Browsing Category Tracks

Sunburned Hand of the Man – “Flex”

by on ·Bits & Pieces, Tracks

There may be few freer flowing catalogs than that of Sunburned Hand of the Man. The longstanding Northeast collective have long kept the candle burning on free psych in the new age, letting out a steady stream of CDrs, cassettes, and limited digital ephemera in the name of digging into the deep scatological burn of psychedelic fallout that lives and dies in the room. The band breathes a noxious exhalation of groove battered funk, jazz-wrenched psych, and noise scuttled concrete. The lucky takes find their way imprinted onto tape for preservation on the shelves of those who’ve already felt the call of the cosmic and are keeping tabs. They are totems that aren’t often easy to come by. Last year the band pulled out of a longtime vinyl drought to slip out an excellent LP for Cardinal Fuzz. Headless hit like a second coming, hammering in everything that kept the band vital over the years and packed it onto a platter that was woefully here and gone before too many hands could feel the heat. It was their first LP since 2010’s A on the long shuttered, but much missed Ecstatic Peace, but this time they don’t make the wanting wait too long between records. The band announces a follow-up today as part of Three Lobed’s 20th anniversary series.

Pick A Day To Die leads off with the slinking kosmiche coil of “Flex,” finding the band cleaning up their corners with a tightly wound flash of liquid-skinned guitar propelled by a groove that owes its blood to a few German Progressive forefathers. Shot through with a mercury-melted pulse, the song sets out some high expectations for the next round of Sunburned singe. The band is ever elusive on the details that birthed this batch, but the band’s Ron Schneiderman sets it up with an ominous air. –

“Sources say: you need to get the fuck in a car and drive.
Like, get way gone. Crime-solving spree style.
Did we tell you about the time everything changed?
We will not even pretend that things are okay.
Ride with this hope and welcome the collapse.”

Pick A Day To Die is out March 12th from Three Lobed. Nab one of the limited LPs below as part of their essential new anniversary series.


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Bobby Lee – “Impregnated By Drops of Rainbow”

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Just around the corner from his excellent album Shakedown in Slabtown UK purveyor of cosmic country calm Bobby Lee is back with a new EP packed with eight more kosmiche oases to fold into your consciousness. Skimming down his runtimes a bit for this short-format mind massage, the first couple of cuts out of the gate amble slow but stick to the soul with a thick sonic porridge of Ashra and Steve Hillage’s Rainbow Dome Music left to bake in the Southern California sun to soak up some twang. The new EP is out as limited cassette (ltd to 30) or download on March 5th. Highly recommended for fine tuning your senses today.



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Plankton Wat – “Nightfall”

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Finally got a burner off of this new Plankton Wat out today. Thrill Jockey announced this one a couple of weeks back but today “Nightfall” graces the speakers and its another lysergic dose of float from Dewey Mahood (Eternal Tapestry, Gärden Söund). The Wat has always been a more meditative side of Dewey’s music and “Nightfall” embraces the elegiac strain that’s rippled through his works in the past. Guitars sparkle with a dampness in places before the heat-rippled fuzz takes hold of the track. There’s a West Coast air to this cut, sun glinting off of the water and head swimming in the lat August heat before the soft call of brass and brimstone wash away the calm. The new album is out February 26th from Thrill Jockey.





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Chris Corsano & Bill Orcutt – “Some Tennesse Jar”

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Both the names on this one have been busy since their last outing, which was only in 2018, but seems like forever at this pint. Its good to hear them back in company again and finding new crevices of sound to burrow into. There’s immediately a looser feel to “Some Tennessee Jar” than when these two last met in the recorded groove. Brace Up! was brittle and blunt — not to say it wasn’t nuanced — but it was a wrecking ball of an album that hit from all sides. Here Orcutt and Corsano are picking at a dizzying blues of sorts. Blues in the sense that Mingus used to pick them apart and put them back together into complex patterns that still beat with the same heart of the lone back porch picker looking to tangle emotions through the steel strings. There’s not a stomp of groove on the track — Corsano has never been so direct — but the circular nature of the song swims through a delta of some sort, swelling itself with ghosts of Sharrock thrown into the stark Mapplethorpe relief of Verlaine’s iced riffs. The record arrives on Bill’s label Palilalia on March 26th and from this early taste, it feels like an essential one.




