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Chixdiggit! 2012

FAT WRECK CHORDS

September 16 – Canada’s favorite pop-punk sons CHIXDIGGIT! are back with their most monumental release to date, 2012. The epic EP consists wholly of a 24 minute-long opus chronicling every tour stop CHIXDIGGIT! made throughout 2012. From Schiphol to Victoria, 2012 takes the listener on a whirlwind trip via their trademark upbeat, guitar driven sound, addictive melodies, and KJ’s cheeky lyrics. The release of 2012 coincides with the band’s 25th anniversary, marking two momentous accomplishments that CHIXDIGGIT! will be celebrating with a barrage of tour dates throughout the remainder of 2016.

FACTORY FLOOR “25 25”

DFA August 19 – Factory Floor return in 2016 with 25 25, their second album and the follow up to their acclaimed 2013 self-titled debut. With their music stripped to a mesmerizing dance of percussion, fragmented voice and melody, it captures the next vital stage in the evolution of one of the UK’s most restless and exploratory groups. A stark, ultraminimalist and eerily soulful dancefloor pulse, yet one that still bears Factory Floor’s unmistakable hallmarks of hypnotic repetition and jagged, punkish intensity. The close friendships and collaborations they’ve established along the way attest to those connections, among them Chris Carter and Cosey Fanni Tutti (of Throbbing Gristle/Chris & Cosey), Perc, Optimo, New Order and Simon Fisher Turner. Mixed with razor precision by David Wrench (FKA twigs, Caribou), the results are all the more forceful for that newfound space.

FALL “Grotesque (After the Gramme)”

SUPERIOR VIADUCT August 26 – Superior Viaduct presents Grotesque on vinyl! (First North American pressing since its original release in 1980 on Rough Trade!) The Fall’s Grotesque is the true purebred Fall release from the Marc Riley era. Released in the immediate wake of The Fall’s most beloved single “Totally Wired”, the album carries over that righteously famed teeth chattering, bolstered in no small part by the drumming of new addition Paul Hanley, brother of bassist Steve Hanley and aged only 15 at the time of recording. Many significant firsts surround Grotesque, including The Fall’s inaugural production partnership with Mayo Thompson and the debut of Suzanne Smith’s wonderful artwork, both of which would play key roles in the band’s following phase. Superior Viaduct’s edition is the first time that Grotesque has been available on vinyl domestically since its initial release in 1980.

LYDIA LOVELESS “Real”

BLOODSHOT August 19 – Real is one of those exciting records where you sense an artist truly hitting their stride. Whether you’ve followed Lydia’s career forever, or you’re new to her game, Real is gonna grab your ears. On her first two Bloodshot full-length releases, there were fevered comparisons to acknowledged music icons like Loretta Lynn, Stevie Nicks, and the Replacements... She’s half this, half that, one part something else. But now, Real and Lydia Loveless are reference points all their own: Genre-agnostic, Lydia and her road-tightened band stretch from soaring, singalong pop gems, roots around the edges, to proto-punk. Struggles between balance and outburst, infectious choruses fronting emotional torment are sung with a sneer, a spit, or a tenderness and openness that is both intensely personal and relatably universal. It is, as the title suggests, real.

NEUROSIS “Fires Within Fires”

NEUROT September 23 – Over the collective’s past ten albums, Neurosis have invited listeners to join them on the path their music carved. Going beyond the remarkable, they became unforgettable. Throughout the last 30 years, the band has relished the unpredictable and embraced the unknown possibility of where the music was capable of taking them. Neurosis takes their most dominant step yet with their eleventh full-length, Fires Within Fires. Three decades in the making, striking their signature balance between light and dark, beauty and repulsion, this latest album gives due to its predecessors while progressing forward into the unfamiliar and formidable. Featuring exquisite album art and the stellar recording work of the group’s longstanding engineer Steve Albini, Fires Within Fires is at once a beautiful and forbidding work of mastery.

SCIENTISTS “A Place Called Bad”

NUMERO August 19 – With a sound that was swampy, primal and modern-urban all at once—as much in the tradition of rock n’ roll and punk rock as it was a rejection of those things, the Scientists’ formula was as universal as it was specific to their own experience. The themes of getting wasted, driving around in hotted-up cars, being trapped in crap jobs, and paranoia were their subject matter. Machine throb bass and drums with jagged car-wreck guitars were their modus operandi. Fitting into no place or time they spurned all but the most rudimentary and elemental of rock structures to create a sound all their own. “The Scientists turned my head around and made a man out of me! They grew hair on my palms and made my socks stink!” —Jon Spencer // “The Scientists proved to me that rock ‘n’ roll could be played by gentlemen in fine silk shirts half unbuttoned and still be dirty, cool and real.” — Thurston Moore

SONIC YOUTH “Confusion Is Sex”

