Indierock | Alternative Tape Sale 30 Items

Cashier is a band from Lafayette, LA that plays a washed out, fuzzy blend of shoegaze & indie rock. This two song cassette captures a unique ebb and flow between sonic intensity and harrowing urgency with melancholic flare and a DIY attitude.

This listing is for a cassette copy of Big Sonic Chill by Sparkler on a blue & green glitter cassette.

Sparkler is a four-piece shoegaze band from San Diego, CA. Drawing influences from the 90's shoegaze movement and harnessing sounds that span from growling distortion to massive swirling textures, Sparkler gives classic shoegaze a new line on life with a modern twist of all natural lemon and lime flavors. The songs cut through the modern take on shoegaze and dig back into the roots where it all began.

There is an entire sub-genre of poetry devoted to rivers and their persistent, meditative flow. Emily Dickinson's ''My River Runs to Thee'' compares them to the cycle of life, while Alfred Tennyson's ''The Brook'' deems them eternal and Kathleen Raine's ''The River'' muses on the dream-state they evoke. For transcendent folk-pop artist Shannon Lay, the river is all of the above: It's the metaphor driving her latest album, the exquisitely uplifting August, which doubles as an aural baptism renewing her purpose for making music. ''I always picture music as this river. Everyone's throwing things into this river, it's a place you can go to and feed off of that energy,'' she says, ''and feel nourished by the fact that so many people are feeling what you're feeling. It's this beautiful exchange.'' The album's name, August, refers to the month in 2017 when Lay quit her day job and fully gave herself over to music. This was her liberation as an artist, and the album is devoted to paying that forward to her listeners. Lay may be the most chilled-out artist you'll ever meet. Despite fronting her tranquil solo act and being a guitarist/singer in the indie-rock band Feels, she never pressures herself to overachieve. Nonetheless, she regularly does: in a glowing review, Pitchfork anointed her last album, Living Water, ''captivating.'' With her life devoted to music, Lay often spends hours a day simply playing the guitar, challenging herself to become better. ''It just feels so good, doing something that is so much bigger than myself. I think so much of music is that, realizing that it's coming from something beyond and you are just the messenger'' says Lay, who took guitar lessons at age 13, which introduced her to Neil Young and The Beatles. After high school, she moved from Redondo Beach, Calif., to Hollywood and joined an indie-rock band. ''It was an energy I needed to release,'' she says. The exact type of energy may have changed, but her drive hasn't. August was mostly written in three months, during Lay's first solo tour for Living Water. ''For the most part, all of the songs were just guitar and voice,'' she says. In keeping with the humbled, contemplative nature of August, most tracks clock-in at three minutes or less. She saved indulgence for the production. ''Some songs as they were had this room to grow,'' says Lay, who recorded the album with her longtime friend, musician Ty Segall at his home studio on the East Side. ''I believe whoever you record with tends to affect the mood of music and Ty really brought this jovial sense that I hadn't really explored yet,'' she says. Also in the mix is Mikal Cronin, who played saxophone on the album's opener, ''Death Up Close.'' ''A lot of my friends who are really tough have admitted that they shed a tear when they hear my songs, and I think that really speaks to the visceral aspect of folk music,'' Lay says. ''It's this ancient form of expressing yourself.'' Think of August as a warm hug for your psyche. ''I want to create as much music as I can,'' she says, ''and leave this spot by the river where people can go sit and enjoy.''

Hear Current Joys tear through a live set of fan favorites recorded last winter at Kilby Court in Salt Lake City, Utah. This 14 track set is the first time one of Current Joys' visceral live performances has been captured for vinyl and released digitally online. The four-piece plays full-band arrangements of Current Joys classics like "Blondie" "Kids" and "My Motorcycle" as well as a new unreleased track "Altered States."Recorded February 22, 2019, at Kilby Court in Salt Lake City, UtahGuitar & Vocals: Nick RattiganKeys & Vocals: Maddy BoydBass: Aaron JassenoffDrums: Jackson Katz"Current Joys (and its former incarnation TELE/VISIONS) is the quiet and affecting solo project of Nick Rattigan (...) You can affix it with any number of labels - minimalist bedroom pop, spare indie balladry - but whatever the assignation, the music is devastatingly pure. (...) Current Joys is the rare project that manages to transcend its simplistic trappings and achieve something like musical grace. " [Alex McLevy] - AV Club "Nick Rattigan sings and plays drums in the surf-rock band Surf Curse, but he's been doing more and more with the solo bedroom pop songs he writes under the name Current Joys. Propelled by sinewy guitar lines and sweeping synths, songs like "Fear" reflect on the underbelly of modern life without resorting to self-pity. " [Stephen Thomson] - NPR Music

