. Tramp features many stupendous guests, as well, including Wye Oak's Jenn Wasner, Julianna Barwick, and Beirut's Zach Condon, and Dessner himself.

Tidings is the first dark and frenzied offering from London's Wolf People — an alchemistic compendium of English classic rock that has been doused in wine, its pages left red-stained, blurred and melded in the most interesting ways.

The quartet — and first UK rock band to join the Jagjaguwar inner circle — is eager to stress that Tidings is not a proper album per se. Collected from recordings made by Jack Sharp in Bedford, England between 2005 and 2007 (and mostly before the band as it exists now was formed), Tidings is wild with tape hiss, feedback and background noise — a fecund broth of sounds competing for the listener's attention. Stitched together in a style reminiscent of Faust or early Mothers Of Invention, the songs lay nestled in snatches of field recordings, winding tapes, squealing feedback, studio outtakes and the voices of dead relatives. The tunes themselves are full of hissing guitars, distorted blues harmonica, acid rock, mystical flutes and crackling tape, often based on updated versions of classic blues structures and half-remembered English folk songs. These recordings form the prehistory of a band that have recently garnered a reputation for blistering live performances around the UK: Wolf People have supported Dinosaur Jr, Tinariwen, Witchcraft, Sleepy Sun, Malcolm Mooney and Voice Of The Seven Woods among others.

Their sound has evolved to include the diverse influences and musicianship of Jack's three colleagues and, as such,Tidings serves as an index of possibilities.

Jagjaguwar is proud to reintroduce the complete recordings of Supreme Dicks in the form of Breathing and Not Breathing, a four CD set that includes both of the band's studio albums, The Unexamined Life from 1993 and The Emotional Plague from 1996, along with 1994's Workingman's Dick, a collection of early archival recordings, and the 1996 EP This Is Not A Dick, which has been fleshed out with rare and unreleased tracks. Also available are 2xLP editions of The Unexamined Life and The Emotional Plague, neither of which has been previously released on vinyl.

Jagjaguwar is proud to reintroduce the complete recordings of Supreme Dicks in the form of Breathing and Not Breathing, a four CD set that includes both of the band's studio albums, The Unexamined Life from 1993 and The Emotional Plague from 1996, along with 1994's Workingman's Dick, a collection of early archival recordings, and the 1996 EP This Is Not A Dick, which has been fleshed out with rare and unreleased tracks. Also available are 2xLP editions of The Unexamined Life and The Emotional Plague, neither of which has been previously released on vinyl.

Jagjaguwar is proud to reintroduce the complete recordings of Supreme Dicks in the form of Breathing and Not Breathing, a four CD set that includes both of the band's studio albums, The Unexamined Life from 1993 and The Emotional Plague from 1996, along with 1994's Workingman's Dick, a collection of early archival recordings, and the 1996 EP This Is Not A Dick, which has been fleshed out with rare and unreleased tracks. Also available are 2xLP editions of The Unexamined Life and The Emotional Plague, neither of which has been previously released on vinyl.

Jagjaguwar is honored to reissue the band's first three albums, Dinosaur, You're Living All Over Me & Bug, on vinyl this October. Originally released on the venerable Homestead and SST labels in the 1980's, the reissues stay true to form and include the cardinal track lists.

Jagjaguwar is honored to reissue the band's first three albums, Dinosaur, You're Living All Over Me & Bug, on vinyl this October. Originally released on the venerable Homestead and SST labels in the 1980's, the reissues stay true to form and include the cardinal track lists.

Jagjaguwar is honored to reissue the band's first three albums, Dinosaur, You're Living All Over Me & Bug, on vinyl this October. Originally released on the venerable Homestead and SST labels in the 1980's, the reissues stay true to form and include the cardinal track lists.

Songs for the documentary Welcome to Pine Point came to fruition after Michael Simons, one of its creative directors and a longtime friend of The Besnard Lakes' Jace Lasek, told the band about this web-based project he was working on — about a mining town that had been abandoned in northern Canada —and asked if the band would be interested in providing some music for it. Simons also asked if the band would cover "We're Here for a Good Time (Not a Long Time)" by Canadian rock band Trooper. Herewith is their interpretation available for the first time as physical media. "The Corner" is one of two songs written for the end credits of the film "Memories Corner". This is the song that wasn't chosen. Also a Besnard Lakes rarity, this song is available for the first and only time on You Live in the City.

"Special thanks to: Audrey Fouche, the director of Memories Corner, and its producers; Welcome to Pine Point creators Michael Simons and Paul Shoebridge and the National Film Board of Canada. These projects were both absolutely a pleasure to work on, and we hope you, dear listeners, enjoy these offerings." — The Besnard Lakes

“Holocene" is the second single from Bon Iver, Bon Iver. The b-side is a cover of Peter Gabriel's "Come Talk to Me," which Bon Iver originally recorded as a swap, with Gabriel recording "Flume" from "For Emma, Forever Ago."

Peter Wolf Crier’s second album Garden of Arms is a document that paints a vivid portrait of all the pain and beauty of growth. Adapting the tenets of the grinding live show, the duo of Peter Pisano and Brian Moen transformed the fuzzy distortion, rolling and crashing drums, and laser-focused purposefulness into an intensely dynamic yet supremely polished album.

Moonface is not a band, just plain half-old me, in any solo or collaborative projects I'm involved in from now until whenever. In early 2010 the first EP was released on Jagjaguwar. It was called Dreamland EP: Marimba and Shit-Drums, and sounds as the title suggests. This past winter, trying to keep sane in my snowed-in Montreal home, I recorded another solo record. This new one is an LP called Organ Music not Vibraphone like I'd Hoped and is due out August 2nd, 2011. -Spencer Krug

"Your Past Life as a Blast" is the third single from “I Am Very Far” (JAG185) from Okkervil River. The release of this single coincides with the band's late Summer tour and festival season, and will be serviced aggressively to Radio and Press.

Amplifying Host finds Richard Youngs wandering the guitar desert somewhere between Ry Cooder's Paris, Texas score and Neil Young's work on Dead Man. Yet, the randomly determined chord movements and Youngs' stretched-out vocal passes across the record are, perhaps, more akin to Jandek's Six And Six — here, removed from its gauze and dipped in a dark gold. When Youngs bends strings in this anglo-americana vision, it's like he's bending spoons.

"Calgary," the first single from Bon Iver, Bon Iver is a worship song to everything For Emma, Forever Ago mourned.

Bon Iver, Bon Iver is Justin Vernon returning to former haunts with a new spirit. The reprises are there ? solitude, quietude, hope and desperation compressed ? but always a rhythm arises, a pulse vivified by gratitude and grace notes. The winter, the legend, has faded to just that, and this is the new momentary present. The icicles have dropped, rising up again as grass.ja

"Rider" is the second single from the forthcoming LP “I Am Very Far” (JAG185) from Okkervil River. The release of this single coincides with the band's Summer tour, and will be serviced aggressively to Radio and Press.

"The goal was to push my brain to places it didn't want to go. The idea was to not have any idea ? to keep myself confused about what I was doing," frontman Will Sheff says about Okkervil River's newest album. The resulting record, 'I Am Very Far,' is a startling break from anything this band has done before. By turns terrifying and joyous, violent and serene, grotesque and romantic, it's a celebration of forces beyond our control.

Absolute II is the final piece in Oneida's Thank Your Parents triptych of releases, begun in 2008 with Preteen Weaponry and followed by 2009's acclaimed triple disc Rated O. With this release, the Brooklyn group concludes a challenging and profound long-term project. The Thank Your Parents triptych, totaling around 200 minutes, is intended to be listened to as a whole or in its component parts. Absolute II stands on its own, in addition to serving as a chapter in an immense whole.

Beth Wawerna's involvement with rock music started a couple minutes after she was born, when her 14-year-old brother stubbornly insisted she be named for the 1976 KISS power ballad "Beth." Her parents consented ? thus unwittingly sealing their daughter's fate.  Beth now fronts her own rock band, Bird of Youth, whose debut album Defender (out May 24) was produced by Will Sheff of Okkervil River and Phil Palazzolo (The New Pornographers, Ted Leo, Neko Case), with a cast of players that includes members of The Wrens, Nada Surf, The National, Okkervil River and The Mendoza Line.  Defender recalls the classic and college rock Beth grew up with, as well as the swagger of old New York girl groups and the insight and sarcasm the early new wave songwriters. Inherent in Beth’s voice is a cool stoicism ? a dry, knowing wink that is as affecting in Defender’s moments of dark humor and ornate storytelling as it is in its flashes of unvarnished heartbreak. Beth's dry delivery finds a perfect match in lead guitarist Clinton Newman, whose lush, multilayered harmonies and intertwining guitar parts give this record its distinctive sound ? something like Chrissie Hynde fronting Squeeze or Nico signed to Stiff Records. As intricate pop songcraft crumbles into gauzy atmospherics and literate observations devolve into boozy chaos, Bird of Youth’s rave-ups and kiss-offs turn indie-rock braininess back on itself with a casual frivolity.

Over the past few years, Beth has put that wonderfully unstable marriage to the test on stage, appearing with The Wrens, The Mendoza Line, Okkervil River, Roky Erickson and others. With the band's permanent touring lineup rounded out by bassist Johnny North, drummer Ray Ketchem and keyboardist Eli Thomas, Bird of Youth plan to spend the summer months of 2011 bringing Defender direct to the fans.

"The goal was to push my brain to places it didn't want to go. The idea was to not have any idea ? to keep myself confused about what I was doing," frontman Will Sheff says about Okkervil River's newest album. The resulting record, 'I Am Very Far,' is a startling break from anything this band has done before. By turns terrifying and joyous, violent and serene, grotesque and romantic, it's a celebration of forces beyond our control.

"Rollercoaster" is the third single from Black Mountain's Wilderness Heart. This song really showcases the band's trademark psych-metal sound, and throughout it the interchanging vocals of Steve McBean and Amber Webber are in full force. The song was recorded at Sunset Sound in Hollywood with D. Sardy.

The b-side to this single is entitled "In The Drones" and is previously unreleased. It features Webber's haunting vocals at the forefront, accompanied by reverb-drenched picking and shadowy synth stylings underneath. The song was recorded in Seattle at London Bridge Studio with Randall Dunn.

Will Sheff of Okkervil River has long been recognized for his writing: acontributor to McSweeney’s, Sheff was nominated for a GRAMMY for his linernotes for Roky Erickson’s 2010 album “True Love Cast Out All Evil,” and TheNew York Times declared that “Sheff writes like a novelist.”

It is with great pleasure that Jagjaguwar presents "I Am Very Far: TheLyrics," a hard bound lyric book containing the full scope of Sheff's visionfor his latest and most refined album to date, Okkervil River's "I Am VeryFar." Meant to function as a distinct entrance point into the content of themusic, "I Am Very Far: The Lyrics" is set for release in advance of thealbum.

Functioning as much more than a complement to the albums themselves, Sheff'sprose weaves tales both subtle and dynamic, and enriches the content of hissongs. Including the lyrics for the single "Mermaid" and other songsrecorded during the "I Am Very Far" sessions, “I Am Very Far: The Lyrics” isa complete work in its own right.

"Wake and Be Fine" is the first single from the forthcoming lp “I Am Very Far” (JAG185) from Okkervil River. To announce the new record, Okkervil River performed “Wake and Be Fine” with Carl Newman (The New Pornographers) and members of The Roots on The Late Show with Jimmy Fallon in January.

There are advance promo trips planned to coincide with release of the single and video for “Wake and Be Fine." Will Sheff will be performing acoustically and reading from the lyric book, "I Am Very Far."

Constant Future is the career-defining statement from Brooklyn-based noise-pop trio Parts & Labor. The album's 12 tracks deliver the bare essentials that made them sui generis totems of modern art-punk: synthesized keyboard riffs distorted into oblivion, percussion pummeled hypnotically, crackling drones that haunt and soothe, fearless melodies hollered skyward. Their last release, 2008's acclaimed Receivers, saw Parts & Labor blasting off in all directions and creating collage art from hundreds of fan-curated samples. But fifth album Constant Future finds them crashing back to earth, focusing pointedly on what they do best: unique, electronic landscapes melded with buzzing, anthemic hooks. Parts & Labor have distilled the lessons and experiences of nearly 10 years as a band into a catchy, blown-out masterwork.

Recorded on the grounds of a 17th Century Welsh mansion, "Silbury Sands" is the lead track off Wolf People's debut album, Steeple, which was unleashed in October 2010 to huge acclaim from the BBC, Metal Hammer, MOJO, NME, Sunday Times and Uncut, among others. With low, heavy churning guitars and warm, epic psych acumen abound, "Silbury Sands" serves as a fine thesis statement for the album.

The Cave Singers spend a good deal of time beyond the darkened edges of Seattle, in the mist and mystic, among the wolves and redwoods. And their songs, at least on record, have always been like beautiful, faded grayscale photos of this hinterland. Now, these photos are injected with hot blood and technicolor, a ferocity and bite we've yet to see from the band.

By all accounts, No Witch is The Cave Singers' rock record. Laid to tape with dark wizard producer Randall Dunn (Black Mountain, Sunn O))), Boris), No Witch is grander and more lush than The Cave Singers' previous efforts. It's also a nervier, scrappier affair: greasy guitars buck and rear up; Eastern-influenced blues snake through songs; gospel choirs rise up like tidal waves. There are big, grinning nods to Beggar's Banquet-era Stones, the best of Mellencamp ("Clever Creatures") and the juke joint legends of Mississippi like Junior Kimbrough and R.L. Burnside ("Black Leaf" and "No Prosecution If We Bail"). Of course, it's all filtered through that particular, magical Cave Singers formula: Pete Quirk's reedy, behind-the-beat delivery and existential wordplay, Derek Fudesco's lyrical guitar runs and drummer Marty Lunds' no nonsense rhythms.

No Witch is a newfound sheen to the aura that made The Cave Singers' music so special to begin with. All told, there's treasure to be found here for the biker gang weekender, the double rainbow chaser and all that falls in the valley between them.

"Mermaid" is the darkest song you'll hear all year: a self-contained fable shot through with evocative and disturbing imagery but rising to a sweeping, romantic, oddly moving climax. This waltz-time ballad gestures towards the tattered folk of Okkervil River's beloved 2005 album Black Sheep Boy, but somehow unearths something much more mysterious and blurrily ambiguous.

With "Walked Out On a Line" we get a glimpse of what might further emerge. Choral and atmospheric and stripped of any of the acoustic textures that have defined much of the band's past work, "Walked Out on a Line" is a smooth-sailing symbolist fever-dream, fractured and impressionistic lyrics floating over a sea of sighing voices, glittering rhodes, and a gently driving beat. It's an ambitious statement about how much innovative fuel the band has to burn, an as fleeting a 5:20 song as you're likely to hear.

Lia Ices' emotionally driven and experimental pop music is both avant-garde and timeless. A natural yet refined grace permeates her work.

Ices' voice floats and flutters around you, like the leaves from trees on a fleeting fall day, and the instrumentation matches that subtle dynamism. Grown Unknown is a walk in the park on a day of carnival, the most beautiful day so far this year.

Appearing as a guest vocalist for "Daphne," the only duet on the album, is Justin Vernon of Bon Iver.

On the heels of Small Black's debut full length, New Chain, comes their 7-inch for "Photojournalist", featuring a cover of Best Coast's "Sun Was High (So Was I)."

"Photojournalist" finds the band building on their signature sound of hazy synths, kaleidoscopic melodies, and Josh Kolenik's hushed vocals, by thickly layering hook upon hook over a propulsive drum beat.

The b-side houses their dreamix of Best Coast's stoner love anthem "Sun Was High (So Was I)."

New Chain is the debut long-player from New York's Small Black. The Brooklyn group have succeeded in melting together locked and popped drum-shudder, gauzy spirographic synths and subtly contagious, half-remembered melody into ebullient bursts of evocative, subliminal and thoroughly modern pop. The songs are equally informed by the rhythmic bounce and stylistic swagger of more left-leaning contemporary radio rap and R'n'B as it is the submerged kaleidoscopic swirl of the early 4AD dream factory. Formed at the tail-end of 2008 as a bedroom recording project, Small Black first made waves with their eponymous debut EP.Throughout it, Small Black allowed their addictive, stay-gold hooks to unfurl themselves gradually over repeated listens. And now, slightly more immediate and polished than its predecessor, Small Black's new album New Chain remains a continuation of this contrasting ethos ? a delirious smudging of the lines between melancholy and nostalgia, tension and celebration, unabashed pop music and experimentation.  A thinker's party record? A party-hardy thinker's record? Not sure. All we know is that New Chain is one of the most involved, intriguing and effortlessly human collections of organic pop music you're likely to hear this or any other year.

Steeple is the first album proper from Wolf People and represents the emergence of a fully fledged band from the fragmented, haunted bedroom meanderings of their Tidings singles compilation, released earlier this year. Recorded in a converted chicken barn on the grounds of a 17th century Welsh mansion, Steeple takes on a heavier sound while maintaining the arabesque electric guitars, groove-laden drums and ethereal vocals that characterized its predecessor.

Cheerfully aware of the English rock band cliché of "getting it together in the country," the quartet did it anyway, inspired by the rural isolation of West Wales to conjure shifting rhythms, entrancing folksong and smoke-fogged, riff-stoked jams. Steeple captures a band in metamorphosis, bridging frontman Jack Sharp's earlier solo efforts and the speaker-shearing attack developed in concert over the past four years. Now an accomplished live unit, the quartet have shared stages with the likes of The Besnard Lakes, Dinosaur Jr, Dungen, Endless Boogie, Lightning Dust and Tinariwen.

While the bulk of recording took place in Wales, the remainder was undertaken during post-day job, late night sessions in Sharp's bedroom studio. The results are both more coherent and nuanced than previous outings, with Sharp's keen ear for a tune complemented by heady instrumental passages that veer between dreamlike traditional melodies and feedback onslaughts. Proud of their heritage, both musical and cultural, Wolf People's vision faithfully reflects the myriad environments the group's members move between -- the British countryside and various cities (Bedford, London and North Yorkshire) -- while offering a universally appreciable set of songs for this age or any other. Wolf People are Jack Sharp, Joe Hollick, Dan Davies and Tom Watt.

On their debut self-titled album, Women embraced sonic brashness that deeper examination revealed to be tinted with sly pop melody. With their second album "Public Strain", the band has honed a sound truthful to that reverb drenched noise while allowing the pop sensibilities to surface into clearer focus.

This exact balance of delicate and dense is a pervasive thread throughout the album, reflecting the contradiction of the band's environment buried in urban sprawl framed by prairie landscape. Whether twisting through the urgent krautrock of "Locust Valley", an exercise of harmony through simplicity, or climaxing with the bittersweet melody of "Eyesore", the album somehow builds luminous contrast out of a palette of grays.

Wilderness Heart, the new album by Black Mountain, is packed with succinct rock songs that pulse and pound with startling precision: it pummels you and you ask for more. This is arguably the band's tightest, most concentrated venture, but there's still plenty of raw rock energy at work. "It's our most metal and most folk oriented record so far," songwriter Stephen McBean says. "I'm not gonna say it's our best record or the album that we always dreamt of making 'cause that's what everyone says. It's all about where we were at the time the machines were rolling. You can't control the electricity or how your limbs were moving that day. You have to erase the visions and just go along for the ride."

The debut album from S. Carey, All We Grow, is the result of a young lifetime immersed in music. As a band member of Bon Iver, Sean Carey witnessed a flip of his formal training to step firmly into a worldwide-touring rock band. His performance degree in classical percussion and his love for jazz drumming prepared him for a central role in the inspiring force of the Bon Iver live show.

All We Grow is a convergence of Carey's Waltz For Debby-era Bill Evans inflected jazz tendencies, and traditional rock band experience, taking leads from Talk Talk. It also retests the waters of modern classical composition, investigating the moodiness generated by percussive repetition in a manner familiar to fans of Steve Reich.

Following an Irish immigrant carpenter from coastal Queens to the Catskills and beyond,The Builder is an American existential portrait that explores the gulf between the idea of a thing and the thing itself. Having set off to the New York countryside to construct a reproduction of the earliest of American cape houses, the protagonist (Colm O’Leary) finds himself overcome by an inexplicable fatigue. Debts and expectations mount alongside the crudest and most naive of deceptions, that of both self and of family. As the chasm grows the Builder finds himself confronted by the unnerving ambivalence of the world around him.

