Vol. 3 Issue 18 April 2007
So we missed a month. We are sorry. We were at SXSW and time flies when you are standing outside sweating, watching bands and drinking warm beer. Oh, the memories. We appreciate all the cards (ok ecards) and letters, but we are back, pretty much on schedule and promising to update about once a month.
In the meantime, besides Hartley's blurb mania below we've even finally updated the ABOUT US page to include our boy Gandhar. Yup, that only took a year. Oh yeah, we even updated the PLACEMENT page, so go ahead, read the blurbs and click away.
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Current Releases
- Click to see:
- Thrill Jockey
- Drag City
- Ipecac
- Fat Cat
Thrill Jockey
www.thrilljockey.com/
The Sea And Cake
"Everybody"
You think you may “know” Chicago’s indie-rock luminaries, The Sea And Cake, but you don’t. The band’s new record, something like their eighth record if I’m counting properly, Everybody (Thrill Jockey), is not only a brilliant quasi-reinvention for these languid mussy-haired sophisticates, but the single most consistent, immediately pop album they’ve ever made. In short, it’s a classic. Everybody takes the Sea and Cake’s trademark cooed vocal melodies, jazzy, clean-channeled guitar chords, and peripatetic mellow rhythms and gives the formula a welcome injection of energy and accessibility. “Crossing Line” careens off with a driving drum pattern, and grimy as hell fuzz bass riff. It’s almost as if Sam Prekop and Co. have loosened their ties, doing their best Wipers impression. From that point on we get tense-suave emotional jams (“Up On Crutches”), and even an exercise in white-boy afro-beat that actually w orks (“Exact To Me”). I’d be surprised if this doesn’t make my personal top 10 of 2007.
Drag City
www.dragcity.com/
Joanna Newsom
"Joanna Newsom & The Ys Street Band E.P"
Did the new Joanna Newsom full-length get you music sups down!? Too many 10 minute songs. Too many words. No builds. No choruses. Personally, I loved it, but I can definitely understand if some of you out there were “vexed.” Thankfully, the lady who makes music perfect for recreational drug use and building toys in the North Pole is back, with her full touring band behind her, and one new song and two revamped interpretations of tracks from her debut album, The Milk-Eyed Mender. Joanna Newsom & The Ys Street Band Ep (Drag City) feels epic for only having three tracks. They are all pretty mellow, but no less spellbinding, and -- in the opinion of this humble narrator -- somewhat refreshing to hear everyone’s favorite freak-folker back from Van Dykes Park-ville, just modestly playing her songs among friends.
Ipecac
www.ipecac.com/
Dålek
"Abandoned Language"
My Bloody Valentine isn’t the first band you’d think of to influence a hip-hop artist, but Dålek is far from your average rap group. They’ve compared their beguilingly dark and brilliant new album, Abandoned Language (Ernest Jennings Record Co.), to a David Lynch film. I wouldn’t go that far with it. But I’ll take the point. Language is lush and even if the beats are for the most part mellow bass thumps and trebly snare hits, the atmosphere in between is chaotic, hypnotic, and all too easy to get lost in – spindles of melodica, distorted guitar chords, and neurotic keyboard loops. They’re into layering, which is good for us – post-millenial breakdown has never sounded so ready to “move product.” (INSTRUMENTALS AVAILABLE and mindblowing)
Fat Cat
fat-cat.co.uk/
Twilight Sad
"Fourteen Autumns And Fifteen Winters"
The Twilight Sad are one of the most-blogged about bands of the moment. We know what you’re thinking, but they deserve the hype. This Glaswegian band’s debut, Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winters (Fat Cat) is bursting at the seams with frantic, emotional, seething, and anthemic post-rock. Think The Walkmen if every song by that band were as good as “The Rat.” It’s no surprise that the same dude that made sense out of Mercury Rev and Interpol’s dense emotional clutter mixed Fourteen… And hell, from time to time, when the choruses kick in they even sorta sound like Snow Patrol. Like Snow Patrol with cred, songs, chops, etc.
Haushka
"Room To Expand"
Haushka’s Room To Expand (Fat Cat) is the most accessible “prepared piano,” avant-garde classical record these ears have ever heard. It’s the type of modest, quiet little album that one can utterly fall in love with – quite frankly, there is nothing else like it. Room is sublimely textural and subtle. It seduces you into its intricate world like a transfixed lover. File Under: Influenced by Erik Satie. Lovely stuff.
