{"title":"Sub Pop Records","description":"\u003cp\u003eSub Pop Records\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"metz-automat-lp-7-record","title":"Metz – Automat LP + 7\" record","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ciframe src=\"https:\/\/bandcamp.com\/EmbeddedPlayer\/album=1824134362\/size=small\/bgcol=ffffff\/linkcol=0687f5\/transparent=true\/\" style=\"border: 0; width: 100%; height: 42px;\"\u003e\u003c\/iframe\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMetz – Automat LP + 7\" record\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMETZ, our own widely-adored and delightfully noisy 3-piece punk band from Toronto (ON, CANADA), have been laying waste to stages around the globe for over 10 years. During that tumultuous chunk of time METZ, comprised of Alex Edkins, Hayden Menzies, and Chris Slorach, have cemented their reputation as one of the planet's most exhilarating live acts and trusted providers of bombastic outsider rock.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAutomat is a collection of METZ non-album singles, B-sides, and rarities dating back to 2009, available on LP for the first time, and including the band's long out-of-print early (pre-Sub Pop) recordings. And Automat is a chronological trip through the lesser known material of METZ.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIncluded here are the band’s first three 7” singles, recorded 2009-2010 and originally released by We Are Busy Bodies Records; a demo version of “Wet Blanket,” the explosive single from 2012’s METZ; two tracks from the limited-edition bonus single that accompanied preorders of METZ; “Can’t Understand,” originally released in 2013 by [adult swim]; and both tracks from the band’s 2015 single on Three One G.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eConsumers of the vinyl format of Automat will be rewarded with a bonus single that includes three additional tracks: a cover of Sparklehorse’s “Pig,” from a very limited 2012 Record Store Day split single originally released by Toronto’s Sonic Boom record shop; “I’m a Bug,” a cover of The Urinals’ art-punk classic, originally released on YouTube (not an actual record label) in 2014; and METZ’s previously unreleased rendition of Gary Numan’s “M.E.”\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sub Pop","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50626913992996,"sku":"","price":24.5,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/2606\/0952\/files\/metzautomat.jpg?v=1746713552"},{"product_id":"metz-strange-peace-lp","title":"Metz - Strange Peace LP","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ciframe src=\"https:\/\/bandcamp.com\/EmbeddedPlayer\/album=2134218359\/size=small\/bgcol=ffffff\/linkcol=0687f5\/transparent=true\/\" style=\"border: 0; width: 100%; height: 42px;\"\u003e\u003c\/iframe\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMetz - Strange Peace LP\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSince releasing their self-titled debut record in 2012, which The New Yorker called, “One of the year’s best albums...a punishing, noisy, exhilarating thing,” the Toronto-based 3-piece METZ have garnered international acclaim as one of the most electrifying and forceful live acts, touring widely and extensively, playing hundreds of shows each year around the world.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNow, Alex Edkins (guitar, vocals), along with Hayden Menzies (drums), and Chris Slorach (bass) are set to unleash their highly-anticipated third full-length album, Strange Peace, an emphatic but artful hammer swing to the status quo.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"The best punk isn't an assault as much as it's a challenge — to what's normal, to what's comfortable, or simply to what's expected. Teetering on the edge of perpetual implosion,” NPR wrote in their glowing review of METZ’s 2015 second album, II.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eStrange Peace was recorded in Chicago, live off the floor to tape with Steve Albini. The result is a distinct artistic maturation into new and alarming territory, frantically pushing past where the band has gone before, while capturing the notorious intensity of their live show. The trio continued to assemble the album (including home recordings, additional instrumentation) in their hometown, adding the finishing touches with longtime collaborator, engineer and mixer, Graham Walsh.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eStrange Peace isn’t merely a collection of eleven uninhibited and urgent songs. It’s also a kind of sonic venting, a truculent social commentary that bludgeons and provokes, excites and unsettles. With all the pleasurable tension and anxiety of a fever dream, Strange Peace is equal parts- challenging and accessible. It is this implausible balancing act, moving from one end of the musical spectrum to the other, that only a band of METZ’s power and capacity can maintain: discordant and melodic, powerful and controlled, meticulous and instinctive, subtle and complex, precise and reckless, wholehearted and merciless, brutal and optimistic, terrifying and fun.