Lady Lamb the Bee­keeper (Aly Spal­tro) is one of those rare indi­vid­u­als for whom musi­cal expres­sion is so nat­ural, so inher­ently part of her being, that she’s able to pro­duce truly mov­ing art with a grace sel­dom seen at her age (or any age, for that mat­ter). When her plans to travel to Guata­mala between high school and col­lege fell through and she was sud­denly faced with a year of aim­less­ness, Spal­tro made a con­scious deci­sion to begin mak­ing music. Under most nor­mal cir­cum­stances, this seems like a log­i­cal step, but I neglected to men­tion that prior to mak­ing this deci­sion Spal­tro had no musi­cal expe­ri­ence. So, she began to assem­ble her arse­nal, begin­ning not with instru­ments, but with the means by which to cap­ture her (at this point imag­i­nary) songs–an 8 track tape recorder. That’s right, she bought the record­ing equip­ment first. Now that’s commitment.

But she had a clear and sim­ple con­cept in mind: she wanted to layer instru­ments, to cre­ate songs with an empha­sis on sonic tex­ture. When most musi­cians say some­thing like this, their music ends up sound­ing like an Ani­mal Col­lec­tive b-side, or some equally soupy col­lage of over­lap­ping sam­ples, but not so with Spal­tro. Her songs have their ori­gins in folk music and the more del­i­cate side of mod­ern indie pop. A cer­tain inno­cence per­vades them that’s maybe bet­ter described as conviction–there’s no sense that she’s “try­ing” to accom­plish any­thing in par­tic­u­lar, but rather cre­at­ing exactly the songs that she needs to cre­ate in exactly the way that she needs to cre­ate them. There’s lit­tle to no artis­tic pre­ten­sion in her music, just a quarter-inch cable from her brain to your stereo.

For­mat: 7-inch vinyl

Based out of the Maine hinterlands, Blaque Boose fore­grounds the dis­arm­ingly eery vocal tal­ents of a woman named Sheena Char­land and encases them in a dust storm of fin­ger­picked gui­tars, cav­ernous flutes and some fairly aggres­sive tape-mangling. The effect is more darkly hal­lu­cino­genic than psy­che­delic, like the mid­dle hours of an end­less acid trip ini­ti­ated in a trailer park and mov­ing ever closer to the busted speaker a sec­ond­hand, static-spitting wire­less radio. There are no good vibes here, just the aural his­tory of a life­time of bad lovers and men­tal health prob­lems. It’s great, like Throb­bing Gris­tle dis­man­tling the myth of Amer­ica from a fall­out bunker filled with strange, rural preserves.

For­mat: 7-inch vinyl

Cer­berus Shoal has been around in var­i­ous incar­na­tions since 1994. In the last decade and a half the band’s taken on more shapes and sounds than is rea­son­ably pos­si­ble to describe in writ­ing. Ethridge describes them as a “pro­lific avant-rock col­lec­tive” and that’s the best cap­sule descrip­tion I’ve heard to date. This 7-inch, fea­tur­ing “Tai­lor of Graves” and “Hymn” (as A and B side respec­tively) is a per­fect intro­duc­tion to the band’s eclec­ti­cism, rang­ing in influ­ence from Crosby Stills & Nash to Guil­laume de Machaut. Both tracks are drawn from an 8-song suite called “The Ongo­ing Ding” that was recorded in 2003 but never saw release. It was orig­i­nally con­ceived as an exten­sion to “The Ding,” an 18 minute odyssey that closed the group’s split EP with Alan Bishop. Fans of avant-pop take note–this 7-inch is for you.

For­mat: 7-inch vinyl

If Gang of Four had met and repro­duced with My Bloody Valen­tine, and if their super fucked up kids had grown up on The Bea­t­les and Guided By Voices AND had man­aged to live long enough with­out killing them­selves to make a record, the result might sound a lot like Hotel St. George. Their music is heav­ily gui­tar based with nou­veau punk vocals, slick instru­men­tal pro­duc­tion that pays homage to the 70s DIY sound with­out quite emu­lat­ing it, and enough har­monic com­plex­ity to set up and exe­cute some bril­liant hooks. There’s really noth­ing to dis­like here, and there’s a whole lot to merit repeat lis­tens. Check it out on MP3 and Vinyl!

