common loon on Ideal Utopia records

I saw Sebadoh mentioned in this Parasol description and finally gave it a listen last night.

The A-side has this very Beatles spacey feel. Organs, sleigh bells, multiple layers of vocals, huge room sounding drums. This melody right away takes over, reminding me of some later Elliott Smith stuff from XO, that huge sound, that now just gets sadder every time. It's that slow huge sadness... not quite the high falsetto, but completely in the same neighborhood, I could hear those parts in some kind of later cover version. It has this orchestration that flows around, obscuring and then dropping out.... But the B-side opening electric slow repeating riff is the stand out track for me, following in sebadoh footsteps, it's not obvious, it's one of those weird hard to follow loops that works in it's simple disjointed-ness. This simple melody gives in to the big sound for the chorus, that get's back into that Beatles influenced Elliott territory. It could easily be one of Jason Lowensteins driven tracks, guided by an inspired Barlow throwaway guitar loop. But then Common loon just lifts it up out and away from those moments of complete breakdown. It's taking me back to high school and Lush, and The Ocean Blue. When I started to think I didn't just have to listen to punk rock skate shit 24 hours a day.

What can I say..... I'll be humming this in the shower tomorrow.

Common Loon "Dinosaur vs. Early Man b/w Palestine Everywhere" 45 $4.00 Blending classic West Coast harmonies with some cosmically-inclined guitar-gush lushness and an otherworldly hi-fi-ness, local dream-rock duo Common Loon rates as one of the C-U Music Scene's bands to watch in 2008. Yes, there's an album in the pipe. Comes with a digital download ticket, so you can have it both ways. Pink-noise-pop for Sebadoh, Spiritualized, and Spacemen 3 fans. From parasol and Insound super cheap for 4, or 4.50 respectively.

the preakness • 7" EP

Summer has begun...I know it's early, but I'm already listening to this out on rooftop beach. Well, ok it's still cold, but I will. I opened the window and imagine sitting out on the fire escape, and then stay inside.

This is the kind of poppy fun 1990's sebadoh, dinosaur jr., tracks that where I would just keep playing the seven inch over and over. There's some girl/guy harmonies, some acoustic guitar, some electric solo's...not too crazy. I'm just in the mood for it. The minute I went back to review it, I had to go get it from eskimokiss records. I know I'll like this...and it's a 4 song EP, that's the way to do it. Where have the bands like this gone? The eric's trip? The softies? Bring it back preakness... when you mention lo-fi and basement, it's almost like you're trying to be best friends...we are already.

A little history: The preakness started as Brandon's lo-fi project in the basement over many years, and since spring of 2006 has evolved to a full band. Thanks to Tracy Clark and Tim Genius, we're in all-out rock mode. We keep it simple, hooky, and to the point, like back in the day when all you needed was a boom box and some duct tape to be an indie rocker. (no tight pants)

The preakness

Fields of Gaffney

This is not a new discovery by any stretch, but I just came across it the other day and have to admit I had no idea even about the subpop eric gaffney release, which is still available, let alone this split 7 inch, which is the only other solo thing released since sebadoh, who I heard are mounting some kind of reunion tour, after B-low finishes work on the new dinosaur jr. album? Crazy.

Get it on Morc records

Fields of Gaffney / Pernath: "split single"
7 " ep - released february 2004

four new songs bringing the lofi-era back to life. Fields of gaffney is the new band of Eric gaffney, co-founder of sebadoh. though his releases over the past ten years have been very rare, he has lost nothing of his songwriting talents: these songs can easily stand the comparison with the songs he wrote for the critically acclaimed albums 'III' and 'bubble and scrape'. this is his first single since his contribution to sub pop's singles club in 2000.