Beat the summer heat by cranking up the cool with Fanatic’s trio of summer tunes.

Three songs from three different albums by three different artists. The first is California pop straight out of California, the second is California pop straight out of the UK, and the third is California pop straight out of the UK via a California-based record label - all perfect for cranking up at the beach, or at least reminding us that the waves aren't so far away.

“[Frankel is] gently orchestrated pop that recalls a Harry Nilsson (a contemporary kindred spirit may be Richard Swift) yet harbors the subtle atmospherics you might find on a Grandaddy album..” – LA Times

We’ll spare you any Nelly references about how it’s getting hot (upper-90's in NYC today!) and instead suggest using Frankel’s “Thermostat” (MP3) to take it down a notch. The first track on Lullaby For The Passersby has Frankel’s Michael Orendy asking, “Tell me, do you want to come inside? / Because I'm dying to get outside where the sky is blue / And if it's pouring, I mean, it's really coming down / Let's put our clothes on inside out and we'll walk around.”

Frankel’s Michael Orendy is a Los Angeles native who grew up steeped in the music of Southern California, from The Byrds to Beachwood Sparks, and you can almost hear the deserts, canyons and the chaparral in his songs. In fact, after listening to “Thermostat,” we’d find it hard to believe it if you don’t finding yourself daydreaming about road-tripping it to California while the album plays the whole way through.

“Lullaby For The Passerby is going to remind you of a lot of great bands but never borrows a single lick. Frankel’s songwriting holds its ground because there are so many quirky bits stapled to the melodies without ruining the feel” – Little Radio

“It's the kind of music that seeps slowly into your consciousness, and like the warmth following a shot of brandy, it gets a little deeper with each repetition. Despite their humble beginnings, The Lodger is doubtlessly top-shelf material.” – URB

The Lodger’s “Kicking Sand” (MP3) from its glorious debut Grown-Ups, is straightforward Brit-pop gold that deservingly earns the band comparisons to UK greats like The Wedding Present and The Smiths. “We’re not superstars, we’re just kicking sand,” lead Lodger Ben Siddell sings. If that’s the case, we want to be kicking sand right there with you, Ben!

Coming from North England, specifically Leeds, The Lodger is in the company of successful British guitar bands like The Arctic Monkeys and Kaiser Chiefs but stand out as one of the region’s most promising new acts. Grown-Ups is intelligent and catchy without being arrogant or gratuitously complex. Full of singles, the record has a timeless and classic appeal and the irresistible hooks will have you listening on repeat.

“…It’s clear that The Lodger’s prime mover, singer/songwriter Ben Siddell garners comparisons to [David] Gedge and [Amelia] Fletcher mostly because Grown-Ups suggests that he just might be nearly as good as them.” – Billboard

“[The Loose Salute is] a hazily mellow tribute to vintage Laurel Canyon folk-rock” – The Onion

The video for The Loose Salute’s twangy tune “Turn the Radio Up” from its debut album Tuned To Love is the epitome of summer fun. It features footage of the band surfing, swimming, and tandem biking their way across the world in a super-8 home movie style that would make Kevin Arnold, Winnie Cooper and Paul Pfeiffer of “The Wonder Years” beam with pride. Watch it HERE.

Tuned To Love is a record full of summer and nostalgia and songs that make you want to go out, find some friends and dance the night away. The songs are about all the facets of life: falling in and out of love, break-ups, partying, wanderlust, home-cookin’, surfing, travel, fields, beaches, stars and bars…

“The general weight of the world,” explains Ian McCutcheon, Mojave3 / Slowdive drummer and founder of The Loose Salute.

“Clean acoustic guitar arpeggios, the tingle of tambourine, and a modest string arrangement suggest some California dreamin’.” – Pitchfork

Combined, Lullaby For The Passersby, Tuned To Love and Grown-Ups make for the perfect summer mix tape. All three albums are out now. See below for more information and for best results, listen while wading in your baby pool, driving with the windows down, napping in a hammock, or cracking open a cold one while grilling out.

