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Combustible Gems

Lightheaded

Combustible Gems LP/LP/LP bundle/CD

New Jersey's Lightheaded are clearly students of pop in all of its variety, drawing as much from 60s Brill Building song writers as they do from later 60s folk/pop developments and 80s DIY pop. The striking thing is how seamlessly they're able to meld these influences, and the distinctive voice that they've crafted this early in their career. Their new album "Combustible Gems" follows-up their well-regarded "Good Good Great!" EP in fine fashion, striking all the right Phil Spector/Goffin & King chords while rooting the album firmly in the NOW. Singles like "Moments Notice" and "Bright Happy Girls" possess a timeless pop charm, brimming with jangle, drama and infectious energy. Click here to read about the SLR May 2024 3 LP bundle that includes this Lightheaded album. Expected to ship on or before the May 17th release date. If you order this along with other items we'll ship your order when everything is in stock.

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Pop and Circumstance

Lunchbox

Pop and Circumstance LP/LP bundle/CD

Oakland, CA mainstays Lunchbox are back with "Pop and Circumstance," an explosive new album that draws on influences from classic AM radio pop singles to the 1970s UK mod-revival to the jangle of 1980s British indiepop. From the bubblegum mod pop of "Dinner for Two" to the junkshop soul of "Love for Free," from the power pop of "Summer’s Calling" to the horn-driven grooves of "Is this Real?," "Pop and Circumstance" transposes Lunchbox’s unique blend of influences into a transcendent new key. Click here to read about the SLR May 2024 3 LP bundle that includes this Lunchbox album. Expected to ship on or before the May 10th release date. If you order this along with other items we'll ship your order when everything is in stock.

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Unwishing Well

The Reds, Pinks and Purples

Over the last five years The Reds, Pinks & Purples have released six albums and countless singles & EPs, all breathing fresh life into the cerebral, leftfield pop that animated the gloomy teens, college DJs and record store clerks of the 80s and 90s. Such touchstones as The Go-Betweens, The Smiths, Magnetic Fields, and Felt are obvious inspirations, but their prolific, prodigious talent for mood and melody have virtually created their own genre, and "Unwishing Well" is its purest embodiment yet. Expected to ship on or before the April 12th release date. If you order this along with other items we'll ship your order when everything is in stock.

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Torrey

Torrey

Torrey LP/CD

SF Bay Area textural pop group Torrey delve deep into a translucent dreamworld on their self-titled sophomore album. Bending classic shoegaze, rainy day indie rock sounds, and 90s alt rock flair into more intricate forms, the band uses these guitar-forward songs to shape-shift between gentle drifting and noisy breakthroughs. Some touchstones might include Lush, Drop Nineteens, Cocteau Twins and The Breeders, but Torrey have a deft grasp of their craft and a forward-thinking studio approach that places them very much in the NOW.

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Fairweather Friend

The Umbrellas

Channeling sold gold influences like The Pastels, Comet Gain, Orange Juice and The Aislers Set, The Umbrellas represent the fertile San Francisco Bay Area scene at its most pop-tastic. "Fairweather Friend" follows-up their surprise-hit 2021 debut in fine fashion, featuring sterling songwriting and arranging, bigger and more nuanced production, and terrific, assured vocals all around. The Umbrellas have swung for the fences with this new album and it's a bold, beautifully-executed success.

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Fertile State

Blue Ocean

Oakland CA's Blue Ocean blend elements of shoegaze, pop, noise rock and electronics, striking a precarious balance between noise and melody that recalls forebears like Disco Inferno, Bark Psychosis and Flying Saucer Attack. "Fertile State" shows the band at their noisy best. Reverberating guitars swirl around what is at it's heart a lovely pop song, erupting into peels of feedback a la early Jesus & Mary Chain. It's a bracing, intoxicatingly fresh take on noisy pop from a band to watch.

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Good Good Great!

Lightheaded

Good Good Great! cassette

New Jersey's Lightheaded have conjured, through some mysterious alchemy, a distinctive flavor of pop that draws as much from 60s Brill Building, garage-pop and folk-pop as it does from the DIY indie explosion of the 80s/early 90s. Their debut EP "Good Good Great!" shows that band core Cynthia and Stephen are clearly students of pop in all its permutations, but they wear their influences lightly -- a typical Lightheaded song could have been released in 1966 or 1986, but in fact sounds just right in 2023! The sound has just right amount of elemental murk, drawing to mind a mythical collab between Phil Spector and Curt Boettcher's Sagittarius, working their way through the Goffin & King songbook.

