{"title":"Pre-Orders \u0026 New Releases","description":"","products":[{"product_id":"colleen-green_cool","title":"Cool","description":"Colleen Green has always been cool, but on 2015’s I Want To Grow Up, she didn’t necessarily feel it. Too young to be free of insecurities but old enough to be sick of them running her life, Green was experiencing an existential crisis. Five years and a new album later, we find her parsing out what it means to be grown-up—and realizing that it’s actually pretty Cool.\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eOpener “Someone Else” is a paean to power in which Green lets a lover know that double standards can go both ways. A groovy bass loop and zig-zagging guitar lines underscore her realization that happiness is in her own hands, and the vibe is set. Next up is the witty, catchy “I Wanna Be A Dog,” where Green celebrates the simplicity of a canine life and questions why she’s still overcomplicating her own. Dark and slinky “Highway” uses ruthless driving as a metaphor for a lifestyle that no longer interests her.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBurnt out on bad feelings and ready to have fun with melodies and beats, Green enlisted producer Gordon Raphael (The Strokes) to take her songs to higher ground while keeping her lo-fi aesthetic intact. Raphael was already a fan, having caught a show in L.A. and finding himself “struck by how confident and powerful she looked, even though she was the only one onstage.” He agreed to take the gig, and together with drummer Brendan Eder and hip hop producer Aqua over a few weeks in Los Angeles, Cool was created. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe album’s themes come together on the anthemic “It’s Nice to Be Nice,” Green’s reminder to herself that you get what you give, so it’s important to try and be the best person you can—a hard-won but essential lesson in the emotional maturity that defines Cool.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Colleen Green","offers":[{"title":"Color LP","offer_id":41479338590393,"sku":"731261","price":23.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"CD","offer_id":41479338623161,"sku":"731262","price":12.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Cassette","offer_id":41479338655929,"sku":"731264","price":10.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false},{"title":"Digital","offer_id":41479338688697,"sku":"731266","price":10.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0559\/7180\/7417\/products\/colleengreen-cool-4000.jpg?v=1636151355"},{"product_id":"marinero_hella-love","title":"Hella Love","description":"\u003ctable\u003e\u003ctbody\u003e\u003ctr\u003e\u003ctd\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHella Love, the Hardly Art debut from Marinero, is an album about closing a chapter. It’s Jess Sylvester’s grand farewell, and love letter to his hometown and the place he grew up, The San Francisco Bay Area, before relocating to Los Angeles after finishing his debut release. Using the moniker Marinero (which means “sailor” in Spanish), Jess Sylvester was drawn to this name as a means to honor his parent’s stories -- his father, a sailor, and mother, a Mexican-American who grew up in San Francisco. This record blends many worlds from beginning to end, and as you go deeper it hits harder. It’s his goodbye to The Bay.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePulling sonic influences from classic Latin American groups and international composers from the 60’s \u0026amp; 70’s: Los Terricolas, Ennio Morricone, Esquivel, Carole King and, Serge Gainsbourg Hella Love finds Sylvester fusing classical arrangements with a variety of different genres, evoking a sonic nostalgia blended with other contemporary artists like Chicano Batman, Connan Mockasin, and Chris Cohen. The album was written, played, and produced by Jess Sylvester with help from Bay Area engineer Jason Kick (Mild High Club’s Skiptracing) at Tunnel Vision and Santo Recording in Oakland, California. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOn the standout single “Nuestra Victoria,” Sylvester shares “It’s my way of talking about gentrification in SF, or specifically the Mission where my mom and family grew up. The song is about a bakery, or panaderia called La Victoria, and was a place where my mother and tias went growing up, a place I also went to that is no longer there.” It was one of the oldest Mexican-American businesses in SF and I wanted to honor it”. “Through the Fog” highlights Sylvester’s exploration of his influences from the Tropicalia movement, weaving bossa rhythms with lush percussion and orchestration. Using SF’s infamous fog as a metaphor for “tough times”, Sylvester expands that it is a dedication to his friends and family who have helped him get through substance abuse issues, heartbreak, and other painful experiences. “There are a few easter eggs in the lyrics for Bay Area folks or people who have followed my music in the past but it’s mostly about getting through something difficult with the love and support from the homies and fam.” The album’s title track, “Hella Love,” summarizes both of his parent’s stories of how they ended up in the bay. The first verse is about his father’s voyage out west as a sailor during the late ’60s while the second verse follows his mother’s experience moving to The Mission District when she was a young girl.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt’s difficult to classify or generalize about Marinero’s music or identity. To him, it’s important to let his music do the talking. “I’m Chicanx, a bay native, biracial, and I’ve luckily gotten to travel and spend time in Mexico and I feel like my personality and specific musical tastes come through on this album. More than these generalizations we often make, I’m just a human who can both fear and love, and I’m just hoping to connect with others to share optimism and experience joy and laughter, even if for a moment.” Lean your ear to the ground because Jess Sylvester has been many things and will continue to share his journey. It is clear this gifted creator has more to say.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/td\u003e\u003c\/tr\u003e\u003c\/tbody\u003e\u003c\/table\u003e","brand":"Marinero","offers":[{"title":"Color LP","offer_id":41479349862585,"sku":"731351","price":23.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"CD","offer_id":41479349928121,"sku":"731352","price":12.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Cassette","offer_id":41479349960889,"sku":"731354","price":7.