The Hippodrome

It’s really strange what the internet can do to personal space. In my MySpace travels, I came across the intimacies of Richie and the Romantics, a band composed of one Richard John Cyprus the III and a lot of homemade lo-fi recordings. Richie is from Woodland, California, which is a suburb of Sacramento.

I’m having trouble putting my finger on it, but there’s something slightly awry about these recordings that hits a good nerve. Maybe reminiscent of a much sobered up Robert Pollard? Short is sweet.

Audio: Spaceship
Audio: You and I Language

Spy Island, Portland’s independent torch bearers of the Apples in Stereo manifesto, have just released their latest disc, Famous Shipwrecks EP. The album will be officially released on April 8, so while this isn’t an exclusive, frontman Dale Nicholls was generous enough to provide me with some tasty advance meats.

The EP sees seven members contribute the usuals plus a little lap steel and saxophone. Think Jason Anderson guesting on a Stars record. The band is also working on their second LP, and if it’s like anything in their past discography, it’ll be a tenderly pieced together collection of basement and living room recordings. Nicholls has his homemade operation, Ginger Gorilla, doing da ‘distro.

Audio: Pink Like Smog
Audio: Small Storm

Consecutive Wives is Phillip Taylor-Parker, 20-year-old laptop musician out of San Francisco. The main man himself either likes to roleplay, or should be a guest star on Big Love. The project uses a bunch of samples interspersed with some snarky casiotones to make “one guy dicking around on a computer” into something a little more cohesive.

Taylor-Parker is also a music journalist working over at betterPropaganda, an interesting free mp3 site that hasn’t hit my radar screen before and certainly warrants some further research. The track available for download, “Bloghaus,” hits the Dan Deacon/Knife vibrations nicely without necessarily cohering to the aforementioned matriline. Whatever that means… I’m plumb tuckered!

Audio: Bloghaus

Matt Lebofsky, a former member of Dawn McCarthy’s Faun Fables, has had his own prog project since 2001 called Midline Errors. Lebofsky plays it all on the recordings, and is sometimes joined live by a few other pranksters, including the other ex-Faun Faubler, Jenya Chernoff.

If Midline Errors has one thing going for it, it’s the transparency of recording and execution. Lebofsky clearly emphasizes volume of output (no pun intended) over polished production, which is a model I’ve started to appreciate more and more. Everything that Lebofsky has ever done with the project is available under a CC license on his website. It’s all free, but if you like what you hear, donate!

Audio: Glom

Sam Rosen, whose rotating live band includes the illustrious Jason Anderson, runs his own label called Truthtone and plays some grungey-glammy-reggae. The Brooklyn native is on a bit of an eastern seaboard tour right now, hitting up schools and making his way toward Bennington on March 15. He also opened for Vampire Weekend at their Bowery CD release in January.

Interestingly, Rosen tried out a “tour EP” strategy for selling some discs. According to his blog, he sold out all the “tour only” records and is considering a release of these on his label. Whatever sells, but tour only releases, hm? I like it.

Audio: Trenchtown