If It's Too Loud...

Boston's Kingsley Flood are holding a PledgeMusic campaign, which may just be the first of its kind. Typically, a band will start a crowdsource campaign for a particular project, like an album or tour. Kingsley Flood are asking fans to support them for a year. It will help them do everything a band does: writing, recording, releasing, touring, etc. Of course, a crowdsourced campaign doesn't count unless there are rewards. They start the very basic $10, which gets you access to videos, private updates, and a digital download of their most recent album, " Live at the Armory ." For $30 you get the extra content plus your choice of t-shirt and signed cd (which really is a bargain, even without extra content). If you're a fan of the band, these smaller donations are no brainers since they get you albums and other merch you want anyway for a reasonable price. There are also more unique options, such as a private house concert for $1500 or watching wrestling with Travi...

Spoon's latest album, They Want My Soul , has been in constant, persistent rotation for some time now, and after taking the holiday weekend off from mix-making, I figured a good way to usher us back in would be to offer some of the best songs that Spoon has released. Longtime fans will almost certainly disagree with how recent-heavy this mix is, but I've found the band to be much more cohesive as they've aged than perhaps the hardcore fans might. I'd love to hear a mix of songs people think I've missed out on, however, so if you have one, please share. In the meantime, enjoy!

A pretty light week for the holiday weekend. Laura Jean - Laura Jean : I can't say I know the first thing about Laura Jean except that the album cover was fairly striking enough for me to see what it sounded like. The good news is that it's got a very folky vibe to it, but also feels lighter and more fun than perhaps some of the stuff highlighted as of late. "Don't Marry the One You Love" in particular is an early standout track. Definitely worth some of your time this week. Blonde Redhead - Barragán : I was about halfway through the album when I realized that I was not listening to Concrete Blonde, and then wondering how I've missed Blonde Redhead all these years. This is a quiet, contemplative affair that I fully enjoyed from start to finish, and what it lacks in true standout tracks it makes up for with a really cohesive sound throughout. I have no clue how longtime fans might react to this album, but I'm really liking it and I hope that it end...

Right on the heels of Jeff raving about the debut album from Caroline Rose , Noisetrade is offering pretty much the entire album for free. For the price of your email address, you can get 7 songs out of the 11 on her new album, I Will Not Be Afraid.  She's well on her way to becoming a blog favorite, and this is an amazing offer to get a great album for nothing, unless of course you feel like leaving a tip. Head on over to Noisetrade to download the I Will Not Be Afraid Sampler  for free. As you are downloading the majority of her album, head on over to Caroline Rose's website to get some more info on her, including tour dates.

Another packed week this week. Here are the highlights: The Bad Plus - Inevitable Western : The Bad Plus made their mark outside of the jazz world with their covers of popular and classic songs, and the result is a style of jazz that, as someone who isn't a jazz fan, I can sometimes get behind. Jazz, on a whole, doesn't do much for me, and Inevitable Western is a Bad Plus album with no covers on it, which will ultimately limit its appeal. If you, like me, came on board to see what they decided to work on this time, you might not find much to like. If their style is your thing, though, you'll probably find some enjoyment here. Basement Jaxx - Junto : Of the electronic acts that have perservered over the years, Basement Jaxx has never really connected to me the way, say, Orbital or Crystal Method has. The new album, well, it sounds like Basement Jaxx. It didn't do much for me, but it sounded as I expect a Basement Jaxx album to sound, so that's something. ...

Post-punk gods Mission of Burma are gearing up for a West Coast tour later this week, and they just posted a video of them rehearsing a brand new song, "Panic is Not an Option." It's a four minute aggressive blast that sounds like it could have fit right in with Burma's early material. In other words, it's yet another great song by a fantastic band. I don't think there's another reunited band that took that much time off, then came back for a few reunion shows, stuck around to record, and just keeps releasing such quality material. For more information on Mission of Burma, including tour dates in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, and Bumbershoot, head over to their website . You can also watch the rehearsal video for "Panic is Not an Option" below, which hopefully will end up on a new album sooner than later.

Another month gone by already, and we have some real winners from August. This month's mix features some of our favorites of the last month, and, like July's mix, will be updated later this week with notable songs from tomorrow's new releases. Enjoy!

One of the weirder weeks for new music since we started this project up. Away we go! Octagrape - Emotional Oil : Ken knew of this band because they opened for Sebadoh (and wrote about them here ), and I can totally understand why they did. If one was to think about what "indie grunge" might sound like in 2014, this EP would almost certainly take the bill. I'll be honest - I didn't love this, but it definitely has an interesting take and could absolutely find the right audience even if it isn't me. At under 20 minutes, it's not much of an investment and you'll know how you feel about it almost immediately. Orenda Fink - Blue Dream : Orenda Fink's third solo album, and first since the reformation of Azure Ray, sounds a lot like an Azure Ray record, and that's not a bad thing. Putting aside the dream pop in favor of a more dreamy folk atmosphere, the album, on first listen, seems more successful than her previous solo efforts in a number of r...

