Cotton Jones The River Strumming
The American singer-songwriter tradition has always been tethered to a rustic austerity, the sort of front-porch authenticity that suggests an age where home electronics are still considered luxury items. But there’s also the ongoing influence of Bob Dylan and The Band’s Basement Tapes—that strange and beloved document of the magic that happens when private experiments with the folk template flourish into layered and lush songs—and its genesis through informal recording sessions. In our modern age, these kinds of casual DIY constructions are perhaps the more honest contribution to the Americana lineage—the true homespun artform.
When Michael Nau and Whitney McGraw struck out on their own in the wake of the dissolution of their beloved indie-folk outfit Page France, they continued their songwriting practice with a new project called Cotton Jones Basket Ride. As legend has it, Nau and McGraw were working on the material for their debut full-length Paranoid Cocoon (2009) when they realized they had an entire album’s worth of odds-and-ends from various recording sessions. The resultant album—The River Strumming—was released in 2008 on St. Ives in a batch of 300 unique hand-packaged LPs. As the label advertised it back in the day, the band “initially set out to make a cohesive record, and made just the opposite.” Like The Basement Tapes, The River Strumming is a document of a band exploring possibilities without the weight of expectation. The band would eventually condense their name to Cotton Jones and make a name for themselves in the indie world for their fusion of dreamy folk and psychedelic baroque pop. But in the beginning, there was this weird and wonderful collection of songs made by musicians who were enjoying the private process of finding their path.
Suicide Squeeze is proud to present a 15th-anniversary vinyl reissue of this long out-of-print classic with updated artwork by Kayleigh Montgomery-Morris. Our first pressing is limited to 1000 copies—400 on Suicide Squeeze-exclusive 180g half coke bottle green / half bone, and 600 copies on 180g black vinyl.
This Will Destroy You Another Language
Since 2004, This Will Destroy You has been forging some of the world’s most brutal, dynamic, and precariously visceral instrumental rock. In addition to a vigorous tour schedule, their celebrated discography and critically renowned soundtrack work for feature films and documentaries have earned them a sizable and fervent international following. Another Language, TWDY’s fourth full length LP, marks their euphonious return from a prolonged vacuous dark period that threatened to break both the band and the members themselves. Rather than be stifled by their experience TWDY were atomized and subsequently made anew, emerging with a revived energy and reinforced sense of solidarity. As a result, Another Language captures the band at its most potent, honed, and utterly powerful form to date, displaying an edified unity and graduated sense of songwriting, tonal complexity, and studio prowess.
*250 copies on 180 gram galaxy vinyl (Suicide Squeeze exclusive variant)
*2xLP pressed at 45 RPM using brand new metal parts
*Gatefold jacket printed on uncoated stock
*Printed inner sleeves
*Includes a DL coupon
L.A. WITCH Octubre
L.A. Witch seized the moment by revisiting a handful of their early long lost tracks and reshaping them into Octubre, a five-song EP that delves deeper into their darker side. Opener and lead single “Haunting” is a swaggering rumination on heroin, full of big ringing chords, swirling tremolo, and narcotic vocals. It’s more densely layered than anything the band have done in the past, owing in part to the engineering skills of Samuel Shea (Warbly Jets) and the production savvy of Gregg Foreman (Cat Power, Delta 72), but also as a result of the band’s premeditated deviation from bare bones recordings. “Because these are old songs—we don’t play them live anymore but still wanted them to be heard—this was the perfect opportunity to get experimental with sounds and textures,” Sanchez says of the EP. Despite this new studio adventurism, the songs on Octubre stay true to L.A. Witch’s vintage starkness. The obsessive love song “Sleep” still centers on the trio’s economic interplay, but the empty spaces between reverberating chords are filled with woozy whammy-barred guitar, as if tape bleed-through caught the ghost of some forgotten troubadour. The cryptic “BB’s Momma” gets bolstered by organ vibrato in its sultry verses and bombarded by bloody-knuckled piano in its climactic choruses. As the EP culminates with the acoustic ballad “Heart of Darkness” and the instrumental “Outro”, we hear echoes and melodic ether swell in the background, as if the magic conjured by L.A. Witch is beginning to take on a life of its own.
*500 copies on 180 gram green in black vinyl
*Pressed at 45 RPM
*Includes a DL coupon
Death Valley Girls Islands in the Sky
For the better part of a decade, LA’s scrappy rock n’ roll mystics Death Valley Girls have used their music as a means of tapping into a communal cosmic energy. On albums like Glow In The Dark (2016), Darkness Rains (2018), and Under the Spell of Joy (2020) the band challenged the soul-crushing banality of modern society and celebrated “true magical infinite potential” through a collage of scorching proto-punk riffs, earworm melodies, far-out lyrics, and lysergic auxiliary instrumentation. But on their latest album Islands in the Sky, Death Valley Girls’ songwriting mastermind Bonnie Bloomgarden uses the band’s anthemic revelries as a guidebook to spiritual healing and a roadmap for future incarnations of the self. And while these may be the loftiest aims of Death Valley Girls to date, the resulting music is also by far their most infectious and celebratory.
*1000 copies on silver & grimace purple A side / B side
*LP comes with double-sided folded 11 x 17 poster
*Includes a DL coupon
Holy Wave Freaks of Nurture
Suicide Squeeze is thrilled to announce a repress of Holy Wave’s Freaks of Nurture! “Freaks is a hauntingly hypnotic journey through auditory lands of melodic bliss and passively happy psych rock hallucinatory dreams.”