For­mat: 12″ Vinyl

01. Sim­ple Men
02. Wel­come to the Sun
03. Apples & Pears
04. All Those Danc­ing Stars
05. Good in the Bad
06. Jeal­ous Boys
07. TROUBLE
08. Island Man
09. City Boy Lemon
10. All the Rich Folk

KC Quilty, in the early stages of their exis­tence, have cre­ated a batch of songs (the band released a split 7-inch on Decem­ber 10 and will release their first full LP Clover/Coriander on Jan­u­ary 22) that man­ages to sum­ma­rize the good bits of an his­tor­i­cal period that a ton of music fans hold a fond­ness for. And instead of com­ing off as a tired retread, it feels entirely new among their auda­cious, genre-breeding con­tem­po­raries. It’s direct­ness in style-ripping is not the result of a fail­ure to birth new ideas; it’s the result of the con­fi­dence KC Quilty has in its taste and abil­i­ties. There are those who strive on craft­ing new forms of sound and those who strive on stream­lin­ing a pre-existing for­mula. The con­tem­po­rary music scene sur­vives on both. It’s just a refresh­ing breath of 15-year-old air to hear a band choose the latter.

01. KC Quilty – Siiya
02. Buy Back The Boat – Pocketknife

Nate Green­berg wrote:
Whale Belly approaches the chal­lenges of mod­ern urban life through a dis­tinctly folk lens. I’m not sim­ply refer­ring to the genre of music that the band plays. When most peo­ple hear the term folk, they think of folk music, which con­jures images of Bob Dylan, a bare­foot hill­billy play­ing banjo on a porch in Ken­tucky, a bare­foot Bob Dylan play­ing banjo on a porch in Ken­tucky, or other per­mu­ta­tions of the same com­po­nents. Edu­cated lis­ten­ers may know bet­ter than to antic­i­pate bare­foot Bob Dylan, but they’ll still har­bor pre­con­cep­tions which, albeit con­sid­er­ably bet­ter informed, are nonethe­less the prod­uct of reflex.

Whale Belly’s music bor­rows styl­is­ti­cally from folk, but it also exhibits shades of rock, pop, blues, and west­ern clas­si­cal, and there are cer­tainly a num­ber of bands today play­ing in a more obvi­ously folksy vein. Nev­er­the­less, the link becomes clearer when you strip away the con­no­ta­tions and focus on the ter­mi­nol­ogy itself. Folk sig­ni­fies not just music but a way of life, the sim­ple life, and a rejec­tion of the ‘big­ger, faster, stronger’ ethos that fuels the so-called Amer­i­can dream. In that regard, Whale Belly is a bona fide folk band. The music doesn’t stem indi­rectly, via the genre “Folk Music”. It stems directly from the source, evok­ing the phi­los­o­phy that sparked the genre in the first place. It doesn’t mat­ter that the band mem­bers are chil­dren of the dig­i­tal age, resid­ing in the most urban of locales—Whale Belly projects a simul­ta­ne­ous love for human­ity and con­tempt for the soci­ety human­ity has sub­scribed to that would make Woody Guthrie proud.

For­mat: 7-inch vinyl

Rick Andrews wrote:
Jas­mine Wag­ner of Brooklyn/Montana’s Cab­i­net of Nat­ural Curiosi­ties is exactly this kind of musi­cian. Quite frankly, she’s this kind of writer and artist, too. Wag­ner, together with fel­low sound-conspirator Alex Wil­son are the items belong­ing to this curi­ous nat­ural cab­i­net. Together their folky ten­den­cies and love of sound cre­ate a most serene con­coc­tion: 1 part sound­scape, 2 parts folk song, all parts lovely.

For­mat: CD

01. Lit­tle Ice Age
02. Sun
03. For Spar­row
04. Cities
05. Moon
06. Glass
07. Grass
08. Fab­u­list Decay
09. Black Water
10. Owllullaby

KC Quilty, in the early stages of their exis­tence, have cre­ated a batch of songs (the band released a split 7-inch on Decem­ber 10 and will release their first full LP Clover/Coriander on Jan­u­ary 22) that man­ages to sum­ma­rize the good bits of an his­tor­i­cal period that a ton of music fans hold a fond­ness for. And instead of com­ing off as a tired retread, it feels entirely new among their auda­cious, genre-breeding con­tem­po­raries. It’s direct­ness in style-ripping is not the result of a fail­ure to birth new ideas; it’s the result of the con­fi­dence KC Quilty has in its taste and abil­i­ties. There are those who strive on craft­ing new forms of sound and those who strive on stream­lin­ing a pre-existing for­mula. The con­tem­po­rary music scene sur­vives on both. It’s just a refresh­ing breath of 15-year-old air to hear a band choose the latter.

