Sub Pop Rock & Indie 214 Items

First Pressing On Limited-Edition White Vinyl.It Is The Simple Thing That Is So Hard To Do. This Is The Paradox That Musician Lael Neale Has Lived Within Throughout Her Development As An Artist. It Is The Reason She Became Enthralled With Poetry. Poems Are A Distillation. Lael Says, "This Challenge To Winnow Away What Is Unessential Is The Most Maddening And, Ultimately, Rewarding Part Of Writing A Song."Lael's New Album Acquainted With Night Is A Testament To This Poetic Devotion. Stripped Of Any Extraneous Word Or Sound, The Songs Are Lit By Lael's Crystalline Voice Which Lays On A Lush Bed Of Omnichord. The Collection Touches On Themes That Have Been Thr...

Lael Neale still has a flip phone and there were no screens involved in the creation of her new record Star Eaters Delight. The album is her second for Sub Pop and reveals an expansion of her sonic collaboration with producer and accompanist Guy Blakeslee. In April of 2020, in the wake of transformations both personal and global, Lael moved from Los Angeles back to her family's farm in rural Virginia. Looking at the world from a distance and getting in tune with her own rhythms, she wrote and recorded steadily for two dreamlike years, driven by a need to make order out of chaos. Forged in isolation, Star Eaters Delight is a vehicle for returning, not just to civilization, but to celebration. She says, "Acquainted with Night (recorded in 2019, and released in 2021), was focused inward, amidst the loud and bright Los Angeles surrounding me. It was an attempt to create spaciousness and quiet reverie within. When I moved back to the farm, I found that the unbroken silences compelled me to break them with sound. This album is more external. It is me reaching back out to the world, wanting to feel connected, to wake up, to come together again." Album opener and lead single "I Am The River" melts the ice with a dynamic explosion of minimalist transcendental pop clearly descended from the Velvet Underground's branch of modern music's family tree. Blakeslee's spare yet cinematic arrangements create an ambient space in which Neale's clear and unaffected voice can explore familiar themes in an unexpected way. Subtle but potent references to Shakespeare, Emerson and the Bible (which she hasn't read) swirl together with deeply personal musings and touches of wry humor, always more optimistic than cynical. While this is a record about polarities- country vs. city, humanity vs. technology, solitude vs. relationship - the deeper intention is to heal; to come to terms with our differences and put the broken pieces back together again. Lael's affinity with the Transcendentalists has to do with her quest to hold onto sovereignty over her own mind. In a time when our devices are constantly flooding us with information, opinions and propaganda, Lael is intentional about what she takes in - hence the flip phone and the cassette recorder. Neale identifies as a minimalist "not because I don't like things, but because I value freedom more."

Lael Neale still has a flip phone and there were no screens involved in the creation of her new record Star Eaters Delight. The album is her second for Sub Pop and reveals an expansion of her sonic collaboration with producer and accompanist Guy Blakeslee. In April of 2020, in the wake of transformations both personal and global, Lael moved from Los Angeles back to her family's farm in rural Virginia. Looking at the world from a distance and getting in tune with her own rhythms, she wrote and recorded steadily for two dreamlike years, driven by a need to make order out of chaos. Forged in isolation, Star Eaters Delight is a vehicle for returning, not just to civilization, but to celebration. She says, "Acquainted with Night (recorded in 2019, and released in 2021), was focused inward, amidst the loud and bright Los Angeles surrounding me. It was an attempt to create spaciousness and quiet reverie within. When I moved back to the farm, I found that the unbroken silences compelled me to break them with sound. This album is more external. It is me reaching back out to the world, wanting to feel connected, to wake up, to come together again." Album opener and lead single "I Am The River" melts the ice with a dynamic explosion of minimalist transcendental pop clearly descended from the Velvet Underground's branch of modern music's family tree. Blakeslee's spare yet cinematic arrangements create an ambient space in which Neale's clear and unaffected voice can explore familiar themes in an unexpected way. Subtle but potent references to Shakespeare, Emerson and the Bible (which she hasn't read) swirl together with deeply personal musings and touches of wry humor, always more optimistic than cynical. While this is a record about polarities- country vs. city, humanity vs. technology, solitude vs. relationship - the deeper intention is to heal; to come to terms with our differences and put the broken pieces back together again. Lael's affinity with the Transcendentalists has to do with her quest to hold onto sovereignty over her own mind. In a time when our devices are constantly flooding us with information, opinions and propaganda, Lael is intentional about what she takes in - hence the flip phone and the cassette recorder. Neale identifies as a minimalist "not because I don't like things, but because I value freedom more."

