Julian Never

>> Julian Never is the recording project of long-time Sacramento CA underground players Julian Elorduy (formerly of Fine Steps) and Mark Kaiser (formerly of Male Gaze, 3 albums on Castle Face Records), both of noise-punk legends Mayyors. A melting pot of influences ranging from 70s-80s U.K./Aussie/Kiwi D.I.Y. & post-punk to American power-pop of the same era colliding to form a punchy, layered web of sound anchored by Elorduy's dreamy tenor.

“Been a while since I’ve heard rumblings from Mayyors’ camp, but this new project from the band’s Julian Elorduy and Mark Kaiser embraces a less gritty vision of pop, setting their sights on the sun-warped jangle of ‘80s Flying Nun this time around. Backed by ethereal synths and beset with jangles, the title track to this single is a bittersweet gem that would fit in well with the acolytes of the Nun that have currently cropped up all over Australia in the last few years. Elorduy and Kaiser have worked out a pretty solid handle on pop here, shedding some of their raucous punk past (Kaiser was also in Male Gaze), and it all comes crashing to a head on “Silver One.” On the flip, the band postures in am more tender vein, opening with the somber strains of piano, given a slight nod to their more lo-fi past before swapping the keys for strums that, like new works from The Tubs, rope in some of the more tender side of the Creation catalog to the mix with touches of Felt and The Sneetches sneaking in. A solid single from the new band and one that gives cause to keep an eye on them. Hoping that this works itself out into something longterm. “ - Raven Sings The Blues

Listen on Spotify

Spires

>>Every so often the Spires send me a record, and every so often I put the rest of the day away and let that Spires record do what must be done. Each one is the same, cuz they know just how their voices and guitars and conditions of the heart, but each one is different, too, as time and life and the long view from Ventura change what Spires songs are going to be. Curved Space in 2010 was a rowdy one—in a Galaxie 500 kinda way, not a G.G. Allin kinda way, so don’t worry—and now Eternal Yeah is a thoughtful and considered and persistent one. The guitars don’t shimmer, they flash—like when sun hits metal far off in the sky—and when they don’t flash, it’s cuz they take flight on their own. (Like the beautiful Television-style outro at the end of “Flames (You And I),” recorded by L.A.’s Joel Jerome.) For politics, they’re like Robyn Hitchcock, who wrote “Positive Vibrations” as Soviet tanks rolled into Afghanistan, and for personality they’re like the Go-Betweens, who wrote, “When I hear you saying / That we stood no chance / I’ll dive for your memory / We stood that chance.” Grab for a variation on Television, Soft Boys, More Than A Witness-era Feelies—particularly on the stand-outs “Everyone Went Home” and “Response To An Inquiry”—as well Chills and Triffids vibes. Like their song says, it’s a “cracked mirror stare, all jumble and glare.” That’s the Spires perspective, where breaking something gives you a hundred new ways to look at yourself. - L.A. Record

Listen on Bandcamp

Julian Never

>> Inspired by the Flying Nun catalog, Prefab Sprout and odd underground pop hits by Chris Spedding and Dwight Twilley, JULIAN NEVER deliver their debut long player, Pious Fiction, to be released on limited edition vinyl and digital on January 13th, 2023. 

JULIAN NEVER is the latest vehicle for former MAYYORS drummer Julian Elorduy’s jangle pop alter-ego. An evolution of the songwriting that produced the short-lived but much-loved FINE STEPS, Pious Fiction is 15 tracks of bittersweet, sun-warped jangle self-recorded off and on over the last four years in a variety of Sacramento homes and warehouses with the help of former MAYYORS bassist Mark Kaiser (also formerly of Castle Face goth punks MALE GAZE), a newly acquired Tascam half-inch reel-to-reel and a borrowed mixer. The album is built upon a solid base of guitar-centric pop richly layered with ethereal synths and piano, intertwined with themes of love, loss and Elorduy’s Catholic upbringing, all delivered with his captivating tenor.

