Blog Roundup
The Best of February and March

Crystal Skulls - Cosmic Door

Crystal Skulls are my new favorite band. I've been annoying all my co-workers by repeatedly playing tracks from their new album, which is due in May on Suicide Squeeze records. For more downloads, check here.

Self - Donating to Science

Hey, I didn't find this one on a blog, but whatev. Self keeps releasing well-crafted, tuneful albums that absoluely no one buys. Well, some people. He did have a major label deal in the '90s and a minor hit. But can someone explain why his new album hasn't found a label? Half the shit is brilliant and it was released a year ago. Guess that's the whole point of this site.

Track a Tiger - Glad to be Scattered

This Iowa group began as a solo project of Jim Vallet and slowly evolved into a real band. "Glad to be Scattered" is the more upbeat and catchy of the songs the band has available from their website, but all the tracks are great, nodding in the direction of Fleetwood Mac or maybe just nodding off. Beautiful harmonies, sad lyrics, it's got that Gene Clark spark.

Electric Soft Parade - Cold World

Clever Titles are So Last Summer offhandedly posted this mp3 recently as part of a story on some dude who is making mixtapes for charity or some other harebrained scheme. Either way, download this now. Electric Soft Parade is a great, underrated band from England who were supposed to be hot way back in 2002 but ended up drifting into the same no-man's land populated by the likes of Gay Dad and Starsailor. Like all good underdogs though, ESP is bouncing back with a new album to be released in May on Better Looking Records.