DEB AND THE MENTALS - "Feel The Mantra" EP (2015)

After a long and much needed hiatus Made In America is back kids! Continuing the tradition of giving you the gift of listening to music that I like, and I think you should like too, I'll bring you up-and-coming bands from the western hemisphere on an occasional and infrequent basis. Mainly when I can find time to get away from my real job. In the past I've covered the United States, Canada, and Mexico but in what will be a first for blog, South America is now on the list!

Deb and The Mentals are a four piece no-frills garage rock band out of Sao Paulo, Brazil. Their debut EP Feel The Mantra (2015) is chock full of energetic 90's alternative and Riot Grrrl angst. 

Veterans of the Sao Paulo indie music scene, Deborah Babilonia (vocals), Giuliano Di Martino (drums), Stanislaw Tchaick (bass), and Guilherme Hypolitho (guitars) have cut their teeth over the years with bands such as End Hits, P.U.S, Debbie and The Rocketeers, Veronica Kills and Water Rats. 

Made In America - THE MONSIEURS, "The Monsieurs" (2014)

Made up of veterans of the Boston music scene, The Monsieurs, fronted by Andy MacBain (Tunnel of Love), with partner-in-crime/guitarist, Hilken Mancini (Fuzzy, Shepherdess), and drummer Erin King (Where My Beat Be At), have recently released their self-titled debut via Slovenly Recordings.

Slammed full of grainy and glorious garage punk, MacBain's abrasive vocals are tempered just enough by Mancini's backups to level up their sound and make this album more than a treat to listen to.

Get your hands on the album via Bandcamp here.

Made In America - MODERN VICES, "Modern Vices" (2014)

Chicago continues to churn out dirt-laden garage-rock with the likes of Heavy Times and The Orwells, both of who we featured here in the past. The newest kids on the scene are Modern Vices. The five-piece formed last year began putting together tunes that, while less punk than Heavy Times and The Orwells, still retain a gnarly edge.

Front man Alex Rebek's tone-heavy vocals give me an Ian Astbury feeling and helps to set Modern Vices slightly apart from your typical garage rockers by adding more depth to their sound.

Their self-titled debut is our now via Autumn Tone Records and check out the first single from Modern Vices Cheap Style via Soundcloud.

And the video for "Cheap Style" here:

Modern Vices - "Cheap Style" from RYAN OHM ▲ on Vimeo.

Made In America - MEATBODIES, "Meatbodies" (2014)

Chad Ubovich is yet another super-talented musician from that prolific ocean of playmates that Ty Segall surrounds himself with. Ubovich played in backup bands for both Segall (Fuzz) and Mikal Cronin early in his career before forming Chad and the Meatbodies. After releasing some home recordings the band garnered the attention of Los Angeles based In The Red Records, shortened their name to just Meatbodies and have recently released their self-titled debut.

Taking a page from but adding a distinct chapter to Southern California's flourishing scuzz-rock soundscape, Meatbodies comes at you with a full on sonic bombardment that rarely lets up through the album. Ubovich has gotten much deserved attention for his guitar wielding ability, which is exhibited most nicely here, and uses it to effectively rip through a brazen and dirty rhythm section at the most opportune times.

Purchase "Meatbodies" from In The Red Records here.

Made In America - WAND, "Ganglion Reef" (2014)

L.A.'s Wand is one of the newer and more contagious bands to emerge from the west coast garage/psyche rock revivalist scene that include Ty Segall, Thee Oh Sees, and King Tuff. 

After putting out a handful of singles earlier this year, Wand has finally hit the streets with their full-length debut Ganglion Reef. Released in August on Ty Segall's Drag City Records - God? imprint, Ganglion Reef is a trippy, fuzz-filled journey rooted in 60's and 70's garages but adeptly levels-up with more colorful and structurally sound songs that linger on the verge of reckless abandon yet are infectious enough to make their way out of the underground and on to the radio. 

Made In America - CRETIN STOMPERS, "Looking Forward to Being Attacked" (2014)

Billy Hayes (The Barbaras, Wavves, The Jay Reatard Band), Big Muff (Big Muff Radio, The Delay) and Alex Gates (The Barbaras, Wavves) make up Cretin Stompers, a new band currently based in Staten Island, New York. The band has roots that span the width of the U.S. with Wavves in Los Angeles, The Barbaras out of Memphis, and Big Muff Radio operating out of New York.

This national influence allows Cretin Stompers to deliver a delicious mixture of psychedelic power-pop, glam-rock, and straight up garage-punk straight to your ear holes.

