Kiwi Jr. - Chopper - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

When you're trying to make it through tough times, you need a little light to find your way. That light blazes brightly on the alchemical second album from Penelope Isles, an album forged amid emotional upheaval and band changes. Setting the uncertainties of twenty-something life to alt-rock and psychedelic songs brimming with life, colour and feeling, Which Way to Happy emerges as a luminous victory for Jack and Lily Wolter, the siblings whose bond holds the band tight at it's core. Produced by Jack and mixed by US alt-rock legend Dave Fridmann, the result is an intoxicating leap forward for the Brighton-based band, following the calling-card DIY smarts of their 2019 debut, Until the Tide Creeps In. Sometimes it swoons, sometimes it soars. Sometimes it says it's OK to not be OK. Pitched between fertile coastal metaphors and winged melodies, intimate confessionals and expansive cosmic pop, it transforms difficult second album clichés into a thing of glorious contrasts a second-album surge of up-close, heartfelt intimacies and expansive, experimental vision.

Buildings burning in every direction; macabre unknowns in your friendly neighbor's basement; undecided voters sharpening their pencils under pressure we could call Kiwi Jr.'s Cooler Returns Inchtimely.Inch But what year is it, again? On their sophomoric smash-up released world-wide by Sub Pop Records, Kiwi Jr cycle through the recent zigs & looming zags of the new decade, squinting anew at New Year's parties forgotten and under-investigated small town diner fires, piecing together low-stakes conspiracy theories on what's coming down the pike in 2021. Put together like a thousand-piece puzzle, assembled in flow state through the first dull stretch of quarantine, sanitized singer shuffling to sanitized studio by streetcar, masked like it's the kind of work where getting recognized means getting killed, Cooler Returns materializes as a sprawling survey from the first few bites of the terrible twenties, an investigative exposé of recent history buried under the headlines & ancient kings buried under parking lots.

Love And Rockets is the seminal, groundbreaking trio of Daniel Ash (vocals and guitar), David J(vocals and bass) and Kevin Haskins (drums). Formed in 1985 after the first split of their band Bauhaus, Love and Rockets provided a clean slate and an opportunity to plumb the depths of imagination and influences. Everything changed for Love and Rockets in 1989 when they released their self-titled fourth album. The song InchSo AliveInch reached #3 on the Billboard Hot 100 and the album attained gold status. The song reached No. 1 in Canada and charted within the top 30 in Australia, and New Zealand. In the US, it was #1 on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart for five weeks and was ranked No. 1 on that listing's year-end chart for 1989. Billboard wrote that InchSo AliveInch was Inchthe best T. Rex tune that Marc Bolan never wrote.Inch A1. * (Jungle Law) A2. No Big Deal A3. The Purest Blue A4. Motorcycle A5. I Feel Speed B1. Bound for Hell B2. The Teardrop Collector B3. So Alive B4. Rock and Roll Babylon B5. No Words No More