If It's Too Loud...

Photo by Frances Carter Tiny Ruins, the musical project of New Zealand's Hollie Fullbrook, is back with a new single, "Dorothy Bay." The band's upcoming album, Ceremony, is comprised of songs making up chapters of a saga set on Tamaki Makaaurau's Manukau Harbor. "Dorothy Harbor" mixes Fullbrook's Neil Young influence with the current crop of indie rock meets indie pop musicians coming out of New Zealand and Australia these days. It's the kind of song that feels like floating, with fuzzy guitars combining with Fullbrook's vocals to create something beautiful and more than a little melancholy. As downbeat as the song can be, there is a strong bassline that adds an unexpected groove to it. This is a fascinating and captivating new single that's going to have you dying to hear the rest of the album.  You can watch the video for "Dorothy Bay" below. Ceremony is due out April 28 on Ba Da Bing. The album can be pre-ordered here . For m...

The upcoming solo release from Laura-Mary Carter (one half of Blood Red Shoes) is being called "... more contemplative... than her usual guitar-shredding anthems," but "Ceremony" is anything but a quiet acoustic solo song. "Ceremony" is a huge rock song. It reminds me a lot of Kristin Hersh's louder solo work. It has loud, tribal sounding drums with a swirling sound of feedback looping around everything to help keep it all together. At the center of it all is Carter's vocals which sound like a mixture of Hersh and Tori Amos fronting an all-eras-encompassing Sonic Youth. Yes, that's a lofty comparison but it will hold up when you hear it. If you're unfamiliar with Blood Red Shoes like I am, this one is going to have you diving straight into their catalog. In a press release, Laura-Mary Carter says of the new song: "The song is about my career. It’s about being in debt to someone and trying to break free. It's about the feeling of no...

Two of my favorite musical genres are oldies from the 60's and noisy indie rock. It's rare that those two genres get mixed together, but luckily for me The Blog That Celebrates Itself has released yet another brilliant covers collection, this one specializing in girl groups covers. If you're looking for covers that stay true to the original, this one may not be for you. It's filled with genre shattering versions that skew towards shoegaze  and noise rock, filled with more feedback and droning guitars than most people can handle. A perfect example is include "Now You're Gone" (done here by Ceremony, originally by Bobbie Smith and the Dream Girls), which would be entirely unrecognizable without a track listing. It's a blisteringly noisy nearly 7:00 version that ignores the vocals for two full minutes, which completely defies the entire girl group genre. Ghost Transmission goes a little more traditional with their version of The Shangri-las "Rememb...