Rose City Band "Sol Y Sombra"
Rose City Band’s music is sun-kissed timeless country rock whose seemingly effortless momentum carries the joy of its creation without ignoring the darkness pervading our consciousness. Led by guitarist/vocalist Ripley Johnson, the music of Rose City Band is rooted in his love of private press records of the mid to late 70’s. The band, in addition to Johnson, features pedal steel guitarist Barry Walker, keyboardist Paul Hasenberg and drummer John Jeffrey who enmesh a keen sense of rhythmic drive and melody with gentler, sumptuous atmospheres. Sol Y Sombra digs its heels into insatiable grooves, its parade of catchy songs conjuring a sunset drive through an open desert, both a celebration of a sojourn and a reach for the warmth of home.
The contrasts of Sol Y Sombra, the musical equivalent of bright stars in a night sky, are to Johnson an inevitability. “With Rose City Band, I’m generally trying to make uplifting music, good time music,” says Johnson. “This time I couldn’t avoid the shadow being more of a presence. There’s no getting away from it. The shadow is always there. So, I left it in.” Like many genre-breaking private press albums, the melancholia-infused Sol Y Sombra’s contrasts equally enhance moments of joy and movement whilst elevating the music with its honesty and intimacy. Nuanced performances and interplay between players unfurl like desert flowers splashing color onto an arid landscape. The ensemble’s buoyant moments still glide with ease, but there is room to revel in respite of the shade of a dark cloud. For Johnson, the album finds places where the conscious meets the unconscious, the songs emanating the more mercurial and curious aspects of their sonic dream world, using darker hues to paint the panorama around them.
Sol Y Sombra’s opener “Lights on the Way” is halogen on the highways, a beam of light pressing onward past dashed lines and soaring with Johnson’s guitar work and lush harmonies. The album’s first half is rife with blissful Americana, from upbeat rollicks to ballads dripping with sweet molasses. Walker’s pedal steel speckles the slow-motion shuffle of “Evergreen” with glinting starlight. His playing throughout pairs perfectly with Johnson’s effervescent guitar lines, exuding the casual virtuosity of pedal steel country legends while lending remarkable modern twists to his graceful licks. Across the album, Johnson’s tasteful guitar interjections and soothing voice are met in kind with the versatile playing of Walker, Hasenberg, and Jeffery, with special guest performances by synthesist/vocalist Sanae Yamada. Album closer “The Walls” perfectly captures the band’s explorative and expansive songs, Hasenberg’s soulful organ driving the album to an emotionally cathartic conclusion.
Throughout his prolific career with Wooden Shjips, Moon Duo and now Rose City Band, Johnson’s music has consistently centered around exploration and discovery. Sol Y Sombra imbues his penchant for space and resplendent tonality with a denser amalgam of his influences. Johnson tactfully incorporates new elements with deftness and fluidity, while holding the band’s center intact. “One of my takeaways from making this record is that I spent a lot of energy trying to do things a little different but ended up back where I started in many ways,” notes Johnson. “And that’s OK.” Through a delicate balance of the somber and the serene, of subtle evolutions and familiar sounds, Sol Y Sombra makes for a holistically joyous experience, finding solace in both sun and shade.
Mogwai "The Bad Fire"
The arrival of a new Mogwai album – their eleventh – is cause for great celebration. The album’s title, The Bad Fire, is a working-class Glaswegian term for Hell. It reflects the difficult time that members of the band were going through. New to the studio was American producer John Congleton, known for his work with Explosions In The Sky, Sigur Rós, John Grant and pretty much everyone in between. Congleton’s work can be heard on the album’s three singles. The album opener “God Gets You Back” sounds like Daft Punk being hunted by My Bloody Valentine, while “Fanzine Made Of Flesh” sounds like a victory parade for a baby yeti; and “Lion Rumpus” does actually sound like a lion rumpus. The music of Mogwai is a difficult thing to describe, but an easy thing to experience. At punishing volume, it can annihilate your body, leaving you as little more than a head which should by rights fall helplessly to the ground. Yet the music contains an updraft, a sense of beauty encased in the onslaught. This holds you up, suspended and empowered, reminding you that paradise is your birthright. This is especially true of The Bad Fire. It may have been created in dark conditions, but all that is transcended by the act of four musicians working together here, now, in the moment – the only place where Mogwai exist.
MINIBEAST "The Maze of Now"
Defecting Grey "Circuits"
Defecting Grey is the convergence of long-time friends and members of central Jersey punk and power pop bands. CJ and Vince Grogan (The Phantom Five, The Grievous Angels/Gigantic/Buzzed Meg) and Mike Polilli (Buzzkill/Atom Driver) are a trio drawn together by the irresistible, gravitational force of playing music they love. Harnessing the melodic power and virtuosity of bands like Husker Du, The Minutemen, The Jam, and Mission of Burma, since coming together in late 2017, they’ve remained singularly focused on forging songs that are ascatchy as they are visceral.
Over seven years, the band has alternated between recording and serving up one blistering live set after another, all the while honing their mix of power and unmistakable hooks. A year after releasing their Rising Son EP in the summer of 2018, Defecting Grey entered beloved punk laboratory Exeter Studios to record six new songs with a particular focus on capturing the raw feel of their live shows. The resulting Run Silent EP was released on MVC Records in August of 2019 to rave reviews:
“Defecting Grey’s latest collection is a rabbit punch of a record, featuring well-crafted tunes delivered in a tastefully pulverizing manner… Defecting Grey achieves a perfect balance of meaning and malice on this collection from start to finish” -Neuse News
“You can imagine what a live band these three are. “Your Moonlight” ends proceedings and encapsulates all that the band are about. Pace, sweat and real shake your fist stuff, superbly played with an Eddie Clarke type solo. Ladies and Gentlemen, this is rock and you should just embrace it”- I Don’t Hear a Single
And then? Covid. BOO! With playing out and proper recording on ice, the band spent the next two years building on nearly 20 of CJ’s demos, finally returning to Exeter in June of 2021 to record their first long player ‘ARC’ tracking the evolution from a collection of rough sketches to their first fully realized album, released in May’ 22. The reception, was once again, roundly positive:
‘After several EP’s, Defecting Grey has delivered an album of psychedelic garage punk that recalls the similar fusion pioneered by Husker Du (C.J. even sustains his vowels like Bob Mould.) But there’s a lot more going here than mere Husker worship. Vince Grogan plays his bass like a lead guitar, Mike Polilli brings the thunder, “Post Modern Western” veers towards power pop, the 6 minute-plus “The Seven Hunters” emphasizes the band’s psychedelic side’-Jersey Beat
‘Grandiose, very spacious sound, wonderful guitars, enviable songwriting, partly polyphonic vocals with heavenly harmonies”-Ox Fanzine
And now, in late 2024, the boys emerge once again from Exeter with perhaps the truest record of their music to date. The 6-song EP, “Circuits”, released on NJ’s own Fake Chapter Recordsexplodes right out of the gate with the raucous, poppy garage-punk of “Gibraltar”, the first single off the record. Each song that follows shows off Defecting Grey’s deft skill at exploring the sounds and melodies of the music they love most. Whether it’s the driving power-pop of “Flat-Earth Theory” and “Circuits”, the country-tinged “Blind Country”, the super-charged “Backwards Ghost” or the haunting jangle of “Low Status Sound” this is a band showing off just what it’s capable of to glorious effect.
Look out for shows in support of the new EP in late ’24 early ’25.