My review of Crazy Al’s Indiana Punk & New Wave ’76 – ’83 on Twitter consisted mainly of “BUY IT” repeated a dozen times, and I stand by that. Hell, even if the majority of the bands and songs were mediocre, I’d probably recommend you snag this cassette just for the previously unreleased Zero Boys song, “I’m Absent.”
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Archives
The Nevermores, “Lock Your Doors” LP
Big thanks are due Magnetic South for resurrecting these 14 cuts from wherever they’ve been hidden the last 25 years. Honestly, at this point, I’d thought all the lost recordings worth hearing had been collected by Pebbles, Nuggets, Back From the Grave, Killed By Death, Bloodstains, et al, and that we were at the end of the road for quality dirtying rock ‘n’ roll. It’s nice to be surprised.
From the unlikely town of Bloomington, Indiana, comes the Nevermores: this great, strange, organ-fueled garage rock from the early ’90s. This a band for which little information exists, and as the history on the back over was written with a eye to whimsey, it’s difficult to parse what’s fact and what’s fantasy.
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Sitar Outreach Ministry, “Revolution In Dimension 5” cassette
When you get a cassette by a band called Sitar Outreach Ministry, and you know nothing more than whom it was released by, you put it in the tape deck the instant it shows up in the mail. So it went with Revolution In Dimension 5 the band’s release on Magnetic South.
It’s probably the most novel thing a band could do these days, but it’s not the unusual nature of Sitar Outreach Ministry’s music or the novelty which sets them above anything, despite their Soundcloud featuring covers of the Velvet Underground and Bill Withers.
However, it is those covers — and, more specifically, the breadth of music which they represent — that gives a clue as to why this one guy from Bloomington, Indiana, is such an interesting cat to listen to. There’s psychedelic swilring going on here, obviously. To think otherwise would be ludicrous.
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Apache Dropout’s Seth Mahen and Sonny Alexandre on “Heavy Window”
Indiana garage trio Apache Dropout just released their latest album, Heavy Window, via Magnetic South Recordings this Tuesday. The album’s much darker than their last record, Bubblegum Graveyard which was released in 2012 on Chicago’s Trouble In Mind. We’ve been enjoying the hell out of the LP, so we reached out to the band’s Seth Mahern and Sonny Alexandre to ask them about how Heavy Window came together.
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Vacation Club, “Heaven Is Too High” LP
The first full-length from Indiana’s Vacation Club, Heaven Is Too High, took a couple listens to really work its way into rotation. Samuel James‘ vocals are an acquired taste — they’re high, they’re snotty, and they’re fairly monotonic.
It took picking the LP up after a little time away from it, putting it on the turntable, and hearing the opening strains of “Gas Station” to get what Vacation Club’s doing — this is a trimmed-down, lo-fi version of something like the Sweet or Slade.
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Thee Tsunamis, “Delirium and Dark Waters” 7-inch
Thee Tsunamis‘ Delirium and Dark Waters 7-inch on Magnetic South is just so much fun, I can’t believe they haven’t hit the Terminal Boredom hype machine. The songs aren’t scary — you look at the cover art and song titles, and you immediately assume Cramps-ish psychobilly or Deadbolt-style death surf — but instead, the trio works in a lo-fi garage vein with a shitload of twang to work their atmospheric magic.
There’s some swampy surf vibes going on instrumentally — and they’re really good, too. Thee Tsunamis rock a wave of late-night creepiness enhanced by the sneer in the voices of Betsy, Sharlene, and Josie. Opening cut “Haunted House” sounds like the trio’s singing from the perspective of the house’s denizens, daring you to risk a trip through the front door.
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