Full-length LP from the duo of Lea Cho and Russ Waterhouse (last seen alongside Pete Nolan as two-thirds of Spectre Sports) who use keyboard, harmonica, vocals, guitar and tape effects to generate repeat-percussive/keyboard dirge jams that touch on cosmonauts as varied as This Heat, Magical Power Mako, Terry Riley and Royal Trux circa Twin Infinitives. There are some very beautiful passages here that seem to reconfigure the blues as a hermetic, psychedelic form that communicates through endless reconfigurations of three primal chords, given further Kosmiche nuance via smears of delay, time-staggered accumulations of notes and the kind of gorgeous outer-space hymnal phrasing previously at the service of Sun Ra and James Ferraro's Teotihuacan. First pressing of 500 copies with silkscreened covers. Highly recommended.

Excellent new collaboration LP from Denmark's VU-obsessives Family Underground and Mr David Nuss of The No-Neck Blues Band et al. "Summer 06 Family Underground (DK) recorded with Dave Nuss of NNCK at Black Dirt Studios in the woods of upstate NY. The yield was as characteristically unhinged as one might expect: sweeping electronic sounds backed with wood and bone percussion spirit-conjure. However also harvested was some new and especially tasty crop: sung and spoken song, electric guitar/conga 'rock' and an odd ghostly sheen coating the entire proceeding. Nuss comments on the session: 'I remember when we were recording, momentarily leaving the studio and going out into the night and feeling it thicken like a partition separating us from this intense state of clear consciousness we had in the recording, which was like... humankind's natural state. And then thinking about Jesper from FU, an adopted Vietnamese living in DK, and how much he resembles Michael Jackson, and realizing that across continents no man can be divided from himself. We had to make this music to provide for us some fantasy of fulfilment that would carry us through the weekend like rejuvenated suns born again climbing to heaven, after being washed in the deepest bluest sea....' Jacket by designer Susan Cianciolo and screened inserts by Stellar, NL." - Woodsist.

Very dark atmospherics from the Robedoor duo, with two sides of looping Industrial ritual and eerie, devotional sonics that are somewhere between the most caveman Krautrock, an alternative Holy Mountain soundtrack and Nurse With Wound circa Soliloquy For Lilith/A Salt Marie Celeste. Edition of 500 copies with full colour jacket.

New EP from Pink Reason, a three tracker that dovetails nicely with the ragged arc of the Siltbreeze LP, with massively downer ballads ala Jim Shepard/V-3 spiked with the kinda basement garage gnosis previously associated with the whole Twisted Village/Luxurious Bags axis. A good one. Second edition, 500 copies on red vinyl.

Vinyl collection from this post-Velvets NY-based four piece featuring Frankie Rose of Vivian Girls on stand-up drums. This one compiles their prior 12” alongside the “Shattered Shine” 7”. The sound draws on various primitive art-pop moves, specifically the whole Jesus & Mary Chain/Shop Assistants style of Scottish downer fuzz but there are also aspects of the early Rough Trade singles, some of the bands orbiting Factory Records and a nicely-done distant psychedelic atmosphere that has a lot in common with the first wave of Paisley Underground groups.

New seven song mini LP from this mysterious Brooklyn based loner who cuts up zoned, spaced out new wave bombs with minimal synth stylings, moody teen melodies, Factory-style basslines and a general post-Messthetics feel for solitary bedroom rock/pop ritual. Another great one from this guy, with a hazy production style that is nicely psychedelic.

“Lo-fi beach punk anthems” from San Diego’s Nathan Williams that take the whole DIY/synth/punk style of Blank Dogs into a suburban garage and kits it out with Australian pop/punk moves, a more rock-sourced instrumental aesthetic and memorable sun-soaked melodies, all exploded by crude guitar fuzz and trashcan drums.

"Debut release from 27 year old Brian Standeford. After the quick dissolution of his previous band Tall Birds, Standeford began recording songs onto cassette in his Seattle home using a Tascam 4-track, practice amps and a toy drum kit. Loner bedroom psych at its best. Edition of 500 on black vinyl." – FIT.

