Len Bias(ed)

One listen and we're already biased in this Boston band's favor. Download the below and two more for free at Bandcamp.

Bandcamp | Facebook

More Pure Pop from The Fire Apes

Me so happy.

We hope you enjoyed The Fire Apes' "Hey Kate!," which we posted last week. (Clicky clicky.) If so, you might like to know that we just now received another excellent popper by the Apes from Chrissy Borsellino over at Big Picture Media. Click the following to acquire & fire (it up).

The Fire Apes - Only You Could Make Me Happy mp3

Slipslide's Sleeptalk

Slipslide - Sleeptalk mp3

from 2003 LP
The World Can Wait

We were poking around over at Matinee Recordings and found this London quartet's lovely jangler all cued up and ready to talk.

MySpace | Amazon mp3 | iTunes | eMusic

Music of the Sphere: Stars, XTC, Bass Drum OD, Tame Impala, K Vile, J Forte, Smith Ws, White Ws, White F, Fresh&Os, Girls, et. al. . . .***

Vile.

Favebloggers be doin' much good for hu/wo/mankind. Thanks, fb's.

Stars - Ageless Beauty - Chromewaves

XTC - Senses Working Overtime - Popdose

Tame Impala - I Don't Really Mind - Rollo & Grady

J. Forte - Purple Clouds, Dark Skies - Baby, You Got a Stew Goin'!

Hell On Wheels - Baby - The Finest Kiss

White Wires - Summer Girl - Indie Rock Cafe - Get more here and here.
The Fresh & Onlys - Summer Of Love - Indie Rock Cafe

The Happy Thoughts - Sweet Dirty Love - Raven Sings the Blues
Kindest Lines - Destructive Paths to Live Happily - Raven Sings the Blues - electromarcher/lovely voice

Impossible Hair - You Can Own - Gimme Tinnitus
Bad Sports - Would You Wait For Me Too? - Gimme Tinnitus
Night Manager - Pizza Pasta - Gimme Tinnitus
WATERS - For The One - Gimme Tinnitus - Not, perhaps, to every popper's taste, but we like it.

From an excellent blog new to us:

Kurt Vile - Jesus Fever - Weekly Tape Deck
White Fence - Lillian (Won't You Play The Drums) - Weekly Tape Deck
Bass Drum of Death - Get Found - Weekly Tape Deck
Eternal Summers - Prisoner - Weekly Tape Deck - more here & here
Fergus & Geronimo - Baby Don't You Cry - Weekly Tape Deck

A white-fonted sentence strategically placed can please peeps and peepers. (Sorry, we seem to have started a schtick from which we can't get unschtuck.)

Papercuts - Do You What You Will & John Brown - Weekly Tape Deck
Soft Powers - I Begin To Cringe At Eight Ten - Weekly Tape Deck
Cloud Nothings - Understand At All & Leave You Forever - Weekly Tape Deck
Girls - Heartbreaker - Weekly Tape Deck
The Smith Westerns - Give Me Some Time - Weekly Tape Deck

***Blogger only allows a certain number of letters in a postitle. We regret the inconvenience.

The Fire Apes: Powerpoppin' Primates

The Fire Apes - Hey Kate! mp3

from their May 23 release
A Life In Letters

These simmerin' simians from South Carolina have put out a hot piece of perfectly pure powerpop. Listing such influences as Fountains of Wayne, The Pretenders, Green Day, and somebody called "The Beatles" (no information available), lead singer, songwriter, guitarist, and least hirsute bandmember John Seymour also enlisted the help of top producers and recording engineers (e. g., of The Who, Jimi freakin' Hendrix, Plain White T's, and others we might not mention) to make sure the album sparkles and shines (okay, one producer is the bassist in Shinedown), to the nth. We hope you enjoyed "Hey Kate" as much as we and highly suggest you click the links below to check out other songs from this and previous albums. Many thanks to Chrissy Borsellino at Big Picture Media for getting in touch, securing permishes, etc., etc.

