This is the limited edition, first ever vinyl release of The V-Roys – Just Add Ice. Originally released in 1996, Just Add Ice turns 21 this year; now it’s old enough to buy its own Cold Beer Hello. This limited issue of 500 copies is individually numbered with a silver stamp on a nice matte finish, tip-on jacket.
The Story Behind The Release (in the words of Mike Gent, April 2017).
In the spring of 2008, we rolled into Los Angeles armed with a batch of brand new, unrehearsed songs and keyboardist Scott Janovitz. On top of the studio time we had booked, I had the terrible idea of adding shows to our schedule. We would record all day, take a dinner break, go to whatever show was booked, stay up all night catching up with west coast friends, then do the same thing the next day, then the next, and the next….Not the best situation for getting usable takes.
Sessions continued for a bit in Philly at G Love’s studio and then a lot of time passed before we continued work on the album. I’ve always felt that the band really needed a producer for this record. We had successfully produced Palais & Follow Jean on our own, but by the time we hit this record, we had run out of steam in the production dept.
The next set of sessions in 2009 we did at Scott Riebling’s studio. Scott recorded the first Gentlemen record and I’ve always enjoyed working with him. Just what the doctor ordered… Those sessions were so easy and fun, it inspired us to book a final set of sessions with Seth Powell at the original location of his Soundcheck Republic studio to finish the record.
The Man Who Fights Himself was finally released in spring of 2010 (Two years after we started it in LA) with very little fanfare.
The idea to remix some of the record has always been in the back of my mind. A few people over the years have asked when this would be released on vinyl. It made sense to me that when we did get around to putting it out on vinyl, that I would take the masters, remix most of the record, and have it remastered by Mike Quinn specifically for vinyl. Well, I finally got around to this project last Oct-Dec with the help of Ducky Carlisle.
The second full length release from Brandon Krebs. “Avant-Garde Pop for everybody, filled with romantically gloomy soulvoyages.” Refuge In Exile’s instantly breathtaking sweep and rhythmic hooks challenge its title’s reveal of how it was made intimately and mindfully in an uncertain two-year period of the artist’s life.
The Charlotte, NC based Sinners & Saints features Perry Fowler on guitar, vocals, kick snare, and harmonica and Mark Baran on stand-up bass, vocals, kick drum, tenor banjo. Since the bands’ formation in 2011 Sinners & Saints has brought their live show to many a main stage or festival with a combination of small regional tours in the Southeast and regular appearances across their native Charlotte.
On The Other Side, the group’s sophomore album, will be released on March 10, 2017. Sinners & Saints’ sophomore full-length album was recorded in Winston Salem at Electromagnetic Radio Recorders by Doug Williams and mastered by Dave Harris at Studio B Mastering. Lacquers were cut by the team at Well Made Music.
ADIOS is Cory Branan’s death record. Not the cheeriest of openings, but like all of Branan’s mercurial work, it’s probably not what you think. As funny and defiant as it is touching and sad, this self-dubbed “loser’s survival kit” doesn’t spare its subjects or the listener.
Not even Branan’s deceased father is let off the hook. In the tender homage “The Vow” he drolly cites his father’s favorite banality “that’s what you get for thinking” as “probably not the best lesson for kids.” For most songwriters that would be the punchline but Branan pushes through words and, in his father’s actions, finds a kind of “genius in the effortless way he just ‘did’.”
Not all the death on ADIOS is literal mortality. “Imogene” is sung from the wreckage of a love that once “poked fun at the pain, stoked the sun in the rain” but ends with the urgent call to “act on the embers, ash won’t remember the way back to fire.”
The trademark lyrical agility is mirrored sonically. Never a genre loyalist, ADIOS finds Branan (much like his musically restless heroes Elvis Costello and Tom Waits) coloring outside the lines in sometimes startling shades of fuzz and twang. While unafraid to play it arrow-straight when called for (“The Vow,” “Equinox,” “Don’t Go”), ADIOS veers wildly from the Buddy Holly-esque rave up “I Only Know” (sung with punk notables Laura Jane Grace and Dave Hause), through the swampy “Walls, MS” to the Costello-like new wave of “Visiting Hours.”
Mastered by John Baldwin, lacquers cut by Clint Holley.
Whiplash Splash is an assertive doubling down on the power pop hooks and punk rock flair issued by California duo The Dollyrots. Tracking much of the raw performances of this 6th studio effort themselves, the band once again enlists Producer John Fields to add polish to Kelly Ogden’s vocals and craft a radio-ready mix. The resulting 13 songs exude authenticity and shift between breakneck tempo changes (“Babbling Idiot”), extreme loud/soft dynamics (“Mermaid”) and bubblegummy melodic three-chord punk (“I Do”).
Recorded during singer/bassist Ogden’s pregnancy with her and guitarist Luis Cabezas’ second child, Whiplash Splash is The Dollyrots’ first studio LP since 2014’s Barefoot and Pregnant and follows two Top 20 peaks on Billboard’s Heatseekers Chart. Standout tracks include guest vocals by Kay Hanley of Letters to Cleo (“Just Because I’m Blonde”), Jaret Reddick of Bowling For Soup (“Other Trucker”), and a modernized buzzsaw-guitar cover of Katrina and the Waves’ “Walking On Sunshine”. As a whole, the record fits sonically between any modern pop-punk and guitar goddess rock & roll… with a hint of Ronnie Spector.
Even today, it’s possible to write songs honestly and intelligently, arrange them with a sensitive ear and sing in a way that brings their stories to life. We know this, in part, because that’s what Mark Erelli does. In his quiet way, the Boston-based singer/songwriter has gathered and grown a following that values these qualities. Which is why it’s seemed too long to too many since Erelli’s last album of original material. The long wait is over with the release of For A Song, a bouquet of new songs that reflect where this artist has arrived, personally and professionally. From introspective ballads to celebrations of love’s allure, these 12 songs stand-alone as eloquent statements and together as a meditation on life in all its dimensions. Grab it now!
Matija Habijanec aka The Marshmallow Notebooks is a singer-songwriter from Croatia. The North American vinyl reissue of The Marshmallow Notebooks album is available now. This version of the sold-out Croatian LP has been remastered, and repackaged with a brand new cover art and two new, never before released songs. Available for a limited time!
Brutal Juice — Their most sprawling and ambitious effort to date: Old-school molten metal, Gothic Dream Interpretation, Full-on Thrash, and a shit-ton of face melting guitar wizardry accompany you on this journey through Profane and Paranoid Alternate Histories, Psychedelic Nightmares, Oppressive Futuroid Dystopias and Finally Revolution, Scorched Earth and Catharsis.
Be sure to seek out these indie releases on Black Friday! Thanks to Good Records, Shake-It Records, MVD Audio, Lakeshore Records, Colemine Records, and Daptone Records for letting GGR press these records. Happy Thanksgiving from the Gotta Groovies!
Alice Cooper – Live From The Astroturf 7″
Jeremy Pinnell — OH/KY Live
Wussy — Funeral Dress II
Stone Roses — Sally Cinnamon
Bill Callahan — Apocalypse: A Bill Callahan Tour Film
Underworld Soundtrack
Betts, Hall, Leavell, Trucks — Live At The Coffee Pot 1983
Ikebe Shakedown — Hard Steppin’
The Dip — Won’t Be Coming Back 7″
Frightnrs — Dispute/Version 7″
Olympians — Sirens Of Jupiter / Apollo’s Mood 7″