January 2023, Dorset. Snow is piled at the door, icy roads are closed, and Emily Cross is in a coffin. Not a setting typical for a rebirth. But for Loma, this is where they bring their band back from the brink. "It's like a demon enters the room, whenever we get together", writer, singer and instrumentalist Cross says of the struggle to bring new Loma music into the world. Following the release of their 2020 second album Don't Shy Away, Loma's three members were cast around the globe and the band-not for the first time-entered a deep sleep. Multi-instrumentalist and recording engineer Dan Duszynski remained in his studio in Don't Shy Away's central Texas heart, but Cross, a UK citizen, moved to Dorset, and writer and instrumentalist Jonathan Meiburg left the US for Germany to research a book. In the pandemic years, even being in the same room was impossible, and attempts to start a new record faltered.The following winter, in an attempt to salvage the record and the band, Cross suggested they regroup in the UK, in the tiny stone house-once a coffin-maker's workshop-where she works as an end-of-life doula. With minimal recording gear and few instruments, Loma turned two whitewashed rooms into a makeshift studio, using a padded coffin as a vocal booth. It was a turning point. They scrapped much of what they'd made, letting a new place set a new course. The one-lane roads, hedgerows and dark skies of Dorset gave the new songs an ineffable but unmistakable Englishness. The band used the ruin of a 12th-century chapel as a reverb chamber-surprising hillwalkers who peeked in to find them singing to no one-and the sounds of Cross's chilly workshop wormed their way into the recording: a leaky pipe, a drummer's brushes on a metal lampshade, the voices left on an ancient answering machine.What emerged was How Will I Live Without A Body?: a gorgeous, unique, and oddly comforting album about partnership, loss, regeneration, and fighting the feeling that we're all in this alone. Many of its songs have a feeling of restl...

In 2018, Low will turn twenty-five. Since 1993, Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker_the married couple whose heaven-and-earth harmonies have always held the band's center_have pioneered a subgenre, shrugged off its strictures, recorded a Christmas classic, become a magnetic onstage force, and emerged as one of music's most steadfast and vital vehicles for pulling light from our darkest emotional recesses. But Low will not commemorate its first quarter-century with mawkish nostalgia or safe runs through songbook favorites. Instead, in faithfully defiant fashion, Low will release its most brazen, abrasive (and, paradoxically, most empowering) album ever: Double Negative, an unflinching eleven-song quest through snarling static and shattering beats that somehow culminates in the brightest pop song of Low's career. To make Double Negative, Low reenlisted B.J. Burton, the quietly energetic and adventurous producer who has made records with James Blake, Sylvan Esso, and The Tallest Man on Earth in recent years while working as one of the go-to figures at Bon Iver's home studio, April Base. Burton recorded Low's last album, 2015's Ones and Sixes, at April Base, adding might to many of its beats and squelch and frisson beneath many of its melodies. This time, though, Sparhawk, Parker, and bassist Steve Garrington knew they wanted to go further with Burton and his palette of sounds, to see what someone who is, as Sparhawk puts it, "a hip-hop guy" could truly do to their music. Rather than obsessively write and rehearse at home in Duluth, Minnesota, they would often head southeast to Eau Claire, Wisconsin, arriving with sketches and ideas that they would work on for days with Burton. Band and producer became collaborative cowriters, building the pieces up and breaking them down and building them again until their purpose and force felt clear. As the world outside seemed to slide deeper into instability, Low repeated this process for the better part of two years, pondering the results during tours and breaks at home. They considered not only how the fragments fit together but also how, in the United States of 2018, they functioned as statements and salves. Double Negative is, indeed, a record perfectly and painfully suited for our time. Loud and contentious and commanding, Low fights for the world by fighting against it. It begins in pure bedlam, with a beat built from a loop of ruptured noise waging war against the paired voices of Sparhawk and Parker the moment they begin to sing during the massive "Quorum." For forty minutes, they indulge the battle, trying to be heard amid the noisy grain, sometimes winning and sometimes being tossed toward oblivion. In spite of the mounting noise, Sparhawk and Parker still sing. Or maybe they sing because of the noise. For Low, has there ever really been a difference?