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Digital","offer_id":41479349993657,"sku":"731356","price":10.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0559\/7180\/7417\/products\/marinero-hellalove-3000.jpg?v=1636151472"},{"product_id":"lala-lala_i-want-the-door-to-open","title":"I Want The Door To Open","description":"\u003cp\u003e“I want total freedom, total possibility, total acceptance. I want to fall in love with the rock.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat’s how Lillie West describes the theme of “DIVER,” the song she calls the thesis of Lala Lala’s third record, I Want The Door To Open. The rock in question is a reference to Sisyphus, the mythical figure doomed by the gods to forever push a boulder up from the depths of hell. To West, it is the perfect metaphor for “the labor of living, of figuring out who you are, what's wrong with you, what's right with you,” she says. “I think it’s easy to feel like we keep making the same mistakes over and over again, that we never learn, that we’re Sisyphus; but time is actually a spiral that we move up. The key is falling in love with the labor of walking up the mountain.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eComing off of 2018’s acclaimed \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/megamart.subpop.com\/products\/lala-lala_the-lamb?_pos=1\u0026amp;_sid=852c3a643\u0026amp;_ss=r\"\u003eThe Lamb\u003c\/a\u003e, an introspective indie rock album recorded live with a three-piece band, West knew she was ready to make something sonically bigger and thematically more outward-looking than anything she’d done before; a record that would be less a straightforward documentation of her own personal struggles and more like a poem or a puzzle box, with sonic and lyrical clues that would allow the listener to, as the title says, open the door to the greater meaning of those struggles. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe result is I Want The Door To Open, a bold exploration of persona and presence from an artist questioning how to be herself fully in a world where the self is in constant negotiation. From the moment West declares “I want to look right into the camera” over a cascade of dreamy vocal loops on opening track “Lava,” I Want The Door To Open distinguishes itself from anything she’s done before in scope and intensity. The ultra-magnified iteration of Lala Lala is fully encapsulated in the monumental “DIVER.” Inspired by a character from a Jennifer Egan novel, it’s a pop song of Kate Bush-esque proportions replete with layered synths and booming, wide open drumming contributed by fellow Chicago musician Nnamdi Ogbonnaya, and West pushing her vocals to the ragged edge.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWest co-produced I Want The Door To Open with Yoni Wolf of Why? and reached out to various music friends to help her achieve a galactic level of atmospherics that would’ve been impossible on her own. In addition to Ogbonnaya, I Want The Door To Open features contributions from poet Kara Jackson, \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/megamart.subpop.com\/products\/ohmme_mine?_pos=1\u0026amp;_sid=c8b430d01\u0026amp;_ss=r\"\u003eOHMME\u003c\/a\u003e, Adam Schatz of Landlady, Sen Morimoto, Christian Lee Hutson, and Kaina Castillo. Former tourmate Ben Gibbard can be heard on the gentle “Plates,” a song about accepting the past regardless of whatever negative feelings accompany those memories; a necessary act for unlocking the door to the present moment West is actively seeking on the record.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThroughout I Want The Door To Open, West is fascinated with the idea of avatars: how we present ourselves to the world versus how other people see us versus who we really are when we’re alone, and how those images can change over time. “How can anyone else know who you are? How can you know who anyone else is when all these different avatars or personalities or performances are happening simultaneously, in different places,” asks West. It’s a question she poses on the cinematic “Color of the Pool,” a song about wanting to embody the characteristics of something pure and uncatchable that features stacks of wigged-out saxophone from Schatz. West revisits the topic on “Photo Photo,” on which OHMME provide a haunting medieval vocal round as West attempts to parse the various aspects of presentation and representation.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“Utopia Planet,” the final track on I Want The Door To Open, features a very special guest: West’s own Grandma Beth, who charmingly relays her thoughts on a painting West made of herself—another avatar of the artist as seen through the eyes of someone who loves her. It is the fitting end to the inner labyrinth that West maps on I Want The Door To Open, a musical quest undertaken with the knowledge that the titular door may never open; but it is through falling in love with the quest itself that one may find the closest thing to total freedom, total possibility, and total acceptance available to us on this plane of existence.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Lala Lala","offers":[{"title":"Color LP","offer_id":41479351140537,"sku":"731321","price":23.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"CD","offer_id":41479351173305,"sku":"731322","price":6.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Cassette","offer_id":41479351206073,"sku":"731324","price":10.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Digital","offer_id":41479351238841,"sku":"731326","price":10.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0559\/7180\/7417\/files\/LalaLala_IWantTheDoorToOpen_LP_Loser_01.jpg?v=1768974265"},{"product_id":"la-luz_la-luz","title":"La Luz","description":"\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv data-mce-fragment=\"1\" class=\"tralbumData tralbum-about\"\u003eOn their self-titled fourth album, La Luz launch themselves into a new realm of emotional intimacy for a collection of songs steeped in the mysteries of the natural world and the magic of human chemistry that has found manifestation in the musical ESP between guitarist and songwriter Shana Cleveland, bassist Lena Simon, and keyboardist Alice Sandahl.\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTo help shape La Luz, the band found a kindred spirit in producer Adrian Younge. Though primarily known for his work with hip-hop, soul, and jazz acts, Younge saw in La Luz a shared vision that transcended genre. “We both create music with the same attitude, and that’s what I love about them,” he says. “They are never afraid to be risky and their style is captivating. It was an honor to work with them.”