White Fence, the one man project of Tim Presley (of Darker My Love fame), plays trebly psychedelic pop that sounds just as influenced by 60s bubblegum one-offs (I’m looking at you Lemon Pipers and your “Green Tambourine”) as by “serious” artists like Love and the Byrds. On his debut album for Woodsist, White Fence, Presley sounds more like a wide-eyed teenager thinking of endless metaphors for his crush’s eyes than a horny garage rocker (with a few exceptions, like “Baxter Corner” and its paranoid chorus of “Lose your number, lose your name!” and the swaggering “Destroy Everything”). Songs like “I’ll Follow You,” “Sara Snow,” and “The Gallery” (which is provided below for your consideration) sound like they’ve just been unearthed from the dusty archives of some Sunset Strip studio, remnants of a period when every band, even the “square” ones with matching suits, had to have a least one vaguely psychedelic song.

White Fence loses a little steam in its second half, but the eleven track stretch from “Mr. Adams” to “Ring Around the Square” is so effortlessly charming and inviting that it should supply you with enough goodwill to make it through the sorta half-baked experimental stuff to get the totally sweet Lennon-esque closer “Be Right Too.” Listening to White Fence, you can almost fool yourself until thinking you’re really listening to some long lost 60s band; whether that seems cool or just another example of how lame indie rock has become in 2010 is up to you, but the fact remains that White Fence is full of some pretty amazing psych pop jams.

White Fence is available on vinyl here and will be available on CD from Woodsist April 17.

For fans of:  Syd Barrett, Love, Ariel Pink

MP3 :::
White Fence – The Gallery

MP3 :::
Dum Dum Girls – Throw Aggi

Upon relocating from Dallas to San Francisco, Rangers masthead Joe Knight conjured his glazed weariness into the 11 tracks of murky psychedelia that would become his debut LP Suburban Tours. On the odd album opener “Deerfield Village”, he positions himself as some sort of repetitive, humorless version of Ariel Pink, with abrasive blasts of lazy vocal snarls. Aside from “Brook Meadows”, Joe keeps tight lipped, opting to concentrate on the rough-edged collage approach to neo-ambient music that Rangers explore. Saturated melancholy, super compressed down tempo drums, and wheezing vhs synth lines make up the bulk album, which is a roundabout way of admitting that this really just sounds like a new Ducktails cassette. Only on a couple tracks like “Glen Carin” does he nail the looking out the window on a rainy day phenomena well enough for us to ignore his overlapping sonic neighbors.  Suburban Tours is a well executed mission statement, but where is the benchmark for this perpetual 80’s fetish? Are we now obligated to write up anything that sounds like it could be the soundtrack to a job training tape/pizza party/insert nostalgia? Even if this was just intended to play as a hazy personal pet project, I can’t help but feel like it was popped right out of the hypnagogic cookie cutter.

Suburban Tours is out now on Olde English Spelling Bee.

For Fans Of: Ducktails, Arch M, Universal Studios Florida

MP3 :::
Rangers – Deerfield Village
Rangers – Glen Carin

The lineup for APF 3 just hit about an hour ago, and once again it’s lookin’ pretty good, as expected. The Black Angels headline, of course, as they have the previous two. Full lineup:

The Black Angels – The Raveonettes – Pink Mountaintops – YaHoWa 13 – Spindrift – Warpaint – Indian Jewelry – The Vandelies – The Meed – Headdress – Ringo Deathstarr – Christian Bland and the Revelators – Daughters of the Sun – Sisters of Your Sunshine Vapor – The Night Beats – Shapes Have Fangs – Smoke and Feathers – Screen Vinyl Image – Black Acid – Ghost Songs

The festival happens at Austin’s good ole The Mohawk April 23 , 24, and 25. Bummed I’m not within a day’s drive in Austin to roll through for this, but stoked on seeing a lot of these dudes at SXSW next week.

Though I’ve given you just about all the info you need, you should go to their website anyway because it’s fun to zone out on. You’ll see what I mean.

MP3 :::
The Black Angels – Snake in the Grass
Indian Jewelry – Nonetheless
Warpaint – Set Your Arms Down
Ringo Deatstarr – Every Time

4AD just released the first single for the forthcoming, as-yet-unnamed record from Ariel Pink’s Haunted Grafitti. The song is smoooooooth, ya’ll – but what the fuck happened to all the sonic bullshit that Ariel stuffs in his usual jams?! I hope 4AD isn’t going to start “cleaning up” the Ariel Pink sound and turn him into something retarded like St. Vincent. Either way, I still love Ariel Pink agape style. I can’t even say something like “he could fart in a mic for an hour and I’d still buy the record,” because he basically already does that (with pop finesse, of course). Ultimately, I’m very glad he’s discovered Yacht Rock in an even more intimate way on “Round and Round.”

MP3 :::
Ariel Pink – Round and Round

Dan Snaith, a.k.a. Caribou a.k.a. Manitoba a.k.a. “The Professah,” seems to follow a chronologically retroactive pattern. His earliest work reflected IDM and glitch standards prolific in the ’90s. Then his breakthrough full-length, Up in Flames, evoked silky ’80s dream pop and shoegaze. 2005’s The Milk of Human Kindness took cues from the heyday of krautrock. This eventually propelled Snaith squarely in the baroque pop part of the space-time continuum circa 1966 in the form of Andorra, an album that all but references The Left Banke by name. So what of Swim? Will Caribou continue his time traveling trajectory, make good on the album title, and release his surf rock / doo wop / Skiffle album? Not quite. Caribou hinted with the somewhat disappointing “Odessa” a possible move toward more dance-oriented material. For the most part, this is true. However, the result is much more interesting than “Odessa” suggested.

