Musique Non Stop | eMusic Electronica

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Discover: Mexican Summer Posted: 08 Oct 2013 05:57 AM PDT [In celebration of Mexican Summer's fifth anniversary, eMusic is proud to offer a free Mexican Summer sampler, and have put select titles on sale for $5.99 or less through Oct. 22.] Though they eventually became home to festival-status acts like Best Coast, Kurt Vile and Light Asylum, when they began five years ago, the interests of the Mexican Summer label were decidedly cult. An imprint of the mainstream indie label Kemado, the closest thing on their roster to a marquee act was the woozy Swedish psych act Dungen. In fact, they actually didn’t even have a roster. The label was founded to give a leg-up to young bands that founder and Kemado employee Keith Abrahamsson liked, but who weren’t quite ready for a proper label deal. The label’s first three albums are the perfect summary of their helter-skelter aesthetic: that Dungen album, an album by dead-eyed drone-rockers Headdress and an EP from Chicago black metal band Nachtmystium. And while they’ve evened out as the years have gone on, a quick glance at their recent spate of releases reveals a label still focused on the fringes. To celebrate that avant-garde spirit, the label is hosting a two-day five-year-anniversary celebration with a lineup that rivals the most inventive summer festival: Spiritualized (with Oneida’s Kid Millions on drums), Ariel Pink, the Fresh & Onlys and No Joy showcase Mexican Summer’s more traditional impulses, while Happy Jawbone Family Band, Home Blitz and a rare set by ’70s psych-folk enchantress Linda Perhacs are evidence of its continued inventiveness. On the advent of this anniversary — and in celebration of the label’s continued dedication to roaming the borders of indie rock — eMusic’s editor-in-chief talked with Abrahamsson about the label’s earliest days and 11 of the label’s character-defining releases.

On the early days:
All of us are pretty rabid music fans and buyers, and I just saw it as a way to develop artists in a different way and put music out with a little less hassle. A lot of the labels I was buying records from, people were just putting singles out, or doing a 12″ — things that felt a little bit looser or more free-wheeling. That was inspiring to me — I felt like we could do that. I came up with a name, it’s the name of a Marissa Nadler song, and I had three records that I knew we were gonna put out. It just started that way. We initially started as a record club, kind of modeled after Sub Pop and Matador, who were doing singles series, but that quickly bottomed out logistically. After about three or four months, we decided we needed to just be a label. And there weren’t crazy expectations, it was just, “We’re gonna put some records out.” We had been working with Dungen already, and they had some material, so they were like “We’ll do a 12″ with you guys.” So I was like, “Rad, that’ll be our first release.”
On signing Best Coast:
I was introduced to the project by a buddy of mine who was managing them at the time. I actually declined at first, just because our schedule was so crazy. I was like, “I really don’t know how we’re going to fit this in — we have so much slated in the next half a year. I don’t know that it’s possible.” But he was really adamant about it, he was like, “We wanna do this really quick. The record’s already done, we wanna have it out in two months.” It was on such an accelerated timetable, which is what ultimately made me feel like we could do it — it wasn’t going to be this long, drawn-out, ramped-up thing. At that point, it all hinged on me having a phone call with Bethany — because we hadn’t hung out in person. It was like, “You’ve got to talk to Bethany and you’ve got to hit it off.” So we talked, and it was totally easy, because she’s really great, and then it was like, “OK, we should meet.” They weren’t in the country — they were touring in Europe. So I flew to Stockholm to meet them. I saw them play and hung out with them and they were totally awesome, and that was it. That sealed the deal.
On establishing their aesthetic:
It kind of felt like it came pretty quick. We did a Marissa Nadler reissue, we did an Ariel Pink single and we did Tallest Man on Earth and a Kurt Vile LP. By that time, we were starting to get into a rhythm. It felt good — it felt like an aesthetic was forming. I don’t like to define it too much. We put out records that we love by people that we love to work with. Those are the criteria.

The Young, Voyagers of Legend
This one is probably among my top three, if not my favorite record that we’ve ever put out. The Young are from Austin and they were making pop-punk records out there for a while. They ended up on Matador’s Casual Victim Pile comp, and the song they had on there was a game-changer [for them]. I was like, “Holy shit. This is not the same band.” That’s when I contacted them and was like, “What are you guys doing? Are you under contract with anyone?” And they were like, “No, man, we’re just doing whatever.” So we started working together. I’m really thankful that I heard that song — I think the record that they made for us is amazing.