\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe result is an album that is both the most naturalistic and psychedelic of the band’s career. All the elements of classic La Luz are still present—the lush harmonies, the impeccable musicianship, the gorgeous melodies—but it’s a richer, earthier iteration, replete with inorganic sounds that mimic the surreality of nature—the humming of invisible bugs, the atmospheric sizzle of a hot day. After spending the last few years living in rural northern California\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\" class=\"bcTruncateMore\"\u003e, Cleveland’s lyrics have become more grounded, less interested in traveling to other dimensions than in peeking behind the curtain of this one.\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eLa Luz shimmers into existence with a tender strumming of electric guitar on the ghostly “In the Country.” The record then charges ahead with the dynamic “The Pines,” propelled by Simon’s thunderous bassline and punctuated by eerie vibrating keys while Cleveland’s voice hovers high and sweet overhead—no reverb, no fooling. Sandahl leads the way with a soulful Hammond organ on the dreamy, funky “Watching Cartoons,” while the women’s voices weave in and around each other, coming together in a cascade of “ba ba ba ba’s” in the chorus. Later, the band cranks up the atmospherics on madcap stomper “Metal Man” with a frenzy of ultra-fuzzed out guitar, blaring galactic synths, and epic clanging bells. The record’s themes coalesce on breezy 70s folk-tinged pop song “I Won’t Hesitate,” an ode to finding intimacy in a weird world, and the languid ballad “Lazy Eyes and Dune,” which features lovely Mellotron work from Simon. La Luz is an album that celebrates love—of music, of friendship, of life in all its forms.\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e-Mariana Timony\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"La Luz","offers":[{"title":"LP","offer_id":41479353368761,"sku":"731360","price":23.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"CD","offer_id":41479353401529,"sku":"731362","price":12.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Cassette","offer_id":41479353434297,"sku":"731364","price":10.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Digital","offer_id":41479353467065,"sku":"731366","price":10.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0559\/7180\/7417\/products\/laluz-laluz-3000.jpg?v=1636151523"},{"product_id":"whitmer-thomas_big-baby-big-baby-christmas","title":"Big Baby \/ Big Baby Christmas","description":"\u003cp\u003eJust in time for the holidays, the Alabama-born LA-based multidisciplinary artist Whitmer Thomas is sharing an extended version of his single \"Big Baby Christmas\" the holiday version of “Big Baby,” his minor viral hit of 2020.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThomas says of the track, “Christmas is for the babies. Brought you by the elves. Please enjoy the full-length version of Big Baby Christmas. Slappy do to you!”\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Whitmer Thomas","offers":[{"title":"7 inch","offer_id":41601470857401,"sku":"731467","price":7.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Digital","offer_id":41601470890169,"sku":"731466","price":2.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0559\/7180\/7417\/products\/whitmerthomas-bigbabychristmas-3600.jpg?v=1639610372"},{"product_id":"my-idea_cry-mfer","title":"CRY MFER","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe closer you are to someone, the crueler you can treat them, but if they love you, they’re inclined to forgive you. Lily Konigsberg and Nate Amos forgive each other now, but they were in a bad way when they recorded Cry Mfer — which is not to say their debut album is some kind of sonic bum out. Cry Mfer proves you can still make pop music while spiraling, as evidenced by the existence of “Breathe You,” a bop all about fucking Nate constructed while “high as shit in my room making fun of Justin Bieber,” the vocals of which Lily tracked while “blindly sad” and “genuinely devastated.” \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThey’re best friends now, and they were best friends when they recorded Cry Mfer last year, but they didn’t know that yet. (“We definitely were like, oh, maybe we're in love?” Lily recalls; it was a confusing time.) Cry Mfer is the sound of two people figuring out what they mean to one another “in the midst of,” quoth Nate, “a bunch of other chaos,” up to and including being drunk as skunks; when listening to the album, Nate can “smell” the aforementioned chaos. “Thank God we're not those people [anymore],” Lily, with the clarity of newfound sobriety, marvels. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhen not using the other party as an emotional punching bag, Nate and Lily used one another as a creative filter and sounding board — pushing, prodding and challenging themselves to “mess with different sounds,” harkening to, Nate says, “songwriting duos who seem to have their own language that other people don't quite understand.” In life, as in art, they share a language, a hive mind, finishing each other’s sentences while lounging on Lily’s parents’ couch in the Hudson Valley. (Lily recently moved back to her hometown of Hudson in order to “get her life together;” it’s “definitely working,” she says.)\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe duo joined forces in the Fall of 2020, when Lily, after a few years gobbing away in the punk trio Palberta, solicited Nate (who, at the time, was popping away as half of dance duo Water From Your Eyes) as a potential producer for her solo record; the subsequent songwriting competition that followed resulted in dozens of tracks and one EP, That’s My Idea. No strangers to productivity, Nate’s Water From Your Eyes recently released their fifth album, and Lily recently released her solo LP, both to high marks.  \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eCry Mfer is, true to the band’s vision, a beautiful mess of different sounds, completely and effortlessly genreless (though if pressed to label it, the band settles on “Truth or Dare Pop”). While a milieu of myriad styles, from folk to dance, the album’s main through line is truth, regardless of how much the expression thereof may hurt (after all, as Lily sings in the title track, “truth and life go hand in hand”). Its lyrics aren’t “particularly diary-ish,” Nate says, they’re “a little more…” “Diarrhea-ish,” Lily jokes. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe album, while permeated with lyrics about lying and crying and, well, hurting the one you love, has a palpable sense of humor and self-awareness, a testament to “rolling your eyes at something while acknowledging that it's also still kicking your ass,” says Nate. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIt’s a reaction against the self-seriousness that runs rampant throughout indie music, which comes as no surprise when you learn the duo originally wanted to call themselves The Grammys (Why? Because when the two of them started working together, “we were like, we're gonna get a Grammy,” Lily says). They aren’t ashamed to admit they listen to Ariana Grande and Justin Bieber, in much the same way they aren’t ashamed to use a vocoder or lyrically play the heel. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA perfect example is the song “Crutch,” an anthem to codependency from a self-described authority on the subject (“I’m sorry about this stuff, but it doesn’t really matter that much,” Lily breathily sings over bright guitars. “Truth is that I really miss your touch, and I’m hanging on you ‘cause you’re my crutch”). \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSuffering is mitigated a little bit when you turn it into, ahem, art — pain is temporary, but music is forever (or, at least, until the grid goes down). You’ll be pleased to know the “something” Lily was needing in the chorus to “Cry Mfer” she now has — “In the moment I thought I was needing a big life change and shift, like I had been stuck in something, and I was right, I just went about it in a very wrong way,” she says. “And now the thing that I'm needing, I'm getting, actually, which is through being sober and getting my life together.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“I was telling myself a lot of stuff through those lyrics that was subconscious,” she continues. “I thought I was talking to other people, but I was talking to myself.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMy Idea has only just begun, but already misery is in the rearview. Cry Mfer is a punisher, to be sure, but it’s also a banger; reflecting on the time period during which it was recorded, Nate breathes a sigh of relief: “Oof. 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Shana Cleveland of La Luz says that “Endless Afternoon” is a “California lullaby. The melody for this song came to me while I was hiking in the hills above the Yuba River. About the sweetness found in slow days close to home.” This song is the a-side of a physical 7” that is b\/w the track “San Fernando Shadow Blues” (available digitally on June 14th)  with both songs physically available on July 7th.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"La Luz","offers":[{"title":"7 inch","offer_id":42306253291705,"sku":"731447","price":9.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Digital","offer_id":42306253324473,"sku":"731446","price":2.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0559\/7180\/7417\/products\/laluz-endlessafternoon-sanfernandoshadowblues-3000.jpg?v=1652936116"},{"product_id":"ill-peach_this-is-not-an-exit","title":"THIS IS NOT AN EXIT","description":"\u003cp\u003eHere’s the thing about ill peach: this band exists because they are too weird to not exist.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe seed of ill peach was first planted in the recording studios of New York City where Pat Morrissey and Jess Corazza were working together as professional songwriters, collaborating with artists like Icona Pop, SZA, Weezer, Pharrell, Big Freedia, and others. Then came the day they were offered their own publishing deal. Cool, right? Well, about that.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e “Everyone kept saying, ‘The stuff that you’re writing is slightly too left-of-center—weirdo stuff,” remembers Morrissey. “Why don’t you start your own project?”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThus ill peach, a pop band with a punk streak and a taste for both the rotten and the sweet, with an approach to making music that goes something like: “Do you want to pick up a guitar and do you want to be on this water jug and we’ll record it on the iPhone and create some weird drum pattern?”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFollowing a series of well-received EPs on their own Pop Can Records (a record label and artist collective Morrissey and close collaborator Jesse Schuster run with friends), a digital single for Hardly Art’s 15th anniversary series, and some colorful music videos that crystallized the band’s visual aesthetic along with their sound, ill peach’s “weirdo stuff” comes to fruition on first full-length THIS IS NOT AN EXIT: a collection of anthemic songs built out of bright pop and gritty experimental elements (Morrissey names the sculptural use of distortion on the final albums by Low as an inspiration), punctuated with hooky choruses ready to be screamed along to in the safety of your own bedroom or with a bunch of friends at one of ill peach’s intense live shows.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf ill peach first blossomed in New York, it took quarantine in Los Angeles for the project to ripen. Corazza describes it as a time when “the veil of the music industry fell down—you couldn’t put on a facade anymore because everything was too fucking real.” The end of the world turned out to be what ill peach needed to get real with themselves. “It helped us creatively to zone in and removed us from the [industry] side of things to where we could just be like: this is our new identity, let's jump with both feet.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTHIS IS NOT AN EXIT’s title is a reflection of something Corazza realized during a period of personal and familial crises. “I kept walking into buildings and I’d try to exit somewhere and the sign would be like, ‘This is not an exit,’” she says. “It just felt like a metaphor for a hopeful thing—don't give up yet.” The combination of hope and anxiety is all over This is Not an Exit, reflected in a sonic palette (Alternative! Electronica! Indie! Radio Pop! 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On the soothing “CAPILLARY BED,” which was made primarily on an OP–1 synthesizer, Corazza’s vocals sound more angelic than ever as she uses the metaphor of blood vessels delivering nutrients to the body to describe the magic of human connection. (“Weirdo stuff,” remember?)