Made In America - MUSIC BAND, "Can I Live" (2014)

With risk comes reward and Music Band, the garage rock trio out of Nashville, Tennessee, are all about taking risks. First, there's the name "Music Band". Google "music band" and you will quickly learn why playing hard to get can be risky in the music business. Then the band moved from Ithaca, New York, forsaking the center of the indie rock universe, Brooklyn, to Nashville, Tennessee, a city known more for it's county scene than for its rock scene. 

Music Band then recorded a "live" digital only album in a studio titled "Live At Wembley", without an audience. The audience was added in later. In my opinion, it's still a pretty good album, find it here. And finally, their latest album Can I Live is currently only available with a subscription to the Infinity Cat Cassette Series, curated by Casey Weissbuch from Diarrhea Planet. This is a bi-monthly cassette-only subscription to up and coming bands currently on the Infinity Cat label. Cassette, I still don't know why this format is making a comeback, but it is, risky.

Made In America - CONCORD AMERICA, "Suns Out Guns Out" EP (2014)

Brothers, John and Vinny Restivo met Ben Presley while working at an Atlanta, Georgia pizza kitchen but later on, while attending a Cage The Elephant concert, the three would decide to become a band and so became Concord America.

Concord America spits out ragging fuzzy psychedelic garage-rock reminiscent of early Arctic Monkeys only a little louder and a little dirtier.

Made In America - VERTICAL SCRATCHERS, "Daughter of Everything" (2014)

Happy New Year everyone! "Made In America" is back from a nice long holiday break and we are excited for the new year and excited for some new music in 2014. The recent "Polar Vortex", which would NOT be a cool band name, had temperatures diving into uncharted territory this past week but it looks like we're climbing back into normal winter ranges now here in the U.S. But what better way to get the mercury climbing than to barricade yourself into your house, crank the stereo volume up to ten, and to thrash around like a fish out of water. So that's what I did, and Vertical Scratchers is what happened. 

Made In America - Bad Sports, "Bras" (2013)

Musica Cronica's Made In America is back from vacation and man was it ever an exciting August for music fans in the States. First let me address "vacation" from an American point of view. Americans don't generally take vacations like Europeans do. We spend a lot of time hoping that a national holiday falls on a Friday or a Monday where we can have three days off instead of two and during that time off we just think about how to work more. Basically, Americans work and then they die.

Now on to the music! August brought us the highly anticipated reunion of The Replacments. Twenty-one years ago after their last gig, Paul Westerberg and Tommy Stinson reunited on stage at Toronto's Riot Fest. Of course I couldn't go because I had to work. Stereogum has the 22-song audience-recorded set available for your downloading pleasure.

Made In America - The Orwells, "Other Voices" EP (2013)

Chicago rockers The Orwells are young, really young, not old enough to drink yet young, but they do what they do well. The five piece graduated high school early this year to jump into music full time and if the music that they've put out so far is any indication of what's to come, then that was a brilliant career move.

The Orwells are made up of Mario Cuomo (vocals), Dominic Corso (guitar), Matt O'Keefe (guitar), Grant Brinner (bass), and Henry Brinner (drums). Corso and Cuomo are cousins and the Brinners are twin brothers. The band formed in 2011 while all of the members were in high school.

The Orwells released their debut album Remember When last year on Autumn Tone Records and released the Other Voices EP in June on East End/Canvasback here in the States and East End/National Anthem in the UK.

Angst-ridden like early Strokes and groove-laden like The White Stripes, The Orwells write and play at a higher level than their ages would seem to allow them to. It's almost as if they've bypassed the suit and tie age that the early Beatles and Stones went through and jumped right into drug-fueled freewheeling years. This may be a blasphemous analogy but it's been raining every day for the past three weeks so I'm in a blasphemous kind of mood.

Made In America - Heavy Times, "I'm Single" 7" (2013)

I like to think that I have a decent handle on new music but in this day and age with so many bands self-releasing music on the internet sometimes good bands just slip through the cracks. Chicago's Heavy Times are one of those bands that I completely missed the boat on, and shamefully so because they are right up my ally.

Lo-fi garage rock with pop tendencies is as close as I can get to describing Heavy Times whose sound really doesn't fit into any one category and you can't do a band like this justice by pigeonholing them. If I had to draw comparisons to other bands I would immediatly go to Guided By Voices and Husker Du who share two common traits in their songs, melodic driving guitar riffs and monster choruses that will eat you alive.

Heavy Times released their debut album Dead on Rotted Tooth Recordings in 2010 and their breakout record Jacker, released on Hozac Records, the following year. Their latest, I'm Single, a three song 7", also out on the Hozac lable, defines their sound nicely and keeps you believing that Heavy Times are destined for something bigger. The closing song "Bath Salts" just might containg the catchiest guitar hook I've heard in years. Listen to it and you'll be instantly addicted like I was.

