It's our 10 year anniversary and drone metal legends EARTH are playing the shop with support from Esther Blue!

$20 Tix on sale Thurs 2/29!
doors 7
music 7:30
ALL AGES

EARTH

Over the course of their thirty trips around the sun, Earth has remained diligent in their commitment to monolithic minimalism. The sonic vocabulary may have changed—from their early years churning out seismic drone metal on albums like Earth 2 (1993) to the dusty Morricone-tinged comeback album Hex; Or Printing in the Infernal Method (2005) to the meditative rock approach of Primitive and Deadly (2014)—but the underlying principle of austerity and restraint remains a constant. With their latest album Full Upon Her Burning Lips, Earth purges the layers of auxiliary instrumentation that embellished some of their previous records and deconstructed their dynamic to the core duo of Dylan Carlson on guitar and bass and Adrienne Davies on drums and percussion. In the process, they tapped into the Platonic ideal of Earth—an incarnation of the long running band bolstered by the authority of purpose, where every note and every strike on the drum kit carries the weight of the world.

Full Upon Her Burning Lips opens with “Datura’s Crimson Veils”, a twelve-minute opus that adheres to Earth’s 21st century approach with Carlson’s sepia-toned Bakersfield Sound guitars lurching across a barren landscape while Davies punctuates the melodies with death knell drums. It’s a sound that harkens back to the riff-constructed vistas of their Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light albums, but stripped of their ornateness. “It was definitely a very organically developed record,” Carlson says of the process. “I limited the number of effects I used. I always like the limiting of materials to force oneself to employ them more creatively. Previous Earth records were quite lush sounding, and I wanted a more upfront and drier sound, using very few studio effects.” In less capable hands, these kinds of limitations might diminish the aural scope of the compositions, but Carlson and Davies have always thrived on reductive methods.

The stripped down approach had another advantage. “I really wanted the drums to be present,” Carlson says. “I felt with previous Earth records that other instrumentation took up so much of the sonic space that the drums were kind of pushed to the side.” This tactic helps highlight Davies’ ability to elevate the drum kit beyond its mere metronomic functions and allows it to serve as an expressive, nuanced, and tonally rich component to Earth’s arsenal of sound.

In addition to scaling back on their ranks, Earth altered their previous trajectory by entering into Full Upon Her Burning Lips without a conceptual arc to guide the process, relying instead on their collective subconscious to hone in on the overarching muse as the songs developed. “In the past I’ve usually had a strong framework for an album,” Carlson says. “This one developed over the course of writing and recording. It just felt like ‘Earth’—like just the two players doing their best work at playing, serving the music.” The absence of a pre-existing narrative guiding the compositions meant that the songs were more open and intuitive, often resulting in more terse musical vignettes like the richly harmonic “Exaltation of Larks” or the dreamily itinerant “Maidens Catafalque”. Yet subconscious impulses gradually created their own subtext for the album. “I wanted this to be a ‘sexy’ record, a record acknowledging the ‘witchy’ and ‘sensual’ aspects in the music… sort of a ‘witch’s garden’ kind of theme, with references to mind altering plants and animals that people have always held superstitious beliefs towards. A conjuror or root doctor’s herbarium of songs, as it were.”

The ten tracks on Full Upon Her Burning Lips came together in bits and pieces. Songs like “Cats on the Briar” and “Mandrake’s Hymn” stemmed from a handful of musical phrases and repeating patterns concocted in moments of downtime during their 2017 tour schedule. “Descending Belladonna” came from a live soundtrack project. Other songs came from rehearsals in the months leading up to recording or in moments of divine inspiration in the studio. The record was engineered, mixed, and mastered by longtime associate Mell Dettmer at Studio Soli. Knowing their process and their sound, Dettmer helped harness, shape, and document the songs in a manner that highlights the depth of Earth’s sparse components, capturing hidden dimensions much like the veiled images residing in the Magic Eye prints from the ‘90s. For the patient listener, the cyclical nature of the songs “She Rides an Air of Malevolence” or “An Unnatural Carousel” reveal new forms with repeated listens, with the subtle variations between passes creating a kaleidoscope of auditory activity.

Meta reboot tour 2023 is coming to Total Drag !

Acid Mothers Temple & The Melting Paraiso U.F.O.
+
My Education

doors 7
music 8

adv tix $16 (on sale Fri 2/3)
$20 at the door

Acid Mother's Temple

Formed in 1995 by Makoto Kawabata at the same time as the Acid Mothers Temple Soul Collective. The group released its debut album in 1997 on PSF Records (Japan), and it was selected as one of the year's best albums in the The Wire magazine (UK). In 1998 the group played their first tours of the US and Europe. Since then the group has released a huge number of albums on labels from many different countries. As of 2017, the group has released around 80 albums. Every year since 1998, they have toured extensively in the US and Europe, and more recently have started performing around Asia and in Japan too. The group has performed in collaboration with many musicians including psychedelic originators Gong and Guru Guru, Simeon (Silver Apples), Nik Turner (Hawkwind), and the Occitanian trad sinder Rosina de Peira. Japanese collaborators have included Afrirampo, Tatsuya Yoshida (Ruins), Maso Yamazaki (Masonna), Seiichi Yamamoto (Boredoms), Jun Kuriyama (The Ox), and many others.

To begin with the group had a floating line-up with contributions from many members of the AMT Soul Collective. But as tours became more frequent, the group began to coalesce around a core touring line-up. Other bands were created with Acid Mothers Temple as part of their name (AMT & The Cosmic Inferno, AMT SWR, AMT & The Space Paranoid, AMT & Infinity Rising Zero, Acid Mothers Gong, Acid Mothers Guru Guru, Acid Moon Temple, etc.), but AMT & The Melting Paraiso U.F.O. has continued to function as the mothership and main lineage for all our activities.

In 2016, 21 years since the group's founding, there was a major shift in the line-up and "Next Generation" was added to the name. We now view the first 20 years as chapter one in our story, and we are now turning the page to start chapter two.

The group played more than 100 shows in each year, toured in Europe, North America, South America, Oceania and Asia, also Japan. They also played many festivals (Glastonbury Festival in UK, Levitation in US and France, Rock In Opposition in France, Standon Calling in UK, Kuala Lumpur Experimental Film, Video & Music Festival in Malaysia, LUC fest 貴人散步音樂節 in Taiwan, etc).

During pandemic, they launched their official Bandcamp, have released more than 60 albums (including many unreleased materials), and have toured in Japan in each year. And they played the streaming festival “Levitation Sessions”. They organized “Acid Mothers Olympic 2021” against “Tokyo Olympics 2021”, they originated and played a new style of “music sports”.

My Education

Austin, Texas-based My Education formed in 1999 and have released eight full-length albums. The band's last album, Schiphol, was produced by Mike McCarthy (Spoon, Trail of Dead, Patty Griffin etc.) at Public HiFi studios in Austin.
The band’s new LP “Emka” was released on somewherecold records on October 14th, 2022. It is a trans-hemispheric collaboration that culminated in a week of ecstatic sessions at the famed Sonic Ranch studios in Tornillo, TX with Charles Godfrey (Swans, Trail of Dead, etc.) and mastered by Harris Newman (Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Eluvium, Besnard Lakes) at Grey Market Mastering.
“Emka” reflects the terrors of living in a world shaped by the last world war and the cold war that followed it.
My Education regularly tours the US and did 19 shows in 20 days in Europe in 2013. They have shared the stage with A Place to Bury Strangers, Kinski, Bardo Pond, Dalek, The Black Angels, The Sea and Cake, Warpaint, Alexander Hacke/Algis Kizys duo, the Psychedelic Furs, The Soundtrack of Our Lives, This Will Destroy You, and many more.

