Posts Tagged ‘fruits & flowers’

Popular Posts Tagged ‘fruits & flowers’

Glenn Donaldson on The Television Personalities – The Painted Word
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Swiftumz – Game Six
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Michael O – “Haunted”
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Odd Hope
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Odd Hope – “Reasons I Will Not Say”
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The Oilies – “Psychic Dog”
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Odd Hope
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Odd Hope – “All The Things”
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Odd Hope – “All The Things”

by on ·Bits & Pieces, Tracks

It’s been a good week for limited singles collections. Following two stellar entries to Sub Pop’s singles club, the next couple of entries from the Slumberland 30 collection hit the internet today and included is an absolute gem from RSTB faves Odd Hope. The band, fronted by Portland songwriter Tim Tinderholt, has had an album and previous single on Fruits & Flowers, both solid and highly recommended. This single follows in fine fashion, picking up Tim’s thickly frothed jangle-pop, spreading some early summer vibes while there’s still frost clinging to the branches. “All The Things” is pinned to a hard charging guitar line that wouldn’t be out of place on a Power Pop comp, but it’s offset by spindly jangles and Tinderholt’s lightly warped croon, making this an indie pop gem that won’t crawl out from under your skin soon. On the flip, the more languid and lankier “What’s Your Part Of It makes for a fine companion. Pick this one up now. More people need to be singing the praises of Odd Hope.




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The Oilies – “Psychic Dog”

by on ·Bits & Pieces, Tracks

A while back I posted a homespun digital single from Carly Putnam, aka The Oilies, and now the artist is stepping out with her physical debut for the always charming Fruits & Flowers. Having spent time in The Art Museums, The Mantles, Horrid Red, and The Reds, Pinks & Purples, Carly’s well versed in the pastel-hued jangles that tend to drizzle down the window panes of the sould and “Psychic Dog” doesn’t disappoint in that regard. The first cut from the EP lopes through a set of competing strums set against the click-stop backdrop of drum machine snap. The track is wistful and wanting, combining the simple charms of Marine Girls with the pulse n’ pine of Jazzateers. For those who readily wander down the lesser traveled paths of the ‘80s this is just what the grey-skied winters ordered.



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Michael O – “Haunted”

by on ·Bits & Pieces, Tracks

More good news arrives from The Mantles’ camp this week as songwriter Michael Olivares has a new single on the way for Fruits & Flowers. The first song from the single, “Haunted,” is a dreamy, delicate bit of jangle-pop, bolstered by a pillowy touch of keys and a hum of violin. Like much of his work for the small SF label, the song picks at the past with a reverent comb. There’s a looming shadow of The Jacobites here, as well as flashes of The Go-Betweens and The Pastels. Along with producer Edmund Xavier, Olivares has woven another stunner. Fruits & Flowers is quietly building themselves as the new Sarah Records (for those just now getting interested in the veteran label’s Bandcamp revitalization) and I hope that it gets recognition as such in its own time. The fear always remains that something this delicately niche could suffer in silence, only to gain the following they should have had two generations down the line. Prevent that cruel curse by jumping into their catalog with both feet now.



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Odd Hope

by on ·New Albums, Reviews

It’s hard to capture the feeling of an era lost. There are plenty of jangle-pop imitators and even a new crop of Kiwis that are attempting to resurrect what Flying Nun once found so effortless. In California, however, there remains a solitary lifeline to the sound in the form of Tim Tinderholt’s Odd Hope. Following on a solid single for Fruits & Flowers, Tinderholt has come ratcheting back with a perfect distillation of all those lost gems from the underside of the equator. Though, its not without noting that he’s also mining a great deal from The Jacobites and The Pastels as well. He’s found purchase not only in their sunny, jangled ebullience but also in the quieter, introverted weirdness that made so many of these ’80s and ’90s oddities such coveted releases.

Produced by Fruits & Flowers co-founder Glenn Donaldson, (Skygreen Leopards, The Birdtree) the record retains an unmistakable touch of his own homespun and hissed-flecked folk pop, but at the heart is Tim’s distinct gravitational pull. Tinderholt’s songwriting is given a treatment that flickers like an emergency candle in a power outage, an inviting harbor in the face of unblinking darkness. The album is both a beacon and a comfort. When he’s reflecting the brilliant sun’s glow there’s no other light that can hope to outshine his positivity, but when the vibes turn, as they often do, to smirking, unsure, melancholy and jittery, Tinderholt is the friend who understands just how overwhelming the outside world is.

So maybe just huddle down into these ten tracks like a blanket in a storm that may or may not pass. Tinderholt’s eponymous debut is the kind of record that’s destined to be missed by the oblivious as anathema to modern trends and revisited years later as a cherished totem to those who were paying attention. With so many of those types of records now getting the reissue treatment, it would seem only intuitive to nip into this while it’s fresh and fidgeting. Odd Hope is a truly endearing open wound that sucks the listener in with its weird and blissful ache.




