Blog: QRO Magazine

These days, bands forming out of their love for '80s and '90s British pop is becoming a cliché, especially with acts from Scandinavia. But who cares as long as it sounds as good as "Deception" from Sweden's Cave Cat . One of only two tracks available from this new band from Gothenburg on their Bandcamp, but we hope more of this feel good guitar pop jangles with just enough lo-fi edge to stave off twee land will continue to flow from Cave Cat camp! [...]

Delay Trees - another fine band from the connoisseur of Finnish indie pop label, Soliti , just released their sophomore effort this month. Doze is a fitting soundtrack of the warmer season withering into the imminent frigid days. Rami Vierula's solicitous pensive vocals drift through a dreamy soundscape of melancholia, clinging into a sliver of hope. Originally from Hämeenlinna in southern Finland, the quartet describes their hometown as a "hopeless place to live or leave." Sometimes what haunts us results in the most sincere beauty and in Delay [...]

• Soliti - Delay Trees : HML

This September, QRO favorites Jones Street Station ( QRO spotlight on ) are embarking on an ambitious and generous mission - to record & release one song each week for a full year (that's fifty-two songs, folks!) to benefit twelve different charities. Oh, and the five members of the band are all over the country, collaborating remotely from four-to-five different studios... However, the first two entries sound anything but disjointed. First song "For a Lifetime" , has an intimate evocation, while the following "Henry Dryer" [...]

Scandinavia has become a strong force in the indie music scene within the past decade. Sweden wears the pop-churning crown, led by acts like The Radio Dept., Lykke Li, and The Tallest Man on Earth, while Denmark is closing on the competition with the success of Mew, Efterklang, and The Raveonettes. Iceland of course champions Sigur Rós, and Norway (with less obvious front runner) has produced Sondre Lerche, Kings of Convenience, and Röyksopp. But Finland? Most people in an American metropolis probably couldn't name one right off their head, but Big Wave Riders [...]

Illinois' Hank. (sic) shreds. The period after the name is a bit too precious, but you probably picked up their EP The Venture for free on Bandcamp so there's not much cause for complaint. Think early Dinosaur, pre-Dinosaur Jr. even -- or non-Barlow Sebadoh. Plus a touch of Primus eclecticism. Punk, pop, hard-core torpor mixed with the sweetest Allman Brothers licks you could imagine. A little rough around the edges, but that's what you get when you record an album in a basement in a single day. The musical chops are [...]

Chicago's Anatomy of Habit is known for an uncompromising approach to their sound, their album design, their performance. The doom/metal/industrial/etc. crowd is a pretty intense scene to begin with, but Anatomy of Habit makes good use of the gravitas to hyper-infuse every modality of their music with good artistic judgment. The production of their latest EP was handled by John McEntire (Tortoise) and Bob Weston (Shellac). The design of the physical album itself, a 12" record with a die-cut sleeve, is a thing of beauty. And the songs themselves - all two of them on the [...]

Consummate rock 'n' roller King Louie Bankston rallied the garage punk Missing Monuments around his three-song suite of perfectly poppy (with just the right amount of sloppy) sonic tumult. Think of Indiana's Happy Thoughts and you'll get a sense of the heart of this 7". Mix in a few more teaspoons of distortion and punk disdain to get the Missing Monuments. We're streaming the sweetest single on the release - a throwback pop jingle - but don't be fooled, things can fire up along the lines of the fast-paced punk shout-along "Bleed." [...]

Since its well-received debut LP Sons of Stone dropped in 2011, the four young dudes from Michigan's favorite sons of contemporary psych Peoples Temple have been further building their chops on tour. They must have been writing and recording too because their latest 7" pops with all the energy of a live show. The influences sound the same as the first record - heavy 13th Floor Elevator vibes - but the composition weaves the muscle psych sound into tighter knots while the production leans less heavily on retro studio effects to let the music speak [...]

Sprightly acoustic guitar, subdued vocals, some light & Brit poppy piano keys: Está Vivo returns with the hauntingly soulful single "My Thing". Apparently the track was inspired by a chance encounter with a girl at a party who always dreamed of having a song written about her. Naturally the musician behind the moniker, Ryan McMahon, got the ball rolling to make her dream a reality. The result is the track streaming below along with the ephemeral, dubby folk B-side "Green Thumb". Strange vibrations of WU LYF's "Such A Sad Puppy Dog" on Está Vivo's vocals here, [...]

One of QRO's favorite up-and-coming music video directors, Boston's Theodore Cormey , has made an impressive and engrossing video for André Obin 's impressive and engrossing "Valencia" . Evoking war-time Spain, war-time Europe, war-time anywhere, Comey's video for "Valencia" captures the confusion and terror of a world where the powers-that-be strive to make it seem that everything is fine - when it most definitely is not. Theodore Comey's video [...]

