CMJ

Openers were native San Franciscans Jet Trash who warmed up the crowd with their melodically bent garage rock from their new, self-titled debut EP. READ MORE…

This new track from Sydney Eloise And The Palms ambles along like the dusky moods of Neko Case dragged through some valerian root. It’s drowzy, but soon starts rousing from it’s rootsy slumber. This could be due to the fact that lead Palm, Ms. Eloise herself, made the debut album that this song comes from, Faces, over the course of a year, relaxed and friendly in its cooperation with co-producers Damon Moon and Chandler Galloway, plus guest noisemakers like Paul Stevens (Grand Vapids), Jenna Shea Mobley (Book Club) and Matt Jarrard (Royal Thunder,Spirits and the Melchizedek Children).

That doesn’t sound particularly reckless, but we wagered that Eloise has had her moments. So we asked her about ’em. Dig into her answers while lisetening to the premiere of Reckless, below. Faces arrives September 22 via The Cottage Recording Co. LISTEN HERE…

Atlanta’s Book Club is not a book club, but a band, though that doesn’t mean they’re not literary. Despite their music’s pastoral simplicity (they call themselves a “rural pop collective”), there’s a narrative weightiness to their sound. Take You Say It So Glacial, a single off their upcoming album One-Way Moon. Dripping with little but soft strings and the delicate harmonies of guitarist Robbie Horlick and Rachel Buckley, the song creates an atmosphere in its lyrics like, “You say it’s so glacial/like Mars or the moon/another world sometimes/in your room.” Here’s what Horlick had to say about the track and the experience of writing it immediately following a family trip to Iceland:

Some songs you slave over, and some just pour out of you. It’s a mystery. And one of the most exciting parts of that mystery is when songs come to you whole. Paul McCartney dreamed all of Yesterday. I Love How You Love Me was written in five minutes on a cocktail napkin. George Michael wrote the sax melody for Careless Whisper on the back of an envelope on a plane. There’s something really pure about songs that come into the world fully realized. And that’s how it was with You Say It So Glacial.

All of the lyrics for Glacial came to me in about five minutes. And when I got home [from Iceland], I picked up my guitar for the first time in a week, and the chords and music just fell out of me too. The song is about relationships, but not just between people—between places, histories, intentions. It’s about distance, but not necessarily physical distance. It’s about how close two people can be, and how far away at the same time. Or maybe someone will hear it, and draw something completely different from it. That’s one of the beautiful things about songwriting—once a song is out there in the world, there’s no telling what it might mean to someone. It’s like the last line of You Say It So Glacial: ‘It’s steam sometimes, what comes out of your mouth. I never know when you’re gonna go.’

One-Way Moon is out February 17 via the Cottage Recording Co. and Bear Kids Recordings.  LISTEN HERE…

Watch this video of The Wans performing their song “Holy One” at this year’s CMJ Fest, live at Knitting Factory Brooklyn…

Athens, GA’s Grand Vapids have only been together since the start of this year, but their music sounds like the output of a band with way more than exactly zero albums under its belt.Guarantees will be Grand Vapids’ debut LP, set to arrive at the start of 2015. Until then, we’ve got the premiere of the album track Tuned, which struts around with a lazing Beck monotone and a wobbly Pixies buzz. “What I am doing here?” lull co-singers McKendrick Bearden and Austin Harris. Our guess is making pretty good music. LISTEN HERE…

The world’s a party in Gringo Star’s new video for World Of Spin. Though news reports threaten the apocalypse, the grainy footage shows the band playing live at house parties and backyard bbqs, causing everyone within hearing range to drop their doomsday prepping and start shaking a leg. Add to that the fact that the song itself is a doo-wop-indebted surf jingle swelling with harmonies, and you’ve got the perfect distraction cocktail that’ll take your mind off anything.

World Of Spin will appear on Gringo Star’s upcoming 7-inch, which will be the debut release of Grand Rapids, MI label dizzybird records. Brian Hoekstra, who co-founded the label with Nicole LaRae, said, “Working with Gringo Star has been on my mind since I met them at CMJ a few years ago. Gringo Star has a unique, adventurous psychedelic rock ‘n’ roll sound that’s infectious and timeless—these two sides could’ve come out at any point in the last 50 years. And now that dizzybird is releasing this 7-inch, we all get to dream together.” WATCH HERE…