Work Drugs
Work Drugs
Work Drugs

Work Drugs is a sedative-wave / smooth-fi group from an abandoned pier on the banks of the Delaware River in beautiful Philadelphia, PA.

Work Drugs makes music specifically for boating, sexting, dancing, yachting, and living.

Work Drugs is Benjamin Louisiana (more instrumental/less vocal) and Thomas Crystal (more vocal/less instrumental).

Cotton Jones
Quite Scientific Records LLC
Cotton Jones

The music of Cotton Jones speaks of transition: the passage from one form, state of mind, style or place to another. Songs become doorways to the past, or windows that open on some unnamed future, where innocence can still exist and perfection is thrown to the wind.

The Glowstream is a place centered between North and South Cumberland. It's not really called the Glowstream – just a stream that rolls to a dead end by the train tracks downtown. A place to sit, undisturbed in the cool shade, and see the interstate bend around glowing steeples, as cars and trucks break their speed – it's beautiful – how the city materializes, an oasis, after driving many miles through the mountains along I-68 – to this private spot, where it's possible to witness all the paces change.

Michael Nau & Whitney McGraw skipped town months ago, leaving the old haunts in Cumberland behind... To sift through the old noise, they walked off the edge of their world... To sound the depths, the songwriters relocated, to Georgia, far south of the Glowstream.

"We spent a lot of time on the bank of that stream – alone, together, gathered like a flock of birds, examining the next move," said Nau. "Many of the tunes on this record feel like Cumberland to me. When I'm there, it's like a dream – all familiar sound and light, where the factories and birds sing the same song."

The duo settled fast after the move, halted their incessant touring and festival appearances, and began the process of selecting a new cycle of songs to follow their acclaimed Suicide Squeeze debut, "Paranoid Cocoon."

Cotton Jones, as always, rests in arms of Nau and McGraw. "Tall Hours in the Glowstream,'" is the title of their new album. Some of the songs that made the final cut were tracked in northern States, while the majority were recorded and mixed in Winterville, Georgia, as a revolving cast of players, thinkers, and singers were invited to hang in the band's living-room studio.

The resulting sounds are both rich and charmingly lo-fi, full of vivid imagery and more gorgeous vocal harmony. Hard-asking tracks like "Somehow To Keep It Going" and "More Songs For Margaret" prove the promise in this music, the feeling of something better to come if only you can hold tight a little longer...

"Always the mornings keep coming..." And what a beautiful thing that is...

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The People's Temple
Ghost Town, Inc.
The People's Temple

This Lansing, Michigan gang of renegade upstarts has been extremely prolific over the last couple of years, and as the time quickly passes by, even better songs have evolved, as this debut LP will undoubtedly prove. Formed from two sets of brothers, The People's Temple have a certain cohesion that's hard to pin down, yet impossible to resist. Taking the listener even further down the darkened path, they straddle the line between simple garage intentions and certain lysergic after effects, causing these songs to take on a 13th Floor Elevators/Troggs/Black Diamonds vibe that's basically supposed to be impossible to pull off without sounding corny. The dirgey yet sparkling production that rears its head on their debut album here may seem like quite a leap forward (a la the Smith Westerns on their debut LP) to listeners already hooked on their string of 7" singles, but the songwriting shines through remarkably well, and quickly separates them from the pack. With hazy nods to both shoe-gaze and 60s pop/psych interspersed with their own signature sound, they burst through the thickening fog with anthemic precision and unshakable pleasure, as each track revs up and blasts off through the stratosphere, sending waves of chills and reverberation in every direction. Its always exciting when a band creates such a break-though like this, and we're beyond ecstatic to help it take off and rip through the sky.

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Legendary Shack Shakers
Colonel Knowledge Records
Legendary Shack Shakers

Picture it: the rustic grind of rural America. The cacophonous crunch and wheeze of motor-driven rock songs accompany the sound of corroded farm implements awakened to service once again. The soundtrack of a time when strip malls will choke with ivy and the vestiges of overdevelopment will be razed and plowed up for acreage. The Legendary Shack Shakers confront an America that is in decay on their seventh full-length album, AGRIDUSTRIAL.

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Gross Ghost
Public Works Division
Gross Ghost

The 11-songs that make up Gross Ghost's Brer Rabbit are the culmination of two years packed full with disconnected phone lines, unreliable transportation/gear, lost jobs, friends and family members and yet, some undeniably fun times for the band. The album is a collection of previously released tracks from the bands first two EPs, all remixed and remastered, in addition to a handful of new songs. Over the last couple of years in the lives of Mike and Tre, the duo behind Gross Ghost, these songs were written during found hours, in between tireless jobs and sketchy paychecks. A vessel for an escape of any kind was what brought these songs to life. It's been a long time coming, but we hope you find something to take from their scant retelling of how they saw the sights around them.