"Make a proper pop album." Thus was the simple dare handed to Richard Youngs from his friend Andrew "Paz" Paine during their weekly Sunday meet-up. Ever the modest master, Youngs said in accepting this friendly challenge that he merely endeavored to capture the "beats and hooks" of contemporary pop. We present the results here as Beyond The Valley Of Ultrahits. Among bright, hypnotic loops, Youngs' voice finds its inner Bowie. But let it be known: this collection of house-inspired gems displays much more than a capacity for pop emulation. It's a confirmation of Youngs' craft and prowess, no matter the terrain. With enviable grace, experimental minimalist Youngs sets his sights on the pop world and claims it as his own. Youngs' heretofore unknown love of Pet Shop Boys and the Madchester sound is reimagined via his unique avant sensibility and atmospheric wand strokes. Originally released in 2009 as a very-limited CD-R on Paine's Sonic Oyster label, Jagjaguwar is honored to present Beyond the Valley of Ultrahits, remastered and on vinyl for the first time.

Inter-Be is the debut album by PETER WOLF CRIER, the Minneapolis-based duo of Peter Pisano and Brian Moen. The album was born on a single summer night when Pisano felt a torrent of creativity after what had felt, to him, like an interminably long dry spell. He shared the songs with Moen, and over the months that followed, at Moen's home, these rough-hewed tunes became what they are now: a confident collection of songs, but deceptive in that their very guts still reflect the thoughts of a man in transition.

Pisano's is not a new songwriting voice. He is best known for being part of the Wars of 1812, an ascendant Wisconsin-bred quartet. Their first album together, Status Quo Ante Bellum, was more than just an album. It was relocation and aspiration and Pisano's lyrical Eden. As the Wars went on hiatus, Pisano continued to hone his craft, keeping his days full as a teacher at a small private school while fine-tuning, at night, the songs that would soon become Inter-Be. Feeling confident in the songs, Pisano approached Moen, a seasoned drummer and engineer best known for his involvement in Laarks and Amateur Love. After being asked to add some percussive elements, Moen added his thundering drum rolls and perfectly timed fills, but he also added something much more: a melodic soundscape that would complete the evolution of the songs. So was born the partnership that is called Peter Wolf Crier.

When Ryan Olson decided to make a record with Solid Gold members Zack Coulter and Adam Hurlburt, it was clear to them what the result would be: a collection of drugged-up keyboards and slick bedroom production almost exclusively inspired by 10cc's "I'm Not In Love." What they didn't know was that it would spiral into a project of epic proportions, enlisting the talents of over 25 musicians from various scenes around the country, relocating the base of operations from Olson's Minneapolis bedroom/studio to the Wisconsin-based studio April Base, and the genesis of a musical super-family, Gayngs.

Olson began calling upon an eclectic cast of contributors whom he thought would share his vision, and relish in the idea of exploring uncharted musical territory within them. The first people to join the cause were Megafaun and Ivan Howard of the Rosebuds. Bon Iver's Justin Vernon and Mike Noyce were soon to follow. By mid-2009 the studio sessions were becoming more and more frequent, bouncing back and forth between April Base and Olson's bedroom. In Minneapolis, Olson brought in Rhymesayers rapper P.O.S and his fellow Doomtree artist Dessa, psych-rockers Jake Luck and Nick Ryan (Leisure Birds), song-birds Channy Moon-Casselle and Katy Morley, jazz-saxophonist Michael Lewis (Happy Apple, Andrew Bird), retro-pop duo Maggie Morrison and Grant Cutler (Lookbook), and slide-guitarist Shön Troth (Solid Gold).

Vocally, Gayngs is a triumph. Zack Coulter (Solid Gold) shines from the jump, floating over the record with his airy, haunting melodies. Fans of Bon Iver will recognize Vernon's familiar falsetto, but will flip when they hear his Bone Thug's-style R&B, while P.O.S. abandons his genre entirely for a soul inspired tenor. With over a dozen people contributing vocals, its incredible how cohesive the album sounds.

After a year of tracking and mixing, Gayngs is officially ready to release the album, entitled "Relayted". With each song written at 69 BPM's, and tripped-out transitions from song to song, it is truly an audio experience from start to finish.

After months of thawing out in an uncle's attic, Small Black emerged with one of 2009’s catchiest debut releases. The Small Black EP, as it is called, melds strange beats, dreamy synths, tape hiss and laid-back melodies into pop jams. Teaming up with longtime collaborators Juan Pieczanski and Jeff Curtin, the band then fleshed out their bedroom sound, combining both live and sampled drums, live bass, keyboards and samplers for their live performance.

Now 2010 sees Small Black teaming up with Jagjaguwar for a deluxe re-mastered release of their debut EP with two extra songs added, “Kings Of Animals” and “Baby Bird Pt. 2.”

Such gimmick-free sentimentality can often prove too difficult to finagle, but "Despicable Dogs" is a guaranteed soul-stirrer. -- Pitchfork (Best New Music)

There is a war now. The message has been sent through short wave in code. The Besnard Lakes twisting chronicle, or fever dream, of spies, double agents, novelists and aspiring rock gods has turned violent. Loyalty, dishonor, love, hatred all seen through the eyes of two spies, fighting a war that may not be real. One follows the other as they receive coded messages and spread destruction.The city is burning, and it's to the benefit of music obsessives everywhere. Once again, the husband-and-wife duo of Olga Goreas and Jace Lasek has crafted a majestic, sprawling vision of guitar bombast and captivating pop experiments. With the aid of Besnard members Kevin Laing on drums and Richard White on guitar, The Besnard Lakes Are the Roaring Night is a dense, ambitious recording, experimenting, as always, with the studio as instrument.

The Besnard Lakes Are the Roaring Night calls upon the influence of ELO and finer parts of the Alan Parsons Project in its orchestration. Still helped by the Ghost of Beach Boys Past, the album is more Dennis Wilson than Brian, and more Peter Green Fleetwood Mac than Lindsay Buckingham. The album is a dark bliss-out that folds the eerie guitar epics of the Montreal band's breakthrough into a wall of affected drones and atmospherics, but with a toughened immediacy and grit that gives the form a much-needed shove over the cliffs, making for a haunting, provocative swan dive into the crushing tide.

A standout track and the first single from Montreal's The Besnard Lakes' upcoming longplayer, The Besnard Lakes Are The Roaring Night, "Albatross" has all the swagger of a Stevie Nicks-led Fleetwood Mac classic or Roy Orbison reimagined as a rollicking, snakeskin-booted Mazzy Star -- dousing it all in gas and throwing the match as we hear its tale of Vancouver's skid row and its inhabitants.

On the flip we find "Four Long Lines," a non-album cut that not so much exists within the dark grooves of the vinyl as it does float just above the stereo, embodying the extraterrestrial encounter the song cryptically details. "Saw an alien/On the street/At dawn...Saw Aliens/In the sky/Called out to them, " breathes Jace Lasek's otherworldly falsetto, which stays just beyond definition skating on top of what could be a basement-tape lost cut from Eno's Another Green World.

This is physically available only in the vinyl format (approximately 20 minutes of music on a single side of a 12-inch record). It is also available in digital formats. The vinyl edition and some digital editions will be accompanied with a dream journal, on which the music is based.

Black Sheep Boy (Definitive Edition) is NOW AVAILABLE AS DOUBLE VINYL for the first time, to be released on 12/08/2009.

This is the definitive double-album set which brings together Okkervil River's ground-breaking Black Sheep Boy project in its entirety - including the original album, the 7-song Black Sheep Boy Appendix EP, and the song "The Next Four Months" (originally released on the "For Real" CD single). (The CD version of this definitive set also includes the "For Real" video as well as a new video of a magical alternate slower take of "No Key, No Plan".) Enjoy this panoramic perspective of a modern masterpiece and one of the most critically acclaimed albums of the new millennium. Black Sheep Boy is Okkervil River's most ambitious and cinematic record to date, a love story and adult fable carved in lacerating rock and roll, desolate late-night country weepers, and a few shining moments of sheer, shameless pop.

Richard Youngs' latest solo work for Jagjaguwar is a collection of neodruid hymns and chants for the minutiae of homelife and fatherhood -- poetic transcendance through repetition and a focus on the (seemingly) micro. Once again proving himself a master of minimalist composition, Youngs also takes leaps forward as a lyricist on Under Stellar Stream, reminiscent of the list incantations of Allen Ginsberg. With this comes a change in Youngs' voice, now less pleading, deeper and more assured. In these atonal, spatial arrangements, each phrase is granted the room to work into the cerebral cortex -- and perhaps a deeper consciousness. "I am remembering now the waiting on time itself. I am remembering now the value of sleep," recites Youngs' domesticated avatar on opening track "Broke Up By Night," a celtic prayer for the modern man. On "All Day Monday and Tuesday," over droning bass and slow, meandering organ, the grind of the day becomes empyreal: "All day Monday and Tuesday, the room of work, the room of work... All day Monday and Tuesday, the clarity, the clarity."

Pieces marks the second single from Farm, Dinosaur Jr's critically acclaimed long-player on Jagjaguwar. Featuring more bizarro artwork from renowned poster artist Marq Spusta, the Pieces 7" includes an exclusive b-side of Dinosaur Jr's cover of Houses, originally written & recorded by Elyse in 1968.

Volcano Choir is an assembly of Wisconsinites Jon Mueller, Chris Rosenau, Jim Schoenecker, Daniel Spack, Justin Vernon, and Thomas Wincek. You might find these old friends also frequenting records and stages under different monikers, Collections of Colonies of Bees and Bon Iver. The collaboration predates the meteoric rise of Justin Vernon's Bon Iver project, with original songwriting dating back to the summer of 2005, right around the time the Bees first toured with Vernon's previous band DeYarmond Edison.

While entirely a studio record, the collection doesn't suffer from the overburdens of a digital pile up or over-thinking. Rather it breathes and convulses in equal measure, radiating an inherent dynamism found only in the voluntary bondage of intimacy. With influences ranging from David Sylvian and Steve Reich to Mahalia Jackson and Tom Waits, it might be more accurate to say the group's influence is music itself. You can hear it in the care and real love generously applied to each moment of Unmap. With the vibe of some intimate backwoods gospel, plus a spirit of patience and thoughtful repetition, the music of Volcano Choir is as dynamic as it is lovely.

Unmap ultimately came together over a weekend in November 2008 in Fall Creek, Wisconsin, at Justin and Nate Vernon's recording studio. And while it is at its heart a record about the allure of being with people you need and making something with them, it is also a document created by musicians with rare gifts getting together to exorcise their ideas about beauty. This scaffolding of loops and off grid tempos for choral style vocals offers a state of continual surprise, call it unexpectation.

Unmap marks the debut full-length from Volcano Choir, the collaboration between Collections of Colonies of Bees and Justin Vernon of Bon Iver.

Infinite Light, Lightning Dust's sophomore album for Jagjaguwar, finds duo Amber Webber and Joshua Wells (both of Black Mountain) calling upon the powers of classic pop arrangements and making the most of five days with a Steinway Grand piano. While Webber and Wells met through their involvement in what they described as two of the saddest bands in Canada, the songs written for Infinite Light found the two moving away from the uniformly downbeat. Rather, the songs were more suited to lush and melodramatic arrangements. Cue the strings. Moments of Infinite Light remind us of the glory days of musical theatre, with touches of Hair, Rocky Horror Picture Show and Tommy. Lightning Dust have delivered a cosmic record about the adventure in finding love and the journey in losing and rediscovering "the light."

It’s been 8 years since the first Skygreen Leopards' record was released. Since then the boys have maintained their singular aesthetic while managing to dabble with faux-folk, avant garde pop, reverb-drenched lo-fi psychedelia, plastic country and blurry ballads. This latest effort finds them collaborating with Jason Quever (Papercuts) to create a melancholy world overflowing with itinerant dandies, urban streets, suburban teens, and more girls' names than I care to count, all set to melodic shuffles featuring harmonies, frail piano, and romantic guitars.

As always with the Leopards the rhythms refuse to be bridled, the boys resist the urge to jam, and they won’t ever learn to sing properly. This will frustrate the expectations of some. Others will find a sweet shadowy hiding place in these songs -- 3 minutes to hang out with girls who race horses, boys who never learned to dance, and a dirty uncle who steals your cigarettes.

Oneida has delivered a monster named Rated O which happens to be the crowning achievement of their storied creative lives. By producing this colossus they have also created the necessity of its destruction -- which within the confines of this tremendous accomplishment -- they do so handily and with utter fluency. Perhaps Rated O represents the encyclopedic representation of ONEIDA MUSIC, ONEIDA CREATIVITY and ONEIDA INSATIABILITY. As the leviathan rises from the murky depths to endow the idle watch with illusion, disillusionment and mortal terror -- thus Oneida leaves a hieroglyphic spume upon the glassy surface of what is KNOWN and UNKNOWN. The music contained within the covers of Rated O must be seen as a gifted wilderness that when traversed will grant the traveler both a fractured mirror and a demolished and worried pathway deeper into the abyss. This album is an attempt to contain the entirety of Oneida and thus it points the way to infinite rebirth and boundless creativity. It is a finite map and the suggestion of unknown worlds. We finally have in our hands the album that Oneida has often gestured towards. Ladies and gentlemen, this is one of the greatest triple albums ever recorded.

Oneida has been releasing genre-defying music since 1997. They have nine full-length albums (one as double album, and now one as triple album) and various EPs and singles to their name. The list of great musicians and artists that Oneida have performed or collaborated with is far too extensive to briefly summarize here. They are critical darlings, they have become ambassadors for Jagjaguwar, and they are paying it forward with a label of their own called Brah Records (distributed by Jagjaguwar). For the reductivist in you, consider Oneida the bastard offspring of a Can/Suicide marriage, a band who is not afraid to pluck, tap, bend, synth or crash their way to the various extremes of rock, pop, folk and the avant-garde, and who brilliantly do so without alienating the respective fans of any of these so-called "genres".

The worry about the reunion of the original Dinosaur Jr. line-up, more than 20 years after their formation and legendary dissolution, was that these guys were just flogging the back catalog as a marketing gimmick. With the release of Beyond, in 2007, the band gave a hearty Marshall-driven "F**K YOU!" answer to those inquiring ears. Restoring the sound established by the opening hat-trick gambit of Dinosaur, You're Living All Over Me, and Bug, the Beyond record continued the band's march into rock greatness by making old ears smile and new ears bleed afresh. And now comes Farm, the fifth full length record by the original line-up-J Mascis, Lou Barlow, and Murph--set to release on their new label home Jagjaguwar on June 23rd.

If Beyond was Dinosaur Jr.'s return to form, Farm is proof that this band continues to deliver that which makes rock worth cranking to 11. At times wholly 70's guitar-epic, at times perfect for sitting by a babbling brook with Joni and Neil, Farm encompasses Dinosaur Jr.'s signature palette - soaring and distorted guitar, unshakable hooks, honey-rich melodies - songs that get into your head and, bouncing around happily, stay there. The ear-catching "Plans" is nearly 7 minutes of classic whipped-topping rock dessert, while "I Don't Wanna Go There" is a meat-and-potatoes main dish, mixing unapologetic lead guitar with straight-ahead delivery a la James Gang or Humble Pie. These two tunes round out twelve tracks propelled by the unique energy of one of America's greatest living rock bands hitting their stride.

Farm was recorded in J Mascis' Bisquiteen studio in Amherst, Massachusetts, and was produced by Mascis.

Sunset Rubdown was once the moniker under which Spencer Krug released low fidelity solo recordings. The project has long since evolved into a full band, and Dragonslayer is the third full-length recorded by the whole group. Besides Krug, it features the three musicians who originally signed on: Jordan Robson-Cramer on drums, guitar and keys, Michael Doerksen on guitar and bass, and Camilla Wynne Ingr on keys, percussion and vocals. And now, for the first time, newest member Mark Nicol can be heard on bass, drums, and percussion.

Sunset Rubdown's previous release on Jagjaguwar, Random Spirit Lover, was a studio-built album, in that much of it was written while recording (built up in separate layers, with almost all the vocals needing to be overdubbed). With the new album, the band wanted to try something completely different. It was a very conscious decision, and not a "natural progression." The result is an album that feels honest, natural, and straightforward. The musicianship is left in the open, unassisted by studio magic, and the songs are left to justify for themselves their own screwy pop-rock existence.

Dragonslayer was recorded in the fall of 2008. Sunset Rubdown hope that the true strength of this new album is a hidden complexity that emerges slowly from within the straight production and raw musicianship, and from what sounds at first to be an only slightly skewed approach to pop. They hope it's like that one friend of yours who looks unassuming and normal, but once you get to know him it's obvious he's basically crazy.

"Outside Love" is ten songs of love and hate that read like a Danielle Steele romance novel but that would probably make for bad television.

"Outside Love" is the third album by Pink Mountaintops, AKA Stephen McBean, who has slowly emerged as a distinctive voice and a very special contributor to the North American songbook. A veteran of the Vancouver/Victoria punk rock scene, McBean is best known for his contributions to acclaimed rock band Black Mountain, as principal songwriter, guitarist and co-vocalist.

As the second single from The Stand Ins, "Pop Lie" takes the meta-referential mission of Okkervil River to a new distinctly pop level. Stephen Deusner had the following to say about it for Pitchfork: "[Okkervil frontman Will] Sheff wants to look beyond common pop song notions to discover something truer and more essential, no matter how disillusioning it may be, which is the central, enthralling contradiction for Okkervil River: Even as they ruthlessly deconstruct pop music, they make great pop music. The darker Sheff gets, the more honest he sounds and the more absorbing the song. By that equation, the stand-out on The Stand Ins is "Pop Lie", an exquisitely bleak dismantling of singer-songwriter pretensions." There are two additional tracks on the single, on which Sheff plays the role of a whole band: vocals, guitars, bass, and drums. There's an orphaned song from The Stage Names / The Stand Ins sessions called "Millionaire" which displays the storyteller in Will rising to the surface in a soaring acoustic piano-laden shuffle. Also included is an alternate slowed-down, fuzzed-up version of "Pop Lie".

Swan Lake is the musical group featuring celebrated songwriter-mystics Daniel Bejar (of Destroyer and New Pornographers), Spencer Krug (of Sunset Rubdown and Wolf Parade) and Carey Mercer (of Frog Eyes and Blackout Beach). While their debut album was a beautifully-weaved mash-up of their disparate song-writing styles, often with layer upon layer of various melodies and stylistics thrown into a collaborative cauldron to magical, and at times discordant effect, their second album Enemy Mine reflects a more stripped-down, more deliberate approach to collaboration. It's as if they really tried to just make nice songs together.

Everything is coming together in Julie Doiron's world, from embracing her electric past, to embarking on a new and energetic phase of her solo career with some of the most upbeat and inspiring songs of her recording career. I Can Wonder What You Did With Your Day -- which arrives on the heels of the album Lost Wisdom, Doiron and her bandmate Fred Squire's recent critically-acclaimed collaboration with Mt. Eerie -- presents listeners with an album that reflects both her continued growth as an artist and a renewed optimism as a songwriter as well. As has often been the case, Doiron's songwriting is rooted in what's happening around her.

More than any other songwriter, you can tell exactly what's going on in her life. Direct and painfully honest, she lays it all out in her lyrics. "I just sing about what's happening," she admits, resigned to her style. "I don't know how to do anything else. I don't know how to write any other way. I've wanted to... I've tried! Because sometimes I feel like maybe I shouldn't be so direct, but I don't know how."

In addition to this new perspective, Doiron has made an album which showcases a thick distortion and melodic pop not heard since her days with indie heroes Eric's Trip in the '90s. It's part of a desire to get back to her electric days with that band. The past couple of years have seen Eric's Trip regroup for triumphant reunion tours, and a rekindling of her work with Trip mainstay Rick White (who produced her 2007 Polaris Prize-nominated album Woke Myself Up, and returned for this album). I Can Wonder was recorded at White's isolated home studio, just northwest of Toronto. Doiron handled the electric and acoustic guitar parts, Rick played all the bass and keyboards, and Fred Squire performed all the drums and some lead guitar. Squire, who comes from Sackville, New Brunswick, is Julie's bandmate in another of her projects, Calm Down It's Monday.

The Blue Depths is an album for warmer places, a balmy haze habitat for headphone meanderings. This is a dream world where Neil Young and Jimmy Webb float in the reverb-saturated summer breeze. The solemn harmonies of "Moonlight/Twilight" drift between sheets of stirring bowed bass murmur as shimmering guitar notes ebb and flow underneath. Bursts of yearning harmonica arc over ethereal soundscapes in "The Case Of The Great Irish Elk." The jubilant piano of "Harmless Lover's Discourse" gives way to the most enticing pop moment of the album, a soaring bed of synth propelled by a driving bass line and vibrant rhythms.

The four song Blood Bank collection continues down the path forged by 2008's critically acclaimed For Emma, Forever Ago.From the title track's remembrance of the winter warmth we seek, to the summer love tribute of b-side gem "Babys," Bon Iver's snow-blanketed harmonies live across the seasons. Both expansive and intimate, these four songs explore the darker and lighter natures of the seasons and what they signify, and offer a dynamic glimpse into the natural energy and refined craftsmanship that characterize Justin Vernon's music.

