Uncle Mike hosts the edition of KALX Live! kicking off at 9pm on Saturday, November 15th. Tune in for a live set and interview with April Magazine along with your host’s picks from the Live! archives. Can’t wait to find out when you can see the band next? They’ll be slightly downhill from Cal at Ivy Room in Albany on November 26th with Brown Dog.
The purest a band can aim for is to present their milieu as a time capsule from the morning of. April Magazine deals deep in the hypnagogic charm of their surroundings. Since the 2018 release of “Shirley Don’t”— a sneaky classic that first turned ears outside their SF Bay Area home— the band has stirred out a handful of cryptic indie pop recordings nestled in warm aerosol hiss and scrappy hand-drawn cover art. Music that glints in the far back of an urban daydream where guitars could be bells, bells could be voices, and voices hardly find use in words.
April Magazine channel the greats – Spacemen 3, The Pastels, early B&S, Mary Chain, Rainy Day/Opal/Mazzy et al – but submerge their obvious melodic capabilities within seemingly infinite spray can hiss, as if the songs are being pulled backwards through some vortex to the past. Half of these tracks are instrumentals, and it’s in those moments that the band are perhaps at their most expressive, suggesting a very inviting melancholy that can’t quite be figured out.