Listen on Spotify

Fitting

>> Denizens and fans of the DIY pop underground alike rejoice — as a rising trio of light has cast their beam of brilliance from the subterranean landscape of Sacramento. While Los Angeles and the Bay Area often garner a wealth of press and attention from the worldwide masses and ecstatic journos, the San Joaquin Valley spanning to Central California has provided the world with influences and underdogs that continue to inform the biggest names in nearly every emergent style, trope and trend imaginable. Consider luminaries like Death Grips, Pavement, Craft Spells and so forth, providing the groundwork and blueprints that are incorporated into countless artistic entities and works sewn and curated by innumerable creatives past, present and future. These are the visionaries who concern themselves not with the pretensions of genre and conventional constructs but seek to fashion new paradigms to aspire toward and exist within. The primitive painters that establish new building blocks of new institutions and artifices to create newer artifices, facets and functions of the artistic fabrics, tissues and textiles that will be talked about, written about and pontificated about for aeons, decades and centuries to follow. The world is all but lost, a new world is being reimagined and restored like never before, new terroir established, created and founded by today’s aesthetes and auteurs. For hope in the arts and humanities of today and tomorrow we proudly present Sacramento’s artists of promise and prestige — Fitting.

The culmination of veteran independent pop talents Eli Wengrin, Greta Soos and Phil Barkel; Fitting gives us their debut EP Minutes courtesy of DIY imprint Research Chemical. The three piece explodes the minutiae of the moment, the temporality of time, forging the facets of fleeting seconds that make up the hours and measurements that comprise the days, nights, weeks, months and years that can fly by us faster than we can consciously acknowledge. Fitting makes music to find the meaning behind the otherwise menial, perfunctory and procedural actions of which we pay little to no mind that are a part of our day to day. Fitting gives the world something we can feel, embracing the shadow play and gestalt of all the moving parts that are acting and operating beneath the surface when we are just going through the motions.

Minutes takes on the templates and itineraries and other assorted super structures that occupy and clutter the calendars of human existence. "Prepped Header" challenges the predetermined and self-fulfilling prophecies of log books and office grunt work for something of a deeper meaning. Phil, Greta and Eli rage against the machines that dictate the diagrams and forms our worlds can become consumed by, ferociously focusing on something that is more than skin deep beneath the surface of tedious schedules and outdated doctrines. The glimmering glow of "Convenience Trough" wades through the water closets and forbidden bodega bathroom stalls with mathematical chord calculations that dovetail neatly into the catering table spread smash and grab of "Craft Services". An ode to the obsolence of the weekend warrior rings out on "Sunday Driver" in modern rock tones that seek to get away from it all to a point of respite that blazes through the fanned flames of unrelenting praxis. Perspectives on coping and keeping on task with deliverables (and the desire for professional assistance) roar with the high rise tidal wave tones of "Four Month Glance", right before leaving us with the nostalgic tinged "Freebie of 1989" that showcases the sincere trademark touches of Fitting's ability to balance and blend endearing harmonies and spoken poetics. Minutes proves Fitting to be one of the most exciting things happening in the greater Sacramento area right now, a group that is developing their own sound and style devoted to questioning the hows and whys behind the performative acts we act at a time when every construct that we have ever known is in a major state of change. - Week In Pop

Listen on Bandcamp

Motorcycle

Listen on Bandcamp

“Effortlessly tuneful jangle pop” - Pitchfork

QUIVERS [Spotify]

