V/A. Take 5.

A mixture of "awkward" and indie-pop. Plus Spacemen 3. My favorite part is the way Death By Milkfloat shouts "YOU LOOK WEIRD!".

1. King of the Slums - Spider Psychiatry
2. Cud - Treat Me Bad
3. Yukio Yung - Jean Gabin
4. Dog Faced Hermans - Yellow Girls
5. Death By Milkfloat - Vagrancy
6. Kilgore Trout - Peacock Nose
7. Jackdaw With Crowbar - Lies
8. Bachelor Pad - You'll Be Mine
9. House of Love - Plastic
10. Boy Hairdressers - Assumption as an Elevator
11. Spacemen 3 - Rollercoaster

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V/A. The Waaaaah! CD.

A fantastic collection of indie and janglepop bands from Bring On Bull Records. The fine folks who ran it have made their entire catalog available for download on their webpage.

1. Kind- The House (A Dream)
2. Dufflecoats- Sunny Tuesday Afternoon
3. Home and Abroad- Wipe Those Tears Away
4. Field Mice- Other Galaxies
5. Strawberry Story- Ashlands Road
6. Fat Tulips- James
7. Dalek Beach Party- Way Out West
8. Haywains- Dusty Springfield
9. They Go Boom- Body
10. Confetti- Warm
11. Confetti- Jenny
12. Bedflowers- My Ex- Lovers Address
13. Cesspit Rebels- Cabbage
14. Cesspit Rebels- Deodorant Face
15. Haywains- Kill Karaoke
16. Music Seen- Friend Of AFriend
17. Red Alarm Clocks- Cobwebs
18. White Town- We'll Always Have Paris
19. Duglasettes- Bellshill's Son
20. Dalek Beach Party- Teddy Boy's Picnic
21. Music Seen- Hairdresser In The Sky
22. Dufflecoats- Uncertain
23. Home And Abroad- Smokey Town
24. Fluff, Fluff, Fluff, Fluff and Cuddleyness- I'm not ashamed
25. Cudgels- Summer Colours

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Download part 2

V/A. Audacious (Lovely Records).

1. Are You Mr. Riley? - I'll Love You Tomorrow
2. Fat Tulips - The Way Things Are
3. Toy Department - Nursery
4. Strawberry Story - Buttercups and Daisies
5. Fat Tulips - Where's Clare Grogan Now (Original Demo)
6. St Christopher - All Of A Tremble (Live)
7. Home And Abroad - Christopher
8. Patrick Skelly And The Prescriptions - Oranges and Lemons
9. The Waiting List - Hide
10. PO - Ever Been Had
11. Those Naughty Corinthians - Butter Mountain
12. The Volunteers - Migraine
13. Jane From Occupied Europe - Little Valley Town
14. The Losers - Bad Day
15. Those Naughty Corinthians - Pie
16. The Keatons - Remain
17. The Moving Jelly Brothers - Girl Moneypleasure Rides Again
18. Megacity Four - Holiday Song
19. Thrilled Skinny - Pop Star Prat
20. Watch You Drown - It's My World
21. Megacity Four - Behind Closed Doors

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V/A. Sprat and Mackerel Compilation Extravaganza.

Some insanely good contributions by eminently weird bands.

1. Jackdaw with Crowbar - Sailor Soul Survivor
2. The Shrubs - Ballet Gorilla (live)
3. Datblygu - Hen Ysgol Cloff
4. The Noseflutes - Shallow for Deep
5. The Membranes - Electric Storm
6. Sperm Wails - Lady Chatterly's Lover
7. Plant Bach Offnus - Pyrdredd
8. Howl In the Typewriter - Water Yr Plants
9. Howl In the Typewriter - Close
10. The Noseflutes - Girth
11. The Lungs - The Day James Cagney Died

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The Tears. The Tears.

The best teenage garage punk band ever to emerge from Algoma, Wisconsin. There's nothing on here that's new or groundbreaking or life-changing or original, but so what? It's loud, fast, ferocious, and just wants to rock the fuck out, and what more can you ask of four kids (two guys, two sisters) in a garage? Shit, they're way tighter and more melodious, and've got buckets more energy and spirit than most bands in this vein. I guarantee you your band wasn't anywhere near this good in high school.

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Heavens to Betsy. Calculated.