4/26/23
Tenci (CHICAGO)
Eli Show (solo acoustic)

$12 tix available now!
doors 7
music 8
ALL AGES

A well is a stone-encircled place of depth, keeping an abundance of water for survival. “Well” is also a phrase for pause, for transition in language. Our tears can well up and bubble over. To define ourselves as “well” is the most basic term of goodness.

What’s on the other side of the well? Inside the tunnel of change, or this life, we can either feel intimidated by the darkness of uncertainty, or excited by the possibility of nourishment. Songwriter, guitarist, and vocalist Jess Shoman wonders, “what the hell,” why don’t we go for the excess of love we deserve? Tenci’s album A Swollen River, A Well Overflowing becomes a gathering and collection of well-like vessels – cups, puddles, fists – to hold tight to this love and newfound joy.

A Swollen River, A Well Overflowing is Tenci’s second album, coming after their 2020 debut My Heart Is An Open Field, which introduced Jess Shoman’s music explorations to the world. Shoman admits that their first album dealt with letting go of painful life experiences, resulting in emptiness. In this recent collection of wiser years and distance from that former grief, Tenci carries an opposite feeling, a celebration of self-rejuvenation. A Swollen River, A Well Overflowing shows Shoman steering their inventive music further and wilder, spilling over with 12 fable-like songs. In a combination of milk, coins, glass, water, and light, each song forms a spell to “fill my heart back up,” Shoman says, “by reframing complex feelings by turning my head sideways and seeing them in a different way.”

From the close-knit Chicago scene, Shoman is joined by Curtis Oren on saxophone and guitar, Izzy Reidy on bass (Izzy True), and Joseph Farago on drums (Joey Nebulous). The years following My Heart is an Open Field saw the band playing shows together all over the country before regrouping in
Chicago to record A Swollen River with engineer Abby Black. While the themes of Tenci shuffle around a serious pool of thought, trying to understand life’s calamities, their live sets often feature an ample amount of goofy light-heartedness. Their playful interplay of loose drums and bass, huffing sax, and vocal waterfalls leave us warmer than before. The songs on A Swollen River, A Well Overflowing weave together like twigs to create that fire, a burning message to keep going.

The album begins with “Shapeshifter,” which Shoman says is about “piecing yourself together, shape-shifting into someone new,” and finding power in this new form. Setting the tone for the rest of the record, the brief song appears like a glimmering poem in darkness, unveiling an undeniable newness to their sound. “I’m a diamond ring / in a thick lagoon / Butterfly with clay-sewn wings,” sings Shoman. Like the transformation Shoman sings of, the track grows and morphs with stacked guitars and the harmonies of bandmates' voices.

Tenci’s sonic evolution is further reinforced by the upbeat immediacy of “Vanishing Coin.” Shoman’s soft and trilling vocals fuel the song’s imagery as a friendship vanishes and another well appears, as a wish from a coin tossed into that well never comes to fruition. “Two Cups” continues this interplay between folk and rock genres, as a tough and sweet guitar solo converses, “I won’t wait,” fizzling towards freedom. Unlike a public fountain, a personal cup can be filled on your own terms towards abundance.

Tenci’s songs on A Swollen River, A Well Overflowing often appear simplistic at first, then split off to unruly places of boiling self recognition. On “Sour Cherries,” the band starts simple and slow, introducing the brutal fruit of love and the theme of wanting excess: “don’t you think you’ve had enough?” As Tenci gets deeper and huskier, they dip into one of the album’s most exciting and unexpected sections.

Shoman explains the idea behind “The Ball Spins” as “watching the ball spin - as in the world - but also as mundane as a ball on the ground. The world burns with so much sadness and destruction and I am witnessing it in a very desensitized way.” Living during an ongoing pandemic, dangerous nationalism, and climate change, to name a few, can feel so painful, it’s numbing. Tenci attempts to create art out of that metaphorical car on fire outside. Instead of disassociating, Shoman hopes to find commonality in communal care.

Just as the band name Tenci comes from Shoman’s grandmother Hortencia, the legacy of family is woven into the album. “Swallow Me Whole, Blue” comes from Shoman’s mother’s memory of her childhood dog, Blue, who was poisoned by the neighborhood kids: “They threw a poison bone / it cast a spell on you.” Perhaps Shoman’s longing to protect and know Blue is the same longing to protect their family’s memories. The album closes with “Memories”: in a bare folk song, their guitar, and their memories, echoed by the audio of an old family video. The voices of parents, grandparents, and children filter in and out, fuzzy against the assertion of a “crystal clear picture.” “Memories” captures the feeling of “knowing that at the end of your life, you will have your memories to fill your heart,” Shoman says.

Tenci has traveled through a spout that leads to a restorative lake, finding a new place of compositional and lyrical complexity on A Swollen River, A Well Overflowing. All of this fullness bursts forth from words and ideas jotted in Shoman’s journal. The notebook’s cover is made from a repurposed children’s book titled “Great Big Elephant.” Shoman’s own writing often feels like a nursery rhyme, a naming of animals and clowns under your bed, a recipe for understanding life, and hopefully, each other.

GLOIN
+
Off Contact

doors 7
music 8

$10 adv $13 at the door
Tix on sale 2/3 11am

Gloin is a four-piece noise rock group from Toronto, Canada, known for their cathartic live sets and eclectic songwriting. Through bombastic rhythmic constructs, savvy arrangements and fervid melodies, their music spreads much like a tidal wave, positively and thoroughly flooding bystanding eardrums, the result of sheer entropic force harnessed through a “wall-of-sound Maelstrom” (Exclaim!) that is all at once jagged and sinuous. This sonic raz-de-marée reached new dizzying heights on debut album, We Found This, released on October 21st, 2022 via Mothland.

For their first full-length, Gloin elected to print their waves at Soleil Sound and Palace Recording, working alongside up-and-coming studio wizard Dylan Frankland of Tallies, later turning to Canadian music visionary Graham Walsh (Holy Fuck, METZ, Alvvays, etc.) for the mix. Mastering duties were the affair of Gavin Gardiner at All Day Coconut. Firmly entrenched within Toronto’s effervescent alternative music scene, both the process and the result speak volumes as to the city’s knack for bringing innovative leftfield music to new shores. Along its deep fluid grooves and patented “noise pop” envolées, the record tackles bewilderment, dread and anger, while also overflowing with a punk-like sense of self-determination. Moreso, it celebrates the quartet’s genuine love for beautifully dissident art.

Formed in 2018 by John Watson (Guitar, Vocals), Vic Byers (Bass, Vocals), Simon Kou (Drums) and Richard Garnham (Synthesizers), Gloin was at the onset a means to convey their shared passion for engaging and visceral live performance. After honing their craft amidst the underground scene, the longtime friends recorded and released Soft Monster, a debut EP that paved the way for invitations to music festivals like SXSW, Sled Island and New Colossus, opening slots for international acts such as The Brian Jonestown Massacre, A Place To Bury Strangers, Moon Duo and Bodega, and a handful of North American tours. Through and through, the energetic outfit has put precedence on delivering an unforgettable live experience, rife with improvisation and experimentation, the musicians always trusting their instincts that louder is certainly always better.

