Just Friends - Hella - VINYL LP

The raw inspiration for Vague Tidings, Elephant Micah's third effort for Western Vinyl, comes from a DIY tour of the 49th state. It was a trip that went off the beaten path-sometimes a bit too far for comfort. Now, over a decade later, listeners find songwriter-producer Joseph O'Connell stationed at a creaky spinet piano, singing about the Alaskan sky. Throughout, his lyrics take a new angle on a pet theme human encounters with the natural world. Vague Tidings places these encounters in the American West and, at times, in it's sci-fi corollary, outer space. It's imagery draws from the allure of Alaska, the idea of Western prosperity, and the human relationship to wilderness more broadly. Often, O'Connell sings about the goal of capturing and commodifying nature. In poetic sketches of resource extraction industries and dark sky tourism, frontier lust runs amok. Pipelines catch fire and stars disappear, all to the tune of a stark, uncanny Americana. It was 2006 when O'Connell received an unexpected invitation to gig in Alaska. Details were sparse, but the idea was seductive. He grabbed a guitar, boarded a discount flight in Indianapolis, and piled into an old RV in Anchorage with an assortment of other young folkies. What followed was somewhere between a concert tour, a camping trip, and an extended jam session, all taking place under the legendary midnight sun. By necessity, the venues were non-traditional-a public library here, a health food store there-and half the playing went unobserved by any audience at all. For a couple weeks, O'Connell immersed himself in Alaskan life he cheered on the Homer 4th of July parade, drank from rivulets on the Matanuska Glacier, and, in a terrifying turn at the end of the trip, got stalked by a black bear at Hatcher Pass. InchI started to wonder at some point,Inch he recalls, Inchwhether this kind of tour was a little too risky for

Limited red colored vinyl LP pressing. Just Friends is a band from the East Bay of California. Their new album Hella is a jam-packed spectacle of rhythmic funk, riotous punk, and just about everything in between. Every inch of Hella and whatever Just Friends puts their stamp on is drenched in sincerity. This record is like a warm summer night, falling in love, getting into trouble, growing up and coming of age. The last summer you remember. It's beautiful.

Changephobia is the 2nd full-length solo record from Grammy Award-winning songwriter, producer, and composer Rostam Batmanglij. An adventurous new direction for Rostam, the songs collected on Changephobia are deeply personal, yet universal for anyone who has ever experienced doubt. In addition to being a founding member of the seminal New York Indie Rock Band, Vampire Weekend, Rostam has been described as Inchone of the great pop and indie-rock producers of his generation.Inch Rostam has produced & co-written critically heralded recent albums by Clairo and Haim, as well as singles from Maggie Rogers, Solange, Charli XCX, Frank Ocean, Santigold and others