Landlocked Music - 202 N. Walnut Ave. - Bloomington, IN
info @ landlockedmusic . com
(812) 339 - 2574
Hours of operation:
Monday - Saturday : 11:30 - 7:30pm
Sunday : 12pm - 5pm
Every week (or so...), the proud employees of Landlocked Music attempt to help guide you along the path of auditory redemption. We take time away from our busy schedules and craft, in our own words, a tiny little review of a great piece found in our bin that is for sale. We are happy as a clam when a customer purchases our picks, we gotta feed our egos somehow, right? But don't just take our word for it... or rather, DO take our word for it!
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Easily one of the best & most exciting rock & roll albums I have heard in a long time, the Black Lips' 3rd full-length 'Let it Bloom' is a note-perfect combination of raw, energetic performances, scuzzily-perfect garage production, and totally infectious tunes. It's got everything you need. There's nothing spectacular about the musicianship, nothing groundbreaking about the production or songwriting. There aren't even intelligible lyrics half the time. However, it does have that certain unnameble quality that, somehow, just makes it timeless. The songs are so instantly hummable and catchy, it's like you've always known them. Not to make this sound like just a pop record, as the buzzsaw guitars, snotty vocals, juvenile lyrics and general air of garagey-slime would say otherwise. It's simply a great, fun, dirty, unpretentious rock record, something that's becoming harder & harder to find these days. - Cyrus
The year was 2001 and the Postal Service was still a few years down the road with its gold record sales of over 650,000. Jimmy Tamborello recruits a few friends to lay down vocals and other instruments for his underground electronic album, including Chris Gunst (Beachwood Sparks), Mia Doi Todd, Meredith Figurine, Rachel Haden (that dog), Brian McMahan (Slint) and Ben Gibbard (Death Cab for Cutie). The result is a rather beautiful and moody "glitch" pop record. Warm electronics mix with organic instruments to create a bubblebath headphone album, highly recommended for fans of Postal Service, Junior Boys, Album Leaf, Caribou, Mum, Notwist, Royksopp, etc. A perfect melding of the late 90s IDM scene with the indie world of the naughts. - Heath
Probably the most underrated act in the SC roster (and definitely my favorite), Indianapolis-based outfit Marmoset's debut album (like all their releases) is an absolute gem. Most albums with 20 tracks are nearly impossible to get through, incredibly long affairs containing a few good songs amongst a sea of duds. Today it's you, however, is short, succinct, and consistently stunning. Singer/main songwriter Jorma Whitaker pens one classic song after another, his breathy, honey-voiced delivery perfectly articulating his highly personal, messed-up lyrics. The songs themselves are jagged and mostly guitar-driven, sounding a bit like Wire or the Velvets backing Syd Barrett, but mostly they just sound like Marmoset, which is the highest compliment I could possibly give. Headphone listeners are the real winners here, as the production is just as amazing as the songcraft. A true all-time Indiana classic. - Cyrus
It's hard to think of a band that changed more quickly and radically than the Meat Puppets. The rabid, slobbering hardcore of I, the baked desert folk punk of II, and the glistening, blistered psychedelia of Up On the Sun: the Pups were the oddballs of SST Records, which is saying a lot. They seemed to be in the business of confusing if not pissing off their fans. II gets most of the credit thanks to Nirvana paying tribute to it on MTV Unplugged. But, for my money, Up on the Sun, is THE record. It's easy to forget how ballsy it was to release this record at the time, especially on SST, home of Black Flag etc. Turns out these 3 dudes were Deadheads and maybe even indulged in a few Byrds records! Shocking. (Sonic Youth were Deadheads too, but they didn't wear it so much on their sleeve at the time.) The songwriting, playing, and overall laid back vibe shines through the dated production. Slacker rock was born here. - Jason
Gloomy chamber-pop that works well with rainy days or wine-soaked nights. If you dig Leonard Cohen, Scott Walker, Lee Hazlewood, Serge Gainsbourg and Nick Cave you owe it to yourself to check out the discography of this British group from the 90s. Led by Stuart Staples' rich, poetic mumble and supported by elegent orchestrations and jazzy schmaltz, Tindersticks made a heaping handful of wonderful moody albums of aching torch songs, darkly humorous ballads and help launch Belle & Sebastian, too. They went on to rightly score films with their romantic and desperate atmosphere. - Heath
