[Best New Music]

For a debut album, Summer Months by Joie De Vivre has received a generous amount of attention (Must be their excellent PR company!- Will). Fortunately, it’s well deserved. Simply put, Joie De Vivre fills the void left by 90s emo bands such Mineral and Christie Front Drive. Drawn-out, earnest vocal delivery of honest lyrics, twinkling guitars that build and crash, thoughtful drumming with cymbal crashes a-plenty, warm but powerful bass tone – its all here in Summer Months. Joie De Vivre is far from a carbon copy of your favorite broken-up emo band, though, and you’ll be hard pressed to put your finger on exactly what band they remind you of most. While each steady, well-composed track makes it hard to believe this is Joie De Vivre’s first release, Summer Months also has the urgency and passion that makes debut albums so special. If you have even the smallest spot in your heart for the spirit of 90s emo, there is absolutely no reason why you shouldn’t pick this album up. So stick Summer Months in your car stereo and go for a long drive by yourself – you’ll get that feeling like you’re in on a secret no one knows about.

Label: Count Your Lucky Stars

Local Local

www.myspace.com/joiedevivreband

Who? Like Bats

Where are they from? Northwest, Indiana

What do they sound like? Pop Punk the way it was meant to sound…jaded and cynical as ever! This is rough and tumble stuff and I’m loving every minute of it! Like Bats are fairly front and center with their influences…The Lawrence Arms, Jawbreaker and all the other usual suspects. But, I’m still a sucker for this stuff when it is done this well and Like Bats are dealing with defeat and matters of the heart in a very unhealthy way. And that of course leads to some great songs. The band has a four song demo available with more releases on the way! Check out the cover of the demo below…very cool handmade packaging.

Hellbound

There’s been a lot of drama in the Teenage Cool Kids camp since the release of their fine debut, Queer Salutations. They recorded this fine piece of wax, a brand new LP and oh, they were sued by that shitty rap band, Cool Kids for name/copyright issues. Oh, the glamorous life of a DIY indie band! After months of legal wrangling the band is finally free and clear. The Speaking In Tongues 7″ seven inch vinyl is a teaser to the band’s Foreign Lands LP which was finally released this month (my copy actually showed up in the mail today after months of hold up from the lawsuit). The A-side, “Speaking In Tongues” appears on Foreign Lands as well and is one of the band’s best songs. It shows TCK’s evolving songwriting and sounds like some gloriously wired mixture of The Shins and Built To Spill. The exclusive B-side “Crucial Talk” echoes the band’s first album in a messy lo-fi haze. If these two songs are any indication, my anticipation for Foreign Lands just shot off the radar!

Label: Copper Lung

Speaking In Tongues

www.myspace.com/teenagecoolkids

Look Mexico - New Super Fun Awesomeness (and other shenanigans from Tiny Engines )
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* Limited Edition Gasp Asp Jackets
* Win a Gasp Asp Test Pressing
* New 7-inch from Tigers Jaw

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Limited Edition Look Mexico Gasp Asp Jackets

We recently came into possession of some really sweet-looking limited edition hand-screen printed Gasp Asp jackets with exclusive artwork by the band’s Josh Mikel/Sharkguts. Our buddy Dustin Garrett did us a huge favor by pressing these bad boys for us…and they look so rad. Not only did he use three different paper color variations, he was also generous enough to give us 54 copies, all of which I numbered by hand.

Each one of these special jackets comes with a green Gasp Asp 7-inch, standard jackets and a free mp3 download code. You can pick one up here. Act fast though because we’ve only got 31 left (9 white, 9 yellow, 13 black). You can try to order all three colors but if these go quickly, I can’t guarantee anything. If there’s an issue, I’ll drop you a line and we’ll figure it out. Also, don’t forget to list your color choice in the notes!

Win a Gasp Asp Test Pressing
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In other Look Mexico news, we have two Gasp Asp test pressings that we’d like to give away. At first there were close to 20 people who emailed me about buying one of these. It was a little overwhelming because honestly kids, they only cost us around 60 cents to make. I understand there’s a collectibility factor going on here, but I still couldn’t take the pressure of deciding who was or wasn’t deserving enough of one. In the end, I concluded that the only fair thing would be to randomly give them away.

Here’s the dealio - anyone who pre-orders a copy of our second 7-inch release, Spirit Desire from the amazing Scranton, PA band Tigers Jaw, will automatically be entered to win a test pressings for both Gasp Asp and Spirit Desire. The Look Mexico test pressing will also come with one of the limited edition prints mentioned above, so that’s pretty cool. And even though we only have two of these grand prize packages to give away, a bunch of runners-up will receive the Tigers Jaw test pressing as well.

Pre-order Spirit Desire from Tigers Jaw
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Lastly, whether you’re hoping to win a test pressing or not, you really should pre-order a copy of the Spirit Desire 7-inch because it’s an great release. It took us a while for us to decide on a proper follow up to our first awesome 7-inch from Look Mexico, but settling on Tigers Jaw was a no brainer.

