Download: American Gil and the Major Dudes f. John Thill and Golden Boots “Lunchtime Riverside (Tucson Version)”

(from What Is Happening… available now from Big Whup Industries)

If you just rolled out of a bus and wanted to immerse yourself in the newest funnest music playing at artsy dives like Pehrspace and the Vermont House, you’d do well to start by dipping your toes into these tunes, curated by the kids at Cal Arts (way cheerier than those dicks at Otis) and full of mirth and humor and wonderment and lo-fi gung-ho do-it-yourselfitude. Not all of these songs seem to be world premieres, and only a few of these groups actually attend Cal Arts, but with small-band dynamite like Pizza! and Voice on Tape, you just can’t go wrong. My favorite songs on here were the new ones, and some of the most interesting are the ones labeled as actual CalArts bands. The warped barbershop quartet of Adrian the Mighty’s “How Long” is mesmerizing, in a Manson-girls sort of way. And Big Whup themselves turn in perhaps the best tune on the album, a slightly orchestrated celebration with fantastic ethereal gal vocals that by turn evoke Les Calamites and the Centimeters, with “heartbreak makes my heart grow old” seemingly the only English phrase amongst what could just be Esperanto lyrics. It’s as if Dexy’s Midnight Runners met Amazulu on the set of The Young Ones and formed a super group. This album gives me hope for the future, even as it makes me curse my youthful choice to attend USC.

—Dan Collins