Father John Misty / Fear Fun - SP970

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

Released: May 1, 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

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.

Released: March 13, 2012

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 / 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

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

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

Stare Case / Lose Today - 400382

Lose Today wields the ethereal meditative power leftover from The Velvet Underground’s Sweet Sister Ray epic bootleg. The result: a melodious somnolent grievance that leaves the listener to feast on a curiously endless and internal banquet. Young snarls and writhes in irritated spiraling pronouncements that trail off in regretful, pained fashion, producing the same eventual something-isn’t-right that The Velvet Underground secured, but set aside to allow the Michigan basement bluesmen to borrow. Also, here is Young’s virgin performance on bass, a venture that proves suiting as his sparse yet stable meanderings are the backbone to a jam lost in the arcane. At times the bass lines seem to be counting off the seconds until an eventual meltdown. Meanwhile, Olson wanders off on woodwinds, seemingly tangled in wavelengths, letting his own sounds guide him through a brassy chilling darkness. He follows scales—Indian scales, blues scales—though the subtlety of Olson’s discipline fosters to an expansive intimacy, a nuance so massive his quips on flute and saxophone are the secret architects of Lose Today’s meditation. Olson takes the spiraling mania inspired by the likes of The VU’s Sweet Sister Ray lose-all jam and lets it blossom into a soundtrack for a secret think tank whose sole purpose is to maintain a shadowed fire.

Released: September 22, 2011

The Beets / Let the Poison Out - SBL-73045

The Beets are the best band to ever exist from Queens, NY, and this is their third full-length record. Recorded with Gary Olsen of the Ladybug Transistor, Let the Poison Out is a collection of 13 songs about letting the poison out of your system. Semi-metal cover artwork by Matthew Volz. Expect references to the Ramones, Howard Stern, and dead people. All LPs include a download code. THE BEETS!

Released: October 24, 2011

Bloodloss / Lost My Head For Drink - 4004494

Bloodloss – Lost My Head for Drink LP. Long lost, final recordings by legendary Seattle via Sydney Austrailia band, Bloodloss. After prior records with Greasy Pop, Abherrant, Sympathy for the Records Industry, and In the Red, Bloodloss recorded this record in 1996 and it sat unmixed until summer of 2010. Comprised of Lubricated Goat, Monkeywrench, and Mudhoney members, Bloodloss played scuzzed out, Beefheart/spastic jazz-influenced punk rock with one leg in the garage and their arse in the swamp. 1,000 pressed with digital download coupon.

Released: March 11, 2011

Dntel / Life Is Full of Possibilities (Deluxe) - SP955

Los Angeles resident Jimmy Tamborello records, releases and occasionally performs music under the name Dntel. In 2007, we at Sub Pop released the Dntel album Dumb Luck which included contributions from a whole raft of talented people too numerous to list here (a short version of that list would include members of Grizzly Bear, Rilo Kiley, Bright Eyes, and Arthur & Yu). And at the end of 2010, we released a pair of companion EPs by Dntel, entitled After Parties 1 and After Parties 2. Together these two EPs total 8 tracks, all of them instrumental, and featuring (to the best of our “knowledge”) a list of guest contributors numbering exactly zero.

Back in 2001, we did not release the Dntel album Life Is Full of Possibilities. This album was originally released by the Plug Research label, and because we’ve always secretly wished we’d put it out back then, we’re releasing an expanded, re-mastered version of the album to mark its ten-year anniversary in October of 2011.

Life Is Full of Possibilities features collaborations with a number of guest artists, one of which, with Death Cab for Cutie’s Ben Gibbard (on “(This Is) The Dream of Evan and Chan”), led to the formation of The Postal Service. Because Give Up, the 2003 album by The Postal Service, to date the group’s only full-length release, is Sub Pop’s second best-selling album of all time, this is worth noting. Also worth noting: Life Is Full of Possibilities was very well-received at the time of its original release, earning a 9.3 rave review from Pitchfork, and the following from the BBC: “Few electronic musicians out there have come close to the strength of the songwriting contained within this delicately produced CD.”

This double-CD version of the album will include the re-mastered version of the original album on one CD and a collection of both previously released and new remixes, plus outtakes and b-sides on the other. The double-LP version will spread the re-mastered original 10-track album across two pieces of vinyl at 45 33 rpm, with the bonus material included in the download that comes with the record. This will be the first time that Life Is Full of Possibilities has ever appeared on vinyl. We are exceedingly proud to be releasing this expanded, deluxed-up reissue of Life Is Full of Possibilities.

