Weekend Showcase 4.17 adds more heat to this beautiful first weekend of May with 37 sweet & sultry & rocking tunes. Take a listen and discover indie music's hidden gems. Learn more here:
http://therevue.ca/2018/05/05/weekend-showcase-4-17/

Weekend Showcase 4.17

Written and produced by Malena Zavala
Mix by Gareth Jones
Mastered by Alex Wharton
Artwork by Malena Zavala

www.yucatanrecords.com/malena-zavala

If It Goes

'What A Mess' is the first single from the upcoming album "Day & Dark" due out
June 29th -- 
 Featuring backing vocals by Lucius and Springtime Carnivore

Artwork by Eric Ernest Johnson

What A Mess (feat. Lucius & Springtime Carnivore)

Taken from the album, Stains on Silence, out 15th June on Tough Love. Pre-order here - smarturl.it/StainsOnSilence

Formats:
LP - black vinyl, with cream sleeve
LPX - orange vinyl, with black sleeve (indie stores-only - 300 copies)
LPXX - ultra clear vinyl, with black sleeve, poster and hand-numbered (Bandcamp only - 200 copies)
CD & digital

Biog

It stands to reason that many vital albums come critically close to never being made. The eight-track upshot of doubt, upheaval and financial strain, Stains on Silence by Girls Names is one such release.

Following 2015’s blitzing Arms Around a Vision, and the parting of drummer Gib Cassidy just over a year later, the Belfast band suddenly found themselves facing down a looming void. “There was a finished – and then aborted – mix of the album, which was shelved for six months,” reveals Girls Names frontman Cathal Cully. “We then took a break from all music and went back to full-time work. We chilled out from the stress of rushing the record and not being happy with it, as well as being skint with no impending touring on the cards and constantly having to worry about rent.”

The stumbling blocks that proved a strain became the album’s defining breakthrough. Recorded in various locations including Belfast’s Start Together Studio with Ben McAuley, Cully’s home and the band’s practice space, spontaneous creation, cut-up techniques and self-editing took centre-stage for the first time. "We started tearing the material apart and rebuilding, re-editing and re-recording different parts in my home in early Autumn last year,” says Cully. “When we got them to a place we were happier with we went back into Start Together Studio with Ben McAuley to finalise the mixes to what they are now."

Where AAAV proved a brazen statement of intent, Stains on Silence bounds forth as its feature-length comedown. What could have seen the band buckle became an opportunity for approaching things tabula rasa. During its two-year transmutation, Cully, bassist Claire Miskimmin and guitarist Philip Quinn had a single aim for their fourth album: to make an old-fashioned record clocking in around 30 to 35 minutes in length that made the listener reach straight for repeat. From the Bang Bang bar-summoning swoon of opener '25’ and the submerged disco doom of ‘Haus Proud’ to the rapt, dub-leaning ‘Fragments of a Portrait’, Girls Names have excelled in their goal by forging an LP of synchronous nuance and defiance.

Marked by the presence of drum machines and programming throughout, these eight masterfully-woven tales are once again commandeered by founder Cully, whose words, understated yet defiant, mine purpose and meaning from the mire ("I want to bathe again, I want to swim again / In a pool of twisting bodies, blackened gold." — ‘25’). But while Stains on Silence came critically close to never being made, having lived with it, reconfigured it, and guided its metamorphosis from flickers of inspiration and half-formed schemes, it’s both a statement of pure perseverance, and a head-on confrontation with ambivalence that couldn’t be more assured. (Brian Coney, March 2018)

www.facebook.com/GirlsNames
twitter.com/Girls_Names
www.instagram.com/girls_names/
girlsnamesbelfast.bandcamp.com

Girls Names - Karoline

New single from Oslo based trio Sauropod, released April 27th via Propeller Recordings: Sauropod.lnk.to/IKWYB

Sauropod - I Know Where You've Been

Wake Up (Feat. Fionn)

'Turnmills' Out Now -
Stream / Download: https://MaribouState.lnk.to/turnmillsSo

Maribou State All Night Long (DJ set) at Corsica Studio in support of #SaveNightlife - https://MaribouState.lnk.to/corsicaSo

Taken from 'Turnmills' released 2nd May 2018 via Counter Records.

Follow Maribou State -
Spotify: http://found.ee/maribou-sp
Apple Music: http://found.ee/maribou-am
Facebook: http://found.ee/maribou-fb
Twitter: http://found.ee/maribou-tw
Soundcloud: http://found.ee/maribou-sc

Kingdoms In Colour

Turnmills

Ashtray Navigations - Greatest Imaginary Hits (vhf#148 LP+4CD)

Ashtray Navigations - Greatest Imaginary Hits - D1 (Rob) - 04 - There Is A Ditch And There Is A Pit

lauraliesin.bandcamp.com/album/tara-clerkin-trio

Order

Tara Clerkin Trio - Hellenica

Taken from the album, Agitprop Alterna, out on April 3rd via Tough Love and Slumberland. Pre-order here - https://smarturl.it/agitpropalterna

Agitprop Alterna - master MP3s

Peel Dream Magazine - Emotional Devotion Creator

Taken from the record, Look Alive, out 1st May 2020 via Tough Love. Pre-order here - https://smarturl.it/StroppiesLookAlive

New EP - master (MP3)

