There should be something for everyone here. If there’s not, well, we shouldn’t be friends. Kidding! You’ll love everything. Versus came back strong after a long hiatus and crafted a beauty. Leatherface created my favorite album of the year, jam packed with gravelly emotion (it brings tears). Bottomless Pit still haunts me. Boston Spaceships, The Soft Pack and We are Scientists produced some insanely catchy pop rock. Audible, Aloha, Tre Orsi and Jeremy Porter set some stellar moods. Defiance, Ohio, Superchunk and Joy Formidable brought some much-needed euphoria and smiles. Double Dagger and The Holy Mess rocked the eff out and Roky Erickson just plain killed it! Happy New Year!

Click the blue arrow button to listen.

Versus - “Gone to Earth”
CD: “On the One and Threes” – Website – MP3

Bottomless Pit – “38 Souls”
CD: “Blood Under The Bridge” -  Website – MP3

Roky Erickson & Okkervil River - “Goodbye Sweet Dreams”
CD: “True Love Cast Out All Evil” – Website – MP3

Boston Spaceships - “Come on Baby Grace”
CD: “Our Cubehouse Still Rocks” – Website – MP3

Leatherface - “Never Say Goodbye”
CD: “Stormy Petrel” – Website – MP3

Kurt Vile – “In My Time”
7″: “In My Time” – Website – MP3

The Joy Formidable – “Whirring”
CD: “A Balloon Called Moaning” -  Website – Video – MP3

Aloha – “Moonless March”
CD: “Home Acres” – Website – MP3

Superchunk – “Digging For Something”
CD: “Majesty Shredding” -  Website – Video – MP3

Wow & Flutter – “Scars”
CD: “Equilibrio” – Website – MP3

Audible - “The Last Thing I Remember”
CD: “Isolette” – Website – MP3

Double Dagger - “Pillow Talk”
CD: “Masks” – Website – MP3

The Soft Pack - “C’mon”
CD: “The Soft Pack” – Website – MP3

Tre Orsi - “The Engineer”
CD: “Devices + Emblems” – Website – MP3

Jeremy Porter – “Sidewalk Ends”
CD: “Party of One” – Website – MP3

Defiance, Ohio – “Hairpool”
CD: “Midwestern Minutes” – Website – MP3

Les Savy Fav - “Let’s Get Out of Here”
CD: “Root For Ruin” – Website – MP3

We Are Scientists - “Nice Guys”
CD: “Barbara” – Website – Video – Listen

Ted Leo and the Pharmacists – “Ativan Eyes”
CD: “The Brutalist Bricks” – Website – Listen

The Holy Mess – “Goodbye 3713″
CD: “Benefit Sesh” – Website – Listen

Whole Sky Monitor - “Sold”
CD: “Twisted Little Piggies” – Website – Listen

For more good music, check out our podcast, we play a ton of it!

Favorite Videos!

Ted Leo & The Pharmacists – “Bottled In Cork”

Superchunk – “Digging For Something”

Photos by Tiffany Yoon and Kevin Ginsberg. Click thumbnails below.

[flickr-gallery mode="photoset" photoset="72157623550289705"]

Update!

A few tickets still available! Only $7.

UsedWigs Live at Upstairs at World Cafe Live!

Friday, March 19th

• Music: Audible
  Philly’s Audible delivers top-notch pop goodness, layered guy/girl harmonies and chiming guitars with just the right amount of grit and sun-soaked majesty. Get a Taste!
• Comedy: Dave Hill
  Simply put, Dave Hill is a perpetual volcanic eruption of entertainment — comedy, music, Twitter — his fiery flow cannot be contained. He’s also “Big in Japan”.
• Emcee: Nicole Brewer
  The enchanting and diligent digital journalist for Eyewitness News on CBS3 and the CWPhilly, Nicole Brewer, will keep everyone in line and the show running smoothly!