In advance of the 9/9 release date of Into the Wide , their 4th album, Delta Spirit is offering the first single from that album as a free download through NoiseTrade. Not only that, but it's being offered in a package called Lost & Found  which also includes their amazing 2006 debut EP, I Think I've Found It, all for free! It's well documented how much we love free music here at If It's Too Loud..., and we really  love it when bands put up entire releases for free. Especially when they're as good as Delta Spirit.  Head over to NoiseTrade to download Lost & Found  for free! You can also check out their website for more Delta Spirit goodness, including dates for their fall tour, and to pre-order their new album. Make sure you also check out the teaser for Into the Wide  below.

The Splendid End started back in 2010 when Guy Low and Amy Buchanan met and started trading ideas through GarageBand. It's now a full fledged band, with 5 total members. They released their debut, Demonstration Suite , earlier this year. The 13 songs are described by the band as fitting 2 different albums, which is just about perfect. The first songs from the album were recorded with the current full live band, while the last songs on the album are earlier recordings from before the band coalesced.  The earlier tracks have a much more polished sound and fit in with their current Dresden Dolls without the gimmick meets Veruca Salt and that dog sound. The album opener, "Cabaret," reflects this by being a hard rock cabaret song. "Holkham Beach" is both epic and dreamy, mixing 60s pop with the drone of shoegaze and 90s power pop. The later songs have some fantastic moments, too. "Add Alcohol" starts off as a fairly standard pop song but devolves into...

With Jeff out of town, he asked for me to fill in for him. This week we have new releases from '80s, 90's, and '00s acts as well as brand new bands with their first releases. Let's get started! Dilated Peoples - Directors of Photography With their first release in 7 years, Dilated People's are back with a return to form from 2000's Expansion Team. If you like old school 90s conscious hip hop, this is definitely for you. The only problem might be the album's length. For the first 12 or so songs, it is a fantastic album and would get my vote for hip hop album of the year so far. But, at 18 songs and over an hour, it gets pretty repetitive and feels dull towards the end. A little diversity and expansion would have helped the 2nd half of this one immensely. The Gaslight Anthem - Get Hurt I know I'm going to sound like a crotchety old man here, but I've just never gotten the whole Gaslight Anthem thing and lumped them into the whole neo-pop pu...

As I'm heading out on business this week (and Ken will be taking care of new releases), I was somewhat inspired to do a travel-themed mix this week. It's not to say that all the songs are about travel, but either something in the song or something in the title or something in my brain made me think of traveling. Designed to go from start to finish, hopefully this gets you through your travels this week.

A very packed week this week, so let's not waste any time. Katie Kate - Nation : I didn't know of Katie Kate before this week, and she sometimes raps on this always electronic album that combines some electro and synth on this interesting album. I'm going to need to spend some time with it, I think, to really see if it has staying power, but this was an interesting listen for me on a whole. If you dug the Princess Superstar from a few weeks ago, this might be worth a shot for you. Tuatara - Underworld : I've been a fan of Tuatara since their first album nearly 20 years ago. I only got into it because it was a Peter Buck side project, but I became a fan in general pretty quickly. The downside to the group was that, as it expanded, it moved away a bit from its instrumental, experimental world music roots into something a little more broad, to the point that they actually had some basic vocal albums of late. Underworld , thankfully, is a return to the early albums...

The 33/3 blog reminded me that Bill Doss of Olivia Tremor Control , also of Sunshine Fix, Apples in Stereo, and probably all the rest, passed away a year ago last week. The Elephant Six Collective were a group of bands that really, really took up a good deal of my listening time in college and beyond, so I figured, in honor of Doss, the mix this week would highlight some songs from those bands. A fair warning to some - there's equal parts accessible (Apples in Stereo, Elf Power) and weird (Music Tapes, Major Organ and the Adding Machine), so, for best results, throw it on shuffle and enjoy the adventure.

For someone who was obsessed with Superdrag since 1996, I was really disappointed by their reunion album, Industry Giants. Somehow, it was just missing something their earlier recordings had, some kind of spark. Happily, that is back with The Lees of Memory, the new project featuring former Superdrag members John Davis and Brandon Fisher. This is their shoegaze project, and it's much more on the My Bloody Valentine side of things than it is The Stratford 4. It somehow merges the drone of shoegaze with the fuzzed out guitars of Superdrag. You can watch the video below. The Lees of Memory's debut album, Sisyphus Says , is due out 9/16 on SideOneDummy Records . You can get some more information on their Bandcamp page.