Corin Tucker has always had one of the best voices in rock. It's like getting hit upside the head by Big Mama Thornton. Plus, she can scream bloody murder or quietly cut you to the emotional quick with equal intensity. Strangely, I find I really miss her interplay with Carrie here in a way I didn't with Excuse 17. Maybe it's because Excuse 17 already had a similar dynamic between Carrie and Becca plus Carrie's ferocious guitar that I ended up liking them a little bit more. If I weren't counting backward from Sleater-Kinney I'm not sure how I would feel.

It's raw, but in a different way than Excuse 17 or even early S-K. They're still casting around for the right feel, and a few of the songs don't really differentiate themselves. But that's a minor quibble true of most young bands. They're definitely on to something, and when they hit it (Axemen, Complicated) it's easy to see what sort of greatness lay ahead. I think they put Corin's voice too low in the mix, and too often I find myself thinking that she really needs Carrie's slashing sound to underpin her anger, but that's just my problem. The whole thing's a bit like a feminist zine in album form (the word "privilege" makes a number of appearances): messy, heartfelt, exciting, still figuring theings out; the sort of thing that would get passed around hand to hand like a secret gift, a key, the thing that says you are not alone.

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Heavens to Betsy on myspace

Excuse 17. Such Friends Are Dangerous.

It's a disservice to remember this band solely as the practice run at Sleater-Kinney, but then again, S-K were so monumental, so earth-shaking that it can hardly end up any other way. Listening to this again for the first time in ten or so years, I'm amazed at how well-formed, confident, and bone-cuttingly visceral they were. Of the two pre-Sleater-Kinney bands, (we'll get to Corin's Heavens to Betsy tomorrow), Excuse 17 sound the most like what's to come, with their dual, tangled, razor-wire guitar attack, back and forth vocals, gut-wrenching screams, and sense of moral urgency.

Like much of the work Carrie's associated with, it's an album of catharsis. Whether on the bouncy standout track Watchmaker (a dig at music journalists and scenesters), the painful This is Not Your Wedding Song, or the biting The Drop Dead Look, their combination of pure punk fury and tight musicianship is some pretty righteous shit, no matter what came next.

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Excuse 17 on myspace

Them Wranch. Medium Rare.

Them Wranch say they're from Columbus, Ohio, but really they hail from any seedy bar where cowpunk, surf, garage rock, roots music, and psychobilly meet up to swill diesel fuel, steal your girlfriend, and convince you to let them crash on your couch. And somewhere along the way they will rock you like a sweaty hurricane.

Recommended activities while listening: 1. Burnin' past the fuzz while haulin' moonshine in your custom Mercury lead sled; 2. Bare knuckled boxing with an orangutan; 3. Converting your riding lawnmower/barc-o-lounger/dog into a nitro burning funny car.

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Them Wranch official website

Them Wranch on myspace

Leningrad Blues Machine. Leningrad Blues Machine.

I don't know what it is about Japan, but for the last two decades or so they've turned out more atomic-monster sized rawk bands than anywhere else on the planet. Add Leningrad Blues Machine (not from Leningrad, not really playing the blues, probably lying about being machines) to the list. Although lead guitarist and vocalist Tabata Mitsuru has been in Acid Mothers Temple, The Boredoms, and Zeni Geva, Leningrad Blues Machine dabbles in none of their abstract, scribbly freak-outs and instead offers up righteous slabs of "traditional", brain-melting, psychedelic awesomeness.

Roman Castavet makes me think of Red Krayola and Boris covering something from Echo and the Bunnymen's Crocodiles. Woodstock Monster sounds like L7's Pretend We're Dead and Nirvana's Aneurysm holding hands and headbanging at a Hawkwind concert (even weirder, considering this was recorded in '88). And Moon & Milk Bar builds into something resembling one of the Butthole Surfer's old brown-acid instrumentals (In fact, several of their songs display the type of psych-damaged heaviosity that the Flaming Lips burned through on Hear It Is, and both records reference Eddie Cochran's Summertime Blues).

They have at least two more albums, although I haven't had any luck finding anyplace that sells them outside of Japan. If you know where to get them, leave a note in the comments, please.

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Leningrad Blues Machine website (in Japanese)

The High Violets. 44 Down.

I was pretty sure these guys were British (probably as a result of discovering them in a record store during my one trip overseas), but it turns out they're from Portland. They could easily have been some lost band from the early 90s prime dream-pop/shoegaze period, sounding as they do like an otherworldly mix of The Field Mice, The Cocteau Twins, MBV, Lush, Spaceman 3, Galaxie 500, and Julee Cruise. Cool angelic vocals, waves of white light climaxes, and spooling gossamer guitar chaos make this perfect dorm-room make-out music. It's like mirrorballs as satellites.

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High Violets on myspace