Wilfully Obscure

The roster of bands Mitch Easter produced at his fabled Drive-In Studios throughout the '80s is utterly staggering, and as far as I...

So, the band is from Brooklyn, their album was recorded in Belgium, and it was released on a Belgian label?  What gives?  Since Sloth  did...

Had a request for this last week, and it's one I'm happy to oblige.  The history of 415 Records goes beyond the five bands repres...

...that a small town, high school senior made a mad dash to the local record dispensary the second school let out to buy an album he had bee...

Here's another one in a long list of Ebay misfires.  Well, not a complete misfire anyway.  With The Cuts,  I assumed I was going to b...

This past spring, I shared a couple of vintage , albeit rather inspired releases from The I-Rails , a band who's only remote claim to...

I've wanted to do an entry on Human Television probably as long as I've been doing Wilfully Obscure.  The thing is, their meager ...

It would seem that Brody's main claim to fame is serving as the launching pad for guitarist Fred Mascherino , who would later go on t...

Back in the late '90s when I first encountered gnarly, Orange County pop-punks Scrimmage Heroes , I wasn't aware that Mark Arnold ...

Along with likeminded Twin Cities kin the Magnolias and Titanic Love Affair, Ten Ton Bridge fell far short of reaping the bountiful harve...

Back after a brief dryspell.  Today I submit to you New Jetz , a Denton, TX six-piece, who's bio on the back sleeve purports to them b...

This album came recommended to by virtue of it's hefty jangle presence.  True, New York's Alter Boys  baked plenty of ringing chor...

It would be an understatement to say that Kid Icarus should have been on my radar eons ago.  I certainly had the opportunity given they (...

Seems like this just came out yesterday, but it's been more like eight years.  TSAR were a balls-out power pop outfit from L.A. who r...

A little birdy passed this one along to me an what a pleasant "tweet" it turned out to be.  Dany Laj (abbreviated for Lajeuness...

By the sound of Testa Rosa II's opener, "Big Girl," you'd swear someone had broken Phil Spector out of the clink, or at...

Well, by the looks of things (namely the rather carefree band photo on the back sleeve) I was expecting this co-ed five-piece to rock out s...

I have a pretty vast trove of MP3s taking several hundred gigs on my beloved hard drive.  They're pretty organized, mostly in separate...

During their '90s tenure, the Grass Records label inexplicably scooped up a couple dozen WTF no-name bands, almost all of whom were un...

Frontier Trust weren't the only Nebraska natives on the Omaha-based Caulfield Records, but so far as I can tell they were the lone no...

Minneapolis' Man Sized Action were one of a handful of bands taken under the wing of Reflex Records, Husker Du's in-house record ...

This is one of the scarcer Painted Willie recordings out there, which by the way didn't come out on SST Records.  Typically a fun, ar...

This past January I shared the first ep by the long defunct (and for that matter completely unheralded outside of their native Oz) Tall T...

Ex- Mercyland visionary David Barbe's meal ticket came calling in the early '90s when he was tapped by Bob Mould to become one t...

Here's a 45 I obtained from a dollar bin a few years ago but didn't give a spin until this week.  For shame, because I had been de...