Stepping up to the plate to ensure that the 7" single doesn't go the way of the dodo bird are Will Sheff and Charles Bissell, who each covers a song written by the other. Sheff covers "Ex-Girl Collection" which Bissell wrote and performed with his band Wrens (from their album The Meadowlands). Bissell covers "It Ends With A Fall" which Sheff wrote and performed with his band Okkervil River (from their album Down The River Of Golden Dreams). The project was initially conceived to celebrate the two songwriters collaborating on the road in early 2008 when Bissell joined Okkervil River on tour as lead guitarist for a few months.

The Dead C's DR503, released in 1987 (and not to be confused with the releases DR503b or DR503c, which are completely different recordings), sounded like nothing before it ? a furious pastiche of unrelenting drones, noise and menace. It didn’t fit in with the other bands New Zealand's venerable Flying Nun was releasing, and it immediately staked a fork in the road, dividing the "New Zealand Pop Sound" from it's black sheep brother, "New Zealand Noise." Today, the record still sounds as vicious and vital as when it first went to vinyl, except now perhaps there will be more people ready to appreciate the innovative approach the band took some 21 years ago.

Eusa Kills is The Dead C's second album from 1989, released by Flying Nun, the arbiter of the time for all that mattered in New Zealand rock. Considered by many to be their "songs" record, the band took the abstract sounds of their time -- those being created by such luminaries as Dustdevils, This Kind Of Punishment and Dadamah, and added their own dose of ominous aggression. Sneering vocals drift over improvised melodies and unstructured rock songs. One can hear the direct influence The Dead C had on Sonic Youth at the time -- mining deep into the underbelly of music to yield a truly intense and unparalleled sound.

Wilderness's third full-length album entitled "(k)no(w)here" was conceived as one musical piece, and the impetus for this composition came from an invitation to collaborate with renowned visual artist Charles Long at Long's exhibit at the Whitney Biennial in Spring of 2008. The eight identifiable parts of "(k)no(w)here" are not readily separated from each other, such is the flow from and into each part. Created in ways different than the previous Wilderness self-titled album (2005) and the Wilderness "Vessel States" album (2006), "(k)no(w)here" still retains the Wilderness sound, with some evolution. On the new album, James Johnson is sometimes joined vocally by Colin McCann (aka The Lord Dog Bird, whose self-titled debut was released by Jagjaguwar in the Summer of 2008). And, as on previous albums, McCann performs on guitar, Brian Gossman on bass, and William Goode on drums, but the resulting community of all these parts comes across as more dynamic, and the perceived space they inhabit seems more vast.

Brooklyn noisepunk outfit Parts & Labor has dramatically altered their wall-of-sound: Their fourth album, Receivers, finds P&L focusing on open spaces, longer movements, expansive arrangements and loftier goals. On eight epic tracks, Receivers showcases the band's catchiest and darkest moods to date, reveling in a growing dynamic sensibility only hinted at in their previous work. Though they've maintained their love affair with glitchy oscillations and anthemic vocals, they are now utilizing the full possibilities of a band that was once a scrappy punk trio, and now a mature art-rock quartet. It's is a heady mix of psych, noise, and pop influenced by the arty minimalism of Wire, the surreal pop of early Eno, and even the spaced out psychedelia of Dark Side-era Pink Floyd.

Sometimes light and spacious, at other times eerie and dense with an ominous weight, this self titled album touches upon Velvet Underground, Swell Maps or This Heat while not really having any obvious precursors - a lo-fi masterpiece cloaked in layers of vibrato and guitar wash.

It's been four years since the release of Nagisa Ni Te's previous album Dream Sounds, and now - after much work - their seventh album Yosuga has been completed. Jagjaguwar is once again very proud to deliver the band's most recent work to North America and Europe. Yosuga also marks the first time that Jagjaguwar has released a Nagisa Ni Te title on vinyl (not to mention the still popular compact disc format!). The Japanese duo of Shinji Shibayama and Masako Takeda deliver an album that consists of both beautiful arrangements and soft melodies. Yosuga - the meaning of which refers to the source or grounds upon which the body and mind rely - is one of Nagisa Ni Te's finest efforts.

Pre-orders will ship to arrive in the mail by the release date of September 9, 2008. All pre-orders made between August 11 and September 9 will receive download codes via email for digital versions of the album which will be available for download as early as September 5th. Orders will be shipped with posters for both The Stage Names and The Stand Ins at no additional cost.

OKKERVIL RIVER's new full-length album The Stand Ins is the sequel to 2007's critically acclaimed The Stage Names, which Pitchfork praised as "?one of the year's best," and The New York Times proclaimed, "This band's musical arsenal keeps getting fuller." The Stand Ins was recorded in Austin and produced by longtime collaborator Brian Beattie and Okkervil River. The album features 11 songs and includes the track "Lost Coastlines," on which Sheff and recently departed Jonathan Meiburg of Shearwater share a duet on the joys and hardships of trying to keep the band together. Of the process Will Sheff explains, "We had so many songs we were excited about that we briefly threw around the idea of just putting out a double record. Instead, we decided to take a group of songs that fit with each other and turn that into The Stage Names, setting the rest aside for a future release, a The Stage Names sequel." The Stand Ins is that sequel, part two of a staggered double album. Like artist William Schaff's embroidered artwork, which depicts what's happening underneath The Stage Names' front-cover quicksand hand,The Stand Ins picks up exactly where Part One left off but also delves deeper into the story and theme of The Stage Names. It is a full-length, fleshed-out, deeply ambitious labor of love.

The Lord Dog Bird is the solo recording project of Colin McCann, guitarist for Jagjaguwar artists, Wilderness. While the band was on extended hiatus, McCann kept at it, documenting his feelings about life and music at home on his four track. The result is a gritty, tactile document of a time spent in self-exploration and flux.

"Preteen Weaponry" is part one of the "Thank Your Parents" triptych of Oneida releases. Oneida members past, present and future all contributed to this project. It reminds Oneida of what a live performance might sound like. It contains captured improvisational moments married with craft. You can consider it an introduction to their forthcoming triple album "Rated O", which is part two of the fore-mentioned triptych (to be released by Jagjaguwar in early 2009).

Originally released in 1997 by Sub Pop, Loneliest In The Morning was Doiron’s second solo release and her first release as Julie Doiron (having dropped the moniker Broken Girl). This re-issue comes complete with three bonus tracks: “Second Time” from split 7” with Snailhouse and the tracks “Who Will Be The One” and “Too Much” from the 7” release Doiron recorded with the Wooden Stars. Loneliest In The Morning — an album Pitchfork described as “catchy enough to knock Liz Phair upside the head” — is a critical piece to the Doiron catalog and given the wonderful relationship Doiron and Jagjaguwar have forged over the last decade, this re-issue is particularly significant.

Julie Doiron began her career in music in 1990 at the age of 18 in Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada playing bass in Eric's Trip, a folky yet psychedelic band that were to become the undisputed underground darlings of Canadian music. Eric's Trip were the first of many maritime Canadians signed to Sub Pop and found international recognition, releasing several albums and touring widely. Following 1996's Purple Blue, Eric's Trip announced their breakup and Julie Doiron embarked on her solo career, first releasing songs as Broken Girl and soon under her own name starting with Loneliest In The Morning, which was recorded in Memphis, TN with producer Dave Shouse of the Grifters. She has released seven full-lengths and three EPs, including the Juno Award-winning Julie Doiron & the Wooden Stars album.

Originally released in 1997 and having sat in storage unit purgatory (growing finer) for the greater part of a decade, Jagjaguwar proudly unearths and re-distributes this visceral British take on American outdoor spirituality.

"VEIL (For Greg) is a carousel ride inside a digital rock tumbler, a battle between gnomes and mercury termites for a maple tree's soul, and the reflection of a pile of Moog turtles in a bathroom mirror's swamp sweat. Throbbing Gristle reimagined as zen garden desk accessory." — William Gass

Ladyhawk's kiss-of-death evokes the devilish sounds of Goats Head Soup guitars, the honey-slides and howling of Neil Young in his darkest hours, and the phantoms that haunted Roky Erickson at the Holiday Inn. Recorded over a period of two weeks in an abandoned farm house behind the shopping mall in the band's childhood hometown of Kelowna, British Columbia, Shots is an album filled with the cold creaking and ghostly echoes of the old house in the dead of winter. Like a party for the last house standing in a sea of strip malls and condos, surely near the end of its time.

We are thrilled to release Bon Iver's debut full-length "For Emma, Forever Ago". Bon Iver (pronounced: bohn eevair; French for "good winter" and spelled wrong on purpose) is a greeting, a celebration and a sentiment. It is a new statement of an artist moving on and establishing the groundwork for a lasting career. For Emma, Forever Ago is the debut of this lineage of songs. As a whole, the record is entirely cohesive throughout and remains centered around a particular aesthetic, prompted by the time and place for which it was recorded. Justin Vernon, the primary force behind Bon Iver, seems to have tested his boundaries to the maximum, and in doing so has managed to break free from any pre-cursing or finished forms.

Favorite psych-and-prog-spiritual pioneers BLACK MOUNTAIN are back with "In The Future", their second full-length album that resonates with the same epic ring, beloved deep rock touchstones and genuine folk fragility that made their self-titled debut full-length an instant classic. The new album possesses immense breadth, seamlessly showcasing short and classic folk-pop gems along with driving modern rock masterpieces, peaking with "Bright Lights", a seventeen-minute multi-dimensional opus that gives Pink Floyd's "Echoes" a run for its money.

Favorite psych-and-prog-spiritual pioneers BLACK MOUNTAIN are back with "In The Future", their second full-length album that resonates with the same epic ring, beloved deep rock touchstones and genuine folk fragility that made their self-titled debut full-length an instant classic. The new album possesses immense breadth, seamlessly showcasing short and classic folk-pop gems along with driving modern rock masterpieces, peaking with "Bright Lights", a seventeen-minute multi-dimensional opus that gives Pink Floyd's "Echoes" a run for its money.

Make the Dead Come is a limited edition mini-album that Minus Story created as a creative outlet in the middle of making their upcoming full-length My Ion Truss (due out June 19, 2007). In between recording sessions for My Ion Truss with producer John Congleton (The Polyphonic Spree, Explosions In The Sky) at Electrical Audio and Low Key, the band self-recorded Make the Dead Come on their 8-track in Kansas City. A thematic continuation and resolution of the death/ghost songs from their last two full-lengths No Rest For Ghosts and The Captain Is Dead Let the Drum Corpse Dance, Make the Dead Come is a darker and scarier journey with the group of Boonville, MS natives. On it, they rejoice in their trademark intuitive & distorted self-recorded style, which they've warmly named the Wall of Crap. This is their first recording with new band member Lucas Oswald, who contributes hammer dulcimer and background vocals.

Autumn Response is a spartan folk-"pop" record filled with tinder-box intimacies, composed of some of the shortest songs ever recorded by Richard Youngs. The simplest form of trickery comes from Richard Youngs' restrained use of an acoustic guitar, bringing it back to Youngs basics. Twenty-six seconds into "I Need the Light", the first track off the album, the listener is confronted with the pivotal element of the record, the drawing line between the hardcore Youngs purists and fairweather fans: the track, like others on the record, features Youngs' double-tracked voice splitting in two - as one overlaid performance veers away from the other. This gesture warrants such a title "King of the Progressive Minimalists" - which is often used beside his name by critics - as the confident inclusion of such an effect grants it legitimacy. Youngs' voices slipping away from one another is on par with other intense representations of singularity such as Donald Judd and Malevich's Suprematist Composition: White on White. Pop is a gesture, a stance, a pose. Autumn Response is a singer-songwriter album, as Youngs' fingers slip over the steel strings with little feet and whispery toes, his gently prophetic songs evoke Roger Waters and the folk phase play is sure to appeal to fans of Animal Collective's Sung Tongs.

Volume I" is the debut album by the Besnard Lakes, that preceded their recent opus "The Besnard Lakes Are The Dark Horse" which was released on Jagjaguwar in early 2007. "Volume I" was originally released in 2004, and, at the time, The Besnard Lakes were comprised only of husband-and-wife team Jace Lasek and Olga Goreas. The Besnard Lakes have just recently become critical darlings, on the strength of their live performances throughout North America and Europe, as well as with their second full-length record "The Besnard Lakes Are The Dark Horse", which quickly made it onto numerous and budding best-albums-of-the-year short-lists by a whole range of music-listening pedigree -- critics, casual and not-so-casual rock listeners, garden variety pop fans, and headphone junkies. Carrying the Breakglass label name, "Volume I" is distributed throughout the world with the help of Jagjaguwar.

The woven lyrics and singular songwriting style heard in Sunset Rubdown invoke a mythological world, where magical narratives and tiny metaphors give shape to ordinary objects in the room; sometimes beautiful, sometimes beastly. The moniker was first born to bare the solo bedroom recordings of Spencer Krug, but has since evolved into a full-fledged band. Now enter Sunset Rubdown's third full-length record, "Random Spirit Lover", featuring twelve songs that bleed in and out of each other, mixing portents with theatrics, confusions with conversions. The dark glamour of the music beneath the half-baked revelations in rhyme creates a tone of high drama, blown-out and overt, but the stage is wild and the roles aren't clear, so the sincerity of the work and the spontaneity of the recordings can't help but shine through the formality of structure.

In early 2007, the Besnard Lakes released a full-length album on Jagjaguwar that quickly made it onto numerous and budding best-albums-of-the-year short-lists by a whole range of music-listening pedigree. Now these inspired Montrealers continue what they've started, re-stoking the flames and releasing two additional tracks. Side A is "Casino Nanaimo", a place where repetitive sound and lights engulf addicted gamblers all vying for space on the eternal wheel of fortune. And then there is side B, "Devastation (alternate version)", the unedited and original straight-to-two-track nine-minute version, recorded live-off-the-floor at Breakglass Studios.

*We are now out of the deluxe 2xcd version - though limited copies will be available in stores on 8/7/07. The standard single disc version is now available for sale online.* Okkervil River's Black Sheep Boy was one of the most acclaimed releases of 2005. Kelefa Sanneh wrote in the New York Times that "Will Sheff, leader of the Austin indie-rock band Okkervil River, writes like a novelist." With their newest release, The Stage Names, Okkervil River dynamite the walls of Black Sheep Boy's gothic, moss-walled castle from the inside to let in the glaring sun. Where Black Sheep Boy presented a fairytale of dark babbling streams and high distant towers, The Stage Names takes place in an unmistakably modern world, where snowy televisions blast into cheap hotels the spectral images of soap stars endlessly betraying each other, where losers in late-night bars languish to the beat of their favorite songs, where broken-down actresses place their final cell calls from lonely mansions high in the hills. Riddled with characters real and fake, with true-life biography and brazenly fabricated autobiography, with the relics of high culture and the crumpled-up trash of low culture, The Stage Names is a cinemascopic take on the meaning of entertainment. And, crucially, it entertains. Reverberant with echoes of Motown snap and girl-group pop, redolent with ripe whiffs of dirty rock 'n' roll, shining with the shimmy of Bo Diddley, with the shimmer of the Velvets, with the swagger of the Faces, and with a glittery sprinkling of cheap perfume over the top of it all to disguise the stink, The Stage Names is a relentlessly-paced and ruthlessly thrilling journey.

Little Hours is the patient sheen of stillness after a short, violent burst of intention. The lingering, resonant decay of a nail being hammered into wood. A piano laden marriage of small hopes and quiet violence. In Church Hill, a borough of Richmond, Virginia, there is a small yellow cottage. Next to the cottage is an austere replica of a mid-nineteenth century, white Federal period house. The members of Spokane hand built the structure over the course of 2006 while recording and revising their first new album in four years, Little Hours. The record is both a document of and an aural parallel to that difficult, meticulous process. In the emotional vein of folk singer Jackson C. Frank with the textural emaciation of composers Zbigniew Preisner and Morton Feldman, the songs themselves are hinged on concepts of failure and stillborn ideas, on the conflicted process of building or birthing a cerebral image into the world. There are the echoes of insistent cats running through the skeletal frame of the house, pillaged, infant birds in their mouths, left half-dead at the foot of the hole where the stair would be. Little Hours is packaged in a vinyl sleeve with both record and CD inside, 50 of which are handmade and numbered. It features the core ensemble of 2003's Measurement, which MOJO magazine called "a uniquely enthralling treasure", along with contributions from members of Brooklyn's orchestral, minimalist band Gregor Samsa,

Amber Webber and Joshua Wells have been playing together for many years as part of Black Mountain. They've toured the world and have played impenetrable space-rock to the unlikeliest of audiences. With an abundance of creative energy to spare, the two decided to start a separate project together, that they named Lightning Dust.

Committing themselves to a more simplistic approach with Lightning Dust, Webber and Wells also decided to escape the comforts of their familiar instruments and writing styles. On their self-titled debut, minimal and spacious arrangements and a moody, theatrical vocal-style aptly expose the demons, creating songs that creep into your bones with a haunting chill.

The album was recorded in a dank cave and a bright blue house, perhaps an unconscious yet obsessive protest of the sunny beach and beer world that surrounded them on the outside. But despite this unattractive external world, and while completing the album in small fits of insanity, the two were compelled to retreat to the coastal summer air from time to time, when they could take no more of the shadowy frame that they had decided to enclose themselves in.

Many of the songs on this self-titled debut began years ago as melodies which persistently floated around in Webber's head. And, conveniently, Wells was at a loss for words to accompany the piano songs that wouldn't leave him alone. Their creation Lightning Dust matched these lingering ghosts with each other, creating a special, lasting work that perfectly brings together the shadows with the sunshine.

In the distance the land kisses the sky. If you squint just right you can see Minus Story in flux there, somewhere between earthbound and ethereal, making sunspots on the horizon line with their noisy & melodic headphone pop. Reared together in America's Midwestern cradle, Minus Story speak their own codified musical language as only childhood friends can share. Tirelessly artistic yet unpretentious, they are unafraid of abject noise, folk, soul, or straight-up pop rock.

My Ion Truss is Minus Story's Studio Album. It was recorded at Electrical Audio in Chicago with John Congleton (Explosions In the Sky, The Polyphonic Spree). Having a producer behind the controls for the first time allowed them to work more collectively as a band, giving them the freedom to record the primary tracks completely live. It is the closest thing to Minus Story's cathartic live show that they've put to tape to date. The result is an epic & anthemic cross between Pearl Jam, Queen, Brian Eno, and Roxy Music.

Life is full of ups and downs. Sometimes you get up just to get down again. Sometimes you run just to feel the wind against your face, and sometimes you stand still to watch things crumble around you. Vancouver's Ladyhawk knows this. And they got up - way up - and entered a recording studio for a day-long session between tours in the first half of 2006. Perhaps they then soared too close to the sun, like moths drawn into the flame, only to fly again into the shadows, their wings singed. And then maybe, gathering their burned and broken instruments about them, they limped their way home, rearranging the pieces and sounds haphazardly, letting them all lay as they fell.

The end result is the sound of four brothers breaking something down to create something new, reaching into the fire again. It is a shattering 6-song march called Fight For Anarchy, all unmuzzled and jawing out, nothing edited or expunged. And on it Ladyhawk show that, like Spoon, Dinosaur Jr. or Tom Waits, they have the ability to conjure growls, snarls, and storms of sound into musical lightning, never striking the same place twice.

Mapmaker is the second Jagjaguwar/Brah album from Brooklyn noisepunks Parts & Labor. Expanding on the soaring melodies and cracked electronics of 2006's Stay Afraid, P&L explores a wider array of berserk, malfunctioning instruments and intricate, pummeling rhythms. These 12 political/personal anthems about ambition and distraction boast bigger choruses, denser drones and shinier hooks.

Adding new textures to Parts & Labor's searing pop-squall, the album features guest spots from flautist/megaphonist/vocalist Natalja Kent (of The Good Good) and guitarist Joe Kremer (of labelmates Pterodactyl). Opening surge "Fractured Skies" features a horn section (led by P&L's BJ Warshaw on sax) billowing up through the kaleidoscopic fuzz of electronics. Track 10 is a distorted-toy-keyboard take on the classic Minutemen antiwar spiel "King Of The Hill."

Parts & Labor cite the following bands as influences and are totally cool with you name-checking them: Hüsker Dü, Sonic Youth, Boredoms, Minutemen, Neutral Milk Hotel and Amps For Christ. Parts & Labor spent 2006 touring extensively around Europe and North America, playing shows with Clinic, Black Dice, Islands, Sonic Boom, I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness, Wilderness, Man Man, Spank Rock, An Albatross, Oneida, Year Future, Hidden Cameras, Charalambides, Wooden Wand, Matt & Kim, Kyp Malone and Oakley Hall; and they can't wait to do it again.

