Cymbals Eat Guitars - Lenses Alien

1. Rifle Eyesight (Proper Name)
2. Shore Points
3. Keep Me Waiting
4. Plainclothes
5. Definite Darkness
6. Another Tunguska
7. The Current
8. Wavelengths
9. Secret Family
10. Gary Condit

Old-school indie purists could use a modern hero, and while it may be unfair to peg Cymbals Eat Guitars as '90s revivalists, their second album will speak to fans of Built to Spill's squall, Superchunk's chug, and Modest Mouse's string-bending strangeness. Frontman Joe D'Agostino, a.k.a. Joseph Ferocious, belongs in such lofty company: His dense, inventive songs evoke imagistic glimpses of mucus and ice-covered cars, moving from a gentle keen ("Plainclothes") to a desperate scream. Gorgeously harrowing album closer "Gary Condit" plays both sides, its prettiness collapsing into ferocity before disappearing entirely...www.spin.com

Milk Maid - Yucca

01. Such Fun
02. Can't You See
03. Oh
04. Dead Wrong
05. Girl
06. Not Me
07. Kill Me Again
08. Same As What
09. Back Of Your Knees
10. Sad Song
11. Someone You Thought You'd Forgot

There are different ways to approach the band purgatory of "indefinite hiatus." You could maintain a dignified silence, either letting the memory of your band live relatively untarnished in the hearts of fans, or maybe building up feverish anticipation for a lucrative reunion tour. You could start a blog, an acting career, or some other non-music project. There's also always the possibility of starting a new project to satiate your musical urges. Like many artists, Martin Cohen, bassist of UK lad-rockers Nine Black Alps, has chosen Door No. 3, recording songs under the name Milk Maid primarily from his Manchester apartment.

From the blast of distortion on opener "Such Fun" on, Yucca clearly basks in the influence of a few 1990s lo-fi indie greats. Guided by Voices have been the chief comparison so far, but Cohen isn't as strong a singer or as gifted a melodicist as Robert Pollard and where 11 songs make up Yucca's 33 1/2-minute running time, GBV could easily cram at least two dozen songs in that window. Milk Maid is more similar to a group like Sebadoh in musical and lyrical content, combining mostly sunny, pop-friendly melodies with macabre imagery and the occasional spate of abject self-loathing-- at least in the handful of lyrics that you can make out.

Cohen injects a little irony into "Such Fun", delivering the bouncy, jaunty tune-- and its chorus of "'Round, 'round, 'round, and over again"-- with an affect so distant, that it sounds like he's lamenting a tedious exercise, regardless of the slightly more energetic backing vocals that punctuate the hook. "Dead Wrong" puts an emphasis on the former word of its title, with the song's first few lines splattered with blood from dismembered limbs and stab wounds in the stomach. The first verse of the 49-second "Kill Me Again" simulates the back-and-forth of a lovers' spat, with Cohen singing, "Kill me again... And then I'll kill you." Most of Yucca's violent images are delivered as a metaphor for a deteriorating relationship, relating to the death of a romance as death in the most literal terms.

Reportedly inspired by the recording approach of Sic Alps, but mostly lacking the bloodthirsty snarl the San Francisco basement dwellers capturing on tape, Yucca is almost split evenly between propulsive, driving, pop-influenced garage-rock tunes and downtempo almost-ballads covered in a thick topcoat of fuzz. The catchiest of these-- "Can't You See", with its acoustic guitar drowned-out by heavily distorted electric guitar, late-album climax "Back of Your Knees', the buoyant power-pop of "Not Me"-- are torn wide open by ear-splitting guitar solos, ably and excitingly straddling the line between noise and pop. While its lyrics-- especially the hook of "She was American / She was an American girl"-- aren't especially gripping, "Girl" provides a refreshing cool down in the midst of the blown, overheated amps exploding across most of the collection.