Focusing on their craft, staying out of the fray, and holding fast their faith to find new ways to express the discord and delight of being alive, to turn the duality of existence into hymns we can share, Low present HEY What. These ten pieces-each built around their own instantaneous, undeniable hook-are turbocharged by the vivid textures that surround them. The ineffable, familiar harmonies of Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker break through the chaos like a life raft. Layers of distorted sound accrete with each new verse - building, breaking, colossal then restrained, a solemn vow only whispered. There will be time to unravel and attribute meaning to the music and art of these times, but the creative moment looks Forward, with teeth. HEY What is Low's thirteenth full-length release in twenty-seven years, and their third with producer BJ Burton.

When Man Man released its last album, "Dream Hunting in the Valley of the In Between," frontman Honus Honus (née Ryan Kattner) was in a state of unrest, oscillating between hope and cynicism. Perhaps fittingly, the album dropped during the pandemic, a time at which we could all relate. But, much like that bizarre turn of events, the ennui now seems so distant to Man Man. A revived sense of purpose washes through Man Man's new album, Carrot on Strings, radiating a mix of calm and confidence. Kattner always embodied a wild-man pied-piper vibe: his melodic, unhinged art-rock was at once intriguing and angsty. He was so alluringly creative that you went along with it, even if you were never sure where Man Man would take you. Carrot on Strings is no less inventive, but its ethos is radical in context of the band's two-decade career. "When I was younger, I would feed off of chaos. I would, you know, be upset and get drunk and smash chairs," Kattner explains. "Now those chairs are in my head: It's less of an outward projection, more of an interior monologue." The name "Carrot on Strings" came to Kattner while experimenting with the sound of someone munching on the vegetable, which you can hear in the cacophonous, similarly named song. It alludes to how success always seemed to dangle uncertainly before him, often just out of reach. But listen intently and you'll hear a more content Kattner finding an uneasy peace: "Life, as far as I've known it, has always been side hustles. Would it be great if I could go into a studio and record for a year without figuring out how to finance it? Yeah, it would be," he says. "But ultimately, I need to keep making music because art is an extension of my psyche. It's how I have learned to translate the palpitations of my heart. Simply put, I'd go insane without it." Growing up as a multiracial Hapa kid (half Filipino, half white) with a father in the U.S. Air Force, Kattner lived an itinerant childhood that included a few pivotal years in Germany, where he honed in on an appreciati...

Honus Honus (aka Ryan Kattner) has devoted his career to exploring the uncertainty between life's extremes, beauty, and ugliness, order and chaos. The songs on Dream Hunting in the Valley of the In-Between, Man Man's first album in over six years and their Sub Pop debut, are as intimate, soulful, and timeless as they are audaciously inventive and daring, resulting in his best Man Man album to date. The 17-track effort, featuring "Cloud Nein," "Future Peg," "On the Mend" "Sheela," and "Animal Attraction," was produced by Cyrus Ghahremani, mixed by S. Husky Höskulds (Norah Jones, Tom Waits, Mike Patton, Solomon Burke, Bettye LaVette, Allen Toussaint), and mastered by Dave Cooley (Blood Orange, M83, DIIV, Paramore, Snail Mail, clipping). Dream Hunting...also includes guest vocals from Steady Holiday's Dre Babinski on "Future Peg" and "If Only," and Rebecca Black (singer of the viral pop hit, "Friday") on "On The Mend" and "Lonely Beuys." The album follows the release of "Beached" and "Witch," Man Man's contributions to Vol. 4 of the Sub Pop Singles Club in 2019. At the end of 2015, Man Man went on an unexpected hiatus, and thus began a period of creative reinvention for Honus Honus. He worked in music supervision and on scores (The Exorcist, Superdeluxe, Do You Want to See a Dead Body?). He acted in the indie film Woe ("I played a park ranger, a nice guy in a sad movie."), So It Goes, a short musical film with Mary Elizabeth Winstead, and starred in the award-winning tour documentary Use Your Delusion. He also developed an animated series, wrote film scripts, a graphic novel, a neo-noir TV pilot, and briefly penned a music column for The Talkhouse all while continuing to work on new music, such as an unreleased kids' record, another Mister Heavenly album, a self-released Honus Honus record, and a conceptual art/noise project Mega Naturals. In the midst of this surreal exile from Man Man, Honus began piecing together what would become Dream Hunting in the Valley of the In-Between. He recruited longtime-collaborator Cyrus Ghahremani to help him produce. Written in a friend's LA guesthouse that had "an old upright piano, a thrift store lamp, and nothing else," it was an arduous, three-and-a-half-year process, "I had chord progressions that looked like chicken scratch and lyrics on pieces of paper stuck all over the walls. It looked like I was about to break the big case, catch the killer," he says, laughing. "There was a lot of self-doubt, fighting the urge to throw in the towel. It wasn't fun but it definitely forced the best album of my career out of me. Sometimes you just gotta tear it all down to rebuild things the right way. Trust the process."