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Stepdad
Quite Scientific Records LLC
Stepdad

After forming in Chicago in 2009, Stepdad (then roommates ultramark and Ryan McCarthy) soon moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan in order to write and record their debut offering Ordinaire EP. After tremendous local response, the band grew to four members in order to perform their avant brand of electro-pop live. With the help of bassist Alex Fives and drummer Jeremy Malvin, the band gained popularity on tour and catching the attention of critics and fans alike.

"Jungles" starts off this album with a sense of dark optimism in the face of ruin, finding ultramark intoning "we don't belong to ourselves/they've been planning their attack/we belong to places/strong and brave, courageous our tired faces." The following nine cuts, however, promote a poise of lightheartedness that's sometimes hard to find in the world of modern electronic music. "My Leather, My Fur, My Nails" is perhaps a whimsical take on an overbearing relationships, in which one half of the couple wishes to wear the other around like a coat. And why not? If "My Leather, My Fur, My Nails" should be one extreme, then the following track, "Cutie Boots," is at the opposite end of the same spectrum of love, complete with a heartwarming jangle of acoustic guitar, xylophone-esque synth lines and hushed vocals. Stepdad's original version of Ordinaire EP could easily stand alone, but in the addition of bonus tracks "Fine Love" and "Magic Stones" we're seeing a sure sign of good things to come, leaving the listener with a want for what's next in store for this talented quartet of musicians.

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The Big Sleep
Whitesmith Entertainment
The Big Sleep

Considering how quiet they've been over the past couple years, you'd think the Big Sleep decided to suddenly take their name seriously after the tireless tour cycle behind 2008's Sleep Forever LP. The truth is much simpler...

"We took a little break, worked on stuff separately and just lived our lives," explains bassist/vocalist Sonya Balchandani.

"It obviously took longer than we thought it would," adds guitarist/vocalist Danny Barria, "but I wasn't feeling rushed or pressured. I just wanted to write good songs."

Which brings us to the hefty hooks and sugar-spun noise pop of Nature Experiments, the filler-free full-length Danny and Sonya have hinted at since 2000. That'd be the year the duo started cutting demos in the former's Brooklyn kitchen; demos that eventually shifted from a loose shoegaze sound (the You Today, Me Tomorrow EP) to the iridescent instrumentals and groove-locked guitar anthems of the Big Sleep's debut album, 2006's Son of the Tiger.

As promising as that LP was, it's nowhere near as focused and forceful as the tractor beam tracks the pair started recording at the beginning of 2011. Helped in part by Sonya's increased use of GarageBand as a songwriting tool and a more collaborative creative process, Nature Experiments is as robust as a Big Sleep record gets, bursting at the seams with restless rhythms and choppy power chords ("Ace"), venomous vocals and blown-out beats ("Meet Your Maker"), and effects pedals/synth pads that rub and ring out against some of the band's most climatic choruses yet ("Valentine," "Ghosts In Bodies," "Ladders"). And if you need a breather, there's always the psych-steeped balladry of "1001" and "Wood on the Water."

"There was definitely a tunnel vision thing going on with our last record," says Danny. "That pressure was cool and intense, but the guiding principle this time around was to take our time and do whatever we needed to. We'd work on things separately and then meet in each other's living rooms with just an acoustic guitar and a keyboard, which is funny considering that's exactly how the band started."

"This band's always been about what comes out of the two of us working together," adds Sonya. "I think it's normal to write a little past the edge of your capabilities, so then you have to deliver, and the next time around, you end up pushing yourself again. We are always just looking for and editing ourselves towards what feels right, what we can both agree is putting across a feeling in a style that's truly 'us'." - Andrew Parks

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Carnivores
Ghost Town, Inc.
Carnivores

"The Carnivores' keyboardist, Caitlin Lang, is classically trained in piano, but on "If I'm Ancient" (Double Phantom), the group's appealingly messy second album, she sounds equally trained in punk barking. On the breatless "Parent's Attic," she's petulant, and on the riveting garage-rock number "Summer Shades," she's sweetly shrieking. Ms. Lang shares vocal duties with the guitarist Nathaniel Higgins, who sings drily, and the bassist Philip Frobos, whose bright tone anchors the band's songs, which have become more digressive and dirtier since it released it's first album, "All Night Dead U.S.A." (The band also includes the drummer Ross Politi.) That album had a tropical undercurrent in the mode of early Vampire Weekend or Abe Vigoda. It's here, too, on songs like "Cause She Never Stops," which could be the soundtrack for a chase scene on surfboards. "Georgia Power Company" has it, too, but also shows the band's development, drowning it beneath a woozy psychedelic haze." - The New York Times 

"...this is as solid as playing it safe gets, and it doesn't actually play it all that safe-- who else in garage rock is doing this sort of breakdown?" - Pitchfork Media

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The Heavenly States
Strategic Marketing & Management, LLC
The Heavenly States

The Heavenly States came together in 2002, united by a shared passion for complex and cathartic rock bursting with literate, provocative lyricism. A series of acclaimed albums and a seeming endless capacity for touring – including a landmark 2005 trek to Egypt and Libya – confirmed their status as one of America's premiere indie outfits, flying the flag for self-determination and intelligent, energetic rock 'n' roll.

