Mad Mackerel’s Best of the Month: February 2013

Here is our selection of the best of our February downloads together with a few brand new tracks to dig into.

So go on. Knock yourself out.

Blank Realm – Cleaning Up My Mess
Sitting somewhere between the melancholic churn and burn of Mercury Rev and the noisy squall of Sonic Youth, the four-piece gleefully meld psychedelia with punk and pop and even a smattering of blues licks, all to fantastic effect. (Click through for a free download).

Black Pus – 1000 Years
Slightly deranged, often furious – it is a cacophony of drums, loops and repeating phrases and rhythms, but with a pop heart. (Click through for a free download).

Úlfur – So Very Strange
Ambient folk featuring enchanting vocals by Alexandra Sauser-Monnig of Mountain Man.

Andrew Leahey & The Homestead – Summer Sleeves
The sound of the modern South: organ, harmonized guitar riffs, pedal steel, and three-part harmonies all in the mix.

Express and Company – Gold In Your Pockets
Recalls the work of Whiskeytown and Uncle Tupelo.

Vandaveer – Pretty Polly
First taste from their forthcoming collection of reinterpretations of age-old traditional folk songs and murder ballads.

Charity Children – Elizabeth
Rousing folk anthem – their tribute to the bullied and downtrodden.

Pure X – Things In My Head
Guitar jangle, but with added ominous sonic undertones.

Burning Condors – Honey Trap
Blues-punk par excellence.

Brave Baby – Lakeside Trust
Prime toe-tapping, head-bobbing example of infectious guitars and percussion.

New Mexico – Alpha Male
Joy Division-esque rumbling bassline over which a compelling synth harmony and a muscular garage rock riff battle it out for supremacy. (Click through for a free download).

LA Font – Onshore
Wry look at at a relationship in decay that is big on hooks, tipsy guitars and a windows-down groove.

Fantasmas – No Soul
Brooklyn based four-piece that hold the Washington DC punk scene and the no-wave era of Sonic Youth close to their hearts.

Sallie Ford & The Sound Outside – Party Kids
A retro swagger through rockabilly tinged rhythms and classic garage soul.

Criminal Hygiene – Alan I’m In Love
Another bitter pill of noisy, visceral skater-punk that demands to be played at maximum volume. This is needle in the red territory, and all the better for it.

Download The Futurebirds – Virginia Slims mp3 (from Baba Yaga)
Near-six minute pedal steel washed, country tinged, pure, unadulterated joy of southern fried rock.

Download JP Whipple – Home (Is Where I’m Leaving) mp3 (from Ghosts)
Gently plucked strings, scalpel sharp lyrics, black humour, sorrow, and not a little wisdom delivers something sitting somewhere between an (even more) stoned Arlo Guthrie, Damon Moon and Wooden Wand.

Download Thee Oh Sees – Minotaur mp3 (from Floating Coffin)
A more subdued (though still dark and brooding) take on their frenzied garage-psych.

Download Quiet Hollers – Road Song mp3 (from I Am The Morning)
While it clocks in at less than two minutes it is still as tale of extremes – of despair and woes, of worn boots on dusty highways, but of hope and redemption too.

To finish, we have new tracks of beguiling minimalism from Low, and Patrick Stickles from Titus Andronicus covering Free Energy’s Hey Tonight. Finally, from Uncut magazine’s Best of New Music free cover disk, a track of perfect dazed, paisley pop from The Holydrug Couple, and Mount Moriah’s countrified take on weird new/old America with White Sands from their second album, Miracle Temple.