Fourth album from Woods, the trio of Jeremy Earl, Jarvis Taveniere and G. Lucas Crane. This is another hook-filled collection of maximal folk-punkers, rendered in a style that somehow reconciles the whole K Records International Pop Underground feel with timeless psych rock and contemporary free folk ala the MV/EE cultus. If anything, the tracks are a little more extended than previous records, with one particularly blazing stand-out being “September With Pete” that flashes between a loose Crazy Horse-styled barn buster and the Savage Sons Of Ya Ho Wha. Also features a nice cover of the Crosby, Stills & Nash track “Military Madness”. Still one of the best contemporary underground groups to truck in songs-as-songs. Recommended.

“Sacramento's Ganglians want an island somewhere where they can soak in the sun and prowl the canopy by night. It's not often that they do get out, but they can get down for that. Recording sometimes as one, sometimes as four it's a real game to figure out where the entity comes from and where it's going. First and foremost it's about uncertain pleasures. It's a bit like choose your own adventure. There's "codeine balladry"; a slightly upsetting tempo that is quickly flushed into an aural high, the next moment you're in the toy strewn abyss of the bedroom and then out to the tribal caves of the natives. The planets align and the sun beats down, palms tingling, and you are on the island they've built, the scenery constantly shifting for a better view, of you. 8 tracks in 24 min.” – FIT.

"After about a 2 year absence, Psychedelic Horseshit is back with an EP of alleged B-sides from an upcoming full length..."I only listen to OK Computer and Cranes. The Fall sucks, DIY sucks, we suck, you suck." said Matt Horseshit in a recent interview."Why should anyone listen to you then?" replied the reporter."Because we're FUN, duh." And even though you wanna hate 'em, you gotta admit, they kinda are fun. Matt is a dick, of course, and Rich is hilariously clueless mostly, and by all means most of the stuff on this SHITGAZE ANTHEMS EP should'nt work, whether it be the white-boy dub section, the cliche acoustic ballad with backwards guitar, the blatant Dylan rips, or the overall amateur playing, but for some reason these elements that usually reek of pretention and failure actually endear you to the band and their songs. Yes, they're called Psychedelic Horseshit. Yes, they do suck, but I'll be damned if they aren't one of my favorite bands in the world, and they're only getting better, but if I tried to tell you why it'd only make 'em sound worse. So it goes..."- matt horseshit

Debut LP from this Portland, Oregon ensemble who play massively fuzzy rock/pop bolstered with an almost No Wave-scale bottom end crunch and the kind of iconoclastic lead guitar patterns that touch on a bunch of modern American touchstones, Zoot Horn Rollo, Neil Hagerty, Calvin Johnson’s Go Team, while wading through waves of shrill feedback ala the early/mid-80s amp worship style of JAMC/Meat Whiplash et al. But overall this has the kinda up-beat American garage appeal of your favourite houserockers with a slightly more angular take on Velvets-inspired underground, complete with tambourines and Mo Tucker stomps.

New single from this SF-based psych/pop group, two hazy tracks from their Bombs Wombs cassette, with an A-side that has a Syd-era Pink Floyd feel and a flip with a great Bobby Fuller Four vibe. Boss!

Great new project from Glenn Donaldson (Skygreen Leopards et al) and Josh Alper that mainlines the DIY art-pop moves of Dan Treacey’s Television Personalities, Ed Ball’s O Level/The Times et al. Freakbeat psych styles with primitive pro-Mod instrumental settings and a sharp modern art appeal. “The Art Museums ARE into: art, poetry, WHAAM records & films about Mods…The Art Museums ARE NOT into: flared trousers, drip coffee, dirty sneakers.”

Brand new EP from the current greatest live band on the planet. This one expands on the more extended aspect of the group’s recent live set, with a long A-side that dissolves from collage and high lonesome song into vectors of intuitive string think that are as beautiful as any ’72 Dead set. The flip captures two shorter tracks straight out of the teenage garage. Fantastic. Bring on the LP.

