WITCH- We Intend To Cause Havoc

Remember growing up in the early 70's in the Berkshires? Your parents would drag you out to those all-night parties on the farm with their artist friends? They would tell you that this wasn't the kind of candy you could eat even though they were obviously passing sugar cubes around the table. Strangers would beckon you, saying that time doesn't exist here. They would casually assert that transcendental meditation saved their life in Fez. They would dance in a wild arhythmic fashion, falling, bodies writhing on the floor in a mass of discombobulated flesh. You, being tired and confused, would find your way to the spare bedroom, which had become a temporary coat room, and pass out on the pile of jackets splayed haphazardly across the bed. The only thing you wish you would remember from that night was the music playing on the stereo, that African band who had stolen R&B and psychedelia back from the white man. From what you recall, they were the party.

Buy this record so time will fold in on itself.

www.nowagainrecords.com/witch-we-intend-to-cause-havoc

Dope Body- Natural History

Baltimore's Dope Body deliver a crab pot's worth of dude rock to feast on. They rant like Henry Rollins with a slightly higher self-opinion. They shun cloying political slogans as they Rage Against the Machine. They extol the time signatures of NYC band Battles and prance at the primal pace of Primus.  This is testosterone music for experimental jocks or art school flunkies looking to subvert Led Zeppelin's blues by filtering guitar licks through various effect pedals and laptop programs. Dope Body wears its influences on every groove of Natural History, a prehistoric walk through the halls of near-distant musical relatives.

Buy this record if you're looking for a teen version of Sweating To the Oldies.

dopebody.tumblr.com

The Beach Boys- That's Why God Made the Radio

The endless summer keeps rolling along for these timeless music icons. They lost two-thirds of the Wilson brothers (Dennis and Carl, R.I.P), as well as a good amount of respectability ("Kokomo", John Stamos serving as the band's drummer, the realization that Mike Love is a big dick) along the way, but with Brian Wilson back at the helm the Beach Boys seem to have righted their ship. The course has been reset for more vocal harmony and pop awesomeness. Most of the album is culled from previously written songs, sounding like a cross between the Sunflower and  Love You records with a decidedly nostalgic vibe, and all the surviving original members are on board. There's no doubt that this record sounds like what you'd expect to hear from a crew of 60 year old musicians, but for Beach Boys fans like me, songs like "That's Why God Made the Radio", "Spring Vacation", Isn't It Time", and "The Private Life of Bill and Sue" with the awesome, yet typical Brian Wilson-type opening refrain, "The private life of Bill and Sue/ Can you dig what I'm telling you?", really hit the spot. A lot of musicians talk about making mellow, AOR records, as if it's an act of kitsch, but the Beach Boys live it, and continue to perfect it.

Buy this record if you dig what they're telling you.

www.thebeachboys.com