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“Their whiplash of distortion is made with precision, a contained chaos. But you would never talk about them like that. Because METZ are not something you study or analyze,” wrote Liisa Ladouceur in Exclaim! “They are something you feel: a transfer of energy, pure and simple.” In other words: to feel something, fiercely and intensely, but together, not alone.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sub Pop","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50642361418020,"sku":"","price":24.5,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/2606\/0952\/files\/metzsp.jpg?v=1747324097"},{"product_id":"metz-ii-lp","title":"Metz - II LP","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ciframe style=\"border: 0; width: 100%; height: 42px;\" src=\"https:\/\/bandcamp.com\/EmbeddedPlayer\/album=3292633564\/size=small\/bgcol=ffffff\/linkcol=0687f5\/transparent=true\/\"\u003e\u003c\/iframe\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMetz - II LP\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMetz have all the telltale signs of an early-90s nostalgia band. They play blistering Touch And Go-indebted punk rock; they’ve got a frontman who wears glasses and ripped jeans and screams his head off like a young Steve Albini and a drummer who pounds the kit and flails his hair like a young Dave Grohl; they write misanthropic songs about \"rats\" and \"landfills\" and \"nausea\".  \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd yet to their massive credit, the Toronto three-piece has managed to be much more than that. Metz are no museum piece or paean to the glory days of 1991. Somehow, despite the time-stamped familiarity of the band’s ingredients, the finished product sounds urgent, necessary, even a little dangerous.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe reasons why are frustratingly simple: execution and conviction. Metz play brutally efficient, art-damaged rock \u0026amp; roll that never bobs or weaves when it isn’t supposed to. And they do it without blinking. There’s nothing knowing about their music – no references to decode or allusions to suss out, no laughs at your expense – just volume and velocity in hardy portions. And grit.\" - John S.W. MacDonald \/ The Quietus \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sub Pop","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50667077796132,"sku":"","price":24.5,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/2606\/0952\/files\/metzII.jpg?v=1747930309"},{"product_id":"metz-atlas-vending-lp","title":"Metz - Atlas Vending LP","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ciframe style=\"border: 0; width: 100%; height: 42px;\" src=\"https:\/\/bandcamp.com\/EmbeddedPlayer\/album=1658697668\/size=small\/bgcol=ffffff\/linkcol=0687f5\/transparent=true\/\"\u003e\u003c\/iframe\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMetz - Atlas Vending LP\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e“Change is inevitable if you’re lucky,” says guitarist\/vocalist Alex Edkins while talking about Atlas Vending, the fourth full-length album by Toronto’s METZ. “Our goal is to remain in flux, to grow in a natural and gradual way. We’ve always been wary to not overthink or intellectualize the music we love but also not satisfied until we’ve accomplished something that pushes us forward.” The music made by Edkins and his compatriots Hayden Menzies (drums) and Chris Slorach (bass) has always been a little difficult to pin down. Their earliest recordings contained nods to the teeming energy of early ‘90s DIY hardcore, the aggravated angularities of This Heat, and the noisy riffing of AmRep’s quintessential guitar manglers, but there was never a moment where METZ sounded like they were paying tribute to the heroes of their youth. If anything, the sonic trajectory of their albums captured the journey of a band shedding influences and digging deeper into their fundamental core—steady propulsive drums, chest-thumping bass lines, bloody-fingered guitar riffs, the howling angst of our fading innocence. With Atlas Vending, METZ not only continues to push their music into new territories of dynamics, crooked melodies, and sweat-drenched rhythms, they explore the theme of growing up and maturing within a format typically suspended\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"bcTruncateMore\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003ein youth.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCovering seemingly disparate themes such as paternity, crushing social anxiety, addiction, isolation, media-induced paranoia, and the restless urge to leave everything behind, each of Atlas Vending’s ten songs offer a snapshot of today's modern condition and together form a musical and narrative whole. Album opener “Pulse” is a completely unnerving exercise in reductionist tension, with verses providing little more than a lone discordant chord, a hammering kick drum, and the occasional punctuation of a diving bass note. From there METZ launches into “Blind Youth Industrial Park,” an absolute scorcher of paranoid dissonance and malicious force centered on a chromatic descending riff and a merciless four-to-the-floor drum battery.