Heavy Times - Skull Hair - From the album Jacker

Made In America - Mikal Cronin

Currently on heavy rotation on my Spotify Radio is Mikal Cronin’s second solo album and Merge Records debut MCII. I’m not talking about casual heavy rotation either, I’m talking about I’ve been playing this record on repeat, non-stop, for a couple of days now, and probably won’t stop for a while. 

Orange County, California native, Mikal Cronin began making waves in the mid 2000’s with fellow west coaster Ty Segall. If there were a revivalist garage rock version of the Lennon/McCartney songwriting duo then Cronin and Segall were as close as you could have gotten to it at the time. 

Cronin released several singles and played on albums over the years with The Ty Segall Band, Party Fowl, Okie Dokie, The Moonhearts, and the Epsilons before releasing his self-titled debut album on Trouble In Mind Records in 2011.

On MCII, Cronin continues on his self-reflective journey where his debut album left off. This time a little older, a little wiser, and a little more capable of fleshing out songs filled with the uncertainties of life and love. Cronin sets the tone early when crying “Do I shout it out / do I let it go / do I need to know / what I’m waiting for / no I want it now, do I need it though?” in a way that would make Ben Kweller proud.

While Cronin’s sound is more refined and less raucous and knife-like than in the past, his songs are still well-polished sparkling gems that work their way into your head and eventually become anthems to your own life.

Made In America - Allah-Las

So far it's been a wet, sloppy, and unseasonably cool spring, even by southern standards, but I'm already sweating just thinking of that one-two punch coming here inthe southeast where Mother Nature leads off with face numbing heat only to catch you off balance with her muggy blanket of humidity. It sounds more like evil super powers than it does climate but either way you're getting a beat down.

Even with that I've been on a big 60's surfy garage-rock kick lately and what better way to get that itch scratched that to stick with the West Coast.

Los Angeles' the Allah-Las have a throwback sound directly descending from early Kinks and The Animals and if it were possible to get any lower-fi than 60's garage rock then these guys have managed to do so. The quartet formed in 2008, three of the four members met while working at renowened music shop Amoeba Records in Los Angeles. They relesed three singles over the next four years leading up to their full lenght debut Alla-Las which came out last year on the Innovative Leisure label with initial pressing selling out quickly.

Never straying far from mid-tempo, Allah-Las manages to soothe you over with a dozen seductively laid back tunes that beg to be listened to through a pair of vintage headphones while staring through your bedroom window deep into that afternoon sepia glow. The album plays evenly beginning to end and is one of those that really should be listend to that way. It doesn't belong on your iPod on shuffle-play; this one was made for vinyl.

The Allah-Las are currently touring through Europe and will be playing the Primavera Sound festival in Barcelona in May.

Allah-Las: Tell Me (What's On Your Mind)

Made In America - Shark?

At least a couple of times a week I’ll spend a few hours at night trolling the depths of the internet for new music. This both alleviates occasional boredom and feeds my obsession for ear candy. I like to think that I have a pretty good finger on the pulse of what’s out there but in all reality I don’t, not even close, and more often than not, I’ll miss out on a band with some worthy tunes. One of those bands was Brooklyn, New York’s, Shark?

I caught Shark?, yep, pun intended, as one of the two openers for post-punk icons Mission Of Burma a couple of weeks ago at The Earl in Atlanta, Georgia. They were at the tail end of a small tour with a stop through Austin at South By Southwest on their way back home. I must admit that they didn’t get to me at first. Even now I wouldn’t be able to pick out the opening song from a playlist. I only remember that it was a somewhat mono-drone, fuzzy experience and I could even be wrong about that. It was probably as awesome as the rest of the set ended up being. 

Frontman Kevin Diamond knows how to write a song with a head-bobbing groove and a hook that will land the dourest of listeners. I know, the fishing puns, can’t stop, won’t stop. While inching my way towards the front of the stage I invisioned Shark? as a rock and roll love child between The Pixies and The Strokes who received the choicest DNA from both bands. 

 

But the song that did it for me and has been on constant repeat for the last two weeks is the song Shark?, from their 2012 album True Waste. The song was the set closer and it closed the deal for me. I immediately darted for the merch table and netted a copy of the album, on cassette no less. Thankfully there was a digital download card.

So enhance your life a little and check out “You Don’t Love Me Anymore”, fall in love with this band like I did, and then listen to their latest single “California Grrls” from their upcoming album Savior on Old Flame Records, expected to be released sometime this summer.

Here's a link to Shark?s latest single "California Girls" via Soundcloud.
More Shark? music available for a listen on their Bandcamp page.