Dimples, “Heaven Blotted Regions” b/w “Can Feel You Out There”
This is another one of the under-heralded releases in our catalog, and another one of my personal favorites. Dimples put a record out in 2010 called Council Bluffs on a label called Holy Smoke. It totally melted me. It was just crazy classic-rock freak-outs. I felt like it fell somewhere between the Stones and the Stooges. The main guy sounded like Axl Rose sometimes — really scratchy, fucked-up vocals — and then other times he sang in this real weird baritone, like Captain Beefheart. It was a really bizarre record and really amazing. I asked him to do a single with us and he was super into it. It’s one of the most damaged, beautiful singles we’ve ever done.

Michael Angelo, “Sorcerer’s Delight” b/w “Nubian Queen”
I ran another label called Anthology for a little while. It was a reissue label, and we only did digital reissues. I came in touch with Michael through that label because we did his first record, which was this kind out outsider, private press thing. That was a really well respected record in certain circles. He had a much lesser-known follow-up record called Sorcerer’s Delight. He actually tracked both records at the same time. So he had this second record, and I don’t really know that it was ever issued. The two songs on this single came from that record. They were the moments that I thought needed to be heard for sure, and I thought they’d make a killer single.

Lansing-Dreiden, The Incomplete Triangle
This one goes back to the Kemado days, back to about 2002 or 2003 — that’s when we first put out The Incomplete Triangle. We went on to do an EP with them, and then we did The Dividing Islands in 2007, which ended up being their last record. We never issued those records on vinyl, so it felt really fitting to give them their just due and get them out on LP, which is why we reissued them on Mexican Summer. This band made some of my favorite records. Really underrated — or maybe rated in the right way by the right people. People in bands seem to get this band more than people who are just music buyers.

The Fresh & Onlys, Long Slow Dance
I’m a huge fan of this band. I loved the earlier records they’d done. I think [frontman] Tim [Cohen] is probably one of the most gifted songwriters of our generation. They’d kind of hopped around labels a lot, but they wanted to find a home. They wanted to be planted somewhere. We just kind of talked and it felt like a really nice fit. Long Slow Dance is one of the most underrated records both in our catalog and in the band’s catalog. It was a reinvention of their sound, and I think it was time for them to do that — they couldn’t just go out and make another Play it Strange, even though that was an amazing record. Maybe this is the kind of thing where it will catch up with them in the future, and people will look back on this record as the one that stands out the most in their catalog. For me, it’s got some of their most memorable material.

No Joy, Wait to Pleasure
We first found out about No Joy from a blog. It’s a funny story — there are actually two other ways I could have come in contact with them. One of them was through Bethany [Cosentino], who had been really vocal about them. The second is that they had actually sent me their demo tape, and I just never got it. In a way, it was serendipitous that we came together. We’ve been with them since the beginning. They had tapes that they were bringing around with them on their very first tour, but we did their first 7″, then we did Ghost Blonde and now Wait to Pleasure. They’re just amazing people. The new album is not only a huge compliment to their songcraft, but also to Jorge Elbrecht, who produced the record. He really got the best out of them. They really work well together.

Happy Jawbone Family Band, Happy Jawbone Family Band [to be released Oct. 15]
We first did a retrospective of this band’s stuff back in January. This is one of those bands where you have to really dig to even find them. They’ve been around for years putting records out. They’ve done a lot of self-released stuff. They’re from Brattleboro and they worked with a label called Feeding Tube out there. Talk about prolific — these dudes just write non-stop. They have a ton of records. We knew we wanted to work with them, but we were like, “How do we rein all this material in and make it digestible to people? How do we introduce them to people, because they’ve been working from within this bubble for so long?” We ended up cherry-picking a bunch of jams that they’d put out over the years, and that’s what ended up becoming the record.