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Weak Signal – “What’s A Girl To Do”

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Weak Signal prove fruitful with another surprise offering for the new year. The band let loose a solid album alongside a split single with Endless Boogie last year and this EP starts the year off with a nice reminder of their heft. The EP boasts a mix of covers and originals, barreling out of the gate with a gritty reimagining of an ‘80s new wave sprinter “What’s A Girl To Do” by Christina. The original is a turquoise and pink splatter of mall pop with an endearing aloofness. Weak Signal give it a dirt bath, supplanting the synths with fuzz dusted guitars, but the song’s thrust remains alongside its indelible hook. The trio revamps this lost nugget for a new age and its hard to argue with the results of a of grunge-pop glow-up. The rest of the EP finds Weak Signal in reflective mode, bittersweet and melancholy as they slide through calmer waters than they churned on Bianca. Add in a cover of Neil’s “Cortez The Killer” and a cameo from Brian Degraw and Look See is a solid Bandcamp grab for the start of ’21.



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Chuck Johnson – “Raz-de-Marée”

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2021 continues last year’s exploration of pedal steel as a divining force for solace and sorrow. With a follow-up to 2017’s Balsams Johnson again inhabits the nature of loss to find the furrow of scar tissue that lays inside the mind. This time he’s looking past the wound to the world built on top of the turmoil —the good and bad that have been propped against the pain. “Raz-de-Marée” unfolds with a slow elegance, radiating a healing light that pours like relief from a sob. Notably, Johnson has sought to bring not only the emotional depth through the instrument, but to utilized particular spaces to capture an atmosphere within each track. “Johnson dug through archival recordings from Oakland DIY performance spaces to digitally extract their reverb and echo qualities. He then applied these effects—as well as the digitally modeled reverberation of a redwood forest—to the tracks on The Cinder Grove. The effect, at least on the first song, is a peaceful natural air that calms what it can’t cure. The record is out February 5th from VDSQ.



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Spiral Wave Nomads – “Radiant Drifter”

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On of the great improv psych bands to emerge out of the Upstate NY / CT / MA area in the last couple of years has been Spiral Wave Nomads. I had these guys on a show with Wet Tuna and they burned down the Half Moon stage with a barrage of jams (one of which is on their last EP here). Now the band feat Eric Hardiman (Burnt Hills, Sky Furrows) and Michael Kiefer (More Klementines) is back with a sophomore LP again split between Michael’s Twin Lakes Records and Feeding Tube. The first taste of the First Encounters is the contact burn of “Radiant Drifter.” The pair has only burrowed further into their den of knotted riffs, amplifier spray and turbulent rhythm on this record and I couldn’t be more excited to hear the whole thing when it lands in the first week of January.



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Tim Cohen – “Rage On”

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Great news slides down the mountain today that a new solo slab from Tim Cohen (The Fresh & Onlys) is on the way next year from rising label Bobo Integral. The first cut from the album is “Rage On,” which, despite the title is a rather mellow melt into the sunset. Cohen hooks up again with his longtime collaborator James Barone (Beach House) behind the boards and the drum kit. Alongside horns, keys, and backing vocals by members of Magic Trick and Flaural, the record showcases yet again, the tender side of Cohen’s songbook. Album opener, “Rage On” rises out of the river with a gospel-laced delivery anchored by ‘70s Rhodes lines. Cohen makes the song simmer and sway, constantly pushing towards a release, but more often than not he holds the song close to his chest like a meditative murmur. The record, You Are Still Here arrives on shelves March 26th.




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Freelove Fenner – “LED Museum”

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New track up on the speakers today from Montreal duo Freelove Fenner. The song slinks into the room with patience and reserve. Like first single “Shoulder Season,” “LED Museum” pants dry ice and distance. The band pins the track to an oiled bass line while pressure cooled keys and flutes inject a sense of trepidation that enters a tug-o-war with the want to dance. The cut feels like the encroachment of excellent design — a planned world that seeks to upend the listener despite meticulous planning to the contrary. The record is out February 2nd from Moone Records.



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Venetian Blinds – “Flowers Die”

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Got a tip off of a friend about this L.A . band and their LP from March is a total jangle gem that’s been sorely overlooked. While the whole LP is a soft-hearted strummer that could easily find a home on Paisley Shirt or Fruits & Flowers, the absolute earworm of the record is this pillowy puff of pop, “Flowers Die.” With a nice lacquer of nostalgia and cloudy-sky aesthetics, the song reclines onto its own indie-pop eiderdown. There’s something that strikes more of an American indie strain here, evoking a bit more of the fodder on that recently released Strum & Thrum comp than the usual UK and NZ touchstones that crop up. I’m definitely keeping an eye on these guys, but their debut is well worth a spin on the speakers for the jangle lovers in the crowd. Secret Music is out now, self-released from the band.

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