Following a slew of dates as the main support for Snapped Ankles, Gloin are back with We Found This (October 21st, 2022 via Mothland). Described by the band as “Talking Heads and Black Flag joining up to write an aggressive video game soundtrack”, this clever rawkus of a debut album is highly recommended for fans of Sonic Youth, Pixies and Iceage

Living Hour + Local TBA
Doors 7
Music 8

$10 // All Ages

Tix on sale 1/19 11am

Living Hour is Sam Sarty, Gilad Carroll, Adam Soloway, and Brett Ticzon. Someday Is Today, the group’s third full-length effort, features contributions from three producers: Melina Duterte (Jay Som, Chastity Belt), Jonathan Schenke (Parquet Courts, Snail Mail), and Samur Khouja (Cate le Bon, Regina Spektor).

Someday Is Today is Living Hour at their most pensive and longing. It was recorded over seven straight days during the depths of a Manitoba winter, with the band cocooned in sounds as the temperature hit -30 outside. “It’s a grind, and it’s incredibly challenging in a frustratingly beautiful kinda way,” Sarty says of their local environment. “It pushes you to keep going, to keep finding glimmers to move forward. A silver piece of wrapper sticking out a snowbank becomes your altar. The big grey sky gets me giddy.”

Sam Sarty’s lyrics – pulled from journals, iPhone notes, and napkin scribbles – come suffused with reflections on disassociation, human interactions with technology, and a poignant contemplation of life in liminal spaces.

The band’s sound grows to warm and earthy new perimeters on Someday Is Today with lush and generous instrumentation. The album thrives by keeping enough connection across its sonic and thematic palettes to feel like one cohesive world. The songs on Someday Is Today feel bound by something bigger than themselves; an energy that flourished in spite of it all, a human connection that grips just strongly enough even when pushed to its frayed, unreachable extremes.

Is it 2019 again?!
This line up played the shop way back and we are excited to get to relive it!

Vinyl Williams
Dendrons
Merry Martial
$10
tix available 1/19
doors 7
music 7:30

all ages!

Celestial music has a vastly unknown history, the phrase first being coined in the early 70s by Iasos, Greek-American musician who began studying Bossa Nova & Jazz, before he became enraptured by an ambient radio station that began playing in his head. Alan Watts, a friend of Iasos, was quoted in stating “Iasos makes the classical music of the new age” – which gave rise to the musical genre. Music pioneers like Laraaji have found their own center in expressing celestial music, emanating his own aspects of Eastern mysticism & unique forms of meditation, proven to make you bliss out f’days.

In the last few decades we’ve seen celestial music work its way into pop. Vinyl Williams is an LA-based artist that has a history of combining these subtle aspects into harmonious pop music & visionary artwork. Collaborating with like-minded self-producers such as Chaz Bear of Toro Y Moi, Morgan Delt, and Ruban Nielsen of UMO, he’s built a universe of palatial 3D environments, and recorded 5 albums to date. Now onto his 6th, Cosmopolis, Vinyl Williams leads those through his most detailed exoplanet experience thus far.

Coming from a long line of LA-based musicians, Williams follows the feelings of Love, Brian Wilson, Strawberry Alarm Clock, and producer/arrangers like Curt Boettcher and Burt Bacharach to create his own lush sunshine pop paradise. One can also easily notice the many inspirations of Brazilian masterminds such as Arthur Verocai, Lo Borges, Nelson Angelo, as well as British dream pop / shoegaze production of Robin Guthrie and A.R. Kane. The many-riveted layers create a rainbow arch of pure imagination.

Dendrons hit the road before they even knew exactly where they were headed. On New Year’s Day 2018, Dane Jarvie and Zak Sprenger first convened in Chicago to start a new project, recording a demo at home by the seat of their pants, and almost immediately after, began to play shows. “I would just email as many people as possible,” says Jarvie. “I’m like, ‘Can we open this?’ It didn’t matter if it was in Dallas or New Orleans or Sioux Falls, South Dakota. It was like, let’s go.”

With a band name chosen by flipping through books in the library (“Dendron” is Greek for “tree”) and a sound and lineup in healthy evolution as they bounced around North America, Dendrons were finding who they were in front of a live audience. Over the course of 2018 and 2019, they were developing a propulsive, acerbic rock style both reminiscent of midwestern peers like Deeper and Dehd and reaching beyond to develop an unmistakable aura all their own. They put out their debut, 2020’s Dendrons, and were packing their bags for a full European tour before it had to be abruptly canceled when borders closed and venues shut down around the world. Suddenly, a band that cut their teeth on the road had to get comfortable staying at home.

“It was out of necessity,” says Jarvie, who started brainstorming ideas for a new album back at his family’s home in Phoenix, Arizona, just after the pandemic took hold. When he returned to Chicago a few months later, the full band of Jarvie (vocals/guitar/synth), Sprenger (synth/guitar), Matt Kase (bass/synth/vocals), John MacEachen (guitar/samples), Nick Togliatti (drums), and Stef Roti (drums) formed a bubble to get together and work out what would prove to be their highly ambitious and meticulously crafted second album, 5-3-8. “It was just like, well, we can’t tour, we can’t do anything,” Jarvie remembers. “So we might as well just stick together and really create something.”

Meeting three or four times a week, and ultimately rehearsing almost 40 song ideas, Dendrons began to methodically whittle down the batch to a set of songs that weaved through one another intricately, with lyrical and musical motifs dancing around a swirling rock arrangement. Taken on their own, tracks like “Vain Repeating” and “Octaves Only” tap into the manic energy and wit of bands like Wire and Stereolab—but in the context of the album’s full vision, they come together to paint an album informed by post-truth spectacle, and a desire for optimism in the face of isolation.

The lyrics paint those emotions with subtlety, having been put together partially through a cut-up method, grabbing words and phrases from places such as CNN and CSPAN. “That was a real intention with this record was to try different techniques in terms of how words are coming together—stringing together sentences through collage,” Jarvie explains. On “New Outlook 1,” he sings in his direct, almost Stephen Malkmus-like style: “Soon we’ll be stooped over laughing / Watching ourselves high on a vision.”

When it came time to record 5-3-8—the title being a reference to the lyrical refrain that appears at a few points of the album of “Fifths, thirds, octaves only”— Dendrons decamped to Sonic Ranch in Tornillo, Texas, and did additional recording at Highland Recording Studio in Phoenix, Arizona, producing the album with Tony Brant and Sonny DiPerri. A far cry away from where they started as two friends doing everything themselves, from the recording to the booking to even the graphic design, the band is now an eagerly collaborative project. And they’re already thinking about what’s to come.

“You’re always gonna leave a record feeling like there is something more to be said,” Jarvie says. “I don’t believe in a magnum opus. Art is contextual, and exists for the specific time and circumstance it was created in. Every record is a conversation with the last.”

Since 2014, Williams has recorded his albums at Non Plus Ultra, one of LA’s last underground music strongholds. You’ll probably see him on a Friday or Saturday night running sound & visuals. His studio’s filled with a barrage of communal music gear, loaned tape machines and synths, making a funky-yet-simple recording setup. The sound he gets is definitely his own distinct textural landscape, turning Casio’s into orchestras and guitars into full choirs, the simple boundaries create the sonic complexities.

Local band The Disarmed have released their latest record on vinyl and we are celebrating!
Red Maker will be opening
doors 7
music 8
all ages $5

August 1st at TOTAL DRAG!!

Death Valley Girls AND Holy Wave on the same bill!!!