On The Web:
Frankel
www.frankelmusic.com
www.myspace.com/frankel
www.redrocketsglare.com
www.fanaticpromotion.com/current/frankel_lullaby.html

The Lodger (Stream The Album HERE)
www.thelodger.net
www.myspace.com/thelodgerleeds
www.slumberlandrecords.com
www.myspace.com/slumberlandrecords
www.fanaticpromotion.com/current/lodger_grown.html

The Loose Salute (Stream The Album HERE)
www.theloosesalute.com
www.myspace.com/therealloosesalute
www.graveface.com
www.fanaticpromotion.com/current/loose_tuned.html

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Bring Back The Guns sounds call to arms on debut Dry Futures. Houston quartet’s vast arsenal hints at Hot Snakes, Pixies, The Shins, Fugazi and more.

Bring Back The Guns is a messy experiment in taking pop and punk tropes to the classical museum hoping to get thrown out. There's a mathematical precision that belies the boiling underneath, a surface of timing and beats, wordplay, performance, persona that performs the same function as a paper plate during an eclipse. Bring Back The Guns twists its primal screams into exquisite sculpture and invites you to knock over the ropes on your way to touch the art. Bring Back The Guns is anger and love and other short words with long definitions: pop, math-rock, post- Pavement, anti-cool. Its sound somehow simultaneously references elements of such disparate bands as Hot Snakes, The Shins, The Pixies and Fugazi on the young quartet's debut album Dry Futures.

Previously, Matt Brownlie, Blake Powell, Thomas Clemmons and Erik Bogle (ex-Octopus Project) were the award-winning Groceries, and in five years they released two records: the 1999 EP Knuckleheads & Icons and a 2001 split EP with DrillboxIgnition. Powell took off in late 2002 and now flies airplanes through the sky. The rest of the band toured twice with The Toadies, once with Lozenge (Sickroom Records) and did the West Coast with The Octopus Project (Peek-a-Boo Records). In 2004, Ryan Hull joined on bass, and the band became known as Bring Back The Guns. Soon, they were freaking everybody out in their hometown of Houston, TX. The music got uglier, the beats got faster, and the anger got redder. All the while, the praise got louder -- winning the Best Indie Rock award in the Houston Press in 2005 and 2003, with nominations every year from 2001 to the present.

For the next 18 months, scads of touring took the band all over the lower 48 states. The boys hit the Midwest and South repeatedly and both coasts twice, doing stretches with the likes of Old Time Relijun (K Records), The Show Is The Rainbow (Tsk Tsk), Danielson (Secretly Canadian), and Emperor X (Discos Mariscos.) Recording and mixing on the full-length that was to become Dry Futures technically ended December 31, 2004, but since that time Bring Back The Guns released a 7-Inch on Discos Mariscos and appeared on two nationally distributed compilations. The band found a home for its debut on local upstart indie label Feow Records (founded by band member Matthew Brownlie and musician Jana Hunter), which has slated the album release for October 2, 2007. Relentless touring is in the works for the fall.

Imagine the bow-tied rage of a chess genius at his first lost tournament, a spelling bee prodigy after missing an easy word. Imagine the anger irrational numbers feel, when they realize they'll never make the bigtime. Imagine the neighbor dog over the fence, that wants out so badly he's frothing at the mouth. Where do you go when you can't get out? Imagine being “shushed” in the library when you weren't even the one talking, a kid so pissed off he's going to walk until he doesn't want to fight anymore. Set the rage to music. That's Bring Back the Guns.

“Bring Back the Guns is making some of the most original music in the city. The band's music crackles with energy and makes the heart race. It isn't simple, and it's often weird, but these are the very reasons it engages you. You listen, you try to piece together what is being said and why, and then the key changes or the song stops and the rug is pulled out from under you.”— Houston Chronicle

“..one of the coolest bands I’ve ever seen/heard, from Houston or otherwise...chances are that nobody in this town will ever realize how good they are, even though they might well be the closest we’ve got to the Archers of Loaf, Spoon, or Pavement... Skewed, mildly ‘progressive’ pop songs that are smart as hell...” — spacecityrock.com

