Lake Butterscotch is ready to celebrate Summer Solstice right tonight with an epic Ice Cream Social sponsored by Little Baby’s Ice Cream and Narragansett. PhilaMOCA will be decked out with beach balls and palm trees and fully prepared for a night of fun and music for all ages (but with comedian/storyteller extraordinaire Juliet Hope Wayne as MC, you may have to prepare the little ones with some ear muff moments). Also with the evening being centered around festive foods, chefs and food bloggers The Really Cooks are the perfect addition to the lineup. And since they blew away PhilaMOCA with the Dr. Lemonade Stand album release party, they definitely know how to rock the venue into a frenzy. Arctic Splash (which features members of The Trouble with Sweeney, An American Chinese, and The Situation) will be headlining the festivities, which will be rounded out by the soulfully funky beats of Attia Taylor and the turbo-charged guitar rock of Shorty boy-boy. PhilaMOCA, 531 N. 12th St., 7pm, $8, All Ages – Bill McThrill

It’s uber hot out so we wanted to bring in Cold Fronts. Below is the bands new music video for the track “Heart Attack,” which appears on their debut EP Pretty American. It was filmed by Joe Lee, and features raw footage from their 2012 winter tour with mewithoutYou. Cold Fronts would also like you to: “Make sure to watch for Andrew WK falling off of our drum set!”

Lushlife just premiered a beautiful, blown out new remix of Teen Daze’s “Brooklyn Sunburn,” via The Fader. The original version appears on the British Columbia artist’s latest album All Of Us, Together. You can take a listen to the remix and download it for free below.

Check out the great video that Denim & Supply Ralph Lauren put together of Man Man! The footage is from their June 5, 2012 performance at Brooklyn Bowl. Enjoy! (Photo by Jim Gallagher)

Are you sick of the number of poppy acts these days calling themselves punk bands? The word “punk” is being thrown around the music scene like the phrase “rock ‘n’ roll” once was when every band aspired to be Led Zeppelin, but fell way short. Well, rest assured that the term “punk” hasn’t lost its meaning when you are talking about Philly’s own Sickoids. The hardcore punk outfit pulls from a variety of regions in the genre to make bludgeoning sonic assaults that would make their forefathers proud. They’ll be opening for Swedish four-piece Terrible Feelings tonight at Kung Fu Necktie (and I have no clue why), and will also be joined by local badass post post-punk trio Moon Women, who enjoy wading in a pool of darkness and reverb. Kung Fu Necktie, 1250 N. Front St., 8pm, $8, 21+ – Alexis V.

It’s easy to get hyperbolic when discussing an artist who is genuinely exciting, especially one whose music tends toward the transcendental. Jacob Augustine, the enigmatically sorrowed and gorgeous-voiced Maine songwriter is no exception. Each tremble and howl that leaves Augustine’s mouth does so as a sacrifice. The music is pastoral yet intimate. His lyrics are steeped in naturalistic imagery of nights that freeze and mornings that thaw and grow as a river. 

All released on the same day in October, his three new albums deal with issues of solitude, addiction, salvation and personal fortitude in very different ways. The three albums are sonically diverse, and Frontier is arguably the most accessible and straightforward record, featuring the instantly catchy and haunting “Pulse and Hum” as well as the celebratory “Peace Comes.” Goldhymns is a minimal, personal affair that finds Augustine at his most serene. It is a compact six songs, and utilizes nothing but his mighty voice and sparse acoustic guitar. Finally, The Original Love is the experimental album of the bunch, exploring various atmospheric landscapes and vocal techniques. One track coddles while the next jolts. Within this three-album epic, he manages delicacy and brooding fervor as if they are one in the same. Augustine is a brown bear nursing a dove. His songs are timeless yet dwell on mortality. He may be as lost as everyone else, but listen to his music and you may never want to be found.

Jacob Augustine is living up in Northern Maine so if you are lucky enough to live in the area, he plays fairly often in various incarnations from solo performer to a full band sound. You can download his entire catalog for free HERE, but you can also make a donation. And you should. (Photo by Shervin Lainez) – Adam G.

R5 just shared a chunk of their schedule for the free Saturday summer concert series at Morgan’s Pier. You can check out what bands will be performing below. (Photo by Collin Keefe)

Check out the stirring new track from Strand of Oaks (a.k.a. Timothy Showalter) called “Maureen’s,” which is the lead single off his forthcoming album Dark Shores! Oaks will be performing next in Philly on July 30 at Union Transfer when he opens for The Tallest Man on Earth. (Photo by Aaron Delani)

Valley Tangents is an album of tiny experiences – watching a bird fluttering aimlessly through a park, hearing a neighbor struggle at his piano on a summer afternoon, the secret absurdity of minor league baseball. It’s a few frames of film from everyday life taken out of context, simple moments given their due thought, words turned into images through the improv chops of a couple of smart, talented musicians. Simply put, it’s a jazz record, and a great one too, six tracks hip as a smoky nightclub, each driven by tasty piano and colored with rich textures.

Coopersburg duo Lea Cho and Russ Waterhouse have worked as an instrumental outfit for the better half of a decade, forming a bond whose tightness is evident in the craftsmanship of Valley Tangents. Fitting of the moniker Blues Control, the group simultaneously has the ability to take its mood pieces wherever it wants them to go, but the restraint to keep various gears working smoothly together. Despite the apparent free-form nature of the album, at no point does it feel as if Blues Control are goofing off or “noodling.” On “Iron Pigs,” the most immediately noteworthy track on the record, the duo mixes video game synths with a brash, synthetic horn hook. Held together by a simple groove and steady bass, the juxtaposition is intriguing – two broken ideas fused together to form something compelling. This is Valley Tangents all over. It’s not afraid of dissonance (as it thrillingly announces in the wonky introduction of “Love’s a Rondo”), but it’s also never obtuse. In orchestrating everyday images like “Walking Robin,”  “Opium Den,” and “Open Air,” Blues Control allow for asymmetry and hiccups, yet manage to make these imperfections part of a more cohesive whole. In “Walking Robin,” the tempo never settles, suggesting a bird hopping about without direction, but the solidity of the melodic instruments gives the track order.

Valley Tangents is about these little contradictions of life. It’s about organization in randomness, finding meaning in that which doesn’t have to make sense. It makes us pay attention to that which we’d normally ignore, and it does all of this without uttering a single word. A sincerely impressive meditation on the world we live in, Valley Tangents is a humble reminder that there is much to appreciate in a world we take for granted. 

Blues Control’s album is available today via Drag City. – Adam Downer

It’s an evening of firsts when Minneapolis’s Now, Now play North Star Bar tonight in support of their release Threads. When Sugartown ended its run at the storied music venue Tritone, it also marked the end of Go-Gos tribute band Lust2Love. But instead of packing up their bags, the members of the band set out to prove that they still got the beat by creating their own music for a new project called The Pretty Greens. And after a few months of production and recording, the band is all set to make their debut performance. And since they’re working harder and harder on releasing their debut full length over the fall, effervescent indie trio Break It Up will likely be showcasing some new material as well when they take the stage. North Star Bar, 2639 Poplar St., 8pm, $10, 21+ – Bill McThrill