Tickets on sale Friday June 3rd & available at Total Drag (307 E. 12th St. Downtown Sioux Falls SD) or by calling 605-521-6439

DEATH VALLEY GIRLS
Rock n’ roll has always served as a means to elevate the fringe of society, though it’s accentuated the plights of the outcasts and misfits in different ways throughout the years. In its infancy, rock was a playful rebuttal against segregation and Puritanism. In the ‘60s, it became a vehicle for an elevated consciousness. In the years following the Summer of Love and the clampdown on Flower Power, that countercultural spirit adopted the aggravated and occasionally nihilistic edge of bands like The Stooges, Black Sabbath, MC5, and The New York Dolls. And then as the ‘80s approached, popular rock n’ roll turned into a relatively benign celebration of hedonism and decadence, but that contingent of dark mystics from the ‘70s who lifted the veil and used music as a means of rallying people to altered planes had left their mark. It was an undercurrent in rock that would never die, but would percolate in corners of the underground. Today we can see it manifest in LA’s Death Valley Girls.

The group feels less like a band and more like a travelling caravan. At their core, vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Bonnie Bloomgarden and guitarist Larry Schemel channel Death Valley Girls’ modern spin on Fun House’s sonic exorcisms, early ZZ Top’s desert-blasted riffage, and Sabbath’s occult menace. Their relentless touring schedule means that the remainder of the group is rounded out by whichever like-minded compatriots can get in the van. On their third album Darkness Rains, bassist Alana Amram, drummer Laura Harris, and a rotating cast of guests like Shannon Lay, The Kid (Laura Kelsey) and members of The Make Up, The Shivas, and Moaning help elevate the band from their rogue beginnings to a communal ritualistic musical force. On the surface level, Death Valley Girls churn out the hypercharged, in the red, scuzzy rock every generation yearns for, but there is a more subversive force percolating beneath the surface that imbues the band with an exhilarating cosmic energy.

Death Valley Girls’ sophomore album Glow In The Dark was based on the concept that many of us are trying to become more enlightened, and you can tell by the way they ‘glow in the dark.’ Darkness Rains goes a step further, attempting to shift the consciousness of those that have not yet considered how we are all connected and how that relates to the way we view life beyond death. Those that ‘glow’ can use the songs on Darkness Rains as new chants—or they can be used for pure entertainment. “Songs come from beyond and other worlds, you just have to tune into the right radio wave signal to dial them in. Our signal happens to be in a 1970 Dodge Charger Spaceship,” says Schemel.

Album opener “More Dead” is a rousing wake up call, with a hypnotic pentatonic guitar riff and an intoxicating blown-out fuzz-wah solo underscoring Bloomgarden’s consciousness-rattling proclamation that you’re “more dead than alive.” The pace builds with “(One Less Thing) Before I Die”, a minute-and-a-half distillate of Detroit’s classic proto-punk sound. But at track three, Death Valley Girls hit their stride with “Disaster (Is What We’re After)”, a gritty, swaggering rager that takes the most boisterous moments off Exile On Main Street and beefs it up with Zeppelin’s devil’s-note blues. Darkness Rains retains its intoxicating convocations across ten tracks, climaxing on an astral plane with the hypnotic guitar drones and cult-like chants of “TV In Jail On Mars.”

“Learn from the stars and beyond! Be happy and thankful we got to live together on Earth at the same time! And death is just a shift—stay alive and awake,” Bloomgarden and Schemel respond when asked for a final thought on Death Valley Girls. “Embrace the darkness and don’t fear the Reaper.” Suicide Squeeze Records is proud to further the cause by releasing Darkness Rains on October 5th, 2018 on LP/CD/CS/ and digital formats. The first vinyl pressing is limited to 1,500 copies. Both the cassette and vinyl include digital downloads.

HOLY WAVE
Holy Wave is an experimental dream-pop band originally from El Paso, Texas. After seeing a life-altering performance by My Bloody Valentine in 2008, the band moved to Austin to pursue their own vision of Texas psych, their sweet melodies dyed in carefully constructed noise.
Over the course of four albums, the band have cemented themselves as a staple force in the international indie scene, with key performances at Levitation, Desert Daze, and nearly every psych gathering on the planet. They’ve toured the world, and shared the stage with heroes such as Slowdive, Spiritualized, Hope Sandoval and The Black Angels. Their body of work has received critical acclaim from Pitchfork, Consequence of Sound, Paste Magazine and countless others, and in 2020 they are prepared to release their latest body of work.
Interloper sees the band adding new layers to their lush and mesmerizing songwriting style. Written about the duality between life at home and life on the road, it sees the band expanding on their most esoteric and thought-provoking themes. “I’m Not Living in the Past Anymore” is a mantra about breaking the cycle of the mundane, “Escapism” is a dream-like meditation. “Interloper” serves as the centerpiece for this self-expanding record, asking, what happens when the world beneath your feet changes so much that you feel like a stranger in your own shoes? The band turns inward, to blissed-out moments on album opener “Schmetterling”, the saccharine haze of “R&B”, and the freak-out catharsis of live favorite “Buddhist Pete”.
With Interloper Holy Wave weaves together a contemplative tapestry that can serve as a road map for the diffident, a soundtrack to self-realization, or simply an invitation to escape.

LIVE VIDEOS

“Adult Fear”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLr2dYTwsUE

“Western Playland”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKc6h_L496A

MUSIC VIDEOS

“Crys”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igwSgI7G4Xg

“California Took My Bobby Away”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbXZo0U_LCE

PRESS

“Austin five-piece Holy Wave is certainly dreamy in a sense, but theirs is the kind of dream that’s more vivid than blurry, more present than passing.” - Consequence of Sound

“They've got the far-off, dreamy vocal wash of the shoegazers, but their guitars and hooks are anything but subtle” - Pitchfork

Adult Fear Review
https://www.thesouthernsounding.com/.../album-review-holy...
Freaks of Nurture Review
http://post-trash.com/.../holy-wave-freaks-of-nurture...
Relax Review
https://www.pastemagazine.com/.../01/holy-wave-relax.html

Doors at 7pm - Music at 8pm
ALL AGES WELCOME!
be rad

11 am door/showtime!

Folk/punk icon FRANK TURNER plays a FREE SHOW in Sioux Falls @ Total Drag
as a part of his Never-Ending Tour of Everywhere - 50 states in 50 days!

LIKE them on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/frankturnermusic
https://www.facebook.com/totaldragrecords
https://www.facebook.com/theceu

www.frank-turner.com
www.totaldragrecords.com
www.collectiveeffortsunion.com

MONDAY JULY 11TH!!

Frankie & The Witch Fingers return to Total Drag for another fuzz soaked night of psychedelia
They're bringing their friends Hot Garbage in support!

Tickets on Sale Friday April 29th at 11AM!!
$15 in advance
Available at Total Drag (307 E. 12th St. Sioux Falls SD) or by calling 605-521-6439 during shop hours!

Doors at 7pm - Music at 8pm
ALL AGES WELCOME!

If you tune your ears to the cracks in the San Andreas and listen in for the world gurgling grind, you might come close to the tectonic thunder that’s been beaming out of L.A. for the past few years under the banner of Frankie and the Witch Fingers. Hashed and hardened in the Midwest Indy enclave of Bloomington and catching the ear of the Chicago psych contingent with their early singles, the band headed West around the same time that the crew at Permanent put up shop in the Golden State. With records spread across labels like Hypnotic Bridge, Permanent, Greenway, and The Reverberation Appreciation Society, the band has been an ever-evolving force of rhythm-ripped rock 'n roll pummel ever since. Anchored by songwriters Dylan Sizemore and Josh Menashe, the band has kept a rotating door of friends and collaborators moving through their midst along the way, with each bringing their own particular melt to the mountain of sound the Witch Fingers maintain.

