Wooden Wand Makes MAGNET A Mix Tape

Kentucky-based Wooden Wand (the alias of James Jackson Toth) had a really great experience recording a split seven-inch with his friend Duquette Johnson and his band, the Gum Creek Killers. So much so, in fact, that he decided to invite them to help out with some new tunes as the Briarwood Virgins, along with other pals Brian Lowery and Jody Nelson (Through The Sparks). This collaboration resulted in new album Briarwood, which was just released by Fire Records. Hey, what are friends for? Here’s a cool mix tape that Toth made for MAGNET.

“Big Mouth USA” (download):
https://magnetmagazine.com/audio/BigMouthUSA.mp3

Pat Hare “I’m Gonna Murder My Baby”
This is my favorite guitar tone of all time. I’ve collected every side that the under-recorded Hare plays on (Coy “Hot Shot” Love’s “Wolf Call Boogie,” in particular, is a hoot), but this is my favorite, not just because Hare, true to his word, eventually did murder his “baby” and spent the rest of his short life in prison. Dig that guitar tone! Raw like “Rocket 88” but way more hair-raising and brilliant. Video

Raime “This Foundry”
Been pretty obsessed with the Blackest Ever Black label and its myriad limited releases. Raime is my favorite, a minimal techno duo working the sinister angle in a way that makes Demdike Stare sound like Stock, Hausen And Walkman. Play it loud, or don’t play it at all. (And don’t even get me started on computer speakers.) Video

Blind Owl Wilson “Sloppy Drunk”
Blind Owl was a prophet and probably the greatest white blues vocalist of all time. These recordings were made from a hospital bed just months before Wilson passed from this mortal coil. The Owl was a reluctant star and proto-environmentalist who cared more about the Redwoods than groupies. (He wasn’t immune to all the trappings of the rock star life, however; The Owl loved him some dope.) Truly a man out of time. Wilson’s voice conveys broken beauty like few others. Video

Peaking Lights “All That The Sun Shines”
It gets mighty hard keeping up with all the upstart tape labels, trends (hypnagogia, anyone?) and side projects of side projects, especially when there are, impossibly, still Dick’s Picks CDs I haven’t heard, but I try to keep an eye on the Not Not Fun label no matter what. LA Vampires are a favorite (check out the So Unreal 12-inch!), but Peaking Lights, the duo of Indra Dunis and Aaron Coyes, recently caught my attention with this killer jam, a sort of hazy, slow-motion dub that recalls the sorely missed Pocahaunted at their most blazed and mellow. Why murder the soundboy when you can just dose his drink? Video

Jesse Sykes & The Sweet Hereafter “Hushed By Devotion”
While a lot of you dummies were reliving imagined ’80s childhoods and pretending you’ve always liked Peter fucking Gabriel, this record happened. I’ve always liked Jesse Sykes (and Sweet Hereafter guitarist Phil Wandscher, who is clearly one of the greatest guitar players working right now), but this game-changer sorta blew my mind. I wasn’t even sure if I liked this album at first, with it’s Pink-Floyd-as-California-doom-band affectations (alt country, what?), but the fact that I kept coming back to it trying to even decide how I felt about it tells the tale. I’ll go out on a limb and say it is one of the most literally compelling albums I have heard in a long, long time. Video

John Martyn “One World”
My friend Jack Rose turned me onto John Martyn’s music many years ago, and I went so bananas over it I even paid homage to his album Stormbringer by, err, ”referencing” the cover art on my album Second Attention. So when, sitting in the audience of a panel at the Hopscotch Festival in Raleigh, N.C., guitarist Yair Yona happened to mention offhandedly “the album John Martyn made influenced by Lee Perry,” I immediately had that “whoa, back up, what?” moment. Upon hearing the album in question, which sounds like a lost Arthur Russell album recorded at Black Ark, I was immediately angry at everyone I knew for not sharing this album with me sooner. Your life needs this. Video

Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats “13 Candles”
The CDR version (read that again before you continue: “CDR version”) of Blood Lust, the second album by this mysterious doom-pop band from the U.K., recently fetched almost eight hundred fucking dollars on eBay. Ever wary of collector-bait, I tried to convince myself that I didn’t need yet another occult-themed, analog-inclined, kif-fogged metal album in my life, but after finally hearing the record (it was recently reissued), I had to concede its greatness. Totally boneheaded lyrics about ritual knives and candles and chaotic evil, with great hooks and extremely stoney guitar playing beamed directly from the year 1975. Like the great lost private-press doom album by Plastic Ono Band (dig those vocals). Exemplary. (Still not worth 800 bucks, though.) Video

Relatively Clean Rivers “Easy Ride”
Some albums just endure. I break this album out every couple of years, and it always knocks me out. I love all the albums Phil Pearlman made (all under different band names), but this one occupies a very special place in my heart. Easy-breezy psych with rollicking Dead-isms (but with better harmonies) and production that’s After The Gold Rush-perfect. I betcha Beachwood Sparks studied this album. More bands should. Try being in a bad mood while this is playing. Video

Black Merda “Reality”
No, not a gangsta rapper, though you’d be forgiven for thinking so. No, these guys would pummel any gangsta rapper you could name. This 1970 jam boats an irresistible groove (would pay a lot of money to hear Royal Trux circa 1996 cover this), but the best part are the lyrics, which turn that good-time groove on its head by celebrating the power of negative thinking. “Your reality will cause your fantasies to die,” sings the lead vocalist on the chorus, while the background vocals coo “‘Cause your fantasy to die/Die, die/Oh why?” Elsewhere, these pioneers of half-empty glass soul poke fun at you for praying, then proceed to diss you for being patriotic. All in just more than two minutes. Perfect. Video

William Elliott Whitmore “Everything Gets Gone”
You might think, as I did, that William Elliott Whitmore is just another punk-rocker-turned-hillbilly-shouter with a banjo and a porkpie hat. But you’d be wrong to dismiss him as such, because not only does dude have a beautifully evocative voice that transcends genre trappings, but (and this is where he breaks from a lot of his conspicuously old-timey contemporaries), he can write a goddam song. “Like shutters in the wind I’m holding on/But everything gets gone/Everything gets gone.” I wish I wrote that. His new album, Field Songs, made me go back and buy everything else he’s released. Dude rules. Video