Tag: Durham NC

New Audio: North Carolina’s Booster Club Shares a Power Pop Anthem

RaleighDurham-based indie outfit Booster Club features a collection of grizzled North Carolina scene vets: Steven Bailey (vocals, guitar), who has had stints with Indiobravo, The Jaded Rakes, Paloma and Waxing Myrna; Alan Levine (bass), who has played with Bob Funck Band, Coytah, and Indiobravo; and Joey Zielazinski (drums), who had had stints with Secretary Pool and The Softeners.

Formed back in 2021, the self-described “college rock revival” band specializes in a sound that’s clearly indebted to The Replacements, Pixies, Hüsker Dü and the like — and yet the material, which they deliver with an authentic fervor, “fueled by death anxiety and caffeine,” manages to stand on its own. Despite sharing some common aesthetics with pre-internet college radio artists, the band takes on forward-leaning sensibilities that allows them to veer from anthemic hooks to art-rock chaos — within the same song.

The band presents their music “warts and all” partially due to a lack of audio editing ability but mostly because the band’s Steven Bailey frequently invents parts during sessions.

The Raleigh-Durham-based outfit’s latest single “Say It Out Loud” is an anthemic, college radio jam rooted in enormous hooks, fuzzy power chords and heart-proudly on-sleeve performances from old pros. At its heart, is a reminder that craft and earnestness is absolutely timeless whether you’re 20, 40 or 60 — and that this music thing is for the young, and the forever young at heart.

If you’ve been following JOVM for the past month or so, you may have come across a post or two on Silber Media’s experimental 5 in 5 project. The label, which is the label home of the Durham, […]

The primary members of Hiss Golden Messenger, the Durham, NC-based singer/songwriter M.C. Taylor and the Brooklyn-based multi-instrumentalist and recordist Scott Hirsch have been playing music together for almost two decades, and their fifth full-length effort, Lateness […]

Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings are not only at the forefront of the soul revivalist movement, and the act that put Daptone Records on the international stage as the primary purveyor of all things contemporary soul and […]

Neighborhood Veins marks two occasions – the first release from the Durham, NC-based band Schooner in quite some time, and the first national release from Durham/Raleigh, NC-based boutique label, Potluck Records. Why would it take […]

Cascine Records, a label that’s quickly become a favorite label of mine, recently released Kids in L.A. the latest effort from the duo of Kisses. The duo is on an East Coast tour which includes […]

!!! (pronounced chk! chk! chk!) recently released their fifth full-length album, Thr!!!er through Warp Records. Just before they’re about to embark on a three month-long tour to support the new effort – with stops in Cambridge, […]

“Zombies” is the second single from the Portland, OR-based band Radiation City’s upcoming Tender Loving Empire Records release, Animals in the Median, and what i love about this song is that it sounds like it was […]