If you’re not familiar with this incredible five piece, listen to a couple mp3s from their 2008 full-length below. Likewise, the songs on Spirit Desire are amazing, keeping with Tigers Jaw’s nostalgic yet completely fresh indie-rock-cum-pop-punk M.O., but injecting even more tension, energy and ridiculously contagious melodies into the mix. For more pressing info and to pre-order a copy, go here.

Listen to “I Saw Water” and “Arms Across America” (Free mp3s!)

Contact Chuck with any questions: chuck@tinyengines.net

Anchor Arms play rock n roll infused punk with a dash of hardcore. Kind of like Leftover Crack mixed with The Explosion and maybe the Hot Snakes; that line reads pretty good, so the influences certainly stack up nicely. Lead singer and bassist James Austin certainly has the gravelly, snotty singing style necessary for this type of music; Justin Sane of Anti-Flag and Stza seem to be the benchmarks Austin is reaching for. The band is tight but flat sounding; the guitars lack a lot of presence and I’d like to see more of a gang singing approach to the “whoah-oh” sing-a-long moments.

Austin has a different sounding voice, maybe not for everyone, but he helps Anchor Arms stand out a bit from the other decent bands with poor production. Track “Poison Arrows” goes a long way towards showcasing the good and bad that seems to be at odds with this release and this band. The sound here seems like a work-in-progress, so maybe the band will hit its stride just as they find the right engineer and producer.

Label: Fail Safe

Girl And A Glacier

www.myspace.com/theanchorarms

“The Final Breaths Of A Main Character” appears on The Woods‘ (not to be confused with Woods) Self-Titled debut. The band has just released a brand new EP which you can download for free here.

www.thewoodsvideo.com

Sharks And Sailors

Label: Self-Released

Builds Brand New

www.myspace.com/sharksandsailors

[Best New Music]

(I reviewed the band’s Demo CD-R back in October of 08. Salinas was kind enough to still send me the vinyl release recently so I thought I would re-post my review. The release was in my Top Ten EPs of 2008.)

From the ashes of Each Other’s Mothers and Tin Kitchen, rise Little Lungs. As much as I was stoked on the initial EPs from EOM and TK, Little Lungs’ Hoist Me Up! sees my enthusiasm at an all-time high! The band barrels through 7 songs in less than 15 minutes (six songs on the 7″) and it is a breath of fresh, rejuvenating air. Imagine if Sleater-Kinney went pop-punk but kept their angular approach. Little Lungs can play their instruments with the best of them and they show it off to a certain extent. But the band also keeps the noodling to a minimum and the pedal to the metal! “Atlantic Bridge” and “White & Green” are awesome, sounding like the discordant driving pop-punk of the great Discount. And I’m a sucker for anything resembling that band. “Dreary” should be a show stopper with its fist-pumping chorus. Hoist Me Up! is full steam ahead and it is an absolute blast because of the band’s energetic approach! Unbridled enthusiasm can only carry a band so far though. You got to have the songs to back it up. But no doubt about it, Little Lungs got the juice! EOM and TK bit the dust after debut EPs that truly teased the ears. Let’s just hope Little Lungs don’t suffer the same fate.

Label: Salinas

Atlantic Bridge

Dreary:

www.myspace.com/littlelungsnynj

Who? Canyonsofstatic

Where are they from? West Bend, Wisconsin

What do they sound like? Beautiful instrumental rock that touches on elements of ambient and shoegaze. Oh great you say, yet another post rock band, right? Yeah, I know the feeling. It seems this genre has become the definition of watered down but Canyonsofstatic prove there are still gems yet to be unearthed. Everything on the band’s debut, The Disappearance, sounds completely organic. There is no model the band seems to be following here and perhaps that is why these songs possess such a stark, contrasting voice. Drifting in and out with rich, inviting textures, the band gives new meaning to the word epic. Canyonsofstatic are uplifting in every sense of the word, thankfully they just go about it a bit differently than all the other instrumental bands.

Slowly To Sea

The Casting Out are:

1. A rock band
2. Comprised of ex-members of BoySetsFire
3. Located in Delaware
4. Really popular in Germany…?
5. Big, huge fans of vests…and ties

The Casting Out are not:

1. All that popular stateside
2. All that great

It upsets me that the first influence cited on The Casting Out’s Myspace page is The Replacements; they sound nothing like The Replacements and they wish they drank as much as Paul Westerberg. I mean, everything here is okay and the recording is serviceable, but they’re certainly not breaking any new ground and the overwhelming sense of “we-don’t-give-a-fuck”ness that emanates from their band comes off as a pointless shtick, not an actual mantra.

Nathan Grey can still sing and is a good enough reason to at least try this. Of course, having his name attached to the project is probably the only reason these guys are getting any attention at all. But cashing in on one member’s past achievements does not a good band make. Grey has given up the political leanings that made Boysetsfire so relevant and anthemic and replaced them with musings on life and love, which don’t really fit his call-to-arms style of singing. “The Ebbing of the Tide” is the only true highlight; Grey sounds convincing and the band does a nice job of reaching an actual crescendo. Some of the faster tracks can be good a few times through (“Quioxte’s Last Ride” sports some nice hooks and “These Alterations” proves that there is hope), but I’d honestly rather listen to old Rise Against or even Broadway Calls.

Label: Fail Safe

These Alterations

www.myspace.com/thecastingout