Following the ambitious arc of their opus Monsters Eating People Eating Monsters… the band burrowed further into the street tar grip and pelvic pulse of L.A. rock 'n roll euphoria with an oil-slick drop-kick of a single — “Cookin’ b/w Tracksuit.” The release accompanied a 5-week U.S. tour that saw the band topping bills at NY’s Bowery Ballroom and gracing the lineups of Levitation in Austin and Shaky Knees Fest in Atlanta. Their time at Levitation also saw the band enter the fest’s revered Sessions series, recording a live LP that culled from the MEPEM and ZAM records heavily. The session found the band holed up for a week at Super X Ranch outside of Joshua Tree, California, finally pressing their stage heat onto a twelve-inch tempest for posterity. The last run oiled the gears for what’s to come, getting them back into their natural habitat up on the stage, steaming under the hot lights and sublimating a heady mix of psych-soul singe into a full-body buzz.

The upcoming year promises a renewed dedication to tour, molding their mayhem in the process into its final form before they enter the studio to scrape the scars off of the road to tape. In anticipation, a new face enters the fray for both the live arena and the gestating new LP. Drummer Nick Aguilar will join now-permanent bassist Nikki Pickle (Death Valley Girls) as the rhythm engine behind the acetylene alchemy of Dylan and Josh. Nick brings a new crunch to the kit, having honed his craft in the San Pedro / LBC punk scene before touring as the drummer for Mike Watt. The addition of Nick turns up the tumult, both on stage and in the studio, and his prolific pound will act as a powerful catalyst for the band’s next direction. The new lineup finds the band as potent as ever, and following past stints opening for luminaries like OSEES, Cheap Trick, and ZZ Top, the Witch Fingers have more than proven their heft, now entering a new chapter as heirs of the amp stack kingdom.

While the last record, and an ensuing storm of dates made Frankie and the Witch Fingers a household handle — burning through a barrage of multicolored vinyl pressings and sparring with indie heavyweights for Billboard chart positions — the band returns from the forge of 2020 and the vice of 2021 to make a case for the rapture of the stage once again. Bringing an audience back to the wellspring to connect to these songs on a metaphysical level, the band transforms the stage into a sonic scrub for the soul. With years spent pressure-coating their sound into a diamond-hard hydra of heaviness, the band enters its next phase hungry for the heat of the throng and ready to wrap the Witch Fingers’ grip tighter around the reigns of rock ’n roll.

WEDNESDAY JULY 6TH at ICON OUTDOORS!!

Nice Enough Entertainment & Total Drag present

STRFKR

(just…the best)

The Undercover Dream Lovers

Das Kope

Sun Daze

6pm

$20 Advance tickets available here…

www.ticketweb.com/event/strfkr-at-icon-icon-lounge-event-hall-tickets/11735225

ALL AGES WELCOME!

Damien Jurado Live in the store!
Chris Pureka opening the evening!
June 1st
7pm doors
8pm music
$15 tix on sale Friday 3/11
Available in the shop or by calling (605)5216439

DAMIEN JURADO

On The Monster Who Hated Pennsylvania, Damien Jurado gathers up ten stories of people determined not to be broken by their dire circumstances. “The world is a liar, the stars are a must,” he sings over brushed drums, a circling bassline, and acoustic guitar on “Helena,” which opens his 17th album, the first release from Damien’s own Maraqopa Records. Dire circumstances have long been fixtures of Jurado’s songs, which are filled with ghosts, killers, cruel lovers, and the occasional UFO cult or false messiah. But here, the scenes are earthy, drawn from ordinary but no less immense calamities: hurricanes moving toward town, strained connections, amnesiacs in the front yard. On The Monster Who Hated Pennsylvania, Jurado pulls the curtains shut, blocking out “the light now embarrassed and afraid of the dark,” as he sings on “Tom,” one of the album’s haunting numbers, only to throw them open the exact moment sunshine needs to come flooding in.

Jurado has certainly made sparser records than The Monster, but sonically it is among his most exposed, stripping away the cosmic gloss that defined his trio of albums with the late Richard Swift in favor of dry, homespun ambiance. “In a lot of ways, it’s a continuation of the work I did with Swift,” Jurado says. Had the producer not passed away in 2018—he’s been memorialized in a number of Damien’s recent songs—it’s likely the duo would have found themselves drawn in this direction too, Damien suspects, noting that the addition by subtraction approach imbued the new album with a certain quality of “emptiness,” creating the feel of a sort of spiritual karaoke track, tailor made for personal projection. “I wanted to leave space for the listener,” Jurado says.

Known for working fast—he’s usually got a handful of finished albums at the ready at any given time—the compositions here are uncluttered, but not slight, decorated by Beatles-esque bass-lines, drums, and strings. Inspired by the sound of records like Lou Reed’s The Bells and Paul McCartney’s Ram, Jurado produced the new album himself, employing “a certain dryness,” which allowed the songs to feel cavernous, even “after spending so long in reverb land,” Jurado laughs.

Jurado’s discography is full of detours—from answering machine collages to full-on electric rock band outings—but there’s a through line connecting it all, evidence of an almost oracular or prophetic unease that lurks in Jurado’s headspace. Listening to The Monster Who Hated Pennsylvania, you can still hear that young man living within these songs, speaking as if from the other side, about the circumstances that crush people or leave them vexed. “The loneliest place I’ve ever been is in your arms,” he sings on the ghostly, Jason Molina-evoking “Male Customer #1”; “I hadn’t been in a car yet/Hearing the world through your eyes,” he sings on the quixotic “Jennifer.”

On the album’s most harrowing and gripping song “Johnny Caravella,” he dreams up an epic of American strangeness in the vein of Springsteen’s “State Trooper” or Suicide’s “Frankie Teardrop.” His voice cracking over a distorted maw of guitars, Jurado narrates a frantic drive west, tuned into the sound of prophecy coming over the radio: “All is not lost/Even if you’re without a direction.” “Just stick around till the light pushes into the darkness,” Damien promises - or admits - at the burned-out husk of the song’s conclusion. Jurado’s best songs have long concerned inevitabilities. On The Monster Who Hated Pennsylvania, he offers up his own Twilight Zone, “a middle ground between light and shadow”…a dimension of imagination, of half-remembered dreams and people reaching out to cross into that liminal space between heartbreak and wholeness. Jurado knows the territory well. He knows the secret words to whisper at the right time. Press your eye to the speaker, tune your ear to the horizon.

-Jason P. Woodbury

SUNDAY MARCH 13TH!!

Portrayal of Guilt

(our favorite kind of filthy/heavy from TX)

Yashira

(FL hardcore/metal/doom)

Doors at 7pm- Music at 8pm

$12 at the door

Advance tickets available at Total Drag (307 E. 12th St. SF SD) or by calling 605-521-6439!

ALL AGES WELCOME!

THURSDAY MARCH 10TH!

Hot Freaks

(super sweet indie/dance/fun from Minneapolis!)

Hooks

(you know em’, you luv em;..)

Doors at 7pm - Music at 8pm

$10

ALL AGES WELCOME!

FRIDAY FEBRUARY 18TH!!

We could not be more excited to welcome one of our new favorites to the stage at Total Drag <3

Bnny

(Chicago Indie/Dream/Rock/pop on Fire Talk Records!!)

Isanti

(Local chilled out psych/pop)

Doors at 7pm - Music at 8pm

$10 at the door

Advance tickets available at Total Drag (307 E. 12th Street, S.F. SD) or by calling 605-521-6439

ALL AGES WELCOME!