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe album hits its stride with “No Ceiling”—a minute-and-a-half rager that comes about as close to containing a pop hook as anything METZ has ever written. Though it’s still saturated with in-the-red distortion, this truncated anthem about discovering love and purpose provides the rare counterpoint to the band’s grievous compositions. But there’s no yielding to complacency on Atlas Vending, and the mercurial nature of love and romance is expertly captured in the alternately brutal verses and beguiling choruses of “Hail Taxi.” If METZ’s current mission is to mirror the inevitable struggles of adulthood, they’ve successfully managed to tap into the conflicted relationship between rebellion and revelry with the song’s tactics of offsetting their signature bombast with anthemic melodic resolutions.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe song sequencing follows a cradle-to-grave trajectory, spanning from primitive origins through increasingly nuanced and turbulent peaks and valleys all the way to the climactic closer, “A Boat to Drown In.” The lyrics speak to this arc as well, with the songs addressing life’s struggles all the way through to death, as Edkins snarls “crashed through the pearly gates and opened up my eyes, I can see it now” before the band launches into the album’s cascading outro.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhile past METZ albums thrived on an abrasive relentlessness, the trio embarked on Atlas Vending with the goal to make a more patient and honest record—something that invited repeated listens rather than a few exhilarating bludgeonings. It’s as if the band realized they were in it for the long haul, and their music could serve as a constant as they navigated life’s trials and tribulations. The result is a record that sounds massive, articulate, and earnest. Bolstered by the co-production of Ben Greenberg (Uniform) and the engineering and mixing skills of Seth Manchester (Daughters, Lingua Ignota, The Body) at Machines with Magnets in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, METZ deliver the most dynamic, dimensional, and compelling work of their career.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sub Pop","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50688273580324,"sku":"","price":24.5,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/2606\/0952\/files\/metzatlas.jpg?v=1748537354"},{"product_id":"metz-s-t-lp","title":"Metz s\/t lp","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ciframe src=\"https:\/\/bandcamp.com\/EmbeddedPlayer\/album=168974647\/size=small\/bgcol=ffffff\/linkcol=0687f5\/transparent=true\/\" style=\"border: 0; width: 100%; height: 42px;\"\u003e\u003c\/iframe\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMetz s\/t lp\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCanada’s METZ are a return to everything that’s good about loud, ecstatic live music; a frantic nod to Nation of Ulysses, Shellac, The Pixies, The Jesus Lizard, and Public Image Ltd. at their most vicious, while carving out some heavy new business. METZ have been around for over three years, sharing stages with Mission of Burma, Mudhoney, Oneida, and NoMeansNo. METZ, the band’s self-titled and formidable debut full-length was produced by the band and recorded by Graham Walsh (Holy Fuck) and Alexandre Bonenfant. Both live and here on this record, METZ articulate with deafening clarity what we’ve known for some time: The world of good music needs a new power trio, and this is it.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sub Pop","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50709102887204,"sku":"","price":24.5,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/2606\/0952\/files\/metz_4550250e-dce5-4b83-92b0-4b72de9c8051.jpg?v=1749137476"},{"product_id":"sunny-day-real-estate-lp2-s-t-2xlp","title":"Sunny Day Real Estate - LP2 (s\/t) 2xlp","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ciframe src=\"https:\/\/bandcamp.com\/EmbeddedPlayer\/album=2056475967\/size=small\/bgcol=ffffff\/linkcol=0687f5\/transparent=true\/\" style=\"border: 0; width: 100%; height: 42px;\"\u003e\u003c\/iframe\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSunny Day Real Estate - LP2 (s\/t) 2xlp\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Delivering on the promise Sunny Day Real Estate showed on their 1994 debut Diary, the following year's LP2 (a.k.a. The Pink Album, for its entirely pink cover) also felt like a posthumous work left by a brilliant writer. Shortly after recording LP2, the band spontaneously imploded: Enigk emerged born-again as a Christian, and the rhythm section, Nate Mendel and William Goldsmith, headed off