Give Collin Vs. Adam A Dollar

Bloodsucker, Collin vs. Adam’s second album has been a long time coming. More than two years have passed since the band started teasing tracks on its SoundCloud page, compilation albums, and live shows. More than two years have passed, too, since Mason Maudlin, the band’s original bass player, was killed in a plane crash. The album is dedicated to his memory, and his playing can be heard on most of the songs on the album.

There are a lot of different sounds on the record: ambient instrumentals, poppy dance tunes, arena rock anthems, and more. Credit Collin vs. Adam that they are able to take all these different kinds of sounds, dress them up in a little 80’s-pop flourish here and there, and have it all come out sounding like one consistent, unified whole.

My favorite song is “Get Back To You,” a shimmery slice of new wave influenced pop that would have ruled the radio circa 1984. The song catches your ear first with an echoy, staccato guitar hook that’s enough to anchor any one song, then it hits you with a keyboard hook that’s even catchier, and rounds you off with a vocal you’re singing along with before the end of the song. And it does all this while almost totally upending the traditional verse-chorus-verse pop song structure.

Bloodsucker is available to download from iTunes and Amazon. Physical copies are available at the Max Recordings website.

Give Christopher Denny A Dollar

I haven’t said enough yet about Christopher Denny’s fantastic new record, If The Roses Don’t Kill Us, recently released on Partisan Records. It’s not just a worthy successor to his 2007 debut, Age Old Hunger; it’s a bolder, more confident record, full of complex, bittersweet emotions. Denny has said in multiple interviews that he actually made this record twice. He recorded it the first time about four years ago while struggling substance abuse. His label shelved that record, but with the promise to give him another chance when he got sober. Fast forward to 2014, Denny is in good health, touring, and Roses is now on record shop shelves and gathering accolades nationwide.

As always, Denny mixes up a bunch of Southern and roots music genres. He gets country and folk peanut butter all over his R&B and Gospel chocolate and calls the resulting confection “Arkansas Soul.” His warbling tenor, likewise, is sensual and sad; an enticing high lonesome wail that’s as timeless as it is unique.

The streaming taste of Denny’s music we’re giving you this week is “Watch Me Shine,” a brilliant bit Gospel-infused pop-rock songwriting in the middle of the record. But my favorite song on the record is “God’s Height,” which isn’t available for streaming, that features some of my favorite word play in recent years about how the diminutive Denny is leaving his lover because she’s too tall (but also because he doesn’t measure up to his image of her). It’s funny and sad, clever, and has a guitar solo that will lodge in your brain for days.

“Watch Me Shine” and “God’s Height” are available now on iTunes.

Give Mothwind a Dollar

After gigging around for a couple of years, Little Rock’s Mothwind (made up of veteran players Jeremy Partin from Vore, Kevin Rains from Holy Angel, and Mike Mullins from Underclaire and Year of the Tiger) are set to release their debut record, In The Clutches Of The Novae, at a show this weekend at the White Water Tavern.

Mothwind hits that sweet spot of arty, occasionally proggy, metal-influenced rock. Comparisons to bands like Mastodon are probably inevitable. But they’ve got the goods to stand on their own.

You can pre-order In The Clutches Of The Novae at Mothwind’s Bandcamp page. When you do, you get an immediate download of the first single, “Sunbender,” which you can also buy individually for one dollar.

Give Reagan's Polyp A Dollar

It’s a cliché, but I honestly don’t know how to begin to describe Reagan’s Polyp, the prolific, perverse, musically unpredictable creation of Krel and Astronaut Body. Between 1992 and 2002, the duo (with occasional collaborators) released something like 25 to 30 albums. They get reduced to “punk” more times than not. But their musical story is much bigger and weirder than that. The liner notes to “Love Overdrive,” the band’s compilation of “unpopular favorites,” describes them as “avant garde anti-music.” That’s as good a description as any, but it doesn’t really capture that holy shit, what the hell did I just listen to feeling one should have at the end of a Reagan’s Polyp record. That’s the feeling that either compels you to play the record again, over and over, for probably more people, put the CD on a shelf where you won’t be tempted to play it ever again. The first kind of people are more fun.

Vetoxa Records has just issued the first three out of 12 Reagan’s Polyp reissues the label has planned for the next year or so. Facefuckingbatspermantidotepudding (1994), Deadenator (1998), and America Needs More Ass (2001) were re-released in physical and digital formats last week. Different recordings of “Citizen Dwarf” are the second track on all three albums. The version in the video above is from Deadenator, but the version on Face… is my favorite Reagan’s Polyp cut, so it’s the one I recommend you give up your hard earned dollar (and twenty-nine cents) for.

“Citizen Dwarf” (Face…Version)

Give Bonnie Montgomery A Dollar (and twenty-nine cents)

This week’s featured track is “Take Me or Leave Me,” one of my favorites from Bonnie Montgomery’s self-titled first album. “Take Me…” is a standout cut on a record that doesn’t have a single dud or even a filler track on it. It’s a glorious throwback to the days of “outlaw” country music and sounds about ten times tougher than anything by some pretty boy singing about his truck, or beer, or tight blue jeans that you’ll hear on country radio today.

“Take Me or Leave Me” is available on iTunes for $1.29. CD copies of Bonnie Montgomery are available at Arkansas CD & Record Exchange on MacArthur Drive in North Little Rock.

Bonnie is playing this Thursday night in a trio with Amy Garland Angel and Mandy McBryde as The Wildflowers. They are opening up for Billy Joe Shaver, one of the original country music outlaws, at the White Water Tavern.

Give Brother Andy a Dollar

If you’ve been out to hear live music in Little Rock anytime in the last several years, you’ve probably seen or heard Andy Warr. He’s the leader of the Arkansas Times Musician Showcase winning Brother Andy & His Big Damn Mouth, a burly band of boisterous barroom brawling rock ‘n’ rollers. He plays or has played in Iron Tongue, Sweet Eagle, Booyah! Dad, and a bunch of other bands. Lately, he’s started a new “dad rock” band, Marvin Berry, whose music you can buy for a paltry $500 a song.

But, what I want you to listen to this week is a cut from his Acoustic Demo album called “The Dumbest Things.” When Brother Andy turns down the volume, you find out what a really great songwriter he is.  With the guitar amps turned all the way up, it’s easy to miss the lovesick heartbreak, the self-reflection, reluctant maturity, and the kind of stubborn optimism (if not outright hope) recurrent in his music. Once you hear it, though, you see it everywhere in his body of work. The song also has a cool animated video.

The song is embedded below for your listening convenience. Click on the buy button and give Andy Warr a dollar.

Give This Band A Dollar: On The Radio!

Thanks, everyone for the fantastic response so far to Give This Band A Dollar! I'll be on Shoog Radio today to talk more about the project and why it's important to support local musicians. Shoog Radio is on 12 noon to 3 p.m. every Tuesday on KABF 88.3 FM "The Voice of the People." You can stream it live on www.KABF.org or get the podcast from the Shoog Radio website.