Plus the UsedWigs Emergency Response Team:

• Hosted by: Todd, Russ and Jeff
• Performances by: SM Shrake and Crazy Aaron
• Video by: After School Specialists

Comedy, music, prizes and danger guaranteed.

Only $7: BUY TICKETS NOW!

Keep in Touch: Get Updates

Website: www.usedwigsradio.com

Pass It On! Click to enlarge

View: UsedWigs Live Summer Spectacular 2009 Recap

Philly six-piece Audible recently released their latest EP “Isolette”, which as of this writing you can still download for free here – but move fast, as I’ve been assured that’s only temporary. In fact, you might want to do that now, and have these great new tunes as a companion for the review. Go ahead. I’ll wait for you.

Congratulations! You’re in for quite a ride. This is the band’s first outing since their fabulous 2009 full-length “In Simple Intervals”, and it serves up the story arc of a rock opera of yore without the two-record length, while packing twice the emotional wallop.

Before we get into the content, if you dig smart pop-rock with guy/girl harmonies and great musicianship with a loose, authentic vibe, you’ll love this for nothing other than the music. There are great memorable choruses in these mostly mid-tempo, introspective tracks – songs that smolder and evolve as they reveal their secrets. Interesting guitar tones, airy vocals, and masterful arrangements are anchored by some seriously tasteful and musical drumming (I just HAVE to call this out here – because drummer Steve Cawley really plays for the song – on several of my many repeated listens, I’ve delighted in just focusing in on what he’s doing). So, you could concentrate solely on the music…but you wouldn’t be able to escape the palpable emotional undercurrent – the air around these pieces is heavy with it.

So that’s where the content comes in – what we’ve got here isn’t trumped up emo-drama equating crushes or feelings of personal isolation to epic struggles (I mean that’s fine too, in it’s own way) but something that is in a whole different league of “real”. The story goes like this: Audible nucleus Mike Kennedy was all set to start touring behind “In Simple Intervals” with the band when his wife (and Audible’s bassist) Kristine went into extremely early labor just 25 weeks into her pregnancy. If you’ve ever been there (and I have), that’s the “holy shit, we’re not playing games here anymore” type stuff that makes pretty much everything else you’ve gotten worked up about recently pale in comparison. And amazingly, Mike went ahead and documented the experience in these songs – they should put this in the Library Of Congress for its sociological value alone.

But let me be clear about something: this collection is anything BUT a “bummer”. Maybe the most amazing thing about it is the way that even in the darkest moments, the optimism is palpable. You actually don’t need to have had a similar experience to hear yourself in these songs – and that, my friends, is true songcraft. If you know the background, it’s fascinating and the metaphors come a little clearer – but if you don’t, it’s still the story of wrestling with major uncertainty and knowing what it feels like to be completely powerless, pushing through it while waiting for the clouds to clear, and the final quiet release of having made it (check out the gorgeous “Fourteen Weeks”).

Yes, like all good rock operas, there’s a happy ending – on the EP and in life too, evidenced in little Alex’s appearance in the video for “The Last Thing I Remember” filmed at the band’s Y-Rock session at WXPN’s studios. Funny I should mention that, since the band will be joining us at that very location this coming Friday (3/19) at the second Used Wigs Live event! You will NOT want to miss this!

Russ Starke

Topics: Winter Olympics, We Are The World Part II: Who Is 2010′s Dan Aykroyd?, Lionel Richie’s Giant Hand, Olympic Sex & Giant Bag of Olympic Condoms, Discontinued Dumb Olympic Sports, Bad Mascots, McDonald’s Grimace and Man Babies

Playlist: The Soft Pack, Magnetic Fields, Half Acre Day, The Holy Mess and Rocky Votolato

Play Now: http://www.usedwigs.com/pod/podcast72.mp3

iTunes: Download, Listen and Subscribe

Video: www.ustream.tv

Website: www.usedwigsradio.com

The Last Thing I Remember from Ed Hogarty on Vimeo.