to join Dave Grohl in Foo Fighters, seemingly sabotaging that once-limitless future. As tragic as the turn of events was for fans, the album proved how special the band was and underscored just how lamentable their too-early demise was. From its first ringing guitar tone to its abrupt conclusion, LP2 is a masterpiece of emotion and evocation, a sprawling musical soundscape that moves effortlessly from tender, unsteady sonic explorations to raging assaults of guitars. At all times, it seems heartbreakingly fragile and moody, ready to spin apart at the apex of one of the band's guitar frenzies or fold in on itself when the music turns serene. There are plenty of both such moments, all of which come together to produce lovely, resplendent songs like \"Friday,\" \"5\/4,\" \"8,\" and \"J'Nuh,\" made all the more breathtaking by Enigk's alternately tortured and delicate vocals. It's sometimes difficult to make out what he is warbling about, but the intent seems obvious. LP2 wears all of its affectations and passions on its sleeve and has a lump in its throat; in the process, it also creates the same sort of longing and desire in the listener. Few post-grunge bands were able to make their tortured souls sound so viscerally appealing, and few albums of the mid-'90s strike as poignant a note as this tour de force.\" - Stanton Swihart \/ All Music\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sub Pop","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50726705856804,"sku":"","price":29.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/2606\/0952\/files\/sunnyday.jpg?v=1749748328"},{"product_id":"nirvana-sliver-dive-7-record","title":"Nirvana – Sliver \/ Dive 7\" record","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ciframe width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/QECJ9pCyhns?si=GMsQ0rClE9dvzRwB\" title=\"YouTube video player\"\u003e\u003c\/iframe\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNirvana – Sliver \/ Dive 7\" record\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRivers Cuomo, of the American alternative rock band Weezer, cited \"Sliver\" as the song that made the biggest impact on his life in his early 20s, and shared his memory of hearing it for the first time in a 2015 Pitchfork interview: \"It was just one of those things where, by the time it got through the first chorus, I was just running around the store ... [It] had the simplicity of the Velvet Underground in the structure and the chords ... [and] the melody and the major chord progression of the pop music I love, like ABBA, but also this sense of destructiveness ... and it came out in this new hybrid style.\" - From Wikipedia\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sub Pop","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50750399414564,"sku":"","price":10.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/2606\/0952\/files\/nirvanasliver.jpg?v=1750350060"},{"product_id":"deep-sea-diver-billboard-heart-lp","title":"Deep Sea Diver - Billboard Heart LP","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ciframe src=\"https:\/\/bandcamp.com\/EmbeddedPlayer\/album=1655265007\/size=small\/bgcol=ffffff\/linkcol=0687f5\/transparent=true\/\" style=\"border: 0; width: 100%; height: 42px;\"\u003e\u003c\/iframe\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDeep Sea Diver - Billboard Heart LP\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the middle of July 2023 in a Los Angeles studio, Deep Sea Diver mastermind Jessica Dobson took a guitar solo but somehow felt nothing. Just days earlier, her Seattle band played a series of semi-secret shows for devotees at a hometown bar, de facto rehearsals for cutting a new record. The sets had gone well, but, almost immediately, the sessions didn’t. The songs’ essence seemed muddled, Dobson’s conviction lost somewhere in the 1,000 miles between Southern California and the home studio she shares with partner, drummer, and frequent cowriter Peter Mansen. On that first night in Los Angeles, she broke down, wondering what she was doing there, what her band could do to fix it. For the first time ever, Deep Sea Diver retreated, heading home without an album. Did they need to scrap it all, to begin again with new material? \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNot at all: Following a brief break, Dobson found a renewed sense of self, a trust in her vision for her band and songs and her ability to capture them. After that Los Angeles hiccup, longtime collaborator Andy Park asked Dobson how the new stuff was going over an early fall dinner. She admitted she needed help. In that humbling confession, she soon found ways of working that helped her reimagine and reinvigorate Deep Sea Diver and led directly to the power and brilliance of Billboard Heart, Deep Sea Diver’s fourth album and first for Sub Pop. It is a coup, a triumph over self-doubt in which what first felt like failure became an opportunity to find new freedom, belief, and strength. You can hear it in each of these 11 songs, the beating heart that makes everything here feel like a new anthem for finding your own way forward. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe cocksure Bad Seeds swagger of “Shovel,” the tender mercies of “Loose Change,” the serpentine machinations of “Let Me Go,” where Dobson tangles with fellow guitar dynamo Madison Cunningham: Billboard Heart immediately puts Deep Sea Diver in the company of St. Vincent, TV on the Radio, and Flock of Dimes, bands that have found newly ornate and magnetic ways to make indie rock by discarding notions of how it must sound or what it must say. Dobson punches through her past here. As she howls during Billboard Heart’s rapturous title track, she is “welcoming the future by letting go of it.” \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eExactly three years before Dobson’s galvanizing dinner with Park, Deep Sea Diver issued its third album, 2020’s Impossible Weight, via ATO, the colossal indie imprint that has helped My Morning Jacket, Alabama Shakes, and King Gizzard build careers across the last quarter-century. It was a significant step up for a band that had self-released its first two LPs. The surge of resources resulted in a groundswell of exposure, even a spot on Billboard charts. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat success, though, caused Dobson to doubt her impulses, to begin thinking about what an idea’s impact or reception might be as much the strength of the idea itself. During this period of second-guessing, she and Mansen sat near the wide windows of their Seattle living room, with her on piano as he hammered a guitar nearby. “See in the Dark”—a song about coveting your own notions, despite the occasional sense they’re slipping away—emerged in that single sitting, its gothic elegance and pop grandeur proffering a blueprint for what else could come.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat moment of domestic creation proved essential for several reasons. Before Impossible Weight, Dobson and Mansen wrote many of Deep Sea Diver’s songs together; this was a return to that bond, which carried over to more than half of Billboard Heart. What’s more, the pair began recording more at home, too. They borrowed microphones and a small clutch of essential gear to capture guitars and vocals in their basement. When talks later began in earnest with Park following the Los Angeles debacle, Dobson began revisiting those earlier recordings, realizing that she had captured so much of that ineffable spark at home, where the atmosphere was of her own design. Mansen and Park helped convince her these weren’t just good enough to use but riveting in their realness. These early versions became templates and blueprints to build upon and frame, plus a way for Dobson to believe again in the material and, most important, herself.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd from end to end, the material on Billboard Heart is astonishing. The title track is the one song Deep Sea Diver actually finished in Los Angeles. It’s a radiant and magnificent thing, the billowing synths of member Elliot Jackson and tunneling pedal steel of guest Greg Leisz pushing up an anthem for fearlessly advancing into the future, as best you can. “Emergency” links hardcore’s famous vim to electroclash’s instant allure, Dobson’s italicized voice racing like a gust of wind. Her brief guitar solo at the end is an all-timer, a few hiccupping notes suddenly moving like a sports car in terrifyingly tight corners. Tender and vulnerable, “Tiny Threads” is a sweeping anthem for anyone trying to hold anything together—life, love, themselves. “If it haunts me, let it haunt me,” Dobson sings softly over a stillness framed only by bass and noise. She lets her guitar careen into feedback, then steadily sculpts it into something tuneful. It’s a lifetime of anxiety and sublimation, crystallized into 10 seconds. Billboard Heart feels that way at large.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor a minute there, Dobson let that mix of art and commerce we call the music industry cloud her judgment and interfere with her impulses, a common enough story for anyone whose decades of work suddenly yield success. She found her way out of that wormhole by embracing newness, whether that meant practicing songwriting as if it were collegiate homework, believing in her skills recording at home, or playing bass herself because the band had blown so much money during those aborted Los Angeles sessions. (N.B. The big but elastic bass lines are a consistent highlight here, so: good choice.) \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMostly, she let go of the fear that comes when we think about our jobs, no matter what they are, and remembered that making music is less work than a way of reckoning and playing with the world, of healing and finding other ways forward. Billboard Heart emerged when Dobson trusted her instincts, a personal breakthrough that prompted an artistic one. It is, in turn, the best Deep Sea Diver album yet, a defiant and brilliant exclamation mark at the