Father John Misty / Fear Fun - SP970

Fear Fun is the new full-length album from Father John Misty.

Released: May 1, 2012

Memoryhouse / Memoryhouse Dots - 2092599

This t-shirt features artwork from Memoryhouse’s debut record, The Slideshow Effect. Printed on American Apparel’s 50/50 blend t-shirts for maximum softitude!

Released: January 30, 2012

Black Marble / Weight Against the Door - SBL-73054

Black Marble is one of the latest and greatest additions to the Brooklyn synthwave lexicon, and Weight Against the Door is their debut release, which manages to be bleak, punk, electronic, and uplifting all at once. A download of the EP is included with the 12".

Released: February 14, 2012

THEESatisfaction / awE naturalE - SP960

THEESatisfaction are Stasia Irons and Catherine Harris-White. The pair live/laugh/love/dance and create in Seattle, WA. They write, produce and perform their own material: funk-psychedelic feminista sci-fi epics with the warmth and depth of Black Jazz and Sunday morning soul, frosted with icy raps that evoke equal parts Elaine Brown, Ursula Rucker and Q-Tip. Immediately embraced for their singular sound, unflinching commentary, and immortal groove, Stas and Cat made friends, fans and family from coast to coast via their own immaculate grind; a combo of sharp digital hustle and self-booked, self-financed tours that connected them to like minds everywhere. Even crowds with nary a right foot between them find the steps when indoctrinated with THEESat’s unorthodox but right-on-time rhythms. Like their comrades Shabazz Palaces (you may have heard these two on the 2011 Shabazz Palaces album Black Up), THEESatisfaction came upon the scene with lovingly handmade CDs of their self-released albums, the first of which was 2008’s That’s Weird. All has been in preparation for the album they’ve envisioned for years, their debut full-length on Sub Pop Records, awE NaturalE.

Released: March 27, 2012

Poor Moon / Illusion - SP990

Illusion is the debut EP from Poor Moon.

Released: March 27, 2012

Shearwater / Shearwater Natural - 2095798

Brand new Shearwater t-shirt featuring artwork from their new album, Animal Joy. Printed on American Apparel shirts.

Released: February 14, 2012

Shearwater / Shearwater Gray - 2095799

New Shearwater t-shirt featuring artwork from their new album, Animal Joy. Printed on American Apparel.

Released: February 14, 2012

Dum Dum Girls / Bhang Bhang - 4084093

“Bhang Bhang I’m a Burnout” b/w “Last Caress”

On blue or white vinyl! It’ll be a surprise!

Released: January 11, 2012

feedtime / the Aberrant years - SP980

With the Aberrant years, Sub Pop finally realizes our goal of releasing feedtime, a longtime staff favorite and a huge influence on the label’s early artistes. From 1978 or 1979 (dates are hazy) until the breakup of their classic lineup in 1989, Sydney, Australia’s feedtime—no, that’s not a typo, the ‘f’ is lowercase—shoved their mutant fusion of early American blues, stripped-down hard rock and minimalist punk on an often-hostile music scene. Their raw vision of rock music and disdain for trendy music-biz maneuvering earned them little in the way of mainstream success, but it did get them a rabid underground following (notably Sub Pop’s very own Mudhoney) and the support of seminal Aussie indie label Aberrant Records, Amphetamine Reptile Records and Rough Trade US.

The sound of feedtime was like nothing else in Australia: a vintage blues swagger via roots rock and the late ‘70s that didn’t come from an established clique, a pure strain of rock and roll with a relentless mechanical propulsion. It was the perfect symbiosis of syncopation, minimalist rock that carried a thunderous atmosphere of reckless intoxication and intense personal pain but with a self-assured “ease” amongst the chaos. The sound was both Zen-like transcendence and a form of self-defense from psychic scum. Impenetrable, yet welcoming. Guitar noise you could dance to with lyrics cut straight from experience, tradition and dead crazy urban confusion.

the Aberrant years collects the entire output of feedtime’s 1978-1989 lineup, including their self-titled debut, shovel, Cooper S and suction, plus gobs of rare bonus tracks and a full-color booklet with extensive liner notes by band biographer Leon O’Regan.

This is perfect sound and pure art. Avant-garde pub-rock. All hail the concrete urban blues.

Low / I Could Live in Hope - 4064385

I Could Live In Hope is the first full-length album by Duluth, Minnesota slowcore group Low, released in 1994. It was produced by Mark Kramer.

