Happy Seven Inch Holidays

Thanks to everyone for sending in records to review, lots more to get to when we're back on the 29th. Darren from Velocity of Sound Records and I are working on our year end list to podcast and post then.

Also thanks to everyone checking out my latest single from Harpoon Forever on S&P recs. I've got another one coming up probably in Feb.

J

Harpoon Forever The American Flag EP on Sweaters & Pearls Records

A while back I covered a release on Bleeding Gold Records from Harpoon Forever. Immediately it reminded me of my formative years of seven inch single purchases from Pavement, The Strapping Fieldhands and Silver Jews among others. It's not that I want to compare Harpoon Forever to any of these guys and set the bar impossibly high, I just got the sense that Alex Goldstein wasn't chasing any current trend, just playing a laid back thoughtful indie rock that I didn't hear much of anymore. We ended up talking after that post about a lot of things including this idea for a seven inch EP of four songs called "American Flag" that Alex had felt always belonged together on vinyl. Alex had thought out every detail of the package and I agreed to put it out on my own Sweaters & Pearls label.

Once we put together the sleeve, a portrait of Alex by Derrick Kpeli I contacted Albany artist Travis Kostell to get started on alternate silkscreened matchbook covers for the first 50 and you can see photos of his process here.

The project has finally come together and I hope the rest of the stuff that goes along with the music carries some of that perfect 7" forever sound that I fell for.

Listen to a conversation Alex and I had about the record:


You can also stream the entire release below:



Thanks.

Jason

R. Stevie Moore single on Sweaters & Pearls Records

A few years ago I didn't even know who R. Stevie was.

My friend Travis in high school was always the one introducing me to amazing stuff. He moved to our small town school sometime my freshman year and blew minds with Eraserhead, Zappa and "Bob", in the days before the internet, plastering flyers in the hallways and busses until anything with a pipe and quotes was completely banned as a cult by the principal.
A few years ago we started using 7inches (and buckflix) as an excuse to talk about music and movies and one of those conversations (maybe even this one) ended up with me talking up Ariel Pink's Oddities... to him and Travis telling me I had to check out this guy R. Stevie Moore.
I picked up the "I hate people" single, (because god forbid I buy a whole album) and it was amazing, the 4-track style of Lou Barlow with the experimental pop weirdness of Ariel. A lightbulb went off. I could literally hear the straight line from Stevie through Pink, who I was so crazy about.
Fast forward to six months or so ago I ordered that Ku Klux Glam single from R. Stevie's site and Mike over at PIAPTK was just starting his Saturday singles series and I was inspired to try to send an email direct to R. himself.
Does he even check email? What about facebook? Was some entity posting on his behalf? Nope. He got back to me right away and seemed willing...hell, even excited to work with two nobodies on a new single. We were thrilled and emailed back and forth with Stevie to figure out which songs he'd want to get together on a tiny record from the archives. He sent a couple of photos to use for the sleeve, which I went ahead and rephotographed and glitched up. (I've been obsessed with Instagram and how pointless it is making digital files look like old photo processes when digital images have their OWN special ways of looking insane and nostalgic, thanks to decim8) Which R. was totally cool with. My friend Matt wrote the track text out when he was visiting from Boston while Travis had been doing a bunch of silk screening and I asked him to come up with something awesome for the first 50 cardboard matchbook sleeves.

The insert is handwritten tabs of "Traded my Heart for Your Parts" with some credits RSM requested and I copied them at work from ripped up legal pads and pressed it on red because I love color vinyl. That's it. 300 copies available from Sweatersandpearls.com and from R. Stevie on tour and maybe his site in the future.

The first 50 or so get the Travis cover which is a serious labor of love... This whole thing is really. We can die happy.

Pick this up over at my very own Sweaters & Pearls Records site, 5 bucks plus shipping. Obviously if you live outside the US, email jason at sweatersandpearls dot calm because USPS wants to make up for their incompetence by charging extra to ship overseas...sorry guys.

I really appreciate it. Oh and the tracks are really great, obviously.

R.A.D. Vinyl Interview of Sweaters and Pearls Records

Thanks to Ross over at R.A.D. Vinyl for the very first Sweaters and Pearls interview! I still have copies of The Super Vacations/Ceiling Stares, Fat History Month and Soccer Mom Records....check them out. I appreciate the support, these are great bands that deserve to have records out there...and do me a favor, and punch those skateboarding jerks in the face!

Soccer Mom - You are not going to heaven - EP on 100m Records and Sweaters and Pearls Records

Got another release today from my own Sweaters & Pearls label.