The Stroppies - Holes in Everything

Taken from the album, Agitprop Alterna, out on April 3rd via Tough Love and Slumberland. Pre-order here - smarturl.it/agitpropalterna

Peel Dream Magazine - It's My Body

Taken from the Day By Day 12", out 8th May. Pre-order here - https://smarturl.it/DayByDay12 

-----
"Day by Day was actually written a few years ago but has taken on an eerie relevance in light of current events. As the title suggests, the song explores living in the present moment as a way of overcoming difficulties and growing stronger. Written during a dark time in our lives the song is about the struggle of carrying on, taking each day at a time in hope that things will eventually get better"

Co-produced by Doves’ guitarist, Jez Williams, Day By Day picks up where debut Night Drive left off, fragile, and amorphous, driven by a Kevin Shields-esque drone and underpinned by Katie Drew’s beautiful and delicate vocal.

The double A-side single, Day By Day / Katy Song will be released on 12” vinyl on May 8th and is limited to 150 copies.

White Flowers - Day By Day (Extended Edit)

The Reds, Pinks & Purples - I Should Have Helped You

Taken from You Might Be Happy Someday, released 2nd October. Pre-order the LP here - https://smarturl.it/redpinksandpurples
--
Deep amidst San Francisco’s Richmond neighborhood misty air and washed-out pastel blocks, Glenn Donaldson has been diligently creating minor masterpieces with rudimentary home technology for some time now. With The Reds, Pinks & Purples, Donaldson has finally created a vivid reflection of this dreary scene. You Might be Happy Someday is an oblique strand of SF outer-avenue cloud cover that stretches across the Atlantic to the grey docks of Bristol as captured in Sarah Records’ fetishized insert photos.

Despite the deceptively congenial presentation, Happy is often a heavy record. After a litany of Donaldson’s past iterations (from experimental abstraction to post-punk and pop), The Reds, Pinks & Purples is Glenn D’s most personal project. Balanced awkwardly atop almost ironically upbeat jangles and rhythms Mitch Easter might have captured on his reel-to-reel are prime cuts of bummer pop. Almost every track is written in second person, creating a feeling of overheard private inner conversations-on-repeat: soft-lob criticisms, supportive friend advice and embarrassing confessions, You Might be Happy Someday is a smeared window into the (kindly) cynical thoughts of a romantic misanthrope.

Like the work of other U.S. depresso-pop purveyors East River Pipe, The Reds, Pinks & Purples’ mini-album is the kind of record that is both unsettling and comforting. When you’re four drinks deep and you’ve worn your Smiths records out, You Might Be Happy Someday is on deck to have wine spilled on it while you dance alone in the kitchen.

You Might Be Happy Someday is released on Tough Love on 2nd October. Fittingly, the record will be pressed on to 'pastel pink' colour vinyl, with a limited run of 300 copies.

The Reds, Pinks and Purples - Last Summer In A Rented Room

Taken from You Might Be Happy Someday, released 2nd October. Pre-order the LP here - smarturl.it/redpinksandpurples
--
Ahead of the release of their Tough Love debut in October, Glenn Donaldson's prolific Reds, Pinks and Purples project have released the second track from the record, the poignantly titled 'Your Parents Were Wrong About You'. Lyrically, it's a perfect riposte to the challenges of a n unrelenting year, captured best in the line, "take good care of your friends, they won't always be there". As you read this, Donaldson's city of San Francisco is coated in a thick layer of smoke from nearby wildfires, and these words feel as appropriate as ever.

Reflecting on the track, Donaldson provides a little insight into its inspiration, a moving portrait of a dark situation. 
 
"I once had a girlfriend whose mother took me out to dinner basically to warn me that her daughter was a bad person. The tragedy of that has stuck with me all these years. This song is dedicated to anyone with toxic or undermining parents. They were wrong about you."

The Reds, Pinks and Purples - Your Parents Were Wrong About You

Taken from the Within A Dream EP, released 15th January 2020. Pre-order the limited edition 12" here - https://smarturl.it/WithinADream

Further info
Following the release of two 12"s in the past year, White Flowers return with the Within A Dream EP,  a recently recorded four song collection to be released on 15th January 2021. Alongside digital formats, it will be pressed to 12" transparent vinyl in an edition of 300.  

The four tracks on the EP came together earlier this year during various periods of enforced isolation, and somewhat inevitably reflect the conditions of their provenance, exploring themes of dissociation, multiple selves, and the role of the individual in an increasingly strange and fragmented world. Co-produced with Ali Chant (PJ Harvey, Perfume Genius, Portishead), Within A Dream combines home and studio recordings in ways that display the duo’s growing ability to switch between grand sonic gestures and subtle sonic abstractions.

Alongside the three originals which explore the outer edges of post-punk, dreampop and shoegaze in increasingly alien ways, is a beguiling cover of Mama Cass’ ‘Didn’t Want to Have to Do It’. As with their version of Red House Painters' 'Katy Song' from their previous 12”, it's provides another example of how defined White Flowers' aesthetic has become, as they’re effortlessly able to shape the music of others to their own vision. Indeed, as with all their videos and records to date, the artwork for the single is again created entirely by the band, another example of their intentions to create a defined White Flowers universe distinctly their own.

Within A Dream EP (master - MP3)

White Flowers - Within a Dream

We are not music snobs. We prefer music connoisseurs.

Girls Names - Karoline

Tough Love

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