Wild Ones
Topshelf Records
Wild Ones

In late 2012, Wild Ones was on the verge of collapse. Guitarist Clayton Knapp had blown out an eardrum, the band’s original drummer left the group and his replacement, Seve Sheldon, was in the hospital with a punctured lung, practicing songs on a drum pad with a tube sticking out of his chest. The band’s members had funneled all of their money into a debut record, Keep It Safe, that had taken a year to write and nine months to record and mix. Fans and followers began to wonder if that record would ever see the light of day. It was make-or-break time.

Wild Ones made.

Instead of folding in the face of financial drama, injuries and personnel changes, Wild Ones took a deep breath and adjusted to its new surroundings. This band is used to adjusting. Since its formation in 2010, Wild Ones has insisted on operating as a DIY collective. The band recorded and mixed its debut as a group (with help from engineer David Pollock). Sometimes considering each member’s opinion meant endless revisits and tweaks to the album’s tracks. The process was time-consuming, but it was also worth it. “That was a reaction to the bands we had been in before,” says lead vocalist Danielle Sullivan. “This band was born out of our desire to have a democratic, all-inclusive music-making process.”

Going it alone—even the artwork on Keep It Safe was created by Wild Ones’ keyboardist Thomas Himes—comes with its fair share of challenges. Most of Wild Ones’ debut was recorded in a two-story East Portland warehouse rehearsal space, where the band was surrounded on all sides by rock acts like Quasi and the Thermals. Wild Ones would get to their practice space around 8 am to record, often grabbing quick takes between thunderous drum solos from down the hall. “Somewhere on the record, if you listen close enough, you can probably hear the metal band next door,” Himes says.

“When we went in that room in March, it was raining,” says Knapp. “When we finished recording in October, it was raining.”

Keep It Safe, the album that finally emerged after well over a year of gestation, is bigger than the sum of its meticulously gathered parts. Even now, the band’s sound continues to evolve. Wild Ones’ members come from vastly disparate musical backgrounds—guitarist Nick Vicario was a Portland punk icon long before he turned 18; bassist Max Stein is a classical composer—and all of their experiences inform pop music that is influenced by everything from German techno to American R&B. These are sounds that don’t usually come packaged together, but in the able hands of Wild Ones, they seem like a perfectly natural fit.

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Wildhoney
Topshelf Records
Wildhoney

In forming in late 2011, Wildhoney set out to write pop songs with the energy and malcontent of hardcore punk, but without its entrenched masculinity — drawing influences from ‘60s girl groups, ‘80s post punk, indie pop, and shoegaze. The five-piece has since become one of the loudest — and sweetest — bands in its hometown of Baltimore.

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Javelin
Track Record
Javelin

Javelin is the creative endeavor of George Langford and Tom Van Buskirk, cousins from New England.

Javelin began making music in 2005 under the auspice of the Providence, RI art/noise scene. They wielded a mobile boombox soundsystem that used FM transmission to pump out pop-influenced sample collages, and their aesthetic aimed for surrealist block party in-a-box.

In 2008 they performed at MoMA's Poprally event and moved operations to Brooklyn. They quickly made a dent in the extensively musician-populated borough and were featured in Pitchfork's "Rising" section. Pitchfork also named "Vibrationz" Best New Track, and gave honorable mention to the self-released CD-R Jamz n Jemz in their Staff List 50 Best Albums of the Year (2009). Javelin released two 12" EPs on Thrill Jockey that were housed in dollar bin record sleeves and silkscreened with their name, actualizing the thrift store / dollar bin / sampled art aesthetic that had been their hallmark.

In 2010 Javelin signed to Luaka Bop, David Byrne's psychedelic world music label, who released their debut LP No Más. The album artwork and booklet featured spray painted record cover collages by Tom Van Buskirk. Javelin played shows and toured with Yeasayer, Sleigh Bells, Future Islands, Matt & Kim, Warpaint, Major Lazer, performing at Lollapalooza and The Whitney Museum, as well as parties across the US, Europe, and South America. They booked the flights themselves.