Mapmaker was recorded and mixed by The Brothers (Oxford Collapse, !!!, Measles Mumps Rubella, Pterodactyl) at the Brothers Studio in Brooklyn, NY. Additional vocals and electronics were recorded by Parts & Labor in a windowless bedroom. In between their Jag full-lengths, P&L recorded an all-electronics EP for esteemed experimental electronic label Broklyn Beats. Warshaw and Friel also run their own record label, Cardboard Records, which has recently put out music from Gowns, Big Bear, Pterodactyl and Aa.

Think Can or Faust all mashed up with the personal disco of Arthur Russell. Think of the electric organ of Terry Riley's Shri Camel, slowly morphing and perpetually in motion, but remaining in step with a guitar-less and Moroder-charged Sparks. And think of a more composed Dead C, where Michael Morley sings about Big Thunder Mountain while holding a beach ball in one hand and fending off the digital shards of musique concrète humming around his ears with the other. Alex Delivery have gleefully exposed their myriad gifts and influences with their debut full-length Star Destroyer, almost two years in the making. On it the New York-based quintet have demonstrated their penchant for the electro-organic, seamlessly blending the sharp and gentle, like a chain-gang draped in organza. You can hear the chattering of insects resonating from the inside of a kettle drum, and you can imagine this colossal robo-beast wobbling and waltzing down an abandoned carnival boardwalk. Sylphs soar across strings, occasionally descending to enjoy some wiggle-worthy poly-rhythms. These and many more colorful characters have climbed aboard the Star Destroyer.

Alex Delivery is Nik Bozic, Marika Kandelaki, Robert Lombardo, Colin Ryan, and Yegang Yoo. Star Destroyer was self-recorded and mixed by the band and mastered at West West Side with Alan Douches. The album artwork is taken from six oil paintings made by Kandelaki.

Spokane's second full-length THE PROUD GRADUATES finds quietness abundant in the most unlikely places. Written and produced by Rick Alverson (former frontman for Virginia-based band Drunk), this record, like the CLOSE QUARTERS EP recently released by Spain's Acuarela Records, is a more dynamic expansion of the terse, melancholic and at times minimal compositions explored on last year's debut full-length LEISURE & OTHER SONGS.These eight songs are like visiting the rubble of a home that once held commotion and laughter. Coupling the spare and orchestral, the album draws in tone from influences as diverse as Simon and Garfunkel's PARSLEY, SAGE, ROSEMARY & THYME, Leonard Cohen's SONGS OF LOVE AND HATE, The Cure's FAITH and Galaxie 500's ON FIRE. According to one writer, "like Talk Talk's Mark Hollis, Alverson's lines trigger emotions in your consciousness with the lightest touch."Assisting Alverson in the studio and on the road is Courtney Bowles, who performs backing vocals throughout the record. Also contributing to the record are old and new collaborators, including violinist Karl Runge and ex-Drunk cohort Bill Russell. Recorded mostly at home in Richmond, Virginia, this record was mixed in Los Angeles by Rich Costey.To be released September 17, 2001.

Patrick Phelan's third full-length recording is called Cost. To Phelan, it is an understatement. For him, every opportunity explored is another opportunity forgone. More so than on previous Phelan records, Cost places an emphasis on the guttural. His voice and words take center stage. He is much less guarded on Cost than on previous records. There is no lack of desperation in these new songs, yet a hopeful tone is maintained throughout. Balance is the key. Emotion is the lock. And simplicity is the door. Like a finely-tuned architect, Phelan places all of his songs in their proper space, not letting them get crowded with unnecessary words or sounds. He also steers Cost from tipping too far in the "minimalist" direction, thanks in part to a bevy of guitar solos and to the abundance of true rock moments that occur throughout the record. It has been four years since Phelan's second full-length record Parlor came out (released on Jagjaguwar, as was his debut Songs of?). And during this sabbatical from the frontlines of musical performance, Phelan has devoted his time to the pursuits of cooking ? spending time in Italy recently doing just that ? and studying local and global human rights. If one's life energies are zero sum, these recent personal endeavors of Phelan have come at the cost of promoting and performing his recordings. The good news for his fans: the release of Cost coincides with the shift of Phelan's focus back to both recorded and live music, confirmed by his recent formation of a new live band. Bryan Hoffa, who the record is dedicated to, returns as engineer and co-producer. The record was recorded in several stages, creating an interesting challenge for Phelan who often had to work with "one takes" as the foundation of his pieces. A celebrated cast of players provided support and, bringing their influences to the table, made things a lot easier for Phelan. Greta Brinkman, former bass player for Moby, and Ian Whelan provided splendid bass arrangements. Justin Bailey's electric guitar arrangements are placed beautifully along-side Phelan's finger-picked acoustic guitar. And Camper Van Beethoven's Jonathan Segel offers a haunting violin on two tracks. Phelan's music ? acclaimed critically for its elegant simplicity and earnestness of expression ? flourishes on this latest release, building on both old and new influences and contributions.

First released in 1989 on Jad's own 50 Skidillion Watts Records, Jad Fair & Daniel Johnston's IT'S SPOOKY (as it was called for the European pressing; the American version carried the title Daniel Johnston & Jad Fair) seemed like the perfect pairing of two of the most unique and idiosyncratic songwriters to emerge from the post-punk rubble of the late-'70s. Jad and his brother David Fair self-released their seminal first album as Half Japanese in 1977, citing punk forefathers (and fellow Michiganders) MC5 and the Stooges as critical influences. They followed that with over a dozen full-length albums and countless singles, not to mention Jad's collaborations with Yo La Tengo, the Pastels and Teenage Fanclub.Meanwhile, Daniel Johnston had self-recorded his first songs on the family piano with a boombox between 1980-82. These songs would eventually make up the earliest of the twelve cassette releases which he hawked on Austin, Texas, street corners, a few of which were re-released by Homestead Records, and were subsequently followed in the early '90s by his two stunning studio classics for Shimmy-Disc (1990 and ARTISTIC VICE), and his one and only record for Atlantic Records (1994's FUN). A Beatles fanatic at heart, "a healthy number of discerning musicians and critics have hailed Daniel Johnston as an American original in the style of bluesman Robert Johnson and country legend Hank Williams." On this new expanded reissue -- which contains 6 bonus tracks not on the original version -- IT'S SPOOKY stands up as a true masterpiece, sadly overlooked in its day. A magical trip through the child-like universe of two kids at heart, it is even more impressive now with twelve years of perspective just how uninhibited Jad & Daniel are as they walk you through their best fantasies and worst dreams on IT'S SPOOKY's 25 originals and 6 covers (by the likes of Burt Bacharach, the Beatles, Phil Ochs, and Austin friends and co-conspirators the Butthole Surfers and Glass Eye).Also, as a special added bonus, this reissue is an enhanced cd and features a very moving live video performance of Daniel on organ playing his "Don't Play Cards With Satan". This never-before-seen archival footage was shot by David Fair during the original IT'S SPOOKY recording session.

Reissued on June 18, 2001.

The Lucky Sperms: Somewhat Humorous by Jad Fair and Daniel Johnston is being released hot on the heels of the Jagjaguwar reissue of Jad and Daniel's once-sadly-overlooked opus It's Spooky (originally released in 1989.) It is a timely reunion of two of the most compelling and idiosyncratic songwriters to emerge from the post-punk rubble of the late-'70s. Their initial collaboration on It's Spooky seemed too good to be true. This time they have entered into the proverbial bat-cave with co-conspirator Chris Bultman and have created a piece of heaven on earth.

Recorded and produced by Jad Fair, The Lucky Sperms: Somewhat Humorous is made up mostly of songs composed skeletally and separately by Bultman, Fair and Johnston. With Bultman being the x-factor notwithstanding, what makes all of Jad and Daniel's shared works so special is the natural chemistry between them that is so readily apparent upon first listen of the record. There is an unrefined playfulness in their work, a playfulness not much unlike what was present on Bob Dylan and The Band's Basement Tapes.

Both Fair and Johnston have enjoyed long careers making music in their own unique way. They have forged their own paths and created their own mythologies, borrowing little from anybody else. Since 1977, Fair has--with his iconoclastic band Half Japanese, as a solo artist, or with collaborators Yo La Tengo, the Pastels or Teenage Fanclub--defied convention while continually tapping that primal-root-without-inhibition that most every artist strives for. Johnston, likewise, has unflinchingly plowed forth for the past twenty years with his own artistic vision. Since the early days of hawking his boombox-recorded cassettes on Austin, Texas, street corners, through his classic mid-period Shimmy-Disc albums, through the major label fiasco and to now, as he is at long last re-emerging as a public artist, Johnston has been making a clear case for his being one of this past quarter century's most important songwriters. He is nothing less than a visionary. It is no surprise, then, that each of Jad and Daniel's trademark personalities are in full-regalia on this new record. (How could such large personalities be anything but?) It blissfully follows--true to the form of all of their past works--that The Lucky Sperms: Somewhat Humorous is another chapter in a magical trip through the child-like universe of two kids at heart. On it, both of them uninhibitedly walk you through their best fantasies and worst dreams.

Released October 29, 2001.

Not all sediment settles at the bottom of the river. Some dirt stays in the water and becomes dissolved and suspended in the big, shapeless ocean. LEISURE & OTHER SONGS, the debut Spokane full-length, examines this sort of sedimentary existence. Written by Rick Alverson, shortly following his return from Albany, New York, after a failed attempt to find a home in New England, this album is resonant with the inability of finding permanence anyplace but where one finds oneself already: bending over a sink, sitting in a chair to tie one's shoes, or nodding resignedly to greet a neighbor. Musically, it is a lush and uniquely-mixed tapestry, involving a large number of instruments and players. It evokes the songcraft of Drunk, of which Alverson is a founding member, if it were less collaborative and more singularly arranged. It is a very strong work that comes solely from the much harder school of songwriting which strives to commingle music and words without sacrificing either.Spokane is Rick Alverson's new "more solo" project. Having been the principal songwriter for Drunk in the course of their four full-length records and two EPs, Alverson has decided to explore a more personal vision with Spokane. He is touring domestically as Spokane this fall and will be performing with Drunk this winter when the group tours Europe and the U.K. LEISURE & OTHER SONGS was co-produced by Patrick Phelan, who also contributed instrumentation.

Released on October 2, 2000.

Rich with Beach Boys style harmonies, Roy Orbison reverbs and orchestra, Pink Floyd's pacing and Freddy Mercury's falsetto, The Besnard Lakes Are The Dark Horse is a luxurious foray into sound and music. This is the second record by The Besnard Lakes, Montrealers by way of Western Canada. Their independently released previous record, Volume I, came out in 2004, and it was noticed by critics but was largely overlooked by the public at large. On both records, The Besnard Lakes have shown that they are masters of finely-honed experimental pop songs that invoke the eerie Lynchian setting as aided and abetted by the music of Julee Cruise. But, on The Besnard Lakes Are The Dark Horse, the band throws into the mix a mad dash of Fleetwood Mac proportioned swagger and ambition. Not so incidentally, the Besnard Lakes have created a masterpiece that will resonate within all quarters, amongst critics, casual and not-so-casual rock listeners, garden variety pop fans and headphone junkies.

We all are driven to doing certain things and making certain decisions in our lives for any number of reasons, be it ambition, fear, greed or love. The last purpose is perhaps the most identifiable to most of us, and so it is no great mystery that that which drives us can both reward us immensely and plummet us into the greatest depths of inconsolable sadness and regret. On Julie Doiron's first album of new material in over two years, she addresses in her signature intimate songwriting style both the heights and the fallout in a way that forces the listener to reexamine their own loves.

One of the most important and greatest loves in Julie's life is that towards her family. The first half of Woke Myself Up details the joy and awe that her family has given her. Immediately, one knows that her unabashed and unaffected lyrics are coming from a woman truly moved. The second half sees Julie making mistakes, blowing second chances, and coming to terms with the sad truth that one cannot live up to expectations set by herself or those she loves. The harrowing untitled final track (recorded and added to the album at the eleventh hour by Doiron) may very well be the most affecting of Doiron's performances ever committed to tape.

Also important to the recording of this album was a reunion of sorts with her musical family. Founding Eric's Trip bandmate Rick White produced and played on the entire album, and a handful of the songs contain the entire original Eric's Trip band nucleus that took the Canadian indie underground by storm 15 years ago. Working with an old friend and collaborator like White was key to this album's intensely vulnerable and emotionally raw tone. What's captured is timeless and universal, in the same way as Cat Power's Moon Pix, Leonard Cohen's Songs of Love And Hate, and Joni Mitchell's Blue.

“The President's Dead" is the first release by Okkervil River since 2005's masterful Black Sheep Boy project. Having spent most of 2005 touring and writing, the band and Jagjaguwar wanted to rush this single out before 2006 came to a close. Locked in the grooves of this limited-edition vinyl-only release is what might be Okkervil River's most accessible and most contentious song, "The President's Dead." A two-minute and forty-two second serving of alternative historical fiction camouflaged as a folk anthem tarted up as a pop single that never was, "The President's Dead" depicts with tenderness and empathy the shock felt by a sensitive young Republican upon hearing news of an assassination over the radio, its lyrics shifting sneakily from images of public horror to those of private tenderness as its music performs a similarly schizoid leap. Meanwhile, sequestered away on side 2, the lyric that bobs atop the loping, twangy pop of "The Room I'm Hiding In" depicts a paranoid flight from vastly more powerful pursuers determined to exact the most severe punishment and revenge.

For Simon Joyner's tenth proper album, he's joined by his working Omaha band, the Fallen Men. What they've created is a dark, rock-and-roll, beginning or ending of an era, seven leaf catalogue of people (skeletons) and their troubles (blues). Sounding like Doug Yule-era Velvet Underground, Dylan with the Band (or is it Neil Young and Crazy Horse?), and Sister Lovers damaged Big Star, this is unlike any other Simon Joyner record.

The song cycle begins with a cobblestone street inviting a man in an open window to splash the bricks below, to the cadence of It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding), and ends with a man walking down the street waiting for the rain to wash him clean. In between is all the news fit to sing. Joyner knows it takes a worried man to sing a worried song and the songs here are certainly worried, peopled by bruised lives, but make no mistake, this is not hopeless music

Swan Lake is the new band featuring Daniel Bejar (Destroyer, New Pornographers), Spencer Krug (Wolf Parade, Sunset Rubdown) and Carey Mercer (Frog Eyes).

Beast Moans is their debut record featuring, among other things, beast moans, starling voices, cobra hi hats and arpeggiating pianos. The songs are great weaves, showcasing the famous and very distinctive songwriting styles of Bejar, Krug and Mercer. The sum is definitely greater than the parts, and at distinct points on the record a new "combined" style emerges that throws whole heaps of magic into the air, sounding like nothing else.

When the three "come together" (as if stuck in a sea-storm, in a sinking boat, forced to bail together), we first glean some grudging camaraderie. But, like rugged individualists after the storm, parting at dry crossroads, their work on Beast Moans can still be the sounds of each individual muttering under his breath, and not the chorus of exclamation and supplication to the raging maelstrom that is the hallmark of "collaboration". It's good either way.

Beast Moans was recorded in a summer cottage town in Canada, and in Victoria, in a house where Krug and Mercer are familiar with and Bejar feels comfortable enough. It was "self-produced."

Now available for the first time as a vinyl LP. Originally issued as CD in 1998 by Oblique Recordings, Sapphie was Richard Youngs' fifth solo full-length and quite a unique album in his already unique oeurve.

Made up of three acoustic tracks -- spanning over 37 minutes in length -- featuring just classical guitar and voice, Sapphie is quiet and introspective. The songs feel like an intimate journey by hand through a song cycle of loss and renewal. Within the context of his massive and ever-growing body of work, Sapphie is his most song-based and arguably his most personal. Fans of reclusive sages like Nick Drake, Anne Briggs and Robert Wyatt will most appreciate the timeless quality inherent in Youngs' songs.

Originally released in 1990 in the vinyl format on Youngs' own No Fans label, this title has been reissued numerous times in the CD format (most recently by Jagjaguwar.) Jagjaguwar is now proud to reissue this very important work on viny as well. Advent became a true underground success story, a critical darling, with Alan Licht, for example, putting it on his "minimal top ten list" in the publication Halana. "It is a record by an intense young man," writes Richard Youngs, in an essay packaged with the record.

"A three-part composition for piano, voice, and ultra-nasty oboe and electric guitar, Advent indicated signs of life in a genre long dormant in the 80s 'experimental' scene. It continues the tradition from [Terry Riley's] Reed Streams on down with gusto."-Alan Licht's "Minimal Top Ten List", Halana

The Skygreen Leopards started in 2001 as a duo, just Glenn Donaldson and Donovan Quinn. Working out of the Hobo Victoria district of San Francisco, they've since recorded five full-length albums and one EP in their five year history. Over these recordings the band has been given to metamorphosis but has always managed to sound distinctly "Skygreen". Their newest album, Disciples of California, continues in the alchemical tradition of change and inward-revolt. On it, the Skygreen Leopards mix pop melodies, minimal country truisms, jingle-jangling Californianism and angular folk with something the band refers to as "our horse called Dire Arrow," which roughly translates into family friendly (sans the "American Censorship" connotations).

Living Through / Part Ways, the first 7-inch released by Wilderness, contains two previously unreleased songs done at Silver Sonya Studios, the same studio as where their first two full-lengths were recorded and mixed. On “Living Through”, thundering bass and dangerous shards of guitar splatter before James Johnson as he walks his plank, while on “Part Ways” Will Goode channels his pummelling drums through the gates.

No band has been so praised for such a wide range of music over the last ten years than Brooklyn's Oneida. Nobody has come close to matching their output of dazzlingly creative, uncategorizable music. Psychedelia, minimalism, maximalism, one-step, infinitewave, blah blah blah blah?it's all there, all the time; and Happy New Year, the band's ten billionth album, is Oneida's zenith. Simultaneously the most eclectic and most coherent album they have yet released, Happy New Year flows flawlessly from a traditional hymn of grim beauty ("Distress") through hypnotic rounds, thunderous kraut grooves, severe ballads, and other, indescribable music. Phil Manley of Trans Am and the Fucking Champs and experimental pianist Emily Manzo return for encores of their guest appearances on 2005's The Wedding; they are joined by Shahin Motia of Ex Models, Brad Truax of Home, and frequent Oneida collaborator Barry London.

Ladyhawk's core is bracing rock. Neil Young's Tonight's The Night is the hailstorm on the hood of The Replacements Let It Be, while distorted guitars invoke the thread and swerve of Silkworm and Dinosaur Jr. Helped along the way by Amber Webber (vocals) and Josh Wells (percussion, organ, singing) of Black Mountain, it will be hard to find a more hauntingly beautiful set of rock music than this debut. It was recorded and mixed, with the help of Black Mountaineers Wells and Matthew Camirand, in the "Karachi Vice" clubhouse, in the back of a furniture factory, amongst chicken and fish processing plants. With some of the more "inexpensive" ladies of the night scattered about, it captures the bottlenecked frenzy of their much-loved live show. There, each night, these grown-up kids at heart fall over, get right back up, cry on shoulders and fold the day in halves, watching the sun come up over the dashboard.

Brooklyn trio Parts & Labor combines tumultuous noise with enormous, triumphant melodies on their latest album, Stay Afraid. Malfunctioning electronics howl in agony, drums rupture like fireworks, battle cries are belted through a monolithic layer of distorted bass and guitar. P&L revel in day-glo noise, charred drones, punk velocity and phoenix-like hooks?a unique blast influenced by the clamor of Husker Du, the bluster of Boredoms and the homemade spirituals of Neutral Milk Hotel.

Wilderness is an unconventional band from Baltimore, Maryland, whose apparent musical pedigree stems from the likes of the Fall, This Heat, Savage Republic, Public Image Limited and Joy Division - without sounding like any of them -, and whose music is every bit as spiritual as it is visceral, as nuanced as it is overt, and as communal and all-embracing as it is culturally alienating and nihilistic. Embodied most recently in their second full-length record called Vessel States, the music-art of Wilderness attempts to glide above definitions or categorizations, especially those that are self-serving or manipulative. Yet the band is fully aware that striving for this kind of purity is most likely futile. Every human expression builds on or is connected to previous expressions, and the music of Wilderness will be packaged, commodified and connected to other forms of things beyond their understanding or control. This tension between the intended and the actual, and the awareness that this tension exists, may best sum up what Wilderness is all about.