1. Clothes
2. Siiya
3. Super­nova
4. Tags
5. Bor­neo
6. Jack­shit
7. What Is This?!
8. Lit­tle Minor
9. Shark Week
10. Mr. Ben­jamin Watson

Lis­ten­ing to A-side “come home eccen­tric” off peopling’s self-titled EP is a bit like receiv­ing a stray trans­mis­sion from the ambiva­lent mid­point of this self-alienating process, its ori­gin about equidis­tant from the poles of “fun” and “not fun.” There’s a con­fes­sional qual­ity to the track’s styl­is­tic inde­ci­sive­ness, a kind of emo music for peo­ple with no feel­ings what­so­ever. – Ben Las­man (AEM133 peo­pling)
For­mat: CD

Nate Green­berg wrote:
The Orange Opera started off humbly enough. It began as a stage name for song­writer Kevin Ham­brick (vocals, piano, gui­tar) who per­formed his orig­i­nal songs accom­pa­nied by an upright bassist. Every­thing kicked into gear in 2002 when Ham­brick started jam­ming with Kevin Hock­a­day (drums) and Bryan Brubaker (elec­tric bass) and the band had its first gig as a three-piece just a week later. Shortly after their first gig, the band swelled into a four-piece with the addi­tion of lead gui­tar. The Orange Opera has remained a quar­tet ever since, although they ran through three gui­tarists before finally arriv­ing at Zach Smith, who joined the group in 2009.

The Orange Opera has earned a siz­able fol­low­ing in their eight years of exis­tence, embark­ing on sev­eral tours and per­form­ing along­side high pro­file indie acts such as The Teeth and Dr. Dog. In 2007 they were awarded 1st place in Whatzup Magazine’s Bat­tle of the Bands. Nev­er­the­less, they’ve yet to aban­don their home­town and the major­ity of their per­for­mances are in or around Fort Wayne. “Here’s the excep­tion that proves the rule,” the biog­ra­phy con­tin­ues. “Great music can emerge from the most hum­ble of locales.” And it’s true with­out a doubt. Great music can indeed emerge from the most hum­ble of locales and The Orange Opera is a prime example.

For­mat: [V0 MP3 Download]

01. Hys­ter­i­cal
02. Ruby
03. Weiry Nights
04. Barfights & Fid­dles
05. Both Of Us
06. Fool For The Game
07. 65 Look­ing For 18
08. Hick­ory Hen
09. Dream I Had
10. Year Of The Beard
11. Hys­ter­i­cal (Acoustic)

Rick Andrews wrote:
Jas­mine Wag­ner of Brooklyn/Montana’s Cab­i­net of Nat­ural Curiosi­ties is exactly this kind of musi­cian. Quite frankly, she’s this kind of writer and artist, too. Wag­ner, together with fel­low sound-conspirator Alex Wil­son are the items belong­ing to this curi­ous nat­ural cab­i­net. Together their folky ten­den­cies and love of sound cre­ate a most serene con­coc­tion: 1 part sound­scape, 2 parts folk song, all parts lovely.

For­mat: [256kbps MP3 Download]

01. Lit­tle Ice Age
02. Sun
03. For Spar­row
04. Cities
05. Moon
06. Glass
07. Grass
08. Fab­u­list Decay
09. Black Water
10. Owllullaby

For­mat: [192kbps MP3 Download]

01. What’s Left?
02. Lonely Ani­mal
03. They Don’t Wanna Dance
04. Set­tle for More
05. Beat Back
06. The Ves­sel
07. Plat­inum
08. The New Some­thing
09. Intro
10. She Knows Her Name
11. Dog Day Requiem
12. Shoul­ders of Giants
13. Com­ing Home

If Gang of Four had met and repro­duced with My Bloody Valen­tine, and if their super fucked up kids had grown up on The Bea­t­les and Guided By Voices AND had man­aged to live long enough with­out killing them­selves to make a record, the result might sound a lot like Hotel St. George. Their music is heav­ily gui­tar based with nou­veau punk vocals, slick instru­men­tal pro­duc­tion that pays homage to the 70s DIY sound with­out quite emu­lat­ing it, and enough har­monic com­plex­ity to set up and exe­cute some bril­liant hooks. There’s really noth­ing to dis­like here, and there’s a whole lot to merit repeat lis­tens. Check it out on MP3 and Vinyl!