Ariel Pink and Jorge Albrecht, “Hang on to Life” b/w “No Real Friend”
This was a dream come true, to be honest with you. I’ve known Jorge for so many years and I’ve worked with him in so many capacities. We came together, maybe a year ago, and decided we were going to start doing this singles series with him. I already knew Ariel from working with him before. Jorge knew him as well, and we knew Ariel was a fan of Jorge’s work, so we were like, “Maybe he’ll wanna do a single.” Jorge reached out to Ariel, and he was super into it. So Ariel came to the studio and they tracked four songs over the course of one day and mixed them the next day. It was just a total creative avalanche.

Travis Bretzer, Making Love
Travis is a 23-year-old kid from Edmonton that we came across, and we just fell in love with his jams. It’s a very Stiff Records kind of vibe — really classic, borderline power-poppy stuff. But it’s also really troubadour-y, like the way Nick Lowe was. He’s just getting his start. We just did a new single that came out last week, and he’s writing for a record that’s going to be done soon.

Connan Mockasin, Caramel [to be released Nov. 19]
I came to his music as a fan. The record he did in 2010 was a favorite of mine. He works with Erol Alkan, who runs the Fantasy label in the UK, and we started to talk to them about working together. We’ve been talking to them for almost a year — this has been a long time in the works. He self-recorded this record in a Tokyo hotel room over the course of a month. It sounds like listening to a Prince record underwater. It’s amazing. I knew I was on to something with this guy, because there’s a song on his first record called “Megumi the Milky Way” that my oldest son, who is five, was obsessed with for months.

Quilt, Held in Splendor [to be released in January 2014]
We did their first record in 2011. It was really beautiful, pastoral folk stuff, with these freewheeling harmonies — kind of a ’60s San Francisco thing. But they did this new record with Jarvis from Woods and it’s going to be a game-changer of a record for them I think. It’s taken a leap from the formula that they had and made it feel real “now.” Jarvis just really got their aesthetic.

Sale: Mexican Summer

Posted: 08 Oct 2013 05:56 AM PDT

Though they eventually became home to festival-status acts like Best Coast, Kurt Vile and Light Asylum, when they began five years ago, the interests of the Mexican Summer label were decidedly cult. An imprint of the mainstream indie label Kemado, the closest thing on their roster to a marquee act was the woozy Swedish psych act Dungen. In fact, they actually didn’t even have a roster. The label was founded to give a leg-up to young bands that founder and Kemado employee Keith Abrahamsson liked, but who weren’t quite ready for a proper label deal. The label’s first three albums are the perfect summary of their helter-skelter aesthetic: that Dungen album, an album by dead-eyed drone-rockers Headdress and an EP from Chicago black metal band Nachtmystium. And while they’ve evened out as the years have gone on, a quick glance at their recent spate of releases reveals a label still focused on the fringes.
To celebrate that avant-garde spirit, the label is hosting a two-day five-year-anniversary celebration with a lineup that rivals the most inventive summer festival: Spiritualized (with Oneida’s Kid Millions on drums), Ariel Pink, the Fresh & Onlys and No Joy showcase Mexican Summer’s more traditional impulses, while Happy Jawbone Family Band, Home Blitz and a rare set by ’70s psych-folk enchantress Linda Perhacs are evidence of its continued inventiveness.
On the advent of this anniversary — and in celebration of the label’s continued dedication to roaming the borders of indie rock — they’ve put a dozen-plus titles on sale, for eMusic members only, for $5.99 or less through Oct. 22. The Mexican Summer folks put together a free sampler of tracks from some of their best artists, and eMusic’s editor-in-chief also talked with the label’s founder about the label’s character-defining releases; you can read that here.

• 

  Crazy For You

  Best Coast

  2010 | Mexican Summer
  Bethany Cosentino moved to New York to become a writer and boomeranged back to her native Los Angeles to pen woozy dream-pop that couldn't sound more quintessentially and brilliantly California. On Best Coast's full-length debut, Crazy for You, Cosentino and industrious L.A. indie rocker Bobb Bruno mix reverb-drowned surf guitar with hip-swiveling '60s shoop and the lo-fi girl-rock of '90s bands like That Dog. It's primo beach-blanket bop with a loveable quaint... streak: more Annette Funicello than the Situation.
  
