There’s always something oddly familiar about a Reno Bo release. Maybe it’s his vocal style that feels like a late-era Beatles production or maybe its his artwork that gives a heavy nod to the simpler graphic design of the 60′s and 70′s or maybe its his simple, catchy, songwriting. Sometimes it can be a bit corny (i.e. calling this a Digital 45 single is a bit much) but if you like well produced pop songs, there’s no denying these offerings. 

Just a quick reminder that the latest full-length from The Lees of Memory, The Blinding White of Nothing At All, is officially released. They had previously completed a successful PledgeMusic campaign that put the album into early backers hands quite awhile back but now it’s available for all to hear. 

If you haven’t heard the band before, this can seem to be a daunting entry point with its 24-tracks across a double LP but the album never loses its stride through the duration. I always thought of this band as a ROCK band, all caps intentionally, but that’s laughably incorrect. The Lees of Memory is a pop band that  has managed to find a mixture of 70′s psychedelia, latter day Beatles pop vocals and a mind-numbing plethora of instruments that never feels overdone.

If you haven’t heard it yet, don’t miss it. If you have, give it a revisit.

Some music lends itself to particular seasons and types of weather than others. While there’s only two songs to go off of, the debut offerings of Golf Party seem to lend themselves quite well to the cold mornings of a wintery season. “You’re Cold” is a quiet, ruminating number and “Narcisstic Optimistic” steps up the DIY bedroom production with a slightly ominous vibe. It’s a promising single and I’m hopeful they offer some more during our colder months.

Get a quick dose of garage rock from Cheap Time’s latest 7″ - “Goodbye Age” b/w “Soon Over Soon” released via Orlando, FL. label Total Punk Records. Be sure to stick around for the b-side, as it’s got a choppy new-wave-snear thing going on.

I’m definitively behind on hearing the latest full-length from Soccer Mommy, aka Sophie Allison, but am glad to encounter it in November rather than August when it was released. The Fat Possum release, Collection, is a more produced version of the bedroom musings that Allison has released previously but it’s still a, mostly, introspective endeavor fit for colder nights indoors. 

There may be more drums and tinkling synths present in the arrangements but the lyrical content is intensely personal; declarations from the perspective of finding your way through relationships and personal growth. Those aren’t exactly new subjects for indie rock but the vocal delivery makes them feel extra unshielded. 

I’ll even go out on a limb and say there’s something akin to early Liz Phair happening here.  Allison isn’t as openly sexual as Phair was but she’s able to write an intimate song that shows vulnerability and strength simultaneously while also being a memorable pop song.

If you aren’t familiar with director Kogonada, I suggest taking a deep dive into this Indiewire piece and learning about his history and his journey to becoming a full-fledged filmmaker. His debut, Columbus, has received rave reviews from the likes of The Nashville Scene to NPR to a 97% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes. All that is to say, it certainly seems to be a film worth investigating.

What many of the articles mention is the Original Soundtrack backing the film, brought to you by Hammock. It makes sense for a band that’s been together for over a decade making cinematic scores spawned from their own brains to collaborate with a film of this nature. There are only four tracks posted for preview over on their Bandcamp but the entire record is streaming on Spotify.

It’s a slow, spaced-out, moving body of work occasionally undercut by some tense, foreboding, presence. Hammock has been refining this kind of sound for years and this is an exemplary application of their efforts.

It’s been a minute since we heard from Joshua Moore’s one-song-a-month project, V to Z, but he’s back with “Artificial Dead”. It’s hard to say what genre any of these tracks exist in but I’ve always given them kind of a Mike Patton Pass; they’re all over the place but have some undercurrent of consistency regardless of being a space-rock endeavor or some other thing. 

Always looking forward to more of this.