Raven Sings The Blues

A huge rundown to help get you settled on this Bandcamp Friday, there are new cuts from Footings, Supercrush, Massage, Golomb, Go Kurosawa, The Gnomes, Emergency Group, Zachary Cale and more! Help wind up the week right and maybe support a few artists if you get the inspiration. bit.ly/3Ucpfke

“Back of the Line” captures the grit & grind of the aughts guitar revival, slinging sinewy lines & shout along choruses. It’s a dark alley, late night cut, soaked in summer sweat, fighting for life under the flickering streetlights, wiping blood off the strings with each heavy hook bit.ly/4od7TS9

The New Eves slip between dirt floor folk and ‘70s art rock tensions. Rather than lean into sonorous harmonies & soothing tones, they seek to scratch the psyche, to wake the listener from the daze that keeps them docile, carving their own oaths into the wood. bit.ly/4fnY3ZI

“Gimme Coherence” kicks in with a restrained synthpop patter, shaking off the decorum as the second half explodes into sax squalls and cathartic cookdowns. A fitting theme for 2025, one of hope in the face of staggering odds, of waking daily to news that makes you want to scream. bit.ly/4og1JR5

Dipping back into the deep well of cosmic jazz, spiritual undertones, & new age float of their debut, The Cosmic Tones Research Trio let “Sankofa” trickle over the listener. Melting piano lines & furrowed cello lap at the mind as burbling polyrhythms urge the listener closer to bliss. bit.ly/46Erzbi

Circles Around The Sun offers up a preview of music that will serve as set break soundtrack for the upcoming Grateful Dead 60 shows at Golden Gate State Park this weekend. The music will be assembled onto a sequel to their original Interludes For The Dead, available on LP in November. bit.ly/4mI1EEr

Alien Eyelid are slowed to a heatsick crawl on “Nesadel Club;" lamenting, lost in the haze and humidity. It fades through the mind as nighttime anxieties mingle with the first flickers of dream, fading away on gentle strums and the sticky sway of Mlee Marie’s sax. bit.ly/44UEggM

Galore's new LP keeps a slippery handle on genre; leveling its sights on chiming guitars & honeyed harmonies, but leaving room for brill building lushness, the chirp & charm of field recordings, & a few brittle breaking points as well. One of the best indie pop recs of the year. bit.ly/45efA1y

A beautiful piece from Joe Harvey-Whyte and Paul Cousins accompanies the announcement of a collaborative full length out this fall. Like SUSS scoped through Basinski’s eye, the first cut from the session reverberates around the headspace, slowly crumbling under its own weight. bit.ly/4lUHK95

Ohio-based trio The Peel weave the traditional with the experimental for songs that reflect the dissonance of modern life with our natural surroundings. Draped in wooded hues, the first single, “Adam Disturbed a Bird,” finds the trio’s strings sparring in a concert of voices. bit.ly/4lWtxIM

Definitely dig the gnomes! Didn’t know they had a new single, that’s exciting.

“Soft Goodbye” finds The 1981 echoing greats from power pop’s early classes and ‘90s followers, crushing The Quick into The Blondes in a cut that’s cured in Summer sun. The song strings jangles into the mix before letting those big, crunchy riffs wipe away any tender tears. bit.ly/4lSLKXz

The Pink Stones keep the twang out of the cosmos, but they let the harmonies soar towards the clouds. “Real Sad Movies, Big Jet Planes” is a classic country weeper, hung heavy in pedal steel and heartbreak. bit.ly/4ff9Lpm

Golomb's rifle a rabble of '90s signifiers, sounding like a scroll through the best freeform radio station. Their left of the dial approach turns The Beat Goes On into a loving homage and a study in alchemy, turning late night YouTube rabbit holes into an album’s worth of gold. bit.ly/3U1jw0F

“Calico II” pairs Alex ET's serpentine sweep with a harder edge. The 1st single was spun in the ‘90s cocoon of Mercury Rev & Opal. The latest builds until it boils over in squalls of guitar, feedback, & flash that feel the thumbprints of Spiritualized & Dream Syndicate in their clay. bit.ly/3ISv5Vu