For­mat: [320kbps MP3 Download]

01. Sim­ple Men
02. Wel­come to the Sun
03. Apples & Pears
04. All Those Danc­ing Stars
05. Good in the Bad
06. Jeal­ous Boys
07. TROUBLE
08. Island Man
09. City Boy Lemon
10. All the Rich Folk

Birth­day Girl was recorded on 4-track and released cassette-only, DIY, in Northamp­ton back in 1994. Only a hand­ful of these still exist any­where. A dig­i­tal re-master was made in 2009 with two addi­tional songs, also from 1994, that hadn’t fit on the orig­i­nal cassette.

For­mat: [320kbps MP3 Download]

01. Big Lie Tech­nique
02. Facial Type
03. Six-Gun
04. Lemon­ade
05. Rush Deliv­ery
06. Derailed
07. Abra­ham
08. Blood River
09. Happy Damn Birth­day
10. Anes­the­sia
11. Ganser-Smith
12. Self-Protectionist

Paper Valen­tines was recorded within the past few years, in Sun­set Park. They’re the diary of an adult liv­ing and work­ing in New York in the first decade of the 21st cen­tury, kick­ing and scream­ing all the way.

For­mat: [320kbps MP3 Download]

01. Paper Valen­tines
02. Sea of Dolls
03. Grey Sta­tions
04. The Things I Saw
05. What’s Good For Busi­ness Is Good For Amer­ica
06. The Clothes Make The Man

Lis­ten­ing to A-side “come home eccen­tric” off peopling’s self-titled EP is a bit like receiv­ing a stray trans­mis­sion from the ambiva­lent mid­point of this self-alienating process, its ori­gin about equidis­tant from the poles of “fun” and “not fun.” There’s a con­fes­sional qual­ity to the track’s styl­is­tic inde­ci­sive­ness, a kind of emo music for peo­ple with no feel­ings what­so­ever. – Ben Las­man (AEM133 peo­pling)
For­mat: 320kbps MP3

The band says:
“Lo-fi, garage rock ala Neu­tral Milk Hotel (the E6 gang) mixed with the pro­duc­ing styles of Brian Wil­son. This is another solo album cre­ated entirely by musi­cal imag­i­neer Justin Stivers. Throw Ani­mal Col­lec­tive, Smash­ing Pump­kins and bit of Mod­est Mouse (the older stuff of course) into the blender and you have your­self a “cheer up~its rain­ing” smoothie. Sit back and enjoy.”

For­mat: [192kbps MP3 Download]

01. Cel­e­brate Youth (Over and Over Again)
02. Tales of Stage Fright
03. Pro­duc­ing Emo­tions
04. Mis­takes
05. Age of Auto­mat­ics
06. Mex­i­can Apart­ment
07. Big­ger and Stronger
08. Kiwi Per­fume
09. Elec­tric Angel
10. Soaked
11. Vio­lent Dreams
12. Another

The band says:
“darker, longer, scarier, louder, qui­eter, pet ghost-ier. in many ways pet ghost project’s most extreme album. recorded in my base­ment in brook­lyn dur­ing a time when i could hardly make rent and its very much…of the times.”

For­mat: [192kbps MP3 Download]

01. I Am Noth­ing New (You Are Noth­ing Spe­cial)
02. Wires From The Ceil­ing
03. Short Name
04. The Con­se­quence of Think­ing
05. This Life in a Bot­tle Rocket

The band says:
“from our base­ment stu­dio we bring you pet ghost project’s finest album to date. this crea­ture is alive and puls­ing with the fla­vors of ani­mal col­lec­tive, brian wil­son, fugazi and tor­toise. within the screams and chants, aggres­sive drums and angu­lar gui­tars, there sleeps a con­stant under­ly­ing flurry of melody embe­ded in the dim.”