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Perfect Worlds

Tony Jay

Perfect Worlds LP/cassette

"Perfect Worlds," the newest album by San Francisco's mysterious lo-fi pop legend Tony Jay, delivers an intimate record of thirteen dreamy, assured arrangements that further cements Tony Jay's status as a dejected crooner of the quotidian par excellence. Drawing inspiration from failed relationships, lack of sleep, a bicycle injury, and depression, Tony Jay (helmed by SF scene mainstay Michael Ramos) pairs catchy melodies and hushed vocals with ethereal instrumental tracks.

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The Town That Cursed Your Name

The Reds, Pinks and Purples

The Town That Cursed Your Name LP w/bonus 7"/LP/CD

The Reds, Pinks & Purples' new collection "The Town That Cursed Your Name" gathers together twelve perfectly-constructed pop gems, some previously unheard and some released for just a few days and then withdrawn, but all adhering to the absurdly high standards of song-craft that the band's Glenn Donaldson adheres to. Echoes of everything from The Go-Betweens to Felt to Magnetic Fields reverberate through his songs, informed by an extreme dedication to detail and no small amount of outright fandom.

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Love As Projection

Frankie Rose

After spending nearly two decades establishing herself across New York and Los Angeles independent music circles, Frankie Rose returns with a fresh form, aesthetic, and purpose embodied in her new album "Love As Projection." Celebrated by countless critical and cultural outlets over the years for her expansive approach to songwriting, lush atmospherics, and transcendent vocal melodies and harmonies, "Love As Projection" is a reintroduction of her iconic style through the new lens of contemporary electronic pop. Featuring beautiful, ethereal songs like lead-off single "Anything," "Sixteen Ways" and "Come Back," this album is more than a rebirth, a refinement, a resurgence – it's a culmination of influence and the most personal and accessible collection of art-pop that Frankie has delivered yet.

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They Only Wanted Your Soul

The Reds, Pinks and Purples

Limited edition reissue of a very scarce 4 song EP, now expanded to mini-LP length with the addition of six bonus songs. Recorded around the same time as the songs that went on to comprise the beloved "Uncommon Weather" album, "They Only Wanted Your Soul" contains some of the best examples of Glenn Donaldson's melancholy but wry take on indie pop. It has songs about record shopping, religion, worker's rights, dysfunctional holidays, and of course heartbreak, sung over a maze of shimmering fuzzy guitars and drum machine beats -- an essential chapter of the Reds, Pinks & Purples story.

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Pad

Peel Dream Magazine

Pad Ltd Edition LP/LP/CD

Joe Stevens' Peel Dream Magazine project has dazzled savvy listeners for the last several years with its tuneful yet hypnotic synthesis of post-punk, shoegaze, 60s pop and motorik kosmische grooves. Now Stevens is back with "Pad," a new, conceptual album which draws on influences from baroque pop to Bossa Nova, folk and mid-century orchestral, from Burt Bacharach-era 60s pop to first wave homemade post-punk. First single "Pad" is a perfect introduction to what the album is all about, all finger-snapping cool, groovy flute and sumptuous harmonies; a whispering sigh of a love song. Like the album it lends its name to, "Pad" is conceptually playful and sensuously subterranean, blurring the line between blithe escapism and pointed subversion. The limited edition mail order-only edition includes a bonus 4-song 7" EP.

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Don't Wait For A Sign

Jeanines

Jeanines' 2019 self-titled debut was an indiepop tour-de-force that drew from a deep set of DIY pop influences, garnering attention from well beyond the international pop underground. Now they're back with "Don't Wait For A Sign," and it's a real gem. With the band now divided geographically and touched by the isolation and uncertainty of the pandemic, Jeanines' new album is deeper and a bit darker than their debut. The folk influences feel more pronounced, at times recalling early Fairport Convention or Vashti Bunyan as much as indiepop touchstones like Dear Nora, The Aislers Set, and the many bands of Pam Berry. Second albums can be tricky, but with "Don't Wait For A Sign” Jeanines ably manage to build on their terrific debut with well-honed songwriting, singular melodies, and unerringly sympathetic production.

