New Music 2016 - Part 46 - three doses of garage rock

I feel like a change from narrating my thoughts on festivals because I haven't written a post on new music for what seems like an age (it's about four weeks in truth) and I mentioned female-fronted garage rock in relation to Seratones at End of The Road Festival 2016. This is about that sort of thing.

The first is the only one of the three albums released as of today but all three are by bands that I have seen live.

The band's latest LP is 'Get Gone' (Fat Possum Records, 6 May 2016).

Released tomorrow is this from the Californian duo of Lindsey Troy and Julie Edwards. It is their second full-length release following 'Sistrionix' (2013) and a change of label.

Deap Vally - Femejism (Cooking Vinyl, 16 September 2016).

Towards the end of the year Scottish duo Stina Tweedale and Cat Myers pitch in with their own second album. The first, released in 2014, was self-titled.

Honeyblood - Babes Never Die (FatCat Records, 4 November 2016). Vinyl, CD and d/l.

Babes Never Die - Honeyblood

• Babes Never Die
• Ready For The Magic
• Sea Hearts
• Love Is a Disease
• Walking at Midnight
• Justine, Misery Queen
• Hey, Stellar
• Cruel
• Gangs

I imagine all the smallish people had a lot of fun playing the parts in this!

Three bands (two from the US and one from the UK) released on three different independent record labels (one from the US and two from the UK). Track listings, more details and live pictures to follow soon.

Truck Festival 2015 - Part 2

As of 2015 Truck Festival has six music stages but I concentrated my attention on just four of them. I did make occasional forays to the main stage however, catching part of Augustines' set thereon (I saw their whole set at Green Man 2014) and the set by Scottish garage-rock duo Honeyblood.

Stina Tweeddale.
Cat Myers drums, while both usually contribute vocals.

The comparisons with Californian duo Deap Vally, who played the same stage at Truck in 2014, are obvious in as much as of the core power trio format - guitar, bass and drums - both do without a bassist. An interesting comparison with another format, in which there is no drummer but a bass player instead, will come at End of The Road Festival in September when I shall have the chance to see Californian duo Girlpool, that comprises Cleo Tucker (guitar, vocals) and Harmony Tividad (bass, vocals). The three bands are at a similar career point too, in so much as all three have released one LP.

After this I wandered down to the curiously named Virgins and Veterans stage.  The logic is as follows: on the Friday it hosts acts that have never played Truck Festival before, on the Saturday only ones that have and that are returning favourites.
This next act falls into the former category and coincidentally is a band that I have serially missed seeing live, even at festivals that I have attended and they have played, for one reason or another.  This is Polly and The Billets Doux as the sun set on a stage-smoke-filled tent on Friday evening...

We got new songs, old songs and it did occur at the time that if it were not to get any better than this all weekend I wouldn't be heading home disappointed.

Far be it for me to choose a single highlight but, suffice to say, this set was equalled by several on the Saturday.
To blow away any cobwebs the music on Saturday started with the rather improbably named Wallflower. Tell me that a band was called that and I wouldn't have imagined that it would be like this.

The phrase "a shy wallflower" comes to mind... not five alpha-males playing shoegaze of sorts. That, combined with the full glory of the coloured Market stage in bright sunlight would have been kill-or-cure for any hangover. The reason I mention Wallflower is because they were good - very good - at what they do.