Pink Mountaintops is Stephen Mcbean. His other bands to date have included a straight out punk outfit, a crusty punk/metal band, and, most recently, a psych-tinged maximal rock group whose self-titled debut record, Black Mountain, captured a great amount of critical acclaim (and meteorically became Jagjaguwar's best-selling title.) With Axis of Evol, Pink Mountaintops' second full-length record, Mcbean has once again created something much greater than the sum of his influences. Axis of Evol begins with a forboding spiritual. It then almost immediately ramps up into a thumping, buzzing, blissful haze, at various parts sounding like the Velvet Underground or Spacemen 3 or the Jesus and Mary Chain circa Psycho Candy, and then ends with a hypnotic, Smog-like meditation. Throughout the record, Mcbean sings about love and war, the love of war, and the war of love?on the body, on the mind and on the soul. Home-recorded and largely self-produced, Axis of Evol is a further testament to the vital prolificacy of Stephen Mcbean.

The early 90’s lo-fi explosion coincided with and was precipitated by the emergence of hundreds of small independent tape labels, many of which onlyexisted long enough to release one compilation. It was during this heyday that Simon Joyner contributed some of his finest material to various intrinsicallylimited edition releases. Beautiful Losers: Singles and Compilation Tracks 1994-1999 collects all such compilation appearances and the few singlesmade during these years, including the perennial favorite “One for the Catholic Girls” and “Burn Rubber”, recently covered by Bright Eyes.This was such a prolific period for Joyner that he usually contributed his best songs of the moment to whoever requested a track, instead of reservingthem for his proper albums. You’ll find here varying degrees of sound quality and various approaches to songs, from solo acoustic to full band, but whatties the collection together is the strength of the material. This isn’t filler. The same themes that haunt his large scale work are explored here: death, love,the politics of time. Fans of Joyner’s albums can now stop searching for the impossible to find cassettes and out of print 7” records.We’ve compiledeverything here, even the songs Simon would rather forget. For those unfamiliar with Simon Joyner’s music, this compilation is a good place to start as itserves in the same capacity as the original compilations and 7” records, to introduce the ambivalent audience to the ambitious songwriter.

Room Temperature was recorded in the winter of 1992 in a small room above a carpet store in Omaha, Nebraska, with two microphones and a cassette four-track recorder. Despite being his second full-length release, this was Simon Joyner’s first fully realized album, the one that first caught the interest of British DJ John Peel, who played it so often he single-handedly created a European audience for the Midwest singer-songwriter. Populated with sometimes harrowing and desperate stories of the complex workings of the human heart (in conflict with itself), the stark record features Joyner solo on all tracks. This marks the influential album’s first appearance on vinyl.

Okkervil River's Black Sheep Boy Appendix is not just a companion piece to their critically-acclaimed 2005 release; it's also a condensed, alternate vision of that record's imagery and themes, with the ultimate intent to exhaust and destroy both. This ambitious mini-album rounds up and reworks the band's favorite unfinished songs (tracked for the Black Sheep Boy full-length) and then punctuates and bookends them in brand-new compositions; in the process, it shows songwriter Will Sheff and company both revisiting themes from their past and shooting off in some startling new directions. "Missing Children" entombs an unnerving fairy tale monologue in an arrangement that recalls The Marble Index or Tilt; its melody is reprised twenty minutes later in a frenetic and jangly rocker that might have been hatched from the side of Love's "A House is Not a Motel." In between is everything else; suffocatingly lush string instrumentals, skittering found sounds, lean rockers, deafening epics, the rhythm section interrogating the lead singer, and "Black Sheep Boy #4," which messily dispatches the Black Sheep Boy character in a lurid crime scene high on a plateau of hallucinatory, cinematic folk.

The Skygreen Leopards present Jehovah Surrender, a six song EP that documents the changing of seasons in a world of whippoorwill moans. Electric guitar howl like a farmers hound, fuzz bass stampedes, and drums trot and gallop like the finest of wild horses. Donovan & Glenn write: “Not long ago the band was visiting a friend in Port Costa, California. After sharing a bottle of wine and enjoying the moonlight dances of his two daughters—the friend wanted to share a secret. He pulled an oversized key outof his overalls pocket and lead them out back to his shed. In the shed was an ancient drumset and a cobwebby electric guitar.The man said he knew Arlo Guthrie and that he was once in a band called Hobo Splendor.Well thats all it took for theSkygreen's to lose their hearts and heads to a new muse.We played All the Young Dudes and Hobo Jesus Blues all night longand the daughters danced ballroom. This e.p. is inspired by the man from Hobo Splendor—get better my friend!”

If we could hear the angels singing about us, they would be in harmony with the chosen sons of Boonville,Missouri. With No Rest for Ghosts, their second full-length record for Jagjaguwar, Minus Story have arrived. Their heavenly racket shuffles, flutters, crashes and bangs all about us. Their reedy artistic voice nears multi-octave range. Their rhythmic presence delights us in a sublime collision of the conventional and the experimental. And while their trademarked "Wall of Crap" sound is still present to some degree, No Rest for Ghosts has transcended the earnest collage aesethic of sounds battling it out for attention and now fully exhibits a depth and subtlety of performance not found on their critical darling The Captain Is Dead, Let the Drum Corpse Dance (their first full-length for Jagjaguwar, released in 2004). No Rest for Ghosts is a portal to a richly imaginative Minus Story universe, where the band sings about a narrator being eaten and regurgitated by his/her own baby in order to feed its own monstrous young, the chasing of a cloud that eats souls, the jumping off of a cliff like lemmings after employers are laid waste to, the dreaming of a Nazi invasion of their hometown, God sadistically laughing at them, and their respective minds being invaded by undead celebrities. The emphasis is on either structure over hooks, or the willingness to enjoy a story in words unfolding over a set of chords without any unneccessary "window dressing" getting in the way. Minus Story is influenced musically by the solo work of John Frusciante, the tenderness of Bjork, the melodic interplay ofTelevision, and the directness of late period Tom Waits. The band is also conceptually influenced by the brutality of JerzyKosinski's The Painted Bird, the sweeping and ambivalent authoritarianism critique of Jason Lips (the provider of cartoon drawingsfor the album art, and the creator of the Opera and the Blond Stalin character), and most of all by the idea of the invisibleenemy and the erosion of the soul by unknown outside forces.The isolation and boredom of small town life has led Minus Story to put the love of art and best friends before career, fashion andprofessionalism. The writing and recording process for them is one of festivity and trying to capture inspiring moments in theirmistakes. They will never hit their mark, but, in failing, they arrive transported somewhere else. A driving aesthetic force withinthe band is their conviction that they are only different from their musical idols in that they are dependent on shitty jobs to fundtheir art. Only the rich and privileged are truly independent. Minus Story feel that they and their peers are bound by a commonlack of funds as "budget artists" playing "budget rock".

Richard Youngs has been making music for over two decades. The Naive Shaman, released in dual format (cd and lp), is his seventh album for Jagjaguwar and is a deeply personal work. Created on a computer at home, it is a high density digital song cycle driven by heavy, heavy electric bass guitar.

The opening "Life On A Beam" combines a modal vocal line with throbbing sonics and non-linear percussion. Elsewhere a plaintive voice threads itself through frosted atmospherics and we hear Richard's first recorded kazoo work since 1992's "New Angloid Sound". At the core of the album is "Sonor In My Soul", a bass loop on to which are collaged strangulated guitar, singing and more singing. The track climaxes in a hollered plea for "unity". The second half of the set contrasts "Once It Was Autumn", a succintly crafted dub chant, with the epic "Summer's Edge II" whose sprawling 16+ minutes anchor a floating vocal melody and free-flowing drums with fuzzed bass octaves.

This quartet's self-titled debut conjures images of Metal Box-era Johnny Lydon fronting Savage Republic or Explosions in the Sky. Cascading guitars build into the most beautiful pop epiphanies, as though the Edge were leading a modern day Popol Vuh up the mountain before us. Wilderness' debut is the culmination of three years steady work by four dear friends. Their songs touch on numerous themes like living through the end of capitalism, the beauty inherent in beauty, staring at the sky, listening to the woods, feeling the landfills topple and swell, vibrations in the market place, collective brain harvesting and the absolute falling all around the opinionated as the opinionated fall all around the absolute. The record is about your perception. It is ultimately a celebration of life that serves as an impetus to stand in a place and aim music towards itself. The four human beings that comprise Wilderness have been making art and music, living and travelling together for over 10 years. They live and work in Baltimore, USA.

Time to rejoice space travellers, music lovers, drug takers and all freak creatures of the nighttime world. The heat is on and the streets are wild. We've had enough of your modern music and fake painted smiles. We're all looking for a little more. Big amps, small amps, it's all the same. Dee-lite said that groove is in the heart. But we believe that rock'n'roll is boiled in the blood and born in the soul. What more do you want? What more do you need? Distractions? Interstellar cellular progress? Better killing machines? Originally released as a 12-inch single (and acting as the band's first release ever), the Druganaut single is now being molded in the CD format, with two additional songs added to it. Black Mountain are the front line soldiers for the Black Mountain Army, an arts collective from Vancouver, British Columbia, featuring members of The Pink Mountaintops, Jerk With A Bomb, Sinoa Caves, and Blood Meridian. Their debut self-titled full-length record may well be the Pied Piper that takes us all back into the primordial mountain, where our hearts can be made steady and our minds can be set free. It brings to mind - as does this Druganaut single - Animals-era Pink Floyd, Black Sabbath, Neil Young and a James Brown on a liberal does of cough syrup.

Through the hollow vision of centuries of reputable texts and celebrated celebrity and American pulp fiction, journeys have always been epic. And so Southern Indiana's own Odawas mine these territories in their debut full-length "The Aether Eater". It is a sort of conventional journey. One which Neil Young may have taken in his early Buffalo Springfield days. This journey has a beginning, an end, and an epochal disposition. It takes a Camus-type anti-hero and hurtles him into space to watch him mock and finally humble himself before it (but of course, in the most discrete way possible). Odawas are nicking all over the place: from Randy Newman's plain-spoken grandeur or Beach Boy story-telling or Angelo Badalamanti's cheesy romanticism or Charles Ives' avant-garde ear or Art Garfunkel's "presence-of-a-blue-whale" harmonies.

Oneida came up with the idea for The Wedding in early 2001, and immediately began building the largest music box on the east coast of the United States. Built of plywood, salvaged marine pilings, industrial motor parts and over seventy saw blades, the hand-cranked behemoth was assembled in the warehouse loading dock that's also home to the Vale of Tears, Oneida's own recording studio. By hammering nails and spikes into the cylindrical pilings at carefully mapped intervals, and rotating the pilings through thickets of variably-tensioned saw blades, Oneida created and recorded unearthly tones and melodies; these were subsequently used as the basis for a series of melancholy, yearning songs that now see the light of day as The Wedding.

After working for several years to complete the songs, the band added a number of complex, lush string arrangements. Brian Coughlin, leader of the NYC new music group Fireworks Ensemble, contributed his arranging talents and assembled a group of string players whom he felt were capable of understanding the unusual demands of the songs at hand. "Other than my version of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring for Fireworks, no arranging task has pushed my skills and talents to such extremes as the music of Oneida," according to Coughlin. "The emotional complexity of the music is unmatched -- except maybe by the steel-drum version of 'Stairway to Heaven' I arranged for an amusement park," he laughs.

Other guests at The Wedding include Phil Manley of Trans Am, Adam Davison of Company (who also appeared on Oneida's recent EP Nice/Splittin' Peaches), Brad Truax of Home, and avant-garde piano wizard Emily Manzo.

Black Sheep Boy is Okkervil River's most ambitious and cinematic record yet, a love story and adult fable that evokes the mature songcraft of Leonard Cohen's New Skin for the Old Ceremony, the sophistication of Scott Walker's Scott 4, the shambling slow-motion bravado of Neil Young's On the Beach, and the raw nerves and trick effects of Big Star's Third/Sister Lovers. It also occasionally echoes Lou Reed's Transformer in that it is actually the band's most playful and confident record by far, delighting in linguistic games, scrapping all caution and reserve, reveling equally in sheer pop, lacerating rock and roll, and straight-up country weepers. The most fully-realized and wildly adventurous Okkervil River record yet also introduces into the modern folk bellwether's traditional palette of mandolin, pump organ, steel guitar, Wurlitzer, strings and horns such previously foreign elements as children's keyboards, digitally-manipulated field recordings, and dirty splatters of distorted guitar. The longing might be keener, but the fun is funner this time around, too; somebody has spiked the drinks, and there are at least two bullets in the Russian roulette chamber.

Most of the songs for Black Sheep Boy were written by Sheff after he'd moved out of his house to spend all of 2003 on the road, touring for Down the River of Golden Dreams and road-tripping around the country during off weeks. After rehearsing many of the new songs on the road during tours with Califone, John Vanderslice, Azure Ray, CocoRosie, and Clem Snide, the band retreated to an un-air-conditioned Austin, Texas tin roof shed to solidify the arrangements before going into the home studio of Brian Beattie (an ex-member of Austin legends Glass Eye as well as a producer for Daniel Johnston) who also recorded the band's Jagjaguwar debut Don't Fall in Love with Everyone You See.

Minus Story’s debut record for Jagjaguwar from a year ago, The Captain is Dead, Let The Drum Corpse Dance, drew rave reviews and solidified the band’s standing as young sonic provacateurs on the brink of widespread notoriety, as fertile crafters of mystical melodies and harmonies that dig truly and deeply under your skin. Drawing from the spirit of The Captain is Dead? but looking unflinchingly towards the future, Minus Story have now created a new shorter work that will inspire the same kind of fervent (and sometimes hyperbolic) reaction as did their Jagjaguwar debut. Listening to the Heaven and Hell CDEP, one is left with absolutely no doubt that this band is special, that they are especially privy to the fundamentals of great music making, that they are becoming in more and more proximate league with the likes of Smile-era Beach Boys, Circulatory System and Neutral Milk Hotel. The first two songs on the CDEP are a couple of years old. The third and fourth songs are newer, the fourth (“Misery is a Ship”) being written just a week before recording occurred. Along with a Misfits cover and the recital of a “true” ghost story, these four Minus Story songs contained on the CDEP are about death in one way or another.

Dream Sounds may be the closest Nagisa Ni te ever gets to a greatest hits record. And although there are only four tracks on this compact disc (some previously released, but all re-recorded, re-mixed and re-mastered for this special edition), the record clocks in over forty minutes, runs the whole gamut of the sounds and moods of Nagisa Ni te’s songcraft over the years, and contains their most moving moments. This full-length record is the perfect introduction to the dreamy and nature-obsessed universe of Nagisa Ni te. Nagisa Ni te is Shinji Shibayama and Masako Takeda, and they are from Osaka, Japan. This is their sixth album.

This is the tinderbox to the fantastical fire that is Black Sheep Boy, the much anticipated full-length record by Okkervil River, coming out in April 2005. This CD-single, priced exceptionally low, will be in stores while Okkervil River tours the United States with the Decemberists in March and April. The first track, “For Real”, is from the full-length record. The second track, “The Next Four Months”, is previously unreleased. And the third track, “For the Enemy (Live)”, is a very special recorded glimpse of Okkervil River performing live.

With Life & Love in Sparrow's Meadow, The Skygreen Leopards expand on their strange pastoral folk-pop and enter center stage as one of the most unique voices in the new folk movement. The Skygreen Leopards are Donovan Quinn (Verdure) and Glenn Donaldson (Thuja, Blithe Sons, Franciscan Hobbies, Birdtree, Ivytree, etc.). Formed in 2001, Quinn and Donaldson met while responding to a cryptic ad in the paper looking for Lumberjack players (little wooden dancing men you play on a board for percussion and visual interest). After being bested by an Appalachian man, Donovan and Glenn began studying the stars together where Glenn, while tracing his finger along Orion, said, "Donovan, we are the Skygreen Leopards", and so they were.

The Skygreen Leopards originate from the Bay Area-based Jewelled Antler forest of bands. Donaldson co-founded the Jewelled Antler label in 1999, which has since released over 25 CD-R's ranging from straight field recordings & outdoor improv-folk to noise & fractured pop music. The Skygreen Leopards are without a doubt the most structured and accessible of these projects. Much of the Jewelled Antler music is recorded live outdoors on mini-discs & boomboxes while the Skygreen Leopards primarily focus on a surreal form of multi-layered folk-pop recorded on an old reel-to-reel housed in a moldy trailer on the back of a horse ranch. 12-string guitars, banjos, dulcimers, Jew's harps, organs, maracas, mandolins, harmonicas, ocarinas & reed flutes harmonize with the field-recorded songs of birds, barnyard animals & insects. This hedge of sounds is the backdrop for Quinn & Donaldson's mythological rants & hazy melodies.

Black Mountain, the front-line soldiers for the Black Mountain Army, an arts collective from Vancouver, British Columbia, write, perform and record music that speaks (and sings) to this realization: that solutions are rarely simple, that the world is as complex as it is ambiguous, and that music sprinkled with an inoculating dose of madness may well be the Pied Piper that takes us all back into the primordial mountain, where our hearts can be made steady and our minds can be set free. Their debut self-titled record, like a space probe built of erector set parts and transmitting secret and arcane messages to earth by string, charts territories unknown yet remains grounded by the roots of classic rock and roll. It is easy to discern these roots: Black Sabbath, Animals-era Pink Floyd, Blue Cheer, Led Zeppelin and Can. Principal songwriter Stephen McBean's vocals are a smoother, bluesier amalgam of the voices of Neil Young, Mick Jagger and perhaps a James Brown loaded on cough syrup. And when Amber Webber's voice joins Stephen's, the combination brings to mind the potency and chemistry of Richard and Linda Thompson singing together on Shoot Out The Lights, or of Meat Loaf and Ellen Foley howling together on Bat Out Of Hell. Musical comparisons aside, the Black Mountain full-length is one part protest song, one part pop-cultural commentary, and one part sick-groove-rock casserole peppered with mesmerizing ballads and intoxicating ditties. "Modern Music" is the lead-off hitter and counts its way to the imposing and riff-rife "Don't Run Our Hearts Around". Immediately thereafter, the sludge-rock masterpiece "Druganaut" establishes the fecund heart and tone of the record. Black Mountain have also just recently released a 12-inch single (on Jagjaguwar), including an extended mix of "Druganaut" on the A-side. And the band's currently sexploitative counterpart The Pink Mountaintops, a band that also pipes into the prolific well-spring of Stephen McBean's mind, released their self-titled debut record (on Jagjaguwar as well) this past summer. A video by Heather Trawick of the song "Druganaut" is included on the CD version of the Black Mountain self-titled record.

Released by Mercrider Record Co. in 2001 and now available from SC Distribution for the first time, Moebius Syndrome is the precursor to 2004's breakthrough album on Jagjaguwar, The Captain is Dead, Let The Drum Corpse Dance. Minus Story craft melodies and harmonies that dig truly and deeply under your skin, displacing all those lead-filled chiggers of life that keep you low and on the outside. Moebius Syndrome begins to define Minus Story's self-proclaimed “Wall of Crap” sound—resembling a naively recorded pop symphony - much like the music of Circulatory System and Neutral Milk Hotel. It also embraces those indefinable qualities found on records like Mt. Eerie by Microphones or Fragile by Yes. It is experimental pop, through and through, with all the attendant haunted edges.

On Sleep and Wake-Up Songs, Okkervil River and principal songwriter Will Sheff take advantage of a break between albums to present a small collection of five more meditative songs that toss little boomerangs across the distance between what is and what could never be. They try on a loose-fitting felt suit of Tim Hardin-esque folk-pop, wade until soaked into a misty psychedelic duet, strap on an electric guitar for a lark, stack the overlapping refrains of Sheff and Minus Story’s Jordan Geiger into a Phil Spector-esque ecstacy of sexual confusion, and finally strip things down to naked and initiate a straightforward love song. These five songs have a thematic unity and a serious purpose, but the modesty of the EP format allows the band to carry them off with a candid sense of playfulness. Next spring will see a new full-length from Okkervil River; in the meantime, rest awhile in these songs.

Goodnight Nobody finds an unguarded Julie Doiron, efficiently but undeliberately creating her first masterpiece in only a few days time at three different locations. Ploughing through the studio in just a few days with a gangly crew of musicians, the result is a collection of songs that all are "allowed" to speak for themselves. Their instinctive "rawness" remains intact, not cooked out by incessant knob twiddling or second-guessing. With the help of friends like Herman Dune (who also perform as her European touring band) and ex-Eric's Trip collaborator Rick White, she has taken the textures of her first widely released full-length Loneliest in the Morning and mixed them with the crystalline vocal performance of her most recent full-length Heart and Crime. Goodnight Nobody is the end product, the best of both worlds, downcast and moody pop tunes right from the heart, aimed straight at the heart. Even though she is described frequently in the press as an "indie-diva" or "chanteuse" of the highest power, Julie Doiron fits these well-intentioned approbations only in that she is a woman singer comfortable in her own skin. Under-reported are her signature guitar-stylings and her singular mastery of conveying mood and sentiment in song. For fans of Cat Power, Leonard Cohen and Hayden.