Released: January 10, 2012

Shearwater / The Golden Archipelago - 4095799

Shearwater continue to explore the beauty, menace, and fragility of the natural world – and that increasingly rare species, the indivisible album – on The Golden Archipelago, the band’s most absorbing and accomplished work to date. The new record is the third panel of a triptych that includes 2006’s enigmatic Palo Santo and 2008’s acclaimed Rook, albums linked by themes of environmental and personal decay and humans’ impact on nature. In The Golden Archipelago, Shearwater turn to a portrait of life on islands – a world of alternating lushness and austerity, numinous silences and sudden cataclysms, and the strange flowerings of plant, animal, and human life that only arise in isolation. These are intimate subjects for songwriter Jonathan Meiburg. As a researcher, he’s camped on islands at the edges of the world, including the Falklands, Tierra del Fuego, the Galapagos, Madagascar, Nunavut, and New Zealand’s Chatham Islands, and once spent a few surreal months in a remote Aboriginal settlement in northern Australia. Adding his grandfather’s WWII experiences as a radio operator in the South Pacific to these travels gave Meiburg plenty of fodder for the songs of The Golden Archipelago, in which he weaves these times and places together with common feelings of wonder, grief, and defiance. The Golden Archipelago opens with the first strains of the anthem of Bikini Atoll, sung by Bikinians in exile on the islet of Kili, where they’ve lived since atomic tests left their home uninhabitable. It’s a fitting introduction to the gentle, eerie “Meridian”, with its depiction of an air raid on an island garrison. From there, Shearwater take us on an island-hopping journey of spectacular contrasts, from the distant heights of “Landscape at Speed” to the snowy expanses of “Hidden Lakes”, from the manic, shuddering confines of “Corridors” to the isolated vistas of “Castaways”. It’s an album of lofty goals and great risk, but Shearwater have never been afraid to dream in widescreen. Like Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love, Husker Du’s Zen Arcade, or Pink Floyd’s polarizing opus The Final Cut, The Golden Archipelago’s beautifully and strangely-wrought musical textures summon a majesty, drama, and individuality that few current records attain, or even attempt. The band worked for months with producer John Congleton (St. Vincent, Black Mountain, Polyphonic Spree, Explosions in the Sky) to capture the thrilling dynamics that have always marked their live performances, burnished by subtle orchestrations and cascades of mallet percussion. The results are singular, revelatory, and demand to be appreciated as a whole. Islands under siege, islands of impenetrable solitude, islands of the world and islands of the mind – all are here in The Golden Archipelago, whose shores and reefs flicker and beckon, even as they crumble under rising seas.

Released: December 15, 2011

La Sera / Sees the Light - SBL-73051

The second LP from La Sera is ten new tracks of peppy break-up pop brimming with defiance and bitter sweetness, recorded with Rob Barbato (The Fall, Darker My Love) in California. Where the first La Sera album was super-dreamy in its layered vocals, Sees The Light is more direct, more aggressive; almost a soundtrack to a lost drive-in movie classic. This is not an album for half-hearted partakers in the heartache scene: just an all-consuming love for punk as pop and pop as punk. All LPs include a download code.

Released: March 27, 2012

Mudhoney / Mudhoney & King Salmon LP - 4004493

In 1995 during the grunge boom, when Steve Turner had a break from Mudhoney, Kim Salmon (The Scientists) was invited to join the band in Seattle. So Salmon accepted the invitation from his friends and flew from Australia to Seattle to check whether the experience was viable and worthy. After a while they amicably split, leaving behind this gem along the way, lost for the last 15 years and recently found. Then in September 2010, Mudhoney and Kim Salmon met again in New York for the ATP Festival, with a band list including The Scientists, Mudhoney, Stooges, Sonic Youth, and more. On this occasion, they spoke about releasing the record. And here it is… and it’s a masterpiece. Like a cross between Kim Salmon’s Sin Factory and Mudhoney’s early albums, this is a gem of swamp and grunge like no other before.

Released: January 5, 2012

Michael Yonkers / Michael Yonkers & The Blind Shake Period LP - 4050895

Music freaks world-wide know now know Michael Yonkers as one of the most exciting sounds in psychedelia. However, although Michael Yonkers has been making music since the early 1960s, until the release of Microminiature Love by DeStijl Records in 2002, he was a relatively obscure figure in the Minneapolis music scene. That might have been different if Sire Records would have released his psych classic Microminiature Love in 1968, as planned, but that was not to be. Shelved for decades, the world – or a small handful of the world – got to hear folk offerings like Grimwood.

