Numero present ’90s shoegaze band Should’s ’98 debut ‘Feed Like Fishes’ + 10 period bonus tracks.
The folks in Phoenix’s Half String talked up this trio when they were Austin, TX’s shiFt (before they moved north to various universities and gave up their name because of another band called Shift). And it’s easy to see why: Should would have fit perfectly into Arizona’s former “beautiful noise,” post-dream pop scene.
Even without the interestingly sedate but grasping cover of the Wedding Present’s “Spangle” (and, on another record, 18th Dye’s “Merger”), their sound makes it apparent that they can match the English in pairing inventive, modern guitars to lulling tunes for nighttime singing. You could see “Sarah Missing” appearing on a Slowdive…
Tag Archive: Numero Group
Vazz formed in Glasgow during the early ’80s, and initially consisted of vocalist/lyricist Anna Howson and multi-instrumentalist Hugh Small. With Howson’s ethereal harmonies floating over Small’s sparse drum machines and mysterious guitar hooks, the duo’s music fell somewhere between coldwave, post-punk, and dream pop. The five-song mini-album Your Lungs and Your Tongues (released in 1986 by Cathexis Recordings, also home to records by Fini Tribe and Pink Industry) was one of a handful of vinyl releases the pair made before splitting up near the end of the decade. As Small resurfaced during the 2010s with solo piano and ambient compositions, Vazz’s scant ’80s discography was rediscovered and revived in several different configurations…
San Diego in the ’90s was a great place to be if you were a weird punk kid. A conservative Navy town on the surface, the hardcore underground churned out innovative bands at a furious clip, with the bleeding edge of the scene revolving around Gravity Records and its standard-bearers, Heroin and Antioch Arrow. Balancing nihilistic fervor with a ragged poetic sensibility, these bands transmuted post-adolescent angst into timeless invectives against boredom and apathy. After Heroin broke up in 1993, guitarist Scott Bartoloni joined with vocalist Matt Goldsby, bassist Ryan Noel, and drummer Mario Rubalcaba to form Clikatat Ikatowi. Combining the intensity of hardcore with the epic soundscapes of local noise rock exemplars Drive Like Jehu, Clikatat Ikatowi quickly…
The Numero Group kicked off their 200 line of titles in 2017 with Savage Young Dü, an unprecedented archival dive into the early works of Minneapolis punk trio Hüsker Dü. Fifty entries later in that chapter of the label’s discography, Numero has a new Dü title that takes a special look at what may be their most pivotal year as a band.
1985: The Miracle Year is a 2CD that chronicles the group’s biggest gambles yet, through the filter of their blistering live shows. Kicking off with a powerful 23-song local set at First Avenue not even a month into that year and following through with another 20 tracks recorded around the globe over the next nine months, The Miracle Year offers an alternate path through the year that saw the group issue third and fourth albums…
Rescued after 40 years, Húsker Dú’s near-mythical homecoming set at Minneapolis’s First Avenue club (where much of Purple Rain was filmed) has been properly mixed and mastered at last.
At one stage, this performance was expected to emerge. The band had recorded the set to 24-track tape at the time, expecting to release it as a live album later in the year. But their star rose rapidly and priorities shifted – the tapes were shelved, pending a further look, and in 2011 when a house fire destroyed a huge portion of the Hüsker Dü archive, it was assumed to have burned. Thankfully the tapes have been saved and restored completely by Electrical Audio, so we can finally get to hear how the band were shaping up before ‘New Day Rising’ and ‘Flip Your Wig’…
Lodestar is a reissue of the rare 1974 album by the American band Lodestar, released by Numero Group, renowned for its archival projects. The music blends elements of folk-rock, psychedelia, and country, creating an atmospheric sound emblematic of the 1970s underground scene.
Tracks like Who Are You stand out with melancholic acoustic melodies, delicate guitar arrangements, and introspective lyrics. The song “Who Are You” performed by Lodestar appears as Track 4 on the compilation album Cosmic American Music: Motel California, released in October 2024 by Numero Group. The album transports listeners to an era of independent musicians, reflecting a spirit of freedom and experimentation, making it a valuable discovery for fans of Cosmic American Music.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Champaign/Urbana, IL, gained some notoriety as a college town with a surprisingly great independent music scene (along the lines of Athens, GA) — one of the bands that pioneered and set the tone for the town’s scene in the ’80s was the Vertebrats, whose occasionally wonderful post-punk tunes gained enough recognition for the Replacements to cover one of them.
A Thousand Day Dream, released through the C/U label Parasol, collects a great deal of the band’s recordings, some of which is semi-brilliant and some of which is not — the band takes its Clash, Rockpile, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Ramones, and Neil Young influences into the sort of American post-punk territory (Replacements,…
Numero Group’s terrific Eccentric Soul series are studies in early soul, rock and roll, R&B, and pop, much of which is obscure and largely forgotten to time. The most recent installment of the series showcases the Cobra Records label, an establishment founded in San Antonio by Abraham “Abe” Epstein, sometime record producer and real estate mogul.
As is Numero’s wont, The Cobra Label is a finely-packaged double LP with extensive liner notes featuring label and band histories and ephemera. And the music herein is a wonderful overview of Cobra’s oeuvre. Beginning with Sonny Ace & The Twisters’ take on “Wooleh Booleh,” The Cobra Label runs through 28 tracks, from the label’s 1961 debut release, The Royal Jesters with…
Numero’s flagship Eccentric Soul series is effectively remapping the American soul diaspora. Each compilation explores, a US city’s smallest time hooks and would-be world beaters tossed into the glutted big-hole record sea of the ’60s and ’70s.
Among presidential hopefuls and future astronauts, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, located in Greensboro, was a hotbed of black excellence, activism, and raw talent. At the helm of a half-dozen labels, local yokel Walter Grady assembled a rotating cast of townies, homecoming queens, and big men on campus to manifest a scintillating sound that was both homegrown and revolutionary. Eccentric Soul: The Linco Label compiles melodic milestones from the birthplace of the civil rights movement.