Insound Staff Pick - 2008! The Donkeys are more than simply four California beach bums who love to surf, drink beer, and jam as the sun sets over the Pacific. If their back story contains those top-down cars and suntanned utopian surf tableaus, it also contains the malaise and the escape fantasies familiar to all suburban kids of the 80s and 90s. Miraculously, the music manages to communicate both moods at once. Any expression of existential ennui - 'is this all there is?' - is soothed by an unrushed   [ read more ]

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Thunders  Que Sera Sera (Whatever Will Be Will Be), her space holiday  Audio Astronomy, The Flaming Lips  Zaireeka

Live, their music is total spastic bliss. A complete sugar high freak out. Smiles all around - like Christmas morning, riding roller coasters, triple dips. But it's not easy to emulate the spirit and energy of the Baltimore foursome's live show on CD. Yet the outcome of this, their second release, truly embodies the spirit of the band's live gigs. Complex yet pop, raw yet refined, heavy yet sweet, Ice Cream Spiritua' needs to be blasted while standing.

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Arab Strap  Monday at the Hug & Pint, My Bloody Valentine  Loveless, Forget Cassettes  Salt

A 67-minute masterwork, a wonder of songwriting and alchemical engineering, certain to overtake last year's acclaimed 'It Was Hot, We Stayed in the Water' and earn Microphones the undisputed title of experimental pop's Most Valuable Player. Phil Elvrum, the man behind the Microphones' mask, continues to inspire with this genre-imploding album. This album is the complete package: impeccable songwriting laden with hooks, a widely varied palette of instrumentation, potent lyrical paintings, and interspersed is   [ read more ]

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Smog  Rain on Lens, I Am the World  Look Around You, Spoon  Kill the Moonlight

Thee Hounds of Foggy Notion is a brilliant live performance collaboration between Thee Oh Sees and Director Brian Lee Hughes. The project resulted in a dual disc DVD/CD featuring live performances filmed and recorded not on stages, but at a variety of haunting scenic sites in and around San Francisco. The film is also studded with dozens of stories and whatnots filmed during their 4 day adventure.

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Hell  Time, Beat Happening  Beat Happening, Castanets  Cathedral

Why not call it GASOLINE or DEATH? Because MONEY is the root, and this is Root Music. Because MONEY will still be there after you've thinned out. Because MONEY is TIME and TIME is SPACE. MONEY is YOURS! MONEY was made differently this time. MONEY was written in your sleep. MONEY was performed by hired extras. MONEY was produced by wanted celebrities. MONEY was engineered by a secret government. MONEY was arranged to be discovered by indigenous tribes. You're in a forest of insects wearing night v   [ read more ]

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Modest Mouse  A Life of Arctic Sounds, Bathgate  Gold Lame, Candidate  Good Works

The tragic virtue of folk music is its earnestness. That is, while honesty and openness are clearly good things in many contexts, too many songs about the need to save the rainforests or spreading your love around can quickly wear on the nerves. Raleigh's Bowerbirds, a couple plus a friend who have just put out their debut album, manage to keep the virtue without any tragedy. An accordion, a big thumpy bass drum (marching band-style), some pretty guitar that echoes into the far reaches of what sounds like a   [ read more ]

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Bon Iver  For Emma, Forever Ago , Holy Fuck  LP, Deerhunter  Microcastle

Long regarded as one of the best live acts in New York, Oakley Hall has finally delivered on the promise of its collective talent and the energy of its live shows with the masterpiece Gypsum Strings, their second full-length record of 2006 (!) and their first on Brah Records. While the first, Second Guessing, established Oakley Hall as one of the premier roots rock bands in the land, Gypsum Strings turns the volume way up and the traditions on their heads.

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HEALTH  HEALTH//DISCO , Wolf Parade  At Mount Zoomer , Dan Friel  Ghost Town

Hornet Leg, the new Northwest fuzz harbingers in tune with the 'heavy,' identify the primal symbolisms of blood as fear, death and paradoxically, life. 'The Blood Trilogy' condenses the full length concept album into three potent tracks of pure unsentimental, raw energy. Expertly engineered by Calvin Johnson at the Dub Narcotic Studios, these recordings are an immediate grab to the throat but leave a haunting grip to the ear. The arterial guitar and voice of Chris Sutton (Dub Narcotic, C.O.C.O) is the jugul   [ read more ]

MP3 $3.15

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Part Chimp  I Am Come, Crystal Antlers  EP, Of Montreal  Id Engager b/w Alter Eagle

When Home visited Florida in 2005 for the annual Screw Music Forever 'Come the Freak On' festival, they had original Home drummer Sean Martin sit in for a set of songs and the notion of reuniting to record a new album became inevitable. Sean suggested a concept album about fucking and it took little time for all to agree. They wrote nearly 50 songs on the subject, which were whittled down to 20 and recorded in a marathon 3-day weekend recording blitz. Chris Millstein shared drumming duties with Sean, while    [ read more ]

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HEALTH  HEALTH//DISCO , Wolf Parade  At Mount Zoomer , Dan Friel  Ghost Town

Just as there are albums that artists were born to make, there are albums that labels were born to release. Waiting for the Sunrise is one of those albums for both David Vandervelde and Secretly Canadian. Upon first laying the needle down, the listener is greeted by a warm wash of sounds that seems to breeze in from decades back. Vandervelde's singular voice emerges from the drums and keys with 'When the morning comes, I will be fine, I will be fine, I will be fine' and you're pretty damn sure he wil   [ read more ]

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Last Match  1997 to 1999, Kettel  Smiling Little Cow, Low  Transmission

'Jona Bechtolt makes his way over to DFA for three tracks, all of which find him tailoring his endearing electronic pop squiggles into a far more serious sounding James Murphy-friendly setup, complete with robust live kit sounds, disco drum patterns and tough no-wave basslines. Both 'Summer Song' and 'I'm In Love With A Ripper' sound like perfect DFA fodder, with their slouchy rhythms and slick organic styling, but 'It's Boring/You Can Live Anywhere You Want' is a little more connected to indiedom - at leas   [ read more ]

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Molly McGuire  Molly McGuire, ElfpO/Landis  Polyphase 3, East River Pipe / Baby Bird  split

The longest running punk, indie and rock compilation in history.

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Love as Laughter  Sea to Shining Sea, Ugly Casanova  Sharpen Your Teeth, Yume Bitsu/Andrew Reiger  Split 12