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Swiftumz – Game Six

by on ·Reviews, Singles (7", 10", 12"), Videos

You’d be forgiven for having missed Swiftumz’ two LPs over the years. Despite crafting consecutive albums of homespun pop that shimmers brightly, Chris McVicker’s output has slipped all too quietly out into the world via the Holy Mountain and Melters labels. Its a shame though, because both records captured an artist who is at ease with his corner of the world – tumbling through a muted brand of power pop, glimmering jangle-pop and slicing through the bleary-eyed glories of American Indie with a rather precise knife. So, it’s with the release of McVicker’s latest single that SF’s Fruits & Flowers posts their second essential release of the year.

“Game Six” is pure jangled glory, spillin’ sunshine out of its pockets like quarters on laundry day. Like most of MicVicker’s songs it sounds so effortlessly intuitive you’d almost swear you’ve heard it before. He’s a student of the late ’80s and early ’90s and given a good time shift would most certainly have been pulling down some zine ink. This track alone is worth the price of admission, but he backs it up with a b-side that’s also tipping the gold standard. Shifting into melted-amber Indie-pop mode here and threading his way through Galaxie 500 and Yo La Tango vibes as felt through the soul of the late great Brightblack Morning Light, he’s letting things fade into a sherbet sunset – glowing an orange aura around the track to the very end. Both songs are on endless repeat around here and you’d do well to snag one too.

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Odd Hope – “Reasons I Will Not Say”

by on ·Bits & Pieces, Tracks

Been a while since I’ve heard from Odd Hope, the solo project from Tim Tinderholt, but he’s back in fine jangled form on new track “Reasons I Will Not Say”. Still chasing the fading tail of the Sarah Records ghost, Tinderholt again creates a song that’s gently bumping the nostalgia centers of the brain. Full of wistful sighs and softly crying keys, it’s more fleshed out than the first single that he put out a few years back on Fruits & Flowers, a sign that the upcoming LP is shaping up to be a real jangle-pop contender. Produced by Skygreen Leopards’ Glenn Donaldson, the LP, also on the small SF imprint, is the label’s first full-length proper. If the rest of Tinderholt’s songs shape up as beautifully spare as this, then we’d all better keep an eye out for what’s sure to be a hushed classic in the making.




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Glenn Donaldson on The Television Personalities – The Painted Word

by on ·Features

Hidden Gems is based on the idea of those records that are found along the way in life that you can’t believe you never heard about, the ones that just blow you away on first listen and seem like such a find. The kind of records that get left out of all the essential decade lists and 1001 records you need to hear before you die type of listicle. The ones that got away. In the first installment I tapped Glenn Donaldson (Skygreen Leopards, Art Museums, Jewelled Antler Collective) to have his pick at a record that fits the bill. Glenn’s Twitter feed alone is full of enough overlooked classics to fill this feature ten times over, so needless to say I was intrigued. He’s picked Television Personalities’ fourth album, the darkly shaded, The Painted Word. I asked him how the record came into his life and how its affected him and his music.

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Odd Hope

by on ·Reviews, Singles (7", 10", 12")

Bay Area musician Tim Tinderholt serves up a debut single for Fruits & Flowers, currently one of our favorite destinations for band’s you should be checking into. The a-side is a chilled piece of folk, all grey skies and winter reserve. Then the flip takes a step out into the sunshine. The label’s assessment that this could have popped up on Creation is well deserved (though Sarah Records is an equal contender). Banging around through Razorcuts b-sides or Sneetches EPs, it seems likely that you might run aground on a copy of Odd Hope’s “I’ll Follow You Soon”. This is definitely a gem in an already stellar catalog for the SF label.

Listen:


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Michael O.

by on ·New Albums, Reviews

It would probably be pushing it to say that Michael Olivares is better known as the lead singer of San Francisco ramshackle poppers The Mantles. To be fair, The Mantles aren’t exactly a household name either, but that’s more of a testament to most people’s poor taste than anything else. They should be a fixture in your record collection, as should Olivares’ first solo LP for Fruits & Flowers. The album follows his previous single for the start-up label and lands on some of the same twinges of homespun pop but it also expands its scope into a much larger statement of new wave hat tips to Nikki Sudden’s jangle comedowns, classic era Flying Nun cracked lens warbles and even a touch of sun-smeared folk that crinkles around the edges.

Aiding Olivares in bringing this collection to fruition is Edmund Xavier of Horrid Red. The pair don’t fill out a room but in their restraint, they find the nuance that makes Olivares’ brand of honest, fluid pop feel familiar and fresh in equal measure. Plenty of other albums will come beating down your door in 2015 but Really? is the kind that lets you come to it, and you’d be well advised to seek it out.


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