Posts tagged as:
The Shout Out Louds are working on a new album, titled Work, and the first single off it is called Walls. The band is have been oled up in a Seattle studio with Phil Ek (Fleet Foxes, The Shins, Modest Mouse).
Bob Dylan / She Belongs To Me
Great lyrics. A different kind of love song. A portrait.
{ 0 comments }
Acrylics was formed by Jason Klauber and Molly Shea in 2008 and evolved into a trio. Their debut album All of the Fire was produced by Chris Taylor of Grizzly Bear at his church-studio in Brooklyn, Terrible Studios.
Bobbie Gentry / Reunion
Most famous for her hits, Ode to Billie Joe, and the unstoppable Mississippi Delta, Bobbie Gentry is a sultry-voiced country singer who wrote and produced her own music in a time when it was rare for both women and country singers. Gentry talk-sings the part of a young girl at a large family reunion in this track off her Delta Sweetie album. We first heard it the day after Halloween while driving back to New York from upstate and it made our ride. Starting off with a seductively sparse hand-clap rhythmic figure, Gentry’s Mississippian belle rap, ‘mama can I huh’ enters next. More and more voices and sounds enter the party until we reach a cacophonous fever-pitch. The result sounds like a Charles Mingus arrangement of I Want Candy in a southern baptist church. The song quickly fades back to a whisper before the three minute mark.
{ 1 comment }
Jer Coons is a pop artist from the green mountains of Vermont. His songs draw comparisons to John Mayer, Jason Mraz, and Damien Rice (although, as Jer would claim, you do not need Zoloft to enjoy his music). His debut album Speak drops September 29th through RED Distribution.
Michael Jackson / Baby Be Mine
Talk about soul. What Quincy and Michael did with this track has forever shaped the way I look at pop music. I put this song on, turn it up loud and inevitably end up dancing around like an absolute idiot for its entire duration. It MAKES you move. I’d tell you to pick this album up, too, but I’m pretty sure the world got the memo.
{ 0 comments }
Los Angeles-based rock trio, The Entrance Band, have just released their self-titled album, through Ecstatic Peace!
Dwight Twilley / Looking For the Magic
This dude is the unsung-hero of power-pop. If you search for this track on Youtube, you’ll see a young (and incredibly androgynous) Tom Petty playing bass in Dwight’s band. Twilley’s records are the best dollar-bin scores ever.
{ 0 comments }
Born the youngest child of two blind parents, William Fitzsimmons was raised in the outskirts of the steel city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Due to the family’s inability to communicate through normal visual means, William’s childhood home was filled with a myriad of sounds to replace what eyes could not see. The house was suffused with pianos, guitars, trombones, talking birds, classical records, family sing-a-longs, bedtime stories, and the bellowing of a pipe organ, which his father built into the house with his own hands. When his father’s orchestral records were not resonating through the walls, his mother would educate him on the folk stylings of James Taylor, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, and Simon & Garfunkel. By the completion of his youth and schooling, Fitzsimmons had become well-versed at a variety of instruments, at the minor expense of social standing, and a knowledge of proper shaving technique.The Sparrow & The Crow is out now on Mercer Street/Downtown through Inertia.
Sun Kil Moon / Carry Me Ohio
The first Sun Kil Moon record was actually my initial introduction to Mark Kozelek’s music. His voice is utterly recognizable, calm but very communicative, and the economy of speech in this tune is brilliant. I connect strongly with regret songs, and this one is dripping with it. This song helps me connect pieces from my past I might be tempted to too quickly forget.
{ 0 comments }
Vandaveer is the alt-folk song singing/record making/globetrotting project penned and put forth by DC-by-way-of-Kentucky tunesmith Mark Charles Heidinger. The son of a preacher, whose father was a gambler, whose father was both judge and US Congressman, Heidinger one day found himself in possession of a golden pocket watch owned, wound, and regularly counseled by each in this paternal line. On the backside of the watch was a family name engraved, passed down for more than a century like the timepiece that followed. That name was Vandaveer. Vandaveer will release Divide & Conquer through Supply and Demand Music on August 25.
Elvis Perkins / Shampoo
This is the first track on Elvis’ new record, and it bites and lurches with intensity. Black is the color of a strangled rainbow, as Perkins rightly points out. Why isn’t a song like this topping the charts? I just don’t get it.
{ 0 comments }
Australian band Yves Klein Blue made a name for themselves with their EP Draw Attention to Themselves doing just that. The band has toured internationally three times to play SXSW, MusExpo and The Great Escape. Their hit single Polka sound-tracked a successful car ad and was picked up on more than 60 college radio stations in the USA as well as Radio 1 and XFM in the UK. Ragged & Ecstatic was recorded in LA with producer Kevin Augunas (Cold War Kids) and features the singles Getting Wise, Polka and Make Up Your Mind.
Fleetwood Mac / Go Your Own Way
It’s just such a great album, with a great story. Many things have been written about it, much better than I could even hope to, so look it up. It’s a song you will probably know well, but its so full of love, malice and all this broken, messed up relationship baggage that got carried through the band and onto the stage with this record. Perfect.
{ 0 comments }
Vladislav Delay’s new album Tummaa will be released on the wonderfully eclectic Leaf Label in September. The Finnish electronic artist, otherwise known as Sasu Ripatti, creates dense, experimental music with sophisticated textural qualities.
Juan MacLean / One Day
Strong and brave dance-pop. Not usually my cup of tea, but this track is quite interesting.
{ 0 comments }
After twelve years, five albums, hundreds of shows, festival appearances, and a string of gold and platinum awards, Something For Kate front man Paul Dempsey is spending 2009 stepping out on his own to release his first solo album in the middle of the year. Recorded at a friend’s house on the NSW central coast, with producer Wayne Connolly and mixed in LA with Doug Boehm, the album is a departure from the heavier, more intense Something For Kate sound. Dempsey plays every instrument on the record, and uses space and atmosphere in every song.
TV on the Radio / Dancing Choose
This track has so much manic energy: buzzsaw synth-bass, mad shuffling drums and a rapid-fire lyrical rant that sounds like some kind of crazed public service announcement. Guaranteed to shake you from your mid-morning malaise.
{ 0 comments }
‘This is a scary time for a lot of people, government-wise, art-wise, and especially business-wise,’ says Company of Thieves singer, Genevieve Schatz. ‘People seem to be very held back in what they’re willing to invest in — personally, emotionally, and financially. But at the same time, there’s a new, gutsy energy coming out right now, almost a generational thing. There’s a feeling that we’re at the edge of big change right now. Great art always rises up when change is going on’. These exciting — if uncertain — times are reflected in the eclectic sound of Ordinary Riches, an album that moves effortlessly from the seemingly jaunty, piano-led In Passing and the catchy pop tones of Pressure to the arena-ready sing-along chorus of New Letters and the Jonny Greenwood-ish guitar figures on Old Letters.
Animal Collective / My Girls
It’s pretty much impossible to sit still by the end of this song. Say what you want about this band, but I find them to be one of the most fascinating bands around today. They sound like no one else. With every album, they transform into something new. Their songs become more accessible, but they stay just as indefinable as always. Not to mention that the lyrics in this song are absolutely beautiful.