The first widely distributed Okkervil River full-length on Jagjaguwar is now available in the vinyl format. This is the record that put the the Austin, Texas-based group on the map. Uniting the strains of moody chamber pop contemporaries like Tindersticks, Arab Strap, and Bright Eyes with the ragged emotional vulnerability of classic folk singers like Leadbelly and Dock Boggs, Okkervil River plays music that is both lush and organic, beautiful and unsettling. Supported by some of Austin's best musicians (including a duet with Daniel Johnston) and produced by Brian Beattie, it is no surprise that Don't Fall In Love With Everyone You See is an accomplished musical work. What makes this album truly singular, however, is that, lyrically, it is so good it makes your head hurt. The good kind of hurt. It reads like no other record we have ever come across, a very contemporary, reflexive masterpiece owing a lot in tone to the very best of the Russian and Southern Gothic literary traditions.

Nagisa Ni te (aka Shinji Shibayama and Masako Takeda) are back. Their new record The Same As A Flower, recorded between 2002 and the beginning of this year, is the third to be released by Jagjaguwar. Much like on previous records, the songs on the new record by this Osaka, Japan-based group are about nature, about the singularity of two people immersed in nature together, and about experiencing life as “being”, not “becoming” or “recovering from”. And like their previous full-length record, Feel, The Same As A Flower still brings to mind the very best of sixties’ and seventies’ psychedelic, progressive and folk rock (i.e. middle-era Roy Harper, Pink Floyd, 13th Foor Elevators and early Neil Young). Maher Shalal Hash Baz’s Tori Kudo may describe Nagisa Ni te best when he says: “Nagisa Ni te’s naked Progressive rock-based worldly songs, which are sung not so much deliberately as seriously, on their love beach, now fill a blank somewhere between underground hi-fi and overground lo-fi.” Also of note, Dominquie Leone of Pitchfork wrote: “Well before mystic folk became fodder for VW commercials, Shibayama was conjuring up the spirits of Tim Buckley and Tim Hardin to the delight of the Japanese psychedelic scene.”

Can a sexually frustrated Canned Heat seduce a hot and bothered Neu into a cheap one night stand? The rock'n'roll road can be a long and lonely one. And it leaves much time for the mind to wander, to fixate and to obsess over the human body and all its wondrously dirty parts. Enter The Pink Mountaintops. Their debut record begins with "She caught my eye and I was on fire" and it ends with a repetitive begging plea "Don't walk away!" from a reworking of Joy Division's Atmosphere. In between these bookend statements, mountains are fucked, an ode to rock'n'roll groupies is sung, and tales of loose panties and ex-models are exposed.The Pink Mountaintops is Stephen McBean, formerly of Jerk With A Bomb and now also exemplar member of Black Mountain. The debut record -- conceived at dawn, while high on a mix of trucker speed and Red Bull, and while sailing down a Colorado highway on route to Denver as the last decent Floyd record played on the cassette deck -- was written and recorded in a month with friends Amber Webber, Joshua Wells, and Christoph Hofmeister. The fore-mentioned country drone stoned drug rock band Black Mountain lent limbs, lungs, and amplifiers to the festivities.

Minus Story's mystical third full-length, The Captain is Dead, Let The Drum Corpse Dance, is fuzzy and full of sunshine but also full of dark clouds and cold rain and is wistful and billowing, much like the music of The Zombies, Smile-era Beach Boys, Circulatory System and Neutral Milk Hotel. It also embraces those indefinable qualities found on records like Mt. Eerie by Microphones or Fragile by Yes. It is experimental pop, through and through, with all the attendant haunted edges, including a storyline about some young boy who rallies together an army of children, some black cloud that eats birds, and some girl who comes back as a ghost in a marching band. A masterpiece that will creep into your consciousness and lay anchor for some time.

If the “musical” real number line is infinitely dense, then the most recent work of Richard Youngs endeavors to fill in all of the holes on it. River Through Howling Sky is Youngs’ latest full-length. It returns to the more meditative and drone-y side of his songcraft (circa Sapphie (1998) and Making Paper (2001)), although this is no true devolution: all of his recordings to date have some measure of these qualities. So what is it that sets River Through Howling Sky apart from its predecessors? It is the density on the recording, both intraspatial and otherworldly. The howling guitar that points unerringly to some imagined horizon line. Throughout, Youngs is the calm and steady wolf, chanting odes to infinity. Expose the ancient Brotherhood of Pythagoras to River Through Howling Sky, and you would find knowing nods, pursed lips, and secret incantations in caves. An unwitting acceptance that not everything is rational or conceptually circumnavigable Our western tonal system relies on ratios, i.e. strings whacked at particular intervals. Young’s howling guitar and circular chants—with the help of a spartan amount of percussion and electronics— may just encompass all the possible ratios and, mystically, more.

In over a decade of artistic exploration, Simon Joyner has never been content to make the same record twice. Lost With The Lights On is Joyner's ninth album, and it is a sprawling document in the grand tradition of the post-Dylan singer-songwriter epic. It begins with the narrator declaring "I got sick in the rain on some holy day, dreaming of St. Teresa and I lost all your pills after they spilled out of the bottle into my possible futures." Joyner is a benevolent guide and he wants to see us succeed, so he's got to show us all the burned out basements and blown bridges and the traps along the way so we know how to survive them when they come for us, and they always come for us. By the end of the album, the narrator of "Forgotten Blues" can't see out his window, he can only see his reflection in it. Simon Joyner was born in New Orleans and ended up some time later in Omaha, Nebraska where he has lived for the last two decades, writing and making music. He is an influential local hero with a devoted international following. "Simon Joyner, in one huge, gorgeous gesture, singledhandedly takes American song into his hands and reshapes it into a previously unimaginable creature, a gorgeous thing that lives and breathes on the floor in front of your stereo speakers, and that has eyes into which you can and will look for hours on end, seeing in them things you always wanted to see but had never had the courage to look at directly." - John Darnielle, Puncture

Bevel makes pastoral folk music in the same vein as Vashti Bunyan, Nick Drake and Maher Shalal Hash Baz. Bevel is the project of Via Nuon (lead guitarist of Manishevitz and now defunct Drunk). Down the Puppet String, Marionettes began in the early parts of 1998, is now being introduced for the first time since its original conception 6 years ago. Comprised of old and new songs diligently re-worked and re-recorded between 2001 and 2002, it also includes a chilling rendition of a Civil War-era traditional and a suitably deconstructed version of Donovan Leitch’s “Teas”. Melodious and interwoven throughout this mini-album are the lull-like tones of Deanna Varagona’s baritone sax exhalations. Sometimes an undulating piano line—played by Michael Krassner—can be heard punctuating against the textural rhythms tapped out by Gerald Dowd. Although only 19 minutes in length and operating in a stream of consciousness-like fashion, Down the Puppet String, Marionettes, captures a transitory world, whose bucolic plains and uncharted beaches are characteristic results as one awakens, diluted and immersed, such as from an afternoon reverie.

Oneida's Secret Wars is a Pacific summerjam. It's got Balinese gongs, Hawaiian ukuleles, red wine, injuries, glee, and a song called "Wild Horses" that's written by Oneida. It's also got a lot of good advice. With their new full-length record, Brooklyn sons Oneida simply start where they left off with Each One Teach One, their highly acclaimed and soon to be classic double CD and LP that came out last year. (Jon Pareles of the New York Times dubbed it a top ten pick and Mojo called it an essential underground record.) But these purveyors of righteous noise and indignation never stopped in the first place. Almost immediately after wrapping up Each One Teach One, they collaborated with the Liars on a split EP while touring both Europe and the United States. In the meantime, they also created Secret Wars. Their trademark iterated and psych-tinged noise attack is still fully intact, both nervous and subdued at the same time - like what happens when you give meditative children trained in the ways of yoga an excessive amount of caffeine. If there are any new wrinkles to be discovered, it is perhaps that, even more so than on Each One Teach One (Oneida's Tago Mago), Oneida seem to be mining the same fertile ground as Kraut-rock visionaries Can, effortlessly shedding the constraints of pop forms and structures while still remaining soulful and spiritually centered all along. Like spazzing out in the Lotus position. The album was recorded and mixed by Oneida at the Travel Agency and with Nicolas Vernhes (who recorded the most recent albums by Black Dice, Ted Leo, Fischerspooner, amongst others) at the Rare Book Room.

Spokane is not for people who want to belong to something. On Measurement, their fourth full-length, a shift emerges from the terse, melodic strings that have marked their previous recordings, to a sparser terrain occupied by long, empty spaces and tenuous ambiences. With the addition of Robert Donne (Labradford, Breadwinner, Cristal) on bass, Rick Alverson and Courtney Bowles reduce their songs to an unsentimental narrative, stripped of excesses, resisting the grandiose crescendo that has become so popular in thematic and orchestral music. On “Temporary Things” Alverson and Bowles hollowly imbue the phrase “Should we talk about something else” with an unsettling domestic familiarity. “Addition”, sung solely by Bowles, searches relentlessly for an accountable presence: “There’s something you’re not saying”. And “Protocol” evolves from dependable clockwork into a harrowing, indecipherable whine. In its subtlety and patience Measurement vacillates between the vulnerable and the cold, between resignation and meek defiance, ultimately assuming its own unique place of surety and quiet definition. On “Cities”, a couple laments “Oh Convention / The willing wait out on the lawn / I never wanted to be one / I never wanted to be one”. Undertaking the sort of fragile examination the “closed-space” novels of Samuel Beckett explored, Measurement takes the minutiae of daily life and magnifies it. Mixed by Brian Paulson (Slint, Uncle Tupelo, Wilco). Recorded by R. Alverson and Bryan Hoffa.

Manishevitz are a bunch of introverts trying their hardest to make extroverted music (and failing). City Life is the third Manishevitz album, but it is truly the first product of the band Manishevitz. The first two albums, Grammar Bell and the All Fall Down (1999) and Rollover (2000), were largely composed by Adam Busch and Via Nuon. But after extensive touring in support of Rollover, a new larger band nucleus evolved to also now include cohorts Joe Adamik, Ryan Hembrey, Nate Lepine and Fred Lonberg-Holm. Vocalist Adam Busch has foregone his oft-indiscernible mumbling-like singing for a more articulated and attitude-fueled vocal performance. His delivery resembles that of Bryan Ferry’s 70’s work, while the rest of Manishevitz play foil to his Ferry. Most immediately noticeable are Nuon’s historical leads, Adamik’s rock steady drumming, and Lepine’s snotty sax riffs. City Life is about wonderment, estrangement, mania, exhaustion, solitude, and togetherness. Manishevitz bounces these themes back and forth as the songs thoughtfully bleed into each other (check out the wall of sound climax of “Hate Ilene” as it is hard spliced into the groove-y rock charge of “Mary Ann”). Sleazing, sweating, grunting and moaning through each tune, Manishevitz have created something that will endure. Produced by Michael Krassner and engineered by Andy Bosnak, the album was tracked in Chicago at Clava and then mixed and over-dubbed in Los Angeles at Kingsize with long time friend of the band, Wil Hendricks.

Okkervil River's Down the River of Golden Dreams takes the band's hallmarks?lush, eclectic orchestration that evokes chamber pop and soul, lapel-gripping emotional urgency, and the lyrical, direct songwriting of frontman Will Sheff?and expands and elevates them in service of a stunningly ambitious set of new songs. If last year's Don't Fall in Love with Everyone You See was the middle of the darkest night of the year, Down the River of Golden Dreams is the earliest light of a morning that could either bring the first breeze of spring or a battalion of tornadoes. On it the band stretches their wings. They shake off the fear and trepidation of the last record and try to look life in the face, emboldened by distorted blasts of Wurlitzer, guttural stabs of Hammond organ, urbane strings and jaunty horns that could be the work of a shitfaced Canadian Brass. Down the River of Golden Dreams combines with Okkervil's trademark melancholy a sense of drama and play at which the last album only hinted. It oozes the band's signature string-destroying folk-rock attack and umbilical chamber-pop swoon, but it also echoes the venomous cabaret of Jacques Brel, the off-kilter swagger of the Faces and Bob Dylan's Blonde On Blonde, and the dusky balladry of Nick Cave. In addition, it displays a new confidence in frontman Will Sheff, whose concise, literary lyrics and emotionally direct delivery are rapidly distinguishing him as one of rock music's best new songwriters. Critical raves from the likes of Rolling Stone, MOJO, Alternative Press, and No Depression variously compared the band to Neutral Milk Hotel, Wilco, Bright Eyes, Tindersticks and Will Oldham. This, their third full-length album, was recorded in San Francisco, California, in early 2003?at John Vanderslice's Tiny Telephone studio?with engineer Scott Solter (The Mountain Goats, John Vanderslice, the Court and Spark, Tarentel) at the board.

After a summer spent listening to grimy hip hop beats and hooks, supporting the re-release of Sugar and Feathered, and making 4 track demos, Aspera converged at Tonearm Studios to begin work on their third album. Oh Fantastica continues a darkly thematic tradition established with Sugar and Feathered and the follow up Birds Fly EP (Suicide Squeeze) but strays from both records overwrought psychedelia (oft compared to Flaming Lips and Mercury Rev). Oh Fantastica is full of minimal yet memorable melodies driven by Drew Mills' most upfront and un-effected vocal performance to date. The beats are intentionally raw?composed of deep, 808 / 909 textures and laced with gated, acoustic percussion takes and dirty synth bass lines. On Oh Fantastica, Aspera ride a dream-like wave enjoying and sharing the fruit of parallel universes?where the epic '80s pop production (as heard in early work of Simple Minds and Tears for Fears) exist side by side with hip-hop's old school (Afrika Bambaataa) and new school (Swizz Beats, Anti-Pop Consortium, Missy Elliott & Timbaland, and producers the Neptunes), and, perhaps most-notably, electronic music's contemporary experimentalists (Boards of Canada) as well as its early trailblazers (such as the pop soundscapes of Another Green World-era Brian Eno; Giorgio Moroder's militant electro; and the early-80's tech-adventurism of musical veterans as manifested in Herbie Hancock's Future Shock and Paul McCartney's McCartney II).

Jagjaguwar is proud to release the long lost Julie Doiron album Broken Girl, expanded to include her first two 7"es. It was originally released in 1996 (in a scant edition of 1000) by Doiron after her band--the psychedelic folk group Eric's Trip — had crumbled around her, under the temporary moniker "Broken Girl". The name did nothing to hide her feelings regarding the breakup of her band and the relationships that she shared with its members; neither did the songs on the record. The twelve songs from the original album come across like an epitaph for a departed lover. Broken Girl was a watershed for Doiron, showing her to be the sort of songwriter and performer that Eric's Trip only hinted at. Achingly beautiful and showcasing her vocal style and personality as a songwriter, the reviews immediately put her in the same class as Leonard Cohen in terms of importance as a Canadian solo artist. The album was self-recorded in the same home-y manner as the classic Eric's Trip albums which helped--along with albums by peers Sebadoh, East River Pipe and Smog — define the bedroom aesthetic of the early '90s. While some rock scribes would call it lo-fi, the fidelity of the recordings that Doiron and her Eric's Trip mates employed in the first half of the '90s was clearly the most appropriate medium. The close-mic'ing of everything from the vocals to the swirling guitars and peaking drums created a sense of real intimacy (while avoiding a lot of the awkward pitfalls that so many confessional songwriters run into) and suburban claustrophobia. Rolling Stone wrote, "Fellow Canadian songwriter Leonard Cohen once titled an album Songs From A Room. Montreal-based Julie Doiron apparently took up residence there and removed whatever furniture was left behind."

Richard Youngs' impressive body of work continues to mount. It resembles, unwittingly for sure, a slow zig zag march towards some Hegelian musical ideal in the distant horizon. Youngs, the leading wizard of droney and minimal psychedelic folk, has unleashed Airs of the Ear, his new opus invoking new magic looking for new ears to ensnare. Building on his esteemed recordings Advent (1990), Sapphie (1998), Making Paper (2001) and May (2002), Airs of the Ear goes beyond merely residing in what is the essential ecology of Richard Youngs — the spiritual nexus between the oft disparate realms of traditional folk and the avant-garde; it now embodies this ecology. Acoustic instruments coexist perfectly with electric ones, while neither class of instrumentation is ever trumped by the other contraptions on the record, namely ring modulation, the square wave or the theremin. Perfect balance is almost achieved. There is harmony, true emotional resonance, even on what is Youngs' most captivating work on the record, "Fire Horse Rising". Despite the ever-escalating nature of this song, where Youngs powerfully and repeatedly invokes "...and I don't understand, ...and I don't want to know...", the listener is never allowed to feel overwhelmed or be pushed out of that special meditative and trance-like space. The spell is never broken.English born and bred, but residing in Glasgow, Scotland (where Airs of the Ear was recorded), Richard Youngs has remained busy over the last two years. In addition to his recent Jagjaguwar offerings, Youngs has remained a very active collaborator (releasing albums with Makoto Kawabata of Acid Mothers Temple, Simon Wickham-Smith, Neil Campbell, Sunroof!, Vibracathedral Orchestra, as well as being featured on the latest Damon & Naomi live album Song to the Siren on the bonus DVD).

Guitar virtuoso, songwriter exemplar, former Songs: Ohia collaborator and now Chicago everyman Dan Sullivan (aka Nad Navillus) is back with his most accomplished work to date, Iron Night. But this time the concept of Nad Navillus has been expanded. For starters, Nad Navillus has bloomed into a full band accompanied by various instrumentalists, including a full-blown string section. Sure, Sullivan still writes all the songs and leads the charge with his incredible lead guitar work and vocals. But this isn't your albino brother's indie-rock label's singer-songwriter anymore. There are collaborators in Dan's midst--a team Nad Navillus, so to speak. And they are, dare we say it, making sure the rock gets out.Recorded at Steve Albini's Electrical Audio in Chicago in the blazing summer heat with Rob Bochnik and Greg Norman at the helm, Iron Night is the Nad Navillus full-length avant rock record we've all been waiting for. Lyrically flirting with both the spiritual and the macabre, Iron Night encompasses a large range of themes and moods but never fails to project a unified tone. It is not quite a concept record, but it feels like one. And, musically, Iron Night reads like a "what if..." manifesto found in the used bin of some second-hand book store catering to music-types...what if Low had teeth or what if Gastr del Sol committed itself more steadfastly to the song form or what if the members of Fairport Convention regained their youth and plugged in for one last hurrah on the rooftop of some midwestern pizza parlor. A band can rest its laurels on being impeccably referential, or it can go about embodying a vastly superior parallel universe. Iron Night demonstrates that Nad Navillus does the latter.

Released November 5th, 2002.

Here is the Nagisa Ni te story: in the beginning Shinji Shibayama performed "hyped up dada-psych" in the early 1980's as part of Idiot O'Clock and then the more toned-down Hallelujahs. He also founded and still runs Org Records, the label responsible for bringing Eastern psych powers Maher Shalal Hash Baz to the world. With Maher Shalal Hash Baz's help, with the musical contributions of many of their collective friends, and with the assistance of Shibayama's now full-fledged cohort Masako Takeda in all things Nagisa Ni te, Shibayama recorded and released On The Love Beach, a beautiful, slow and entrancing work pulling equally from American and British rock traditions. Thus was born Nagisa Ni te, which means "on the beach" in Japanese, an homage of sorts to Neil Young's 1975 masterpiece. Their psych folk tendencies notwithstanding, Nagisa Ni te also did well to take cues from the avant rock world around them at the time, comfortably implementing the minimalist credo "less is more" throughout this record.Though On the Love Beach was Nagisa Ni te's debut, it is the second Nagisa Ni te record brought to the United States and Europe by Jagjaguwar. It follows Feel, their most recent endeavour, which garnered significant critical acclaim in the press. And like Feel, it does bring to mind the very best of sixties' and seventies' psychedelic, progressive and folk rock (i.e. early to middle-era Pink Floyd, George Harrison, Crazy Horse, and Roxy Music). Maher Shalal Hash Baz's Tori Kudo may describe Nagisa Ni te best when he says: "Nagisa Ni te's naked Progressive rock-based worldly songs, which are sung not so much deliberately as seriously, on their love beach, now fill a blank somewhere between underground hi-fi and overground lo-fi."