With a title like At Echo Lake the fifth album from New York’s Woods intimates a modern rock aesthetic fully informed by historical manifestations of teenage along with a concomitant feel for the specifics of time and place. The distance between 2007’s At Rear House and 2010’s At Echo Lake may at first seem only semantic but it more properly represents a move from a kind of informal back porch jam ethos to a fully-committed vision of the infinite possibilities of group playing. Over the past few years Woods have established themselves as an anomaly in a world of freaks. They were an odd proposition even in the outré company of vocalist/guitarist/label owner Jeremy Earl’s Woodsist roster, perpetually out of time, committed to songsmanship in an age of noise, drone and improvisation, to extended soloing, oblique instrumentals and the usurping use of tapes and F/X in an age of dead-end singer-songwriters. Recent live shows have seen them best confuse the two, playing beautifully-constructed songs torn apart by fuzztone jams and odd electronics. At Echo Lake feels like a diamond-sharp distillation of the turbulent power of their live shows, in much the same way that The Grateful Dead’s “Dark Star” single amplified and engulfed the planetary aspect of their improvised takes. Some of the material here – the opening “Blood Dries Darker”, the euphoric “Mornin’ Time” – is so lush that lesser brains would’ve succumbed to the appeal of strings and horns but At Echo Lake is more Fifth Dimension than Notorious Byrd Brothers, nowhere more so than on “From The Horn”, a track that is as beautiful in its assault on form as “Eight Miles High” or Swell Maps’ “Midget Submarines”. But despite the instrumental innovation that the album heralds – G. Lucas Cranes’ psychedelic tapework on “Suffering Season”, guest musician Matthew Valentine’s harmonica and modified banjo/sitar on “Time Fading Lines” – At Echo Lake is all about the vocals. Woods’ secret weapon is the quality of Earl’s voice, osmosing the naive style of Jad Fair, Jonathan Richman and Neil Young while re-thinking it as a discipline and a tradition. Here he is singing at the peak of his powers, in a high soulful style that is bolstered by heavenly arrangements of backing vocals. At Echo Lake feels like the transmission point for teenage garage from the past to the future. Deformed by contemporary experiments, bolstered by magical traditions from the past, it’s the sound of now, right here, At Echo Lake.

With a title like At Echo Lake the fifth album from New York’s Woods intimates a modern rock aesthetic fully informed by historical manifestations of teenage along with a concomitant feel for the specifics of time and place. The distance between 2007’s At Rear House and 2010’s At Echo Lake may at first seem only semantic but it more properly represents a move from a kind of informal back porch jam ethos to a fully-committed vision of the infinite possibilities of group playing. Over the past few years Woods have established themselves as an anomaly in a world of freaks. They were an odd proposition even in the outré company of vocalist/guitarist/label owner Jeremy Earl’s Woodsist roster, perpetually out of time, committed to songsmanship in an age of noise, drone and improvisation, to extended soloing, oblique instrumentals and the usurping use of tapes and F/X in an age of dead-end singer-songwriters. Recent live shows have seen them best confuse the two, playing beautifully-constructed songs torn apart by fuzztone jams and odd electronics. At Echo Lake feels like a diamond-sharp distillation of the turbulent power of their live shows, in much the same way that The Grateful Dead’s “Dark Star” single amplified and engulfed the planetary aspect of their improvised takes. Some of the material here – the opening “Blood Dries Darker”, the euphoric “Mornin’ Time” – is so lush that lesser brains would’ve succumbed to the appeal of strings and horns but At Echo Lake is more Fifth Dimension than Notorious Byrd Brothers, nowhere more so than on “From The Horn”, a track that is as beautiful in its assault on form as “Eight Miles High” or Swell Maps’ “Midget Submarines”. But despite the instrumental innovation that the album heralds – G. Lucas Cranes’ psychedelic tapework on “Suffering Season”, guest musician Matthew Valentine’s harmonica and modified banjo/sitar on “Time Fading Lines” – At Echo Lake is all about the vocals. Woods’ secret weapon is the quality of Earl’s voice, osmosing the naive style of Jad Fair, Jonathan Richman and Neil Young while re-thinking it as a discipline and a tradition. Here he is singing at the peak of his powers, in a high soulful style that is bolstered by heavenly arrangements of backing vocals. At Echo Lake feels like the transmission point for teenage garage from the past to the future. Deformed by contemporary experiments, bolstered by magical traditions from the past, it’s the sound of now, right here, At Echo Lake.

