* PREORDER * MOPE GROOVES - Box of Dark Roses 2LP

* PREORDER * expected to arrive early July

Highly recommended.

We've loved every previous Mope Grooves album, having dealt direct with Stevie for years (responsible for releasing genius albums by L.O.X and Honeybucket) and were saddened to hear of their recent passing.

“… the final 27 songs recorded by trans activist and musician Stevie (Pohlman), a massive 2LP set that showcases her DIY art, passionate engagement and close links to other trans advocates, poets and revolutionaries.

Mope Grooves emerged in Portland with a brash but vulnerable guitar rock sound and a message, from the beginning, about gender identity, inclusion and mental health. Their early albums bristled with punk energy, with shouted anthems and loose-slung, infectious melodies.

Portland’s Ben Parrish who caught them early and fell hard, wrote of an early show, “And Mope Grooves broke my brain. Imagine if somebody ran records by The Raincoats, The Clean, Beat Happening, Tyvek, and Marine Girls through a wood chipper and glued the pieces into a new super-record.”

Musically, this is more keyboard- and synthesizer-based than Mope Grooves’ earlier album, an uneasy sweetness percolating in its gentle melodies. The soft pretty songs are, in some ways, the most disturbing. “Forever Is a Long Time” pits tootling organ riffs against a sing-song melody, but sharpens the edge with rattling, off-kilter drumming. “Aileen” floats hauntingly graceful vocals over space-video-game pinging and rushing drums. “They’ll tell you you’re a criminal for paying them back in kind, but in the dark, in the wild, in the heart of the night, it is right to fight,” sings band member Lee. It’s a bracing sentiment in a song dedicated to Aileen Wuornos, a sex worker from Florida who killed seven of her clients, purportedly in self-defense. And “I’m Tired All the Time,” with its music box chimes, spiraling fiddle and slapping, just-behind-the-beat percussion, is a lullaby or a suicide note, depending on how you hear it.” - Dusted