Stone Temple Pilots live at the Centrum, Worcester, MA on August 22nd 1994. Taken aback by the huge success of their 1992 debut album, Core, and drained by the heavy touring that ensued, this San Diego band almost fell apart before recording its follow-up, Purple. Issued in June 1994, it debuted at #1 in America, cementing their star status. This superb concert was broadcast on syndicated radio two months later, and captures the quartet at the height of their powers, before singer Scott Weilands drug problems derailed them.

Sorrow Wave duo BRING HER return with their second LP and first album since 2019, Comfort In The Shame. Based out of Pittsburgh, BRING HER play a distinctive brand of somber darkwave, defined by haunting and magnetic vocals over pounding and obsessive drum machines, penetrating guitar chords, and eerie and harrowing synths. Using DIY recording methods coupled with sound shaping, heavy layering, and meticulous editing the new album sees the two-piece at a new height, adding to the urgency and crushing weight of their already brooding sound. Elements almost industrial in nature shine through these 10 new tracks, yet the duo stays as gloomy and dismal as the self-described Sorrow Wave moniker implies.

Moments of eternity: the first plucks at the strings, a bass note cementing the drift into place a little more than a minute in. The organ drones, iterating unrelivable ancient history, a chiming note of the church. Guitars strings, climbing that stairway to heaven. Gossamer-light when viewed from a distance; up close, the gears grind with a visceral physicality. With Bcmc, Cooper Crain and Bill MacKay unite to create Foreign Smokes: provocalogues, equal parts avant-garde noir and fire-and-icy jams to recall bright shades and warm stretches of infinity drawn through the buzzy overdrive of this side of life"s strange and sunny days. Cooper"s organ and synths and Bill"s guitar draw songs from spontaneous statements and elegiac scraps, floating closer, then farther, and closer again to the sounds of the other. Starting with a melody, as set of progressions or even as little as a scale or just a key, gives room for either one of "em to take the lead, depending on where they are or are going at any given time. The reigning motif most often seems to be, to melt and wind around each other"s sound, part of a singular undulation, handed back and forth, a slowly emerging trip up into and through an ideal of exuberance.

Experimental And Improvisational Psychedelic Rock, For Fans Of White Heaven, Les Rallizes Denudes, Headroom, Düngen, Heron Oblivion, Comets On Fire, The Renderers, Bardo Pond. Mountain Movers Arguably Are The Perfect Band For All The True "Heads" Out There. The New Haven Quartet Have Been At It For 15 Years, And The "Newest" Lineup (Now At It For Well Over A Decade; Vocalist/Guitarist Dan Greene, Bassist Rick Omonte, Guitarist Kryssi Battalene And Drummer Ross Menze) Have Firmlygrasped What It Takes To Fry Brains; Achingly Beautiful Melodies Buoyed By A Life Raft Of White-Hot Guitar Scree And Mind-Melting Feedback. "World What World" Is The Band's Eighth Album And Third For Trouble In Mind Records. "World What World" Is The Newest Chapter Of The Group's Continued Explorationsand Efforts To Refine Their Sound. The Lyrics Of "World What World"S Songs All Imply A Protagonist On A Quest; The Title Itself Is An Implied Query With No Question Mark; Is It A Question, Or A Statement?. The One-Two Punch Of Opener "I Wanna See The Sun" And "Final Sunset" Lay Out What's In Store; Crazy Horse-Inspired Sandpaper Melodies Sit Comfortably Next To Improvised, Psf-Influenced Six-String Ragers. The Group Performs Together Effortlessly And Telepathically, Subverting The Loud/Quiet/Loud Dynamic That Has Saturated Independent Music Since The Late-Eighties. The Loud Parts And Quiet Parts Are Like Waves; Indistinguishable From Each Other, Creating A Fluid Dynamism And Intensity That Swallows The Listener Up Inits Current, Sweeping It Toward Oblivion. Hyperbole, You Say? Watch Out For Midway Through "Then The Moon" When The Tune's Lilting Waltz Pivots Into A Casually Blistering Solo By Battalene Before Fading Into The Melancholic "Haunted Eyes" -Beckoning You With A Mournful Sidelong Glance. Side Two Opens With "Staggering With A Lantern", An Elegant, Lumbering Instrumental Improvisation Again Showcasing The Synergistic Shredding Of The Group's Guitarists. The Sticky Lyrical Hooks And Sideways Jangle Of "Way Back To The World...