Up until the October 25th, 2011 release of this altogether deluxe reissue of Dntel’s Life is Full of Possibilities if you buy, from us, the vinyl LP format of the album, you will receive the Anywhere Anyone Remixes 12" as A FREE GIFT!

Released: October 24, 2011

Hertta Lussu Assa / Hertta Lussu Assa - 4000383

Gnomic no-fi plunk, wheeze, rattle and moan courtesy of an unfortunately monikered (well…at least to English language readers anyway…it probably means something just lovely in Finnish…) supergroup comprised of Jonna Karanka aka Kuupuu, Laura Naukkarinen aka Lau Nau and Merja Kokkonen aka Islaja that draws from the seemingly eternal well of stoned detuned mischief that feeds the viaducts of the Finnish underground. The sheer density of acts positing variants on this same post-Amon Duul / Siloah-like freakout stylee there gives rise to questions of bandwagon hopping, but that’s a discussion for another time. For the here and now, this first release of theirs is a choice manifestation of heavy-lidded third-mind acoustic weirdity that’s as ungainly as it is mystically/chemically blasted.

Released: August 16, 2011

Circuit des Yeux / Portrait - 4000384

Portrait is Haley Fohr’s third LP and a massive step in her growth as a musician and artist. While pursuing a degree in recording and ethnomusicology she has become proficient in the studio. The result—radically unexpected qualities of cohesion and hi fidelity posit Portrait’s narratives in a space that we’ve yet to experience. This sort of playing the game in the way that the game is usually played, I think is usually called a sell-out. And had her intent faltered to the slightest degree that conclusion might be apropos. But it’s merely an effort to strip the canvas bare and get face to face with things. And it’s Haley’s intent that continues to be championed, as it has endured the acts of recording and performing and yet still stands strong and pristine. the rare qualities of strength and character can only be attributed to a rare artist. The modest, clarion sparkle of Portrait would not have been expected, or even achievable, considering the arc of Symphone and Sirenum, and it stands as a cornerstone and a monument, a testament to the daily practice of channeling her 21 yr old, roiling emotions into sound recordings.

Released: August 16, 2011

Gem Club / Breakers - SBL-73039

Gem Club is music, made by Christopher Barnes and his collaborators, cellist Kristen Drymala, and vocalist Ieva Berberian; Breakers is their masterful debut LP.

Released: September 27, 2011

Shimmering Stars / Violent Hearts - SBL-73041

Violent Hearts is the debut LP from Shimmering Stars. Filtered through years of Spector records and awash in an echo chamber of dark reverb, Shimmering Stars specialize in crafting subtle, lilting pop for both bedroom loners and sock hop slow dancers alike. All LPs include a download code.

Released: September 13, 2011

Dum Dum Girls / Only in Dreams - SP950

On several levels, Dum Dum Girls’ second full-length Only in Dreams is a great leap forward for a gifted songwriter and an equally gifted band—it’s heavy, deeply personal stuff and surely unprecedented for this style of music. “The first record was basically the first songs I’d ever written,” says band-leader Dee Dee, “and I was thinking nostalgically about being a teenager. This record, it was pretty much impossible not to write about very recent, very real things.” Very real things indeed: Dee Dee wrote “Hold Your Hand” immediately after her mother (the pretty lady on the cover of both the Dum Dum Girls’ self-titled 2009 debut EP and their 2010 debut album I Will Be) was diagnosed with what turned out to be a fatal illness, and it’s one of several songs on Only in Dreams that unsparingly trace her mom’s passing. Other songs spell out the emotional toll of separation from one’s lover, something Dee Dee had to deal with while she and her husband (Brandon Welchez of the acclaimed noise-pop band Crocodiles) pursued their own tour schedules.

Only in Dreams more than fulfills the promise of 2011’s acclaimed and fast-selling He Gets Me High EP. It retains Dum Dum Girls’ signature blend of the girl-gang eyeliner punk of the Shangri-Las, the trashy propulsion of the Cramps, and the moody atmospherics of Mazzy Star, but for the first time, all four Dum Dum Girls play and sing on the album. Now the harmonies have more depth, Jules plays her own distinctive guitar leads, and the Bambi (bass)/Sandy (drums) rhythm section powers the music like a vintage V-8 engine. Best of all, tons of time on the road—including two massively successful headlining tours—have molded Dum Dum Girls into a very formidable rock & roll band, giving the music an undeniable force.