“If You” jangles just as brightly as Josie's last couple of singles, a loving return to the Sarah, Sha La La, and 53rd & 3rd era. It’s a shadier cut, not quite as saturated in sun, but the band still soaks those chords in the hues of Talulah Gosh, Tiger Trap, and Dolly Mixture. bit.ly/4oqDu2S

Loose Tooth refine their sound while pondering motherhood, identity, and grief. Keys & pedal steel pop into view, but the wired duo dynamic of drums and guitar make the bulk of the record, slinging fuzz riffs and the kind of hooks that tug you out of sleep with their insistent itch. bit.ly/4o6raEB

"Omeyocan" weaves the scented smoke of Cochemea’s mournful sax with the ripple of polyrhythms, inviting the listener into the enthralling terrain of his songwriting. The track is a dreamscape that explores the duality between dream & reality, mirroring the Nahuatl roots of the title. bit.ly/3U3dFIc

“Daffy Duck” is Massage at their best, smelting jangle & synth-pop into a single that’s bittersweet & beautiful. Hung on the perfect melancholy of Gabi Ferrer’s vocals, the song carves out a corner for the kind of decisions that crystalize us into adulthood, the ones that leave a scar bit.ly/3IVd0WN

“Sugar in the Wound," streaks the speakers, crumpling to the floor with the kind of pop collapse that should sate fans of The Cure, The Bunnymen, RVG or The Laughing Chimes. Louse offers a saturated clip in counterpoint to the sun and static of the rest of the year’s indie offerings. bit.ly/46CBXAl

“Plan Ahead” has an amphetamine shake to it; funk strung but strident in its ability to drag pop through the glass & grit and come out shining. Doused & pungent with the fumes of Blues Explosion by way of Butthole Surfers, the single keeps a blade in the back of its leathered exterior bit.ly/4f8lANQ

Bitchin Bajas brings the Kosmiche cool on first single “Skylarking.” Clouds of synths and a nodding rhythm push the track until sax begins to scuff the surface, turning it from morning mediation into a late afternoon jazz-haze humidifier. bit.ly/3GJBOR6

Edena Gardens turn towards darker hills. Drenched in a dose of anguish the first taste of the album, “Fills The Well” finds the guitar from Nicklas Sørensen (Papir) singeing the edges of the speakers, welled up with an angst that seems suitable to our current environments. bit.ly/44Tu08s

Michael Hix (Nashville Ambient Ensemble) has taken on the moniker Wonderful Aspiration of the Source, further embracing the meditative center of his works. With Hix trading synth for a B-Bender guitar, it's aloft somewhere between ambient country and jazz, a radiant pool of calm. bit.ly/46qDvgB

Creative Writing brings the jangles on their debut LP, laying first single “Can’t Thank You Enough” into a comfortable valley between the Byrdsian beginnings of jangle’s joyride and the nineties acolytes to follow, nodding to Teenage Fanclub and Wowee Zowee-era Pavement. bit.ly/40ARHzV

Kikagaku Moyo drummer Go Kurosawa shifts slightly from the band’s psychedelics. His first single slinks towards Kosmiche buffeted by a bed of burbling rhythms. The song thrives on repetition and vapor trails of brass, with Kurosawa lacing in vocals just below the surface. bit.ly/470ufQr

Catching up on all the great news while I was away and starting with The Cords. “Fabulist” is bright and buoyant, a jangler in high regard that feels out its debts to Talulah Gosh, The Primitives, and Tiger Trap, soaring through the speakers like a bolt of pure sunshine. bit.ly/46pxv7Q

Lovely. I missed the Tubby’s show because it sold out fast, but saw him on the tour the next night at Half Moon in Hudson and it was great!

RSTB will be on vacation next week, the 21st – 25th, but I’m leaving with a Snapshot for this week. Packed with plenty of new singles, this mix highlights stunners from Kyle Hamlett Uno, Winter McQuinn, Way Dynamic, Julianna Riolino, The Croaks, The Telephone Numbers & more. bit.ly/410AQqa

Sparring fuzz bass with violin, The Croaks new EP rounds up urgent, anxious folk-pop with a deft touch. The four tracks solidify them as something akin to White Magic or Espers, looking longingly towards Pentangle before twisting the knife with a howl of anguish to set us on our way. bit.ly/46grsSV