Things changed when Clint Simonson of Destijl stumbled on one of Michael’s records – Border of My Mind – in the late 90s. Brothers Jim & Mike Blaha also lucked their way into Michael Yonkers world by a chance encounter with a 7” put out by Get Hip Records. All three set off to find this fascinating musician…and they did. While Simonson heard, fell in love with, and finally released Microminiature Love, the Blaha brothers and their band The Blind Shake chanced into a jam session with Yonkers. That jam was to lead to a fantastic collaboration by Michael Yonkers with the Blind Shake entitled Carbohydrates Hydrocarbons.

Carbohydrates Hydrocarbons is not only a great collection of punk-induced psychedelia, as heavy as anything can be without sludging to death; it was also the best thing Yonkers had done since Microminiature Love, and a high point of the Blind Shake. A few years later Yonkers and the Shake got together for a brief split/collaborative album on Learning Curve Records. Good stuff but not quite as powerful as the two aforementioned monsters. Now comes Period, Michael Yonkers and the Blind Shake’s first full album together since Carbohydrates Hydrocarbons and their best yet.

Like Yonkers and the Shake’s previous work, Period is tuneful and heavy and punk and psychedelic, but there is also something more. The album has an energy which is dark but not sinister. Yonkers’ lyrics are intense, even painful, but his voice is strong. The swirl of sound created by his homemade guitar is other worldly, and when woven into the guitar/baritone guitar/drum throb and punch created by the Blind Shake, Period is nothing less than great. Seriously, after six straight months of listening to Period, I think it is a classics of heavy weirdness – a melding of Von Lmo’s Future Language, High Rise II, and Monoshock’s Walk to the Fire. Period is even worthy of a listen next to Blue Cheer’s Vincebus Eruptum. Yeah, it is a pretty good record. Vinyl copies of Period are housed in a Stoughton “old style” tip-on sleeve.

Released: January 4, 2012

Spoek Mathambo / Father Creeper - SP975

Johannesburg’s Spoek Mathambo (real name: Nthato Mokgata) first hotwired our world with a series of collaborative projects—Sweat X, Playdoe—that placed his smart, dirty vocals on top of electro-rap bangers that activated dance floors across the globe. Things went darker and deeper with his 2010 debut album, Mshini Wam, a record which took Spoek’s love affair with South African culture and his coined “township tech” as a starting point. As always, he pulled those influences in a direction all his own (incl. a pitched-down wobble-house cover of Joy Division’s “She’s Lost Control”).

With the arrival of his second album, Father Creeper, Spoek Mathambo makes the Afro-futurists look old school. Each song arrangement is a statement in and of itself. Rock moments swerve electronic. The crisp, changing rhythms of Mathambo’s live drummer go cyborg with drum machine beats. Guitar lines snake and ripple across the album, ranging from summery highlife melodies to amped-up rock riffs. Soulfully sung choruses shift up into double-time rap choruses as video game bleeps splash through Mathambo’s gutturals. Lyrically, Father Creeper flips the concerns of mainstream rap by embracing a deep sensitivity for a traumatized society where the fucked-upedness is real, the optimism stubborn and the booty ripe. The more you listen to Mathambo’s world, the more it makes sense. The big picture shows us a musician hitting his stride with enough confidence and vision to craft songs as robust and challenging and attractive as life in our electrified, apocalyptic 2012.

Released: March 13, 2012

Shearwater / Rooks 7" - 4095798

“Rooks” b/w “The Rainbow”

Released: December 15, 2011

Shearwater / Rook - 4095797

Cut ’n Pasted from the Matador site:

Hailed as “almost impossibly majestic and beautiful” (NPR “album of the year”), Shearwater’s Palo Santo (2007, Matador), a suite of ethereal but oddly disquieting art-rock songs loosely centered around the life and death of singer Christa Paffgen (aka Nico), marked the Texan quartet’s debut on the national stage. Several publications, including The New York Times, named it one of the year’s best, and the band’s singular combination of sonic abandon and restraint, spun around the soaring, otherworldly voice of part-time ornithologist Jonathan Meiburg, drew comparisons to late-period Talk Talk and both the lovely and anxious moments of Eno’s early solo work.