The first word of the album says it all: 'Bang!' On their new album Midnight In A Moonless Dream the Buttertones dig deep and discover something dark. Where their previous album Gravedigging played like the soundtrack of a good spaghetti-western heist movie, Midnight moves to the dark cityscapes of '70s New York and tells the story itself - a perfect and intricate crime executed by a crew of professionals under cover of night, a biting sound befitting of CBGB's while staying true to their LA roots. There are echoes of Suicide and Bauhaus, nods to the spirit of sax and violence that powered the Deadbeats. Midnight is music made for dancers but also for doomed romancers that will appeal to fans of The Cramps, The Gun Club, Car Seat Headrest, Black Lips, King Tuff, Thee Oh Sees, Ty Segall, and Parquet Courts.

"Smashing Pumpkins Live Riviera Chicago 95" captures a live performance by the alternative rock band The Smashing Pumpkins at the Riviera Theater in Chicago in 1995. Known for their distinctive sound, emotional intensity, and captivating live shows, The Smashing Pumpkins' concerts were an essential part of their musical legacy.The setlist for the album showcases a mix of tracks from different albums, highlighting the band's range and their ability to transition between melodic and intense moments.

The tenth studio album by Bjork on cassette tape.

each album always starts with a feeling
that i try to shape into sound
the feeling was landing
( after my last album utopia which was all island in the clouds element air and no bass )
on the earth and digging my feet into the ground
it was also woven into how i experienced the "now"
this time around 7 billion of us did it together
nesting in our homes quarantining
being long enough in one place that we shot down roots
my new album "fossora" is about that
it is a word i made up
it is the feminine of fossore ( digger, delver, ditcher )
so in short it means "she who digs" ( into the ground )
so sonically it is about bass , heavy bottom-end ,
we have 6 bass clarinets and punchy sub
i would like to especially thank bergur þórisson and heba kadry
and side project , el guincho , hamrahlíð choir , soraya nayyar , clarinet sextet murmuri , siggi string quartet ensemble , emilie nicolas , serpentwithfeet
viibra and last but not least : sindri and dóa .
visuals were made by viðar logi , james merry , m/m , nick knight , andy huang , edda , isshehungry , tomi , sayaka , sunna , sara and heimir
and my ever so loyal and magnificent team : derek , rosamary , catherine , chiara , hilma and móa

After decades on the road and the never-ending hustle of life as an artist, Lou Barlow has tapped into a new confidence in the chaos. In 2021, the concept of balance feels particularly intimidating. Now more than ever, it's clear life isn't just leveling out a pair of responsibilities. Instead, we're chasing after a flock of different ideals with a butterfly net. On Barlow's new solo album, Reason to Live, he has come to an understanding of that swirl rather than trying to contain it. As a long-time indie legend, Barlow has found a life akin to a middle-class musician. In recent years, he's moved from Los Angeles back to Massachusetts, where he lives with his wife and three kids. And yet rather than settle into a comfortable malaise or yearn for the open road, Barlow's strengthened urgency finds a way to merge the two instincts. Reason to Live is shambolic and grand yet intimate and doting, warmly acoustic and crackling with grit. "I had been struggling for a way to connect both my home life and my recorded life, but this record is the first time I've integrated that," Barlow says. By folding the many facets of his life into one package, Reason to Live radiates with a renewed balance and calm. That comfort in complexity shines through even in the recording process, with select songs having origins in decades past and others written in the early stages of 2020. The multitude of whirring messages of Reason to Live are united by Barlow's roiling multilayered arrangements and the understanding that change is inevitable - and that it can bring you a new reason to live in the darkest times. "This album is me really opening up, and the album follows that through its many different themes," he says. "Some of my other work could be almost claustrophobic in its insistence on being all tied together but there's space for people to live inside these songs." After albums with Sebadoh, Dinosaur Jr., Folk Implosion, and under his own name, listeners may have felt they knew the construction of a Barlow song, even that they knew Barlow himself. "People have this vision of me as this heartbroken, depressed guy, but this record feels so true to who I am, to this rich life I now have full of people I love," he says. "The songs culminated over the last five years to show that music has returned to its central comforting role in my life. Now I'm home."

