[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScspszbunJ8&w=560&h=315]
Paper Bag Records is excited to have released the new album from the ever-morphing Slim Twig in North America on CD, LP and DL. Sof’ Sike is a dramatic follow-up to 2009’s Contempt! and replaces analog drum machines and scratched record samples with the psychedelic rumblings of live instrumentation: pianos, organs, guitar, bass, drums.
Out of the murky and demented inspiration of Slim Twig’s previous releases we can now hear the sound of a promising young songwriter. Although as idiosyncratic as ever, these new songs showcase an interest in classic songwriting, a fondness for psych-era Rolling Stones, an affinity with the queer power pop of R. Stevie Moore – in short, an odd friendliness (of sorts). Sof’ Sike is a diverse collection of songs, and with its restless approach to genre and uncontained enthusiasm for pop, can be viewed in the lineage of records like The Who’s Sell Out, or Spark’s A Woofer In Tweeters Clothing.
Slim Twig has torn through enough ideas and styles to finance a fistful of bands since releasing his first EPs in 2008. These earlier explorations include the prescient flirtation with an avant-rockabilly sensibility on Vernacular Violence (2008), and his full-length debut, Contempt!, a re-appropriation of off-kilter sampling techniques gleaned from the RZA and Madlib, and presented in a decidedly un-Hip Hop-like format. The latter record stands out as one of the most strangely singular records released on a major Canadian indie label, and as an unsung pre-cursor to the solo, sample-based, oddball pop that by 2012, has become commonplace.
2012 also sees the release of a wealth of new Slim Twig material. Appropriately for an artist as diversely prolific as Slim, the coming months will see two full-length album releases, as well as a 12”-split on Clan Destine Records with blog-favourite pals, Dirty Beaches, Ela Orleans, and U.S. Girls. Slim Twig’s work for U.S. Girls debuted with the a split 7″ and fully blossomed with their collaboration on 2011’s critically acclaimed, U.S. Girls on Kraak. 2012 further establishes Slim’s role as producer as FatCat prepares the release of U.S. Girls latest record, an unabashed foray into pop & glam, recorded, produced and mixed by Slim Twig. Fun fact: Slim Twig and U.S. Girls are married and live together in Toronto. They will tour Europe together later this year.