BOOM! – ‘Get a Grip’
The brand new album by Portland’s best kept secret! BOOM! is the brainchild of Izak Arida (also of beloved stoner pop boy band The Memories) and Chris Scott (also of legendary surf party renegades Guantanamo Baywatch), two childhood friends who moved together to Portland, OR from the burnt out badlands of SoCal’s Inland Empire. Pop punk has long been used for foul deeds but BOOM! is here to bring the party back. If you’ve ever crashed a house party, bombed a hill on a skateboard, shotgunned a beer on a porch, made out with a stranger in a van, woke up in a front lawn, crowd surfed at a basement show, puked on the floor, laughed til you cried, or if you love it when the punk POPS then this tape is your new best friend. Split realease with Burger Records!
LOVE COP – ’2 True/2 Real’
Prolific lo-fi pop princes, Love Cop, return with their third album of 2013 and it’s their best, clearest, and most sinister release to date. After two prior high selling tapes for Gnar, “2 True / 2 Real” has been released by the esteemed Burger Records and contains hit after hit after hit of burner-boy love pop. Love Cop is a duo from the shadowy warehouse rows of the Central Eastside Industrial District of Portland, OR. Born and raised in New York, then relocated to the Northwest, Duffy Rongiiland and Phil Salina are creating some of the best stoner goth, beat-brat, dark pop happening now. Like a beautiful mutt child of Beat Happening, Television Personalities, and The Jesus and Mary Chain albums, Love Cop’s newest swooner, “2 True / 2 Real”, is a bedroom pop masterpiece of dark and romantic intentions. Toning down on the cheeky and manic themes of their prior releases and dialing down the distortion for a more open-hearted and focused set of headphone-pop love songs, Love Cop prove on this one that they are as diverse as they are determined. This is for all the dark ones out there getting dreamy this Summer.
KEEL HER – ‘Keel Her’
The undisputed “UK pop princess” of the current home-fi experimental pop stratosphere returns to Gnar Tapes with an undeniable new tape of swoon-worthy stoner-pop candy. Sweet and subdued with a mega chilled out aura, this is some of the best, best, BEST pop Rose has committed to cassette. Like friends and contemporaries Ariel Pink, Emotional and Free Weed, Keel Her has been constantly releasing a consistently developing string of home-recorded pop that just seems to get better with each and every release. She also shares a kinship with friend and former mentor R. Stevie Moore in that she has a rare and unique mind seemingly made for pop experimentation, as well as a sly sense of humor and free spirited attitude towards the carefree. Easily one of the brightest stars in the modern lo-fi pop constellation and a blessing to all cassette lovers on Earth. And beyond.
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