Wonked digital psych from NY’s Excepter, featuring ex-members of NNCK, with a slab of vinyl that plays from the label out: “The 23rd Excepter record: The Late EP. The Black Rust Rush Tour of "High Noon" lore. One track recorded at Oberlin Dionysus Disco, Fall 2009, in I-94 palindrome dub by R/N. One track recorded at 382 Jeff Street by Lala with the TR-808. 2009-2010 edit. Two tracks live on "Presidence Day" at the Glass Lands, February 16th, 2010, by Derek Maxwell, sound engineer. The Late EP returns Excepter to Woodsist. All four tracks are previously unreleased. The Tank Tapes are included as a complimentary bonus digital download with the record. Excepter is New York City's premiere improvisatory, vocal-and-electronics cosmic beat-box band. Whether on stage, on record or on video, Excepter never gives the expected, and this is no exception...” – Woodsist.

New collection of sunbleached songs and strange, melancholy instrumentals from Matt Mondanile aka Ducktails. Mondanile combines a hazy surf/pop sensibility with primitive instrumentation to generate a teenage neverland complete with heavenly Beach Boys harmonies and dreamy psychedelic guitars. Some of the instrumentals almost touch on the kind of naive basement pop of Calvin Johnson’s great run of early K cassettes but there’s also a heavy 80s Flying Nun/Go Betweens vibe complete with chiming Byrds-style guitars and keening, laconic vocals. As with alla Mondanile’s work the simplicity of its construction kinda belies the emotional weight of the material making this a supremely personal and inexplicably affecting release. The best Ducktails yet? Either way this is a totally memorable set that is impossible to get out of your head. Recommended.

New collection of sunbleached songs and strange, melancholy instrumentals from Matt Mondanile aka Ducktails. Mondanile combines a hazy surf/pop sensibility with primitive instrumentation to generate a teenage neverland complete with heavenly Beach Boys harmonies and dreamy psychedelic guitars. Some of the instrumentals almost touch on the kind of naive basement pop of Calvin Johnson’s great run of early K cassettes but there’s also a heavy 80s Flying Nun/Go Betweens vibe complete with chiming Byrds-style guitars and keening, laconic vocals. As with alla Mondanile’s work the simplicity of its construction kinda belies the emotional weight of the material making this a supremely personal and inexplicably affecting release. The best Ducktails yet? Either way this is a totally memorable set that is impossible to get out of your head. Recommended. Vinyl comes with free digital download that includes an exclusive bonus track—an alternate version of the track “Killin’ the Vibe” featuring Panda Bear.

Great 12” EP from Pete Nolan’s Spectre Folk, here with Steve Shelley of Sonic Youth on drums, Peter Meehan on guitar and Aaron Mullan (Tall Firs) on bass. In many ways this is the apotheosis of Nolan’s recent work which has been moving towards an hallucinatory synthesis of basement rock and chiming west coast folk, somewhere between the Paisley Underground sound and a pre-Sweetheart Byrds. Four tracks that have an ecstatic garage band feel complete with submerged/spaced vocals that float across the tracks in clouds of reverb and some almost Rallizes-esque soloing: “Pete Nolan was Spectre Folk before drumming and strumming in Magik Markers was his main gig, and will be Spectre Folk long after he shuffles off this mortal coil. The main benefit of ghost-folk is: you can play it way after you’re dead, and while you’re alive the Spectre can haunt any decent willing body with a gift for the unreal. This time around, fellow Michigander Steve Shelley (Sonic Youth) runs drums, Peter Meehan (The Grey Lady) glues guitar and Aaron Mullan (Tall Firs) slithers bass, creating an alchemy the Spectre hasn’t floated since the days of basement wig-wearing in the short-lived Norman Bates era. The band entered Echo Canyon West with the intention of recording a 7-inch of the up-tempo version of “The Blackest Medicine,” the title cut from the 2007 home-fi Woodsist debut. After several sessions, they emerged with a four-song studio collage monster that won’t fit in your locker and smells like smoked banana peels and undies blowing down an alleyway. A vibraphone, piano, and a plate reverb unit the size of a Brooklyn apartment were all employed by the Spectre like Uri Gellar used spoons—inappropriately, desperate and bent. They physically turned the two-inch reel of tape over so Meehan could put subliminal backwards masking under his Erkin-Koray-worthy guitar solo on “Fourth Dimension Refs,” and Nolan put the Temple Screamer to good use on tracks one and two, using samples of Shirley Temple Black’s “Good Ship Lollipop” as vocoder harmonies on choruses. Oh yeah, it’s full of burning psych-pop jammers, too!  Earmarking Nolan’s longstanding but unspoken obsession with personal hygiene, “Keep Your Teeth Clean!” is a krauty suite that betrays Shelley’s and Mullan’s recent stint as the rhythm section for Neu! Their teutonic influence has the effect of putting the dreamy psych-fuzz exhibited on last year’s Compass LP through a blender… with a frog... that spills out into a wide open Milky Way head zone. You can’t snuggle with this record, so strap yourself in and feel the Gs! Fearless as a lemming, Nolan has created a private universe here, a Society of the Spectre-cal, if you will, and his gift is his freedom. Let’s have a drift.” - Elisa Ambrogio (Magik Markers)