*Repress limited to 500 copies on 180g opaque baby pink vinyl
*Reworked album jacket
*Includes black dust jacket & DL card
Holy Wave Interloper
Interloper sees Holy Wave adding new layers to their lush and mesmerizing songwriting style. Written about the duality between life at home and life on the road, it sees the band expanding on their most esoteric and thought-provoking themes. “I’m Not Living in the Past Anymore” is a mantra about breaking the cycle of the mundane, “Escapism” is a dream-like meditation. “Interloper” serves as the centerpiece for this self-expanding record, asking, what happens when the world beneath your feet changes so much that you feel like a stranger in your own shoes? The band turns inward, to blissed-out moments on album opener “Schmetterling,” the saccharine haze of “R&B,” and the freak-out catharsis of live favorite “Buddhist Pete.” With Interloper Holy Wave weaves together a contemplative tapestry that can serve as a road map for the diffident, a soundtrack to self-realization, or simply an invitation to escape.
*Repress limited to 500 copies on 180g opaque cyan blue vinyl
*Includes double-sided insert & DL card
STILL FRESH
Chastity Belt No Regerts
Chastity Belt Announce 10th Anniversary, Limited Edition No Regerts Vinyl!
*250 copies on milky clear w/ oxblood splatter vinyl (Suicide Squeeze exclusive)
*Expanded artwork in a gatefold jacket
*Includes OBI Strip, folded double-sided poster, DL coupon
Night Beats Rajan
As Night Beats, Texas-born, LA-based artist Danny Lee Blackwell creates music like one might assemble a puzzle. The Western psychedelic auteur builds his work from one moment, an initial spark, that must fit a certain criteria: it must give him goosebumps. If that sensation arrives, Blackwell will pursue the idea relentlessly until he has a new song; if not, he moves onto the next moment, constantly looking for the perfect molecule of a song. On his new Night Beats album, Rajan, the songwriter is at his strongest, creating works that shine with captivating melodies and hypnotic rhythms, but are underscored by subtle choices of craftsmanship that can only be achieved after countless hours in the studio. Blackwell creates a work that lands somewhere between Spaghetti Western film score and psych-pop opus, a career-defining album that reveals much about Danny Lee Blackwell’s artistic philosophy while keeping that ever crucial air of mystery intact.
*250 copies on 180g blood moon month color vinyl (Suicide Squeeze exclusive)
*LP comes with an exclusive folded 11 x 17 poster
*Includes a printed inner sleeve & DL coupon
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Cotton Jones Paranoid Cocoon
At its debut, Michael Nau noted the presence (and absence) of time’s influence on Paranoid Cocoon. He noted “there’s no intentional theme behind these songs. Cocoon didn’t span a lengthy duration of time, so head-space and moods tended to remain thread-like throughout. I believe there’s a familiar mood from start to finish…the lyrics work like visuals of such moods.” The 10-year anniversary reissue of Paranoid Cocoon celebrates this mood, which remains peacefully untouched and seamlessly woven into the hearts of long-time listeners and new fans alike.
Paranoid Cocoon is an album full of quiet, wooden psychedelia reflecting Cotton Jones’ casual pursuit of comfort and freedom. Michael Nau and Whitney McGraw have hearts – huge, questioning hearts – full of music that mixes elements of soul, rock, and gospel into a gauzy cocoon of small-town sound. Under the mountains of Cumberland, Maryland, where creeks zigzag in the lonesome dark of the forest and a red moon hangs overhead, these songs were born of leaving, of dreams both good and bad, sung from surroundings the band has known their whole lives. In the album’s 2009 debut, NPR lauded Nau and McGraw’s ability to “create a mature, oddly woodsy feel, with strikingly evocative and despondent lyrics. Nau’s baritone, which recalls that of Lee Hazlewood, sings of forgotten happiness and missed chances, evoking charming sadness throughout the new record.” Rolling Stone noted how Nau and McGraw “craft jazzy folk peppered with pianos, strings, and organs, and drive them with down-home vocal harmonies. Importantly, they’ve got lyrics to back up the gentle vibes.” Paranoid Cocoon is simple, understated perfection: they sound timeless from singing together forever.
*1000 copies on hardwood color vinyl
*Expanded artwork in a gatefold jacket with printed inner sleeve
*DL card included
Modest Mouse / 764-Hero Whenever You See Fit
The mid-‘90s were an interesting time in Seattle. The city had just experienced its brief period in the rock n roll limelight, but it was still a lonely outpost in a largely ignored corner of the United States. Touring bands were reluctant to make the trek up from San Francisco, or across the mountains from Denver, or from across the Great Plains from Minneapolis. There were barely any all-ages venues to play in town. Bands like Modest Mouse and 764-Hero helped fill the rainy void with a relentless schedule of writing and playing out. That creative thirst and no-one’s-watching mentality prompted a lot of artistic exploration and experimentation, a phenomenon best captured on the collaborative single “Whenever You See Fit.” Marrying Modest Mouse’s jagged blowouts with 764-Hero’s pensive songwriting, the track slowly came together over the course of a tour together, with the bands taking the stage together nightly and dueling over a few fleshed-out chords. The resulting 15-minute marriage of sparse pop and guitar sturm-and-drang perfectly captured the wistful artistry and punk turbulence of Northwest indie rock at the close of the century. Suicide Squeeze is proud to offer a 25th Anniversary vinyl repress of Whenever You See Fit with updated artwork by esteemed designer Jesse LeDoux. The 12” single—also featuring remixes by DJ Dynomite D and Sientific American on side B—is limited to 1500 copies (500 on Suicide Squeeze exclusive color in color, 1000 on evergreen), pressed at 45 RPM, and includes a download coupon.
*500 copies on mustard in electric blue vinyl (Suicide Squeeze exclusive)
*Cut at 45 RPM
*Comes with a black dust jacket & DL coupon
Suicide Squeeze T
Suicide Squeeze Records “Fremont Seattle” design printed with white ink on a 100% cotton black Canvas brand T.
*Sizes XS – XXL