A melancholy sway marks "Someone You Thought You'd Forgot", finding Cohen using his voice to deliver a kind of sadness that perfectly matches the song's chords. The song itself makes for an appropriate closing track-- it feels like the soundtrack for saying goodbye to someone, all long faces, downturned eyes, and slow, monotone speech. It's softer feel also illustrates the dynamic range Cohen has as a songwriter on his first solo outing, one that isn't especially revelatory or inventive, but does offer a solid starting point for the second chapter of his career...www.pitchfork.com

Wolf Eyes - Always Wrong

1. Cellar
2. Living Stone
3. Broken Order
4. Pretending Alive
5. We All Hate You
6. Always Wrong
7. Droll/Cut The Dog

Always Wrong is a mantra of severity. Wolf Eyes has been scouring audiences across the globe with their acid drenched industrial noise and dub terror psychedelia, establishing themselves as the trailblazers of a genre and pioneers of the long-form noise tour. coming forth from the piles of tape loops and effects the bulk of tables reeling with electronics have been shed. This clarity never sacrifices intensity as paradoxically this is the most organic of the full lengths but also the harshest and most dissonant. Opening track “Cellar” immediately sets the pace of barraged edits and percussive electronics as startling vocals spit from the dry throat and remain unfiltered for the first time breathing a clear litany of scorn. a new voice is rising and it isn't happy. throughout the album non-electronic beats created from live drums replace programming while colliding tape loops and junk metal bring new unstable rhythm like a house with erroding foundation. “Living Stone” shows a more natural state of acoustic composition highlighting the despondent subtle plucking of controlled guitar improvisation that could come from natures ghost. forging ahead in “We All Hate You” loud tonal horns and architectuarly placed electronics. however their aesthetic core of pummeling hasn't been abandoned as the aggressive “Broken Order” takes hold with shrill feedback fueling industrial cannon blasts of white hot noise that burn the body from the neck down. an eerie harmonica driven death march straight out of "once upon a time in the west" cries on the closing track 'droll/cut the dog' Immediately it is clear that Wolf Eyes have crafted a statement with maturity that stands at the top of their mysterious discography. Always Wrong is a denial against conformity and the triumph of walking a path alone. Young, Olson, Connelly.

I.U.D. - The Proper Sex

1. Daddy
2. Glo Balls
3. Monk Hummer
4. 911
5. Mary Unmargaret
6. Girls Just Wanna (Time to Have Sex)

The pantheon of great sleazy sex records includes the depraved minimalist funk of Prince’s Dirty Mind and the squalid bedroom drama of Soft Cell’s Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret. Gang Gang Dance’s Lizzi Bougatsos and Growing’s Sadie Laska make a bold attempt at joining such lurid company with The Proper Sex, their first album as I.U.D. It’s a witty, spooky and abrasive record that mixes spacious dubby beats with the noise assault of the Melvins and Unsane.

Bougatsos and Laska open with the shrill metallic percussion of “Daddy.” The heliumized Kate Bush vocals will be familiar to Gang Gang Dance fans, although this music is brutally tribalistic, with less of the glazed pop of Saint Dymphna and more of the infinite space of God’s Money. The second track, “Glo Balls,” is fueled by a murderous vocal reminiscent of Whitehouse’s William Bennett or just about anyone signed to Amphetamine Reptile in the early ‘90s. It’s propelled by some jarring no-wave primitivism that sounds wonderfully debauched, variously recalling Suicide, “11,000 Volts” by Mars and the willful antagonism of early Swans...

If “Daddy” and “Glo Balls” are the foreplay, then “Monk Hummer” is an introduction to the level of degradation at which I.U.D. operates. It’s a mish-mash of porn-film inspired samples and a sludgy stop-start rhythm reminiscent of Coil and the incidental music from ‘70s splatter movies. “Monk Hummer” induces the same kind of dizzy disorientation that occurs when you unexpectedly emerge into bright sunlight from a darkened movie theater. It’s a woozy, drunken and scrappily distended track that leads into the full-on intercourse of “911” and “Mary Unmargaret.”

