Footage: Archers Of Loaf's "Harnessed In Slums"

The web exclusive from the band's appearance Friday night on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon Jimmy Kimmel Live. Strong. [A hat tip to The Koomdogg for the correction and another to Mr. Breeze for sending us the link in the first place].

Young Adults with Ringo Deathstarr | Great Scott, Boston | July 2

We don't know how to make this more plain: next Saturday night's show at Boston's Great Scott with Austin-based shoegaze assassins Ringo Deathstarr and local ambient punk heroes Young Adults may very well be the show of the summer. By our count it is The Deathstarr's third area gig, although coincidentally (or not?) we've been violently ill for the trio's past two Boston dates and therefore we have yet to see their brand of deafening chaos live. We'll have an interview with Ringo Deathstarr online later this week and will offer more exposition about them then. Saturday will also be the first time we've seen Young Adults, again due to a series of unfortunate circumstances. Bostonians with their ear to the ground can breathe a sigh of relief: while founding Young Adults bassist Demitri Swan has left the band, Chris and Kurt Villon have recruited a successor and plan to continue Young Adults' remarkable rise out of the basements of Allston-Brighton and into the regional and even international consciousness. Tickets are allegedly still available for the show; don't be stupid. Prague-based Amdiscs is still selling Young Adults' debut full-length Black Hole as an LP or digital download right here.

Young Adults' "Let Us Out"

Today's Hotness: Fonda, Lilac

>> It's an all-too-familiar story: good band releases three records, drops off the map, and the word is the band members are doing "adult" "stuff" like earning a living, starting a family, finishing the advanced degree, et cetera. What happens much less frequently than we'd like has fortunately happened to dream-pop lifers Fonda: after an eight-year hiatus, the LA-based act has returned to making music. Fonda first formed almost two decades ago when core members David Klotz and Emily Cook (now married with children) met in Hollywood. We didn't know Fonda's work the first time around, but its forthcoming Better Days EP's arresting presentation of sounds first made famous by My Bloody Valentine, Ride and Slowdive is quite engaging. We were particularly intrigued to learn that former The Mighty Lemon Drops guitarist -- and former producer for Clicky Clicky favorites The Hush Now -- David Newton was once part of the band, although he is no longer. Better Days closes with the humming, pulsing delight "Summertime Flight," which the band was cool enough to allow us to post for download. The song opens with a subdued verse before bursting open into a strident, elegiac smiler, during which Mr. Klotz and Ms. Cook blissfully harmonize "you've wasted your life, you've wasted your life on me."

Fonda -- "Summertime Flight" -- Better Days
[right click and save as]
[buy Better Days from Fonda at Bandcamp right here]

>> A lot of fizzing 60's jangle (guitars! organ! tambourine!) and a little bit of shoegaze make Lilac's self-titled EP something we've been returning to again and again. The relatively new, San Francisco-based quartet describes itself alternately as "pop religion" and "heavy driving acid grunge dream," neither of which makes sense to us. But the music on Lilac's new EP -- in addition to being remarkable and efficient -- suggests a broad vision that implicates elements of Rocketship and The Stone Roses and The Kinks and The Monkees, and those are all good things. The resulting music is wholly immediate, but if we had to point our finger at a stand-out track from the new EP we'd have to select "Days," which commences with an insistent bass line and the sort of guitar jangle that is hard-wired into our hearts; an over-driven, riotous bridge and chorus around the two-minute mark transforms the song into an undeniable summer anthem. Lilac has been available on ITunes and presumably other digital storefronts since June 7; the EP will be available on vinyl from Omega Records July 19.

Days by LILAC_MUSIC

Footage: Yuck's "Shook Down"

Premiered by Consequence of Sound, pimped by Pantsfork, but if you still haven't watched this video for Yuck's terrific mid-tempo strummer "Shook Down," you really, really should. It features naked people in it, but we're tired of calling things not safe for work; you are either a grown-up who is allowed to know what a human body looks like, or you are not. Can't wait to hear new material from these guys. The London-based quartet/sometimes quintet releases "Shook Down" as a double A-sided singled with "Milkshake" next week, as we first wrote here in mid-May. Here's an embed of "Milkshake" in case you missed it first time around.

"Milkshake" by Yuck

Pleased To Meet: Faculties

We don't imagine there is a more die-hard (die-hardier? with a vengeance, sir) Haywood fan out there than us. Consequently, we spend a preposterous amount of time and energy wondering when we will hear new music from any of the band's principals, as Haywood has been mostly dead and/or not-quite alive for a decade now. And so we are very pleased to report multi-instrumentalist Rob Viola, who manned the drum kit for the late, great 'Wood, has returned with myriad ambient electronic and electropop projects. Many of these operate under the nom de guerre Statikluft, and we've been living with a lot of Statikluft music for months and months. But, much to our surprise, Mr. Viola has commissioned a new vessel with vocalist Vinny Lopez called Faculties, and the Brooklyn-based duo's first offering, the song "Weekend Warrior," is a dense, deep hybrid of deli-sliced beats, sinewy guitar and synth hooks, shot through with plenty of ghosts in the machine.