Will You Still Love Me? and Julie Doiron and the Wooden Stars are the two much-acclaimed albums that Julie Doiron released on Tree Records in 1999 (the latter was also released on her own Sappy Records imprint in Canada, where it won the 2000 Juno Award-the Canadian equivalent to the Grammy-for best independently released record of the year). Having been out of print for the greater part of two years, Jagjaguwar is proud to reintroduce them to the record buying public in newly packaged form, with upgraded booklets that include lyrics for the first time. Also, the Julie Doiron and the Wooden Stars CD will include a compressed version of her video for the song "Dance Music", accessible to fans with personal computers. After a solo album on Sub Pop (her home for the previous decade with Eric's Trip), Doiron found a good home in Tree, for whom she first released Will You Still Love Me? As the inaugural EP, it was also a creative spring-board for Doiron, a mini-album that has endured as a fan favorite. Adored for its sparse, no-nonsense demeanor, the EP offers a first glimpse at what has become Doiron's signature style, the moody union of vocals and guitar whose unified tone both expresses and evokes a timeless longing for a comforting, primal maternalism.

After a solo album on Sub Pop (her home for the previous decade with Eric's Trip), Doiron found a good home in Tree, for whom she first released Will You Still Love Me? As the inaugural EP, it was also a creative spring-board for Doiron, a mini-album that has endured as a fan favorite. Adored for its sparse, no-nonsense demeanor, the EP offers a first glimpse at what has become Doiron's signature style, the moody union of vocals and guitar whose unified tone both expresses and evokes a timeless longing for a comforting, primal maternalism.

From that understated gem she launched right into her most critically-acclaimed and accessible album, Julie Doiron and the Wooden Stars. Ottawa-based quartet the Wooden Stars played as the back-up band and helped Doiron step out of her solitary, introspective robe and venture into a more urgent and upbeat, albeit still relatively spartan, direction. Combining elements of rock and jazz-a la Joni Mitchell's early '70s work-Julie and the Wooden Stars somehow translated the coldness of the Canadian winter into one of the warmest and most tender records to be produced in the Eastern province in years.

This is the double CD version of Oneida's already legendary double LP Each One Teach One, the first truly heavy psychedelic rock record of the new millennium, originally limited to 500 vinyl copies packaged in individually hand-screened packaging (released by Version City).

Oneida, responsible for the unstoppable rock opus Anthem of the Moon, have dropped on the Earth nine extended, blown out new songs that reach far beyond the fairly concise bursts of noise and melody found on previous records. On the two CDs that form the CD version of Each One Teach One, Oneida are given the chance to stretch their rock to their breaking point and beyond, offering up enormous, dripping wet slabs of extended, linear noise mayhem, hollowed out hulls where ghosts of America sing songs that few will ever hear, and longer takes on the sort of speed-fueled manic garage grot that's graced the band's songbook from the start.

Recorded at Tarquin Studios and outdoors in the Stones (the band's personal retreat, located near the New Hampshire border), the ten songs on Each One Teach One find Oneida at the peak of their all-out-rock phase, sounding more like their incomparable live shows than any of their previous records.

Put the first CD on and lie down on your floor with your eyes closed. Have a friend around to put in the second disc when it is time and to guide you on the trip it'll take you on. Headphones or loudspeakers recommended for playback. Discover the miracles of your Third Eye with Each One Teach One.

Through the cerebral undergrowth and fantastical thickets of Aspera's dark imagination comes Sugar And Feathered, the re-release of the elusive Philadelphia-based quartet's sophomore full-length, re-mastered and packaged with all new artwork. As eerie as it is amiable, the twelve songs of Sugar And Feathered create a conceptual forest breathing with melodies familiar and forgone.On this record, Aspera creates songs that bear a passing resemblance to Crocodiles era Echo and The Bunnymen as fed through the dry, trashy production work of Tony Visconti's T Rex recordings. The experimental nature of Brian Eno and David Byrne's random sampling on My Life In The Bush of Ghosts mixes with the rudimentary electronics of Bowie's Scary Monsters, a smattering of 80's-style synthetic percussion and a fondness for Peter Murphy, conjuring a record with only one non-wayward quality - unrelenting creativity.

Following the So-Cal pop earnestness of 2000's Rollover, Manishevitz has taken us by the hand with their Private Lines EP and into a Chicago improv club where band leader and principal songwriter Adam Busch tosses his umbrella in the spitoon and lets his hair down while the band gets drunk in the street. Raging on the title track, Manishevitz more closely resembles the incredible live act they've become over the past three years than they ever have on record. It's here where their collision of art pop and jazz rock is sewn. It's as if Lou Reed's 1976 Rock And Roll Heart tour band was still alive and kicking. When the horns blare through the din mid-way through the tune, it's a profound declaration of clarity for modern rock music. Also featured on the EP are two stellar covers: "Free Will" by Robert Wyatt and "2 HB" by Roxy Music.

"While lovers of gritty, post-punk, gothic blues need look no further than Love Life - in fact, you might want to drop some of your other loves - even disparagers of the genre may find Ms. Ford too formidable a force to dismiss. Sounding like the bastard offspring of blues-era Diamanda Galas and a teenage Nick Cave, Ford outdoes both, growling and wailing and offering guttural conciliation while succinctly punctuating the ghastly things that befall the human heart." - Silke Tudor, San Francisco Bay Guardian Here is Night, Brothers, Here the Birds Burn is Love Life's second record, their first for Jagjaguwar. On it the Baltimore quartet create dark, twisted operatic-rock for the rest of us. Featuring ex-members of Jaks, Universal Order Of Armageddon and The Great Unraveling, their music is the evil carnival without the kitsch. Or the dance of the bull-fight without the sword. It co-mingles the sacred with the profane, making the juxtaposition seem natural. Odd time signatures, driving bass, spooky, multi-layered arrangements and Katrina Ford's uniquely sinister, guttural voice and lyrics...the music of Love Life is unlike anything else.

Able Bodies is Spokane's fourth release in the brief space of 2 years. The most accomplished, varied and haunted of their recordings to date, it is a darker, more dynamically textured departure from the subtle arrangements of 2001's The Proud Graduates, all the while retaining the signature stillness that pervades the band's work. Bringing to mind the resonant and brittle ambience of the 4AD label in its heyday, these intricate and deliberate compositions accumulate an impression of what the London Sunday Times calls Spokane's "uniquely sinister beauty".

One night, midway through the production of the record, the band's car lost control and twice overturned on the interstate mid-way between Richmond, Virginia and Indiana. The members of Spokane narrowly escaped serious injury. However, the incident left an indelible effect on the band and their recording. The album title and the title track were conceived and written the following week, exploring a sentiment of displaced vitality, the seeming unpredictability of fortune and misfortune, and the close link between fate and dislocation.

Spokane is composed of songwriter/singer/guitarist Rick Alverson, drummer/vocalist Courtney Bowles and violinist Karl Runge. Able Bodies was recorded by Dan Burton (of Early Day Miners and Ativin) in Bloomington, Indiana in December of 2001. Cellist Molly Kien and violinist Maggie Polk, who contribute to Spokane's string section for this record, also play with Papa M.

Released May 7, 2002.

One writer puts it best: "Fellow Canadian songwriter Leonard Cohen once titled an album Songs From A Room. Montreal-based Julie Doiron apparently took up residence there and removed whatever furniture was left behind." Heart And Crime is the follow-up to the much acclaimed Julie Doiron and the Wooden Stars (winner of the coveted Canadian entertainment award, the Juno, for 2000) and comes hot on the heels of the French-sung Jagjaguwar release Desormais. Like her previous records, Heart And Crime abhors unneccessary accoutrements. It relies on naked and minimal arrangements to propel familiar themes of self-doubt, hope, longing and sadness. The tone of intimacy throughout the record is like that which comes after three bottles of wine; a solitary singer with guitar, singing to herself, accompanied only by the sounds coming through the wall. Described frequently in the press as an "indie-diva" or "chanteuse" of the highest power, Doiron fits these well-intentioned approbations only in that she is a woman singer comfortable in her own skin. Under-reported are her signature guitar-stylings and her singular mastery of earnestly conveying mood and sentiment in the body of song. The latter is where she outpaces contemporaries like Edith Frost, Mia Doi Todd, Catpower, Elliot Smith or Beth Orton. Doiron seems destined for the pantheon of important singer-songwriters of this generation, and her affective powers are significant. According to another writer, Doiron's "moody minor key whispers make Joni Mitchell seem almost giddy by comparison."

Feel, the record by the Osaka band Nagisa Ni te (aka Shinji Shibayama and Masako Takeda) is now available for the first time outside of Japan, the first in a series of Nagisa Ni te records to be released in the United States and Europe by Jagjaguwar. Nagisa Ni te ("On the Beach" in English) are on the vanguard of the burgeoning psych-avant-folk movement in Japan. Their contemporaries include Maher Shalal Hash Baz and Naoki Zushi, artists who also have work on the inspirational Osaka-based label Org (founded by Nagisa Ni te"s Shibayama.) The songs within Feel bring to mind the very best of sixties' and seventies' psychedelic, progressive and folk rock (i.e. early to middle-era Pink Floyd or George Harrison) while steadfastly remaining in the modern by introducing to the mix avant touches ala' Eric Dolphy, Derek Bailey or Robert Wyatt. Soaring Gilmour-esque guitar solos abet the colliding forces of heaven and nature. And that is where Shibayama and Takeda reside, either on their way towards or in the process of departing the Garden of Eden. On Feel they sing about love, light, stars and the sea, words about both the spiritual and visceral worlds that the poet Pablo Neruda would be proud to call his own.

May, recorded at various times in Harpenden, England, is Richard Youngs' solo meditation. His music is magical, but not in the sense that it merely conjures up fantastical imagery or "transports the listener to another place". None of that is really happening. Richard Youngs' spell lies in the transformative qualities of his music. From so little we get so much. It is minimalism without pretense, songwriting that abhors artifice. It resides in the spiritual nexus between the oft disparate realms of traditional folk and the avant-garde.Following in the same spirit of his more celebrated solo works, Advent (1990), Sapphie (1998) and Making Paper (2001), May is, like Sapphie, just acoustic guitar and Richard Youngs' voice. Like the others it has an unmistakable "drone-like" quality that has, over time, become one of Youngs' trademarks. But what sets May apart is that it is almost a conventional record; six songs, just over 36 minutes, no song over 8 minutes. If you listen carefully enough to the plaintive, stripped-down and gentle rumbling of the songs on May (and squint hard enough), you can almost discern a semblance of verse-chorus-verse structure. And, for sure, May derives much of its glory from the traditional and the hymnal. If there is a "psych" or "trance-like" quality to Youngs' music, it is charged only by internal endorphines, natureês most underrated drug-mechanism at work. Richard Youngs treats his body of work very much like his own body. He is very careful with what he lets in.

With Where Leaves Block the Sun, Bevel follows through with the promise that was made with its debut Turn the Furnace On. The new full-length is principal songwriter Via Nuon's electric pastoral folk music, which begins with a symbolic Dante-esque like descent into the wilderness. Through the foliage disguised music, rich and fascinating images interplay with dark and light scenarios giving a chiaroscuro effect and also a sense of cinematic progression. Though difficult to describe in sound, one might compare Bevel to the other worldliness music of Pearls before Swine, Brian Eno's experimental ambient period, or the climactic achievement of Popol Vuh's lush film soundtracks.

Show Your Face is Nad Navillus' second album, its first for Jagjaguwar. The record combines Chicago-native Dan Sullivan's John Fahey-esque guitar playing with his beautiful voice and timeless lyricism, which brings to mind classic early-period Jackson Browne. Throughout much of the full-length, the songs demonstrate the happy marriage of a minimalist approach to songcraft with traditional fingerstyle guitar. The result is a meditative and layered work built on simple melodies and rhythms. While it is the guitar that drives these songs--something that won't surprise those who know Sullivan primarily as the guitarist for Songs:Ohia prior to this album--it is the vocals that anchor them. Lyrics focus on paradoxes: earnestness and cynicism, sensitivity and callousness, innocence and wisdom. The songs on Show Your Face occupy the unresolved conflicts of our conscience. Drawing equally on Sullivan's experiences performing classical choral works, bluegrass, barbershop, and Metallica covers in a Japanese metal band, Nad Navillus will appeal to fans of Gastr Del Sol, Archer Prewitt and Low.

Released November 19, 2001.

Julie Doiron is the most entrancing chanteuse at this North American block party. Fans of her work as a founding member of early '90s hyper-moody Eric's Trip will be thrilled with this latest chapter in her unfurling body of work. Desormais is the French-language record Doiron has always wanted to create. Although the full-length is mostly sung in French (all but one song), it still contains all of the hallmark characteristics of Doiron's songwriting; it is a record that contains music of spartan beauty while the songs all tend towards moodiness but hedge themselves by steadfastly remaining understated. Whether or not you understand the French tongue, Doiron's stylized guitar and vocal melodicism are so lyrical that they transcend the need for translation. It is no surprise that this Acadian songwriter from Montreal, Quebec, is often compared to songwriters of a previous generation. Perhaps the most appropriate comment made by any writer is how Doiron's "moody minor key whispers make Joni Mitchell seem almost giddy by comparison."

With Parker Paul's debut full-length Lemon-Lime Room, many wondered if the piano man wouldn't be consigned to the awkward yet prestigious league of musicians' musicians--that cadre of the pop intelligentsia which includes the Harry Nilssons, Randy Newmans, Todd Rundgrens and Ron Sexsmiths of the world. Each one is recognized for their superior songwriting talent, yet the cash register has never rung for any of them with quite the same frequency as would naturally be suggested by the multitude of airy plaudits they have each garnered. With the unleashing of the second full-length record Wingfoot--the album that no one expected to hear for another five years--Parker Paul has made it clear to the world that he is not a man to sit on his hands.

You should have no illusions. The future for Parker Paul is still unclear. But he is resolute on one thing: not relying on critical acclaim, on ivory towers alone, to spread the word. The masses will come or Parker Paul will fade permanently into obscurity. Lingering in and out of the public's eye, clutching tightly to the consolation prize of being deemed "canonical", will not suffice.

The formula remains the same. Parker Paul writes songs about people whose lives have a real lived-in quality to them. They are not overly beatific, worn-down or damaged as the subjects of most realist songwriters today are. And when Parker Paul's lyricism provides sage advice to the listener, it is accidental, not intentional. Parker Paul is never pedantic. For him, stating the obvious comes natural: "The people who tell lies / About their crappy childhoods / Probably had crappy childhoods."

To really fill out his songs of love, laughter and devotion, Parker Paul enlisted a full band of crack musicians who, performing together, sound like a New Orleans cosmic brothel jazz band. Members include Dan Sullivan (Nad Navillus), Emma Niblett (Scout Niblett), Adam Busch (Manishevitz), Fred Lonberg-Holm (Peter Brotzmann Tentent, John Zorn and Light Box Orchestra), and Jeb Bishop (Vandermark 5 and The Flying Luttenbachers).

Wingfoot was produced by the Schwartz Brothers (Michael Krassner & Busch), and various arrangements were made by Lonberg-Holm.

Released October 8, 2001.

ANTHEM OF THE MOON -- recorded in the stones by Oneida. Mixing and additional recording by Peter Katis at Tarquin Studios.There's an awful lot of "psychedelic" music around these days, mostly of the gentle, sprightly, cosmic nature. It has seemed to Oneida for the past couple years that the world has forgotten a huge part of the critical essence of the psychedelic experience: anxiety, dislocation, alienation and half-formed terror. With ANTHEM OF THE MOON, they're out to remind the world why psychedelia matters.Over the course of thirteen months, Oneida made repeated journeys to an array of Colonial-era ruins in the woods of western New England, where they had set up a small mobile recording unit in the midst of the stones. They recorded each of these trips, ending up with a massive trove of tape reels, from which the bulk of this album was distilled. Sounds of the stones and the night woods saturate the recorded music (including the ghostly screech of a barred owl on "Almagest"), literally and emotionally; the naked, anxious exhaustion, ecstasy, and paranoia that the listener hears are the real thing.ANTHEM OF THE MOON is a literal and figurative field recording -- of voices: animal and human, real and imagined, whimpers, moans, screams and incantations. Their trip is no fucking picnic in the meadow -- it's a journey into the stones.

According to one writer, Patrick Phelan "plays at the fringes of desperation instead of delving head-first into melancholy." It seems that whereas elegant simplicity has become Phelan's most obvious calling card in all of his compositions, whether it is his solo work, his work as part of South or his contributions to friends Drunk or Spokane, what really sets him apart as a songwriter above songwriters is his sense of equilibrium. Balance is the key -- compositionally, lyrically and sonically. His work is neither indulgent nor haphazard. Perhaps it is even more accurate to describe Phelan not as a "singer-songwriter" but as an architect of sound and mood. The foundation of all of his designs seems to be the steady repetition of themes and the recurring states of emotion that are peppered diligently throughout all of his music.PARLOR, Patrick Phelan's second full-length recording, is different from SONGS OF PATRICK PHELAN -- the minimal, intimate debut released in 2000 -- in that much of what was written was done in the studio, a far more "collaborative" theater for Phelan. Also important to note is that much of this record was written on a piano; for Phelan, this time around, there is much less of a reliance on the guitar. Joining him both on stage when he performs live and in the studio are journeyman musicians Paul Watson (with previous contributions to Sparklehorse, Michael Hurley, House of Freaks and FSK), Jim Thomson (Bio Ritmo and Gwar) and Phil Murphy.

Released on June 18, 2001.

This is a reissue of Oneida's landmark second full-length, which was first issued on the now defunct Turnbuckle label. It was with this record's original release that this motley crew of spinmeisters first made a name for themselves. Just when everyone had thought that there was yet another band in the world with the sole intention of devoting itself to the indulgent pursuit of the endless permutations of "noise exploration", we got instead a "slippery" masterpiece that, according to Mojo (for which this record garnered Rock Album of the Month honors), melded "rock'n'roll, garage punk and New Wave [with] Hammond organ arpeggios [bumping] into parping jazz trumpets and MC5-inspired riffs, while a discordant Suicide-spooked backdrop keeps the paranoia levels up." Hopefully, you get the picture and understand why we deemed it necessary to reintroduce this to the masses, with the added bonus of a previously unreleased track to boot. Finally, Oneida offers this explanation:Back in the winter of 1998 when Oneida couldn't find anyone trustworthy to supply us with psychedelics we made some of our own. Using Fat Bobby's childhood chemistry kit and a vintage recipe found in a community library, we made a small batch of mind moonshine to get us through the long session of what was to become ENEMY HOGS. Beginning in the dark days of the cold winter of 1998, we proceeded to lay down thirty hours of seamless brain-boiling freak-out in the tradition of who-the-fuck knows. In those days we ate, slept and lived in Studio Tropical. One morning we awoke to PCRZ weeping over an indoor bonfire of the tapes. After we barely escaped with our lives and the rest of our crystal, we asked Crazee what moved him to destroy what we had begun to call our "mind garden." "The weeds," he said, "The weeds."What I think he was trying to say was that our vision had become compromised in a cloud of paranoia. We were letting the demons outside the hallowed walls of Tropical dictate the sounds that were reaching the tape. So we began again in earnest and with double doses of the mind moonshine. The results you now have in your hands. We were able to save one complete "song" from the destroyed tapes and include it here for the first time. The track is called "O.D.B." and we wrote it after Old Dirty Bastard from the Wu Tang Clan got shot in 1998.

Richard Youngs' first three-song "full-length" release shone down like a beacon from above. It opened with a chorus of tape hiss and a patently English-sounding piano. Eventually there was a British man pleading in song for mercy, for pardon, or, at the very least, for conviction to a lesser charge. This was ADVENT and it was 1990. Youngs had just introduced himself to the universe at large through his No Fans label.Fast forward to the New Year, 2000. Youngs is back on the stool, this time in Edinburgh, Scotland, with long-time collaborator Brian Lavelle engineering. Youngs has another three songs in him, and they show him to be a much wizened, more patient man. Distilled to only piano and vocals, the album is epic to say the least. Opening with "Warriors", a 19-minute journey the size of Scotland, the song pleads, "Warriors see through battle lines." The second song, "The World Is Silence In Your Head", is vintage Youngs fare, offering further evidence that there is significant kinship between him and the ranks of the late-60's to early-70's progressive rock set such as Peter Hammill and his Van Der Graaf Generator, as well as first wave Yes and King Crimson. The song is as sprawling and imaginative in its mythology as the most inspired of prog's deep canon ever got. Yet it tells the tale in less than three minutes and with only one phrase and one instrument, with unprecedented clarity and precision -- not to mention poesy. Certainly it warrants that Youngs be crowned the king of the progressive minimalists. He preys on the most meditative tendencies in each of us, and he finds the essence in each of his songs (throwing out the rest) which endeavours to put erstwhile listeners in a trance-like state.

