Rip Roaring Records with their first release, a remastered reissue of Giant Drag’s Lemona (2004) and Swan Song (2009) EPs, both available for the first time on vinyl. Giant Drag is pop music for the damaged and deranged. Maniacal tailspins of fuzzed-out guitars and raw feeling. Glistening lullabies of longing and loss. Blunt and darkly funny, Annie Hardy’s music is pure catharsis. It’s everything you’ve ever wanted to confess but couldn’t. The heyday of Giant Drag was bookended by two EPs: Lemona and Swan Song. Lemona is Hardy’s songwriting at its purest. Hardy and Micah Calabrese, her friend and original drummer, recorded these five hazy, sun-bleached rock songs in a “shithole” warehouse in LA. Then things got cooking. Indie 103.3 music director Mark Sovel, aka Mr. Shovel on-air, fell in love with Lemona’s opening anthem “This Isn’t It.” Thanks in part to this airplay Giant Drag ended up signed to a major label and found themselves playing to adoring fans in LA, New York and London.

The band’s debut album, Hearts and Unicorns, featured several songs from Lemona re-recorded with a little less grit. Nearly five years passed between the release of Hearts and Unicorns and the aptly named Swan Song. The 2009 EP burns more slowly than Hardy’s earlier output; the title track features some of her most beautiful, shimmering textures. But songs like the spiraling “Stuff to Live For” express the maddening anguish of addiction. Giant Drag is anchored by Hardy’s unrelenting honesty. Her lyrics are at once resolute and vulnerable; impossible not to relate to. Hardy’s influences range from Neil Young to Lilys to Kanye. But she has not listened to music for almost a decade. Without it, “I started being more creative than I’d ever been in my life,” Annie says. “I’ve only been influenced by my own self. I’m super-concentrated Annie Hardy right now.” But to those who love her music, it’s always felt that way. Lemona and Swan Song are Hardy—and they are us. In all their power. In all our pain.