\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eUltimately, says Corazza, THIS IS NOT AN EXIT is a record about healing, a process often spoken about in New Age-y terms but one that in reality can be really confusing and, yes, weird. But it is the beautiful strangeness of being alive that ill peach capture so well on This is Not an Exit. The band’s unabashed embrace of their own zany impulses enhances the honesty at the heart of their songs, because what is zanier than unpredictability of human emotions in the face of life’s challenges? What is more beautiful than coming out the other side with greater wisdom and compassion for yourself and others? 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They’d spent much of their early 20s searching for their voice as an artist and as an individual, as well as for a musical community. Llobet would eventually move to Brooklyn, but after three years of looking for a hopeful artistic breakthrough, they spent much of their time in seclusion, consumed by social anxiety and imposter syndrome—and they were considering abandoning songwriting completely. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eOne day, while commuting through Penn Station and en route to their partner’s family home in Virginia (that would also lead to the crucial purchase of a secondhand Tascam cassette recorder), they noticed Patti Smith sitting alone, waiting for a train. The typically shy Llobet decided to approach the icon, who was, in turn, delighted to see that Llobet was carrying a guitar. At the end of their interaction, Smith offered some parting wisdom: “She wished me luck and said, ‘Practice hard, Nick.’” \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLlobet took her advice to heart, and this chance encounter kicked off a personal and artistic rebirth. They started performing as youbet, a play on their last name, and began “changing [their] vision for what a song could be.” Eventually, this journey resulted in youbet’s latest record, Way To Be. Across 12 delightfully off-kilter tunes, Llobet uses wordplay and tongue-in-cheek humor to obliquely explore dysfunctional relationships, regret, self-confidence or the lack thereof, queerness, and self-discovery. Fuzzy at the edges and filled with playful, kinetic arrangements, Way To Be is a bridge into the entrancing world of youbet. You won’t want to leave.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWay To Be arrives four years after youbet’s debut, Compare \u0026amp; Despair, a delightful gem of a record that showcases Llobet’s propensity for freewheeling whimsy and emotional intensity. In May 2019, they were inspired by a song-a-week writing group that produced Compare \u0026amp; Despair. Llobet decided to helm a second club in which contributors would upload that week’s song to a private Bandcamp. Invigorated by this small musical collaboration, the feedback, and the accountability, Llobet wrote 18 songs throughout the duration of the club (Twelve of these songs became Way To Be). \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAfter this songwriting marathon, Llobet spent 2020 focusing on instrumental guitar work and political engagement. By the summer of 2021, they were ready to revisit the Way To Be tracks. Over the next year-and-a-half, Llobet worked on the record relentlessly, refining the lyrics, recording, and arrangements from their apartment. Llobet self-produced Way To Be and describes the process as an enormous, labor-intensive undertaking that felt akin to “making a whole film.” Along the way, Llobet was joined by collaborators, including Julian Fader (Ava Luna), Adam Brisbin (Buck Meek), and Daniel Siles. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLlobet is also an abstract storyteller, preferring to structure songs around snapshots of their life. Take “Carsick,” Way To Be’s lead single, which dances around Llobet’s frustration with their own addictive personality. “I tend to do things in excess, I like to party, sometimes a little too hard,” they say, “I wish I could be more in control of myself, hence the lyric ‘Knowing when to stop\/It must be sweet.’”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMany of these songs touch on the duality of self-love and self-loathing, like on the downcast “Nurture.” But even when the subject matter is heavy, playfulness is an intrinsic part of Way To Be. Across the album, darkness is regularly softened by Llobet’s inclination towards lightheartedness. “Seeds of Evil,” a topsy-turvy study of self-criticism, plays with this contrast, pairing a lovely melody with devilish lyrics about losing perspective. “It’s choose your own adventure music,” Llobet says. “I like to keep listeners on their toes.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIndeed, the songs on Way To Be are unpredictable, and each listen offers the opportunity to dig into a new aspect of the album, from Llobet’s distinctively high voice to their complex guitar playing. “Peel,” which combines the Flamenco guitar techniques Llobet studied as a teen with a rhythm inspired by Maybelle Carter, is especially invigorating. The most labor-intensive track on the album, Llobet says that “Peel”’s lyrics—“I tried a dream\/And took it too far”—reflect their exasperated mental state during the writing process. Through its nods to Llobet’s musical education and Miami beaches, “Peel” connects their past and present. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan id=\"docs-internal-guid-0b0f8224-7fff-9acf-57e8-4e6b4aef71aa\"\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLlobet concludes, “Every song I birth is an opportunity to reinvent myself and gives me a chance to perform through a different spiritual filter. Each song is like a creature that lives within the depths of my soul, waiting to be written. 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It has worked, too, with Cohen’s terrific stint in the mighty Deerhoof and his own captivating art-rock act The Curtains, preceding production and session work for the likes of Weyes Blood, Kurt Vile, Le Ren, and Marina Allen. Somewhere along that long way, Cohen started writing lyrics. He found that, though it didn’t come naturally, the process offered a new sense of self-discovery and reckoning, a way to see himself and the world from unexpected angles. His three twilit albums of casually complicated pop during the last decade radiated these epiphanies: handling family strife, navigating advancing age, and understanding social woes.