It's a ridiculous thing to do in a recession—quit your job, start a band, go out on the road. But that's exactly what Portland's Nick Drum and Jon McNeill did. The former was a young lawyer working his way up the ladder through endless hours; the latter an ethnographer whiling away his days on product research far from home. They felt themselves settling, their freedom slipping, so when the pair finally met, they knew what they had to do. From a single jam session, Brave Chandeliers was born—a power-pop and soul-fueled answer to the nine-to-five grind ringing with heartfelt sentiment and optimism.

What began as a couple of fast friends playing cover songs—"Tempted" by Squeeze and "I Get Lifted" by George McCrae—quickly evolved into the piano-driven, hook-laden Brave Chandeliers of today: Nick on vocals and keys and Jon on guitar, plus bassist Cary Samsel and drummer Nathan Powell (tour-tested players for bluesman Terry Evans). In a sense, the band's founders had waited all their lives for this. Nick developed his voice in choir, and began piano lessons at 8 with a teacher who didn't quash his ability to improvise. Jon had instruction too, but taught himself guitar by memorizing the tabs to Siamese Dream. 

It seemed significant that their first practice took place on the day of the TARP bailout. While the nation set out to fix itself, so did the men of Brave Chandeliers with a new outlook attested to by the poignant words of "Madmen," an early standout: "I can read the headlines / I know all the hard times / I'd rather take a slow night / Where you and me can get out of here / out from under the fear / and follow our lives." That romanticism couched in reality colored the band's self-released debut EP, Put Away the Camera, and helped secure them a seven-week tour around the U.S.

Brave Chandeliers' brand new album, 11 Escapes, finds the fresh-faced group already coming into their own. After locking themselves into rehearsal for two weeks, they repaired to KBC Studios, situated in a gorgeous old remodel in northeast Portland. With producer Jeremy Sherrer (Hockey, Dandy Warhols, the Gossip) at the helm, they recorded live to two-inch tape, everyone playing at once. In the parlor was a grand piano you can nearly picture as the rich notes ring out. Songs like "Sinking Ship" deliver propulsive pop à la Maroon 5, while the fuzzy raucousness of "Escape" evokes Arctic Monkeys and the upbeat jaunt of "Deep End" Ben Folds—others who put songwriting above all else.

As its title would suggest, 11 Escapes offers as many angles on the concept of breaking away. Each song acts as a window into one room, or one life, in contemporary America. "Say It's Alright" is told from the view of a repentant cheater. "Bumpy Ride" is about overcoming of a rut. "Life In Motion" takes stock of those things we simply cannot avoid: entropy, aging, time. "Viral" is about falling head over heels in love. And of course, it's deeply personal too. After all, 11 Escapes is the very document that proves that Brave Chandeliers, happily, are the ones who got away.

It’s been almost exactly two years since Sacramento musical mesmerists Sun Valley Gun Club released their practically perfect, self-titled sophomore album. That record was absolutely my favorite album of 2016, and remains one of my favorite records to this day, getting almost as much play in 2018 as when I first heard it. So when I first discovered there was a new SVGC record, I was pretty excited. I had been hearing the band perform some of these songs live for a while, but when gathered all up together, as The Water, The Stars, they revealed themselves to be yet another pitch perfect collection of classic indie rock, filtered through SVGC’s unique sonic lens: a hook-heavy hybrid of languorous twang and noise pop crunch, each song impossibly catchy on its own, but even more compelling as part of the whole. Like with the previous album, I had to fight the urge to simply listen to individual songs over and over and over endlessly. But honestly, I didn’t really fight all that hard…

The opening track “If You Would Only Wait” perfectly encapsulates the Sun Valley Gun Club sound, a galloping blast of jangle and crunch, driven by distorted vocals, fuzzy guitars and some dizzyingly loose-limbed drumming. Hooks everywhere, the bridge as catchy as the verse, the verse as catchy as the chorus, the band deftly delivering the occasional feedback drenched squall or slipping into syncopated, almost metallic heft. And of course, one of the most distinctive parts of SVGC’s sound, their tendency to take what is essentially a pop song and stretch it WAY out at the end, letting it transform into something much more psychedelic and dreamily droney, a sprawling, hazy and heavenly psych jam that could stretch out forever, and I would not mind one bit.

As if the opener wasn’t good enough, “She Is Gone” might be one of the best songs SVGC have ever written, which is saying a lot for a band whose catalog is essentially made up of coulda/shoulda/woulda been stone cold classics. Laconic vox draped over woozy jangle, a sweetly slacker indie rock that finds the perfect middle ground between Pavement and Built To Spill, laced with some of the most divine background harmonies, the whole song demonstrating the band’s unparalleled pop-song mastery, still channeling the nineties, but making that sound wholly and totally their own.

And that’s just two songs in. The rest of the record unfurls just as dramatically, from the slow burn of “Falling Apart”, replete with spidery guitar melodies and a seriously crushing breakdown, again liberally laced with feedback and impossibly catchy hooks, to “Goodbye Columbus”, which sounds like a twangier take on unsung San Diego math pop crew Heavy Vegetable, to the last-call mope pop, countrified slow-jam of “Years After All”, an hypnotic see-saw between the Beatles-beholden Weezer-shred of San Francisco pop legends the Ovens, and a drowsy and drunken, sleepy smolder, laced with lush horns that lend the song an almost funereal Calexico vibe, all dusty and dusky.