>> QUIVERS from Melbourne, Australia (via Tasmania) are FINALLY touring their cathartic lyric-driven guitar pop around the USA. Guitars and tape loops that glimmer and glisten. Four distinct male and female voices. Hard jangle about grief, friendship and love. Quivers were originally slated to tour in 2020, but at least the delay has brought a 2nd album, Golden Doubt (out on Ba Da Bing), and a full cover of REM’s Out of Time which the band themselves endorsed with fire emojis. As for Quivers’ sound, Pitchfork calls it "effortlessly tuneful jangle pop" and "like a Go-Betweens with Coachella ambitions", while NPR’s Otis Hart says Quivers write “earnest earworms, and I am here for every one of them”. You can check out the band’s performance for KEXP. DJ John Richards said the single “You’re Not Always On My Mind” was one of the best songs he’d heard in years and he listened to it “8 times in a row”. Quivers recently supported The Hold Steady at The Corner Hotel in Melbourne, which has only furthered the longing for them to return to the US. It is music for road tripping with your friends and ghosts, and that is what Quivers will do as they traverse the American landscape and pull up to the bumper for 14 or more shows. We can’t wait.

See video for “Hold You Back”
See video for “You’re Not Always On My Mind”
See live session for KEXP Seattle

Interview with NME
Interview with Trouble Juice

MASSAGE [Spotify]

>> The kind of music Massage makes—sunny, bittersweet, tender—is less a proper genre than a minor zip code nested within guitar pop. Take a little "There She Goes" by the La's, some "If You Need Someone" by the Field Mice; the honey-drizzled guitars from The Cure's "Friday I'm In Love,"  a Jesus & Mary Chain backbeat, and you're almost all the way there. Indie pop, jangle pop, power pop—whatever you call it, pushing too hard scares the spirit right out of this sweet, diffident music, and Massage have a touch so light the songs seem to form spontaneously, like wry smiles. Massage resurrects a brief, romantic moment in the late-'80s, right after post-punk and immediately before alt-rock, when it seemed like any scrappy indie band might stumble across a hit.

See video for “In Gray & Blue” at Brooklyn Vegan
See video for “Half A Feeling” Brooklyn Vegan

Interview with Chickfactor

JULIAN NEVER [Spotify]

>> Julian Never is the recording project of long-time Sacramento CA underground players Julian Elorduy (formerly of Fine Steps) and Mark Kaiser (formerly of Male Gaze, 3 albums on Castle Face Records), both of noise-punk legends Mayyors. A melting pot of influences ranging from 70s-80s U.K./Aussie/Kiwi D.I.Y. & post-punk to American power-pop of the same era colliding to form a punchy, layered web of sound anchored by Elorduy's dreamy tenor.

“Been a while since I’ve heard rumblings from Mayyors’ camp, but this new project from the band’s Julian Elorduy and Mark Kaiser embraces a less gritty vision of pop, setting their sights on the sun-warped jangle of ‘80s Flying Nun this time around. Backed by ethereal synths and beset with jangles, the title track to this single is a bittersweet gem that would fit in well with the acolytes of the Nun that have currently cropped up all over Australia in the last few years. Elorduy and Kaiser have worked out a pretty solid handle on pop here, shedding some of their raucous punk past (Kaiser was also in Male Gaze), and it all comes crashing to a head on “Silver One.” On the flip, the band postures in am more tender vein, opening with the somber strains of piano, given a slight nod to their more lo-fi past before swapping the keys for strums that, like new works from The Tubs, rope in some of the more tender side of the Creation catalog to the mix with touches of Felt and The Sneetches sneaking in. A solid single from the new band and one that gives cause to keep an eye on them. Hoping that this works itself out into something longterm. “ - Raven Sings The Blues

Hear “Silver One”
Hear “Radio Memphis”

FLOWERTOWN

>> Flowertown is Karina Gill and Michael Ramos. The San Francisco duo first wrote a song together because their respective projects (Cindy + Tony Jay) were scheduled to play a show together in March 2020. The show didn't happen, but as shelter-in-place took effect they started trading song ideas and writing collaboratively, sending voice memos back and forth and eventually recording the songs in Karina’s basement on a 4 track. Flowertown released two EPs on cassette with Paisley Shirt Records, and here they are remastered and compiled on vinyl by Mt.St.Mtn.