When Manishevitz's debut record GRAMMAR BELL AND THE ALL FALL DOWN was released in 1999, the record was quickly branded by the press as an "underground treasure" that was "bleak and baleful." To them it possessed "a poker-faced Gothic sensibility flavored with sinister acidity." In contrast, Manishevitz's followup record ROLLOVER is a more upbeat affair, possessing the absorbing chemistry of Mr. Van Dyke Parks, Arthur Lee's Love, and (from a different continent altogether) Robert Wyatt. This is exactly as intended. When Adam Busch, the man behind the band, decided to move from Charlottesville, Virginia, to Chicago, he was also looking to find a new home for his masterful collection of spacious blues effigies. The result: the fractured folk lonesomeness evident on the first record has become wrapped in glistening sheaths of 1960s So-Cal pop enthusiasm.ROLLOVER was produced by Michael Krassner (Boxhead Ensemble, Lofty Pillars and Simon Joyner) and arranged by cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm (Peter Brotzmann Tentent, John Zorn and Light Box Orchestra). In the recording of ROLLOVER, Manishevitz expanded to not only include Krassner and Lonberg-Holm, both of whom performed throughout the record, but also Via Nuon (Drunk and Bevel), Ryan Hembrey (Edith Frost and Pinetop Seven), Jason Adasiewicz (Central Falls) and Jeb Bishop (Vandermark 5 and The Flying Luttenbachers). With the help of this superb collection of Chicago-area musicians, Adam Busch has put together a record backed by cascading percussive pellets and simmering, mellifluous horns that resound in mysterious cyclical rounds.

We will concede this to the latte-sipping coffee table theorists of the world. When it comes to the small slice of pop culture called American rock music over the last three decades, a profound shift did occur when the National Minimum Drinking Age Act was signed into law on July 17, 1984 by Ronald Reagan. The rock farm leaguesãtraditional rock and roll venuesãtook a big hit in the nose, and ever since rock music has been less "substance-tial."

Well, thank God for Oneida.

With their third full-length record COME ON EVERYBODY LET'S ROCK (their first full-length record for Jagjaguwar), Oneida conjure up the spirit of a forgotten past -- from the heaviosity of Deep Purple and Blue Cheer to the hooks of Humble Pie and Foghat to the attitude and dirty swagger of early Alice Cooper Band. The Brooklyn rock band also lives up to the tale of the tape, hands down being the best live band in New York City at this very moment. So infamous are their live performances that even overseas the British press makes it their business to hail Oneida as purveyors of the burgeoning New York City "Loft Party" scene (the new rock farm league?). Best of all, Oneida are smart and are as rooted in the present as they are informed by the past. Consider for instance their take on the global economy as poignantly expressed in "Doin Business in Japan":

When I do business I do it in Japan / I am signing contracts that I don't understand /But it don't matter when the deal is done / I'm getting higher than the rising sun

Stand clear of the mirror and get away from mom and dad's robitussin. This is the great rock record by Oneida we all have been waiting for

Cinematically speaking, Drunk is a band that ought to be approached not as a static film, but rather as an ever unfurling serial. Indeed, their many public episodes run like connect-the-dots that express a full range of human discourse all embodied in one unified corpus. There are the manic moments of ferocity and tension release ("Miscellany" from RAISED TOWARD), the beautiful moments of melodic playfulness ("Dorothea" from TABLESIDE MANNERS), the brief stops of satire along the way (their footstomping rendition of "Martyr To The People" from their split 7" with the Young Pioneers), and then there are the rare glimpses into the more contemplative and routine -- and, dare we say, serene -- as found on "The Round Couple", which is the A-side and crown jewel of this new single. And such magic does not go unnoticed. Jagjaguwar artist Patrick Phelan heard an early demo of this Rick Alverson-penned song and quickly recorded it for his debut solo album SONGS OF PATRICK PHELAN, therein beating Alverson to the punch, releasing it before the Drunk-founder could release the song on one of his own records (by either Drunk or his own "more solo" project Spokane). That song can now be heard through its writer's voice, in its writer's house. And thank goodness for that. The B-side is an older Alverson song entitled "St. Theresa" which was recorded in 1995, a very pretty song which shows Drunk at its earliest roots.

Twelve uneasy pieces, these songs are rough and unhewn like the stones that make up an altar precipice. Bevel is theAn unpolished document, TURN THE FURNACE ON exists in the same moody and emotional climate as Yoko Ono's SEASON OF GLASS and Red House Painters' OCEAN BEACH. Not so unlike Skip Spence's OAR, TURN THE FURNACE ON is the product of a man who has for years existed in the public eye only as a member of a greater whole (Nuon being a core member of the Richmond, Virginia, group Drunk, as well as an occasional member of Chicago-based Manishevitz; Spence with San Francisco's Moby Grape). Like Oar, TURN THE FURNACE ON is the sort of creative watershed which begs the listener to re-examine the works done by the artist in his more well-known group and experience his effects there more acutely, with more regard for the subtle force of personality which has rightly been made more evident. name of a character in modern Southern literature.Turn the Furnace on is the debut album by Bevel, and it is a feat of beauty. Conceived, composed and captured almost entirely by one man, Via Nuon, Bevel's TURN THE FURNACE ON is a subtle work of solitary triumph. Few albums created by the hands of one succeed in leaving such an indelible impression of personality. Most solo artists -- especially those of such minimal design -- are required the span of a career to leave their mark on the ever-evolving body of song. But with TURN THE FURNACE ON Bevel distinguishes Via Nuon as a brave new voice in folk form.

In October 1999, Monroe Mustang were invited to attend the Crossing Borders Festival in the Netherlands, an annual musical gathering organized by the VPRO (Dutch Public Radio) that tries each year to unearth all the best kept secrets in independent music internationally. For Monroe Mustang, the motley crew of Texan / Oklahomans who reside in Austin and prefer to record at home and rarely travel to perform, this was a special treat for two reasons. Not only did they finally experience the joy of performing in unfamiliar territory, but they were also afforded the opportunity to be recorded live in VPRO's studios -- their first taste of third party production of their music. Engineered/produced by Berry Kamer, Jan Hiddink and Maurice Woestenburg, the result is almost a full-length's worth of largely acoustic, perfectly paced music that culls together the best moments of this youthful outfit's career -- songs from their post-psychedelic masterpiece THE ELEPHANT SOUND and from their glorious debut full-length PLAIN SWEEPING THEMES FOR THE UNPREPARED (Trance Syndicate, 1998). Also, in the mix, are new, previously unreleased songs that are their strongest material yet.

According to Oneida:Oneida -- called a whole lot of names -- "the organic Kraftwerk", "bastard prodigal sons of Afrika Bambaataa," "Brooklyn's electro nightmares unleashed" ...and it's all true. Claims of jazz refuted here. Oneida is all rock, all beat, all the time. This record is our nametag.Break your door, steal the shutters, dear landlord: there's a price on your head and Oneida's new STEEL ROD EP is embedded six inches into the back of your skull. All you old men, handing out religious brochures and telling the youth that they've lost to the devil, take a look into your own asshole. We think you just might find our new CD, the god you've lost and a nice little piece of pipe. Give or take five screaming cuts about new identities, new visions and civil war -- Oneida's Steel Rod lays down another testament to bein' free like we want it to be. Remember Watson and Crick? Well, we think that Nobel Prize needs to be recalled and delivered to the real innovators of genetics: us. Ever wonder what an "XXY" baby looks like? Listen up. I think you'll hear its fragile egg shell mind crying out on track one.Some say our "Steel Rod" is discriminate. Not so -- we smash it all up -- but ask questions later. The board rooms are still talking about the event described above. Suits and casual Friday types keep Oneida in the minutes these days. This Steel Rod we keep talking about -- look at it as our scale of justice. Eyes wide open, next stop "Tennessee." The Union presence is keeping the good people down, disguised as police. But we're not heartless. We shed a tear on this track... for the dead men in blue, piled up in our wake. Climb onto our "Hell Train" headed for the promised land. Paranoia, beer, and trucker's speed fueling the next binge on the devil's consciousness. We think it's all damn sinister. That there's an end coming. It'll get your ass. Listen up. It's knocking on your door. It won't stop here.

(they say you never forget)so get on your bike and just ride /amateur cyclist / you have nothing to hide

SONGS OF PATRICK PHELAN has a large emotional scope. The music on the record uses such instruments as the cornet and lapslide to create a broad tonal range, including, but not limited to, uptempo Brazilian beats, slower and more resonant country sounds, and the lonesome warmth of church-like organs. The words that Phelan emotes are short and to the point. But these are, for sure, sharply aimed songs about love, the loss of love, failure and transition. Phelan gets, and keeps in his head, what most songwriters forget (as they become more "serious"). That it is against the paler background of simplicity that truth is most discernible.This is the solo debut of Patrick Phelan, a principal member of South who are makers of, as one writer elegantly put it, "ambient music for people who pay attention." A Richmond native for the last six years, Phelan has found time to enter the studio and record personal music. Bryan Hoffa, a frequent Jagjaguwar collaborator, engineered and mixed the record with Phelan at The Sound of Music Annex in Richmond. Also appearing on the record are Drunk members J.T. Yost (on piano) and Via Nuon (on violin), as well as Paul Watson (on cornet) and Phil Murphy (on lapslide). The record was mastered with Brent Lambert at The Kitchen, in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Released on April 17, 2000.

Sarah White lives in a postal address area outside of Charlottesville, Virginia, called White Hall. She has lived most of her life in either Virginia or West Virginia, never more than a stone's throw away from the Blue Ridge Mountains. But she isn't a hermit. She isn't a disconnected member of society living in a wood shack evading technology or a person of poor length of bone who was found under a rock and is now being pushed on you as the poster child for "the new and truly authentic," as a reminder of what American music "really" is at its roots. Sarah went to college. She lived for some time in San Francisco and has travelled the world many, many times. And maybe why her music immediately strikes a chord is that it is informed by so many, many different, disparate musical traditions. BLUEBIRD isn't a folk record, although at times it makes you feel like Sarah has in her collection Hazel Dickens' or Smithsonian-era Lucinda Williams' records. It isn't a country record, but it makes you think maybe she was raised listening to Emmylou Harris. Finally, it isn't something that comes close to what you would consider rock, although the "rock" or "pop" sections of record stores is where it will end up. Like Marianne Faithfull's BROKEN ENGLISH record, BLUEBIRD is a fish out of water. And perhaps on this record Sarah has become, in one body and mind, the communion of Kris Kristofferson and Rita Coolidge, ala FULL MOON.

Parker Paul is, first and foremost, an entertainer. He is then both a piano player and a story teller. He comes to your town in his little blue Pacer and gets on stage and makes you feel really good for the evening. In the spirit of the classic vaudevillean performers of yore, Parker Paul fuses his lucid sense of humor and uninhibited vision as a story teller to convey absurd truths of life -- especially those truths that profound sadness can inspire and those that, being acutely sentimental, can make you laugh out loud. From nonsense springs wisdom.On the spectrum of modern songwriters of refined yet wily wit, Parker Paul fits somewhere between Randy Newman and Shel Silverstein, Harry Nilsson and Loudon Wainwright III. He never succumbs to silliness yet can still whip a zinger with the best of them. At his best he makes you understand the deepest of longings.He is just a man and his piano. And LEMON-LIME ROOM, his debut record, is recorded live with zero overdubs. But don't let the piano fool you. Parker Paul is a rock and roll veteran. He has experienced the world of rock in a few of its guises -- as pivotal member of the now defunct Virginia rock groups the Curious Digit and the Fledglings and through a short stint as keyboardist with Royal Trux.

Released January 24, 2000.

Tableside Manners are post-Christmas musings for the emotionally truant. The songs all deal with familiar Drunk themes -- notions of arrival or becoming, coping with expectations, exploring the crossroads where personal politics intersect with existential deliberation. But on this record the delivery vehicle of these themes is substantially different. Tableside Manners is less melancholic and more upbeat than previous Drunk albums. It relies less on exploiting and contorting musical traditions of the past. And while the words and ideas of this record act like a smooth compress on the back of the neck, lulling the listener, many of the rhythms and melodies, instead, rebel against this plaintive end. They act to move the body, to get the foot tapping, to invoke physical instead of spiritual rumination.Drunk's fourth full-length demonstrates first and foremost that Drunk is a band hellbent on not making the same record twice. Call it chronic reinvention syndrome. While it has been fairly easy to gauge how Drunk have changed sonically over the years, it has been much trickier to track the band's musical development -- or, more specifically, the evolution of Rick Alverson's songwriting. For instance, the band's third record, RAISED TOWARD, features songs from Alverson's warchest that were written way before Drunk was even conceptualized. Which makes TABLESIDE MANNERS different -- it is thoroughly a collection of Alverson's newest songs, all of which make a very strong case for Alverson's recent emergence as an important, truly distinctive American songwriter.

Jagjaguwar Correspondent is proud to announce the release of a new recording of the internationally renowned poet Robert Creeley. Captured on tape at his home in Waldoboro, Maine in the summer of 2000, the poet reads a selection of new and previously uncollected poems. This marks the first occasion in which Mr. Creeley has appeared unaccompanied on a CD, his work read in all its bare and vital intimacy.His landmark importance as a modern and uncompromising voice in the 1950`s and 60`s has continued through subsequent decades with work as crucial and innovative as in those formative years. He has been a distinct and relentless documentarian of age and its changing perceptions. From the tender, inquisitive addresses of a father to his growing children to meditations on growth, memory and reality, these fifteen pieces reveal a poet in maturity. Among them is a 25-part poem in response to the paintings of Francesco Clemente.

William Carlos Williams said of Creeley, "The subtlest feeling for the measure that I encounter anywhere except in the verses of Ezra Pound." Michael McClure wrote, "He is a genius of the sensorium as Kerouac was and a master of the ear as is Miles Davis." Listen and you'll know why.A 32-page booklet of text, photographs, and author's note accompanies the CD.Among his numerous books are The Collected Poems of Robert Creeley 1945-1975 (University of California Press, 1982) and Life & Death (New Directions, 1998).

From the first cymbal crash on the first song of this debut record, you know instantly that you're dealing with something extraordinary. A songwriter has arrived, and he is much younger than he sounds. You must already know that songwriters are like mathematicians... they all peak in their 20s and early 30s. Then it is all downhill. We have so much to look forward to.Manishevitz is Adam Busch. And GRAMMAR BELL AND THE ALL FALL DOWN are confessional rock songs informed by old school rhythm and blues. It is obvious that the inestimable substance and the words that hold these songs together come from someone well beyond his years, in both lyrical ability and world-weariness. A glimpse of Busch's apparent trajectory was first seen in his previous work as part of the now defunct quartet called The Curious Digit. Whereas The Curious Digit were "adept impressionists" who, with their second record HESSIAN HILLS, created a few sweeping portraits of sonic, artistic and emotional paralysis, Busch, as Manishevitz, has created with GRAMMAR BELL... "a brittle folk document with quiet, understated power."

the Monroe Mustang, still first in spaceThis band has cool charm and mystique to spare -- the least of their qualities. They are from Texas, for crying out loud. And they are resolute, having put together a special session of musical embroidery that sounds like nothing else. Still, sonically-speaking, you can't help but think that Monroe Mustang have been around since 1971, session-guitarists, perhaps, for Ziggy Stardust. Or openers for that unfortunate T. Rex stateside tour. Maybe they were simply in the background, hanging out during Syd Barrett's last stab at it, watching him slowly melt away. There is some lineage that is inexplicable but apparent. And with THE ELEPHANT SOUND, Monroe Mustang have created an epic, post-psychedelic masterpiece -- on equal footing with any of the works of their erstwhile predecessors.

RAISED TOWARD -- thirteen songs for sufficience and disregard. Drunk's third full-length release features the gently effective words of Rick Alverson set amidst the workings of a full range of musical contraptions. The songs Alverson and crew have put together on RAISED TOWARD are cut from the same cloth as those of many of the great lyrical composers of our time (and slightly before our time): Leonard Cohen, Tim Foljahn, Nick Cave and Mark Eitzel, to name a few. If RAISED TOWARD resonates in that special, timeless style, it is not for want of fragility or the grace of inexperience, or for lack of innovation and youthful exuberance. Drunk has all of these to spare. They are, according to one magazine, "far ahead... in the race to the define the new American sound."

The Union of a Man and a Woman are Neil Campbell, John Harouff and Kurt Beals, three high school kids from Stauntonä Virginia, who have been playing together since the age of twelve. Their tools of the trade are squealing, static-y guitars, a barely legal batch of broken cymbals contained in a little red wagon, the Millenium Falcon of sound systems and shear, youthful bravado. With them, they bring back all the best elements of the convergence of art-rock and punk in the eighties, borrowing as much from artists like the Dead C and Glenn Branca's army of noise guitarists as they do from more "socially important" and vital bands like Fugazi and Big Black. Yes, "there's a bomb in that baby carriage," and it is the Union of a Man and a Woman. Their non-negotiable brand of transcendent noise will convert you on the spot."Cutting its teeth on rock theoreticians like Bastro and Don Caballero, the trio has created a fully-formed machine capable of a wide range of post-punk athleticism, allowing a jarring mix of tight starts and stops, giant walls of sound and studied experimentalism to somehow coexist within the span of a single song. What's more impressive is that THE SOUND OF... was recorded live in the studio with only the vocals overdubbed. Keep an eye on these three -- they may end up rocket scientists by the time they hit their mid-20's."-- Tad Hendrickson, CMJ

Released in November, 1998.

Drunk's harrowing second release is borne of circumstance and built on the back of various folk traditions. Whether the subjects conjured on TO CORNER WOUNDS arise from nostalgia or from fantasy, nothing is really stated. There are no morals. According to one magazine, TO CORNER WOUNDS evokes "a dreamworld where ghosts of the old world commingle diffidently with those of the new."

South's self-titled debut is one part mood-music for the masses. For bookworms, it is an exegesis on the great ambient-rock moments of the 20th century. Some would call it the soundtrack to vacancy. Repetition has never been so substantial.Incorporating such things as tightly wound loops and arpeggiation into their music, South redefines these devices through songwriting and orchestration to arrive at something that is intricate but simplistic in tone. Aside from the sweeping sounds of the keyboard, everything is done organically. It is when other instruments are added and time signatures are layered that South's sound is discovered.South are three well-heeled souls from Richmond, Virginia: Patrick Phelan and Nathan Lambdin, the principle songwriters, and Tod Parkhill, who contributes drum parts. They are joined on-stage by a larger supporting cast which has grown with their music: most often Bryan Hoffa on bass, Jess Bittner on vibraphone, Peter Neff (a Pan American and Labradford contributor) on hammmered dulcimer, and either Via Nuon (Drunk, Bevel) or Rick Alverson (Drunk, Spokane) on keyboard.

Released in September, 1998.

Husker Du vs. Mission of Burma? Four young men from the mountains of Virginia who deliver in straight-forward fashion. Co-release with the Squealer label!

Released in July, 1997.

Transferred directly to CD straight from an audio cassette tape received in the mail one day, ALL MY SKIES ARE BLUE is an unpolished, naked collection of songs recorded to four-track over a three year period. It covers a wide gamut of moods and sounds, moving quickly from the dense, rumbling tones of "dredge" and "halloween," through the ugliness-embodied in "shit," to the well-orchestrated, slightly more hopeful and extremely beautiful "I'm down." It hits full stride with "acres," a song as vast and grand as its title suggests. A remarkable debut by an artist who is truly a diamond in the rough.

By the time the Curious Digit had gotten around to recording HESSIAN HILLS, they had become "adept impressionists" creating a few sweeping portraits of sonic, artistic and emotional paralysis. The songs throughout Hessian Hills flirt with country and the subtler side of epic rock, with sentimental noise and the vestiges of gamelan -- there is a good balance between the traditional and the unconventional, between tension and release. And the words and melodies are memorable, almost infectious, yet disarming.

Celebratory, contemplative, melancholic: a quick description of Drunk's stunning debut, A DERBY SPIRITUAL. This is the album that established both Drunk as an important musical entity. According to one writer, "Drunk, all arpeggios and sentiment, are a cross between slow Sparklehorse, the Band singing about Dixie, and Russian dirges -- true smart rock for smart people (and really, really beautiful to boot)." According to Jennifer Nine, writer for Melody Maker, "Drunk, whose no-bones name could scarcely do justice to their graceful sweetness, know just what bones hold you together... [they] move with the drowsy precision of music-box figurines. They sound like a sleepy chamber orchestra in threadbare clothes..."

Rob Sheffield (Details, Rolling Stone) put it best when he wrote, "BOMBAY ALOO is a playfully bizarre avant-pop racket with guitar fuzz, cheapo synths, video-game noises, and songs to take your breath away... If a junk shop could hum, it would sound like the Digit."

Printed on American Apparel 50/50 Cotton and Polyester Blend T-shirts.