In 2011 Javelin joined up with a wagon train and headed West. The Kickstarter funded psychedelic cowboy short film Canyon Candy, directed by Mike Anderson, and the Canyon Candy EP (Luaka Bop), found Javelin exploring a junk store cowboy aesthetic. The project culminated in a multimedia art installation with Mike Anderson at the Clocktower Gallery in New York, which stayed up half the year into 2012.

The new record is called Hi Beams. It represents a more holistic approach to writing and recording than previously attempted by the band. Lyrics and vocal harmonies for the first time are foregrounded in decidedly songlike forms. Songs made to be performed in concert rather than as a patchwork of fragmented if glittery shards.

The songs cover a broad range of territories: homage to the strangeness of being a performer; encountering beauty & the void in the natural world; how mundane aspects of work/life distract and alienate us from our desires; advice to internet-based musicians; an assurance to someone who has isolated themselves; light, sky, stars, moon; gravity, delivered with levity...

Hi Beams was recorded and mixed at Machine With Magnets (Pawtucket, RI) using proper microphones, vintage mixing desk, an array of amplifiers, real plate reverb -- in the traditional sense a "studio album." Previous work had been cobbled together in home studios and mixed on computer. On this record, Javelin aimed for a sound they could not have achieved by themselves.

Of note, "Light Out" was written with samples from "Hey" by Moss of Aura, aka Gerritt Wilmers (keyboardist in Future Islands). "Drummachines" came from a track recorded by Javelin with Travis Murphy on guitar, of the now defunct Killer Whales.

In performance, the beaten down tower of boomboxes will make their reappearance in mutated form -- like a phoenix rising from the ashes -- as the visual backdrop for the new stage show. A large wall sculpture of dozens of boxes stitched together with industrial velcro and lit up with LEDs will provide a taste of the old show flavor, and will make any room feel slightly more like home (or like an eccentric stereo repair shop, who knows). Changes to the sonic and light show setup are expected as well.

From Javelin: "The last thing we'll say about the new record is that we are sincerely proud of it. We chose the name Hi Beams because the songs evoke to us a sense of sky, stars, night, and warmth -- they are bright bodies of light that wave hello. Please enjoy the fruits of our collective labor."

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Cadence Weapon
Upper Class Recordings
Cadence Weapon

Roland Pemberton was born with hip hop in his DNA. His father, Teddy Pemberton, a Brooklyn native and the muse for Cadence Weapon's acclaimed sophomore album, Afterparty Babies, was a pioneering college radio DJ and in 2010 was inducted into the Hall Of Fame during Canada's National DJ Awards, the Stylus Awards. He's credited for introducing hip-hop to Rollie's hometown of Edmonton, Alberta through his show, The Black Experience In Sound on CJSR-FM.

Following in his father's groundbreaking footsteps, Rollie discovered he wanted to rap at the tender age of 13. Pemberton first gained massive grassroots support for his mixtape "Cadence Weapon Is The Black Hand". He soon followed up with his explosive debut "Breaking Kayfabe" and the album yielded instant praise and notoriety culminating in nominations from the Polaris Music Prize, the Canadian Indie Awards and "Best Rap Album of 2006" at the Plug Independent Music Awards, and won the CBC Radio 3's Bucky Award.

Pemberton has performed with Public Enemy, De La Soul, Mos Def, Questlove, Kool Keith and Lupe Fiasco and toured extensively with acts as diverse as Jurassic 5, Final Fantasy, Islands and Buck 65. He's played internationally renowned festivals such as Glastonbury, Lollapalooza, Roskilde, Pitchfork Music Festival, Incubate and Germany's Splash! Festival. He's remixed Grimes, Roots Manuva, Chad VanGaalen, Kid Sister, Busdriver, Disco D and Stars and made acclaimed bootleg mixes of tracks by Ciara ("Oh") and Rick Ross/Simian Mobile Disco ("Hustlin' Hustler"). He inked deals with labels Epitaph and Big Dada. Most impressively, this was before he reached age of majority.