Oui Camera Oui – the Bay Area-based band's first release on the new Hippies Are Dead label – follows their highly praised 2008 album, Delayer. After spending much of the year on tour following that record's release, the band pondered their next move, wondering how best to follow such an ambitious collection. The inspiration struck to attempt an EP, in the tradition of band favorites like Margin Walker, Metal Circus, and oh yes, Magical Mystery Tour.

"We started thinking about the death of the record," says singer/guitarist Ted Nesseth. "People are broke, their attention spans are waning. We have all these ideas so we thought, let's just rock out five or six songs, give the EP a rebirth."

"We're never short on concepts or ideas," singer/multi-instrumentalist Genevieve Gagon adds, "so we thought the EP could be a great medium for us – a handful of songs that just fit together. This could be something we carry into the future, releasing a series of EPs instead of writing these epic novels."

In the fall of 2009, the band headed for Los Angeles, where they produced the record alongside Bill Lefler (Meg & Dia, Low Vs. Diamond, Dashboard Confessional) at his Deathstar Studio. Having fewer songs to record gave them a chance to invest more time on each track, crafting a carefully orchestrated sound enabled drummer Jeremy Gagon to experiment with an array of percussion – including triangle, vibraphone, and other instruments – while Ted and Genevieve were focused on detailed arrangements and intricate vocal tracks.

"We've never had the luxury – or the cash – to really try to capture vocal performances," she says. "We wanted to make it so you can hear all the elements. When things get really orchestral, you can't always hear everything that's going on, so we wanted to try and create a kind of clarity."

After the sessions wrapped, Nesseth flew to Brooklyn to mix the record with John Agnello (Dinosaur Jr., The Hold Steady, Kurt Vile), who had previously worked with the band on 2005's "King Epiphany" single. While in BK, Nesseth arranged for comedian Eugene Mirman to record the EP's comic epilogue. The States had previously encountered Mirman – beloved for his Sub Pop stand-up collections as well as his recurring role on Flight of the Conchords – while playing a comedy/indie rock double bill in of all places, Fargo, North Dakota.

"I just thought he was ridiculously funny," Nesseth says, "and made it my mission to become his friend."

Mission accomplished, Mirman agreed to appear on Oui Camera Oui, offering to record a recitation of the band's less positive reviews. The result is a somewhat scathing indictment of the sorry state of rock criticism in the blog age, as well as a classically Mirman-esque bit of hilarity.

"He basically embellished what was already there," Nesseth says. "The reviewer never actually said that we 'fuck baby wolves.' That was Eugene."

Also joining The Heavenly States on Oui Camera Oui is avowed fan Britt Daniel of Spoon, who lends his distinctive vocal stylings to "Berlin Wall." The band met the Spoon frontman after a 2008 show at Portland's Doug Fir Lounge with The Minus 5, whereupon a rather inebriated Nesseth got up the dutch courage to present Daniel with a copy of Delayer. The following day the band was surprised to receive a message on their Facebook page.

"Britt literally said, 'I can't stop listening to this record,'" Gagon says. "And then he invited us to open for Spoon, three nights at The Fillmore. It was like this incredible gift. After that Ted asked him, 'Do you want to do something on our next record?' and he said 'Yeah.'"

Daniel recorded vocal tracks at his home studio, which were then mixed into "Berlin Wall" at fellow Spoon member Jim Eno's Public Hi-Fi Studio in Austin, Texas. Despite the high-profile guest stars, Oui Camera Oui is very much The Heavenly States' show. Songs like "Model Son" and "Monster" capture the band's very essence, an eclectic, multi-faceted approach easily identified by Nesseth and Gagon's bifurcated harmonies, crafty melodic structures, and a satisfying sense of musical motion marked by wit, intensity, and endless possibility. Nesseth likens the EP as the band's "'Theresa's Sound-world' moment," referring to the Sonic Youth track from the 1992 classic, Dirty.

"I don't know if it's because I was really stoned in high school," Nesseth says, "but I thought that song was just the most concise statement of who Sonic Youth were, like, this is the thing that they'd been trying to say forever. They just hit it on the head. I feel like that's what we did with Oui Camera Oui, only across a group of songs, not just the one."