And now that power and glory is showcased by full-on studio production—while I Will Be was recorded at home and modestly spiffed up in a studio by legendary pop maestro Richard Gottehrer (Blondie, Go-Go’s), Only in Dreams was recorded at Josh Homme’s Pink Duck Studios, and Gottehrer again produced, this time with Sune Rose Wagner from the Raveonettes.

Only in Dreams represents a musical evolution for Dum Dum Girls and a personal one for Dee Dee, and that’s no coincidence. “I’m for real,” she says. “We all are. I’m really passionate about this, it’s all I know. And maybe we’ve just grown up a bit-or grown out a bit. There’s some weight to what we do, and a pure intent, and I think that comes across on this album.”

If you pre-order Only in Dreams, you’ll receive a limited-edition seven-inch single featuring an edit of “Coming Down” b/w “Crystal Baby.” That’s not the only bit of good news—we pressed a whole bunch on black vinyl, but if you order through us, you get your seven-inch on white vinyl. -And more good news with the colored vinyl: if you pre-order through us, your copy of Only in Dreams will be on light pink vinyl!- (We are now out of pink vinyl.) Both of these things is a “while supplies last” sort of thing, so order now!

Released: September 27, 2011

Still Corners / Creatures of an Hour - SP940

Creatures of an Hour, the debut full-length by London’s Still Corners glows with the delicate vocals of singer Tessa Murray and the atmospheric, cinematic influences of songwriter Greg Hughes. A devoted cinephile, Hughes sees film as a major influence in the band, from the projections (created by band member Leon Dufficy) that feature heavily in their live performances, to the free-floating grace of the new album.

Recorded at his own studio in Greenwich, Creatures of an Hour fuses whispered intimacy to the emotional expansiveness of composer Ennio Morricone. Hughes has crafted an album of deceptively simple songs that linger like half-remembered dreams. Lead single Cuckoo shines in its simplicity, a single drumbeat, ghostly guitar, and distant organ highlighting Murray’s haunting soprano as she asks, “I’d like to read your mind/can you read mine?” Hughes explains, “It’s about being confused. Am I going crazy? Does this person like me? What’s happening? That’s the vibe of the whole record really.”

For now, Hughes is happy to maintain Still Corners’ musical mystery. “I don’t like to talk too much on decoding the songs. It takes the mystery away,” he says. Reviewers like Gorilla vs. Bear, Pitchfork and Drowned in Sound, however, have proven more than happy to sing the praises of Still Corners’ pop beauty. So grab some popcorn and stick around—for Still Corners this is just act one.

If you pre-order Creatures of an Hour by October 11th, you’ll receive, for free, a flexi-disc (for those who don’t know, as flexi-discs have only recently reemerged from extinction, here is an explanation of what these really cool things are) featuring an otherwise unavailable, and the remarkably necessary Still Corners track “Cabot Cove.” “Cabot Cove” is also available as a bonus track on the version of Creatures of an Hour available in the iTunes Music Store. The flexi-disc we are giving away here is, so far, the only place you can get this song on a physical format. This offer is only being extended to the first 200 pre-orderers, by the way!

Released: October 11, 2011

Blitzen Trapper / American Goldwing - SP949

American Goldwing is Sub Pop’s third full-length release with Portland’s Blitzen Trapper and the band’s sixth full-length overall. Over the course of their career they’ve earned rave reviews (from Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, SPIN, and a whole lot more), played on television, appeared at festivals all around the world, done a staggering amount of touring, and sold a whole bunch of records. All of which is distinctly less interesting that what Blitzen Trapper singer/songwriter/guitarist Eric Earley has to say about the band’s new record, American Goldwing…

It’s us letting our loves, our early influences hang out for all to see. Entering into the sounds we grew up with, the hard guitar rock and country picking of our younger years mixes with glimmers of our usual space-aging technology and pawn shop Casio aplomb. Heavy guitar riffs and blasting drum fills live side-by-side with plucking banjos and wailing harmonicas, and muddy slide guitars that make you want to shotgun a beer in the shower while listening to the Stones or Joe Walsh. It’s also our first foray into direct, outside influence in the creation of a record. It’s me letting go in a certain way. I let Tchad Blake come in to mix this album, and my good friend Gregg Williams co-produced all these tracks.