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Past Life Regression

Papercuts

Jason Quever has been releasing timeless dream pop as Papercuts since 2004; his new album "Past Life Regression" is a journey into the dreamier reaches of psychedelic folk-pop that digs deep into influences as wide-ranging as The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band, Spiritualized, Echo & The Bunnymen, Leonard Cohen and late 60s pop of various flavors. Jason's songcraft, arranging and production are immaculate as always, reflecting his broad experience and enlivened by his move back home to the San Francisco Bay Area. It's remarkable that after more than 15 years he's writing his best songs and in "Past Life Regression" has made his finest record. Gorgeous, perfectly constructed chamber pop for the very unusual times we're living through.

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Summer At Land's End

The Reds, Pinks and Purples

"Summer at Land's End" is the 4th LP from The Reds, Pinks & Purples, Glenn Donaldson's solo kitchen pop "band." Since 2019 The Reds, Pinks & Purples has built an obsessive, ever-growing following by combining a vinyl-oriented release schedule with regular drops of new songs on Bandcamp. 2021's "Uncommon Weather" was something of a breakthrough and now Donaldson is back with the brilliantly ambitious "Summer At Land's End." Like the blossoming flower-themed sleeve might imply, it's bursting with heart-ripped-open vocals, ringing guitars, and warm reverberations. As before, "Land's End" contains plenty of concise indie-pop songs, but it also expands into hazier acoustic sounds and some extended mood pieces. You might hear '80s and '90s influences in the echoing guitars, but more so you might hear melodies and words that resonate deep down in some mysterious, transcendent space.

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Fingers Crossed

Artsick

Fingers Crossed LP/CD/cassette

Artsick was formed in June 2018 when Christina Riley (of NorCal band Burnt Palms) teamed up with Mario Hernandez (Kids On A Crime Spree, Ciao Bella) on drums and Donna McKean (Lunchbox, Hard Left) on bass. Following up their terrific 2018 7" single they are now back with their debut album "Fingers Crossed," a thrilling, compelling and downright fun record that surveys a vast swathe of indie and indiepop history, from DIY progenitors like Dolly Mixture through the punkier side of C86 (think Talulah Gosh, Fat Tulips) to the 90s K Records-centered International Pop Underground and straight through more recent exemplars like Vivian Girls and Colleen Green. Christina says that she was "always been drawn to fuzzy guitars, melodies with emotion and songs with urgency" and that is readily apparent on every moment of this excellent album.

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Fall In Love Not In Line

Kids On A Crime Spree

Fall In Love Not In Line LP/CD/cassette

Oakland, CA's Kids On A Crime Spree have spent the last decade crafting a compact discography that shows a deep love of 60s Brill Building songwriting, 70s power-pop, bubblegum glam/pop, the Ramones and of course Phil Spector's legendary productions. "Fall In Love Not In Line" is the band's first full album and it's a corker. Head Kid Mario Hernandez -- along with drummer Becky Barron, and guitarist Bill Evans -- sought to move even farther from their influences, and the thick, rich sound that the band has put to tape (analog, of course) shows more warmth and some darker textures than in previous efforts; more shifting of tempos and melodies; a unity of purpose that can only come from years of playing together and listening to each other. The result is thoroughly modern power-pop that wears it's love of the classics lightly, finding new paths through familiar territory.

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Chime School

Chime School

Chime School CD/cassette/LP

Chime School is the project of San Francisco musician Andy Pastalaniec. Charmed by 80s indie and its 60s forbearers, Andy cut his teeth as a drummer with SF groups Pink Films, Cruel Summer, and Seablite; now he has come out from behind the kit to write and record his own material. The aptly named Chime School pays homage to the formative jangle of The Byrds by way of early Primal Scream and The Springfields; the production and pop sensibility of the Biff Bang Pow! and Razorcuts; and the spirit of great singles labels like Creation, Postcard and Sarah. From the dreamy album opener "Wait Your Turn" to the driving jangle of singles "Taking Time To Tell You" and "It's True" we can see that we're in the presence of a very talented writer indeed, someone with a lifetime's worth of pop fandom just waiting to burst out in song.

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now viewing: albums
filter view: all releases   albums   eps   singles   shirts, badges & more   other label's stuff we sell