“Sixth studio album from Woods sees them further transition from back porch rural folk rock to their current fully developed sound w/finely crafted songs with enough elasticity to stretch out into extended jams on the bandstand. Sun And Shade is classic Woods but still represents a development in their psychedelic pop/garage rock song writing. When At Echo Lake came out VT described it as “more Fifth Dimension than Notorious Byrd Brothers” and in that sense this feels closer to Younger Than Yesterday – the perfect document of their form. Woods in the studio is quite different a proposition to Woods live. Whereas live they are happy to stretch out into wild psychedelic jams, in the studio it is all about formulating classic songs, with a focus on melody and those amazing vocals. It’s not surprising given the personnel involved. Woods the studio group are predominantly the duo of Jeremy Earl and Jarvis Taveniere (augmented on this occasion by Glenn Donaldson of Skygreen Leopards/Art Museums et al) whereas live sees the addition of G.Lucas Crane on tape loops, vocals and FX and Kevin Morby on bass, guitar and drums. On this record Woods display their craft across ten songs and two radical instrumentals (think “September with Pete”) that are some of the album’s highlights. Opener “Pushing Onlys” - already a staple of the live set - is the perfect articulation of the Woods sound, setting psychedelic pop dreamscapes to a garage infused pulsating drive. There are almost too many highlights to describe but “Any Other Day” is a stand-out with its Byrds-like chorus and a riveting/phasing guitar sound straight off “Wasn’t Born To Follow”. It closes with these delightful drum fills that will bring a smile to anyone with a pulse. The cornerstone of the Woods sound is still Jeremy Earl’s sublime, infectious vocals (whether solo or multi-tracked) with a euphoric aspect that gets me every time. Sun And Shade includes some more tender and introspective moments that take his vocals to a whole new level. The delivery on the sublimely personal “Wouldn’t Waste” and “Who Do I Think I Am?” features some of the finest psychedelic vocals I’ve heard, with a softness of touch comparable to Arthur Lee’s performances on “Orange Skies” and “The Castle” on Da Capo. Other highlights include the Small Faces-sounding psychedelic pop of “What Faces The Sheet” and the percussion driven ballad of “White Out” with its almost calypso guitar.  But the two tracks that really set this apart as the definitive Woods release are the long instrumentals, “Out Of The Eye” and “Sol Y Sombra”. “Out Of The Eye” comes across as a kind of pop-infused krautrock jam w/a dose of Neu circa “Hallogallo” complete with motoric drumming and tightly compressed wah-wah chords. This is the only track to feature G.Lucas Crane of the ‘live’ Woods outfit and his box of tricks greatly enhances this uniquely odd space jam. There’s a moment where Jeremy Earl breaks into a flurry of notes as if impersonating the Byrds attempt to mimic the sound of Coltrane’s sax at the start of “Eight Miles High”. Woods are one of the greatest contemporary live acts and this sounds more like their live set, leaving me salivating for the UK Autumn tour. “Sol Y Sombra” is equally sublime, a percussion driven raga evoking the type of organic sounds and vibes that Jeremy Earl has added brilliantly to recent Matthew Valentine albums. Not as wildly psychedelic as some of MV’s “Environments”, this retains the Woods’s penchant for song and melody and therefore reminds me of some of the output of The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band.
Overall, this is a classic Woods album, with those two long jams and the further perfection of Jeremy Earl’s vocal pretty much sealing the deal. I have always really liked Jeremy’s artwork and this might just be his best yet.  It’s Woods. It’s fucking genius and I highly recommended it.” – Andrew Ross. 