If you would have told me I would be a part of 3 releases in the same year I would have...well the S&P accountants would have said "No way", but there's just been so much great stuff that I've really wanted to support and they just all came together pretty much at the same time. In the best way...this was by far the most ambitious project to date. Soccer Mom signed recently with 100m Records and said they were putting out this 6 song EP, they've always been huge vinyl fans and it made sense to see if we could put together a vinyl version of the release. When I saw the sleeve design Will had come up with, money was no object! I had always wanted to check out letterpressing a cover sometime, but the way it's pressed, the Soccer Mom and the album title are covered by a wraparound vertical graphic, such a cool idea. It was beyond anything I'd ever come across and couldn't wait to have it in hand.

Soccer Mom has been evolving a lot since that first single. There's still a lot of '90s classic fuzz throughout this whole EP, taking all kinds of unconscious influences and coming up with their really unique take the classic sound. There's times when I'll catch a dead on Dinosaur Jr. style melody in "(A) Natural history" one minute and then Dan's vocal will have Lee Ranaldo natural detachment the next.

It's got all the looseness of those catchier Sonic Youth tracks, when they veer towards melody, finding that line that just makes sense, Soccer Mom is playing around with a similar experimental guitar approach, the unnatural sounds and combinations of rhythm and melody. They're distilled down into melody you can't over think. It's the track that works no matter how many times you perform it. The first song to warm up in the rehearsal space, because it's just fun.

"American shirt (Eagle Flag 911)" most closely resembles that Loveless style haze, the layers of guitar are working in a dense chorus and distanced slide echo. I wouldn't be surprised if this was days in a studio, but I've seen them play live and all of these odd sounds are incredibly coming from Will and Dan, and at incredible volume. Like The Big Sleep it's overwhelming to see live, the structures are all there, it starts to sound like it's coming from somewhere else, it takes up the space like nothing else. Or "Unwanted Sounds" which has layers of distorted huge guitars, both an intricate picked melody and massive MBV style dense walls done in a bouncy optimistic indie feel. When Dan comes in with an epic far off chorus vocal it adds up to a pop vision of Broken Water.

In "Celebrity Unrest", they find a hard distorted groove that starts out at that massive height and continues on that plateau the whole track, building another melody on top of melody, and like "High on Dad" just when you think it might be instrumental, Dan comes in vocally unable to hold back anymore. I love that economy...when there's something to say, come in. If the great mathy guitar back and forth on "Salty Wyoming" works somehow like two completely separate loops then that's it.

So glad I could have a tiny part in spreading the word and I just want to say to everyone who's picked up anything from the label, thanks a lot.

Go get this one from Sweaters and Pearls Records...or 100m records...(the price including shipping is the same).

Fat History Month - A Gorilla EP on Sweaters and Pearls Records

I've been waiting to announce the latest single from my own Sweaters and Pearls label from Fat History Month. It's been hard... but until I finished printing those handcut linoleum sleeves I just had to suck it up. So there is it, ready to order, a 4 song, 33 1/3 EP clocking in at 14 minutes of mellow math equations and epic ringing distortion, from lead vocals and guitarist, Jeff Meff backed by Bobby Hobby's intricate pounding. I've always loved the dynamic of a duo, the back and forth between the guitar and drums, the stripped down nature of the instrumentation. Not that you would know it from B-Side's "Heart would take a Beating" where they build an intense wall of sonics from this minimal setup. Fat History Month takes pride in this kind of painstaking restraint, the intricate picked melody that explodes the next measure in growly distortion. Every track has these truly impressive ranges, the peaks of crazy time signature cymbals crashing, to muted heavy reverb picking, actually allowing notes to completely drift off out into nothing.
There's that underlying connection between a duo that comes across in the complexity of these changes, the kind of thing that comes from more than just the muscle memory of repetition. It's like all my favorite bands came together at once, A minor forest, Atvin, Unwound, June of 44... something like that....look, I'm already building it up way too much and I'm going to ruin it.

I urge you to go listen to their bandcamp page, check out the streaming tracks on the record player at Sweaters and Pearls and pick this up along with their recently released full length, "Fucking Despair" on Sophomore Lounge Records AND that "Safe and Sound" single still available from the Australian label, Bedroom Suck Records. I'm not the only one.

Almost forgot to mention when Fat History Month rounds up their tour to the west coast and back again, they'll be stopping in NY, September 27th at the Legion bar on metropolitan for a record release party show for this single. It will be the first time hearing these tracks in person and I'm counting the days.

