Friday, January 6, 2012

Sweaters & Pearls Discography

7 Inches is the ever excellent blog that combs through the vast magnitude of singles that are released at a mind numbing rate, and manages to fine a great piece of wax for everyday of the year. Now, like so many blogs, they have moved into the record making business. With that comes the birth of Sweaters & Pearls Records, a commitment to colored vinyl releases, and showcasing some of the best unknown indie rock around.
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The Ceiling Stares/The Super Vacations split 7"

Sweaters & Pearls first release is a split between two "The" bands, as well as a "split" release with Velocity of Sound Records. The Ceiling Stares "A Tunnel Through Air" is a great, hodgepodge of a indie rock song, filled with a fuzzed and drugged guitar line, melodic keyboard undertones, Television like breakdowns, and chanty-esque vocals. It sounds utterly familiar, yet out stop just enough to never be be to place how. The Super Vacations are the perfect counter point to the Ceiling Stares. Buzzing, fast paced guitars and songs that bring to mind the less stoney work of the Fresh & Onlys. The band ha quite mastery in making guitar shifts from sunny to tense, tight, and bleak, as best demonstrated on the opening riffs of the appropriately titled "Hexing". Excellent post-punk with a little California beach garage placed within them.

Stream: The Ceiling Stares-A Tunnel Through the Air


Stream: The Super Vacations-Hexing

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Fat History Month-A Gorilla EP

Truly, I was not expecting much from a band called Fat History Month. A best, I was hoping the 7" would be some sort of passable guitar rock that was stupid in the right ways. Boy was I wonderfully proven wrong. Contained within these bright banana colored grooves are four, beer soaked indie rock tunes which are some of the best I've heard of the genre in a while. This is what's played in basements, by guys are drink too much in order to get over the pain of their lives, while said pain drips into their songs as well as a general decrease in ability to play, but this somehow compliments the songs even more. It's as if Andrew Cedermark decided to cover the Silver Jew's "Secret Knowledge of Backroads" and take that sound as the basis for an entire band. From the opening notes of "Gorilla" the guitar dissonance builds to heart breaking levels that by the time "Heart Takes a Beating" you know the band isn't joking. It would be much more brutal if the music wasn't so great.


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Soccer Mom-You Are Not Going to Heaven EP

A title as harsh as You Are Not Going to Heaven should be the dead give away that Soccer Mom are not the twee band their name suggests. Instead, you get the awesome mixture of Rather Ripped era Thurston Moore fronting a shoegaze band that has listened to too much early '90s indie rock. This 10" has a wonderful balance to it, while taking so many cues from classic indie rock, Soccer Mom's ability to jump one style to the next keeps the band alive and thoroughly excellent. Simply compare "(A) Natural History", which sounds like "Incinerate", to "Unwanted Sounds" which conjures to mind "Only Shallow" by My Bloody Valentine. But it all works into a cathartic combination of everything great of indie rock, mushed together in a blender, and spread over these six tracks. Warm, loud, and fuzzy in all the right ways, Soccer Mom make music to submerge one's brain into, just perfect guitar music to disappear into and never look back.



Links:

The Ceiling Stares' Website
The Super Vacations' Tumblr
Fat History Month's Bandcamp
Soccer Mom's Website
Buy all this wonderful vinyl here, from Sweaters & Pearls Records 

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