eMusic Loves Palmist Records
Palmist Records is that best of little indie ventures – the highly impractical labor of love. Run as a side venture of the venerable FatCat Records, Palmist collects limited vinyl runs of interesting artists and releases them, A/B style. That’s it. Generally speaking, it’s the rougher, more bedroom-pop side of the indie-rock work they traffic in – scratchy, recorded with whatever’s handy, rooted in the energy of the moment and capturing the spontaneity of creation. The music itself, though, runs the gamut from the brightly colored, primitive bash-and-strum of Growlers and Prize Pets to the deeply wiggy and weird underwater sounds of Gentle Friendly and Dustin Wong. There’s not a bad record on here; we’ve sampled them all.
Palmist – FREE Sampler
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Not sure which of these you want? This is the place to get started.
U.S. Girls/Slim Twig
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Tough-chick, gum-popping rock'n'roll of the U.S. Girls alternates with desert-vista expanses of washed-out sound.
Gentle Friendly/Dustin Wong
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On one side, we have the peaceful-extraterrestial atmospherics of Gentle Friendly; on the other, the washed-clean, narcotized jangle-pop of Dustin Wong.
The Growlers/Thee Ludds
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Perfect nuggets of Nuggets rock from two bands who have the puppyish swagger this music demands down pat. Mono-radio miracles.
Lotus Plaza/Odonis Odonis
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Lotus Plaza is the side project of Lockett Pundt, who works with Bradford Cox in Deerhunter but releases his own wisps of chiming, dream-pop melancholy on the side. Odonis Odonis, on the other hand, make lurching garage-rock full of dead-eyed menace.
Bitches/Yuppies
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Bitches make pedal-to-the-medal punk-pop, one that erupts in yelps and shouts as often as it shifts into a caramel-sweet chorus. Yuppies, meanwhile, make Bitches look sedate. The tinker-toys-at-a-wall production redefines primitivism — the keyboard sounds played by a one-fingered infant. (It sounds awesome.)
Beaters/Prize Pets
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Beaters drag the sweat and heat of the Yardbirds-style rave-up through the blackness of the post-punk graveyard, and the result will make you shimmy like mad and break out in a clammy sweat simultaneously. Prize Pets are the opposite pole: catchy, loutish pop-punk bearing a Hawaiian shirt and a sunburn.
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If you like the Fresh & Onlys, Thee Oh Sees, or any of the other sun-baked psych-rock bands currently releasing three or four full-lengths per year in the indie-rock world, the Burning Yellows will be just your cup of laced tea: hooks, smarts, and sardonic humor, all wrapped up in a loosey-goosey swagger and a broke-down guitar strum. The Whines have the same heat-shimmer to their recordings, but the vocals recall a wearier, younger Nancy Sinatra.
