The Crookes - Play Dumb

Brass Bed - "I Am just a Whisper"
from their new album In the Yellow Leaf
in stores 04.15.16

pre-order now on LP and CD:
http://modernoutsider.bigcartel.com/artist/brass-bed

http://www.modernoutsider.com
http://www.brassbedisbrassbed.com

Being an undiscovered commodity has its advantages. Growth, movement, exploration, metamorphosis and misfires can be weathered without scrutiny or expectation. There’s no mistaking that Brass Bed is not a young band. Now in their early 30s, the band’s essential trio of Jonny Campos, Peter DeHart and Christiaan Mader are too old to be wunderkinds, too young to be cult, but just old enough to understand themselves.

With their 4th LP, In The Yellow Leaf, BB continues to contemplate the slipping horizon. Where others confront mortality with a self-seriousness that belies a fundamental insecurity, principal lyricists Mader and Campos encounter the void with winks and shrugs.

That’s the most impressive hidden growth of all – the development of a poetic sensibility appropriate to their stage of life. At one time collegiate Wilco-acolytes, cribbing Jeff Tweedy’s romantic nihilism and Jim O’Rourke’s texturizations like teenagers raiding a liquor cabinet, BB now wears a mask commiserate with their age.

They’ve grown up. They’ve learned about shit. They can talk about it honestly now.

Yellow Leaf finds the band in much the same headspace as their 2013 breakout The Secret Will Keep You: angsty vortices of sound draped over pop idioms constructed with a grad student’s eye for abstraction and musical grammar. With the help of guitarist Ben Jones (Generationals, Youth Lagoon) and a pilot recording with engineer Chris Woodhouse (Ty Segall, Thee Oh Sees), the band rediscovered the exuberance of guitar rock and forced it to grow up.

Faced with an audience not yet listening, BB turned up. Where other bands age into balladry, BB traded their ill-fitted pining in for decibel urgency and caterwauling feedback. Their musings sit much better over fuzz, spit, and glistening reverb.

The result is a record that is as eclectically inventive as it is fundamentally raw and abrupt. Lead single “I Am Just A Whisper” captures the band’s ability to charm snakes of anxiety while creating enough speed to allow melody, decay and sustain to hover over the scurrying madness like whispers. Thematic center-piece “Yellow Bursts of Age” evokes a haunting innocence arranged with studio-ghosts that vanish like falling evening snow. From all this it may seem as though BB is trapped in a cycle of morbid meditation. But consider the apostate sarcasm of “Maiden Voyage” and witness that Yellow Leaf is a cradle for artists at peace in an unsettled universe.

Brass Bed used to be wide-eyed pop dreamers. Now they are realists finding wonder in the dark comedy of mortality. They are the eponymous bursts of age – kids hopping into leaf mounds and making the most out decay.

Brass Bed - "I Am Just a Whisper"

from their upcoming album Cruise Deal
in stores March 11, 2016 on Modern Outsider
http://mirrortravel.biz
http://modernoutsider.com

The true beginnings of garage-dwelling daydreamers Mirror Travel originate in 2003 in a small Texas town you’ve never heard of.  Through many cities, years, and members, Lauren Green (guitar, vocals) and Tiffanie Lanmon (drums) remained the spring of the band’s musical essence, continually writing, recording, and performing their own brand of narcotic, swirling, post-punk for over a decade.

In 2010 the two recorded the wiry and propulsive earworm The Ghosts That Wake You as the title track of Gerard Cosloy’s (Matador Records) pet project, Casual Victim Pile; a 19 song snapshot of Austin’s Red River music scene. The project quickly landed the band a 7” release (Wooden Bones) on Seattle’s Mt. Fuji Records and US tour dates alongside acts such as Bill Callahan, Ringo Deathstarr, and …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead with new bass player and vocalist Paul Brinkley in tow.