Dry Futures Tracklisting:
Release Date: October 2nd, 2007
01. No More Good Songs
02. The Art of Malnutrition
03. Let's Not
04. Dry Futures
05. Take It Like A
06. Face Smear Pt. 1 (All Right Now)
07. The Family Name
08. The Season for Treason
09. Radio Song '04
10. I Am the Voice of Sarah Strickland's Rage
11. In Piles/On File (MP3)

On The Web:
www.bringbacktheguns.com
www.myspace.com/bringbacktheguns
www.feowrecords.com
www.myspace.com/feowrecords
www.fanaticpromotion.com/current/bring_dry.html

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The Octopus Project reveals title, artwork and two more tracks from upcoming third album, prepares for tour with Stereo Total, Aesop Rock.

“Post-rock that actually rocks.” – URB

“The lovely Theremin lead, like Florian Schneider's processed flute on the second side of Kraftwerk's Autobahn, suggests that technology just might save us after all. – Pitchfork on “I Saw The Bright Shinies” (MP3) from Hello, Avalanche, the upcoming third album from The Octopus Project.

Hello, Avalanche. That’s what one might say when The Octopus Project’s new gem of a record lands on the top of that mile high stack of records on his or her desk. Coincidentally, that’s exactly what the band has decided to call its new record. Hello, Avalanche is the follow up to last year’s The House of Apples and Eyeballs, The Octopus Project’s highly celebrated collaboration with Black Moth Super Rainbow. The new album was recorded and co-produced by The Octopus Project and Ryan Hadlock (Blonde Redhead, The Gossip) at Bear Creek Studio in Seattle during February, 2007 and was mixed by the band with Erik Wofford (Voxtrot, Explosions In The Sky) back home in Austin.

During the weekend of July 6th, numerous blog postings of the recently issued MP3 of “I Saw The Bright Shinies” from Hello, Avalanche resulted in a cheer of recognition when the band announced the tune from the stage during its headlining set at the Mccarren Pool Party in Brooklyn on Sunday, July 8th. If you weren't there, check out some footage of the performance as caputure by New York Magazine (LINK). To further the anticipation for the new record, two more tracks from Hello, Avalanche (“Bees Bein' Strugglin'” and “An Evening With Rthrtha”) are now streaming via an e-card (LINK) containing the band's tour dates, sampler tracks from its previous releases, the video for “Music Is Happiness” -- recently selected as one of 20 videos featured in the sixth annual Indie Music Video Festival (LINK) -- and more!

The Octopus Project will provide plenty of chances to check out its live act up close when the trio comprised of husband and wife Josh and Yvonne Lambert and Toto Miranda becomes a quartet with Ryan Figg hopping on board for the band's upcoming dates with Athens, Georgia rockers Cinemechanica, French-German electronic group Stereo Total and Def Jux recording artist Aesop Rock. A headlining tour of the the US will follow.

Of the tour, drummer Miranda says, “After all the detail-oriented work we put into the record, we're really looking forward to taking the new batch of songs to the people – usually our tunes continue to evolve as we play them out and it's exciting to start crossing them over from the perfectionist studio world into the somewhat more chaotic live show.” He continues, “The Stereo Total and particularly the Aesop Rock dates should give us a chance to play for a lot of brand new audiences, and it's exciting to have this record and these songs ready for both the folks who know us already and the Stereo Total and Aesop Rock fans who have no idea what to expect. Weeeeehoooo!”

More about The Octopus Project and Hello, Avalanche:

With ragged, furious distorted guitars at one end of the spectrum and the pure, luminescent tones of the Theremin at the other, the members of The Octopus Project mine a staggering variety of sounds in between (via synthesizers, drums, violins, glockenspiel, trombones, etc...) to fill its songs with brilliant contrasting colors and cascading waves of sonic bliss. And as if the instruments themselves weren't enough, many sounds on the band's upcoming record were manipulated to push them even further - inhuman drum breaks three layers deep piled over the live drum track, a heavenly four-Theremin choir from a Wizard of Oz soundtrack that never existed, guitar parts mulched into bits and reassembled into a tiny action figure of Prince.