Deemed by Dazed and Confused as "hip hop's saviour", Cadence Weapon is changing the game. Hope In Dirt City is a clearly defined and emotionally mature statement of intent that represents the culmination of these experiences. Pemberton applies an interesting approach to production using samples as a foundation for writing the album, then working with live instrumentalists (Jered Stuffco (DVAS) on keyboards, Ian Koiter (Shad) on bass and string arrangements, Eric Lightfoot on drums and percussion, Paul Prince (The Cansecos) on guitar and Brett Miles (Magilla Funk Conduit) on saxophone) to reconfigure his original compositions. Pemberton then turned the band-recorded tracks into samples for the album to "achieve a listenable, honest approach to integrating a live band into his setup". "I wanted to have a live feel, but I didn't want to sound like the Arsenio Hall band," Pemberton told Paste. "I wanted to make it ambiguous between where the sample ends and the live band begins." Referencing his album's first single "Conditioning" Pemberton goes on to say, "Originally it was a drum machine demo, I wanted it to be a Bo Diddley song. I basically have a band play it as a rock song, then when I took it home, I switched it into half time and turned it into a hybrid-blues track."

Composed of a unique hybrid of psychedelic soul, old school rap, IDM and mutant disco; Hope In Dirt City is a groundbreaking achievement in hip-hop. Cadence Weapon has returned to bring rap back to its essence.

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Paper Pilots
UsedBinPop
Paper Pilots

In the grandest tradition of pop, Paper Pilots' sound is intently familiar. Sitting somewhere between the worlds of contemporary indie pop and 60's British rock music, Los Angeles arrival Justin David Bocchieri sets forth to revive classic songwriting by way of lush, grandiose arrangements and illustrated by lyrical waxing worthy of dialogue banter between Ringo & Marc Bolan during Born To Boogie. Aiming for the pristine melodic heights of The Zombies' Odyssey & Oracle, or Bacharach with a sense of psychedalia ala Revolver, with the lead off track Lacksadaisical, their EP quickly moves into noisier territory through the kind of orchestrated rock inspired by early Scott Walker or Bowie and honed by The Last Shadow Puppets. The short journey touches down gently in the modern folk territory of Sondre Lerche, The Shins or even Belle & Sebastian, with the frail, but joyous crescendo of My Home. Paper Pilots debut EP features contributions from drummer Stephen Edelstein (Caught A Ghost), bassist Ryan Hailey (Orlando Napier Band), lead guitar Evan Winsor (Bluegrass band, The Get Down Boys), and a first time behind the producer's desk for John Girgus (Ex-Sarah Records Aberdeen). It was recorded and mixed with Ülysses Nöriega who has worked recently with The Wedding Present, The Mars Volta amongst many others. Musicianship shines with a production aesthetic somewhere between the golden age of the 1970s and all mod cons. '...their first single "Lacksadaiscal" (that's on purpose, that title) and the B-side "Catch the Lamplight Low" give you an idea of where they're are headed. It's someplace good.' -Buzzbands.la

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The Mo-Odds
UsedBinPop
The Mo-Odds

For the last five years The Mo-Odds have been one of the sweatiest, nakedest, rawest, and funnest rock n' roll acts in Los Angeles County. The band christened their signature sound in their first demo Los Angeles Rock and Roll, a no-nonsense garage release with roots in the punk and soul that has been worrying parents and shaking hips for six decades.

The LA Weekly describes The Mo-Odds as, "equal parts fuzz and soul, drunkenly crash-landing somewhere between the high-energy Detroit rock of the Bell-Rays and the high-personality Detroit R&B of the Gories."  Owl Mag describes the Mo-Odds as "chaotic, dirty, dangerous, nasty, and alive." Mainstays of the Silverlake Jubilee Festival, their over-the-top shows earned them a reputation.

The Mo-Odds' Soto was Produced, Engineered and Mixed by Eric Palmquist (Aloe Blacc, Wavves, and No Age), and Mastered by Pete Lyman at Infrasonic Studios in Los Angeles. Together they have crafted a 4 song EP that has housebroken the signature frantic energy of the band with a tight studio sound based around big vocals and sharp woodwinds.

When people say 'they're good live, I just wish they had a recording that sounded like it', pretty sure this is what they mean. From the immediately catchy riffs of It's My Heart to the infectious rhythms of Lights Go Out to the confrontational lyrics and unrestrained vocal delivery of Smoke & Fog; with equal measure energy and fidelity, this is The new Mo-Odds, Soto.