Video Age's third album pairs neon-bright 80s pop melodies with a vast range of influences (including Janet Jackson, David Bowie, and Paul McCartney) to create an optimistic sound all their own. The influences vary song to song, but they're all tinted with the same rosy hue, and Singer and multi-instrumentalist Ross Farbe says, "I'm often trying to create a more idealized version of the world I'm in." Video Age's first two albums were about loneliness and discovering oneself, but Pleasure Line takes on a whole new attitude, considering both Ross and songwriting partner Ray Micarelli are getting married this year. "We're feeling the love," Ray says, laughing. But these aren't expressions of one-dimensional puppy love-this is euphoria with depth, ecstasy with complications. Darkness is always lurking somewhere beneath happiness, but in the Video Age, even melancholy sounds like something you can dance to. Ray and Ross share a love for dancefloor hits. Experimentation and play is crucial to their approach, as is collaboration. Joined by band members and multi-instrumentalists Nick Corson and Duncan Troast, Video Age recorded the album together in Ross' New Orleans home studio. Pleasure Line is a salve that protects against cynicism-listening to this album, you can't help but feel the world around you is full of romantic potential.

Tasha's Second Album, Tell Me What You Miss The Most Mingles Pockets Of Introspection With Wide, Expansive, Marveling At What's Yet To Come. Born And Raised In Chicago, Tasha Is A Musician Who Writes Songs That Take Loving And Longing Seriously. Whether Dwelling In The Sad Thrum Of An Impending Break Up Or The Dizzying, Heart Thumping Waltz Of New Infatuation, Here Is An Album That Traces One Artist's Relationship To Herself In Love. Full Of Deep, Invigorating Inhales And Relieved, Joyful Exhales, Tell Me What You Miss The Most Is An Exquisitely Crafted Breath Of Much Needed Air.Tell Me What You Miss The Most Isn't Just A Catalogue Of Tenderness - It's Also A Showcase Of Tasha's Growing And Formidable Musicianship.For Fans Of Julia Jacklin, Molly Burch, Orion Sun, Lucy Dacus.

Song In The Air is Elliott’s third fulllength album. But for all of its beauty, energy, and human spirit, Song In The Air is not Elliott’s moment of finding “the answer.” What we have is a record that shows us the value of the moment of asking the question...of looking at a thing and figuring on it. Elliott’s songs glow, spiral around, get messed up, come back home, get really sad, get worked up, fight against melancholy, are pissed off... they are “alive.” Song In The Air is the first record that Elliott made with the addition of Benny Clark on guitar and Jason Skaggs on bass.

La La Land doubles down on the intricate proggy-pop displayed on Guided By Voices’s last album Tremblers And Goggles By Rank. On a hot streak of critical acclaim, Robert Pollard continues expanding his songwriting towards extremes of prettiness, heaviness and poeticism. As always, unforgettable hooks are everywhere. But with thsi latest, it seems Pollard is playing with the extremes of his abilities as a songwriter, emboldened by the power of this lineup now on their fourteenth album together since 2017. The prettiest stuff is prettier than ever (“Queen Of Spaces”) and odder, more complex songs like “Slowly On The Wheel” combine minimalism, whimsy, and cinematic inclinations. There are the exquisite power pop bangers that fans come to expect like “Ballroom Etiquette” and “Pockets.” Tracks like “Instinct Dwelling” and “Caution Song” effortlessly display a cranked-up weight and complexity most bands could never muster. Celebrating forty years in 2023 with their thirty-eighth album, GBV has lately been garnering rave reviews from Rolling Stone, Stereogum, Brooklyn Vegan, Uncut, Mojo, Shindig, Paste, Popmatters, The Quietus and many more.

Originally released in 2019, Tapes Not Dead Vol.2 is getting a UV reissue! Featuring bands that release their music on cassette which include Juliana Hatfield, Antarctigo Vespucci, Culture Shock, Thelma and the Sleaze, Warm Drag, Clown Sounds, The Bobby Lees, The Advertisers, Gymshorts, The Loving Paupers, Dragon inn 3, The Prize Fighters, Jumpstarted Plowhards, Mount Sharp, Shellshag, Adult Magic, Glasses, Worlds Fair, Living Room & Tanya Donelly.