Honus Honus (aka Ryan Kattner) has devoted his career to exploring the uncertainty between life's extremes, beauty, and ugliness, order and chaos. The songs on Dream Hunting in the Valley of the In-Between, Man Man's first album in over six years and their Sub Pop debut, are as intimate, soulful, and timeless as they are audaciously inventive and daring, resulting in his best Man Man album to date. The 17-track effort, featuring "Cloud Nein," "Future Peg," "On the Mend" "Sheela," and "Animal Attraction," was produced by Cyrus Ghahremani, mixed by S. Husky Höskulds (Norah Jones, Tom Waits, Mike Patton, Solomon Burke, Bettye LaVette, Allen Toussaint), and mastered by Dave Cooley (Blood Orange, M83, DIIV, Paramore, Snail Mail, clipping). Dream Hunting...also includes guest vocals from Steady Holiday's Dre Babinski on "Future Peg" and "If Only," and Rebecca Black (singer of the viral pop hit, "Friday") on "On The Mend" and "Lonely Beuys." The album follows the release of "Beached" and "Witch," Man Man's contributions to Vol. 4 of the Sub Pop Singles Club in 2019. At the end of 2015, Man Man went on an unexpected hiatus, and thus began a period of creative reinvention for Honus Honus. He worked in music supervision and on scores (The Exorcist, Superdeluxe, Do You Want to See a Dead Body?). He acted in the indie film Woe ("I played a park ranger, a nice guy in a sad movie."), So It Goes, a short musical film with Mary Elizabeth Winstead, and starred in the award-winning tour documentary Use Your Delusion. He also developed an animated series, wrote film scripts, a graphic novel, a neo-noir TV pilot, and briefly penned a music column for The Talkhouse all while continuing to work on new music, such as an unreleased kids' record, another Mister Heavenly album, a self-released Honus Honus record, and a conceptual art/noise project Mega Naturals. In the midst of this surreal exile from Man Man, Honus began piecing together what would become Dream Hunting in the Valley of the In-Between. He recruited longtime-collaborator Cyrus Ghahremani to help him produce. Written in a friend's LA guesthouse that had "an old upright piano, a thrift store lamp, and nothing else," it was an arduous, three-and-a-half-year process, "I had chord progressions that looked like chicken scratch and lyrics on pieces of paper stuck all over the walls. It looked like I was about to break the big case, catch the killer," he says, laughing. "There was a lot of self-doubt, fighting the urge to throw in the towel. It wasn't fun but it definitely forced the best album of my career out of me. Sometimes you just gotta tear it all down to rebuild things the right way. Trust the process."