Snaith makes it clear this time around that he’s going balls to the wall, trying on a variety of new hats. “Jamelia” juggles dub beats, Colin Bluntstone-channeled vocals, orchestral arrangements, and non-linear songwriting in one of Caribou’s most driving efforts. “Bowls” is an exploration of the more minimal and ambient works under the Manitoba moniker, replete with David Fridmann ethereal harp accents, Aphex Twin-informed minimal techno, and glitch flourishes.  ”Hannibal” acts as a compromise betwixt the splattered rhythms, bubbling low end, and horn explosions of Scratch Perry and the fluid, galactic vibe of Boards of Canada circa Twoism. “Kaili” shows Caribou experimenting with acid house samples over pop vocals and Love-inspired psychedelic orchestration. The idea has more value than the actual product, but the bold jump should be applauded nonetheless. Despite some pitfalls, Swim showcases some real moments of brilliance and clarity, best demonstrated on the psilocybin-saturated “Sun” – an angelic, blissed out motorik club banger augmented with hauntological synths and the self-evident mantra of “sun.”

Though not as strong as his mid-decade releases, Swim is a surprising follow-up that, while not groundbreaking, is thoroughly enjoyable and a great juxtaposition of electronic and psych genres spanning every decade Snaith has covered in his impressive repertoire. Moreover, Swim set a new paradigm for Caribou by breaking his old pattern, which may be one of the album’s biggest triumphs.

Swim drops courtesy of Merge on April 20 (hurhur, 420 lol), which should be available for pre-order soon. And lest ye forget, Caribou swings through Louisville with Toro y Moi on June 8th at the Zanzabar.

MP3 :::
Caribou – Sun

Austin trio Pure Ecstasy dwell in a swampy hybrid of past and present. Their recent string of patient, affected singles gave nods to peers in the tropical lo-fi scene with their cavernous, prismatic reverb guitar settings, combined with hefty dub baselines and crawling 4/4 beats. Where they tend to stand out the most is their vocal maneuvers, which forgo the expected Beach Boys idolization in favor of a syrupy southern droll that confidently steers the wall of sound into moments of anguish, and yes, pure ecstasy. No news yet on a proper full-length from the boys, but they’ve brought another rock solid teaser in the interim, dropping the Voices/Alexandria single on March 23rd on Acephale. You can also catch them playing the Underwater People’s Party at SXSW on March 17th.

Pre-order the Voices/Alexandria 7″ here.

MP3 :::
Pure Ecstasy – Voices

I made a half assed promise a while back to spotlight more left-field hip-hop on this site and never followed through (or all rap music ceased to exist during my absence of interest, you decide). So good looks to UK psych/soul producer Huess for helping me back in touch by releasing his new EP I’d Rather Be The Hunter.

His genealogy includes all the right departments: intuitive vocal stutters and stretches learnt from Dilla, pulsating new-school passages a la Bullion or Flying Lotus, and a good amount of his own Tron-tinted idiosyncrasies. The tempos fly pretty low, with druggy rhythms that constantly feel like they’re gonna nosedive but nevertheless find their way into ecstatic, fluid passages of late-night atmospheres, jazzy interludes, and hard hitting samples. Recommended. Stream and download the EP here.

For fans of:  Bullion, Flying Lotus, Onra

MP3 :::
Huess – I’d Rather Be the Hunter

Let’s get this out of the way: Spirit Spine, the one man laptop project of Bloomington, Indiana’s Joseph Denny, sounds a lot like Panda Bear. From the huge drums to the deep space reverb to the campfire singalong melodies, Denny has completely absorbed the template laid down on Person Pitch. But what saves him from the “Well, why don’t I just listen to Panda Bear?” tag is the fact that he jettisons so many of Noah Lennox’s more experimental tendencies (the crying babies, the owl hooting, and such) and just focuses on writing really catchy songs. This is a dude to watch out for.

“Slept Away,” off Spirit Spine’s new album Jungle Bridges, is offered below for your consideration. Jungle Bridges is available for download on Amazon and is streaming for free on Spirit Spine’s Bandcamp site.

MP3 :::
Spirit Spine – Slept Away

Austin-based label Kill Red Rockets is a humanitarian effort, providing a wealth of free shit. They currently host a killer (pun intended) compilation on their website available for free download called Jesus in Space made up almost entirely of good stateside shoegaze, dream pop, fucked electro, and ethereal meditations with teeth. The comp is packed with artists readers of this blog will be familiar with (Oblisk, Ceremony, Dead Leaf Echo), and many more that I’m not familiar with at all and will take measures to correct.  The nefariously titled Bloody Knives (pictured above) is one that stuck out. “Hands Around My Neck,” included below for a taste, is quality acid punk with a slight synth edge at its finest and most crafty – basically what M83 could’ve done had they not decided, on their own volition, to suck a big one after the Dead Seas set. 8-bit shoegaze hath been reared.

Quality abounds on this massive set, so no matter what else happens, go download this compilation right now and know that you’ve done at least one radical thing today.

To celebrate the compilation and generation awesomeness of the KRR community, the dudes are throwing a big SXSW party in Austin. Thursday March 18 and Friday March 19, Kill Red Rockets will welcome 21 different acts from around the nation to play at, get this, an apartment complex with a giant pool. Wall of sound noise squalls… and a pool party. That sounds like some intergalactic MTV Spring Break/Beach House action. Where Dasiy Fuentes and Pauly Shore at? Oh, looks like Pauly Shore is over here hanging out with White Rainbow. Maybe they’ll both roll through.

Details on the festivities, as well as download sampler of everyone playing, are right here. This is a Kenny Bloggins-approved event, and that should hold some weight on your itinerary, for realz.

MP3 :::
Bloody Knives – Hands Around My Neck