Did I mention this is pressed on banana yellow vinyl with all kinds of smudges and swirls, some of them are even almost clear....very cool job from Archer Pressing.



I just couldn't let Darren at Velocity of Sound Records get away with putting out that Flesh Vehicle single and not responding with one of my own.
We're gonna have a 7 inch party tonight!
Alright!

The Ceiling Stares / Super Vacations Split singles ship today!

Hey guys, just wanted to thank everyone for ordering this one, they ship today.... as you're reading this ....on dark purple vinyl.

Darren talked United into a special color mix.

Get one if you would be so kind from my own Sweaters & Pearls Records.
I would like to keep doing it.


Here's a linoleum stamped 2 color insert!
Are you crazy?
Yes.
Might not do that again for a pressing of 500.

The Ceiling Stares / Super Vacations Split single on Velocity of Sound + Sweaters and Pearls Records

Got an advance copy of this split from my buddy Darren at Velocity of Sound and myself at Sweaters and Pearls Records....wait...that's me? Yes it is good reader, I up and started a label...finally.
Darren, who had a split in mind with the fantastic Ceiling Stares about 6 months ago seemed like the perfect opportunity to team up with someone who could show me the ropes. So with a blank side and psyche on my mind I contacted The Super Vacations and the rest is history that could end up in your mailbox.
S&P 001, is finally ready and I've been trying really hard to keep my big mouth shut until it was finished so I didn't hex* myself.

The Ceiling Stares reside in Pittsburgh, PA and impressed Darren so much live that he immediately had to see if he could put out, 'A Tunnel Through the Air' on vinyl, which ended up here being the A-Side... not that one side is better than the other mind you.
The 5 piece makes use of their numbers to quickly work in a winding layered riff, both guitars working a complex rhythm back and forth, with a subtle organ melody taking shape driven by an unstoppable snare attack. If there was ever such a thing as psyche-punk, it may be the time to introduce some distant relative here. Get ready for a long player folks, this clocks in at over 5 minutes, so was cut at 33 of course. But how would it even be related to psyche unless it took its time worming this melody deep in your skull. The vocals are upon the lyrics from the very first line, some sort of extended Greek chorus, working as much at the changes as the instrumentation. Heavy distortion guitar leads the big sound, separated big time into a major stereo experience...I know you've heard stereo before, but not like this.

Minutes and degrees
Without them we'd be lost at sea

But give this track a minute to tunnel through your speakers, over at their bandcamp page for yourself.

The Super Vacations take full advantage of the long distance pace set by the Stares to introduce two tracks here that are exclusive to this single "Hexing" and "Controller". Rob explained these are demo versions of tracks they are recording for a new album. By 'demo' he means they went all out recording in full rock fidelity and spent hours on the mix, I honestly think he might have mistakenly sent the final versions, or they're a band full of perfectionists, because this isn't your mom's demo. *"Hexing" kicks off, when the needle drops with a stuttered distorted rhythm at frantic pace, and psyche never attempted these speeds before. On top of that it's a sinister sounding track, pounding out that punchy rhythm, guitars speeding forward, the layered harmonies in a minor key....spooky.
Talking about a curse, and riding an elevator (to the 13th floor?) it sounds like the vocal here is looking forward to the 'hexing' it's going to take to get through this one. You and me both buddy.
"Controller", up next gives you just a moment to catch your breath in between tracks and this power groove drives another scary power psyche track. They have a way of unsettling that driving rhythm with the vocal, overwhelm with a huge layered haze and that's it, even if you wanted to turn back, the path home is gone.
I'm really happy to be able to press something that might have otherwise never even seen the light of day, not only can you get a sense of what they're up to next, but hear it in it's early stage of development. That's why the 45 is still alive and why I know you and I still buy singles.

Check out all these tracks on the fake record player at S&P. The sleeves have been printed, the test pressings were approved, and now it's time to order the shit out of this!
It's available over here at the new sweaters and pearls site, which again in case anyone is confused, is definitely the new label part of 7inches or at Darren's Velocity Of Sound Records. He's got the green ones and my run is purple. 250 pressed of each.
The Super Vacations are touring a little around their neck of the woods to sell these in person, so you can always support the band and get one live or even contact The Ceiling Stares directly....we're all in this thing together.

The records, I'm told, are being shipped to me this week, they won't actually go out in the mail until next week sometime, but I'll keep everyone posted.
Any issues, shipping problems, etc. I can be reached at jdean99 at gmail dot com or jason at sweatersandpearls dot com.

Thanks as always for reading and if you can support the label so I can press more in the future, then double thanks. Rest assured I've got a few more records in the works for later this year.