This year’s much-anticipated Rook takes the band into realms both richer and stranger. Though a similarly haunted, elegaic mood – punctuated by flashes of dread and menace – pervades the album, Rook is its own animal, at once more accessible (the near-title track, “Rooks”, anchored by Thor Harris’ thunderous kick drum, a booming organ, and a stately trumpet line, could almost be mistaken for radio-friendly) and more accomplished than its predecessor, with a depth and grandeur that seem improbably packed into the album’s tidy 35 minutes. Squalls of feedback have largely given way to sudden gusts of strings and woodwinds, though the band’s fondness for unusual instrumentation remains intact – harp, hammer dulcimer, and a curiously carved metal box all take featured roles. Each song is a mini-epic, from the in-medias-res opening of “On the Death of the Waters” to the pounding (but drumless) urgency of “Leviathan, Bound”, the abrupt rock of “Century Eyes”, the crystalline depths and heights of “I Was a Cloud” and “The Snow Leopard”, and the final, elegant flourish of “The Hunter’s Star”. Rook is unlike any other album you’ll hear this year – or any year. It has the vividness and ineffability of a waking dream, the strange beauty and internal logic of a fairy tale, and above all, evokes a vanishing world that may or may not be our own.

Released: December 15, 2011

Shearwater / Palo Santo - 4095796

Shearwater has transformed itself to the point of reinvention on Palo Santo, the band’s fourth album. The first Shearwater release to be made up entirely of songs by vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Jonathan Meiburg, Palo Santo resembles previous Shearwater albums only incidentally. It’s a thrilling, paradoxical record—icily warm, welcoming and threatening, sloppy and immaculate—and one which NPR called “impossibly majestic and beautiful” in naming it the best record of 2006.

Released: December 15, 2011

Jakob Olausson / Morning and Sunrise - 4000380

Jakob Olausson’s ?Morning and Sunrise? CD from De Stijl Records

Released: December 15, 2011

Sub Pop / Loser Knit Hat - 30000873

In an attempt to achieve the same dizzying heights of success we attained when we manufactured the first ear-warming favorite Sub Pop Knit Hat, we’ve stripped it down, simplified, and self-deprecated it and came up with the heather gray, LOSER edition of this winter friend. Your head is going to be stoked, trust us.

Released: December 14, 2011

Hunx / Hairdresser Blues - SBL-73052

Hairdresser Blues is the first solo record from front man Hunx, and features all Hunx, all the time (minus drums, played by Daniel Pitout). Listen in as Hunx sings on about love, hairspray, and rollers, all backed by contagious pop melodies with streaks of glam, garage, and the Dunedin Sound in its hair. Recorded with Ivan Julian (Richard Hell & the Voidoids) in NY. All LPs include a download code.

Released: February 28, 2012

Obits / Obits October 2011 In Person Tour Poster - 30785993

Printed on sturdy card-stock, this handsome poster at one time announced and foretold, and now commemorates, the October 2011 tour conducted IN PERSON by the very good rock band Obits. These posters are just about (if not exactly) 14" wide by 22" tall.

Please note! Because these posters are neither fold-able nor roll-able and therefore must be shipped rather expensively and entirely flatly, we will only ship these to US addresses!

Released: November 29, 2011

The Head and the Heart / iTunes Session - SP992

In mid-October of this year, in the midst of their first-ever headlining tour, Seattle’s The Head and the Heart stopped at LA’s EastWest Studios to record an exclusive session for iTunes. The band spent a full day recording eight songs, including alternate versions of “Lost in My Mind” and “Cats and Dogs” from their breakthrough 2011 self-titled release. The session also features “Chasing a Ghost” and “When I Fall Asleep,” two brand new songs that have become live show staples and fan favorites. The Head and the Heart’s iTunes Session is out November 29th, 2011.

More information is available here.

The Head and the Heart’s iTunes Session.

Memoryhouse / The Slideshow Effect - SP925

Memoryhouse formed some five years ago in the depths of Southern Ontario, Canada, in a mid-size town called Guelph as a collaborative project meant to serve as an artistic outlet for composer Evan Abeele and photographer Denise Nouvion. Evan, a dedicated student of classical music and a pop-music encyclopedist, intended Memoryhouse to be a multimedia art project, pairing his instrumental compositions with Denise’s photographs and short films. Testing ways to blur the boundaries between genres, to weave a synthesis of music and photography, they experimented with themes, lyrics and multiple layers of instrumentation. Nouvion’s soft, ethereal voice anchored the frozen textures of Abeele’s compositions with frank sentimentality—a unique approach towards humanizing the electro-pop compositions they were creating. The results, at once timeless and new, were impressive and in September 2011 we at Sub Pop released a fully re-recorded, remixed and re-mastered version of the band’s 2010 self-released, digital-only EP, The Years.

