Release Me: MGMT, The Donnas, Moss, Renminbi

If you want to know about the new Daughtry album, you've come to the wrong place.

-It didn’t take long for MGMT to get scooped up by a major: About a year and a half after graduating from Wesleyan in 2005, Ben Goldwasser and Andrew VanWyngarden inked a deal with, er, Columbia/Red Ink. But as anyone who’s done their homework on the ambitious electro-psych explorers knows, they called indie label Cantora Records home first. Maybe as a reminder, maybe to cash in on the duo’s sparkling success, maybe just for the hell of it, the label has issued a remastered version of Time to Pretend, MGMT’s first EP. The 2005 release has early versions of “Kids” and the title tune, and four more songs. Among the latter is “Destrokk,” which Cantora is making available for download right here.

-The Donnas used to rock our world like Debbie Gibson did the Goonies’. They’ve been effectively defanged over the years - just like their summer tour partners, Blondie and Pat Benatar - but we’ll be damned if their cover of “Living After Midnight” didn’t finally convince us of Judas Priest’s supreme awesomeness. Sadly, the band wound up getting way too slick - but still, its early material killed, so it’s good to see the ladies revisiting some of that with Greatest Hits Volume 16 (hardy har har). Released via their own Purple Feather Records, the 16-track collection starts off on a boring note with two new songs, “Get Off” and “Perfect Stranger” - which make the Donnas sound like they’re getting either old, tired or both.

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But deeper in, things get interesting, with two grrreat riot grrrl-ish unreleased songs, “Teenage Rules” and “Don’t Wanna Break Your Head.” They’ve got heart, which the band seemed to lose as its sound became more and more polished. Down with the new, in with the old.

-Moss crank out sludge so slow you might fall a-Sleep. But if you don’t, and you don’t have ADD, Tombs of the Blind Drugged is gloom-and-doom heavy rock at its finest. There are only four songs, but three of them trudge on for more than 10 minutes - they’re like the soundtrack to Treebeard slowly lumbering toward Isengard, with vengeance burning in his eyes. There aren’t any explicit “Lord of the Rings” references, so far as we can tell, but Moss does allude to the Knights Templar, Amando De Ossorio films, Hashshashin rituals and other topics that prove these guys are deadly serious. Fans of Om and Khanate, you have found your next favorite band.

-And here’s one for all you cheap bastards: Renminbi’s new EP, Surface is available for free right here. Download it, stream it, buy it, put it in your pipe and smoke it, whatever. The effort at times sounds a hell of a lot like A Thousand Leaves by fellow New Yorkers Sonic Youth - coincidentally, producer Don Fleming twiddled the knobs on both releases. If you like what you hear - and we sure do - grab the limited (500 copies) blue vinyl version or one of the various packages, which come with a download code unlocking additional studio and live recordings, pics and mo’. Or just donate something, because it’s purty kewl a band that isn’t as big as Radiohead can afford to give away their stuff for free.

What we’re eyeing this week:

Born of Osiris - A Higher Place (Sumerian)

Bowerbirds - Upper Air (Dead Oceans)

Broken Records - Until the Earth Begins to Part (Beggars Banquet)

Church of Misery - Houses of the Unholy (Rise Above)

Clutch - Strange Cousins From The West (Weathermaker)

Read all about it right here.

Discovery - LP (XL Recordings)

The Donnas - Greatest Hits Volume 16 (Purple Feather)

Chris Garneau - No More Pirates (Absolutely Kosher)

The Golden Shivers - True Romance (XL)

Himalaya - Himalaya (self-release)