By this point, Bougatsos and Laska are flooding The Proper Sex with sound, abrasively adjoining coarse musical dissonance with Brian Chippendale-style grunts and lyrics like, “Someone please call the doctor/ I’ve been shot through the heart.” When they get to the album’s finale, “Girls Just Wanna (Time to Have Sex),” they’re touching you in ways that don’t feel comfortable at all. Joined by Rites of Spring guitarist Mike Fellows, the threesome produce the aural equivalent of having some large household appliances shoved into several orifices, all at the same time.

Bougatsos and Laska clearly have impeccable taste, as witnessed by the album’s cover, which pays warm homage to Sparks’ classic Big Beat. That said, The Proper Sex isn’t going to be much of a turn on for Gang Gang Dance fans enamored by the squelchy acid rhythms of Saint Dymphna. But it is a welcome blast of pungent discord, driven by a lurid sexuality that feels both filthy and funny. And they could definitely pull Prince out of his creative stupor by letting him produce the next I.U.D. album...www.prefixmag.com

Future Of The Left - Travels With Myself And Another

1. Arming Eritrea
2. Chin Music
3. The Hope That House Built
4. Throwing Bricks At Trains
5. I Am Civil Service
6. Land Of My Formers
7. You Need Satan More Than He Needs You
8. That Damned Fly
9. Stand By Your Manatee
10. Yin/Post Yin
11. Drink Nike
12. Lapsed Catholics

Lead singer/guitarist Andy Falkous described the second album from his latest project Future Of The Left as “faster, bigger, grander, three per cent less nasty, 14 percent more energized, constructed from hard work and the happiest, most inspired band that I've ever had the pleasure of being a part of.”.....we can't wait...www.recordstore.co.uk

Experimental Dental School - Forest Field

1.) Basement Fever
2.) Earthquake
3.) Royal Fantasy Snow
4.) Tear Brush
5.) Square Wave Cave
6.) Cheap Wine River
7.) Vicious Cycle Of Life
8.) Argentine Pears
9.) Dark Stars In Daylight
10.) Now I Can Do Anything I want

Experimental Dental School are a musical duo from Portland Oregon that somehow sound like a 12 piece marching band. Their new album FOREST FIELD is a unique blend of pop melody and compact punk rock power. Shoko pummels the drums like a jazz great while chanting like a sweet catholic nun. Jesse sings as if his voice were made from an old telephone, and plays the guitar like a feral cat. The duo recently finished a 6 week US tour with the esteemed Deerhoof and have shared stages with The Shins, Trans Am, Deerhunter, Errase Errata, etc. This Spring will find XDS on their 5th tour of Europe. They will be playing on borrowed equipment and sleeping on borrowed beds...www.myspace.com

Noah's Ark Was a Spaceship - My Name Is What Is Your Name EP

1. Adult Sized Skeletal
2. Constructing Destruction
3. Mood Swing Morale
4. Reverse Effects in Jumping Jacks
5. Wish You Weren't Here
6. The Coughing Show

Noah’s Ark Was A Spaceship is a band from Omaha, Nebraska formed in 2004 by good friends Andrew Gustafson and John Svatos. The band has undergone several lineup changes and has settled on drummer Rob Webster in 2007. Influenced by late 80’s and early 90’s alternative rock the band combines noisy guitars, fuzzed out bass and hard hitting drums in a simple songwriting fashion.

