Mana Pools Share Idle Thoughts
The side project of Dumb Things members, Mana Pools, is wasting no time bringing us new music; they sent us “Black and White” at the end of July and here they are again with “Idle Thoughts.” This is the one that feels like a departure from their main gig, as the structure of the tune is more centered around a deep groove, as opposed to guitar work, leading towards more of a clever nod to bedroom pop’s earliest days. That said, the vocal cool that comes through the speaker might be one of my favorite things from this tune; it’s almost like they couldn’t care less, but still want you to swoon. Hoping there’s an LP of these types of jams on the way!
In playing catch-up from Spring Break, we covered quite a bit of new music, though I may have run out of steam at week’s end. Still, we brought you some new music from Austin artists like Sophia Warren, Adrian Quesada, Will Johnson and Day Friend. Unfortunately, the Day Friend was your sneak peek before their show this Friday at 13th Floor, so we’ll include that in next week’s jams. We also got to premiere a brand new Why Bother jam, so be sure to give that one a listen. Some of my personal favorites from the week are down below, like a new Dumb Things single, as well as fresh Pachyman to boot. And as always, the sounds are all over the place, from the folk of Swedes Egentid to the crazy joyousness of Johnny Maraca‘s garage punk! Play it all below!
In a little over one wee, my current favorite Aussie’s, 
Pretty solid wee of new music last week, and we got to as much as our time allowed. We even managed to start getting some of our SXSW coverage together, as the festival is somehow just over the horizon; RayRay got an interview up with Population II you should check out. We even got back on some album stream coverage, making sure to have the homies in Constant Follower and Daily Worker up there. We continue as the one-site hype machine for Sharp Pins Radio DDR reissue, but there some of my favorite acts also returned with their own new jams to grab us, like Dumb Things and Jetstream Pony. I even jumped on the Sports Team train with their latest single. Get into it below.
With a holiday squeezed in, and some craziness on my own end, we maybe didn’t cover as much as I ideally would have liked to cover. Nonetheless, there was tons of great tunes running on the site, including a premiere from 40th Parallel, plus brand spanking new music from Apollo Ghosts…which I’m still listening to right now. Rural France is back too, so we included that in our coverage, not to mention the fact that we got a hot new Daniel Romano tune included. You can never go wrong either with new Reds, Pinks and Purples or En Attendant Ana…and those are included. It’s a 45 minute collection of solid rock n’ roll, so turn it on and turn it up.
It may not have been a week covered in big names, but there were tons of ridiculously quality tunes dropped this last week. We had tons of ATX stuff, from Daily Worker to Wet Dip to S.L. Houser to Voxtrot, so we were all over that. I fell in love with Dumb Things, which is the Aussie outfit opening up this week’s playlist. But, it’s probably a toss up for me whether the new track from The Witching Waves got more plays than that new Weakened Friends. A ripper of a week with some new names we hadn’t come across before like Amelia Coburn, so give the whole mix a Monday morning spin.