• Georgia Malone

Good news everybody: I've found the best new band around so we can all relax and take them under our wing (ZING!). The Mallard fit in quite well with their trip-pop San Francisco friends, Sic Alps, Thee Oh Sees (John Dwyer is part owner of Castle Face records) Ty Segall, Fresh and Onlys, Royal Baths, etc., in that they write catchy, weird, unique tunes and somehow sound old and new at the same time. The recordings (which are as interesting as the songs) sound, not so much "underwater" but more like laying in a warm bathtub with your ears right on the surface line so that the water creates strange fluctuations in your hearing between obscure and waterlogged and clear and airy. (Huh?) When I first heard the LP I wrote a gushing email to band leader Greer McGettrick saying I thought they sounded kind of like the the Country Teasers playing the Amps (ok fine, the Breeders) covers with microphones borrowed from the "White Light / White Heat" sessions.

You can check out my favorite song here (and the sweethearts made it available for download as well...). The chord change in the chorus still makes my hair stand on end 50 listens later...

And live in a bookstore here:

As usual, I'll let Greer speak for herself about her new LP Yes on Blood for another installment of TRACK MEET...

Greer: I should say before I start going through these songs, that I recorded it in my practice space on a 16 track, ½” reel-to-reel in September of 2011. I learned a lot more on my own that going into a studio. I’ll share some of the lessons I learned.

Intro: Who doesn’t love a good intro, it was the first song I recorded on the 16 track, and I can totally tell the difference in fidelity from the last song. What I learned: I didn’t bring my acoustic guitar in that day, but really wanted one on this song and not being a patient person, I went to the pawn shop across the street and asked to borrow one. to my surprise they said sure, but gave me the crappiest, piece of shit one they had, I asked for a better one and they shot me down. The action was so high I could barely get an open chord out of it, but I recorded it any way. What I learned: bring your own guitar.

Fog: The lyrics are about being on tour, when around week 3 you really get into the schedule of waking up, driving, playing, hanging out, sleeping, until it just makes sense and all the days lap over into one big mess. Eventually you start to feel alone, even though you’ve been sharing the same experiences with the same group of people. I remember recording this one in like two hours with no break, just played drums threw down the sticks, played guitar, picked up a mic, tambourine, keyboard, done, it just spilled out of me and it felt really rewarding. What I learned: don’t take breaks.

Ants: You know, it’s your typical song about ants getting in an argument while crawling up and down a decomposing body. I couldn’t hit the high notes while singing, so I slowed the tape down, and then when we played it back it sounds like there’s a 12-year-old boy singing with Dylan. I have a great memory of Dylan singing on this one; he just sat right down on the amp, closing his eyes while holding the mic so gently and let his legs swing to the beat, like Kermit the Frog. What I learned: when Dylan wants to do another take and it’s perfect, tell him no.

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La, one of the region's very best MCs, has been steady serving top choice bars since 2010; he's been approaching the game with a classic one-producer-per-album model, working with beatsmen Def Dee (Gravity), Blu-Ray (Roll With The Winners) and Jester (SeaLab 2012). The beats on his newest, Ocean Howell, are all by his boy Olee, whose spacious Saturday morning quiet-storm jazz/funk provides the perfect backdrop for La's ice-cold rhymes. (La should honestly consider sticking with this guy, in this reporter's opinion.) La's studied effortlessness and classic Polo boasts benefit from the humid warmth of the production, and from the hi-caliber collaborations chosen (FisH from Kung Foo Grip, Mic Phenom, Thaddeus David, Knowmads, and JFK), sure; but it's the potency of both La's venom and his stylish, smirking Hov-inspired indifference to everyone else that make Ocean Howell his best shit yet. I suspect La draws strength from his underdog status, but there can be little question: very few around here can hang with him on the mic. Everybody's always talking about what a bad time it is for real hiphop, but maybe it wouldn't be if they'd just pay attention to true purveyors like this one, especially when they release some of the very best shit to drop this year, which Ocean Howell certainly is, and will likely still be ten months from now, and beyond. Which would make this album more than deserving of the word that springs to mind, the feeling that I get when I listen to it: classic.

[We receive a lot of quality electronic-music releases at The Stranger—way more than we can cover in the paper itself. With that in mind, I hope to frequently post brief reviews on Line Out of albums and EPs that I think deserve your attention.]

Lindstrøm
Six Cups of Rebel
(Smalltown Supersound)

Lindstrøm’s Six Cups of Rebel finds the Swedish producer indulging in maximal cosmic-disco machinations, with dazzling results. The lavish production style approaches some of the extravagances of prime ’70s prog rock; the opening track, “No Release,” for instance, rivals Vangelis and Mike Oldfield for spine-tingling suspensefulness and grandiose melodiousness. And “Call Me Anytime” is as mind-bogglingly complex as anything on an early-’70s Yes or Gentle Giant LP. The title track is acid house in its truest sense—both reminiscent of the Trax label's rampant Roland 303 abuse and LSD-trip-gone-awry sonics.

But Six Cups of Rebel’s peak occurs on “De Javu,” which follows the tension-building sonorities of “No Release” with… profound release. “De Javu” sounds like Parliament-Funkadelic going off on an Italo-disco bender at a Chicago warehouse party; it’s a seductive, soulful strut of a track that may be the hottest cut in Lindstrøm’s catalog. This sexy bravado pervades Six Cups of Rebel and this new release proves Lindstrøm isn’t content to simply repeat his past efforts—as illustrious as that past is. In this case, more is most definitely more.