- Click to see:
- Merge
- Yardley Pop
- Misra
- Quannum
- Friendly Fire Recordings
Merge
www.mergerecords.com/
The Rosebuds
"Night Of The Furies"
The Rosebuds are nothing if not fickle. The North Carolina-hailing his-and-hers duo have spent their surprisingly scant six years as a band trying on genres like models do shoes at fashion week. 05’s Birds Make Good Neighbors saw the married couple in expertly crafted indie-rock pop mode. Well, with this star-making turn of a follow-up, Night Of The Furies (Merge), The Rosebuds mark the end of the 70’s and fully embrace decadent 80’s style, drum-machine heavy key-board pop. The album’s sugar-coated first single, perfectly-titled (get this...), “Get Up, Get Out,” will have you doing the “hustle” even before you realize that it may be the hookiest Depeche Mode song that Depeche Mode never wrote. Truly, Merge Records has never put out anything this unabashedly “disco” before. Dare I say Night has a little Scissor Sisters to it, if SS sounded a little less, uh, happy, and maybe had a tinge of Montreal’s indie-popsters, Stars, in their blood. Get up, Get out. Indeed.
Yardley Pop
www.yardleypoprecords.com/
Let’s Go Sailing
"The Chaos In Order"
Let’s Go Sailing is the moniker that LA-hailing songstress, Shana Levy, records under. So, she’s Jewish. And I like to think of her as something of the Jewish Liz Phair. She’s tall, and plays guitar, and if I was in high school and hearing LGS’s debut, The Chaos In Order, for the first time I would probably be hopelessly smitten with Ms. Levy. Songs like the album opener, “Sideways,” make it hard not to be. It’s a gorgeous mid-tempo piano ballad, equally weepy and optimistic, with a refrain that begs for road trip sing-a-longs. It’s no surprise that Chaos was recorded with a smorgasboard of hipster LA’s who’s who, including Nikki Monninger (Silversun Pickups), Elvis Perkins, Chris Chandler (engineer for Flaming Lips and Modest Mouse), and on and on. Quite a debut.
Misra
www.misrarecords.com/
Palomar
"All Things, Forests"
Nobody misses Belly more than I do. Little Hartley was blasting “Feed The Tree,” and “Now They’ll Sleep” and sporting a major Tonya Donnelly crush to boot...ah, those were the days. Brooklyn’s Palomar certainly are no Throwing Muses or Belly yet, but on much of the group’s Misra Records debut, All Things, Forests, these girls and guy bring infectious harmony-soaked indie-pop of the highest order. The first two tracks, the breezy uke-pop of “Bury Me Closer,” and the turbo-charged, anthemic grunge of “Our Haunt,” are both unforgettable. Plus, All Things even has a tree on the cover – an homage? Some things never change.
Quannum
www.quannum.com/
Lifesavas
"Gutterfly"
Quannum rap visionaries, the Lifesavas, are back! Gutterfly is the duo’s new sophomore album, a soundtrack to an imaginary Blaxploitation movie of the same name, filled with horn-punctured funk-hop – equal parts Digable Planets, Outkast, and The Roots. A throw-back hip-hop album that somehow manages to feel entirely fresh. Everyone from Dead Prez to Camp Lo to Fishbone to Vernon Reid of Living Color and more make appearances. An epic hip-hop banger.
Friendly Fire Recordings
www.friendlyfirerecordings.com/
Elk City
"New Believers"
In their review of the new Elk City record, New Believers, the Village Voice proclaimed that this blog-beloved buzz band sounds like “a female David Bowie in a threeway with Hope Sandoval and Patti Smith.” What a description. It’s pretty dead-on. Outstanding vocals aside, there is something equally transfixing about Elk City’s own songs. Modest shoegaze-y noir pop verses explode into anthemic choruses (see: album opener, “Cherries In The Snow,” whose chorus has enough “hallelujah’s” to make Leonard Cohen blush). Furthermore, “Los Cruzados” begins sounding like Tom Verlaine until we get a soaring feel-good banshee sing-a-long for a refrain that reminded me of …KT Tunstall!? Holy Indie Cred! I know I know. Call it a “feel good album.”