The story goes that Mssrs. Viola and Lopez met when the former was impressed by the latter's karaoke rendition of "Everybody's Talkin'," a prominent tune from the soundtrack to the film Midnight Cowboy; surprisingly, Faculties is Lopez' first band. "Weekend Warrior" leads off Faculties' forthcoming self-titled EP and it is gorgeously arrayed and exquisitely textured and if you are fans of acts like Arc In Round or White Laces, you are going to be very, very excited about this. Below is an embed of the tune to stream or download; the full EP is expected to drop next month. Everyone, this is Faculties. Faculties, this is everyone.

FACULTIES - Weekend Warrior

Faculties: Interzizzles | Facebook | Vimeo | Soundcloud

New Music Night DJ Sets | River Gods | 16/17 June

Here are the songs we played whilst manning the figurative decks last night in the booth at the fabulous River Gods in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Set Two/10:00PM/Jay

1. Bos Angeles -- "Beach Slalom"
[blogged / listen]
2. Gold-Bears -- "Record Store" -- Are You Falling In Love?
[blogged / listen / buy]
3. Rival Schools -- "The Ghost Is Out There" -- Pedals
[buy]
4. The Henry Clay People -- "The Honey Love He Sells" -- This Is A Desert EP
[buy]
5. Soccermom -- "That's When You Know" -- Unreleased 10" Master
[expected release Fall 2011]
6. Let's Wrestle -- "There's A Rock Star In My Room" -- Nursing Home
[buy]
7. Cats And Cats And Cats -- "Celebration" -- Motherwhale
[listen / buy]
8. Maritime -- "Paraphernalia" -- Human Hearts
[blogged / listen / buy]
9. Lilac -- "Days" -- Lilac
[buy]
10. The Feelies -- "Time Is Right" -- Here Before
[blogged / buy]
11. Little Gold -- "Oh Dad" -- 7"
[blogged / buy]
12. Eldridge Rodriguez -- "What A Difference A Drug Makes" -- You Are Released
[blogged / buy]
13. Get Help -- "You Should Be Home By Now" -- The Good Green Earth
[blogged / listen / buy]
14. Point Juncture, WA -- "Bones" -- Handsome Orders
[buy]
15. 11:59 -- "Girls, Girls, Girls" -- Ou Est Le Tisser
[listen]
16. Yuck -- "Suicide Policeman (live)" -- Daytrotter Session
[blogged / listen]
17. Fire Island Pines -- "You Didn't Mean To Hurt Me" -- Bratislava EP
[blogged / listen]
18. Grass Is Green -- "Twinkle Toes" -- Chibimoon
[blogged / listen]
19. Antiques -- "ETC" -- JWNS
[blogged / listen]

Set Four/12:00AM/Jay

1. Buffalo Tom -- "Untitled" -- Skins
[blogged / buy]
2. Destroyer -- "Kaputt" -- Kaputt
[buy]
3. The Hush Now -- "Thorns (Remix)" -- Constellations 2.0
[blogged]
4. Cookies -- "Boycrazy" -- 10"
[blogged / listen / buy]
5. Cold Cave -- "Villains Of The Moon" -- Cherish The Light Years
[listen / buy]
6. Johnny Foreigner -- "With Who, Who And What I've Got (With Peach)" -- There When You Need It
[blogged / listen / buy]
7. Good Dangers -- "So Unkind"
[blogged / listen ]
8. Cannons -- "Beef Fiesta Medley" -- Cuddled By Giants
[listen / buy]
9. Ringo Deathstarr -- "Kaleidoscope" -- Colour Trip
[blogged / buy]
10. Fonda -- "Summertime Flight" -- Better Days
[buy]
11. Manorlady -- "International Boys Club" -- Home
[blogged / listen / buy]
12. The Raveonettes -- "Forget That You're Young" -- Raven In The Grave
[listen / buy]
13. Sun Airway -- "Wild Palms" -- 7"
[blogged / listen / buy]
14. Arc In Round -- "Spirit" -- Diagonal Fields EP
[listen / buy]
15. Letting Up Despite Great Faults -- "Teenage Tide" -- Paper Crush EP
[listen / buy]
16. Barry Marino -- "I'm In A Band"
[listen / buy]

Soccermom | O'Brien's Pub, Allston | 17 June