Honus Honus (aka Ryan Kattner) has devoted his career to exploring the uncertainty between life's extremes, beauty, and ugliness, order and chaos. The songs on Dream Hunting in the Valley of the In-Between, Man Man's first album in over six years and their Sub Pop debut, are as intimate, soulful, and timeless as they are audaciously inventive and daring, resulting in his best Man Man album to date. The 17-track effort, featuring "Cloud Nein," "Future Peg," "On the Mend" "Sheela," and "Animal Attraction," was produced by Cyrus Ghahremani, mixed by S. Husky Höskulds (Norah Jones, Tom Waits, Mike Patton, Solomon Burke, Bettye LaVette, Allen Toussaint), and mastered by Dave Cooley (Blood Orange, M83, DIIV, Paramore, Snail Mail, clipping). Dream Hunting...also includes guest vocals from Steady Holiday's Dre Babinski on "Future Peg" and "If Only," and Rebecca Black (singer of the viral pop hit, "Friday") on "On The Mend" and "Lonely Beuys." The album follows the release of "Beached" and "Witch," Man Man's contributions to Vol. 4 of the Sub Pop Singles Club in 2019. At the end of 2015, Man Man went on an unexpected hiatus, and thus began a period of creative reinvention for Honus Honus. He worked in music supervision and on scores (The Exorcist, Superdeluxe, Do You Want to See a Dead Body?). He acted in the indie film Woe ("I played a park ranger, a nice guy in a sad movie."), So It Goes, a short musical film with Mary Elizabeth Winstead, and starred in the award-winning tour documentary Use Your Delusion. He also developed an animated series, wrote film scripts, a graphic novel, a neo-noir TV pilot, and briefly penned a music column for The Talkhouse all while continuing to work on new music, such as an unreleased kids' record, another Mister Heavenly album, a self-released Honus Honus record, and a conceptual art/noise project Mega Naturals. In the midst of this surreal exile from Man Man, Honus began piecing together what would become Dream Hunting in the Valley of the In-Between. He recruited longtime-collaborator Cyrus Ghahremani to help him produce. Written in a friend's LA guesthouse that had "an old upright piano, a thrift store lamp, and nothing else," it was an arduous, three-and-a-half-year process, "I had chord progressions that looked like chicken scratch and lyrics on pieces of paper stuck all over the walls. It looked like I was about to break the big case, catch the killer," he says, laughing. "There was a lot of self-doubt, fighting the urge to throw in the towel. It wasn't fun but it definitely forced the best album of my career out of me. Sometimes you just gotta tear it all down to rebuild things the right way. Trust the process."

Field Songs is the fifth solo album by Mark Lanegan, released in 2001. Aside from its
inclusion in the now out of print box set one Way Street' this is the albums first time on
vinyl.

"Change is inevitable if you're lucky," says guitarist/vocalist Alex Edkins while talking about Atlas Vending, the fourth full-length album by Toronto's Metz. "Our goal is to remain in flux, to grow in a natural and gradual way. We've always been wary to not overthink or intellectualize the music we love but also not satisfied until we've accomplished something that pushes us forward." The music made by Edkins and his compatriots Hayden Menzies (drums) and Chris Slorach (bass) has always been a little difficult to pin down. Their earliest recordings contained nods to the teeming energy of early '90s DIY hardcore, the aggravated angularities of This Heat, and the noisy riffing of AmRep's quintessential guitar manglers, but there was never a moment where Metz sounded like they were paying tribute to the heroes of their youth. If anything, the sonic trajectory of their albums captured the journey of a band shedding influences and digging deeper into their fundamental core-steady propulsive drums, chest-thumping bass lines, bloody-fingered guitar riffs, the howling angst of our fading innocence. With Atlas Vending, Metz not only continues to push their music into new territories of dynamics, crooked melodies, and sweat-drenched rhythms, they explore the theme of growing up and maturing within a format typically suspended in youth. Covering seemingly disparate themes such as paternity, crushing social anxiety, addiction, isolation, media-induced paranoia, and the restless urge to leave everything behind, each of Atlas Vending's ten songs offer a snapshot of today's modern condition and together form a musical and narrative whole. The song sequencing follows a cradle-to-grave trajectory, spanning from primitive origins through increasingly nuanced and turbulent peaks and valleys all the way to the climactic closer, "A Boat to Drown In." The lyrics speak to this arc as well, with the songs addressing life's struggles all the way through to death, as Edkins snarls "crashed through the pearly gates and opened up my eyes, I can see it now" before the band launches into the album's cascading outro. While past Metz albums thrived on an abrasive relentlessness, the trio embarked on Atlas Vending with the goal to make a more patient and honest record-something that invited repeated listens rather than a few exhilarating bludgeonings. It's as if the band realized they were in it for the long haul, and their music could serve as a constant as they navigated life's trials and tribulations. The result is a record that sounds massive, articulate, and earnest. Bolstered by the co-production of Ben Greenberg (Uniform) and the engineering and mixing skills of Seth Manchester (Daughters, Lingua Ignota, The Body) at Machines with Magnets in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, Metz deliver the most dynamic, dimensional, and compelling work of their career.