7" and Tape in Gold or Silver with Poster, Postcard and five Poodle Pins. Destiny decides - golden edition comes with autgraphed postcard. Good luck!

The newest longplayer from Tio'tiá:ke/Montreal staple Cedric Noel lands with a stunning sense of surety and self. Hang Time stands as a high water mark for a songwriter who's spent the past decade quietly expanding the borders of his music. Longtime fans will recognize the fluid elements of the album's open-ended rock formations: reflective strumming, soaring choruses, searing guitar lines, subtle bass grooves; all occasionally dissolving into pools of pure ambience. New listeners will find surprises throughout: threads of folk pop, ambient and sound collage fasten the foundations of this expressive whole. However, what's most striking on Hang Time is Noel's newfound sense of voice, both literal and metaphorical. Written primarily in 2017-18 during an intense period of self-reflection, this collection of songs finds Noel wrestling profoundly with his sense of identity, self and place. Born in Niger, adopted by Canadian and Mozambican/Belgian parents, he spent his youth moving around the globe with his adoptive, multi-racial family, eventually landing in Fredericton, Canada for university. While studying, Noel embedded himself in a predominantly white indie rock community that left him feeling, as a Black man, both seen and unseen in complicated ways; both welcome and not. This tension would follow Noel through a move to Montreal in 2016 wherein he found himself again moving within predominantly white music communities. This (dis)placement would encourage Noel to find respite in Ottawa, holed up temporarily in a family home, studying the pieces of himself and putting them to place in music. Listening to Hang Time, one can feel the tensions of this process being held and released, as if being allowed to breathe for the first time: forms open and close, surfaces are seen through, feelings go supernova. The album's material was captured faithfully at The Pines, a beloved downtown Montreal studio whose doors shuttered shortly after amidst the strain of the pandemic. Noel worked closely and patiently with friend and engineer Steve Newton, ensuring the songs had the time and space needed to come fully to fruition. Hang Time features subtle rhythm work from drummer Liam O'Neill (suuns) and guest spots from Brigitte Naggar (Common Holly), Ella Williams (Squirrel Flower) and Tim Crabtree (Paper Beat Scissors) among others.

Access, The Second Album By Major Murphy, Is An Album Born Out Of Being At A Crossroads. It's Also, Without Question, An Album To Blast At An Unruly Volume To Soundtrack An Experience Onemight Have Standing At That Crossroads. It's Remarkably Cohesive - A Striking Relic In An Age Where Ardent And True"Album-Making" Is A Fading Art Form - Full Of Heavy Rock'n'roll Sounds And Textured Atmospheres Fused Withpro-Idea, Hyper-Creative Jittery Warmth. In Nine Songs, It Somehow Takes A Listener Backwards And Forwards Atonce, Reckoning With Intrinsic Anxieties While Conceptualizing A Fantastical And Vibrant Happening, Soothing In Itsfamilia Familiar, Occasionally Childlike Tone.Behind The Sturdy And Poetic Architecture Lies A Story Of New Parents, Navigating Uncertainty And Seeking A Senseof Agency In The New Unknown. Throughout Access, Songwriter Jacob Bullard Recounts Memories Of Teaching Hisyoung Son To Breathe Through His Nose And Laments Missing His Son And His Partner And Bandmate Jacki Warren.On "In The Meantime", Bullard Expresses The Timeless Anxiety Of Recent Parenthood, Written In The Wake Of Theterrifying Experience Of Their Son Suffering From Lead Poisoning. While The Title Track "Access" Is As Much Apersonal Plea For Patience And Humility...

Waking the Dreaming Body is the follow-up to Tucson artist Karima Walker's 2017 standout album Hands In Our Names, which garnered praise from Pitchfork, Mojo, and Bandcamp. The album includes dense harmonic arrangements of synthesizer, guitar, piano, percussion, field recordings, tape loops and Karima's dulcet singing voice. The final result is a 40-minute dream-narrative of her conscious and subconscious minds that oscillates between the rich textures of her ambient work and the melody and poetry of her melancholic, Americana-tinged songwriting, their ebb and flow recalling liminal states of half-sleep where images and emotions are recalled and forecasted from the previous night's dreams. Night falls in regular intervals throughout the album, forming a natural dialogue between waking and dreaming.

