both of these songs are really great, but it's too bad you can't buy girl don't tell me, the beach boys cover that was on the 7" of this single. check it out on youtube though, it's excellent
D.I.Y. and hi-fi have rarely gone hand in hand. From the muscular crackle of Black Flag to the basement anthems of Guided by Voices, the sound of indie rock has long been the proudly noisy product of four walls and a four-track recorder. As laptops have replaced boomboxes, the aesthetic has endured, with bands embracing digital fuzz as a signal of both outsider cool and a thin wallet.
But with the late-2000s lo-fi boom that launched… more »
Four years ago, I flew from Portland to New York to see my favorite band, New Zealand's garage-pop trio the Clean, play three shows at a glorious pit called Cake Shop. The openers were Crystal Stilts, a Brooklyn group with no records out whose moody and noisy music pushed all the right buttons. I quickly befriended the group, especially guitarist JB Townsend and his then-girlfriend Frankie Rose, whose own band Vivian Girls were soon-to-be favorites.… more »
File Under: Ragged, guitar-based indie pop; jangle-'n'-reverb forever!
Flagship Acts: Beach Fossils, Wild Nothing, the Fresh & Onlys, the Girls At Dawn
Based In: Brooklyn, New York
When I first meet Mike Sniper, he's drinking Patron Silver at an Oyster Bar in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. From any other record executive, the scene would be typical to the point of almost seeming mundane. But Sniper is the founder of the tiny, ragged Brooklyn indie Captured Tracks, a label that prizes… more »