This Sub Pop Loser edition is clear vinyl LP plus 7" including bonus tracks.METZ, our own widely-adored and delightfully noisy 3-piece punk band from Toronto (ON, CANADA), have been laying waste to stages around the globe for over 10 years. During that tumultuous chunk of time METZ, comprised of Alex Edkins, Hayden Menzies, and Chris Slorach, have cemented their reputation as one of the planet's most exhilarating live acts and trusted providers of bombastic outsider rock. Along the way, they've earned enthusiastic support from The New Yorker, Mojo, NPR, The New York Times, KEXP, Pitchfork, Stereogum, The AV Club, Q, Uncut, Exclaim, and a bunch of others. Referring to the trio's tireless tour regime and unquenchable thirst to bring their music to the people, John Reis (Hot Snakes, RFTC, Drive Like Jehu) once said, "your ambition is really unflattering, chill out." They did not listen. In...

Written and recorded in 2014, after two years of constant touring behind their rightly-adored, self-titled debut, II is METZ at their most true to form-as pure an expression of what they do as can currently be committed to tape.

The guitars are titanic, the drums ill-tempered, the vocals chilling, and the volume worrisome.

II is the sound of an already monstrous band improving in both subtle and terrifying ways.

With time, we come to understand the way the joy of connection is mirrored by the void of loss, how the constancy of love is matched only by the impermanence of life, the simple idea that we could not create light if we did not risk the dark - we'd never need to. So it is with Metz, a band once known for blowing out eardrums with songs of joyous rage who have, over their past few records, begun exploring ways to turn abrasiveness into atmospherics, the evolution of their sound not only a reflection of the maturing of the band themselves but also of a changed world that demands nuance and compassion to comprehend and to survive. It was a journey already underway on 2020's Atlas Vending, but one that reaches new heights on Up On Gravity Hill, where the Canadian trio creates a kaleidoscopic sonic world as tender as it is dark, aided once again by engineer Seth Manchester (Mdou Moctar, Lingua Ignota, Battles, The Body). Deep, detailed, and unyieldingly personal, it is not only Metz's most powerful record to date but also their most beautiful. Still three punks from Ontario at heart, guitarist and vocalist Alex Edkins, drummer Hayden Menzies, and bassist Chris Slorach waste no time as opener "No Reservation/Love Comes Crashing" sweeps in like a wave, sonically and thematically setting the scene for the record to come. A dynamic song about feeling suspended in stasis, layers of dissonance melt into a restlessly heady outro marked by escalating crescendos of shimmering noise that reach for the stars - and is that a violin quivering brightly beneath those elegant swells of guitar, those charging drum fills, those intricate bass lines? It is indeed, courtesy of composer Owen Pallett; his presence an immediate indicator that Metz are thinking more cinematically than ever before. The change is partially inspired by Edkins' work as a scorer for film and television and his pop-leaning solo project, Weird Nightmare, where, he says, he learned to write more intuitively, letting his emotions lead the way. But make no mistake: Up On Gravity Hill is a total band effort, the work of three musicians who have been playing together for over a decade, with all the trust that entails. For those who believe in the power of the rock band to exemplify the highest resonance of human connection, there is much on Up On Gravity Hill to lift the spirit, a puzzle worth repeated listening to unlock or just to get lost in again and again. Rather than the music being flattened into a single plane, the band explores "the space above the cymbals," resulting in some of the most spacious, sympathetic, and accessible songs - could we call them pop? - of their career. If this seems contradictory, well, Metz has always been something of a contradiction. "We've never been heavy enough for metal or hardcore purists, but we're way too heavy for indie rock. We just don't have a lane - and that's okay. We exist outside the lines of delineation. I think this record is even more like that," says Edkins.

