New York’s Hopewell has been blending vintage fuzz pedal jams with their early space rock and shoegaze roots for over a decade.Their 2001 full-length, The Curved Glass, was the noisy bridge between the epic psychedelia of ‘90s acts like Flaming Lips and Mercury Rev and a newer generation of bands that include Dungen, Dead Meadow and Serena-Maneesh. Now they’re back with their sixth album, Good Good Desperation, which effortlessly slips from cacophonous dueling piano passages, to the Hammond-driven roots rock of The Basement Tapes. You can download the entire Hopewell Secret Playlist here.
Electric Tickle Machine / Blew It Again
My new favorite band in New York. We had to have them play our record release show. kids come out and they dance! Like, they really get down to this stuff. It’s so fun to see. They are the new MGMT in 2010. God, if you’re listening, please help this band find an awesome label, too.
Velcro Lewis Band / Half A Man
Derek from the band Awesome Color is a total road warrior. He’s toured so much he always has emails or phone numbers for about ten cool bands to play with in any given city. He told me about Velcro and his band for our Chicago show and they didn’t disappoint. Kind of hard to classify, they definitely don’t fit in the Pitchfork grizzly animal projectors scene. They seem to be living in their own world of psychedelic Chicago blues. like if Will Oldham grew up in Chicago instead of Louisville. No, maybe that analogy doesn’t really fit. Hopefully I can convince our label to put this album out.
Imaad Wasif and Two Part Beast / Oceanic
This dude is totally cool. I met him at our show in LA and was kinda nervous , nice as he is, he has this quiet mystical power thing going on. I took this track from his last record. His next album is due out on our label later this year.
The Lumerians / Corkscrew Trepanation
The best kept secret in San Francisco right now. Well, maybe after Sleepy Sun. Why is there so much good music in San Francisco over the past couple years? Did it all start with Gris Gris? I mean, come on: Wooden Shjips, LSD and The Search For God, Sleepy Sun etc. This EP is available exclusively where I work at Other music. Buy it and keep me employed.
Birds Fled From Me / Staring At The Sea
Keeping in the San Francisco area, this girl just blew me away live. She is so sweet and small, but you can tell she can really rock out if she wants to (like she does in her other band, Sleepy Sun). But solo, she’s content to just be cute as a button.
Wayne Robins and The Hellsayers / Time Is A Bird In Your Eye
Asheville band and old friends of ours. They made this excellent record a few years back that nobody’s really heard, except Band Of Horses who took them on tour in Europe last year. Lucky bastards. This track is so haunting.
Bad Liquor Pond / Collision
What an interesting band. Another bunch of kids who seemingly live in their own little world in Baltimore. It’s like they never heard of Dan Deacon or Ponytail. They just hung out with their 60s records, caught Brian Jonestown Massacre and The Black Angels when they came to town and that’s it. They told me they recorded all this stuff themselves in a farm house. Pretty rad.
The Main Street Gospel / All Your Love Is Gone
Another recent Tee Pee Records signing from Columbus, Ohio. We met the singer in a laundrymat a few years back. It’s been really cool to see them develop their style as a band over the last few years and arrive at this pretty powerful vintage blues rock sound.
If you like any of these bands, please support them by getting their records or going to see them live. Half these albums are unreleased, but you can usually still buy directly from the artist, which is often a more meaningful experience. Also, there’s live footage of these bands and a bunch others on our video tour blog.
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