MySpace | Bandsite | Amazon mp3 | iTunes | eMusic

Fun with the Fungis

She's tonguing the Girls. (Click to enlarge.)

Fungi Girls - Pacifica Nostalgia mp3

from 2010 release
Seafaring Pyramids

Well, here we go again. No sooner do we buy this groovy little number at eMusic (as recently documented) than we find it available for free download at last.fm. So how does that make us feel? Ecstatic, that's how. You can find another free and legal by the Cleburne, Texas trio at that selfsame last.fm page.

MySpace | Amazon mp3 | iTunes | eMusic

eMusic pppurcha$e$ - Second Quarter of 2011

If you like some of the same music we do, you might like to check out our purcha$e$ at eMusic for April, May, and June of this year. Click here to scope out the list. We found plenty by "old" favorites plus a wealth of new-to-usses. We're pretty sure those LPs by Ringo Deathstarr, The Raveonettes, and Kids on a Crime Spree will end up among our very favorites for all of '11. Funny, though, isn't it, how even one great song from an album catapults an artist/album toward the toppermost of one's poppermost. Yeah, very funny indeed. Har-har. Happy listening.

More Schweetness from The Sunshine Factory

You may remember (no penalty if you don't) our recent effusions over Mobile, Alabama gazers The Sunshine Factory? Well, we just noticed over at the last.fm Shoegaze group page that the band have posted their entire LP Sugar for free download. How sad were we that we had already spent some of our hard-earned for some of the LP? Not a whit because we were thinking of you and the fiscally friendly fun you were about to have. (Yeah, we know, "Awwwwwww, pp, ya softie ya," etc., etc.) Here's our favorite, to give you another taste. You take it from there (or here).

The Sunshine Factory - Twisted And Clover mp3

Austin's Literature Does Cincinnati

If that postitle doesn't make quite enough sense for you, click here, here, and here. Two more excellent songs await you at that first here. (P.S.: Enjoy all the orthographical contradictions.)

Lunch Time

Appropriately enough, we found this Worcester, Mass. band at Baby, You Got a Stew Goin'! The opening riff kind of reminded us of The Replacements' "Can't Hardly Wait," which is a very good thing indeed, as is the rest of the song. As B,YGaSG! suggests, there's not a lot of info about the band, but maybe they'll serve some up soon. If you want to read their tweets, click here.

We Need Karibean

Our Italian's a bit rusty/nonexistent, but Karibean seem to be from the east coast of da boot. (Possible future side projects: Ehdriatic? Dyerrhenian?) Here's our favorite song from their Love, Tears, and Spiritual Blessing EP, all of which can be downloaded at their Bandcamp page. Learn more at Facebook.

Music of the Sphere: Posies, New P's, Smithereens, 6ths, Who, Pretenders, VotB, Wonder Stuff, Will/Kill, B. Wilson, Teens, Grooms, Male B, et. al.

We should be embarrassed going 2+ weeks without posting and then returning with another MotS thingy. So, okay, like, maybe we're blushing. (The music's pretty stellar, though, in our haughty opinion, so there's that.) We thank the hostbloggers vewy, vewy much.

The Posies - Dream All Day & Solar Sister & Flavor of the Month - Peter's Power Pop - That "Dream All Day" vid was the first thing we ever posted. Sigh.

The New Pornographers - Mass Romantic - Tsururadio - See #25.

The Smithereens - Sorry - Rocker - the only number we bought off the new LP; see Rocker main page here.