This is the new album by Mike And The Melvins. It was supposed to come out sixteen years ago. Whatever the reasons, these recordings, unfinished since 1999, languished on a shelf until 2015, when much to everyone's surprise, the involved parties reconvened, finished the damn thing, & delivered it post-haste to Sub Pop HQ. MIKE's (Godheadsilo) signature bass crunch & vocals are all over it & The Melvins are in fine form

Limited white vinyl edition.

This Sub Pop Loser Edition is light blue Colored Vinyl! Moaning is a band defined by its duality. The abrasive post-punk trio comprised of LA DIY veterans, Sean Solomon, Pascal Stevenson, and Andrew MacKelvie, began nearly a decade after the three started playing music together. Their impassioned debut album comes born out of the member's experiences with love and distress, creating a sound uniquely dark and sincere. Although the band is just breaking out of their infancy, Moaning's sleek and cavernous tone emphasizes the turmoil of the era they were born into. One where the endless possibility for art and creation is met with the fear and doubt of an uncertain future. Solomon, Stevenson, and MacKelvie initially met as teenagers while growing up in the San Fernando Valley, and immediately developed a kinship through Los Angeles's local music scene. The three began regularly frequenting DIY institutions like The Smell and Pehrspace, eventually selling out dozens of their own shows at both venues with their first few bands. Moaning's conception came when Solomon sent Stevenson and MacKelvie the first demo for "Don't Go," setting the tone for the impulsive songwriting that would follow. The three fleshed out Solomon's primitive recordings, adding in MacKelvie's heavy syncopated drumming, and Stevenson's melodic driving bass and synth parts, capturing each member's personality in their sparse and fuzzed out tracks. Like many of their previous collaborative projects, Moaning forces pain up against pleasure, using the complexity of personal heart break to inform the band's conflicted sound. The band chose the moniker Moaning, admiring the ambiguity the name held, and hoping to reference both an intimate wail and an anguished scream. The band's homemade video for an early, home-recorded version of "The Same" caught the attention of Alex Newport, a seasoned engineer and producer who had previously worked with At The Drive-In, Bloc Party, and the Melvins. With Newport, Moaning began working on the tracks that would make up their self-titled release, employing a lush, open ended production quality that had never been at the band's disposal. Tracks like "Artificial" stand out among the recordings, where Moaning used the studio's recourses to take their frantic live arrangement and give it the intensity merited by Solomon's lyrics. As a whole, Moaning drifts from sentimental to catastrophic, hiding meek and introspective lyrics within powerful droning dance songs, giving sonic nods to some of the band's musical heroes like, New Order, Broadcast, and Slowdive. The band's youthful attitude is met with the weight of topics like loss, routine, and mental health, reflecting the anxiety towards the status quo that much of their generation faces today. Where many young bands take years to find their footing as writers and performers, Moaning has built up a confidence in sound and vision from the ten years of playing basements, bars, and ballrooms together in their previous projects. Yet, even with their polished exterior, Moaning continues to make the sacrifice of deeply personal anecdotes and emotions to their audience for the benefit of their craft.

