“In 1999 I was well on my way through a journey of classic rock. I was nine years old, and anyone you might expect to see on a list of “Rock Gods” had become my idols. Bowie, Hendrix, The Stones, and anyone else with tight pants and a guitar were all who mattered. I bought an electric guitar and stopped cutting my hair. At just over four feet tall I considered myself a total badass.”

“Due to my new-found obsession, I took an interest in my dad’s record collection. Unfortunately they were kept at my parents’ cottage three hours north of our home in Grand Rapids, Michigan. We only used the cottage during the summer, so I waited for the school year to end, and dreamt of a stockpile of classic rock artillery to blast on the record player.

You might expect a description of me opening a dusty cabinet to find Zeppelin, The Who, Bowie, and the rest of my hero’s records hidden away like treasure. Unfortunately, this is not a Rock’n'Roll fairytale and that’s not what happened.

While there were a couple hundred records in a dusty cabinet, the majority of them were 1940s lounge singers, and a surprisingly large number were Christmas records. I was crushed. Someone should have videotaped my reaction; it would have been Youtube worthy. The more I searched the worse it got and my hopes of spending an afternoon listening to classic vinyl culminated in listening to the Bread album Manna. Not exactly what I had in mind.

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Press Play is our Monday morning recap of the new tracks received last week—provided here to inform your vinyl purchasing power. We post, you right-click.

Trails and Ways – Como Te Vas
Algernon Doll – Anti-them
The Julie Ruin – Oh Come On
Cosmic Suckerpunch – Glad You’re Here Now
Poor Things – Morgan
Mortar & Pestle – Pristine Dream
Dinosaur Bones – Spins in Circles
Jan St. Werner – Feed Opener
Warships – Heater
Beisbol – That Feeling

TVD SINGLE OF THE WEEK:
Boyfrndz – Water Weight

Sixfingerz – Rhode Island
Maps – A.M.A. (Susanne Sundfør Remix)
Marika Hackman – Bath Is Black (Hackman Remix)
Big Shaw – Fete
Can’t Dance – Trust Issues
Futurecop! – Coming Home (Tom Budin Remix)
Hayley Coupon – Feels Like We Only Go Backwards (Tame Impala Cover)
Flaamingos – All I Wanna Do is Live
Future Loves Past – Grow Up Tall
Hibou – Sunder

12 more FREE TRACKS after the jump!

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These days there’s a certifiable bevy of garage punk activity that’s worthy of inspection, but back in the ‘90s the roost was ruled by a handful of bands. One of them was the Oblivians. They were unstable, unsubtle, and proudly uncouth, and after roaring through the mid-section of the ‘90s like kings, they disbanded in 1998. Like many outfits from that decade, they’ve decided the time is right for a return to the recording studio, and the good news is that with Desperation, the Oblivians have rekindled their fire with ease. An even better turn of events is that they do so without pretending that sixteen years have transpired since their last effort.

Like assorted other enduring genres, the Garage impulse can be a fairly large descriptive umbrella. That all depends on the person wielding the term of course, for some continue to consider it exclusively as the expression of ‘60s teen bands as detailed most famously on the Nuggets compilations, but also through a slew of other discs; along with Pebbles and Highs in the Mid-Sixties (which combined for over fifty goddamn volumes), the Crypt Records’ issued Back From the Grave series really set the garage-comp standard (only eight LPs, the last two double sets, but all of it massive.)

Other folks, in a manner similar to the use of the descriptor “punk,” have retroactively applied Garage to all sorts of stripped-down musical action, from the more unkempt strains of ’50s R&R to a big hunk of late-‘70s, mostly US-based, punk stuff.

And there is also a prolific wave of ‘80s bands to reflect upon, the majority adopting a look to match their combined stylistic plundering of the original ‘60s garage wave, the devotion of these groups getting them lumped into a sub-genre labeled as either retro- or neo-garage.

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