For­mat: [192kbps MP3 Download]

01. They Built a City in My Coun­try Mind
02. Cloud Seeds
03. A Series of Left Turns
04. Raised on Tech­ni­color
05. Death in a Pixel
06. Para­petetic
07. Power Symbol

Nate Green­berg wrote:
In Feb­ru­ary of 2009 Ralph Hoga­boom (gui­tar, vocals, glock­en­spiel) decided to par­tic­i­pate in the Feb­ru­ary Album Writ­ing Month chal­lenge at www.fawm.org by writ­ing four­teen new songs.  He took his songs to Jay Wain­man (vio­lin, vocals, melody­horn) with whom he’d been jam­ming for sev­eral months.  The pair entered the stu­dio in May and spent two full days pump­ing out as much as they could. The prod­uct of these ses­sions was the six-track EP Come Away From Your Home (avail­able for down­load on this site).  Per­haps Hoga­boom and Wain­man couldn’t see it because they were stuck in the thick of it, but it only took me one lis­ten to tell that they had cre­ated some­thing special.

For­mat: [192kbps MP3 Download]

01. It’s a Metaphor, Dear!
02. Mod­ern Satel­lites
03. Aspirin
04. Sophie’s Plas­tic Ele­phant
05. Some­times Things Get Bro­ken
06. Is That Alright

“I’ve been told that I paint land­scapes, that even where then isn’t much travel there’s plenty of explo­ration. I like that, forc­ing your ears to see in 3D and Tech­ni­color. Some­one told me that they thought it was punk folk, while another folk punk. I’ve heard Emo, Post-Emo, Emor­i­cana. I think that’s what you get when you fol­low four straight years of Brand New with four straight years of Neu­tral Milk Hotel.”

So opens John Michael’s Ampeater sub­mis­sion as SAVES!. A home record­ing project of the high­est cal­iber, SAVES! is Michael’s Neu­tral Milk, his Mt. Eerie, the ulti­mate chance to cre­ate with­out let­ting oth­ers sub­li­mate his best ideas, or as he puts it, with­out “being a douche to my friends.” The result is some­thing catchy but strange, full of wit and yet entirely hum­ble. It’s simul­ta­ne­ously eru­dite and plebian, cap­tur­ing timess sit­u­a­tions and rela­tion­ships through a dis­tinctly mod­ern lense.

J.E.B., J.S., D.T.

For­mat: [160kbps MP3 Download]

01. Get a Lot of Light Waves Out
02. Sleep

J.E.B., J.S., and M.F.

For­mat: [160kbps MP3 Download]

01. Mas­culin­ity Pt II

J.E.B., J.S., M.F., N.W., D.F.

For­mat: [160kbps MP3 Download]

01. Unti­tled
02. Straw­berry Hands
03. Born Under a Ham­mer
04. Acid Grave­yard
05. Unti­tled
06. Straw­berry Jams
07. Ice­bergs
08. War­den
09. Caged Wisdom

Lush lay­ers of a Casio, six– and 12-string gui­tars, cel­los, vio­lins, per­cus­sion, and the voice of an angel: it’s all pack­aged neatly into a col­lec­tion of songs that has gar­nered rave reviews from radio, press and blog­gers alike. This is Swim­ming in Speak­ers. From the smoothly bur­bling synth pop of “In Know­ing” to the slip­pery del­i­cacy of “Near My Ear” and the lilt­ing twists and turns of “Nev­er­green,” Swim­ming In Speak­ers’ sound defies easy categorization.

For­mat: [192kbps MP3 Download]

01. In Know­ing
02. Near My Ear
03. Serve Them Well
04. Icarus
05. Uh Oh
06. Nevergreen

Gould’s music has uni­ver­sal appeal. That’s not to say that it’s uni­ver­sally liked, but rather that it’s uni­ver­sally lik­able. There’s some­thing about it that wholly tran­scends its roots in Amer­i­can tra­di­tional gen­res and com­mu­ni­cates suc­cess­fully in a lan­guage that need not be trans­lated into any other for one to imme­di­ately grasp its poignant and beau­ti­ful essence.

For­mat: 192kbps MP3

1. For­get the Great Heart
2. Red Star Blues
3. Bibi Ander­s­son
4. Lit­tle Grey Finch
5. Red on the Vine
6. Dream of the Draft Horse
7. Slow as Snow
8. Fare Thee Well