This hot, hot, hot summer welcomes the sun-drenched 'Unity Tour' as 311 and Slightly Stoopid team up for an absolutely massive summer tour, two full months, July to September, cross-country and everywhere in between: 7/8 - Sioux Falls, SD - W.H. Lyons Fairground 7/10 - St Louis, MO - Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre 7/12 - Dallas, TX - Gexa Energy Pavilion 7/13 - New Braunfels, [...]

QRO has loved Snowden for a long time ( QRO spotlight on ), from seeing them on tour ( QRO live review ) with Kings of Leon to a great interview with main man Jordan Jeffares. That's why it's been so frustrating waiting for the band to release a follow-up to 2006's great debut full-length, Anti-Anti . Well, the band is finally going to release their sophomore record, No On In Control , this fall on Kings of [...]

In anticipation of a full-length LP, New York City's favorite dharma-core technicians Beat Radio have dropped a mini-excerpt EP hard times go, part 2 . Lead vocalist Brian Sendrowitz knows how to spin out a catchy pop number. Beat Radio serves up music with all the rough edges you'd expect from a vintage K Records type release. Sweet, raw, earnest. Pure pop poetry in an age where lyrics are a dying art. The track "strange harmonies" includes some of the more folktronic elements of the band: think Beck, sitting on a street corner, with [...]

The Brooklyn soft-psychers Quiet Loudly return with their second full-length LP, Go Into the Light Smiling. Have a listen to "Sometimes I Forget" below. The band is capable of heavier blues, psych exhalations, but they play it pretty relaxed on this track. A reflective, even mournful, atmosphere pervades throughout: the choral-infused climax cranks the intensity up a notch before dropping back to a quiet murmur, an intimate moment, like the last glimmer of light along the horizon before the sun finally sets. [...]

Boston's Thick Shakes stir it up with more retro, Pontiac Supreme, tailfin inspired proto-garage wonders on their latest release French Dyppe . "Friends Like This" cuts a jagged path through feedback slurries of die-cut pop hooks. The band added a fourth member since their previous release and put him to work hammering out some tasty, old skool keyboard vibrations. French Dyppe is available now via Aurora 7 Records as a limited edition cassette - or cassyngle, "in the parlance of our times." [...]

Chicago's dreamiest dream-poppers return with the 3-track 7" Serious Radical Girls . It's being released in anticipation of a full-length LP titled Northern Automatic Music , via Saint Marie Records. The tracks on the limited edition 7" are exclusive to the 7" release: no iTunes, no Amazon, no nada. So have a listen here to get a read on the future of Chicago shoegaze. Title track "Serious Radical Girls" spits nice mid-tempo cloud-crunch; "Golden Age (Precursor)" trots out some impressive pop/ambient instrumentals; and bonus remix from Dean Garcia (Curve/SPC ECO) opens up its [...]

Chomp is the unholy union of members of the somber Cloud Nothings and the Wavves-y Total Babes and their first release from forthcoming LP Buddah Jabba Momma , "Throw Out Your Wish List", sounds exactly like you'd expect it to. Retaining the shambolic, summer-ready rock sound of the latter and combining it with some of the introspective lyricism and aggression of the former. It's all energy and friction with cymbals crashing, guitars chugging and singer/guitarist Joe Boyer showcasing a surprising range, nailing a punk delivery as adept as his brief [...]

One of the finest of Portland's dream pop scene, Pinscape just released a new single, "Termina!". Combining unique synthesis, electronic drum programming, and textured guitar, Pinscape evokes the work of Slowdive, M83, Ulrich Schnauss, and Boards of Canada. Resonating loss and solitude, united with hope and yearning, accompanied by empathetic tone, the duo's textural soundscape is in perpetual search of terra incognita. Pinscape is a collaboration between Matthew Flook and Andrew Wisler that has developed between various songwriting projects. Flook released Pinscape's first EP "Transitory Timing" through Nueva Forma [...]

SECRETWARS returns with the six-track EP Dead In The Western Cosmos . Moody, ambient, acronym-inducing, the tracks are hard-coded into a fifteen-minute video detailing either the end or the beginning of civilization. Heavy early David Lynch vibes on the visuals -- his art school days of vomit painting & pre-holocaust anxiety. Check out QRO's interview with the mysterious electronic maven and email SECRETWARS at secretsecretwars[at]gmail[dot] com for an ultra-limited release CD-R hardcopy with custom album art (and possible IRL encounter). [...]

Portland's Jack Lesser Lewis' Awkward Energy recently released a full-length LP in May, Lvov Swims the Willamette , a record forged from collaborations that stretches from the west cost to France. Fourth installment of Lewis' 'Lvov Cycle' which includes Lvov's Lament (2002), Lvov Reads His Notes (2004) and Lvov Goes To Emandee (2006), it is a continued testament to why awkward energy is so fitting to follow his name. With a press release describing as "A conversation with the pushy-neighborhood cat, a haunted library, trying to get some friends to [...]