MONDAY JULY 27TH!

Surfer Blood have just finished recording their 5th album, which will be coming out on May 1, 2020, alongside a 10th anniversary reissue of their debut album Astro Coast. Surfer Blood's music is renowned for catchy hooks and sonic detail. One of the best indie guitar bands around, founding members John Paul Pitts and Tyler Schwarz are joined by guitarist Michael McCleary and bassist Lindsey Mills, all four alumni of the same high school in West Palm Beach, Florida. Surfer Blood are the cleanest and nicest band in existence.

Surfer Blood
https://www.facebook.com/surferblood
https://twitter.com/surferblood
https://instagram.com/surferblood/
http://www.surferblood.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Om8TAKK6ai8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_RBxVpM_AI

HOOKS
(local indie darlings)
https://weallhavehooksforhands.bandcamp.com/

TICKETS ON SALE FRIDAY MARCH 13TH!
$15
Tickets available at Total Drag (307 E. 12th Street Sioux Falls, SD) or by calling 605-521-6439
DOORS AT 7PM - MUSIC AT 8PM
ALL AGES WELCOME!

THURSDAY JUNE 11TH!

Holy Wave is an experimental dream-pop band originally from El Paso, Texas. After seeing a life-altering performance by My Bloody Valentine in 2008, the band moved to Austin to pursue their own vision of Texas psych, their sweet melodies dyed in carefully constructed noise.

Over the course of four albums, the band have cemented themselves as a staple force in the international indie scene, with key performances at Levitation, Desert Daze, and nearly every psych gathering on the planet. They’ve toured the world, and shared the stage with heroes such as Slowdive, Spiritualized, Hope Sandoval and The Black Angels. Their body of work has received critical acclaim from Pitchfork, Consequence of Sound, Paste Magazine and countless others, and in 2020 they are prepared to release their latest body of work.

Interloper sees the band adding new layers to their lush and mesmerizing songwriting style. Written about the duality between life at home and life on the road, it sees the band expanding on their most esoteric and thought-provoking themes. “I’m Not Living in the Past Anymore” is a mantra about breaking the cycle of the mundane, “Escapism” is a dream-like meditation. “Interloper” serves as the centerpiece for this self-expanding record, asking, what happens when the world beneath your feet changes so much that you feel like a stranger in your own shoes? The band turns inward, to blissed-out moments on album opener “Schmetterling”, the saccharine haze of “R&B”, and the freak-out catharsis of live favorite “Buddhist Pete”.

With Interloper Holy Wave weaves together a contemplative tapestry that can serve as a road map for the diffident, a soundtrack to self-realization, or simply an invitation to escape.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POArv1F2oXQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwg326zDFd8

HOLY WAVE
(Killer psych rock from TX)

WINTER

There's a fairy tale surrealism that sets Winter's blend of dream pop and shoegaze apart from her contemporaries. Winter built a cult following with a stream of bilingual releases and national tours opening for artists like Broncho, Surfer Blood, and Cherry Glazerr. The bands stateside success took them on tour to Mexico, Europe,
and South America. On Endless Space (Between You &amp; I), her forthcoming and debut LP co-produced by Ian Gibbs, Winter presents her most realized vision yet,
drawing inspiration from Broadcast and Melody's Echo Chamber for a glorious, 3-D journey into her world. The album is slated for release on May 15th, 2020 on Bar/None
Records and Winter will be touring the United States in May and June this Summer.

TICKETS ON SALE MARCH 10TH!
$10 - ADVANCE - $12 DAY OF SHOW
DOORS AT 7PM - MUSIC AT 8PM
ALL AGES WELCOME!

TOTAL DRAG RECORDS
307 E. 12TH STREET
SIOUX FALLS SD

Total Drag and Come On proudly present OOG BOGO and Lot Lizard live at Total Drag!

4/28/2020

OOG BOGO
L.A. based freaks with a new record out on Ty Segall's label, god?records
(memebrs of Meatbodies, Audacity, Mikal Cronin band, and Shannon Lay's band)

Lot Lizard
Local post punk goth vibes

doors at 7
music at 8
$10 adv Tix available 2/18
$12 at the door

SATURDAY APRIL 25TH!

We are sooooo excited to welcome back to Total Drag..

The Shivas

(killer surf/psych rock from Portland!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0eQ6pl0I0o

https://theshivas.bandcamp.com/album/dark-thoughts

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7SO4ojI7QA&feature=youtu.be

“For The Shivas, the show has always been the thing. That thing being a bombastic, explosive and thoroughly communal live rock and roll experience where barriers between the performers and their audience seem to dissolve into the sweat and sound. The band is releasing its fifth album, Dark Thoughts, but it’s the stage—or the basement, or the living room—that’s The Shivas’ true element. It’s their raison d’etre. It’s the show that keeps them coming back after over 1,000 performances spread over 25 countries in 13 years.

In those 13 years, The Shivas have grown tight-knit as a group. Guitarist/singer Jared Molyneux, bassist Eric Shanafelt and drummer/singer Kristin Leonard have all been with the band since its earliest days; guitarist Jeff Boyardee joined in 2017. Together they’ve learned to thread a seemingly impossible needle: They’ve honed and tightened their performances without sacrificing the element of surprise that makes each show special.”

The Velcro Ultrasound & Free Truman will be opening the evening!!

Tickets on sale Tuesday 3/10!!

$10 ADV - $12 DOS

Tickets available at Total Drag (307 E. 12th St DTSF) or by calling 605-521-6439

ALL AGES WELCOME!

Doors at 7 - Music at 8

WEDNESDAY APRIL 22ND!

We're so excited to announce the return of David Dondero to TOTAL DRAG!!
Touring in support of his brand new album "The Filter Bubble Blues"!
https://daviddondero1.bandcamp.com/album/the-filter-bubbles-blues

DAVID DONDERO
(top 5 living songwriters in our book!)
https://newnoisemagazine.com/track-premiere-david-dondero-laying-at-your-feet/
https://glidemagazine.com/235978/david-dondero-announces-new-lp-the-filter-bubble-blues-releases-single-the-presidential-palace-of-pornography/
https://www.popmatters.com/david-dondero-easy-chair-2641333573.html

Chris Pohlson Music & Brian Stai opening the evening!
Doors at 7 - Music at 8
$10 at the door
ALL AGES WELCOME!

TOTAL DRAG RECORDS
307 E. 12TH ST. DOWNTOWN SIOUX FALLS, SD

TUESDAY APRIL 21ST!!

TICKETS ON SALE THIS FRIDAY DECEMBER 13TH!

$15 (Available at TOTAL DRAG or by calling 605-521-6439)

Acid Mothers Temple & The Melting Paraiso U.F.O.

Formed in 1995 by Makoto Kawabata at the same time as the Acid Mothers Temple Soul Collective. The group released its debut album in 1997 on PSF Records (Japan), and it was selected as one of the year's best albums in the The Wire magazine (UK). In 1998 the group played their first tours of the US and Europe. Since then the group has released a huge number of albums on labels from many different countries. As of 2017, the group has released around 80 albums. Every year since 1998, they have toured extensively in the US and Europe, and more recently have started performing around Asia and in Japan too.

The group has performed in collaboration with many musicians including psychedelic originators Gong and Guru Guru, Simeon (Silver Apples), Nik Turner (Hawkwind), and the Occitanian trad sinder Rosina de Peira. Japanese collaborators have included Afrirampo, Tatsuya Yoshida (Ruins), Maso Yamazaki (Masonna), Seiichi Yamamoto (Boredoms), Jun Kuriyama (The Ox), and many others.