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Riverboat Gamblers
Villam Artists
Riverboat Gamblers

There was a point in time before everything fit into neat subgenres, a period when rock music and the nascent punk scene were still discovering their sound and anything seemed possible. Looking back it’s hard to pinpoint the exact moment when these two genres converged but if you had to sum it up sonically it would probably sound a lot like the Riverboat Gamblers’ latest album The Wolf You Feed.

The Riverboat Gamblers did all the pre-production for The Wolf You Feed with Ted Hutt (Flogging Molly, The Gaslight Anthem) in Los Angeles and then headed down to Dallas put these ten songs to tape with Grammy-Award winning engineer Stuart Sikes (The White Stripes, Cat Power). “There’s four writers in this band and we all instantly got on the same page as far as wanting this to be a darker record that still had lots of hooks,” frontman Mike Wiebe explains. “We really wanted to go for a grittier, less polished sound to get across the true spirit of these songs because that’s what we do live anyway.”

Wiebe adds that recording the record in Dallas meant that the band could step outside of their comfort zone and create an album without worrying about external distractions. “My other bands all have different writing processes and I think it’s cool to shake it up and have completely new musical experiences whether it’s with the Gamblers or anyone else,” he explains. “Doing [the album] in Dallas really forced us to creatively get outside of our box and when you do that the results aren’t always favorable but this time around things really seemed to come together in a way that was natural.”

Listeners just need to listen to the first fifteen seconds of the Hives-worthy opener “Good Veins” to see that the band—which also includes guitarists Fadi el-Assad and Ian MacDougall, bassist Rob Marchant and drummer Sam Keir—achieved their goal largely because they weren’t trying to make a record that fits into today’s musical landscape. “I got really interested in the time when punk rock and old rock n’ roll were all converging and there wasn’t really a term for it yet, like with the Dictators bleeding over into the weirder Iggy Pop stuff,” Wiebe explains. “It’s edgy and intense but it’s still catchy and people could dance to it if they wanted to.”

Despite the fact that The Wolf You Feed perfectly captures this often-forgotten era, there’s a remarkable amount of variance inherent in these songs. From the sweetly scathing anthem “Bite Your Tongue” to the piano-driven, Murder City Devils-esque death march of “Gallows Bird” and classic Alice Cooper-esque feel of “Loser Neck,” the album juxtaposes all of these influences into something that’s got its roots in the past yet still sounds remarkably relevant. Additionally the album features contributions from Mark Ryan (Marked Men, Mind Spiders) and Sean Kirkpatrick (The Paper Chase) each of whom help the band expand their sound even further.

Wiebe not only proves how versatile of a frontman he’s become on The Wolf You Feed—whether he’s belting out the soaring chorus to “Bite My Tongue” or singing like a ‘70s glam icon on “Heart Conditions”—but he also proves what an accomplished lyricist he is on songs like the heartbreaking “Comedians.” “I think there’s a really strong connection between comedians and musicians; they’re ripping their hearts out onstage for people who might not care at all so that was my love letter to how enamored I am with comics and what they do,” he explains. Trust us, when Wiebe croons, “At the end of the day it was really only you who wanted to laugh at me,” it’s impossible not to be moved by the sentiment.

Ultimately all of this relates back to the album’s title, The Wolf You Feed. “It’s kind of referring to an old Navajo saying that you’ve always got two wolves inside you and one is good and one is evil; you have to feed one and starve one and it’s up to you,” Wiebe explains, noting that the cover art represents the constant struggle between good and evil that each of us are forced to undertake each and every day. “Where do you want to go and do you want to deliver your energy to this black horrible thing or channel it into this process of trying something new that could change everything?”

The Riverboat Gamblers can’t make that decision for you, but with The Wolf You Feed they’ve created the perfect soundtrack for it.

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The Swayback
VQ Creative
The Swayback

The Swayback's sound is a mix of blues swagger and early punk bite that's cut with art-school gloom. Their revved-up live performances have led them to share the stage with such diverse bands as: Gang of Four, Girls, The Raveonettes, Dead Meadow, Dum Dum Girls, Portugal. The Man, Akron/Family, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Swervedriver, Hold Steady, Cage The Elephant, and Place to Bury Strangers. Swayback's album Double Four Time was recorded with legendary British producer Andy Johns (Television, Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin) and released on LGL Records.