The 6ths - Heaven In A Black Leather Jacket - For The Sake Of The Song - love The Chills, too, of course, but maybe not that there song

Manfred Mann - Ha! Ha! Said The Clown - Star Maker Machine

Moon Duo - Mazes - Raven Sings the Blues

Teens - O'Lay - Austin Town Hall
Male Bonding - Bones - Austin Town Hall

My Teenage Stride - Creep Academy - Gimme Tinnitus
Grooms - Sharing - Gimme Tinnitus
Hard Nips - Release It - Gimme Tinnitus

Pretenders - Back on the Chain Gang - Popdose
Voice of the Beehive - I Say Nothing - Popdose
The Wonder Stuff - Give, Give, Give Me More, More, More - Popdose
Kim Wilde - Water On Glass - Popdose
Will and the Kill - Heart of Steel - Popdose
Brian Wilson - Love and Mercy - Popdose
The Who - It's Hard - Popdose - a long-time Whofave; post has nine other Who songs as well

Music of the Sphere: Mars Classroom, Hummingbirds, Sloan, Jonny, Army Navy, LEAGUE, Byrds, KOACS, C Stilts, W Idols, C Green, A Museums, F Mac

Favebloggers continue to outdo themselves. And we do thank them. (Clicking on the artist names or blog names should take you where you want to go.)

The Hummingbirds - Two Weeks With A Good Man In Niagara Falls & If A Vow - Peter's Power Pop

LEAGUE - Two Wild Hearts - I Guess I'm Floating

Army Navy - Right Back Where We Started From (Maxine Nightingale cover) - Teenage Kicks - Soldiersailors bring the clap!

The Art Museums - Dancing With a Hole In Your Heart - Raven Sings the Blues

Kids On A Crime Spree - Trumpets of Death - Sound Bites

Kids On A Crime Spree - I Don't Want To Call You Baby, Baby - Said The Gramophone - We recently posted one by KOACS here.
The Byrds - You Ain't Going Nowhere - Said The Gramophone

Sloan - The Answer Was You - Chromewaves
Jonny - Candyfloss - Chromewaves - Teenage Fanclubber Norman Blake collaborates with Gorky's Zygotic Munci's Euros Childs.

Mars Classroom - New Theory & Wish You Were Young - The Finest Kiss - from one of GbV's Robert Pollard's latest projects (as of the last five minutes)
Crystal Stilts - Half A Moon - The Finest Kiss
Wax Idols - All Too Human - The Finest Kiss
Colleen Green - Y Do U Call Me? - The Finest Kiss - While you're there, be sure to grip the La Sera song if you haven't already or even if you have. We posted it here, but since you're going there, getting it there might be more convenient. Ur call.

Fleetwood Mac - The Ledge - Fluxblog
Fleetwood Mac - Second Hand News - Fluxblog
Fleetwood Mac - Monday Morning & Hold Me - Fluxblog
Fleetwood Mac - What Makes You Think You're The One & Walk A Thin Line - Fluxblog

Gross Relations Aren't Gross

We first entered into Gross Relations back in November and have just reencountered them via the ever bountiful Gimme Tinnitus. We chose our favorite from each of two tuneful two-song singles at the Brooklyn band's Bandcamp site, so pay them a visit for more if you like. You can find them here and here, along with access to two other tuneful two-song singles.

Of Late: Golden Dogs, Rassle, Western Civ, Skull Tape, Bird of Youth, Seapony, Papercuts, Burning Hearts

A few recent and recentish finds/loves:

The Golden Dogs - Cheap Umbrellas mp3 - from Coat of Arms - MySpace - Thanks to Indie Rock Cafe, which has one more here.

The Rassle - Celebrate The Days mp3 - from The Rassle EP - MySpace - Get the free EP here.

Western Civ - My Valuable Hunting Knife mp3 - from Sing For Your Meat: A Tribute to Guided By Voices - MySpace - Thanks to Team Clermont.

Skull Tape - Trans Anthro mp3 - from The Invisible Hand and The Descent Of Man - MySpace


BTW, there's a looload of links in this post, so might we pause to recommend that post we did on mouse scroll wheel clicking? Why, yes, we just might.


Bird of Youth - She Is Here to Stay mp3 - from Defender - MySpace

Seapony - Dreaming mp3 - from Go With Me, out today - MySpace - You like? Find another Seapony here.

Papercuts - Do You Really Wanna Know mp3 - from Fading Parade - MySpace

Burning Hearts - Into The Wilderness mp3 - from Into The Wilderness EP - MySpace - Thanks to Music of the Moment for the headsup.