“Matthew Valentine opens it up to deliver a masterpiece solo album in what might just be one of the recorded highlights of his career so far: It was always going to be important that MV delivered an album that didn’t sound principally like an MV&EE album or any of the releases with the various augmented ‘Golden Road’ line-ups.  In that regard, he has succeeded in delivering a record that sounds like nothing he has done before while clearly building on prior musical and personal themes – a concept that recurs throughout this deeply affecting musical statement.

What I Became is particularly introspective and inward looking - at times fairly dark – and it shares aesthetic ground with career anomalies like Gene Clark’s White Light, Dennis Wilson’s Pacific Ocean Blue and Neil Young’s On The Beach. In fact, an even closer comparison may be Terry Reid’s River album with its notable side A/ B split loosely termed ‘City’ and ‘Country’. What I Became also seems to have a split focus, with the first side focusing on ‘physical surroundings’ and evoking the importance of that Home Comfort vibe through more up-tempo numbers, while the second side is more introspective and seems focussed more on personal aspects. The presentation of the album seems to support this ‘concept’ of the journey and what he became.  The inner sleeve acts almost like a scrapbook of MV’s life, with pictures from throughout the years pulling in various locations, homes, and personal acquaintances. At an informed guess this includes MV’s homes from Lower East Manhattan through to Maximum Arousal Farm in Vermont. It also features a various who’s-who of the psychedelic underground, including a shot of him hanging with the late Jutok Kaneko of Kousokuya, and it even goes so far as to include his influence on the free folk underground with a poster for the original Brattleboro Free Folk Festival. It’s then that you realise you are looking at a virtual time capsule and you feel the weight of personal importance that this release carries.