What happens when an abrasive rock trio trades guitars for synths, cranks up the beats and leans into the everyday anxieties of simply being a functioning human in the 21st century? The answer is Uneasy Laughter, the sensational second Sub Pop release from Los Angeles-based Moaning. Vocalist/guitarist Sean Solomon, bassist/keyboardist Pascal Stevenson and drummer Andrew MacKelvie have been friends and co-conspirators amid the fertile L.A. DIY scene for more than a decade. They are also immersed in other creative pursuits - Solomon is a noted illustrator, art director and animator, while Stevenson and MacKelvie have played or worked behind the boards with acts such as Cherry Glazerr, Sasami and Surf Curse. On Uneasy Laughter, they've tackled challenges both personal and universal the only way they know how: by talking about how they're feeling and channeling those emotions directly into their music. "We've known each other forever and we're really comfortable trying to express where we're at. A lot of bands aren't so close," says MacKelvie. Adds Solomon, who celebrated a year of sobriety during the Uneasy Laughter sessions, "Men are conditioned not to be vulnerable or admit they're wrong. But I wanted to talk openly about my feelings and mistakes I've made." Moaning's 2018's self-titled Sub Pop debut featured songs mostly written in practice or brought in already complete by individual band members. It garnered acclaim from Pitchfork, Stereogum and Los Angeles Times, who observed, "Moaning craft anxious music for an increasingly nervous local scene." But Uneasy Laughter is a collaborative breakthrough which significantly brightens Moaning's once claustrophobic sound, again abetted by producer/engineer Alex Newport (At The Drive-In, Bloc Party, Melvins). The trio points to first single "Ego," which features a costume-heavy video directed by Ambar Navarro, as an embodiment of this evolution. Solomon admits Uneasy Laughter could have gone in quite another direction had he not gotten sober and educated himself on such core subjects as gender and mental health. "I did a lot of reading in the tour van - authors like bell hooks, Mark Fisher, and Alain de Botton, all really inspired me. I don't want to be the person who influences young people to go get high and become cliche tragic artists," he says. "What I'd rather convey to people is that they're not alone in what they think and how they feel. 'Ego' specifically and the album overall is about those themes - letting go of your bullshit so you can help other people and be present." "We want to be part of a community," he adds. "I wrote online about being sober for a year, and I had kids from all over writing and asking for advice. One of them said, 'For the first time I can remember, I didn't drink last night.' I thought, for once, maybe we did something besides sell a record. That's a win. That's incredibly exciting."

This 10 song collection is a home-fi construction with a more subtle, brain-tickling character than its predecessor & somewhat reflects a realist take on the flower power fantasy of 1967

- Classic 1991 Album Remastered And Expanded With Rare And Previously Unreleased Tracks.- Extensive Liner Notes By Band Biographer Keith Cameron.- Album Is Considered A Landmark Of The Grunge Era.- Gatefold Jacket With Custom Dust Sleeves And Poster- Black Vinyl Pressing //By Going Back To Basics With Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge, Mudhoney Flipped Conventional Wisdom. Not For The First Time - Or The Last - They Would Be Vindicated. A Month After Release In July 1991, The Album Entered The Uk Album Chart At Number 34 (Five Weeks Later, Nirvana's Nevermind Entered At 36) And Went On To Sell 75,000 Copies Worldwide. A More Meaningful Measure Of Success, However, Lay In Its Revitalisation Of The Band, Casting A Touchstone For The Future. The Record Is A Major Chapter In Mudhoney's Ongoing Story, The Moral Of Which Has To Be: When In Doubt, Fudge It. The Album Began At Music Source Studio, A Large Space Equipped With A 24-Track Mixing Board - Downright Futuristic, Compared To The 8-Track Setup That Birthed The Band's Catalytic 1988 Debut, "Touch Me I'm Sick." The Music Source Session Quickly Turned Into A False Start When The Results, In Guitarist Steve Turner's Words, "Sounded A Little Too Fancy, Too Clean." Lesson Learned, The Band Went Primitive And Got To Work At Conrad Uno's 8-Track Setup At Egg Studio. Named After The Cartons Pasted On The Walls In An Optimistic Attempt At Sound-Proofing, Egg Boasted A '60s Vintage 8-Track Spectra Sonics Recording Console, Originally Built For Stax In Memphis. So It Was That, In The Spring Of 1991, Mudhoney Made Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge. The Resulting Album Is A Whirlwind Of The Band's Influences At The Time: The Fierce '60s Garage Rock Of Their Pacific Northwest Predecessors The Sonics And The Lollipop Shoppe, The Gnashing Post-Hardcore Of Drunks With Guns, The Heavy Guitar Moods Of Neil Young, The Lysergic Workouts Of Spacemen 3 And Hawkwind, The Gloomy Existentialism Of Zounds, And The Satirical Ferocity Of '80s Hardcore Punk. The Quartet's Special Alc...