Not Lame Recordings
A truly unique blending of moody, melody drenched hooks colored divinely with violin and cello stringed strummings that's breathtakingly beautiful.
LA Weekly
Innercity Garden has my vote for best song of the summer. An L.A. Treasure? You bet!
The Big Takeover
The sort of ageless pop moment you spend hours in CD stores looking for.
Losing Today
A sugar-glazed kaleidoscopic indie sucker punch washed by subtle 60’s accents.
(Los Angeles New Times
Like The Cure, they create deceptively upbeat pop tunes that often mask dark emotions.
LA Weekly
'Innercity Garden', the title track from their new EP, has my vote for best song of the summer.
Magnet
It's 'Innercity Garden' that burns the house to the ground with its grinding, fire-alarm guitar riff.
Amplifier
Yet another impressive triumph, brimming with immediate and infectious appeal.
High Bias
Boasting some of the veteran band's best material ever, this EP bodes extremely well for the next full-length.
Magnet
It's Innercity Garden, however, that burns the house to the ground with its grinding, fire-alarm guitar riff.
Album Description
This is the band's first UK release. Their brand new EP contains two tracks from the forthcoming album The Hypnotizing Sea, together with two exclusive B-sides. The Black Watch are one of the most tenacious and "criminally under-appreciated" indie pop bands in America - whose leader, you may well find, is at the top of his game in the songwriting department. Their music has often been compared to Robyn Hitchcock and My Bloody Valentine.
From the Artist
The Black Watch are from Los Angeles, and are the musical vehicle for John Andrew Fredrick, a Ph.D. in English who teaches in The Writing Program at The University Of Southern California. He writes "witty, literate, unpretentious songs in the vein of Robyn Hitchcock", and Pink Hedgehog are proud to be releasing their first ever UK pressings. Starting with The Innercity Garden EP and followed by their amazing new full length album, The Hypnotizing Sea.
About the Artist
John Andrew Fredrick formed The Black Watch in 1987 after he'd received his Ph.D. in English from the University of California at Santa Barbara. He was married and deeply unhappy, a great change from his perhaps excessively felicitous childhood growing up as he did in Santa Barbara flying kites, playing sports and listening to The Beatles. The first incarnation of the band included a surfer, a Native American, and a Joe College UCSB Crew Team Member. They played in kilts and were very terrible. They listened to too much Joy Division and The Cure and opened for Toad the Wet Sprocket. They made a demo of four songs which you will never hear, got one of those songs on a commercial alternative specialty show in their hometown, opened for The Church, and kind of drifted apart. Thank God for that!
In 1990 tbw hooked up, at Dr. Dream's suggestion, with Joe Chicarrelli, one of the nicest producers in the western hemisphere, a guy who'd worked with AMC, The Verlaines, et alia. The result was Amphetamines, a CD which is now out of print, and which was originally put out by Zero Hour Records. It garnered lots more nice commentary from the underground press and included a single, "Whatever You Need," that also got some decent commercial airplay. Oh yeah: the disc was also produced by Chris Apthorp and Scott Campbell.
The Black Watch continues to play shows and record (now with Scott Taylor on bass and Rick Woodard drumming: both from a Silver Lake punk-pop band called Velouria) - there's lots more music coming from this little indie pop band that could. The Black Watch, have been compared to the likes of XTC, My Bloody Valentine, Robyn Hitchcock, New Order and/or, perhaps most flatteringly, a sad Beatles. Now, seventeen years after Fredrick last put on a kilt, Pink Hedgehog Records is proud to release the band's first UK pressing.