To begin with the group had a floating line-up with contributions from many members of the AMT Soul Collective. But as tours became more frequent, the group began to coalesce around a core touring line-up. Other bands were created with Acid Mothers Temple as part of their name (AMT & The Cosmic Inferno, AMT SWR, AMT & The Space Paranoid, Acid Mothers Gong, Acid Mothers Guru Guru, etc.), but AMT & The Melting Paraiso U.F.O. has continued to function as the mothership and main lineage for all our activities.

In 2016, 21 years since the group's founding, there was a major shift in the line-up and "Next Generation" was added to the name. We now view the first 20 years as chapter one in our story, and we are now turning the page to start chapter two. The current touring line-up is: Makoto Kawabata (the sole original member), Hiroshi Higashi, Mitsuko☆Tabata, Nani Satoshima, and Wolf.

http://acidmothers.com

my education

Austin, TX/Auckland, NZ-based instrumental/post-rock ensemble My Education formed in 1999 and has released eight full-length albums. The band has just released a highly limited edition album of select cover versions entitled “El Conejo”, followed by a Texas tour, despite living on opposite sides of the planet! Their latest album of originals, Schiphol, was produced by Mike McCarthy.

My Education loves collaboration and specializes in new media crosscurrents. The band's collaboration with Houston's NobleMotion Dance company premiered with three sold out shows in 2011 at Ballet Austin; a second collaboration in late 2013 sold out two shows at Houston's Hobby Center. The band has also composed the score to a new film by CM Talkington, director of the cult classic "Love and a 45", entitled "Mud, Mules and Mountains". The film tells the story of the invasion of Italy by the raw recruits of the Texas 36th Infantry Division in 1943. Two albums and several tours and festival appearances have resulted from an ongoing collaboration with the Salt Lake City based instrumental/improvisational band Theta Naught entitled SoundMass.

My Education's previous albums include Moody Dipper, Italian, A Drink For All My Friends, and Bad Vibrations. Recordings have been remixed by members of bands Kinski, Pelican, the Red Sparowes and Dalek. A remastered edition of My Education's debut LP 5 Popes was released on Beat Imprint Records in 2013.

The band has shared the stage with A Place to Bury Strangers, Kinski, Bardo Pond, Dalek, The Black Angels, Echo and the Bunnymen, The Sea and Cake, Warpaint, Alexander Hacke/Danielle diPiccioto/Algis Kizys trio, the Psychedelic Furs, The Soundtrack of Our Lives, This Will Destroy You, Sleepy Sun, White Denim, Radar Bros., Eluvium, Sian Alice Group, Don Caballero, Trans Am and many others. Additionally, My Education has joined Maserati and the Red Sparowes on multi-date regional tours.

DOORS AT 7PM - MUSIC AT 8M

ALL AGES WELCOME!

SUNDAY APRIL 5TH!

We're sooooo stoked to have Karen Meat back at TOTAL DRAG!

The Velcro Ultrasound will be releasing their much anticipated debut album!!

(Blondie & Joan Jett had a baby, raised her on hot dogs & Dada & named her...)

Karen Meat

(...glittering with memorable beats & 60's-girl-group vocals) <3

https://karenmeat.bandcamp.com/

Sharon's Little Helpers

(local rockers)

Sylva Stoel

https://open.spotify.com/artist/6u0KNuVzGLGJhLN4fqOjIC?si=ktGxcGCTSrCUI21VzwFkyQ&fbclid=IwAR0mxNAGoEk1DSgKTel6KuOHCJveahwz7HjzOaf8SsRjxAFFvAehcARZuew

Doors at 7pm - Music at 8pm

$7 at the door

ALL AGES WELCOME!

the Cult of Lip and Panther Ray are coming through on tour from Minneapolis, with local act JAKE rounding out the bill.

-the Cult of Lip-
Loud shoegaze/dreampop/postpunk:
https://thecultoflip.bandcamp.com/album/sleep-receiver

-Panther Ray-
Garage psych goodness:
https://pantherray.bandcamp.com/track/no-diving

-JAKE-
lofi Sioux Falls local:
https://jakemakesstrangersfeelinsecureaboutwhattheyeat.bandcamp.com/album/jake


Doors at 7, Music at 8. $7 at the door and it's an all ages show!

WEDNESDAY MARCH 4TH!

Owen Ashworth’s albums have always been about the human condition, and his latest is no exception. That may sound strange, given that it’s called Animal Companionship, but it’s as human as anything he’s done before.

After hearing problems forced the end of his electronic pop project Casiotone for the Painfully Alone in 2010, Ashworth started making quieter music as Advance Base, releasing A Shut-In’s Prayer in 2012, Nephew In The Wild in 2015 and a slew of tapes and 7” EPs in between. After releasing a 2016 live album, In Bloomington, the prodigious songwriter shifted his focus to his label, Orindal Records, and put his efforts into helping other artists release their music.

This break from songwriting gave him time to explore not just how he makes music, but why he’s driven to do so. “I spent a lot of time thinking about why I write songs and what I get out of writing songs,” he said. “It took a while to get back to writing for myself, unselfconsciously.

“The reason I’ve always made music is because it’s therapeutic for me,” he said. “It’s a way of processing my feelings and understanding my subconscious. I love the ritual of writing a song and performing it over and over again until its meaning reveals itself. It’s the closest I get to meditation.”

The meditative nature of Ashworth’s new songwriting process can be heard in Animal Companionship’s spacious arrangements. Blissful drones and lush synthesizer textures envelop soft electric piano arpeggiations and spare drum programming, creating an almost hypnotic backdrop for Ashworth’s lyrical narratives. And the lyrics themselves have found a new focus: dogs.

“There was a while last year when a bunch of different friends of mine were having problems with their dogs,” said Ashworth, “and even though I don’t have a dog, suddenly I was giving all of this dog advice. I was just thinking and worrying about these friends and their dogs all of the time, and dogs just started showing up in my songs.

“When you explain the relationship you have with a pet, it can sound crazy. We all tend to anthropomorphize the animals we love, talking about them as if they're children, siblings, even spouses,” said Ashworth. “I wrote these songs to help myself understand what pets mean to their owners, how those animal relationships affect our human relationships, and vice versa.”

Unlike the previous Advance Base albums, which were made at home on Ashworth’s trusty 4-track tape machine, Animal Companionship was mostly recorded at Palmetto Studios in Los Angeles with Ashworth’s old friend and former Casiotone for the Painfully Alone collaborator Jason Quever. Animal Companionship still sounds like Ashworth, but Quever’s production adds more depth and clarity than you’ve ever heard from an Advance Base or Casiotone album. The album opener, “True Love Death Dream,” is full of warm synthesizer textures and lush drum machine tones, the kind that sink deep into your soul and take root there. It shows how much time and consideration Ashworth put into Animal Companionship, and how Quever knew exactly how to capture it. From the pedal steel atmospherics of “Dolores & Kimberly” to the densely layered oscillations of “Rabbits,” every movement beautifully frames each song’s narrative. Animal Companionship’s production is expansive but always deliberate, allowing Ashworth to speak volumes through subtle, emotional gestures.

Taken as a whole, Animal Companionship is not just a step forward for Advance Base—it’s the culmination of everything Ashworth has been building for the past two decades. It’s a record that’s gentle in approach and endearing in practice, the kind of thing that only Ashworth could create.