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBut Cohen has never had as much to sing so directly as he does on Paint a Room, his first album in five years and his debut for Hardly Art. If Cohen’s meanings have previously lurked inside the tessellated musical layers he built alone, they are newly clear and resonant here, animated and underscored for the first time by a band playing in real time. There is the endless miasma of state violence on the subversively melodious opener “Damage,” the existential exhaustion of modernity on the horn-traced jangle “Laughing”: this is Cohen communicating with friends not only through his deep understanding of groove, harmony, and hook but also with his listeners through songs that croon of our uneasy little era.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the past, Cohen made records in spells of isolation, phases when, as he puts it, he would “try to make my world a lot smaller.” He would play any of a dozen or so instruments until he stumbled upon something interesting, then slowly build upward and outward upon the idea. The method was solitary and stepwise, an act of accretion and deletion.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eCohen, though, has been playing live with bassist Davin Givhan, drummer Josh da Costa, and keyboardist Jay Israelson in some fashion for the better part of a decade. This time around, then, he built demos in the dusty garage of the suburban Altadena rental that smelled like old wood and gasoline and tried something new—he took the songs on tour with that crew, yielding total control by letting them fill in or flourish their own parts as they saw fit. They came back home and began recording as a band. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eCohen even called in a few friends to help, with Jeff Parker contributing the fluttering horn arrangement on “Damage,” and Parker collaborator Josh Johnson (who produced Meshell Ndegeocello’s Grammy-Award-winning album The Omnichord Real Book) supplying flute, sax, and clarinet arrangements throughout the record. It felt a little bit like producing someone else’s records, with Cohen given the chance to step back and evaluate others’ contributions to his own songs rather than scrutinize every little bit he made himself. This was a longtime ambition realized, another way of relating to others openly through sound.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eCohen, really, has never sounded so assured on a solo album, gliding above or sinking into this band that boasts a preternatural sense of feel. On “Damage,” as he surveys the way we lord power over people with less of it in most every walk of life, his voice lifts above Johnson’s horns like he’s looking for a way out. Cohen wrote “Sunever” for a transgender child in his life, while considering the violence that hard-and-fast categories can create. This song reminds us that we are “always in between,” that transitions are just a part of life.  With the hook, he sweetly sings his vow: “You’re gonna find a way.” Cohen is tender and vulnerable in the lead, his voice cracking with feeling as the tune presses forward toward a better future. Written by cutting and pasting phrases from the unemployment form he filled out at the pandemic’s start, the frolicking “Physical Address” considers what it is we all want for our lives, how we untether ourselves from the past in the present. On Paint a Room, Cohen’s music feels like a warm spring breeze, easy to love and gentle to feel. But it’s often carrying something heavy, as if blowing in from some unseen storm cloud.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eCohen had another hobby as a kid: transcendental meditation, a practice his parents taught him when he was six. It’s still part of his life, a window into observing his thought processes, habits, and relationship to the rest of the world. Making music—and, turns out, writing lyrics for it—works in a similar way for Cohen, as he’s able to understand and then articulate notions that wouldn’t be so easy with the absolutism of mere words. Paint a Room both reckons with reality and conjures an alternate one, where nighttime walks and a neighbor’s wind chimes offer endless escapes for the imagination, space for the mind to roam. Sublime and sunlit, these 10 songs consider dreamy new ways out of old predicaments, clearly stating the problem and dancing and singing their way somewhere new.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Chris Cohen","offers":[{"title":"Color LP","offer_id":48897184006419,"sku":"731730","price":23.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"CD","offer_id":48897184039187,"sku":"731732","price":12.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Digital","offer_id":48897184071955,"sku":"731736","price":10.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0559\/7180\/7417\/files\/chriscohen-paintaroom-4800.jpg?v=1714537626"},{"product_id":"youbet_deny","title":"Deny","description":"\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eNick Llobet says of the single, “Normally, youbet songs start on the nylon string, but this time I was inspired to write on the electric guitar. While driving around last spring we listened to a ton of Polvo, Autolux, and Boris, just to name a few. ‘Deny’ was written last April after we got home from supporting Mary Timony on tour. I was inspired to create a song that captured the energy of that time. In this way, touring is such a great learning experience. Getting in front of new audiences last year helped us develop a new sound. We fed off of the energy. I would say this song is an experiment- trying to explore some new stylistic terrain. 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Created in motion and shaped between long stretches of touring, the album reflects a moment of ecstatic possibility and grit. Both sharpened and expansive, youbet grows from the confines of home recording and “bedroom pop” into something sturdier, louder, and unmistakably their own.