On The Ripple Desk - Featuring The Plimsouls, Low Sonic Drift, and Roadsaw

Haven't done one of these in a while. A selection of cool discs sitting on top of my Ripple desk at the moment.



The Plimsouls - Beach Town Confidential

What a year it's been for fans of powerpop and the Peter Case/Paul Collins axis in particular.  With Paul Collins and the Beat still cranking out music, recent release of archival material by Peter and Paul's first band, The Breakaways, Peter and Paul going out on tour together and a bonanza of archival live releases by Peter's main band, The Plimsouls.  All of which brings us to Beach Town Confidential.   Featuring a different set list than the recent, Live! Beg, Borrow and Steal, if anything, Beach Town Confidential is an even punchier, tighter set of classic Plimsouls tunes.

Recorded at the Golden Bear in Hunington Beach, 1983, Beach Town Confidential finds Peter Case, Eddie Munoz, Dave Pahoa, and Louie Ramirez ripping through a set of 16 powerpop gems with reckless abandon.  I mean this set rips.  From the buoyant and jubilant bounce of opener "Shaky City," all the way to the crisp and raucous closer, "You Can't Judge a Book," the boys are in fine form, performing before and appreciative crowd and obviously loving it.  In between we get killer raves like the crunchy "Making Time," a raving "Zero Hour," a souring "Fall on You," mournful "Oldest Story in the World," and a just perfect "A Million Miles Away."   Probably the best song they ever recorded, I'm still damned to figure out how it was never a huge hit.  Let's don't forget killer versions of the powerpop power ballad, "Now," and a fiery "How Long Will it Take."

To me this is the definitive document of the Plimsouls live.  Passionate and tuneful, crunchy and melodic.  Check it out to discover an LA jewel that really should have been a world treasure.

Low Sonic Drift - Shadows of the Titan

From the first tribal drum intro, through the vaguely middle-Eastern accents, finally onto the crushing riffs, Low Sonic Drift explore their own world of mind-melting, stoner psych.  And they do it with panache and a mammoth-sized rock attack.  4 songs, but 30 minutes, of time-changing, neo-prog, desert explorations.  Heady, trippy, heavy stuff.

Like Tool picked up and dropped into the lost-mine of Kyuss.  Not content to follow previously well-explored paths through the stoner universe, LSD live up to their initials and open new sonic doors of perception.  Dig that cranium busting bass work on "As the Crow Flies", the shifting sands of tempo on "Hyperion" or the haunting, stoner-jazz of "Shadows." 

LSD.  A trip well worth exploring.

Roadsaw - Roadsaw EP

Released as a thank you to fans after their successful romp at Desertfest, The Roadsaw EP is three tracks of riff-mad, heavy psych perfection.  "Twisted Steel and Broken Glass" finds the boys stretching out in a bit more of a psychedelic haze than I'd heard them before.  A touch more airy, expansive.  By no means, gentle mind you, but not the regular tight-riffing assault that I'm used to from the boys.  This one sounds much more dropped into the '70's jam session and let me tell you, that's a compliment, as it doesn't take the band long to find their groove and wrap the whole thing up in a fuzzy bass assault and effect-laden guitar freakout.  "Burn Down the Night" continues this jammier vein, slowing things down even more for a truly haunting apocalyptic psych burner. "Monkey Skull" brings back the full-on Roadsaw assault that I've grown familiar with, tearing into it's riffs with a furious frenzy. 

Three tracks that do so much more than offer up some free music for Roadsaw fans.  With the EP, Roadsaw has opened up the doors to a whole new horizon for their music.  Definitely worth grabbing.





--Racer

Ripple News - Roadsaw S/T Now Available for Pre-order on 180 gm Vinyl

You know we loved this album.  Doesn't matter if we got the CD or the digital download.  If it's coming out on vinyl, we're buying.

Limited edition of 100 on clear blue 180 gram wax.

This a pre-order. Estimated to be in stock by late April/early May.

The highly anticipated new album from the mighty Roadsaw!

Unbelievable guitar tones on this one, folks; every song just dripping with fuzzy love. Who can make an album that's heavy as fuck, while simultaneously delivering hooks that will have you singing along before you've even made it through your first spin? ROADSAW, that's who!!!


Roadsaw - S/T (Clear Blue 180gr Vinyl)
$19.99

 Buy from Small Stone

Roadsaw - S/T

This is an album that had to be made, and Roadsaw was just the band to do it.

Let me explain.  Every week it seems, around the Ripple HQ, Pope and I get into a fevered conversation about how America is poised to embrace real rock again.  With the schmaltz producers running out of retreads to retread, it seems that there’s a burning for something honest, something raw, something real.  Along those lines,  Small Stone, with its stellar line-up of bands like Lo-Pan, Sun Gods in Exile, and Suplecs, leads the way, and others like Hydro-Phonics, Tee-Pee, and even our own label, Ripple Music, with bands like Stone Axe, Grifter, Mighty High and Iron Claw, are poised and ready to pounce at a moment’s notice to unleash a fury of real rock onto the world.  Satisfying the hunger, feeding the craving.

