Gold Sounds: Safe Words – Hollow Leg

One of the hardest things about being attached to a smaller local music scene is when a promising act breaks up. It happens a lot. When Iowa City’s Molly Ringwald called it quits a year or so ago, I was pretty bummed. The flip side of that coin is that rarely do talented, interesting people stay off the stage for long. So welcome two-thirds of Molly Ringwald back into the fold, folks. Dustin Hamnes and Jake Mathesien find themselves part of a quintet making a similarly shaggy brand of music in Safe Words.

 

Amplifier Worship: Supersonic Piss – Umbilical Noose

(Photo: John C. Schlotfelt)

Iowa City’s premier punk outfit, Supersonic Piss, has itself a serious slab of shellac about to drop. The dirtiest quartet that the city has to offer is about to scramble some brains and blast through some ear drums with their debut full-length Umbilical Noose–out soon on Rotted Tooth Records.

 

Gold Sounds: Alex Body Doles out New Tunes and a Music Video

(screenshot from Alex Body’s “Blood Orange” video)

Alex Body is poised to stake a claim as the most consistent and prolific songwriter in Iowa City–a title currently held by Samuel Locke Ward. On Thursday, Body announced a Kanye-esque roll-out for his latest album, Cutting Down Camelot. Friday he declared that he’d release “one track every day or so” leading up to the album’s release, which “will be available on 12″ [LP] by the time [he goes] on tour.”

 

Amplifier Worship: Former Thieves – The Language That We Speak

Cedar Falls, Iowa has had some bruisers in the past. In fact, Cedar Falls has almost always been the Hawkeye state’s stronghold for tight, intelligent music with an edge. Continuing in that tradition is the fist-pumpingly good Former Thieves.
Yesterday, the normally indie-leaning AV Club posted a stream of the quartet’s upcoming jam, The Language That We Speak, dropping courtesy of  No Sleep Records on Tuesday, April 19th.
The Cedar Falls hardcore group’s full-length debut is pretty darn impressive. It’s lean–10 tracks clocking in under a half an hour, it’s muscular with enough riffage to keep the Converge-cravers sated, and it has just enough swagger to stomp around to.