Sisters - Everybody

1. Lust is Just
2. Rotten Fucks
3. So Long
4. Blue
5. Everybody's So Fucked Up
6. Skeletate
7. Fire Escape
8. Go Fast
9. Caspian Tern

Everybody... is a quick-strike blast of noisy pop from Sisters, but in under a half-an-hour, the band explores a surprising array of sounds. The disc is sped along by brief bursts of catchy fuzz like “Lust Is Just” and the title track, that sound like they could have been embedded in a late-night college radio show back in 1992. And that isn’t to say that they are looking backward, or revivalists, but instead it accents their guileless need to make noise. They are brash and silly, their recordings deliberately, but charmingly, sloppy, but they’re never too clever or cute, and they always rock hard. When they’re not bursting your eardrums with the harsh infection of their pop songs—try not grinning and bobbing your head when they fill out the title’s ellipses by shouting “Everything is so fucked up, everybody’s so fucked up”—they slow things down to a throbbing sludge.

“Blue” and “Easpian Time” stretch out the band’s fuzz sound into something huge and dark, and they are just as striking as distorted noise-mongers as when they’re zipping through their unruly blast-pop. This is the stuff of half-full basement shows and hand-printed fanzines. Sisters make a vital, elemental sound that has no time or central place of origin, a sound that doesn’t need the internet, or the summer festival circuit, or anything else outside of amplifiers and a space to thrive. But, with Everybody..., the band has earned more than that. They’ve earned our undivided attention. And once we give it to them, we won’t even mind the tinnitus, because the noise behind that ringing sounds awfully good...www.popmatters.com

Boo and Boo Too - No Tempo

1. I Know Nothing's All Right
2. I'll Be Your Whore
3. Obviously
4. Bottom Of The Lake
5. No Tempo
6. Black Buggy
7. Sometimes At Night
8. KGB
9. White Light, Dark Sheets
10. Alleys In Whitechapel

"Boo And Boo Too are a Lawrence, Kansas sextet with fang to spare. Specializing in incredibly muscular, sleeves-rolled-up guitar rock that throws up great walls of fly paper melody, their new full-length No Tempo, is a stunner. "I Know Nothing's Alright" is that album's towering opener and its squalls, like those in standout "No Tempo," are some of the most breathtaking I've heard in a while..." - www.rcrdlbl.com
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"[No Tempo] continues on as a work of sweltering hard driving claustrophobia intermingled with shoegaze, NYC noise, and a dark myopia reminiscent of The Cure's Pornography." - www.parasitesandsycophants.com
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"But what makes No Tempo such a damn listenable record is that Boo and Boo Too are able to draw from several areas of music's past and blend all their influences into a sound that's familiar before it's fresh. It's loud without being obnoxious, current without being too trendy, and vintage shoegaze without being patronizing. In its entirety, No Tempo is as straightforward an offering of bottled manicisim as one can get." - www.baeblemusic.com

Wolf Eyes - Moods In Free Time

1. Untitled 1
2. Untitled 2
3. Untitled 3
4. Untitled 4

Wolf Eyes began as a solo project of former Nautical Almanac member Nate Young, with Aaron Dilloway joining in 1998, and John Olson in 2000. During this time, the band also briefly relocated to New York City and at one point enlisted Andrew Wilkes-Krier, now known to the public as Andrew W.K. The group is to have released over 150 recordings in their relatively short lifespan, on labels such as Bulb Records, Troubleman Unlimited, Fusetron, and Sub Pop, as well as on Olson's American Tapes label, Dilloway's Hanson Records, Mike Connelly's Gods of Tundra label and Nate Young's AA Records. Connelly (also of Hair Police) replaced Dilloway in early 2005, due to the latter's departure for Nepal to make arrangements for his marriage. Dilloway is no longer an active member of the group but he did some production work on their 2006 Sub Pop album Human Animal and has performed with them on at least two occasions (Empty Bottle Chicago, IL 2/25/2006 and No Fun Fest Brooklyn, NY 3/18/2006). John Olson also performs in Dead Machines with his wife Tovah Olson. Nate Young performs solo as Hatred and with Steve Kenney and Alivia Zivich in the visual music group Demons.
Wolf Eyes' first two major tours were with Sonic Youth and Andrew W.K. They have also collaborated with Anthony Braxton.
And now they release the newest cd tour..www.wikipedia.org