Slipped Discs

Mindy Smith - Stupid Love

Gossamer offerings melt Mindy’s sugar-glazed country into heart-felt velvet whose refreshingly romantic songs soar as they sympathize, gracefully vulnerable, casually intimate. Backed by angelic harmonies and doused in breathless wonder, “Stupid,” plays it smart balancing sumptuous comforts and cautious observations, emotionally invested with high returns and polished backing. Mindy plays Madison’s Majestic August 20th.

Shudder To Think - Live From Home

Sparking fiery thought bombs beneath serrated storms, angular angst and pounding, stalk-rock, “Live,” juices up STT’s catalogue. By all appearances a joyful event, Shudder’s 2008 reunion roll out pulverizing palpitation, a towering squalor through which slinks serpentine soliloquies performing jungle-gym twists around a steel web of mind games and shock logic.

Shout It Out Louds - Work

A deceptively effortless atmosphere hangs over the suave and unassuming, “Work.” Swift, deliberate beats motor inside sweet, charismatic pop doused in determined waves of bristling hooks and insistent riffs drilling deep into the brain. Wrestling nervous restraint into patient self-examination, SOL pits keen observation against ominous uncertainty; swollen momentum carried with sadly placid efficiency.

Kim Salmon and the Surrealists - Grand Unifying Theory

Explosive blues hallucinations rut and rupture as off-kilter cataclysms pass like squealing wheelies through Kim’s wild-eyed wango tango. Kim and the Surrealist’s first effort in thirteen years, “Grand,” shows no signs of age, lambasting and exonerating with madcap flashbacks and beastly thunder; improvised rampages coasting over fantasy anarchy.

Mathew Sawyer and the Ghosts - How Snakes Eat

Slightly skewed views delivered in gentlemanly eloquence, “Snakes,” charms sweet hayseed hallucinations from classically daft English pandemonium. Civilized seaside psychedelia, Sawyer and friends conjure toddling obsolescence and creaky vaudeville civility beneath surreal jaunts and subtly pastoral poppycock, slyly embellishing miniature moon-struck show tunes, art-house ironies and breezy, parlor mysteries.

Stars - The Five Ghosts

Emotionally-charged spirits waver and disperse, evaporating into heavenly college-rock proclamations as Canada’s musical social archeologists limbo beneath society’s swinging underbelly. “Ghosts,” waltz while angelic chords and hip, sophisticated hooks bounce and rally against unburdened yearnings and tarnished afterlife regrets; tightly-wrapped cabaret squirm in the restrained desires of poignant synthesizers presiding over charmed, chamber-pop novels.

Stricken City - Losing Colour

Announcing their demise before releasing their final effort, London-based indie-pop instigators Stricken City insure their underground cult status with nimble middle class narratives marrying sinister riffs and cavernous crescendos to winged deliveries tunneling through riveting rhythms. Posh pariahs stylishly sizing up fleeting scenes, “Losing,” fuses vexing questions and parochial prose to turbulent furnaces stoking fiery choirs and deft, reflective projections.

Southeast Engine - Canary

Penitent and persevering, rowdy and reverent, SEE’s gurgling Wurlitzers and Delta-bound brass rile rustic ruckus for relapsed travails, electrified revivalists fronting frontier racketeers, recasting tragic burdens into grizzled, gratifying honky-tonk. A ragged tabernacle, “Canary,” canvasses unflappable affirmations etched in mournful cornfields, barnyard brimstone and boardwalk morality; rousing rust belt ballads conjuring coal mines and cold spells, bad luck and love-sickness.

Heidi Spencer and the Rare Birds - Under Streetlight Glow

Lingering fiddling and tidewater drums filter drifting harmonicas and blue-sky slide; sweet molasses melodies dally about weary wishes as halting, unholstered Spencer and her Cold Mountain minstrels wrap dilapidated desires over tattered sighs littering forlorn sojourns ravaged from fog-bound farewells. Cradling Appalachian patience, “Glow,” exposes windswept ragdoll blues wallowing in unspoken truth playfully wavering between pregnant pauses and uncertain resolve.

Secret Cities - Strange Hearts

Love children from Brill Building refugees, S C mastermind lo-fi, reverb-addled shin-digs; muffled scuffles baked inside grandly bandied jukebox soufflés whose gentle persuasions with twilight choirs shiver behind fading AM beach-party bingo.  Swooning and canoodling through retroactive odysseys, “Strange,” hosts idyllic misfit idolizers worshipping vintage pop thoughts, ghostly baroque smokescreens soaked in rainy-day dreams, fab nostalgia and timeless adolescent appetites. 

Alina Simone - Make Your Own Danger

Thrusting cellos, hunted drums, writhing flights of tungsten tongues dressed in blacksmith brass sparking private and perilous prose, “Danger,” wrangles war-cry choruses from hounded prayers, elusive truths become locomotive prey charging into accelerated folk-punk blues. Brittle, bold and brazen, Simone’s furtive curtsies and volcanic candor reinforce scornful searchlight labors, thorny bulimic images navigating lean serpentine situations, guarded, bartered and charmed.

Smoke Fairies - Through Low Light and Trees

Sisterly tranquility pirouettes through throaty folk dipped in slinky mists and prowling pomp. “Trees,” weaves celestial serenity bobbing along the choppy waters of twisted steel guitar, prim hymns bursting into lofty rock. Prickly filigree embroidered in kudzu, Britain’s Smoke Fairies string Renaissance wings onto swamp-water incantations, massaging potent mojo into ancient mysteries. Catch them August 14th at Milwaukee’s Shank Hall.

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