Here is another collection of fifteen top tunes lovingly collected and filtered for your listening pleasure. So gather round and invest some time in these – a veritable aural treasure trove of tracks.
First up is another track of swaggering blues rock and roll in the shape of New York Avenue from the Delta Routine’s recently released album, Cigarettes And Caffeine Nightmares.
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In a similar vein, the bravely named Velvets from down under, have a big, sleazy blues sound going on with their free download of Shoot You Down.
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Darren Hayman has shortened his Long Parliament and returns with a new album of seventeenth century folk songs called Bugbears, which is due out on Fika Recordings in July. A companion piece to previous release, the very well received The Violence, have a listen to Seven Months Married.
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Graham MacRae has shared a new single from his album Dundrearies and by the sound of Game Changer, those Bill Fay and Bill Callahan comparisons seem pretty much on the money.
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Granite City is the lysergic new single from Aussie psych indie-rockers Deep Sea Arcade.
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London’s Low Moon Low are set to release their first official single with Calm Now, sweetly melodic indie-folk that errs on the side of dreamy.
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The wonderfully skewed world view of Justin Farren featured on MM back in March last year and he is back with a new album Another Bluebird Day from which we have Mostly In My Mind. This time he plays it a little straighter on the back of an upbeat folky strum and some scalpel sharp lyrics. Great stuff.
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Spectrals have given us another track from new album Sob Story. Inspired by Dave Edmunds, A Heartbeat Behind has a great riff and is full of rockabilly twang and heartbreak lyrics. No longer are the brothers low key, lo-fi merchants and it bodes very well for the album indeed.
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Two Inch Astronaut have given up Blood From A Loyal Hound for download, a convulsive rocker propelled by a muscular power-pop melody.
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Quilt hail from the eastern shores of Massachussets, where the band formed out of a tight-knit art collective in the winter months of 2009. They combine traditional folk vocal harmonies, reverb-drenched fingerpicking and meditative drum repetition in a patchwork of eclectic psych-folk ideally suited to their name. Open Eyes comes from a recent split single with MMOSS.
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Carmen Villain, aka London-based Carmen Hillestad, recently released her fiery debut album, Sleeper. Introduce yourself to the darker and more psych-oriented side of the album via Made A Shell.
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Half The Time, the A-side of recent 7″ single by Nick Ferrio & His Feelings is a psychological thriller, exploring one man’s realization that his love is unrequited and only exists within the confines of his fallible mind.
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Like the excellent Allah-Lahs, The Young Sinclairs mix folk rock and garage rock with plenty of jangle in the style of The Byrds or Rain Parade and their most recent single Hurt My Pride is a top-notch example of what they are capable of.
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Though we were late to it, we are loving the gorgeous Hymnal by In The Valley Below, a duo from Echo Park in LA who are a new musical pairing, delivering hushed swirls of male and female vocals forged with dark stories of brooding riddles and romance.
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And lastly (for now) we have a taste from Robert Pollard’s (of Guided By Voices fame) new album Honey Locust Honky Tonk. The song, I Killed A Man Who Looks Like You is already one of our favourite titles of the year so far and thankfully the tune itself more than lives up to its title.
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In fact these themes of “people doing very bad things, and then we sing about them“, have long been central to Vandaveer’s work, making them a nigh on perfect fit for Mad Mackerel. Death, hauntings, tales of evil, retribution and regret combined with plenty of pedal steel guitars, banjos, pianos and vocal harmonies are a mighty fine combination, and one that Vandaveer do far, far better than most.
Five people (living or dead) you’d love to share a stage-jam with:
