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CD
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AW 127CD
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"Consisting of singer/guitarist Bodary, percussionist and musical director/arranger Dan Seibert, and keyboardist Jack Doran, Hello Emerson has been crafting subtle, earnest, and expansive songs since its formation in 2015. Drawing on the midwestern songwriting tradition of acclaimed acts like Bright Eyes and The Mountain Goats, Bodary's erudite yet homespun lyrics are bolstered by the group's increasingly baroque arrangements. A collaborative act inspired by the local artistic community of their home base of Columbus, Ohio, their 2020 sophomore effort How to Cook Everything featured contributions from 50 local musicians, creating an immersive and complex yet folky and accessible sound. Their latest effort, To Keep Him Here, further develops and focuses their style, while applying it to a set of darker themes. A concept album, the record delves into the chaos and confusion that followed a serious accident suffered by Bodary's father which landed him in the ICU for nine days. Across the record, Bodary uses his measured yet honest lyrical voice to articulate and sort through the terror of the experience, and the strength which pulled him and his family through. Tracked live in his godfather's home, the band's physical proximity lends an added layer of intimacy to the tracks, all while maintaining Seibert's subtle yet sweeping arrangements. The result is the band's strongest effort yet; a record of hope and fear, To Keep Him Here finds beauty in the kind of compassion which can only arise from disorder."
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LP
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AW 127LP
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LP version. "Consisting of singer/guitarist Bodary, percussionist and musical director/arranger Dan Seibert, and keyboardist Jack Doran, Hello Emerson has been crafting subtle, earnest, and expansive songs since its formation in 2015. Drawing on the midwestern songwriting tradition of acclaimed acts like Bright Eyes and The Mountain Goats, Bodary's erudite yet homespun lyrics are bolstered by the group's increasingly baroque arrangements. A collaborative act inspired by the local artistic community of their home base of Columbus, Ohio, their 2020 sophomore effort How to Cook Everything featured contributions from 50 local musicians, creating an immersive and complex yet folky and accessible sound. Their latest effort, To Keep Him Here, further develops and focuses their style, while applying it to a set of darker themes. A concept album, the record delves into the chaos and confusion that followed a serious accident suffered by Bodary's father which landed him in the ICU for nine days. Across the record, Bodary uses his measured yet honest lyrical voice to articulate and sort through the terror of the experience, and the strength which pulled him and his family through. Tracked live in his godfather's home, the band's physical proximity lends an added layer of intimacy to the tracks, all while maintaining Seibert's subtle yet sweeping arrangements. The result is the band's strongest effort yet; a record of hope and fear, To Keep Him Here finds beauty in the kind of compassion which can only arise from disorder."
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LP
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AW 124LP
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"Since forming in 2004, Ohio rock band Smug Brothers have enjoyed a relaxed, almost nonchalant, approach to writing and recording, with most albums being minor Big Bangs -- instant and electric. New LP In the Book of Bad Ideas, on the other hand, was a struggle against entropy -- the disorder caused by plagues and departing personnel. Singer, guitarist, and songwriter Kyle Melton wrote the majority of the tunes in 'bunker fashion' during the miserable pandemic summer of 2020, then slowly started recording them with bassist Kyle Sowash, lead guitarist Scott Tribble, and drummer/Smug Brothers co-pilot Don Thrasher in 2021. That November, his contributions partially completed, Tribble decamped the band due to a new job and new demands. The exit was amicable, yet left the group in a lead guitar lurch. Melton had little choice but to enter the ring and play solos on some songs. Finally, belatedly, both In the Book of Bad Ideas and its sister EP Emerald Lemonade were finished in the spring of 2022. And against the odds, the two-year slog produced pleasantly surprising results. On In the Book of Bad Ideas, the band's typical, semi-'60s sound -- boasting biting leads and breakneck jangles -- is now fully integrated with synthesizers and crafted with a cool gloss, anachronistically creating the first Smug Brothers album of the early '80s."
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LP
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AW 122LP
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"Jenny Mae made only two full length records, both released just two years apart in the hey-day of '90s indie-rock where small labels rose up like mushrooms in a tropical forest and like so much of the music from that time was easily overlooked and disappeared. Jenny's music found a small, devoted audience and her music was covered not only by many fanzines but also by Rolling Stone, Spin, Interview, even Entertainment Weekly. She played shows and some tours with Guided by Voices, Magnetic Fields, Neko Case, Chris Knox and more but to see her live one never knew what one would see, perhaps on a good night, a deeply moving set sung in her sweet midwestern voice or maybe a woman who could barely stand, her keyboard falling off a bar table she set up on stage as she usually didn't have a keyboard stand. Jenny lived life how an engine swallows gasoline, hot and quickly except her gasoline was alcohol which she used to quiet her undiagnosed schizoaffective disorder and by the early 2000s she went from living in Coral Gables to living on the streets of Columbus, Ohio in a matter of weeks. She remained homeless for nearly three years in Columbus and Miami with various stints in jail or the many hospitals she would visit until her predictable death in 2017, which of course, was in a hospital surrounded by her family and friends. Her music was sweet, catchy and at times bawdy -- some songs as short as Bob Pollard's who championed her and others lush electronic that was closer to My Bloody Valentine or OMD. She was a fan of the Beach Boys and Beatles growing up in rural Ohio and started writing songs in high school. Eventually she started recording on a borrowed Tascam 4-track in the late '80s, songs as innocent as Daniel Johnston's or the Marine Girls. Some of these earliest recordings are gathered here on this compilation that stretches from 1988 through 2016, where her last recording, the devastating 'Not Another Bad Year' was recorded months before her death. It includes many of the songs she made in the years before she died, including the ode to her good friend, Jim Shepard as well as songs she created as she pined for Ohio while going off the rails in Miami. Side two contains some of the singles she recorded for various indie-labels that have not been available since the mid-nineties and several unreleased songs from a never materialized third record. She was a force for everybody who knew her, and she was one who lacked ambition, or maybe the organization to do what folks around her thought was 'normal', she wasn't made for a traditional life." --Bela Koe-Krompecher, 2022
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LP
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AW 120LP
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"On the fringe of the indie Rust Belt scene since the 1990s, Moviola has quietly forged a low-key career of high-quality recorded output over twenty-five years, issuing ten (!) records and countless 7-inch singles (including splits with Cobra Verde, Hiss Golden Messenger, Handsome Family and many others). In this artistic continuum, the band has evolved from everything from 4-track fuzz to hi-fi country soul. Today, the band steps forward with Broken Rainbows, its strongest collection of songs to date, written, recorded, and mixed inside the group's HQ in Columbus. Jake Housh started Moviola in 1993 as a student at 'The' Ohio State University as a noisy, fuzzed out lo-fi noisemakers. Over the years, the band has morphed into a unique DIY music and art-making collective with five distinct singers and songwriters, recalling the creatively democratic lineage of The Mekons, The Band, Pink Floyd, many others. Moviola is Jake Housh, Ted Hattemer (Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments), Scotty Tabachnick, Greg Bonnell, and Jerry Dannemiller. Broken Rainbows is a milestone release, showcasing a band newly energized and assured in its artistry, and supportive of its members' songcraft. The eleven-song album hovers over a plot of ground that's optimistic in its despair. Album topics range from the personal to the political, showcasing each member's unique songwriting within an overall cohesive band aesthetic."
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