Snowglobe

Formed by old high-school friends, Snowglobe's music traverses the psychedelic folk pathways first cleared by the likes of Gram Parsons and the Byrds and later explored by the likes of Neutral Milk Hotel and their Elephant 6 brethren. While the band started as a four piece, it quickly swelled to include more than 10 people on stage, at times. These days, Snowglobe is mostly a studio band that consists of Tim Regan, Brad Postlethwaite, Jeff Hulett, Brandon Robertson, Nahshon Benford, Luke White and John Whittemore.

Until recently none of Snowglobe’s albums have been released on vinyl. In November 2020 their first album Our Land Brains had a limited release on vinyl of 300 records by Nine Mile Records of Austin, Texas. Black & Wyatt Records is released Snowglobe’s second album, Doing the Distance on August 7, 2021.

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Doing the Distance is full of surprises, especially for listeners who approach it without preconceived notions. After a brief, brass-centric intro (“Theme Music,”) the group shifts into what initially sounds like a kind of Wilco-influenced country rock. But those horns pop back into the mix, alerting the listener that perhaps Snowglobe has a wider musical vision. And then when those keening cellos break through, you begin to suspect that things are gonna get weird.

But wait: a few seconds more, and the song settles into its groove, a tuneful pop/rock/alt-country mix. Okay, so that’s what this album is about, with a nice if conventional lead guitar break? Nope! That second tune, “Loaded Gun” runs just over two and a half minutes, and slides smoothly into the brief “Comforted,” which has more in common with Magical Mystery Tour crossed with some Olivia Tremor Control.

Sure, it’s idiosyncratic. Unless you’re somehow well-acquainted with the individual songs on Doing the Distance, you won’t know when one tune ends and the next begins; you’ll gain a sense after a song is underway. And that’s fine: this album – made in 2005 – is very much of the “listen to it all the way through” school, which makes its new availability on vinyl especially welcome. -Musoscribe | READ

Extant for over two decades, Snowglobe has been described as a Memphis indie rock institution, with the foundation of this esteem grooved into a pair of fresh reissues. Listening to their first album, 2002’s Our Land Brains, which hit vinyl for the first time last November as a double set, and its follow-up, 2005’s Doing the Distance, also debuting on wax July 2, it’s easy to understand why folks would get behind them, or more accurately, stand facing them as they play a set of tunes; the sound is vibrant, also tough, and yet personable. -The Vinyl district | read

The resurgent interest in vinyl is real, and apparently here to stay. Even as streaming services simultaneously make artists’ music more accessible and less lucrative, vinyl releases and re-releases continue to escalate, lending musical works a kind of permanence. “Vinylus longa, vita brevis,” goes the old Latin saying (or does it?), and for those who never stopped loving LPs, there’s no little satisfaction in knowing the medium has staying power.

Furthermore, when albums from the CD-dominated era are re-released as LPs, musical works can take on a new life, reassessed in light of the intervening years. And so it is with Doing the Distance, the 2004 sophomore release by local power pop stalwarts Snowglobe, which is now being released in its first vinyl iteration by Black & Wyatt Records. The album’s title could not be more appropriate, for the one phrase that springs to mind on its re-emergence is “staying power.” - Memphis Flyer | READ

Snowglobe give us cause to question whether you need to be writing and performing garage rock to make it in Memphis. And the answer would appear to be “no”. We spin five tracks in all in today’s show from their 2 albums. Our Land Brains was Snowglobe’s debut LP released on Nine Mile Records and is beautifully produced and features a completely blank side D. Followed up by the brilliant Doing The Distance which was never pressed to vinyl. Until now that is. Black and Wyatt Records of Memphis, Tennessee have now released this excellent LP on wax.

- from the bottom of the record box | listen

With their second album, Snowglobe from Memphis, Tennessee, creates a tension between folky 60's psychedelic, 90's lumberjack shirt indie rock, tolerable melancholy and the imagined experience of acid-soaked trips to the moon. A fine and always opulent theatricality mixes with a despondency in the world that is also reminiscent of Pavement and in parts of Calexico on a space folk trip. But the roots of Snowglobe's music go back even further in time. Audible influences from the Beatles, the Pretty Things, in delicate moments also from The Byrds, and, when things get melodramatic and theatrical, from The Kinks, can be clearly felt without compromising the independence of the band. As with one of the feverish, multi-layered hits and listening tips on the record: “Ms. June”. But also the reduced “Baby”, the opener “Loaded Gun”, the poppy “Regime” and many other outstanding songs leave you puzzled as to why the band has not been better known for a long time. The songs are sometimes more economical and closer to folk, sometimes they are orchestral lavish and sometimes have brass and trumpets, like the soundtrack to a dystopian movie from the 60s with Herp Albert as a disguised free jazz fan. Black & Wyatt Records have now unearthed this diamond with 16 tracks and made it available on vinyl for the first time. Discover! -Dresdner Kulturmagazin | Read in German

Co-lead singers Tim Regan and Brad Postlewaite split the vocal duties on the album well, although neither sounds too removed from the other. Regan's easy, conversational tone is eerily similar to Counting Crows' Adam Duritz; so close, you may be running for the liner notes upon first listen. Postlewaite's mellow husky tones are no less pleasing, making the two a dynamic vocal duo. If the vocals are pleasing, the music is damn near orgasmic. Think Simon And Garfunkel being covered by The Shins, then let it blossom into a full-bodied indie pop album a la Wilco's Summerteeth. It is the kind of album that can only be described as a 'holy f*ck listening experience', full of some of the best indie pop in the last decade. It is the kind of album where you refuse to skip even the brief instrumental vignettes between songs, as even they contain magic. - IGN | READ MORE

There’s an unspoken truth that Memphis bands will face serious obstacles if they don’t fall under the garage-rock umbrella. Aside from Lucero and the now-defunct Lost Sounds, Snowglobe is one of the city’s only groups to establish a respectable local fanbase without ripping off the Oblivians or self-consciously adhering to a three-chord, T-shirt/jeans/Converse amateur-hour aesthetic. -Magnet | READ