Poptones Essential Listening for June

01/06/06

Trashmonk - New Session and Mona Lisa Overdrive—The ‘Monk is back and the people at Poptones rejoices.  Got played a eight minute long psych-glam number over the telephone that has been ringing through our heads for days now.  The five year wait for a new album?  Worth it.  So we’ve been playing the cult release ‘Mona Lisa Overdrive’ over and over again at Poptones Recording Corporation—an album that predated the psych-folk revolution by six years.  Trashmonk you are a total mod.  Love it.

The Icarus Line - New Recordings.  Jesus.  Hitting out like a young version of Primal Scream, this record is sheer rock’n’roll brilliance.  Look for their sister project Souls She Said to come out on Poptones in the fall.  One of the best LA rock’n’roll bands since The Doors and Jane’s Addiction.

The Ronettes - I Wish I Never Saw The Sunshine - Beautiful song.  We’ve been in conversations to have one of our acts to cover it.  You can hear the heartbreak in her voice.

Primal Scream - Sonic Flower Groove - Alan has been raving about Country Girl for days.  Class single but I’ve been pulling out Sonic Flower Groove and giving it a listen.  Oh those days of jingle-jangle mornings in 1986—will they ever happen again?

Leon Russell - The Ballad of Hollis Brown—The dopest fuzziest whacked out moog groove ever committed to record?

The Peddlers - Live at the Pickwick - Imagine the Charlatans in ‘66 reinventing themselves as Joe Meek’s punk rock foes.  Yes, the Peddlers are that good.

The Troggs - Tapes - Late 70s Troggs album.  Never really got into the Troggs that much but Cherrystones turned me on to them.  This album is seriously hot and good.  Imagine the Troggs reinventing them

Nashville OST - I’m Easy - Keith Carradine - This song is genius. You cannot deny the power of this song.  So much so that my girl will never allow any Poptones Recording Corporation acts cover it.  The rest of the soundtrack is fantastic as well.  But this song is like the lost Gram Parsons tune.

The Korgis - Everybody’s Gotta Learn Sometimes - First covered by Trashmonk and then covered by Beck for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind—this track is a pitch-perfect balled.

Nobody and the Mystic Chords of Memory - Beachwood Sparks singer meets up white rapper Nobody and records futuristic dub freak outs and nobody complains.

Ilke and Tina Tuner - River Deep, Mountain High - Turned onto this by Joe Icarus LIne.  It rules.  I Worship You - a song written by Ilk for Tina has gruesome and bizarre feeling in light of her movie.

Lee Hazelwood - Cowboy in Sweden—Poptones Recording Corporation discovered this via Kathryn Williams brilliant covers album.

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