We here at UsedWigs love Audible, they are a giant ray of blasting sunshine fighting through our chilly winter blues. They’re also playing tonight at Johnny Brenda’s! So go and bask in their warmth.

“After an 8-month absence from playing live. Get tickets here for an amazing show this Friday January 29th that will benefit a great cause. We will be playing with East Hundred and The Swimmers and all proceeds will go the JMML Foundation, which funds research for a rare form of juvenile leukemia. Show starts at 9 and we go on at 10:30.”

Free: Download the new EP now! Yes, dammit, I said Free!

More: www.audibleband.com

Still More: “In Simple Intervals” Review

Even More More! Audible will be playing the much anticipated UsedWigs Live show on March 19th at Upstairs at World Cafe Live! Official announcement coming next week! Click here to be kept in the loop.

CD: In Simple Intervals

Now THIS is the type of recording that usually grabs me around this time of year — full of great pop sensibility, layered guy/girl harmonies, and chiming guitars with just the right amount of grit on them. I’m talking about the first self-released recording by Philly’s own Audible — including local scene breakout Mike Kennedy (Matt Pond PA, Mazarin, Lefty’s Deceiver), his wife Kristine (currently incubating some twins — congrats, guys!), and another veteran of a favorite band of Used Wigs — Ed Hogarty of the Bigger Lovers. And let’s go right ahead and shout out vocalist Mary Garito, guitarist Jim Kehoe, and drummer Steve Cawley — because they’re all integral to this great musical layer cake I’ve been listening to the past few weeks.

“In Simple Intervals” has been out since May 19th and is available for download right from Audible’s website — where you can quickly get yourself a copy of these 10 little indie gems. If you’re planning on attending the first Used Wigs LIVE event in Ardmore PA on 6/12, I wouldn’t waste any time — you want to be able to sing along, don’t you?

The set kicks off in a way that seems to be making a statement — “we’re here, we’re doing this, we’re doing this right, and we’re doing it on our own terms”. How else would you accomplish that but with a dramatic intro chord reminiscent of the intro to ELO’s “Evil Woman,” giving way to a hazy vocal with watery guitar strumming, and then capping it off with a head fake into a poppy upbeat groove punctuated by glockenspiel? Correct. There is no better way.

Hazy is a good word to use — many of the songs sound like they are pouring out of a pleasantly yellowed Polaroid snapshot of a summer day, restrained in their execution with lots of great arrangements and musical dexterity bobbing in the waves (the odd-time turnaround 3/4 of the way through April is Real is a great example).

Hours Ago (Sad Mac) has a great little guitar hook that reminds me of one my favorite pop songs from the recent years , the Weepies’ “Hideaway,” the layered harmonies on “Dust From a Broom” (with some “in the round” action) are fantastic, and when they appear on “By Decision” it has that eerie/pretty quality that made the vocals on A Charlie Brown Christmas so affecting — this is what those kids would have sounded like on a heartstring-pulling indie track after they aged 20 years.

Then you’ve got my two personal favorites — the clicking-clacking joy of “Miles to Minutes” and channeling a bit of Tilly and The Wall and The Go! Team on “Like a Code”. A great outing and a firm first step down a new path for Audible. Looking forward to seeing them live on the 12th!

More: www.myspace.com/audibleband

- Russ Starke

One of our favorite Philly bands Audible released a splendid new record today. Take a listen to “In Simple Intervals” and bask in its sunny glow, a perfect soundtrack for some serious springtime adventures or just kicking back on the patio with a few cocktails.

What? You want more Audible? Us too, that’s why the band will be playing the much-anticipated “UsedWigs Live” shindig at MilkBoy in Ardmore, PA on June 12th! How great is that? Buy their new album now, learn all the words, then come to the event and sing along (but not too loudly).

Save that date and/or buy tix now (only 7 measly bucks)! More juicy details to come in the next couple days. Comedy, chat, audience particiaption, giveways, free art and of course, lots of awkward hugs and failed fists bumps.