Noah Deist (first time at the Drag!) & Dan Nissen (debuting unnamed new project) opening the evening.

https://www.noahdeist.com/

DOORS AT 7PM - MUSIC AT 8PM

$10

ALL AGES WELCOME!

TOTAL DRAG RECORDS

307 E. 12TH STREET

DOWNTOWN SIOUX FALLS SD

TUESDAY JANUARY 7TH!

No Thanks

(Killer Punk/Deathrock/grunge from Omaha)

https://no-thanks.bandcamp.com/

PERP

(local punks)

Doors at 7pm - Music at 8pm

$7 at the door

ALL AGES WELCOME!

WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 13TH!
Tickets on sale 10/26/19!!

Mikal is a mainstay in almost all of Ty Segall's projects, but his solo work is a whole different force! Releasing his brand new album "Seeker" today on Merge Records!!

Mikal Cronin
(Incredible garage rock/power pop on Merge Records!)
https://www.mikalcronin.com/

Shannon Lay
(amazing artist on Sub Pop Records!)
https://shannonlay.bandcamp.com/album/august

Platinum Boys
(killer rock n' roll from Milwaukee)
https://platinumboys.bandcamp.com/

$15 advance tickets on sale 10/26/19 and available at Total Drag or by calling 605-521-6439
Doors at 7pm - Music at 8pm
ALL AGES WELCOME!

TOTAL DRAG
307 E. 12TH STREET
DOWNTOWN SIOUX FALLS SD

TUESDAY NOVEMBER 5TH!

MURF

(Punk from Minneapolis)

https://murf.bandcamp.com/

Bodega Sushi

(local men)

Doors at 7PM - Music at 8PM

$7 at the door

ALL AGES WELCOME!

TOTAL DRAG RECORDS

307 E. 12TH STREET

DOWNTOWN SIOUX FALLS, SD

MONDAY NOVEMBER 4TH!

Lisa Prank is a true-blue romantic. In fact, “I’m very preoccupied with romance,” songwriter Robin Edwards admits. On her second full-length for Father/Daughter Records, Perfect Love Song, Edwards acknowledges the ultimate joke of love: that there is no perfect, so you’ll get tripped up while chasing it—but what else could possibly be more rich, more exhilarating, more everything, skinned knees be damned? Stitching together pop-punk panache and pillow talk introspection, Perfect Love Song finds Lisa Prank not in pursuit of the flawless impossible, as the title may suggest. Rather, she’s interested in the entire experience of love and learning through it. “I never learned how to get mad,” Edwards sings on the reflective “Get Mad”—but she did learn how to write totally gratifying pop songs about it. Perfect Love Song is an album that takes a soft-focus gaze at romance’s sharpest points and edges, both the exciting peaks and the scary cliffs.

As Edwards was navigating a drawn out, Lifetime-movie level heartbreak, she found herself drifting back towards the home she had in her friendships. She moved back into her old room in storied Seattle punk house, Spruce House, sharing a door with Tacocat’s Bree McKenna (who’s also her bandmate, along with Julia Shapiro, in the supergroup Who Is She?). She’d knock and ask McKenna for feedback on songs, who wound up playing bass on the record. To produce, Edwards tapped close friend and indie pop legend Rose Melberg of Tiger Trap, The Softies, and Go Sailor. Melberg’s artistic alignment and personal closeness to Edwards gave her near psychic insight into Lisa Prank’s sonic goals, but at enough remove to provide breakthroughs to Edwards at stuck points (Melberg also co-wrote “Telescope,” and sang harmonies on several tracks). It was a collaboration that felt like coaching, leading her achieve her ideal polished-punk sound, alongside Ian LeSage who engineered and mixed the record at the Vault Studios. Recording was fun, too. Friends were around, creating the kind of lighthearted, mutually supportive feeling one needs surrounding them feel like themselves again after retrieving their heart back from a breakup. Lisa Prank’s last record, Adult Teen, used a Roland MC-505 drum machine, for Perfect Love Song, she traded it in for real life drummer, Tom Fitzgibbon.

Writing Perfect Love Song was Edwards’ opportunity “to personally say all the things that I wanted to say, or wish I had said.” In “Scream the Truth,” a gaslighting extinguisher anthem about reclaiming your sanity, she gets to be mad on her terms: “I wasn’t losing my mind,” she sings. Says Edwards, “it’s about being frustrated seeing someone else navigate the world as a very surface-level nice person who is performatively feminist and social-justice minded, but knowing the truth of how they treat people in their personal life.” The opening track, “Rodeo,” likens the searing, sinking-in feeling of a post-fight realization—“‘cause ‘I don’t wanna be in love’/means I don’t wanna be in love/with you”—to the dangers and desires of the spectacle of love. “By now I know/this is the rodeo I chose,” she sings, electing to get back on her horse and ride, acknowledging the pain that’s part of that game.

“I wish a different emotion was so alive and exciting to me,” Edwards laughs, “but love is just the one that feels so visceral and consuming.” Perfect Love Song explodes the roller coaster snapshots of romance in bursts of poppy neon bright color, with Edwards’ cheeky perspective polished to full pop-punk shine. And the mission of that genre, one could argue, is to keep on bopping along through the bullshit of life. To stay buoyant, to find fun in the big what-ifs and whatevers. It what keeps the dream Lisa Prank afloat: as she sings on “Constellations,” “still I keep on hoping this is some perfect love song/and we’ll go on and on and on, and on and on, and on.”

Lisa Prank

Central City
(locals)

LINKS
Instagram: http://instagram.com/lisa_prank
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lisaprankmusic
Twitter: https://twitter.com/lisaprank
Bandcamp: https://lisaprank.bandcamp.com

$10 in Advance - Tickets on Sale Friday 8/9/19!!
Available at Total Drag - 307 E. 12th Street Downtown Sioux Falls or by calling 605-521-6439, or by shooting us a message on FB.

Doors at 7PM - Music at 8PM
ALL AGES WELCOME!

Strobobean brings their spooky, post-punk shoegaze to South Dakota for the first time! The Cincinnati-based trio began their life of femme-powered, desert cruising tunes in 2018, and released their debut EP "Winter" this past May. Their brand new single "Walking Alone" features two new tracks, which AudioFemme describes as being, "anchored by iridescent guitar patterns and hypnotic vocals."

https://strobobean.bandcamp.com/album/walking-alone

Strobobean

LowRidingMoths

Doors at 7 - Music at 8
$7 at the door
ALL AGES WELCOME!

WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 23RD!

Bl_ank
B|_ank(pronounced “blank”) is the solo project of electro-acoustic percussionist/experimental artist Will Hicks. He creates intense and abstract listening experiences by blending his furious drumming style with analog synthesizers, coupled with elements of electronic percussion and live-manipulated digital visuals. His performances can be very harsh and pulsating, as well as ambient and beautiful. He recently performed at the notorious Big Ears Music Festival where RollingStone chose his performance out of over 100 as one of the best shows of the entire festival and dubbing him as the “best solo drummer”. In addition to his solo work, Hicks is a long-time collaborator with The Flaming Lips, and has recently performed with members of Deerhoof and R Stevie Moore.

https://youtu.be/LYFJczMM-94

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQLGxeF2ubA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlhu8FXmpsU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTtyDdUlqkY&t=9s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qTX6f_UcxI

Bandcamp:

https://blankasfuck.bandcamp.com

“…a spectacle of musical mastery and visual art rarely seen.” -Brightest Young Things

Doors at 7pm - Music at 8pm
$8 at the door
ALL AGES WELCOME!

TOTAL DRAG
307 E. 12TH STREET
DOWNTOWN SIOUX FALLS SD