Bobb Trimble

"Take Me Home Vienna" B/W "Selling Me Short
While Stringing Me 'long"

Mighty Mouth | Secretly Canadian [2012]

The more digging I do on the enigma who is Bobb Trimble, the weirder he seems to get. My initial experience, or first impression I should say, of Bobb Trimble was confusing, memorable and freakishly enjoyable. The man sings like an angel, his guitar playing is dreamlike, and his vocals coax me the way my mother would when i was feeling too down to attend grade school. This reissue of Trimble's 1981 obscure 45 oddly credited to "Bobb and the Kidds!" gives me a strange guilt that I could liken to the first time I admitted to enjoying the earlier songs by the band Heart. The cover of the record screams Bad News Bears, with Trimble peering out from behind a child playing a snare drum on an ironic rock and roll meets baseball themed photo shoot…but he's no Walter Matthau.. and I'm not really sure what role these kids play on this record whatsoever. The songs don't drift far from classic Bobb Timble though; you can expect his effeminate glam vocals atop an array of sparkly, low impact guitars and drowned out drums. The end of "Selling Me Short…" gets a little aggressive, but it's a cozy and convincing direction that somehow makes enough sense to work. If I were you I'd pick up this limited reissue and I'd keep my kids away from Bobb. He seems like a really great guy, but isn't that how all those horror stories start? 

-Jeff Ogiba

Grass Widow

Internal Logic

HLR [2012]

This record opened up with what almost immediately convinced me was a sample off of 60's moog and analog electronic pioneer Andrew Rudin's great avant garde work, Tragoedia (or at least something ripped from a Nonesuch composition from that time). It reminded me of a time around eight years ago when my good friend Matt came over to my house after a hard day of work and I was blasting Tragoedia. He passed out on my couch for about twenty minutes while the quirky record blared and awoke to report violent "space nightmares". Thinking back to that time, and given that scenario, I almost now wish that the record I was playing then was Internal Logic by San Francisco three piece female dream poppers, Grass Widow. He would have appreciated this. After the brief aforementioned experimental sample, the record gets dark and mild and then quickly slides into soothing non-stop back to back ear candied splendor. It's the kind of stuff you hoped your friend's hotter older sister's band played back in the mid 80's… the girls who dressed like Death from the Sandman comics or the darker side of the wild hair studded belt-wearing Go-Go's fan base. They're a modern day Chin Chin or a wish granted to finally have some of my 30 year old Swedish girl punk 45s actually translated into English. Not to mention, my friend Matt is still single, and still dreaming.  

-Jeff Ogiba

Mrs. Magician

Strange Heaven

Swami [2012]

Certain recordings, whether they attempt to or not, are unable to shake their regional imprint; Mrs. Magician's Strange Heaven is unmistakably California from start to finish. Contemporaries like Japanese Motors and The Soft Pack also dabble in this type of sound, but Mrs. Magician (they’re actually four guys, what a subversive misdirect) have a slightly darker edge to their sound, due presumably in part to production from the legendary John Reis. His work with the Sultans isn’t a bad comparison to Strange Heaven either, but let’s not lose focus. The first three cuts (“Nightlife”, “There is No God”, and “Don’t Flatter Yourself”) are probably the best on the album, their energetic surf punk approach blends effortlessly with equal parts fuzz and reverb as they creep into the back of your mind, you WILL be humming them throughout the day. The same can’t be said for songs like “Dead 80’s”, “The Spells”, and “Actual Pain”, which are immediately forgettable, yet somehow don’t detract from the overall enjoyment of the record. “Heaven” comes off as a sort of reluctant ballad, an essentially successful experiment somewhere between Phil Spector and Spacemen 3. Closer “You Can’t Be My Man” has an odd guitar tone, reminiscent of the first Elastica album, which I really enjoy. Little touches like these are what rescue the bulk of the this record from obscurity. As for content, one line from the otherwise mediocre “Hours of the Night” tends to sum it up: “It says ‘fuck you’ on the note, but I sent you flowers”. It’s absolutely a collection of jilted love songs and expressions of the virtues/agonies of a solitary life, so in that respect Strange Heaven should connect with all of us post-emo sensitive types. Chances are, though its impending-sand-worm-from-Beetlejuice-attack-landscape cover is intriguing, I probably would not have picked up Strange Heaven if I didn’t get it for free. That would have been a mistake, and I’m glad its part of my collection. 

-Brian Muirhead

The Intelligence with Kelley Stoltz

"(They found me in the back of) The Galaxy" b/w "Lake of Dracula"

In The Red [2012]

Seattle's The intelligence lead man Lars Finberg (also of Wounded Lion and Thee Oh Sees) and his gunk rock flunkies grab San Francisco post-rock talent Kelley Stoltz for this single off of their upcoming full-length, Everybody's Got it Easy But Me, and prove a theory my girlfriend stands by in just two songs: most records featuring cute cats as album cover art are at least decent. The tracks "They found me…" and "Lake of Dracula" are essentially the exact product of post punk/post grunge/post neo-garage that twenty-somethings from both coasts (all hip cities in between included) could and would gravitate toward. The songs are melodic and dirty at the same time, giving the listener the option to dwell on his or her miseries, or to mindlessly smile while another group successfully taps into his or her dopamine supply. The full length will also be released on In The Red, and given this preview I can confidently say that the album will be, at the very least, pretty good.  

-Jeff Ogiba