Dark Tea, the solo project of LA-based Gary Canino, will release their new self-titled, full-length studio album on April 30, 2021, on Fire Talk Records. The 12-track collection expands the group’s sound from their previous LP (also called Dark Tea), further exploring Canino’s cinematic visions and twangy folk narratives.

Born and raised in Huntington, NY, Gary’s quiet Long Island youth gave him access to all of the pleasures and distractions of New York City. After college at the University of Virginia, Canino made his way to Brooklyn in 2011. He played bass with post-punk revivalists Rips, recording and touring their debut album with Austin Brown (Parquet Courts), forming Dark Tea in 2016. Fire Talk, a label known for left-field rockers like Pure X and Dehd, issued the first Dark Tea LP in 2019, mixed by Jarvis Taveniere of Woods and featuring memorable guitar work from Meg Duffy of Hand Habits.

The new Dark Tea album, recorded by Matt Barrick (The Walkmen) and NYC punk veteran Sasha Stroud, is a document of deeply personal, interior reflections, contrasted with the wide open spaces of an idyllic American soundscape. Beyond the music, Gary channels his Cassavetes obsession by making videos for Dark Tea, Current Joys, and The Berries. It’s a continuation of the Dark Tea vision: creativity, commitment, nurturing a sense of wonder through the haze of nostalgia, while looking toward the future.

1st Pressing
300 - Bright Red LP
200 - Black LP

After years side-manning for Long Island, Virginia and New York City’s finest undiscovered songwriters (D.B.B. Plays Cups, the Monte de Rosas Band, Andrea Schiavelli’s Eyes of Love) and contributing crisp basswork to the indomitable Brooklyn band Rips, the songwriter Gary Canino, submits to you a generous collection of country-inflected music under the Dark Tea moniker that, as the quotes from other Garys illustrate, honors the past while looking ahead. There is, as they say, a little something for everyone. 

With Dark Tea, Gary emerges years later as a scientist does from her lab, having cracked the formula. The formula? Honor the listeners’ desire for both danger and comfort. And so, when a melody starts to wander from the marked trail, Gary soothes the listener’s ear with a simple one-four (“Variable Reward”). And so, when ambling verse figure disorients the listener, it repeats until she feels at home in it (“The Bird’s Nest”). And so, a long verse finds punctuation in a tastefully punchy chorus (“No Notifications”). The album also contains no fewer than three truly great guitar solos, including one from Meg Duffy’s Hand Habits on “Rollin’ Back The Dial”.

In closing, I offer three exemplary lyrics from the record to demonstrate that Gary has surveyed the mountain of good taste, climbed it, and now sinks the Dark Tea flag into its peak.

-forward by Andrew Cedermark

Mixed by Jarvis Taveniere (Woods), mastered by Mikey Young (Total Control).

1st Pressing
300 Black VInyl

Monteagle is the solo moniker of Brooklyn based (Tennessee native) singer songwriter and composer Justin Giles Wilcox. Known primarily for scoring the critically acclaimed short Documentary Twins Days for the New Yorker and for his production and songwriting for the ambient folk duo Nassau, Monteagle sees Wilcox diving further into the uncharted territory of southern influenced experimental psych folk. “A Colorful Moth” a new EP from Wilcox is steeped in vivid imagery or as Paste Magazine describes “tremulous, bare-souled vocals, which are as haunted and alluring as the caves that riddle the rocky hills of the band’s hometown.”

Justin tells the tale of “A Colorful Moth” better than anyone could...

“A while back I hit a little bit of a rough patch. I had just wrapped up a very emotionally draining project, My freelance work was drying up, My mental health was at an all time low, all this amongst some tumultuous personal issues. In the midst of all of the chaos I took a walk, and ended up sitting at a park right outside of my apt in Brooklyn. While I was just sort of staring blankly, a Butterfly flew up and landed next to me on a bench. Without even blinking I looked at it and thought to myself, “This fucking butterfly, there’s no real beauty in it, it’s just a colorful moth”. I kind of lost it. It’s like my mind became clear. I started-laugh crying and realized how casually destructive I was being and accepted that my situation was mainly my own doing. Afterwards, I felt this huge sense of relief and I immediately started writing these songs.”

This EP is unique in that it was written and recorded sequentially. As in each musical idea begot the next. If you listen there are little pieces of the previous song in the next idea. The lyrics are a mish-mash, a direct stream of consciousness, and recollection of various hallucinogenic trips Justin had been on. There’s something soothing in the way that sound and words dance around each other in a surreal exploration of mortality in relation to reality.

”A Colorful Moth” is a sibling component to an upcoming full length scheduled for early 2021. 

“Fare Trax” is a new album by Portland Oregon based Campfires. The last one, “Tomorrow, Tomorrow”, came out about 6 years ago, also on Fire Talk. During those 5 years Campfires existed as a live band, watched seasons pass and eventually Jeff and his wife had a baby daughter named Lucy, named after “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”. He wrote a song for her while she was still in the womb. Unsurprisingly, that one is called “Lucy’s Song”, and is the last song on this album. Recorded on the Oregon coast a few months ago in a house overlooking the sea and finished in Portland in a practice space that shares a wall with some local favorites, so you can hear Lithics practicing as “Grand Central Song” fades out. The record is an amalgamation of influences, the Kinks are in there and early Byrds with the aesthetics of raw 60s garage and early 80s punk or anorak pop like Television Personalities & stuff from Sarah Records. Some of the poppier Velvets tunes are a touchstone too, then there’s ambient music and experimental tape work. A guazey take on folk music, refined and perfected over 10 years, it’s tenderness is complimented by honest and sincere songwriting presented in all it’s ramshackle glory. 

Limited to just 300 copies on Black Vinyl.