As the record draws to a close, the sound winds down as well, “Time” takes the mumbled country of the late great Souled American, and lets it blossom into late night, Wilco-worthy dirge pop, the group effortlessly infusing that last-call melancholy with the sort of pathos more often paired with sonic bombast, instead of subtle, subdued songsmithery. And finally, the record closes with “I Saw A Pigeon”, lush with organ and horns, another sweetly maudlin dirge, that slowly builds to a fierce finale, a bombastic big finish: swirling squalls of guitar shred, raspy emotive vox and soaring horns. It’s like the final number of some big production, indie rock musical, that just as quickly fades into silence with one final peal of feedback. // Andee Connors

Behind the Mountain are:

Alexandre Mendes

Ricardo Cruz

Instrumental jam-based project with influences from psychedelic, stoner/desert rock doom/sludge and electronics.

Lots of guitars, basses, drum tracks and plenty of synthy, fuzzy, trippy sounds.
If you like our work, give us your support ! 
Thanks, peace !

!maximum motor city psychedelic garage jam band!

A vox/git/bass/dr Trio with Fuzzy Guitar Rock between 60s and early 70s UK psych und 60s US Garage Rock and a nod to Motor City Punk, jamming away from coast to coast...

Brothers Andrew and Lukas McSherry formed The Dead Zones in a tiny makeshift jam space underneath a motorcycle clubhouse. Their fuzzy and punchy sound is the direct result of their instruments competing with the revving of chopper and dirt bike engines. Anthony Morelli joined the band on drums in mid 2016 and they have since released a single, an EP and an accompanying music video. Look out for their second EP early summer 2018.

Impulsive Hearts is summertime, beaches, swimming after dark, dance parties, bright colors, glitter, and love on a loop. 

For fans of Best Coast, The Pretenders, Beach House, Alvvays, The Beach Boys, The Smiths, Dum Dum Girls, Bully and you. 

Impulsive Hearts pick up where recent revivalist acts like Dum Dum Girls and Best Coast have left off, adding just a hint of indelible Midwestern sadness to the neo-girl group garage rock sound.

 “[The] songs are studies in contrast, sweet melodies and then distortion and rage”, - Jessica Hopper, The Chicago Tribune. 

“Channeling Dum Dum Girls' most Spector-esque tendencies, Danielle Sines & Co. put together melodies so intuitive and simple that you feel like you've known them for years after a listen or two. Ride cymbals and guitar form a sinfonia of their own as each little bit of pop perfection rises to its climax. One of Chicago's most-promising bands.” - Austin B. Harvey, Chirp Radio http://chirpradio.org/blog/chirp-radios-top-10-albums-of-2016

“After a few dozen listens to opening jam "I Wannabe Gone," this wolf is sure Impulsive Hearts always have sand between their toes. Their echoey, languid jams have a touch of Beach House—that is, if Beach House were produced by Phil Spector.” – Gossip Wolf, Chicago Reader 

“The airiness of dream pop, and the toe-tappiness of surf-pop all mixed up with the kind of fuzzy guitars that I’m a total sucker for.” – Listening Midwestward

Impulsive Hearts is Danielle Sines. She sings, shouts, plays guitar and synth, and records noises on tape recorders + Impulsive Hearts forever.

Sydney's psych-junk outfit WAWAWOW have a name to suit the magic – it’s half jam, half Tetris. Carved out of the itches of four frustrated instrumentalists, the group evolved from a like-this-but-weirder attitude to something eccentrically rectangular, with a sound described as “a data-driven Thee Oh Sees for kids that keep their shirt on”.

With a bent, frenzied view of the psych-rock genre, WAWAWOW combine jittery synth with sporadic B-52s style vocals and absurdly indulgent guitars. The four-piece alternate between rhythmic refrain and fuzzy overkill, using pudgy effects to create a “cheeky, trippy, and delightfully screwy” feel, like if Charles Mingus covered The Strokes. Blacklights, glowing drumsticks and triggered rope lights add to the band’s praised live show, with a non-stop monolithic performance that has been electrifying Australian audiences over the last few years.

With a full length LP to be released in February 2020, WAWAWOW are throwing out a “big, eccentric sound that Sydney will surely be hearing a lot more from.” Dig it now and dig it fast.

The Green Reflectors are a two piece band based in Bridgewater, NS. Kyle (Guitars) and Aaron (Drums) Furlotte play instrumental surf flavoured rock n’ roll influenced by such artists as Link Wray, The Ventures, The Jam and The Beatles. They've been hard at work for 6 years now, playing tons of local shows and travelling to all ends of Nova Scotia spreading instrumental surf love. Starting off in a community with a mostly metal scene, they found it hard to even get a gig at first. They started off by playing in driveways. When they finally did get into a venue, they melted faces and had the crowd moshing to their slick Link Wray style riffs. Think tube amps, vintage vinyl records, fuzzy power chords, slick drums and crazy stage presence and you’ll have a pretty good idea of what The Green Reflectors are all about!

The Honey Pot is a hard working group of Rock and Roll musicians out of Detroit Michigan that aim to catch audiences off guard through to the point fuzzy garage rock and the raw power of stage presence. Originally created by lead singer and guitar player Nic Salden in 2008 the band has since been through many paradigm shifts and seen many new faces. The current line up of Nic Salden (vocals/guitar), Pedro Villa (vocals/bass guitar), and Tyler Heike (drums) has been going strong since 2011 via some soul searching, lots of experimentation, and an unsurpassable amount of uniqueness and dedication. Each member brings a plethora of individual influences and when thrown into the function that is "The Honey Pot" produces a sound unlike any you've heard before (and I know no one has ever told you that) or are likely to hear again. As a band our inspiration comes all the way from Chuck Berry and Link Wray to the likes of The Flaming Lips, My Bloody Valentine, The Pixies, The Cure, Rage Against the Machine, The MC5, Dinosaur Jr., Iggy Pop, Jack White and many many more. All in all the Honey Pot consists of three best friends that love to get together and jam, write music, play shows, and ultimately entertain an audience!

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