But before that can happen, we need a bridge album.  An album fully steeped in the heaviness, grittiness, and muscle of real rock, but crafted with such a perfect eye for melody and--dare I say it—pop hooks, that it can capture the general public’s ears.  Threatening and, oh so violent, but deep in its melody, refined in its choruses, and smooth as an iced road in a Boston winter.  Dirty, but clean enough to actually break onto the airwaves.

Roadsaw have delivered such an album, and it’s a corker.

I was a big fan of See You In Hell, their 2008 album which I immediately placed on to my best of list for that year.  Expect to find the self-titled Roadsaw on this year’s list. 

Don’t let any mention of that awful P-word (pop) dissuade you from spinning this beast.  And I do mean beast.  Roadsaw hangs deep in the water of heavy like an overburdened barge weighed down under the immensity of its riffs.  Fuzz, power, gruff, it’s all here.  But so is something else.  I don't mean "pop" in the sense of sell-out.  Heaven forbid!  I mean "pop" in the sense of a killer accessibility, pop in the sense that you could play this album for someone who isn't already addicted to heavy rock and within moments you could get his head doing the man nod and her ass doing the feminine groove.

Since their last album, the cats of Roadsaw (founding members, Tim Catz (bass) and Craig Riggs (vocals), and guitarist Ian Ross and drummer Jeremy Hemond (also of Cortez and Black Thai) have matured as straight-forward songwriters in some sort of exponential way, allowing space to creep into their songs, passages of subtlety, even moments of jazzy breeziness, all layer upon some seriously catchy riffs and H1N1-infectious melodies.   The whole package just screams "we’re still heavy folks, fuck we’re heavy, but we’re so much more than that."

With rock radio caught in a chasing-their-own-tailspin, salivating at the return of Velvet Revolver, or AudioslaveCreedAlterBridgeNickleBoringSomething, this is the album that should creep into the playlists.  Like a midnight stalker, sneaking into the bedroom of the unsuspecting, Roadsaw should insinuate itself onto the airwaves.  Get the nation rocking again.

From the first cut, we’re off and running.  “Dead and Buried,” features a simply filthy guitar tone with its edges totally obscured by fuzz. Yet, somehow, it’s still clean at its heart.  The riff repeats and builds on itself in a fashion not too dissimilar from “Daytripper,” by the Beatles . . .  er . . . that is if the Beatles never shaved, tattooed skulls on their deltoids, and draped their brass-knuckled fingers around the handles of a Harley.  Still, the point is there.  As heavy as that riff is, it’s still totally accessible.  Add to that a thick, but melodic vocal performance by Riggs, and a chorus that should have every trucker singing as they head out I-10 and we got ourselves a candidate for our first heavy radio hit.   “Weight in Gold,” fuzzes the tone even more and ups the adrenaline a thousand fold, coming at you like some Feurezeug attack.  This is a fuzz-punk assault all the way through the impossibly scuzzed Ross guitar solo to its defining moment, 2:36 in.  Sudden tempo change, bass and drum lock into a groove that wouldn’t be out of place in a late night underground beat club, while the guitar squeaks through a tastefully frenetic flurry.  Then the riff heaviness comes back, leading right into the monster blitz of “Thinking of Me,” and again, we’re off and running.  Heavy? Oh, yeah.  But clear enough that this cut should appeal to anyone listening to The Boneyard on XM and wanting to hear something new.  Once again, Riggs outdoes himself on the vocal here, keeping it thick-throated, but accessible. 

“Long in the Tooth,” follows suit, marrying devastatingly heavy riffs, panzer-division bass, and Stuka attack drumming with a melody sweet enough to suck in the ears of the uninitiated.  Add a cool southern swagger to the vocal and we got radio hit number 2.  My choice for number 3 is “The Getaway,” which rides a frenetic riff straight down the throat of its knock-em-out chorus. 

Sure, some fans of only the heaviest and skuzziest history of Roadsaw might feel that the album is a touch too polished.  The impossibly slow and epic, “Electric Heaven,” may appease them a touch, with its Clutch-meets Sabbath bad trip vibe.  But this album isn’t about appeasing the old fans.  It’s about breaking ground with the new ones.  Keeping the past alive while screaming and kicking the masses in the teeth.   It’s about breaking new ground in the acceptance of the heavy and tilting the planetary axis a bit towards the equator of real rock.

It’s an album that had to be made, and Roadsaw was just the band to do it.

--Racer

www.smallstone.com

Small Stone Showcase set to hit Philadelphia this September

Small Stone is pleased to announce that we will be doing two back to back Showcases at The Philadelphia Film & Music Festival in September. Events will be taking place at the Millcreek Tavern which is located at 4200 Chester Avenue, University City, Philadelphia (215-222-1255 ). And, now for the line up:





Friday September 24th:
Dixie Witch
The Brought Low
Throttlerod
Lo-Pan
Sun Gods In Exile
Backwoods Payback

Saturday September 25th:
Solace
Roadsaw
Sasquatch
House Of Broken Promises
Gozu
Red Giant