MERCHANDISE

The Buttertones new album Jazzhound.

LP is Foldout Poster Insert + Download Card.

Before settling in to make Jazzhound, their most extravagant, ambitious, and fully realized album to date, the Buttertones had to face the hounds of real life. Prior to a headlining summer tour in support of 2018’s Midnight in a Moonless Dream, a fiery blast of an album capturing the band at their purest distillation, drummer/multi-instrumentalist Modesto ‘Cobi’ Cobiån had a sudden and serious medical scare involving his eye, requiring emergency surgery. He lost half his vision (it will hopefully return with a future operation), and the tour had to be cancelled. Music took a backseat for the time being. 

“It gave us some perspective on our health,” says bassist Sean Redman, “and the fact that we have to look after ourselves and one another first, or else the music just can’t happen.” Cobiån, Redman, and vocalist/guitarist Richard Araiza have been playing together for seven years now, having first come together for a self-titled debut in 2013; along with London Guzman on sax and keys, they’ve come to establish themselves as one of L.A.’s tightest groups, conquering stages from Coachella to Tropicalia. When one of their own had a scare, they rallied around him—and used the experience to come together stronger than ever for the record they were getting ready to make. 

“He says it adds charm to his character,” jokes Araiza, who led the Buttertones back into writing mode, taking the reset moment to really focus on the approach and style of the record. The material he was working on took the band forward into a heavier sound—and it also brought them back to the spark of their first album. “It allowed us to go back to the roots and the spirit we had when we started,” Redman considers. “We are kind of a new band, in a lot of ways, is what it feels like.” 

Continuing their partnership with producer Jonny Bell of Crystal Antlers, who produced Moonless Dream as well as 2017’s Gravedigging, the Buttertones waited until they were good and ready before hitting thelegendary Electro-Vox Studios in Hollywood, where they arrived knowing exactly what they wanted to lay to tape. Armed with an arsenal of the most propulsive music they’ve written yet, the band recorded the album mostly live—an ideal method for capturing their cult-status live show, which carries on the torch of acts like the Walkmen and the Fleshtones. “We’d do a few takes,” says Araiza, “and then it was, ‘Alright, we got all the main instruments done, now let’s record on the vibraphone that was used on Pet Sounds,’ you know?”

But Jazzhound is completely new territory for the group, too, with Araiza, who calls this album “probably thedarkest one” he’s written lyrically, pushing his Ian Curtis-via-Bobby Darin baritone to new depths, particularly on scorchers like “Phantom Eyes” and “Bebop.” It’s also the first album with Cobiån acting—and thriving—in his new role as a full-time guitarist (the drum parts were written by him and played by session musician Paul Doyle), and the first since the departure of guitarist Dakota Boettcher as well.

“We really worked our asses off on this one,” says Araiza, proudly, already talking about how he can’t wait to do it all again and make another record soon—after they tour the world, that is, making up for the lost dates last summer, and then some. “It feels like we’re still climbing.”

Tijuana Panthers come striding proudly out of their hometown of Long Beach, California, with Semi-Sweet, their most fully realized album yet. Semi-Sweet has every Panther contributing a part in the entire album-making process, all the way down to brainstorming new songs on drummer and singer Phil Shaheen’s ukelele. Traditional Tijuana Panthers engineer Victor Orlando Nieto split the sessions for Semi-Sweet with new engineer Matt Vasquez, which worked with the new creative process to give the Panthers’ latest a different feel, says guitarist & vocalist Chad Wachtel —something instantly apparent from first jittery notes of the Swell Maps-meets-Urinals DIY clatter-pop opener “Above Your Means.”
From there, it’s a twist-and-turn-y journey through at least four decades of off-center from-the-heart music. “Tony’s Song” matches the relentless energy of the Wipers with instantly catchy beach-punk harmonies, while “Father Figure” left-turns toward the kind of complicated jangle-pop of New Zealand’s Verlaines. “Push Over” is like some kind of Howard DeVoto demo that suddenly splits into a Mickey Baker guitar line, and “Juvy Jeans” is pure my-daddy-was-a-New-York-Doll teen-punk hilarity. (Or maybe the Dead Milkmen? Phil is a longtime fan.) Of course, the surf guitar they built their band on is still surging along—leading the band through their moody “Baby On Board” and then bouncing into the darker-than-it-seems “Forbid- den Fruit.” And then there’s the pitch-perfect Nerves cover, a reverent redo of “One Way Ticket” by a band that in sound and sentiment both were pretty much the Tijuana Panthers of their day. They’re really just aesthetically simple dudes, says bassist and singer Dan Michicoff—they know their songs are done when they not only sound right but feel right, and when they’ve got that same rare combination of harmony and velocity and honesty that’s pushed bands out from their garage since the invention of the electric guitar.

