News

Chicago-based five-piece, Dendrons are today sharing their new single, "New Outlook II" – it's the latest to be lifted from their forthcoming album, 5-3-8 which is out on August 26. The band has found tips so far for this new effort from FLOOD, Brooklyn  Vegan, Post Trash, CBC Radio, Under the Radar and more.

The new track, "New Outlook II" finds the band tapping into some of their proggier sounds, taking from jungle influences and cutting this with a Krautrock sensibility. The song's lyrical refrains switch between “soon we’ll all be laughing too” and “Distance. Time. New outlook” pitting these around a quick bpm. "It is a continuation of themes explored on the preceding album track, “New Outlook,” explains Dane Jarvie of the band, "how trial and error, personal aesthetics, and every perceived achievement is reduced to comedy with enough passing time. How there is freedom in that. It’s about holding your life loosely."

5-3-8 – titled as a reference to the lyrical refrain that appears at a few points of the album of “fifths, thirds, octaves only” – was recorded at Sonic Ranch in Tornillo, Texas and Highland Recording Studio in Phoenix, Arizona; it was produced by Tony Brant and Sonny Di Perri (Protomartyr, DIIV, Nine Inch Nails, Animal Collective, Emma Ruth Rundle, Dirty Projectors) before being mastered at Elysian Sound by Dave Cooley.

Read more on Stereogum.

Following the release of "New Summers" last month, De Lux drop new single "Morning Misses Me" from their upcoming album Do You Need A Release? They had this to say on the gorgeous piano ballad, out now: "Morning Misses Me is about forever being a night owl. No matter the noise or the time, mornings are always missed."  Read more about it on CLASH.

"'Tangle' is our weirdo take on a 'ballad' – clocking in at 6 minutes and 24 seconds, we explore odd meters, catharsis, through all-encompassing noise and textural pastiche, with manic builds. We tried to explore lots of sonic territories. Lyrically, the song brims with double meaning and irony."

Dendrons drop a new single in anticipation of their upcoming record, 5-3-8, due August 26, 2022.

Read more on FLOOD.

Tijuana Panthers release their new album, Halfway To Eighty, on June 24th, 2022.

Read more about it on Northern Transmissions.

In one form or another, Tijuana Panthers have existed most of its members’ lives. Daniel Michicoff (bass/vocals), Chad Wachtel (guitar/vocals), and Phil Shaheen (drums/vocals) became friends when they were teenagers in Long Beach, California, and started playing music together soon after, eventually becoming one of the shining stars of the twenty-first century garage-rock revival scene—a (relatively) chill surf-rock-inspired complement to the ruckus of acts like Ty Segall and Thee Oh Sees. But while many of their initial contemporaries have gone through lineup changes or thrown in the towel, the Panthers are hanging tough—and, in a sense, just hitting their stride.

“I feel like this was our most relaxed process yet,” says Michicoff of the band’s sixth LP, Halfway to Eighty, an album whose title serves as a sly embrace of getting older, with a little bit of the Panthers’ trademark sense of humor sprinkled in there for good measure. (On the cover, they gather around their imaginary midlife-crisis Delorean.) It’s a brotherhood that’s only gotten more instinctual over time, and lately that second-nature approach has found each member taking on a more forward role in crafting their own individual songs, which the trio then works out together before hitting the studio.

On Halfway to Eighty, riff-heavy anthems like “Helping Hand” are courtesy of Wachtel, while art-rock thrashers like “Slacker” are Shaheen’s handiwork, and smirking punk numbers like “False Equivalent” are Michicoff’s. (“What good can it bring now? / We’re barely evolved” sings Michicoff on that last song, a squall of guitars swirling around his trembling tenor.) When you keep an ear out for them, you can hear each distinct personality in the songs, but taken as a whole, it’s yet another primo Panthers set of post-Cramps, post-DEVO outsider rock and roll.

That’s partially through the help of regular Panthers collaborator Jonny Bell (Crystal Antlers, Chicano Batman, The Gun Club [reissue]), Hanni El Khatib, Lovely Bad Things, Rudy De Anda), who produced the set at his Jazzcats Studio in Long Beach. Bell has proved to have something of a sixth sense in working with the band, so there was no one better to capture the sound they were going after this time, either. For much of the record, the band was working with the mindset of channeling some of the production sound and attitude of local punk legends like Black Flag and Circle Jerks. “What I told Jonny when he was mixing ‘Slacker,’” remembers Shaheen, “was, like, ‘Just keep it South Bay,’ and he already knew what I was saying.”

But as much as the band has matured over the years, they still know how to put together an album efficiently, without messing around. They’re professionals, after all—and there’s bills to pay, too. “We don’t have the luxury to go in the studio for days on end,” laughs Shaheen. “I don’t know how other bands do it.”

Taken at full, Halfway to Eighty is an embrace of much more than just a band. It’s a statement of dedication to the calling of music—to sticking with making art as long as you want to, age be damned. “You know what would make me just go, ‘Oh, let’s just quit,’” says Wachtel, recalling a recent raucous show in Los Angeles, “is if we didn’t have that reception anymore. The fans keep me going.”

“Not to get all spiritual about it,” adds Michicoff, “but when we were younger, we played really hard for nobody, and now the fans do all the work for us. They have the fun and we just kind of rock out, and it’s nice. It’s cool to sit back and play the songs and watch. They’re putting on a show for us.”

After writing, performing, recording, and producing three albums themselves, De Lux have traded their typically hermetic recording process at their Burbank studio for a more collaborative experience. The result is their most dynamic record yet, titled Do You Need A Release?

Do You Need A Release? Is De Lux at their poppiest, their prettiest, danciest, but also their most abrasive. The record is built on an uncomfortable bed of tension which when released is immediately satisfying in unpredictable and surprising ways. The verses often pummel you with aggressive beats and grooves only to blossom into open, encouraging, and even angelic refrains. Or the other way around, like in first single “New Summers”, where the choruses don’t resolve, and the drums are a never ending build up that disorients you—reminding you that summer will never be the same again. Out now, the band had this to say on it:

“New Summers refers to a life change. The post effects of a childhood home being sold. There was a distinct nostalgic feeling with this home in the summer. Swimming, family gatherings, ice cream trucks, hot concrete and skating. With the house gone, New Summers music paints the picture of the vibrant summers that once were, but the lyrics highlight the darker and sadder tones of having to accept the loss and fading of old times”