The fourth full-length album for the Washington state-based artist Phil Elverum from the independent P.W. Elverum & Sun label gleems forth like a beautiful bad transmission, in keeping with its namesake and creepy artwork. Despite its obtuse, dark meanderings, this is a lucid, intelligent effort, destined to mine your subconscious murderer, dreamer and poet.

Tags: black metal, David Lynch, full length, His Name Is Alive, Independent Music, indie artist, MBV, mount eerie, My Bloody Valentine, phil elverum, washington state, wind's poem

Hailing from Tulsa, Oklahoma, twenty-something singer-songwriter Jonathan Van Risseghem summons daydreamy pop-melodicism that betrays influence from such diverse sources as Cocteau Twins, My Bloody Valentine and more AOR fare like Train’s “Drops of Jupiter.”

Tags: anomalies, AOR, Cocteau Twins, drops of jupiter, full length, jonathan, living room, melodic songs, melody, midwest, motions, My Bloody Valentine, pop rock, real world, right time, session musician, singer songwriter, storytelling, tulsa oklahoma, van risseghem

Goddamn do I hate the cliché of the snarky blogster.

And now, thanks to The Morning After Girls, I’ve become one.

See, there’s good news and bad news:

The good news is that all indications from new music on TMAG’s myspace page are that after six years, they might have finally realized their 60s pop-meets-shoegaze mission statement.  After walking mostly on the wrong side of their influences with their previous effort — Shadows Evolve — a new line-up and a new home base (NYC rather than their native Australia) may have finally helped shape in practice the band that looked oh-so-very good on paper a few years ago.

The bad news is that it also appears that they’re still wielding unwarranted pretensions as fervently as ever.

You could certainly do worse than taking a Dandy Warhols’ approach to marrying 60s’ psychedelic rave-up numbers with My Bloody Valentine’s trademark wall of sound and shitting tambourine all over it, and to that end, TMAG has done well for themselves.  Their initial efforts garnered them enough success to earn a choice spot opening for Black Rebel Motorcycle Club in the States, where they found an easy audience already thoroughly ignorant of or apathetic toward second and third-generation genre robbery, er, “influence” (see also: early BMRC and the Jesus And Mary Chain).

Apparently this was enough to convince TMAG that though the closest thing they had to a hit in the U.S. was their acutely juvenile and vaguely sinister-sounding screamfest “Hi-Skies,” (an incongruous throwaway which lacks all the nuance and promise of their other material), they were entitled to espouse self-aggrandizing statements and behaviors in league with the likes of say, Oasis, who, though very much derivative themselves, had the common sense to write the anthems of millions before running their mouths and acting like pricks.

Of course, it’s completely unfair to generalize.  So let’s run through the evidence:

Exhibit A (from a WOXY “Lounge Act” interview and performance in 2006)

WOXY INTERVIEWER: Is it hard — do you guys get recognized now, pretty easily, here in the States?

TMAG #1: Uh, what — walking down the streets?

WOXY: Yeah, I’m just curious.

TMAG #2: No.

TMAG #1: Yeah. Well, I don’t know man.

TMAG #2: You do?

TMAG #1: Yeah, each time we come back, I guess.

Now, let’s clarify that question and its response:

Q: “Do you, The Morning After Girls, get recognized walking down the street in the United States?”

A: “Yes.”

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Tags: 60s pop, always mine, black rebel motorcycle club, bmrc, Dandy Warhols, general public, hi-skies, hollywood bowl, mercury lounge, My Bloody Valentine, nickelback, oasis, shadows evolve, snark, Spaceland, spinal tap, straight thru you, The Cure, the morning after girls, TMAG, Troubadour, viper room, who is they, woxy, wyld stallyns