Ultramagg

Damn, but these guys are neato. They used to be a sloppy garage-punk band called Pull My Finger, and they even put out a CD under that name, but decided somewhere along the way that they were tired of doing the punk thing, and manage to transform, instead, into a pretty fucking cool indie-rock band. They sound at times like king indie-rockers Superchunk, but also throw in a good bit of an emo influence, and even bring to mind mainstream alternarockers Weezer at times (in a good way, mind you) — loud, melodic, pained songs about love; exactly my kind of thing, believe me. Thankfully, they’ve finally got their self-titled CD out, on their own little Less Than Records label, and it’s absolutely amazing. No, really. It rocks, and everybody and their mom oughta own a copy, seriously. Anyway, they’ve been working on some new stuff lately, up at Dan Workman’s Sugar Hill Studios, and have a track on Deep Elm Record’s recently-released The Emo Diaries, Volume 3 compilation (woo-hoo!). Beyond that, they’re hoping to release a 7″ sometime around March. Thankfully, bassist Mikel is back from his, uh, “vacation” at the Texas Dept. of Corrections boot camp (the band had a couple of temporary stand-in bassists, in the meantime), and the band has been touring quite a bit around the country.

• Tomorrow Night: Get Yr ’90s Emo Fix On (Plus Brand New Hearts, This Year’s Tiger, & Tigerparty)
• Got These Voices In My Head: Words with the Knights of the Fire Kingdom
• Yr. Weekend, Pt. 1: Matt Pond + Hoofprints + Brand New Hearts + Junius + Featherface + We Were Wolves + M.O.D. + More
• No Grand Plans: H-Town Supergroup Brand New Hearts Creeps Quietly Onto the Stage
• Yr. Weekend, Pt. 1: Project Grimm + Brand New Hearts + The Gary + Ruiners + Sarah Jaffe + More
• Hear This Now: Brand New Hearts + Hoofprints + Oceans of Slumber + Valens
• Yr. Weekend, Pt. 1: New York City Queens (Rev’d!) + Knights of the Fire Kingdom + Fiskadoro + Life as Lions + More
• And Out of the Ashes, Behold!: Knights of the Fire Kingdom
• The Wild Moccasins
• Balaclavas
• The Literary Greats
• Scale The Summit
• Muhammad Ali
• Lisa’s Sons
• Update: Ghost Mountain (Tonight!) + Searching for Signal (9/26) + J. Tillman (11/26) + New/Old Films + More