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“I myself am a constant student of life, of creating,” Llobet says. “I see people's creative anxieties because I have lived them. It’s very therapeutic because I can tell that I'm giving people strong advice based on all my failures.” Llobet relocated to New York from Denver in 2013 and forged initial connections in the local scene, while creating youbet and writing two albums, but it wasn’t until meeting Prussack in 2022 that they discovered a different level of musical connection. When the duo started playing together, they quickly realized their uniquely shared musical language and eagerness to learn from everything, connecting over a vast array of musical influence and their own practice of teaching. “Early in our friendship, Nick and I were playing guitar in the park and we decided that the Beatles were so good because they learned how to play hundreds of songs together,” Prussack says. “So we began our quest to learn 1,000 songs. Nick started compiling a massive playlist called ‘Learn Me’ filled with music that we habitually study and generate new ideas from.” \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe duo began experimenting musically, and their subsequent year of touring led to a new, more refined sound. “We had a huge opportunity for reinvention,” Prussack says. “Nick will never play the chord that you expect, and is always pushing me outside of my creative box. Their compositions are so exciting to explore, and on tour we began to reconsider and transform the kernel of each song to match our new environment.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThat depth of surprise and expansive warmth radiates from album opener “Ground Kiss”, a late-night existential query written when Llobet found themselves adjusting to living alone after the end of an 11-year relationship. “The song represents an endless search for that something and the rebuilding that goes along with trial and failure,” they say. The song unites the spectrum between clouds of plucked Big Thief-esque glow and bursts of distorted frustration. To that end, youbet demonstrates Llobet and Prussack’s ability to weave beguiling musical and lyrical expression, pushing and pulling at the resulting mesh.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eDeveloping their finely tuned fusion between complex musicality and deeply felt emotion required more than hoping inspiration would strike. Instead, the process of creating youbet involved countless hours of precise engineering, meticulous craft, and gritty dedication. The duo were consistently listening, learning, and writing. But that hard work boils down into every facet of their work, including bringing a set of dumbbells on tour so they could keep active and stay disciplined. For their part, Llobet sees the resulting album as a statement of that hard work and the opening of a new chapter. “It’s the beginning of a new era for youbet,” they say. “The band started as a sort of bedroom project for myself, but it has transformed into something expansive since working with Micah. It’s like we’re running a family business.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe broiling “Undefined” draws from that personal soul-searching, a musical mosaic of life before and after a complicated breakup. Llobet first worked out the verses while waiting for a guitar student, a fitting backdrop for the song's balance of wizardly art pop experimentalism and diligent power pop hookiness. Co-producers Katie Von Schleicher and Julian Fader help round out the mix, the former adding synth glisten and the latter a drum backbone hammered into place by Prussack’s bass.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe concussive “See Thru” rushes headlong through heavy alt rock chop, moments of gentler curve, and even bubbly electronics—a track Llobet notes began when they were toying with a Debussy piano part on guitar and then stamped in the harmonics and energy of Japanese hard rock band Boris. Elsewhere, “Receive” finds Llobet carving away at generational conflict, tethering propulsive bursts of guitar reverie with raw emotional vigor in the vein of Pile. “On the verse, the bass is playing variations on the vocal melody,” Prussack says. “Throughout the album, there’s unique interplay and variation that you can only get from a lot of hard work together.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eEchoing their strengths as educators, the ability to voraciously learn from a breadth of influences informs youbet—from the dizzying score to Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo to dazzling flamenco—but their ability to recognize meaning beyond signposts and find connections to emotional experience pushes everything into a topographical realism. “Having respect for the canon doesn’t mean we’re ever limited by revivalism. There’s a whole universe of musical vocabulary that we can borrow from and translate into our language,” Prussack says.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThat willingness to learn from the past while building the future is something tied deeply to the band’s New York City roots, with so many visionary artists having previously built new worlds within the city’s confines. “For years, I was too intimidated to step into the scene. It’s been such a breath of fresh air to build this new craft, this new philosophy of songwriting in a scene I respect and feel in community with,” says Llobet.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eCompelling art requires an unimaginable burst of new life, a shift from two-dimensional ideas to viscous, sinewy reality. As much as the hard work bolsters the music, it’s truly the resounding spirit of Llobet and Prussack’s relationship at the core of youbet. “Micah has brought a lot of order to my chaotic neurodivergence,” Llobet reflects. “I consider her my musical confidant. She can be cleverly critical and extremely encouraging. She's probably the most opinionated person I know. 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Everything is just going to continue to be however it will be.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis is the way musician Rae Chen encapsulates his debut album as tofusmell, All My Time. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAt times reserved and gracefully restrained, and other times overflowing and agitated, All My Time showcases Rae’s signature precision in vulnerable, clear-eyed songwriting, with a larger, lusher, and more fleshed-out scale of production than we’ve seen from him before. Here, Chen poetically distills the uncomfortable complications of learning to release expectation from outcome, and in turn live contentedly in life’s constant, confusing uncertainty. It’s not necessarily an apathetic resignation strung through the songs of All My Time, but rather a hopeful insistence that impermanence, and the toiling mystery it brings, is its own kind of steady salve. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFollowing the release of his 2023 EP Humor, Chen spent a few months intermittently touring with Leith Ross before making the daring decision to move away from his home state of Florida to Winnipeg, Canada. Once there, he finished writing the songs that would come to make up All My Time, and began recording. While Chen has primarily worked solo in the past – writing, producing, and recording his music himself – he brought in a collection of new collaborators to help build the songs of All My Time. Six of the songs were co-produced and recorded with Keiran Placatka in Winnipeg, and then developed throughout the months following Chen’s move. New friends, Chen found the production process with Placatka to be surprisingly intuitive and creatively inspiring. For the two of them, it wasn’t just the instrumental arrangements that felt important to the songmaking, but also the emotional atmosphere those arrangements conjured. This inclination is evident on album standout “Pilot Fish” – Chen’s hushed vocals and shuffling guitar interplay seamlessly with swirling electronic chimes and warm, ambling base, swelling and receding like a gentle tide.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eInterspersed with Placatka’s contributions are four songs produced and recorded with Paul Larson in Los Angeles, each one with an energetic and dynamic live-band sound inspired by folk-rock of the early aughts. Tracks like “Voice Cracks” and “Force the Sun West!” incorporate reeling, fuzzed electric guitar and punchy drums bolstered by darker-toned production. Having only ever recorded in the confines of his bedroom, Chen took advantage of this new opportunity of working in studio spaces to showcase the breadth of his range and musical interests. While it required him to relinquish some amount of creative control – an unfamiliar practice – it was well worth the leap. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe collection is rounded out with “Luck”, produced by Chen himself, and “Overspender”, produced with Jack Hallenbeck in Los Angeles and reminiscent of the whisper-close folk stylings of Sufjan Stevens and Nick Drake that Chen has become well known for. Despite the myriad hands involved in the overall production, All My Time remains cohesive, held together with Chen’s earnest and enveloping story-telling. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eRecurring through All My Time is a zen-like admittance of the inconsequentiality of one's small place in the world, paired with an involuntary desire to still seize control of times uncontrollable will, yearning for a path that must surely be better than the present one. On “(Me Tomorrow)” we hear Chen tell himself “The sky is bending around you\/you’re nothing”, a declaration he returns to on “Walk Me Back To Nothing” with the aching verse “I am the leaves damp\/I am the rain falling\/I am nothing\/I am just misunderstanding.” The songs across All My Time find Chen in constant search of safety, contentment, and reassurance that he never quite grasps. When Chen sighs out “I hate not ever knowing” on “Rock Collector”, there’s a weariness that weighs the words down. He’s both too young, and too old. Time moves both too slow, and too fast. But rather than incongruous, these dueling laments reveal a sharp truth about what it means to be young and alive. There is no use in waiting to arrive at a moment of pure and perfect growth: the arrival is in the journey itself. The going and going and going becomes a different kind of revelatory answer. And it’s with this reassurance that we leave All My Time, Chen’s steady-handed and confident collection of musical prose, executed with immense beauty, craft, and care. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eTasha Viets-VanLear\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"tofusmell","offers":[{"title":"CD","offer_id":53857331347731,"sku":"731792","price":12.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Digital","offer_id":53857331380499,"sku":"731796","price":10.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0559\/7180\/7417\/files\/tofusmell_AllMyTime_Mockup_CD_2000x1417_a82868fd-66d2-4fe1-ab39-f710a5553ba7.jpg?v=1771913891"},{"product_id":"cass-mccombs-and-chris-cohen_steel-reserve-ignis-fatuus-hinkypunk-sharkfins-and-ambergris","title":"Steel Reserve \/ Ignis fatuus, Hinkypunk, Sharkfins and Ambergris","description":"\u003cp\u003eCass McCombs – hailed as “one of the greatest lyricists of our time” by The FADER – and his longtime collaborator and Interior Live Oak co-producer Chris Cohen have announced a new collaborative 7”, being released jointly by Hardly Art and Domino Records.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe release features two new tracks: “Steel Reserve” and “Ignis Fatuus, Hinkypunk, Sharkfins and Ambergris.” The songs spotlight the artists’ distinct yet deeply intertwined creative chemistry, forged over nearly two decades of collaboration.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Chris composed the music and I did the words,” says McCombs. “Our longtime friend and mutual collaborator Trevor Shimizu drew the artwork. Chris has weaved throughout my music over the years — he played guitar on my first LP, A, as well as on ‘County Line', he co-produced Interior Live Oak, and he is a remarkable musician and songwriter. Both songs are somewhat cracked meditations on dignity. ‘Steel Reserve’ explores the bushes, hidden away. Public life has nothing to offer dignity. ‘Ignis Fatuus’ is a pirate’s treasure collected from an Earth stained with blood and madness — stolen from W.B. Yeats.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eCohen adds, “Cass and I go back to early 2000s Bay Area. I’ve always thought he was an amazing songwriter so I was very happy when he sent me lyrics. I took it as a dare, as the words were tricky and the forms unusual ones for songs, but I followed them exactly as they were. The music is my reaction to the words as I understood them. Also Cass is a killer guitar player so I had him come in and put some classical guitar on top of ‘Steel Reserve’. We both harmonize and trade verses on ‘Ignis Fatuus’ so it is our first proper duet.”\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Cass McCombs and Chris Cohen","offers":[{"title":"7 inch","offer_id":53897997189395,"sku":"731867","price":12.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"Digital","offer_id":53897997222163,"sku":"731866","price":2.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0559\/7180\/7417\/files\/CassMcCombs_ChrisCohen_SteelReserve_Mockup_7Inch_US_2000x1417_46a82481-d6fe-4dd6-847f-f9ea4a90cb02.jpg?v=1772689973"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.hardlyart.com\/collections\/pre-orders-new-releases\/format-7-inch+cass-mccombs-and-chris-cohen.oembed","provider":"Hardly Art","version":"1.0","type":"link"}