When I sing, in the title track, “I know / I know / I’ll be staying if the wind don’t blow,” I’m seeking to invoke the unseen, the spirit that beckons you to saddle up that old 1980 Honda Goldwing, or your uncle’s beat up Ford Bronco, or that Jeep you somehow, and only barely, keep running and leave this lonely town behind, ‘cause that wind’s always blowing. I’m calling you to ride, to take those curves at speed and head for someplace better where love is true, whether that be into the depths of the galaxy or just to the next truck stop where the neon shines, and where the “company of strangers / and the close and the present dangers” are all that really matters."

Two things! If you’re among the first 500 people to pre-order American Goldwing, you’ll receive a free, high quality, heavy-duty Blitzen Trapper keychain to use with the keys of your personal choosing. Secondly: if you’re among the first three hundred people to pre-order the vinyl, your copy will be on white vinyl!

Released: September 13, 2011

Gold Leaves / The Ornament - SBL-73038

The Ornament is the first ever full-length record from Gold Leaves, the new project of Grant Oslen (Arthur & Yu). Recorded and co-produced by Jason Quever (Papercuts) and featuring guest appearances from Thao Nguyen (Thao & the Get Down Stay Down, Thao & Mirah), Amy Blaschke (Night Canopy), and The Moondoggies.

Released: August 16, 2011

Wet Hair / In Vogue Spirit - 4000386

With their recent split with Naked on the Vague acting as a dip into pop’s waters; Wet Hair’s follow up, In Vogue Spirit is practically a jump into the pool. The band’s most accessible batch of tunes to date boil with Krautrock rhythms, buzzing synths, and a new focus on vocals that has previously been mostly absent in the band’s back catalog. It’s not all motion and melody here though, the band still retains their experimental spirit, giving the record plenty of teeth to sink into any of those rising hooks. Along with contemporaries Lumerians and Moon Duo; In Vogue Spirit stands to gain a pretty solid footing in 2011’s nod to the German progressive underground. The video for “Echo Lady” conveys the band’s psychedelic aesthetic with shifting shots of glare and kaleidoscopic nature walks.

~Andy French
Raven Sings The Blues

Released: June 14, 2011

Jerusalem & the Starbaskets / Dost - 4000385

Jeremy Freeze is a Memphis born songwriter who has spent the last few years in Columbia, Missouri playing and recording with Kim Sherman as Jerusalem and the Starbaskets. Before yr preconceived notions of Missouri make things cloudy, consider the Black Artist Group, Screamin’ Mee Mees, Drunks with Guns, Gene Clark and a whole lot of other shit that you don’t know about get in the way. Lest there be other confusion, my friend Oliver, this 65 year old dude from Kashmir, told me DOST means “brother man”. So basically, DOST is “friend” but a more familiar way of the word. Just so happens that it’s the phonetic same as “dosed”. One crystalline thing herein is the Jams. Freeze has reached that point where he’s saying more by saying less and that’s a level that many songwriters never reach. After a few yrs of playing gigs with Times New Viking, Wooden Wand and a short list of more or less limited releases, DOST is the bands first readily available release and we’re going to do our best to get it everywhere.

Released: June 14, 2011

Male Bonding / Endless Now - SP934

Male Bonding is a noise-pop trio from London’s Dalston neighborhood. Nothing Hurts, the band’s 2010 debut was described by Pitchfork as, “…the sound of a fast, fuzzy rock band racing from hook to hook, plowing happily through breakdowns and guitar blasts, springing through scrappy melodies with style. It’s one of the happiest surprises of the year so far.” This new Male Bonding album, Endless Now, was recorded at Dreamland Recording Studio in Woodstock, NY, the converted 19th century church that birthed such classics as The B-52s’ “Love Shack” and Dinosaur Jr.’s 1993 full-length Where You Been. The band worked with producer John Agnello (Kurt Vile, Thurston Moore, Dinosaur Jr.) installed behind the altar and came up with an album animated by an infectious, evangelical zeal that reflects their roots in the D.I.Y. indie rock community. Eleven tracks—plus a wee reprise—imbued with the fierce urgency of now, and catchy as all get-out, Endless Now is 36 minutes of songs tailor-made to anchor mix tapes and playlists—if you can stand to separate them from the whole album.

If you pre-order Endless Now on CD/LP by August 30th, you’ll receive a free Male Bonding patch! (limited to the first 400 pre-orders)

Released: August 30, 2011