Beneath their ebullient hooks, the songs of Oui Camera Oui offer a pragmatic perspective of 21st Century America as a dystopian society on the precipice of moral and economic collapse. Like any protest singers worth their salt, Gagon and Nesseth are loath to pen explicitly obvious lyrics, preferring a more indirect approach encompassing metaphor, cultural critique, and perhaps the greatest weapon in any revolutionary artist's arsenal, sarcasm. Gagon feels songs like "Monarchia" or the anthemic title track serve an essential purpose in these difficult times, offering a kind of alternative news source to the corporate-owned status quo.

"We've played with Mike Watt many times," Gagon says, "and he often talks about, 'Why do we keep doing this?' Well, for us, one motivating factor is trying to be a voice in all this mess."

In the year since recording Oui Camera Oui, The Heavenly States have kept busy in a variety of ways. In addition to writing songs with Nesseth for the next EP, Gagon has been hard at work penning a screenplay loosely based on the band's trip to the Middle East, a narrative detailing "what it's like to be us, in a band, in this landscape. Libya and Egypt figure into it in that I'm distilling the meaning of those experiences, without it being a literal representation of what happened."

Of course, The Heavenly States' true passion remains writing, recording, and rocking the road. They plan to tour hard behind Oui Camera Oui, while still finding time to cut another EP's worth of what Gagon calls "sister songs and responses, the baroque counterpart to this more classical collection of songs." Having taken their sweet time releasing Oui Camera Oui, the band has adopted a self-imposed deadline, committing themselves to getting the next installment in their continuing series of American songs out before year's end.

"We don't do expository, didactic political songs," Gagon says, "but there is a temporal element to what we do, so it's important to get it out there when it's still kind of relevant. I mean, what if Bob Dylan had to wait three years before putting out his records? What would've happened to the movement?"

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U.S. Royalty
Ghost Town, Inc.
U.S. Royalty

From the bluesy swagger of the album opener "Hollywood Hollows" to the soaring, Washington Irving inspired anthem "Equestrian," it is evident that MIRRORS, the debut full length from U.S. Royalty, is an album of grand scope and range. It is a document of exploration and discovery. Songs kindle a spectrum of locales as the band laces a thread of longing and movement throughout the entire album to create a cinematic experience. MIRRORS is a cohesive and unified collection.

"With this record we wanted to present a body of work, a complete thought," says singer John Thornley. To achieve this, the band wrote and rewrote songs for a year, demoing and dissecting while on the road and at home. John continues, "Because we traveled for about a year and a half before we recorded the album, there is definitely a travel vibe to the record "

In March 2010, the band teamed up with engineer Gus Oberg (The Strokes, Albert Hammond Jr., Bloc Party) and Justin Long to begin recording the album. While in the studio, as a vision of the album began to come into focus, old songs were dropped in favor of new songs being written. The band recently released the first single off the album, "Equestrian," and set a release date for the debut album, January 25th 2011.

Shared experiences, traveling and playing together, informed the writing process as did a steady intake of Kubrick, Godard, McCarthy, and Spaghetti Westerns. The sun-bleached Ennio Morricone soundtracks factored heavily into the scope and range of MIRRORS as the band channeled the sense of epic drama his most memorable pieces evoke – those timeless studies in tension and release.

U.S. Royalty formed in 2008 in Washington, D.C. Built around the lifelong musical collaboration of brothers John and Paul Thornley, vocals/piano and guitar, respectively, and rounded out by Jacob Michael (bass), and Luke Adams (drums), the group has refined and expanded their collective vision since their earliest practices spent shivering around a single heater while ensconced in an abandoned trailer in rural Maryland.? ?While the band had a collection of demos recorded mainly to book gigs they were approached by Brooklyn-based Engine Room Recordings to release a selection of the songs on a 7-inch entitled Midsommar. They have made appearances at SXSW, NXNE, Art Basel and CMJ. They have been featured in Esquire, SPIN, The New York Times, The Washington Post and highlighted on NPR. Their work with Gant Rugger has garnered them attention in the fashion world and created unexpected bridges in the blogosphere, their music has accompanied various web-based promotional films for the label, and the band members will be featured in the Swedish line's upcoming 2011 Spring Collection.

With the release of their debut album, U.S. Royalty delivers on capturing the volatility and explosiveness that define their live performances. While taking cues from the players of old, they treat performances as feverish outpourings of rock 'n roll energy and emotion. For them, there is no reason not to leave it all on the stage every night as a testimony to the music that moves them. U.S. Royalty aims for the grand and the timeless but insists on the raw and the unplanned as they forge their own way in the current musical landscape.

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