  Like gender-flopped Beach Boys songs, the 13 lazily gorgeous tracks on Crazy for You are obsessed with boys. But love isn't idealized in Cosentino's universe — it makes her sleepy ("Crazy for You"), mentally disheveled ("Goodbye"), and apologetic ("I'm sorry I lost your favorite T-shirt, I'll buy you a new one, a better one" she sings in her flatly clean, Liz Phair-like croon on "Bratty B"). Her real romance is with that essential Cali obsession — the sun — but even that relationship falls a bit far of perfection. "There's something about the summer," she repeatedly croons on "Summer Mood" as Bruno plucks out a few breezy chords, "that makes me moody."
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  God Is Saying This To You…

  Kurt Vile

  Mexican Summer / Kemado Records
• 

  Lucifer

  Peaking Lights

  2012 | Mexican Summer

• 

  Replica

  Oneohtrix Point Never

  2011 | Software
  Oneohtrix Point Never has assumed an important place in the sound and theory obsessed underground with music that consumes as it compels and a unique ability to articulate his vision as something more than just a simple accumulation of "vibes." So it goes with Replica, a mindful album that zones out and tunes in at the same time. Though he made his name with drifting, drafting synthesizer meditations reminiscent of '70s kosmiche... acts like Tangerine Dream, Oneohtrix Point Never shifts into more cut-up forms on Replica. Part of the style started to coalesce on his 2010 breakthrough Returnal, but the material here pushes harder and farther into a realm where abstraction and clarity mesh. "Andro" starts off more or less recognizably, with seething synth tones and a portentous sense of atmosphere, but a signal gets sent when the track swerves, all of the sudden, into an unexpected fit of rhythm near the end. "Power of Persuasion" takes the next step by introducing as an aural plaything the sound of a traditional piano, which proves surprisingly prevalent on the album throughout. The rest of the template sets when sampled bits of voice — or, more accurately, weird incidental sounds made by a mouth on its way to speaking — wander in during "Sleep Dealer." It's a strange mix of subject matter, to be sure. But it gathers into shapes that manage to approximate actual songs, with memorable parts and melodies that linger, while doubling down as experimental ambient soundscapes.
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  Quilt

  Quilt

  2011 | Mexican Summer
• 

  Life of Leisure

  Washed Out

  EP/SINGLE

• 

  The Waves

  Tamaryn

  2010 | Mexican Summer
  Music with this much reverb and this many tape delays is often called dream pop, but there's something painfully awake about the debut from singer Tamaryn and producer/collaborator Rex John Shelverton. Their brand of star-crossed, guitar-driven haze gets so dark, so plaintive, so heartbreaking, that it couldn't possibly belong to any kind of dream.
  
  Tamaryn's subject matter tends toward the tragic: lost loves, suicides, empty spaces, seasons ending. The title track is less... a tribute to the ocean than a vast, sky- and soul-searching meditation on death, complete with gothy poetics and fuzzy guitars. "Out of the rivers, the seaports," Tamaryn sings, wraith-like, in the album's most haunting moment, "Wait for the water to claim you / the sea returning into the waves."
  
  The Waves easily could have waxed melodramatic, but the album ebbs at exactly the right points: buoyant on "Sandstone," dense and restless on "Mild Confusion." Tamaryn has said she's "interested in duality" — sad songs with a note of happiness, or lonely songs with some hope. And while you can't read much optimism into a song like "The Choirs of Winter," there is a certain loveliness in her languid, Victoria Legrand-esque vocals as she murmurs about city life and letting go. That type of vastness — sonic or emotional — on any album, is remarkable.
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  Anxiety

  Autre Ne Veut

  2013 | Software
• 

  Raw Solutions

  Slava

  2013 | Software

• 

  Long Slow Dance

  The Fresh & Onlys

  2012 | Mexican Summer
  By virtue of their hometown (San Francisco) and the labels they've worked with (In the Red, Captured Tracks, Sacred Bones, and now, Mexican Summer), The Fresh & Onlys are often grouped with shaggy-haired maniacs such as Ty Segall and Thee Oh Sees. In reality, their gorgeous, glassy-eyed pop is more in line with The Shins, or, to use an era-appropriate comparison for the Nuggets-inclined set, the Zombies. The noisier, feedback-drenched reference points... made a little more sense when the band was just getting started, but with each subsequent release, The Fresh & Onlys have refined their tunes, trading lo-fi riffs for jangling strums, garage rhythms for elegant, choral-enhanced accompaniment. What once could've served as the soundtrack for a Vice-funded documentary now sounds appropriate for starring placement in a Wes Anderson flick, and we mean that in the best possible sense.
  