end of a long period of wandering. \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sub Pop","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50765937574180,"sku":"","price":24.5,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/2606\/0952\/files\/dsd.jpg?v=1750953540"},{"product_id":"omni-networker-lp","title":"Omni – Networker LP","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ciframe style=\"border: 0; width: 100%; height: 42px;\" src=\"https:\/\/bandcamp.com\/EmbeddedPlayer\/album=1796313983\/size=small\/bgcol=ffffff\/linkcol=0687f5\/transparent=true\/\"\u003e\u003c\/iframe\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOmni – Networker LP\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Enter Networker, the new album by Omni and first with indie giant Sub Pop Records. Their sound is still defined by sparse drums, locked-in bass, blistering guitar, and nonchalant, yet assured vocals, but from the first notes of \"Sincerely Yours\" you'll immediately notice that Networker sounds much cleaner and more \"HI-FI\" than their prior two albums, Deluxe (2016) and Multi-task (2017). The departure in fidelity suits the new record and allows the listener to enjoy the nuances of their meticulous arrangements. Don't worry, the riffs of Gang of Four and Wire are still present, but the production is more lush and the harmony is even more expansive. Despite nods to the sounds of the ’70s and ’80s what comes through is a record fully rooted in the here and now. Thematically, this is apparent on the title track \"Networker\" taking a candid snapshot of the “digital you” aspect of life in the age of the internet. The otherwise fun romp “Skeleton Key” also acknowledges the “direct message and obsessive” side of social media with lines like “if you don't like what you see, the pretty face on the screen, scroll on by...”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNetworker was written half between tours and half during recording sessions. The band, Philip Frobos on bass\/vocals and Frankie Broyles on guitars\/drums\/keys, returned with longtime collaborator Nathaniel Higgins to the studio in South Georgia where they also recorded Multi-task and most recent single \"Delicacy.\" In this case, the “studio” is a cabin near Vienna, GA (pronounced Vye-anna) that was built by Frankie Broyles’ great-grandparents in the 1940s. The band completed four sessions between November 2018 and April 2019. Omni hit their stride in the cabin with songs such as \"Moat,” which cruises along at a nice mid-tempo clip with sounds that are maybe piano or maybe the “behind the bridge” strings of a Jaguar a la Sonic Youth or This Heat. \"Blunt Force\" provides a nice contrast to some of the more upbeat cuts, getting jazzy with it’s less traditional arrangement and psychedelic outro.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOn “Courtesy Call,\" Omni successfully ride the line of being able to pleasantly reference influences without mimicking. They venture into experimental Haruomi Hosono territory while still managing to sound like Thin Lizzy. The same could be applied to “Sincerely Yours” where the fantastic guitar work and a beautiful breakdown in the middle dive into late 70’s jazz production. On standout cut \"Present Tense,\" Yellow Magic Orchestra vibes are present in the fun synthesizer riff while the guitar counterpoint checks this direction pulling the song back into something fresh, sharp, and definitely Omni.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOverall, Networker is simultaneously fun, catchy, and contains some truly impressive musicianship. This combo is especially hard to pull off as bands that are great players often don’t have great or memorable songs. Omni and Nathaniel Higgins have done a stellar job of reigning in their diverse influences into a cohesive record by curating their sounds into a tight package that leaves you just on the cusp of understanding where the band is coming from, while still feeling like you’re hearing something totally fresh. While their earlier records had more of a “post-punk” sound, Networker is an amalgamation of the best sounds of the ’70s and ’80s, all arranged with (mostly) guitars, bass, and drums for our contemporary age, and it really works! There are hooks everywhere, vocal and instrumental, that will leave you humming along, even during the first listen. As Philip Frobos says in “Present Tense,” “guess who’s on my mind right now?” Well, Omni’s on mine and will be on yours soon.\"  - Scott Munro, Preoccupations 2019 \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sub Pop","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50799338324260,"sku":null,"price":20.25,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/2606\/0952\/files\/omnisouv.jpg?v=1752160605"}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/2606\/0952\/collections\/subpop.jpg?v=1746713312","url":"https:\/\/www.stickfiguremailorder.com\/collections\/sub-pop-records.oembed?page=2","provider":"Stickfigure Mailorder","version":"1.0","type":"link"}