The new album is called The Slideshow Effect and its title speaks to what hasn’t changed for Memoryhouse: their continuing interest in the synthesis of the aural and the visual. It refers to the photographic/cinematic technique of zooming and panning to animate still images, often used in documentary film making to give movement to archival photographs. The 10-track album, produced by Abeele, with assistance from friend, collaborator, and occasional Memoryhouse bassist Barzin Hassani Rad, finds Memoryhouse heading toward a new clarity in composition as well as sound; a more organic direction for artists who are, in their own words, transitioning from a “bedroom recording project” into a fully realized band. Nouvion’s voice has never been more present than on the new album, which finds her stepping away from Memoryhouse’s past reverbed sound in favor of a more upfront, and intimate vocal approach. They half-seriously refer to their new sound as “Taylor Swift with Built to Spill as her backing band.” However The Slideshow Effect might be described, we fully-seriously love it.

If you pre-order The Slideshow Effect by February 28th, you’ll receive a limited edition photo scrapbook put together by the band!

Also worth noting, if you pick up The Slideshow Effect LP from us, or at your local, independent record store, you’ll get the Loser Edition, a colored vinyl version of the record, in this case, a lovely light purple. Just look for the official LOSER seal!

Released: February 28, 2012

Shearwater / Animal Joy - SP957

We at Sub Pop are exceedingly proud to present Shearwater’s Animal Joy, our first album by the band and their eighth overall. Led by Jonathan Meiburg, and featuring drummer Thor Harris, and bassist Kimberly Burke, Shearwater has been a favorite at Sub Pop HQ for many years. Why? Fellow Shearwater fan Gerard Cosloy puts it nicely:

“It’s been suggested—by fans, detractors, even by the band’s founder—that Shearwater and whatever we call underground/indie/whatever-rock in this part of the century are not an obvious fit. And that’s true. So much of what we hear these days (the lousy stuff, anyway) is willfully insular; Jonathan Meiburg’s songs, by contrast, have constantly tackled bigger questions and been propelled by massive musical ambitions.

We’re in an era in which minimalism and lower-than-low-tech have come in vogue. By contrast, Shearwater’s recordings—the epic “Island Arc” trilogy of Palo Santo, Rook and The Golden Archipelago in particular—have been expansive in a fashion like none of their contemporaries. On Animal Joy, Meiburg has opted to ditch an approach that paid huge artistic dividends over his last three Matador albums for a record that seems shockingly direct, immediate and intensely personal. He’s no stranger to lush, crafted recordings, but this one sounds like no prior Shearwater incarnation.

Someone’s bound to label this Shearwater’s transitional album, but to these ears, it sounds like a thrilling artistic rebirth. Just give ’em the fucking Grammy already!"

Worth noting: if you pick up the Animal Joy LP from us, or at your favorite independent record store, you’ll get the LOSER Edition, a colored vinyl version of the record, in this case, a blood red and black swirl. Just look for the official LOSER seal on the cover!

Released: February 14, 2012

Seapony / Sailing - SBL-73049

Well well well, if it isn’t the first new Seapony material to surface since their debut LP, Go With Me, was released earlier this year. “Sailing” is a subdued, earwormy number, featuring added acoustic guitar layers and delicate instrumentation. “I Saw You” is the more upbeat track, which is why we did the sensible thing and put it as the b-side. Take that, logic. Limited press on black vinyl.

Released: November 22, 2011

Washed Out / Washed Out Tour Poster - 30945998

This silk-screened 18″ × 24″ Washed Out tour poster features artwork from Within and Without and will look wonderful on your wall. Designed by Jeff Kleinsmith.

Released: October 19, 2011

Washed Out / Within and Without Poster - 30945998

You’re looking at a poster featuring the artwork for Washed Out’s 2011 release, Within and Without.

Released: October 19, 2011

Fleet Foxes / Fleet Foxes Type Poster - 30777998

This Fleet Foxes poster features art from their 2011 release, Helplessness Blues.

Released: October 19, 2011

Fleet Foxes / Helplessness Blues Cover Poster - 30777999

Large, glossy poster featuring the cover art of Fleet Foxes’ 2011 masterpiece, Helplessness Blues.

Released: October 19, 2011