Colleen Green Has Always Been Cool, But On 2015's I Want To Grow Up, She Didn't Necessarily Feel It. Too Young To Be Free Of Insecurities But Old Enough To Be Sick Of Them Running Her Life, Green Was Experiencing An Existential Crisis. Five Years And A New Album Later, We Find Her Parsing Out What It Means To Be Grown-Up-And Realizing That It's Actually Pretty Cool. Opener "Someone Else" Is A Paean To Power In Which Green Lets A Lover Know That Double Standards Can Go Both Ways. A Groovy Bass Loop And Zig-Zagging Guitar Lines Underscore Her Realization That Happiness Is In Her Own Hands, And The Vibe Is Set. Next Up Is The Witty, Catchy "I Wanna Be A Dog," Where Green Celebrates The Simplicity Of A Canine Life And Questions Why She's Still Overcomplicating Her Own. Dark And Slinky "Highway" Uses Ruthless Driving As A Metaphor For A Lifestyle That No Longer Interests Her. Burnt Out On Bad Feelings And Ready To Have Fun With Melodies And Beats, Green Enlisted Producer Gordon Raphael (The Strokes) To Take Her Songs To Higher Ground While Keeping Her Lo-Fi Aesthetic Intact. Raphael Was Already A Fan, Having Caught A Show In L.A. And Finding Himself "Struck By How Confident And Powerful She Looked, Even Though She Was The Only One Onstage." He Agreed To Take The Gig, And Together With Drummer Brendan Eder And Hip Hop Producer Aqua Over A Few Weeks In Los Angeles, Cool Was Created. The Album's Themes Come Together On The Anthemic "It's Nice To Be Nice," Green's Reminder To Herself That You Get What You Give, So It's Important To Try And Be The Best Person You Can-A Hard-Won But Essential Lesson In The Emotional Maturity That Defines Cool.

What Do We Do Now is the fifth solo studio LP recorded by J Mascis since 1996. This is obviously not a very aggressive release schedule, but when you figure in the live albums, guest spots, and records done with his various other bands (Dinosaur Jr., The Fog, Heavy Blanket, Witch, Sweet Apple, and so on), well, to paraphrase Lou Reed, "J's week beats your year." What Do We Do Now began to come together during the waning days of the Pandemic. Utilizing his own Bisquiteen Studio, J started working on writing a series of tunes on acoustic with a different dynamic than the stuff he creates for Dino. "When I'm writing for the band," he says, "I'm always trying to think of doing things Lou and Murph would fit into. For myself, I'm thinking more about what I can do with just an acoustic guitar, even for the leads. Of course, this time, I added full drums and electric leads, although the rhythm parts are still all acoustic. Usually, I try to do the solo stuff more simply so I can play it by myself, but I really wanted to add the drums. Once that started, everything else just fell into place. So it ended up sounding a lot more like a band record. I dunno why I did that exactly, but it's just what happened." Two guest musicians are playing this time out; Western Mass local Ken Mauri (of the B52s) plays piano on several tracks. Since J himself has some experience with keys, when asked why he needed a hired gun, he says, "Ken is great, and he plays all the keys. I tried playing some keyboards on the first Fog album, but I'm really only comfortable playing the white notes, so it's kind of limiting. [laughs] Nowadays, I could just turn the pitch on a mini Mellotron to play different sounds, but black keys just seem hard. For whatever reason, I just like banging on the white ones. Seems like it's harder to figure out how to stretch your fingers around the other ones." Mauri has no such qualms and plays all the keys very damn well. He sounds especially great on "I Can't Find You," where he is Jack Nitzsche to J's Neil Young, creating one of the album's loveliest tunes. The other guest musician, Matthew "Doc" Dunn, is also prominent on this track. Dunn's steel guitar manages to both widen and soften the musical edges of the music, giving it a full classicist profile. Dunn is an Ontario-based polymath who J met through Matt Valentine. After J played on Doc's great 2022 Sub Pop single, "Your Feel," he figured it was time for payback. Both Dunn and Mauri add beautifully to the songs here, helping to transform them from acoustic sketches into full-blown post-core power ballads. What Do We Do Now is the finest set of solo tunes J has yet penned, and the way they're presented is just about perfect. Asked if he would be touring to support the album, J says he'll be doing some weekend dates, but he probably won't be putting a band together. And I'm sure these songs will sound great solo and acoustic, but the arrangements on this album are truly great and put a cool, different spin on Mascis' instantly Recognizable approach to making music. So, what do we do now? Not sure. But apparently, what J does is to make one of his most killer records ever. Hats off to him. - Byron Coley