GOOFIN’ September 23 – Sonic Youth’s first full-length album, one of Thurston Moore’s favorites! “a brain-bludgeoning, completely fried endeavor of dissonance and disarray, a perfect soundtrack for running from a chain-wielding gang near the SIN Club. This was the sound of 1983 New York City: nothing like London where punks were starting to scrub their faces and sounds to get on Top of the Pops, and nothing like the jangly roots of college radio rock starting to formulate in Athens, Georgia. It sounded like no one else on Earth, for that matter. The raw, Wharton Tiers 8-track production is dark, the Kim Gordon-scrawled cover figure art of Thurston Moore is dark, Lee Renaldo’s back cover photo-collage and Catherine Ceresole’s crumpledxeroxed images that adorned the inside are dark. It’s an album that moves Sonic Youth forward from their first EP almost by devolving backwards into true ugly, lo-fi primitivity. The bareboned arsenal of junkpile guitars and implementation of alternate tunings was growing, and so were the songs that matched the individual attributes of each instrument: certain ones groan and growl a specific way that the band started to realize itself could become the compositional germ of a song. Herein is the threshold of a new explosion of the band’s creativity , replacing the comparatively cleaner buzz of the Sonic Youth EP with guitars that spew fractured, uglier chunks of sound everywhere, held down by menacing minimalist basslines and the brutal-yet-controlled metronomic drumming" - Brian Turner, WFMU.

SUBROSA For This We Fought The Battle Of Ages

PROFOUND LORE August 26 – Salt Lake City doom/chamber-metal wonder SUBROSA, over the last several years have been recognized as one of America’s most singular and important bands within the doom metal genre. Their 2013 breakthrough album, “More Constant Than The Gods” saw the five-piece (in which two members paly the electric violin) gain acclaim all across the board. “More Constant Than The Gods” also saw the band become more active on the live circuit, touring and playing with bands such as Boris, Deafheaven, and Cult Of Luna. With the release of their new album “For This We Fought The Battle Of Ages”, SUBROSA have created their most triumphant and biggest album to date.

TEENAGE FANCLUB “Here”

MERGE September 9 – The wait is over! On September 9, Teenage Fanclub return with Here, the band’s first album in six years. As ever, song-wise the Fanclub present a textbook representation of democracy in action, the record offering four each by Norman Blake, Gerard Love, and Raymond McGinley. From the almighty chime of opener “I’m In Love” through the ecstatic soul-search of “The First Sight” and the paean to unerring friendship “With You,” Here is a collection of twelve songs about the only things that truly matter: life and love. As is befitting of a record that took its time to arrive, Here uses reflective space to dazzling effect. Not for one second is Here the sound of procrastination or headscratching. It’s the effortless work of a band entirely confident in their own craft—the consolidation of nearly three decades of peerless songwriting and almost telepathic musicianship.

V/A “Afterschool Special: The 1, 2, 3s of Kid Soul”

NUMERO September 16 – The formula was simple: marry bubblegum and soul to the absolute sincerity of an enthusiastic child, cross your fingers and pray for airplay. But while the youthful sums of that formula may have grown up and walked away from their illusions of stardom, their permanent records remain. By 1973, The Jackson 5 were as hip as kids could get—household names, with lunchboxes, coloring books, a Saturday morning cartoon, and an Alpha-Bits cereal commercial pushing the J5 brand onto any kid with television reception. This extreme marketing and merchandising juggernaut created the kid soul explosion. A decade removed from our acclaimed Home Schooled compilation comes a fresh batch of talent show titans. With enterprising parents, neighbors, and teachers turning play dates into recording dates, groups like Magical Connection, Little Man and the Inquires, and Five Ounces of Soul emulated the Jacksons, who’d made grade-school stardom appear easy as ABC. Afterschool Special: The 123s Of Kid Soul contains 19 tiny tunes ranging from bilingual D.A.R.E. anthem, to James Brown bio, to young love and life beyond the playground.

X-RAY SPEX “Germfree Adolescents / (Vinyl Reissue)”

REAL GONE MUSIC (USA)

September 9 – Limited shocking-pink vinyl edition! Real Gone Music is proud to present Germfree Adolescents (1978) , one of the signature albums of the early British punk movement, in the format and color it belongs. The one and only LP release from X-Ray Spex and its irrepressible frontwoman Poly Styrene has been deemed by everybody from Greil Marcus to Robert Christgau to Spin to Mojo as one of the greatest punk albums ever made, yet, somehow, this is its first vinyl reissue!.. And we’ve done it right; besides the colored vinyl, we’ve reproduced the inner lyric sheet, where you can read Poly’s brilliant observations about the plastic, corporate nature of modern society. All of which she sings in a passionate yowl all her own (with Lora Logic among others backing on saxophone); this is not only one of the most penetratingly observant punk records, it’s also one of the most passionate, and, surprisingly enough, catchy. if it’s hooks you’re after; if it’s righteous anger and a noisy racket you’re seeking, every track will do ya.