RecommNeds | Little Barrie, Mystic Braves & Spanish Gold

You can stream this week’s RecommNeds and previous featured releases through these handy RDIO and Spotify playlists as part of the JamBase channels for each.

Make some room in that garage…

Little Barrie : Shadow

I believe my first installment of RecommNeds featured a favorite discovery of mine, Little Barrie, from London. Well, happy to report that Barrie Cadogan is back with a follow-up to the excellent King of the Waves, somehow topping that effort with Shadow. This one is some brilliant power-trio rock and roll: vicious, raw and hair-raising, a modern-day Cream. Shadow is one of those albums that has me wondering: why isn’t everyone talking about this? If you fancy yourself a fan of high-octane rock music, don’t sleep on Little Barrie.

Spotify: Little Barrie – Shadow
Rhapsody: Little Barrie – Shadow

Mystic Braves : Desert Island

From Los Angeles, I present Mystic Braves, playing a very Los Angeles brand of garage-born psych-rock. Reverberating guitars, organ, sunshine, long hair and trippy album art work, the whole package is here, you can pretty much smell the smoke while listening to their newest, Desert Island. While all the clichés checkboxes are marked, the music is damn good: each track a shaggy, lovable three-minute rocker from another era.

Spotify: Mystic Braves – Desert Island
Rhapsody: Mystic Braves – Desert Island
Bandcamp: Mystic Braves – Desert Island

Spanish Gold : South of Nowhere

Not sure if we’re calling this a side project or a supergroup or what, but whatever category, the new band, Spanish Moon, has come into this world ready to rock. The band features Dante Schwebel formerly of Hacienda and City and Colour, Adrian Quesada from Grupo Fantasma and Patrick Hallahan from My Morning Jacket, and their origin story has a very ad hoc feel to it. Regardless of how they came together, their debut album, South of Nowhere, is a revelation, one killer song after another. It’s always interesting to see what members of different bands bring to a group like this, the little details and flourishes and bits of sound; sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. Here it all definitely works. If you haven’t already discovered gold, get panning.

Spotify: Spanish Gold – South of Nowhere
Rhapsody: Spanish Gold – South of Nowhere

Written By: Aaron Stein