  Long Slow Dance feels like a young band discovering their true calling. The title track meditates on finding true love alongside an acceptance that nobody's perfect. "Presence of Mind" grapples with precisely that, trying to attain it amidst a world of lies and disappointment. Multiple tracks feature a protagonist longing to unshackle himself from foolishness, sometimes over clean, dramatic guitars, other times backed by horn sections seemingly borrowed from an epic Calexico jam. The whole thing feels like a coming-out party for a band that's been leaning toward its destined path all along. Perhaps the finest distillation of this weight-off-the-shoulders thesis comes in "20 Days and 20 Nights," when frontman Tim Cohen sings, "Something so heavy in my mind/ I think I wanna try and let it out." Feels good, doesn't it?
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  VPI Harmony

  Mood Rings

  2013 | Mexican Summer
• 

  The Only Place

  Best Coast

  2012 | Mexican Summer

• 

  Wait To Pleasure

  No Joy

  2013 | Mexican Summer
  If you adhere to the strict definition of the term, you really shouldn't call it shoegaze if you can dance to it. This is a problem you run into when categorizing the most recent effort by No Joy. While the Montreal band formed by Jasamine White-Glutz and Laura Lloyd had its feet firmly plastered onto its reverb pedals on 2010 debut Ghost Blonde, new album Wait To Pleasure is far more agile... and aggressive. Make no mistake: No Joy retains the bathyspheric vibe it established on Ghost Blonde, if only by virtue of its distant-sounding vocals, which rarely interrupt the mysterious vibe with an enunciated word. What's different here is an avowed guitar crunch and blasts of white noise that at times make No Joy resemble a ragtag version of the Raveonettes. It's just as easy to spot similarities to Lush's shimmying pop ("Wrack Attack"), the Breeders' bass-heavy rumbles ("E"), or the Kills mucking about with the Cure's "A Forest" ("Blue Neck Riviera"). While these are somewhat expected influences and sounds, "Lunar Phobia" serves up a mid-album surprise, as a shaggy Madchester beat bubbles alongside some shamelessly catchy synth-pop tricks. It may be time to retire the band name as well as their shoegazer label.
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• 

  Moody Coup

  Cola

  2013 | Software
• 

  PDA

  Part Time

  2013 | Mexican Summer

• 

  Tender New Signs

  Tamaryn

  2012 | Mexican Summer
  Tamaryn's Tender New Signs is a middle-of-the-night meditation on love and its constant companion, heartbreak. Titular frontwoman Tamaryn curates her band's after-hours malaise with a breathy murmur, guitarist Rex John Shelverton supporting her efforts through a fuzzed-out wall of guitars. Playing like the nebulous thought patterns that occur between the time the head hits the pillow and the brain finally calls it a day, their desolate shoegaze is a place where fantasies... and nightmares lay side-by-side.
  
  The San Francisco duo's nine-song cycle hinges on a Creation Records-worthy palette. It would be deceptively easy to use The Jesus and Mary Chain to describe their sound: Like the Scottish quintet, Tamaryn have a penchant for detached vocals and heart-on-sleeve songs that often come within hair's breadth of mope. But Tender New Signs is a far lusher affair than any Reid brothers' record – its "Just Like Honey" emotional leanings tempered with a large helping of quiet contemplation.
  
  The pair lingers in a stage of lackadaisical bliss on "Afterlight," Tamaryn repeating the Goth poetry refrain, "Wilted is the flower" as though caught somewhere between comfort and curse. "I'm Gone" breathes air into their delicate underwater grooves, its lush reverb streaked with a Mazzy Star-by-moonlight doomed romanticism. But for all their philosophical meandering (with the help of pathetic fallacy, the earth, sky – and everything in between – is given emotional weight), Tamaryn are obstinately rockers. Luxuriating in the ghostly refrains and hypnotic riffs of "Prizma" that seemingly from here until daybreak, the band doesn't simply catch listeners' ears – it commands them. A notable widescreen meditation on the darker side of life, love, and the great beyond.
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