Parchman Farm
S/T
(Jackpine Social Club)

Check this shit out! Parchman Farm's new self-titled EP is one of the most rockin' things to come out of the Bay area in quite a while. The band comes straight outta that early '70s rock mentality that makes them sound like an American muscle car out cruising for action; imagine Blue Cheer with John Paul Jones on bass and Alice Cooper at the helm, now multiply that by a hundred. They are revolution rock for the new revolution.

The whole EP is badass, but especially "Too Many People" and "Say Yeah" (can anyone say more cowbell?!). Prominently displayed, Carson Binks' bass does indeed "butter your ass," as the band's bio promises. Allyson Baker's searingly fuzzy guitar work and Chris LeBreche's pounding drum sound are only matched by Eric Shea's high-energy vocals. The combination of these four, especially live, is a force to be reckoned with. Do yourself a favor and pick this bad boy up.

- Paul Ohlhaver

The Soft Pink Truth
Do You Want New Wave or Do You Want the Soft Pink Truth?
(Tigerbeat 6)

From ambient music's roots in classical to jazz's longstanding flirtation with electronic sounds, most tastes can find a parallel within the synthesized realm; punk is no exception. The punk/electronic connection is outed completely on this second offering from Soft Pink Truth.

Drew Daniel (half of Matmos, co-conspirator on numerous other projects) and friends run amok reinterpreting tunes originally seething with disenfranchisement and alienation, replacing anger with groove and biting sarcasm with cool irony. The contrast between the originals and these reinterpreted versions is significant; punk's cynicism becomes more obvious, while the reactionary vitriol in the angry punk guitars and shouted vocals becomes so cold and calculated here that it's a little disturbing, especially removed from its original political context.

The biggest irony may be who gets into this album: Old punks looking into electronica probably won't like it; with no guitars, it'll sound too much like disco to their jaded ears. Electronica fans, in turn, may have difficulty with the political, antisocial, and violent lyricism and run back instead to safe old house music with its apolitical feelgood-ism. No, the audience most likely to get this is the electroclash kids, who'll find its tongue-in-cheek danceability and bleak minimalism perfectly contemporary.

- Eric Becker

Tarentel
We Move Through Weather
(Temporary Residence)

It is too simple to say that Tarentel's latest release, We Move Through Weather, only takes its cues from the meteorological. The album's tracks, vacillating between sweetly sonorous and bombastic, move the listener through biorhythms that the animate and inanimate share - resonations, repetitions, whooshes, hums, ticks, scratches and squeals. Tarentel weave tape loops, keyboard passages, string arrangements, and forceful percussion into pieces that are grandiose and symphonic at moments, pensive and looming at others.

"Bump Past, Cut Up Through Windows" is a shining work, particularly when accompanied by its video, shot by local filmmaker Paul Clipson. The combination of the audio and visual is sumptuous and ingeniously simple. A melancholy piano is juxtaposed against an assertive yet meditative drum track; the interplay with Clipson's Super 8 visuals of lush foliage is enough to leave one in awe, as do many of We Move Through Weather's other offerings. Crisply mixed, studious and respectful in its approach to the sounds that the band has carefully included, Tarentel's latest provides a variety of works that elegantly evokes spaces, textures and states far beyond the confines of its compositions.

- Trina Lopez