Mirror Travel returned from the road with new material and set their sites on the small desert town of Marfa, TX to record their first full-length album, Mexico. Working with engineer Gory Smelley at his Marfa Recording Company, the trio spent two weeks crafting one of the year’s most solid releases, a half hour of echo-drenched fuzz Esquire Magazine described as “Neil Young playing live from the bottom of a well”.  Mexico is loose, grungy garage at its finest and travels at such an unhurried and hypnotic pace that you may feel you've driven across the desert yourself.

Mirror Travel’s upcoming release, Cruise Deal, takes the same smoldering psych-rock of Mexico and submerges it in a sea of dense and dreamy post-punk sludge. Recorded in the band’s Austin, TX storage-unit-turned-rehearsal-studio with friend and live-sound engineer Roy Taylor (Emmylou Harris, Patty Griffin), Cruise Deal is brazenly live and best listened to on the loudest speakers you own. Beyond the intensity of Cruise Deal’s sheer volume lies a frank examination of life in the in-between - the album was born as the band counted last days in their native state. The album speaks to a certain sort of coming and going; by the time Cruise Deal was mixed and mastered, Mirror Travel was spread across three time zones with Lauren in New Mexico, Paul in Philadelphia, and Tiffanie poised to leave Austin. Tiffanie (drums) soon said goodbye to Texas and set off with newest member Meredith Stoner (bass) to rejoin Lauren (guitar, vocals) in Northern New Mexico; the trio is currently writing new music and will tour upon Cruise Deal’s release on 3/11/16.

Mirror Travel - Yesca

in dreams fur summer

Cover of Elvis Presley's "Can't Help Falling in Love"

"Can't Help Falling in Love"

Cover of "American Girl" by Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers for the ALL ATX VOL 4: LOW DOWN VIOLET CROWN compilation benefitting HAAM, SIMS, AMF, and Black Fret available at Waterloo Records:

http://waterloorecords.com/UPC/888295498623/Various_All-ATX-vol-4-Low-Down-Violet-Crown

AMERICAN GIRL

Curtis Roush
Cosmic Campfire Music 
release date: 02.09.18 on Modern Outsider 
pre-order now: http://smarturl.it/curtisroush

Fusing bedroom soul with the ambient expanses of shoegaze, singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Curtis Roush explores love and loss away from the purview of his psych-rock comrades The Bright Light Social Hour. Roush was born in Austin, Texas. Suffused with the 70s album rock of his Californian parents, Roush picked up his first instrument, an acoustic guitar, at age 13 in a vain attempt to win back the affections of his 8th grade girlfriend. After his first romantic defeat, Roush buried himself in instruments and musical genres shifting from the metal and classic rock of his teenage years, the hardcore and post-rock of his college years, and into the expansive psychedelia as a member of The Bright Light Social Hour.

Coming off years of heavy touring and relationship upheaval, Curtis Roush composed the songs of his debut album, “Cosmic Campfire Music,” on a laptop during fleeting moments in motels, a tour van, and his parents’ spare bedroom. A reflection of these hushed, quieter spaces, these songs conjure an existential meditation on love - how it rarely arrives, how it often leaves. Working with producer Erik Wofford at Cacophony Recorders, Roush tracked the album to analog tape over one month in the winter of 2016. He played every instrument.

The second track “Getaway” releases an early blast of propulsive energy from its Motown churn and crackling guitar. Album centerpiece “Polestar” nestles its country-tinged yearning in stately slide guitar and languid synths. On “Never Leave You Cold,” Roush ponders devotion over a breezy motorik rhythm before exploding into an immersive hymn of professed love. The album closes with the interstellar gospel of “Space is Empty (Come With Me)” - a seven minute epic reflecting on defeat and rebirth following the disastrous 2016 election. From its calm confessions to its skyward gaze, “Cosmic Campfire Music” is a listen for hushed respite before the long struggle ahead.

Cosmic Campfire Music (MP3)

Curtis Roush - Real Love

Moving Panoramas - Texas Blues

Independent record label based in Austin, TX. 

Mirror Travel - Yesca

Modern Outsider Records

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