Mamalarky - Pocket Fantasy




Mamalarky - Pocket Fantasy
Pocket Fantasy, the sophomore album from Mamalarky is an instant-classic sunny-day record, imaginative and introspective, an enveloping listen of skyhigh hooks and keyboards that soar with joyful abandon. Its twelve kaleidoscopic tracks shapeshift aesthetically and thematically, through ideas about death and impermanence; love and gratitude; nature and technology; humor and hope. Heralded by Billboard, Nylon, The Fader and more, the new album expands on the unique sound of their self-titled debut which Pitchfork called “tenderly tangled indie rock”. On Pocket Fantasy some of the band’s purest pop tendencies collide with more warped and weird strains of quirky psych. It’s a treasure trove of playful grooves and zigzag riffs, a phenomenal album from a young group poised to carve their own place in the bins of your favorite record store.
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Get Pocket Fantasy on cream and blue splatter vinyl & the Pocket Fantasy tee bundled together for one low price!
Pocket Fantasy, the sophomore album from Mamalarky is an instant-classic sunny-day record, imaginative and introspective, an enveloping listen of skyhigh hooks and keyboards that soar with joyful abandon. Its twelve kaleidoscopic tracks shapeshift aesthetically and thematically, through ideas about death and impermanence; love and gratitude; nature and technology; humor and hope. Heralded by Billboard, Nylon, The Fader and more, the new album expands on the unique sound of their self-titled debut which Pitchfork called “tenderly tangled indie rock”. On Pocket Fantasy some of the band’s purest pop tendencies collide with more warped and weird strains of quirky psych. It’s a treasure trove of playful grooves and zigzag riffs, a phenomenal album from a young group poised to carve their own place in the bins of your favorite record store.
Get Pocket Fantasy on cream and blue splatter vinyl and a freshly pressed bright blue Mamalarky self titled variant bundled together for one low price.
Pocket Fantasy, the sophomore album from Mamalarky is an instant-classic sunny-day record, imaginative and introspective, an enveloping listen of skyhigh hooks and keyboards that soar with joyful abandon. Its twelve kaleidoscopic tracks shapeshift aesthetically and thematically, through ideas about death and impermanence; love and gratitude; nature and technology; humor and hope. Heralded by Billboard, Nylon, The Fader and more, the new album expands on the unique sound of their self-titled debut which Pitchfork called “tenderly tangled indie rock”. On Pocket Fantasy some of the band’s purest pop tendencies collide with more warped and weird strains of quirky psych. It’s a treasure trove of playful grooves and zigzag riffs, a phenomenal album from a young group poised to carve their own place in the bins of your favorite record store.
Mamalarky spent two years working on their self-titled debut album (out via Fire Talk on November 20th). Raw and cerebral, the LP looks to a range of influences from their collective musical nerdiness. ''We might have a vocal melody that sounds like the lead steel guitar from Santo & Johnny, played over production that aims to be noisy and weird like Deerhoof or Sheer Mag, all the while steeped in the greats like Stevie Wonder or The Four Seasons,' explains Livvy. The album itself was cobbled together in a mix of DIY ways: home recordings with Livvy’s roommate Joey Oaxaca (White Reaper, Mo Dotti), singles with Daniel McNeill (White Denim) and a “final wrapping-up” with engineer Jim Vollentine (Spoon, Skating Polly). The result is an album that’s as musically fun and explorative as it is catchy and sweet. Or as Mamalarky puts it “We want to provide an experience that's exploratory and trippy, but far removed from the problematic and corny psych stereotypes carried out by all those 60s dude bands.”
1st Pressing
Creamsicle Vinyl - 400 units
Black Vinyl - 300 Units
Bright Red Vinyl - 300 Units (Indie Retail Exclusive)
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‘Fairy Rust’, the new album from Wombo contemplates the spaces in-between, a meeting of the physicality of the land with the fluidity of the imagination, to uncanny effect. Across twelve tracks, sharpened guitar work, distorted freakouts and downtempo musings weave together a tapestry of sound that’s both intoxicating and effortless, where one minute it’s all deadpan post-punk energy, and the next Stereolab on a mountain top. The music functions as their own localized language that feels uniquely out-of-body. Conceived over the course of the last two years, the record is steeped in its own time warp of escapism, and influenced by fairy tales like the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Anderson that blend surreal situations with the mundane. Flirting with prog, pop and effervescent post-punk, Wombo’s forward-thinking approach set them apart as one of the most exciting up-and-coming bands right now. MIxed by Dave Vettraino (Dehd, Deeper, Lala Lala) & Mastered by Jonathan Schenke (Parquet Courts, Snail Mail, Pottery).