Opener “Continuing The Good Life” seems to act as the prelude or overture to the LP – a two and half minute instrumental with a single hooting vocal cry. It features some beautifully finger-picked country folk chords with subtle psychedelic and spectrasound arrangements, as if paying reference to his other work and sounds. Also some sublime single piano notes that remind me as much of English as American folk, with the influence of some simple Joe Boyd-type produced arrangements. At the end the song segues between acoustic guitar and an ‘environ’ looped soundscape, reminding me of some of the recent live transitions between “Environments” and “The Hungry Stones” from the “Steal Yr Slice” tour.
Next is “Hit The Trails” which is the wildest full-on song on the album. Again this seems to focus on the importance of physical surroundings as well as paying homage to MV’s love of playing live – “Hit the trails, up on the road”.  I read a few older interviews with MV prior to listening to this record and a recurring theme which came up was the influence of ‘where I live’ on the sound of his records.  This can be traced through his work from living around the area of 4^th Street and Avenue B in the Lower East side (“Av. B” later on this album) where there were small practice spaces and the remains of the Manhattan loft scene all the way to the influence of the open space of his surroundings in Vermont on his work in more recent years. “Hit The Trails” could even be a reference to walking the East Mountain Road itself, which is featured appropriately on the back cover shot. The track itself has more of a ‘live’ feel and sounds not unlike Thurston Moore’s “Trees Outside The Academy” with its blend of frazzled electric guitar and soaring arcs of notes over repetitively strummed chords on the acoustic. The way “Hit The Trails” is sung/spoken reminds me of Lee Ranaldo’s vocals on classic tracks like “Hey Joni” and “Mote”.
Next is a clear reference to the influence on MV of lunar sounds with the excellent space raga jam of “PK Dick”. This was originally released as a 7-inch on Time-Lag (TL043) back in 2007 as a Dylan-esque folk blues  w/rambling prose recorded on a 4-track. Here it’s radically re-worked with the original lyrics spoken over the top with the kind of gonzo rap-style delivery used on “The Beater” from Bollywoe (COM35). We hear the repeated mantra of “Ryan stepped up, everybody gave him a hand” from the extended title of the original accompanied by a space raga jam which includes hand percussion that is almost dub-like alongside enchanting harp and lucid spectrasound meanderings that come across like underwater guitars. It’s worth spinning back-to-back with the original.
Side one closes with the deeply personal “Stay” in anticipation of the more introspective side two. With gently strummed acoustic chords and a delicate arrangement of oscillating wah-wah tones, MV delivers one of his finest vocals to date. Overall, this album seems to have more of a focus on the vocals and the lyrics, and no more so than this track. The lines “I will always love you that way, why won’t you stay” could sound almost cliché in the hands of a lesser performer, but delivered here in a strained, raspy, emotional vocal style reminiscent of Dennis Wilson circa Pacific Ocean Blue you know it’s heartfelt and sincere – long drawn on the anguish of the soul.
Overall side two seems to work as a complete side as opposed to individual tracks. With a running order of “Ease My Eyes”, “Ave. B” and “Sweet Little Indian Girl”, all tracks are stripped bare and based around strummed acoustic guitar chords and vocals. It’s heartbreakingly beautiful. “Ease My Eyes” has some gentle finger-picked chords and an acoustic bass sound courtesy of Mike “Muscox” Smith that is so clear and organic you could almost be there in the room. MV has always displayed a strong influence from English folk and the interplay between the guitar and bass could easily be that of Nick Drake and Danny Thompson. Erika Elder makes her only appearance on this track, contributing some atmospheric slide as well as some haunting double-tracked vocals. The song closes with a restrained solo of single weeping notes. “Ave. B” retains the mood of the side with a reflective piece that possibly relates to the earlier days and sounds around 4^th Street, Avenue B and Tompkins Square on the Lower East Side. The side closes with the epic “Sweet Little Indian Girl” which is a dark blues masterpiece. It’s possibly a coincidence in light of the comparisons between Country Stash and David Crosby’s If I Could Only Remember My Name, but this song may have taken its title from Rita Coolidge’s character in Crosby’s “Cowboy Movie” from the same album. At almost nine minutes in it gives way to two simple chords accompanied by sporadic hand percussion that sounds like falling raindrops courtesy of Woods’ Jeremy Earl holding this fragile song loosely in place. With atmospheric vocals and lyrics that include “So please tell how far down I came, I don’t know what I’ve become” this is the darkest I’ve heard from MV this far.  Only the desolation of Neil Young’s “Ambulance Blues” comes close.
A deeply personal, psychedelic and at moments very dark release from MV – not psychedelic in the sense of far out ‘spectra’ but more in terms of its intense intimacy and sparse nature, particularly on the second half of the album. Even in the context of some of the recent Heroines and the stunning Country Stash this is a landmark release and it lines up alongside deeply personal albums like On The Beach and Blood on the Tracks or even Jandek’s Chair Beside A Window. It feels like a fully conceived artistic statement, with the cover and inserts working to enhance the experience. Indeed, the classic cover shot featuring MV at Maximum Arousal Farm with Mick Flower in the background (probably on the No Floor Tour April 2010) sanding his homemade Indian banjo stand seems to typify What I Became perfectly – an insight into the world of MV. I went wild over Country Stash and this is equally compelling though for completely different reasons. It feels like the solo album that MV was destined to make – if you are only going to buy one record this year it comes with my absolute highest possible recommendation.” – Andrew Ross. 

Another great shot of moody teen folk punk from this great west coast garage band: "Wander into the sweltering Cali smog to find yourself transported into a lysergic pop netherworld, where White Fence carves broad strokes of color into your mind. Coming on like Love in a Lollipop Shoppe, or Chris Knox abusing a Vox, the record oscillates between a sun-dappled English meadow, a crumbling SoCal suburban bedroom, and a riotous Sunset Strip leather gang knife fight, with the kind of warped precision and purity that marks the wolves from the sheep and the profound from the pretend in this instant online age. You know what I mean." - Woodsist.

Reissue of a bunch of key documents – the Golden Calves Money Band LP and Century Band 12”  – from this pre-Wooden Wand/Vanishing Voice freakout jam band led by Mr James Toth and released in the mid-90s. The sound has that classically fractured post-ESP Disk Siltbreeze feel fully down, with Skip Spence style oblivion ballads further dislocated by almost Shadow Ring-styled idiot avant and drug-dazzled cultic jam blasts ala early Tower Recordings. The spirit of Jandek hovers over the bulk of the recording and Toth makes expressive use of Sterling Smith’s barbed guitar sonorities while orbiting the kind of cultic downer ballads that he would base much of the Vanishing Voice material around. A beautiful sound from a beautiful time. Comes with some hilarious in-depth liners where Toth fesses up to the multiple inspirations behind these still-magical recordings. If you’ve never heard these before then it functions as a key to a whole lot of what was to come later. Highly recommended.