T. G. Shand - WAWO

Music toys with time. Or, maybe songs reflect back that time is always toying with us. The world of a song takes hold of us like an eternity to be lost in, with its repetitions and variations, but ultimately, as with everything else, it has a start and then ends. And there’s no place to lose time like San Francisco, where there are no seasons and all the seasons occur within one day; where the fog takes the space where your plans might have been; where there’s insane wealth all around and everyone you know and love is hanging on at the periphery and making art on any given Tuesday night. About Glenn Donaldson’s new record, "The Town That Cursed Your Name," he says, "I realized as I was piecing it together that it's a song cycle about trying to live while also feeling called to make music." It’s a double life when it works and a deeper doubleness to mirror the Gemini nature of songs themselves. "The Town That Cursed Your Name" contemplates this problem with wryness, generosity, and the micro- and macroscopic realness Donaldson is known and loved for.

Whereas the 2022 collection "Summer at Land's End" was a softer, gauzier world, "The Town That Cursed Your Name" is heavier, with fuzzed lines running through. "Leave It All Behind" starts out with an amorphous whine but quickly launches into something both supremely melodic and buzzing at the edges. "Here Comes the Lunar Hand" is an impressionist geometry that seems to capture the album’s themes without telling you how. Lyrically, Donaldson embraces the earnestness of his heroes Paul Westerberg and Grant McLennan. Sonically, late '80s college rock is filtered through song-forward lo-fi acts like East River Pipe and House of Tomorrow-era Magnetic Fields. Like the images that accompany his releases – flowers and residential street scenes are pushed to the breaking point with color – Donaldson’s songs are at the same time dazzling and lurid, beautiful and burdened, not unlike life as a musician around here.

In the liner notes, Donaldson dedicates the record "to everyone who ever tried to start a band in the Bay." There will be many knowing smiles at his title "Too Late For An Early Grave." But, this dedication captures something else about the particular strain of sincerity that laces the city water supply – the front man around here is on stage under those lights evincing the fervor not of the pop star but of the biggest fan.

-Karina Gill

The Town That Cursed Your Name

The Reds, Pinks & Purples - The Town That Cursed Your Name

The Darkest Timeline

The Darkest Timeline (feat. Lorelle Meets The Obsolete)

Taken from the forthcoming new album This House, out Sept 1st. Pre-order: https://fulltimehobby.ffm.to/thishouse

This House

Hang Out

Pale Blue Eyes - Hang Out

JUST TO ME

It Never Gave Me Anything describes a relationship between a person and an unwanted side of themselves. This side is so unlike how they want to be that they treat them as a separate entity, maybe even a person. It has always been there, ruining moments, talking to them and making sure that they never forget that it is present. A seemingly never ending list of things this "it" is responsible for is recited over a pulsating beat and bass riff that is both ominous and groovy at the same time. This paired with a wall of distorted guitars that show up in the bridges and choruses, creates a song that makes you question what mood the song leaves you with. As is typical of the band, the song plays with what emotion, as well as which genre, it evokes.

Spunsugar - It Never Gave Me Anything

Kewpid

Lightheaded's urgent, thrillingly fresh take on 60s/80s indiepop shines brightly on their debut album "Combustible Gems" and perhaps nowhere more so than on their new single "Bright Happy Girls." What starts as 60s folk/garage pop of the Teenage Shutdown persuasion dissolves into a tumbling, almost chaotic rush of guitars and vocals that go in and out of harmony. The overall effect strongly evokes the wild flush of secret crushes and new loves, the giddy optimism and delicious confusion.

Combustible Gems

Lightheaded - Bright Happy Girls

overcast

Oakland, CA mainstays Lunchbox are back with Pop and Circumstance, an explosive new album draws on influences from both sides of the Atlantic. Besides its obvious debt to the hard end of the 1970s UK mod-revival and the jangle of 1980s British indiepop, the record proclaims Lunchbox’s continued allegiance to the 1960s/70s Southern California pop sensibility and love for the classic AM radio pop single.

Over the course of their almost thirty year career Lunchbox have always impressed with their ability to mine gold from the ore of pop history, and this terrific new record shows them at their best. From the bubblegum mod pop of "Dinner for Two" to the junkshop soul of "Love for Free," the Who-adjacent power pop of "Summer’s Calling" to the horn-driven grooves of "Is this Real?," "Pop and Circumstance" transposes Lunchbox’s unique blend of influences into a transcendent new key.

Pop And Circumstance

Pop and Circumstance

Pre-order

Lunchbox - Dinner for Two

From the 2-track 'Frost' single on Matinée Recordings

Frost

The Royal Landscaping Society - Frost

Slumberland began operations in 1989, inspired by such musical happenings as C-86, early Creation, Sarah, Postcard, and the UK post-punk indie label scene. Since then we've covered a lot of territory, from punk to lofi noise to shoegaze and of course pop, releasing records from bands like The Aislers Set, Boyracer, Stereolab, Rocketship, Lorelei, The Ropers, The Saturday People and Black Tambourine.

By the mid 2000s we were starting to see a resurgence of interest in guitar pop and the start of the ongoing vinyl revival: the perfect environment for Slumberland! We launched into our latest phase of activity with as string of classic releases from The Pains of Being Pure At Heart, Crystal Stilts, Frankie Rose, Veronica Falls, Allo Darlin', Joanna Gruesome and so many more.

2018 is our twenty-ninth year we are still going strong, ploughing our own furrow and bringing you unique, genre-defining (and genre-defying!) releases from bands like Smokescreens, Tony Molina, Papercuts, Business of Dreams, Peel Dream Magazine, D.A. Stern, The Spook School, Frankie Rose, Young Guv, Terry Malts and many, many more. As always, we operate entirely outside of the echo chamber of trends, fashion and phoney hipness. Slumberland bands are independent in the best way possible -- making music devoid of bullshit and true to their own voices, regardless of current popular taste.

Lightheaded - Bright Happy Girls

Slumberland Records

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