“…Flowertown is indebted to the great works of post-Velvets indie: Galaxie 500’s trilogy, Cannanes A Love Affair with Nature, Low’s I Could Live in Hope, ’90-’93 Yo La Tengo, but thankfully they didn’t forget to write songs and find their own voices and charm inside that sound. If you wander the outer avenues out to Land’s End with this in your headphones, you may float away into oblivion. This feels like a band that is about to write a timeless album, and I am more than ready with my PayPal login info.” – Glenn Donaldson, Freeform Freakout

HECTORINE

A low dark voice carries this ethereal, atmospheric, & art pop-inspired album. “TEARS” follows up Hectorine’s 2019 debut with sketches of 70s soft rock production, folk melodies, and deeply lyrical songs that explore “love, loss, nature, and the cosmos.”

In 2016, San Francisco-based Sarah Gagnon formed Hectorine; naming it after her late paternal grandmother. The live band has gone through a few line-up changes over the years, but Sarah is now joined by Max Shanley on guitar, Matt Carney on bass, Betsy Gran on keyboards, and Laura Adkins on drums.

“TEARS was born one summer on the banks of the Yuba River, where Sarah would read Clarice Lispector’s Agua Viva aloud to her friends, and it’s also where it ends: in a cave across from their favorite swimming hole where one could hear her own footsteps if she listened hard enough. A ten-song meditation on the strange but not uncommon phenomenon of heartache.”

R.E. SERAPHIN

>> Tiny Shapes is the debut album of ex-Talkies frontman, Ray Seraphin. Recording under the almost-alias R.E. Seraphin for the first time, Seraphin’s Tiny Shapes is paisley pop meets guitar-centric post-punk. R.E. Seraphin’s lyrical point-of-view is both cynical and sentimental — falling somewhere between The Replacements and The Feelies circa The Good Earth. Musically, jangly yet sturdy instrumentation collide with hushed vocals. This approach is best heard in opening cut “Today Will Be Kind”: a tune that offers a hopeful view of love gone sour.  Engineered and co-produced by Jasper Leach (Tony Molina) and mastered by Matt Bullimore (The Mantles), Tiny Shapes was written following a move from Austin to the Bay Area. While reacclimating to life back in his hometown, Seraphin enlisted original Talkies rhythm section, Owen Kelley (Sleepy Sun) and Phil Lantz (Neutrals, Cocktails) to help develop his songs.

“Seraphin’s music is often under the glow of a bright jangle, these tones more so color in the spaces rather than take center stage, accentuating the crunch and fuzz like light dancing on frosted glass.” - Counterzine 

“Little guitar stabs and intricately pick notes set the landscape for Seraphin’s voice to deliver these smoky whispers.” - Austin Town Hall

TONY JAY

>> Mostly recorded between last Christmas and New Year's during a window of isolation at home, “Hey There Flower” preserves Tony Jay’s prowess at making beautifully eerie lo-fi pop; like a hazy memory where your favorite Sixties girl-group melody is perpetually slowed down.

Without a band to practice with, Tony Jay recorded the music alone, but recruited a slew of friends to remotely record backing vocals: Karina Gill (Cindy), Griffin Jones (Galore), Kati Mashikian (Mister Baby), Alexis Harper (Al Harper), & Hannah Lew (Cold Beat).

Karina says: "hey there flower", the most recent release from the prolific and mysterious Tony Jay delivers real melodies -- both lacey with vocal harmonies and dusty with layered guitars -- as fans have come to expect. This release also carries forward and elaborates on Tony Jay's tradition of songs that express a kind of naked honesty about things we all know -- love and loneliness and all that -- while communicating at the same time a wry edge of skepticism, so that the songs are like coins spinning on edge before landing heads, tails, or lost under the couch. Tony Jay brings us into a nostalgia where we recognize moods from music of the past -- Marc Boland definitely comes to mind, as well as Velvet Underground of the Nico era, and Tony Jay even covers Francoise Hardy on this collection -- but the songs create a three dimensional space with what feels like a thousand layers so that instead of being thrown back in time, it's like stepping into a little world with its own laws of nature, of which the listener gets just a few hints.