PREMIERE: Goldmines - Shadow

Laura Kerry

With Labor Day looming, now is that manic time of summer when you try to fit everything in at the last minute. You say yes to that spontaneous show, that impromptu drink, that ill-planned trip to the beach, and the whole thing—despite the occasional exhaustion—is energizing and a little wild.

This is the perfect backdrop for the release of Goldmines’ new single, “Shadow.” The Cleveland-based garage-rock band put out a self-titled EP at the beginning of summer with Wax Mage and Quality Time Records, but they refused to call it quits for the season: “Shadow” is the second bonus track off of a special Dadstache Records tape edition of the EP, coming out in September. The foursome themselves began as a sort of bonus—a reshuffling of the members of Cleveland’s beloved HotChaCha after the lead singer left town—but with their debut full-length, DRAG (2013), and this latest EP, Mandy Look, Heather Gmucs, Jeanna Lax, and Roseanna Safos have proven themselves worthy of calling themselves the main event.

“Shadow” is similarly satisfying. With a catchy guitar hook that both twangs and thrashes, a noisy wall of sound, and raspy, shouted vocals, it grabs you immediately and pulls you along with your head bopping—all the way until a quiet pause towards the end after a particularly crazed guitar section. Finally, true to the season, the song picks up again for one last epic hoorah before it fades out into a well-earned calm.

Pre-Order the Tape Edition EP Here

PREMIERE: Adler Hall - Half / Tourist Pt. 1

Laura Kerry

Perhaps an equally useful conversation topic for 20-somethings as what we studied in college is what we wish we had. As we wander further from the time when our only expectation was to learn, what shape of lens do our minds form? With what tools do we wish we were armed?

Adler Hall—better known as John Henry Hoagland, or to friends (among whom I count myself, for full disclosure), Henry—studied music theory and composition, but he could just as easily have studied English. Perennially thoughtful, Henry approaches music like a text, carefully constructing themes and imagery in the signifying space between music and words. In his first EP, Circumambulate, he orchestrated five quietly beautiful, impressionistic tunes that approached meaning as the album title suggests: walking—or rather, gracefully ambling—around the perimeter.

If the John Henry Hoagland of Circumambulate explored ideas, Adler Hall seems to lean more towards narrative. On “Half,” the story of a night, the song moves in a graspable arc from sparse, bouncing rock bass and percussion to a swell of trumpet, flugelhorn, trombone, and euphoric vocal melodies. Lyrics such as, “Struggle to make conversation / Land in all the places we’d rather be than New York,” concretize the story’s space with an approachable specificity.

Despite the personal nature of the story in “Half,” it’s “Tourist Pt. 1” that embraces a more aching intimacy. Ebbing and flowing over the heartbeat-like pulse of bass in a verse-chorus pop structure, but invoking the measured intelligence of composer Adler Hall’s bedroom orchestration, the song builds toward the chorus, “Nothing is holy / Nothing ‘round here, not my skin or your name.” Hitting on the satisfying intersection between poetic imagery—Homeric lotus-eaters and the catacombs of London cathedrals make an appearance—and tangible narrative (“Rest your face against my collar”), Henry exercises a literary mind. With these two gorgeous new songs and more to come in late summer or early fall, though, let’s be glad he opted for music.