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Wake Up Lucid
Wake Up Lucid
Wake Up Lucid

On their upcoming fourth release Gone With The Night, Los Angeles gutter rock trio Wake Up Lucid puts it simply: “Give us something real, something we can feel, or get fucked…” This statement resounds as both rejection of fakery and pursuit of honest music, which have remained Wake Up Lucid’s only guidelines for writing and performing throughout the half decade’s worth of their existence. The new album was produced by Icarus Line’s Joe Cardamone at his studio, Valley Recording Co. in Burbank and is being released March 31 on WUL Records.

Gone With The Night is a sampling of the fruits of the group’s determined efforts to develop further as song-writers, offering songs that are much more focused and realized, and diversely dynamic — a departure from the band’s usual m.o. of grit and groove hammered-out at high volumes — while still maintaining the inimitable Wake Up Lucid vibe that has crept around L.A. for the past few years.

Their authenticity and immediacy as writers and performers is rooted in their experience of growing up together in the same extended family—a musical one to boot. After pursuing their respective musical aspirations in other outfits, they formed their own some six years ago, distilling their now matured, ripened abilities into the woozy sound that is Wake Up Lucid.

Early on, cousins Ryan, Ian, and Jamie set up home base at Silverlake Lounge, honing their writing and performance skills in front of one of the most demanding audiences in the world. What resulted was…being offered an album release party, then a residency, followed swiftly by media acclaim from the likes of Rolling Stone, LA Times, Vice/Noisey, Filter, Nylon, MOKB, KEXP… and plenty of others!

After making repeated rounds in Los Angeles, a few West-Coast tours and a slot on a SXSW Urban Outfitters Series bill, Wake Up Lucid began landing TV placements, with songs being featured on Discovery Channel’s Weed Wars, Carson Daly Show (NBC), Nashville (ABC), and a two-song live performance on AXS.tv. They teamed up with VonZipper Sunglasses providing the soundtracks for several short films and have had their music feaured in Oakley, Patagonia, Hurley, Fox, Quicksilver, Me Undies and Under Armour ads.

Much of their crucial development as a band has been facilitated by Joe Cardamone who has acted as producer and assisted in the fine-tuning of the band’s sound on three releases. Joe has this to say about Wake Up Lucid:

“Each production that I have been a part of with Wake Up Lucid is proving to be exponentially more expansive than the previous. I heard a confidence in their sound this time that was really exciting. Providing them with an environment to take chances has paid off and Gone With The Night is a testament to that. This EP is a warning to what will be coming on the new LP. One of the best bands with guitars in their hands.”

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Gold Motel
Whitesmith Entertainment
Gold Motel

With GOLD MOTEL, it's always summer, the bags are always packed, and the car is always running. Beneath tight pop hooks and warm melodies, GOLD MOTEL's songs are infused with joyous exuberance as well as sweet melancholy. The ten tracks on GOLD MOTEL's debut album Summer House are snapshots of dreaming, transient youth in constant motion - driving down desert highways, watching fireworks from the boardwalk, wandering the city in an endless summer but, in the end, always searching for the safety of home, friends, and love.

The Chicago-based quintet originated in the warmer climate of Los Angeles during the summer of 2009. Greta Morgan (The Hush Sound) returned from a year in Southern California to her hometown of Chicago, bringing with her what would become the five-song GOLD MOTEL EP. Collaborating with her friend Dan Duzsynzski (This Is Me Smiling), recording began on a set of sharp, sunny pop songs with a decidedly West Coast outlook. Working with Duzsynski, Morgan realized that her pre-conceived solo project could grow into a full band effort.

Through the fall of 2009, GOLD MOTEL transformed into a full-fledged band, adding Chicago music veterans Matt "Minx" Schuessler, Adam Kaltenhauser (both of This is Me Smiling), and Eric Hehr (The Yearbooks). The super group played together live for the first time in December of 2009 with a sold out headlining debut at Chicago's Beat Kitchen, coinciding with the release of the GOLD MOTEL EP.

Since then, GOLD MOTEL has headlined shows from Los Angeles to New York (and most cities in between) in support of Summer House. In November 2010, they released a two song 7" vinyl, Talking Fiction.

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