Coming off of such recent successes as playing Coachella, several sold-out nationwide tours, an incredible showing at the Austin Music Awards (Best Instrumental Band, Best Indie Band, Best Miscellaneous Instrument -- Yvonne Lambert on Theremin! -- and top ten placement in nine other categories!), and a proclamation by David Fricke as one of Rolling Stone's stand-out artists at SXSW, Austin's The Octopus Project will release its third proper full-length, Hello, Avalanche on Peek-a-Boo Records on October 9th, 2007. The record is the follow-up to the band's collaborative album with Pittsburgh's Black Moth Super Rainbow, The House of Apples and Eyeballs (E-CARD), released last year on Graveface Records.

This time around, The Octopus Project wanted to achieve the perfect blend between high-end studio trickery, and lo-fi home experimentation. Partially tracked to tape, partially to Pro Tools, lots of sounds were taken from the band's original demos - sequenced beats, edited loops, practice space recordings etc. Parts of the album track “Upmann” were recorded on a friend's front porch (listeners will note the sounds of passing cars.) As The Octopus Project's Yvonne Lambert has continued to gain notoriety for her expert Theremin-playing skills (see her demo the instrument for Austin school kids HERE), the band decided to develop its multi-tracked-Theremins concept to its fullest extent -- something the group first tried on last year's The House of Apples and Eyeballs. The experiments yielded amazing results as can be heard on the album track “I Saw The Bright Shinies”.

With its new record waiting in the wings and several trips around the country on the calendar, The Octopus Project is ready to make the coming months its busiest and most productive yet -- stay tuned!

Hello, Avalanche Tracklisting:
Stream Selected Tracks HERE
Release Date: October 9th, 2007
01. Snow Tip Cap Mountain
02. Truck
03. Bees Bein' Strugglin'
04. An Evening With Rthrtha
05. Black Blizzard/Red Umbrella
06. Upmann
07. Mmaj
08. I Saw The Bright Shinies (MP3)
09. Ghost Moves
10. Vanishing Lessons
11. Exploding Snowhorse
12. Loud Murmuring
13. Queen

The Octopus Project Live:
Full US Headlining Tour To Follow!
* = w/ Cinemechanica
+ = w/ Stereo Total
# = w/ Aesop Rock
08/17 Huntsville, AL Bottle Tree *
08/18 Athens, GA 40 Watt *
08/19 Chapel Hill, NC Local 506 *
08/20 Greensboro, NC WUAG
08/21 Washington DC Rock and Roll Hotel +
08/22 Baltimore, MD Ottobar +
08/23 Philadelphia, PA TLA +
08/24 New York, NY Bowery Ballroom +
08/25 Boston, MA Middle East +
08/26 Ottawa, ONT Babylon +
08/27 Montreal, QC La Tulipe +
08/28 Toronto, ON Lee's Palace +
08/29 Pittsburgh, PA Andy Warhol Museum +
08/30 Cleveland, OH Beachland Ballroom +
08/31 Chicago, IL The Abbey Theater +
09/01 Minneapolis, MN 7th Street Entry +
09/03 Seattle, WA Chop Suey +
09/04 Portland, OR Wonder Ballroom +
09/06 San Francisco, CA Bimbo's +
09/07 Los Angeles, CA El Rey +
09/08 San Diego, CA Beauty Bar
09/13 Chicago, IL Metro #
09/14 Madison, WI Barrymore Theater #
09/15 Milwaukee, WI Pabst Theatre #
09/16 Minneapolis, MN First Avenue #
09/18 Detroit, MI Magic Stick #
09/19 Cleveland, OH Grog Shop #
09/21 Baltimore, MD Ottobar #
09/22 Providence, RI Living Room #
09/23 Boston, MA Middle East #
09/25 Northampton, MA Iron Horse #
09/26 Burlington, VT Higher Ground #

On The Web:
www.octopusproject.com
www.myspace.com/theoctopusproject
www.peekaboorecords.com
www.myspace.com/peekaboorecords
www.fanaticpromotion.com/current/octopus_hello.html

Subscribe to Fanatic:
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