John Jacob Niles is, next to Alan Lomax, maybe the most important collector of traditional American Music. He dealt mostly with the music of his native Kentucky and Appalachias. He was transcribing songs from oral sources as early as the 1st decade of the 20th century, barely in his teens! He also composed many songs that have steeped into the vernacular, including "Black Is the Color of My True Love's Hair" and "Go Away From My Window." Classically trained, he sang in an eerie operatic falsetto (think Tiny Tim meets Devendra), often accompanying himself on a gigantic handcrafted dulcimer. I suppose it sounded quite mannered and too idiosyncratic for the populist "authenticity" seekers of the 60s folk revival and afterward, despite big name admirers like Burl Ives and Bob Dylan. It was only after a brief, arresting appearance in Scorsese's Dylan documentary, No Direction Home, that any of his music appeared on CD. This collection from 1958 is as good a place to start as any. - Jason
The tragic story of Badfinger: groomed to be the next Beatles by the Beatles themselves, numerous hit songs in the US and UK, screwed beyond belief by their manager, bankruptcy, suicide... Somewhat lost in this tale are their excellent late period LPs, after they left Apple Records. Wish You Were Here (released before the Pink Floyd LP) was their 2nd for Warner. Pete Ham turns in some of his best work, but during the sessions, things started to unravel. Ham quit briefly, then rejoined, the money situation was worsening, lawsuits were flying between just about every concerned party, and then the album hadn't been in stores more than a few months when WB decided to recall it due to all the legal wrangling. Sadly, it was to be their last LP with both core songwriters Pete Ham & Joey Molland. Ham hanged himself in '75. Molland and co. continued on with the Badfinger name, but their fortunes never really turned around, and Molland eventually followed Ham in suicide in 1983. - Jason
What if the Velvet Underground were blues cowboys from hell, or if Stereolab drove a beat up Ford pick-up and played shady bars on the Texas border? Each song on Jonathan Kane's debut CD sounds familiar. Bluesy guitar figures over locked drums and driving bass, all played by Kane. Not unlike a multitude of "drone" albums, these fragments repeat to infinity, slowly changing over time with you hardly even realising. But Kane is working in a style that is far removed from the audio wallpaper of much drone. And while it also has much in common with lockgroove kraut like Neu, its far from that as well. Its sitting on the porch and strumming one chord on your acoustic to the point of the strings breaking, and thats when the change happens. Earning his chops in brutalists SWANS, one can easily hear Gira moaning along and strumming the same chord, eyes closed, cowboy boots on, lighting the funeral pyre with sound. Propulsive urban dirges for modern ghost towns. - Heath
South were a band lost in time, short-lived and unknown. They chose a path not often tread in indie-music in the 90s, and could have possibly found a home on a label such as Thrill Jockey if the band had chose to have more of a groove. Instead, they are a melange of late era Talk Talk atmosphere, Sea & Cake politeness, Reich-ian looping and Labradford haze. Based out of Richmond, VA, they had a restrained elegance that was equal parts chamber music, "post-rock", and "slow/sad-core". Touches of piano, hammered dulcimer, and vibes are mixed in with crystalline production. Cinematic and academic, music for widescreen home movies and sunlit porch reading. This approach has since followed in Patrick Phelan's solo work over three delightful albums for Jagjaguwar. - Heath
Saying that you like the Bee Gees is usually met with at least laughter, if not a series of scathing remarks that make you question your own love for the brothers Gibb. Don't let the naysayers bring you down, though. The Bee Gees WERE awesome, at least in the 60s. From 1967-69, they created 3 amazing pop-psych albums that rivalled the best work of the Hollies, Left Banke and the Zombies. 68's Horizontal, their 2nd LP, is a total masterwork of UK baroque-psych. Every track is a Gibb-penned nugget drenched in melancholia, clever lyrics, awesome vocals and gorgeous psychedelia. Weeping mellotrons and cascading strings battle it out with pulsating volume-pedal guitars and hard rocking drums. The reissues include stereo and mono mixes of the album, as well as a bonus disc containing singles and amazing unreleased material. Essential! - Cyrus
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