Love is everyday magic. That’s the impression you get listening to Water, the new album by Chicago trio Dehd. Veterans of Chicago’s increasingly fruitful DIY scene Jason Balla ( Ne-Hi and Earring) Emily Kempf (Vail and formerly with Lala Lala) and drummer Eric McGrady share a strange and inexplicable chemistry. Love rises up into the atmosphere like steam off a summer sidewalk and makes you wild. Love breaks your heart and you consider yourself lucky for it. Like water itself, it surrounds us, it supports us; it’s what we’re made of. It takes the shape of its container. The music is hazy and reverb-drenched, a scuzzy and hyped-up take on surf rock that could only come from the Third Coast. It’s all animated by the red-lining feel-good spirit of the Velvet Underground’s Loaded and the breezy melodicism of C86-era indie rock, with a dash of the Cramps’ spooky-hop bop courtesy of McGrady’s locomotive drumming.It’s a clear-eyed look at the wild nature of everyday life that’s been spun up in sugary sweet melodies and scratched-crystal sounds. More than anything, it’s the embodiment of Dehd’s m.o. from the start: As Kempf puts it, “Work with what you have and make it magical.”
Toronto’s PACKS make music that’s like leafing through a diary entry of a time without visible movement, a subtle beauty that appears only when paying close attention. The band’s debut is a collection of songs that marry the loose but incisive jangle of early Pavement with the barbed sweetness of Sebadoh and the wide-eyed wonder of the first Shins LP. Written in two different settings, between the city limits of Toronto where Link was living in 2019, and the Ottawa suburbs where she was quarantined with her parents in the spring 2020, both remain complementary emblems of self-reflection and wry observation of the mundanity of daily life. "Take the Cake" is out on Fire Talk (Dehd, Deeper, Mamalarky) on May 21st digitally and July 9th 2021 on vinyl.
1st Pressing
Cake Splatter Vinyl - 300 Copies
Black Vinyl - 400 Copies
Additional Variants
Light Blue Indie Retail Exclusive - 300 Copies
Bright Red Rough Trade Exclusive - 100 Copies
Deep in View is the debut album from former Ought members Tim Darcy (vocals, guitar) and Ben Stidworthy (bass) alongside Evan Cartwright (drums). Titled after philosopher Alan Watts’ anthology of the same name, the record is built on a foundation of elegant guitar grooves and knotty rhythms, offering commentary on modern life and technology through curious lyrical vignettes, where quotidian objects and scenes are never just as they seem. Deep In View is equally a product of introspective songwriting as it is a consideration of the abstract landmarks of an increasingly media-mediated society. It also presents the most concise and melodic songs Darcy and Stidworthy have written to date.. The album sounds streamlined and intentional, as the rhythms of the punchy and exuberant guitar parts, urgent basslines, and unexpected drum patterns all tangle with each other in an elegant dance. At the center of all these elements is Darcy, whose characteristically wry voice shifts from detached to decisive to distressed, throughout the album’s course. Both enigmatically dense in meaning but precisely intricate in sound, Deep in View is an album that sparks novel interpretations with every listen, like an art object that takes on new shape with each angle from which you hold it.
Throughout the last decade, Strange Ranger have been crafting seamless indie music that feels both already classic and precisely of its time. From ‘Daymoon's strains of the Microphones by way of the Pacific Northwest-era indie scene to the dark elation and Cure-reminiscent stylings of ‘Remembering the Rockets’ they’ve become one of the rare standouts of a crop of bands that have managed to grow up with us. More than just a stopgap along that progression, the new mixtape entitled No Light In Heaven holds some of the band’s most experimental and ambitious work yet. Stitched together through a series of sessions at both a house in rural NY and Strange Ranger’s home studios in both Philadelphia and NYC (where Eiger and Woodman moved in 2021], the mixtape possesses something both abstract and astute; the product of a band in transition and a group of people making something effortlessly transcendental out of their new surroundings.
With prior accolades from Pitchfork, the FADER, NPR, Uproxx, & more, Vice has heralded their music as “unpredictable and expansive, a thrilling document of a band with an ever-changing muse,” with “songs that are packed with hooks and an abundance of feeling” (Stereogum). This outpouring of evocative emotion makes the band’s more traditional song structures read like a new breed of pop music in its purest form. From “Needing You”’s effervescent euphoria to string-laden album closer “It’s You,” the record seamlessly fuses together a multitude of genres, where the industrial punch of “In Hell” sits alongside the chopped up vocals and melodic keys of “Get Right Up to the Mic.” The tracklist itself continues in this shapeshifting vein, with the addition of melancholic, drum machine-indebted bonus single “Raver Explanation" in the reissue. It’s another touchstone that adds further dimension to what already sounds like a fully-formulated framework of personal notes and embellishments. It’s also the beginning of a new chapter for Strange Ranger and a snapshot that pushes the boundaries of what rock music can sound like, a continued evolution that has made them one of the most exciting new bands of the late 2010s.
Everything, the debut album from Chicago quartet Bnny, may as well be a field recording taken from the lone country of grief. Written in sessions that span several years by singer Jess Viscius as she processed the death of her partner, the album is a chronicle of love at its most complex and loss at its most persistent. In the same vein as Sky Blue Sky-era Wilco or the harrowing vulnerability of Tomberlin or Helena Deland, Viscius’ songwriting is evocative and intentional. A longstanding member of the Windy City music scene, the album was produced by Dehd’s Jason Balla, and the sparse arrangements pick apart complicated truths while feeling both timeless and transcendent. Everything is out on Fire Talk (Dehd, Deeper, Pure X, Mamalarky).