When Bass Drum of Death started touring the rock club circuit outside Oxford, Mississippi, several years ago, there was a legitimate concern that the band’s appeal might be limited to fans of the garage scene. With a seemingly never-ending series of tour dates, BDoD nonetheless transformed rooms full of normally too-cool-to-rock indie crowds into a mob of sweaty, stage-diving-maniacs. Meanwhile, Madison Avenue, eager to cash in on hip cachet, took notice. Since the release of 2011’s GB City, “Get Found” has been featured in FOX promos for the NASCAR season. Rockstar Games’ megaseller Grand Theft Auto V helped to promote last year’s self-titled album. Gamers terrorized the freeways of Los Santos, living out their cops-and-robbers fantasies, as “Crawling After You” blasted through their car stereo speakers. Bass Drum of Death are teetering on the brink of reaching a mainstream audience, and Rip This is their attempt to record an unapologetic rock album for people outside their normal fan base.

In the past, BDoD brainchild John Barrett wrote and recorded all the material and toured with a revolving lineup of hired guns on drums and guitar. This time around, drummer Len Clark joins Barrett as a full-time member and collaborator. The duo began discussing plans for a new record when touring with Unknown Mortal Orchestra in 2013. Barrett and Clark then convinced UMO bassist Jacob Portrait to take on the role of producer when the band booked a session in March at Prairie Sun Studios in Sonoma County, California. With a few rough demos, Barrett, Clark, and Portrait hunkered down for two weeks and cranked out the band’s first proper studio album. Rip This retains BDoD’s trademark sorry-for-partyin’ swagger while scrapping the crackling hiss and lo-fi fuzz. The result is an record that still relies on an obliterating attack of heavy guitars, danceable hooks, and kinetic drumming, but will appeal as much to KISS fans as the music freaks and geeks who worship Nuggets. Both a challenge to music critics and a rock call-to-arms, the title says it all. You’re not going to hear many records this year that rip like this, so shotgun a beer, tune in, and turn up.

It all started over a year ago with the caption “MINDBLOWING PSYCHE- DELIA FROM THAILAND”—the Youtube video that accompanied this head- line on the Dangerous Minds Blog was exactly that. Here was a group of Thai musicians being filmed parading through a remote village hundreds of miles away from Bangkok playing some of the heaviest Psych known to mankind out of a crazy homemade soundsystem. Who were these men and how on earth was this not some unearthed archived footage from the ‘60s or ‘70s?! The Youtube clip quickly made its rounds amongst music enthusiasts leaving many in the Western hemisphere to question who this group of contemporary Thai villagers (loosely named Khun Narin’s Electric Phin Band) was.

Six months after that first encounter with Khun Narin’s Electric Phin Band, a Los Angeles music producer named Josh Marcy used Facebook and some un- likely interpreters at his local Thai restaurant to get in contact with the band and inquire whether they’d be interested in having him travel to their town to record their music for a global audience. At first the band was naturally suspicious, but through subsequent interactions the group’s leader and namesake Khun Narin (also known simply as “Rin”) warmed to the idea of having Marcy come visit. And so began the journey of uncovering who these mysterious men from an obscure blog post actually were.

Khun Narin’s Electric Phin Band’s membership is always in rotation and spans several generations, from high school kids to men well into their 60s. A standard engagement has the band setting up at the hosting household during the morn- ing rituals, playing several low-key sets from the comfort of plastic lawn chairs occasionally working in a cover version of a foreign classic (The Cranberries ‘Zombie’ is a recent favorite) while the beer and whiskey flow freely. After a mid-day banquet, they start up the generator and lead a parade through the com- munity to the local temple, picking up more and more partiers along the way.

The music they play is called phin prayuk. The first word refers to the lead instrument, a 3-stringed lute known as the phin. Beer, the phin player, uses a string of Boss effects pedals, including a phaser, distortion and digital delay to get his sound. He also builds his own instruments, installing Fender pickups into hand-carved hardwood bodies, with elaborate mythical serpents adorning the headstock. The band takes pride in their custom PA system, as well as an imposing tower of 8 loudspeaker horns atop a huge bass cabinet. To capture the essence of the group and their sound, Marcy recorded th em in their natural environment by doing a proper field recording, literally in a field outside the city of Lom Sak, in the valley of mountains that form a rough border between Thai- land’s North and Northeast. The result was 40 minutes of hypnotizing psyche- delia filled with heavy drum breaks that sounds like something RZA would sample for a Quentin Tarantino film.

Beyond the real deal is the unreal deal, and therein lies Feeding People, a band of teenagers making some of the heaviest psychedelic around decadesafter the 13th Floor Elevators declared their hallucinatory sense of purpose. Feeding People was founded and is headed by nineteen-year-old Jessie Jones who channels the raw power of Jefferson Airplane’s Grace Slick and Janis Joplin at her most primal as she leads with strong, almost vicious vocals, bellowing blasphemies as if possessed by spirits with a masked sweetness reminiscent of Billie Holiday. Her siren call reeled in Chris Alfaro of Free the Robots who produced some of the band’s earliest recordings, all of which were written acoustic and recorded electric in a single take in a’ 6’x10’ walk-in closet with a 4-track recorder and mic stands made of broom handles taped to fire extinguishers. After playing only a couple shows, Feeding People became the second band ever invited to play storied electronic music club Low End Theory, where they shared the stage with Radiohead’s Thom Yorke.  This is the full length LP recorded and produced by Jonny Bell of The Crystal Antlers and Hanni El Khatib.