Tack för för alla intressanta tips.
Den här är inte helt ny.
Men 2008 kvalar väl in?
http://open.spotify.com/album/34NNRiAunm4I1jvmviZrBE
Moderator: Redaktörer
av Jansson » 2010-10-01 12:15
av FalloutBoy » 2010-10-07 16:05
Jansson skrev:Den här är inte helt ny. Men 2008 kvalar väl in?
Welcome to your new favourite band… kinda like your old favourite band.
Okay, so that’s subjectivity raised to the n-th degree, but The Whiskers – who formed through the mediation of a Frog Eyes message board – often sound like a microscopically observed homage to not just one weird band, but the whole damn Axis of Krug, namely: Sunset Rubdown, Swan Lake, Frog Eyes, Blackout Beach, Destroyer… and even throw in some of their tourmates for good measure, like Xiu Xiu and Elfin Saddle. Perhaps in an effort to throw off the older influences, new album War of Currents builds its surreal ballads up from seesawing acoustic riffs stretched out to six, seven, eight minutes, and adds brass, entering Neutral Milk Hotel territory. But with a cast of vampires, ghosts, swans, and seamstresses sewing wings onto doomed lovers, the shadow of Spencer Krug is still cast over quite a bit of it.
Formed around Connecticut-based brothers Thom and Jim Stylinski, the Whiskers are a shifting, pan-American collective. You could call it a Prog revival, if it’s understood that The Whiskers are far more accessible than that makes them sound, if not instantly likeable. Albums one and two (The Whiskers and The Distorted Historian) took the Frog Eyes formula of lo-fi garage-prog with rapid-fire lyrics starring mythical figures, and substantially improved on it with f/x-heavy synths and programming that explodes in several directions at once. That might make The Whiskers sound like a completely different band, but it’s those unplayable, machine-generated sounds that replicate Frog Eyes’ dozen-ideas-a-second, while (paradoxically) having more emotional impact for being tight in a way Frog Eyes just aren’t.
With their third album, War of Currents, The Whiskers have largely retired the synths, and taken a crack at the multi-segmented epic song, with the example of In the Aeroplane Over the Sea or Sunset Rubdown’s Dragonslayer behind them. In a nutshell: it’s a masterclass in epic songwriting, which only falls short of greatness in its reluctance to vary the (new) formula. Then again, unlike yer-akshel Seventies progsters, The Whiskers never bore or jar by dropping in unnecessary movements; always unifying their songs with a strong riff or chord progression.
Granted, there are other precedents for this seven track, 42 minute album, but with songs like ‘The Seamstress’ you have to wonder whether they’re not attempting a deliberate patchwork of Krug-isms (in this case: ‘The Mending of the Gown’ spliced with ‘Shut Up, I am Dreaming of Places Where Lovers Have Wings’). When Krug sings about chameleons and leopards, morticians and magicians, you know he’s fretting about the nature of performance, even as he mythologizes it; when Stylinski adopts many of these figures (and adds a few of his own, like ornithopter-pilots and wing-walkers), for better or for worse, it feels as if you’re cutting straight to the fantasy, unmoored from the personal. (Not that he doesn’t have plenty of original, deliciously quotable moments: “you married on the ferris wheel / honeymooned in the haunted house / you were buried in the cemetery / I want to blow the winter out of the sea…”).
Elsewhere, the Stylinski brothers deliberately mimic the vocal interplay of Bejar / Mercer / Krug on the Swan Lake records (those three songwriter showdowns), and as if they’re worried no-one’s got the point, they even pull Dan (Destroyer) Bejar’s trick of quoting classic pop songs in a comically different key (on ‘Birds of Paradise’: “bird-bird-bird / bird is the word / everybody’s heard / about the bird…”). Somehow, it always comes across as affectionate rather than lazy, fun rather than tired, which is more than good enough for most bands. Keep watching this space for greatness.
-- http://drownedinsound.com/releases/1532 ... ws/4139696
av Alexi » 2010-10-07 17:56
Healy’s songwriting has been praised by Paul McCartney, Elton John and Noel Gallagher. In 2005, Coldplay frontman Chris Martin called himself "a poor man’s Fran Healy". In interviews
av Jansson » 2010-10-07 20:53
av TCM » 2010-10-08 16:41
Jansson skrev:
Jurij Gagarin!
Prefab Sprout: Andromeda Heights
http://open.spotify.com/album/1rssJ1U1GpcLTCGMdFyIAD
Who was Yuri Gagarin?
He was the first man in funky bass, funky bass
Space, space, space...hahahahaaa
av peetwa » 2010-10-09 11:54
av Jansson » 2010-10-11 22:35
av FalloutBoy » 2010-10-13 17:04
Alexi skrev:British Sea Power En stillsam elektronisk indie version av Joy Division? Jag gillar den instrumentala Man of Aran.
Ton skrev:Delta Spirit
Zombies eh? Back in the early days of Romero’s black and white flicks they ambled about, bumped into shit and got confused by a fence. Admittedly they were pretty eerie, but if you were fleet of foot and didn’t back yourself into a corner your chances of survival were pretty high. But then something happened and the buggers started to run, and I mean really run. Pelting around like Ben Johnson after the stanozolol van, certainly much faster than you or I can fumble ammunition into a rusty old revolver. A similar transformation appears to have taken place to Sweden’s Sad Day For Puppets, as their spooky but sedate debut Unknown Colors has been superseded by the more urgent and high-tempo Pale Silver and Shiny Gold.
Those spooky undertones haven’t been discarded though, far from it. Their ethereal charms now swirl with a cyclonic velocity that when combined with richer and fuller production make their early recordings feel like demos in comparison. From the opening doubled-barrelled vocal assault of the Eklund sisters on ‘Sorrow, Sorrow’ through to the closing blare of ‘’Tingle In My Hand’ it grabs you by the scruff of the neck and propels your through its curios like a runaway ghost train.
As the first bars of the second track, ‘Such A Waste’, burst into life many might lurch toward their MP3 player to check it isn’t set to shuffle and hasn’t accidentally skipped onto Dinosaur Jr. – such is the reverence for Massachusetts’ favourite sons. But it’s not plagiarism or Dinosaur Jr Jr (or should that be Dinosaur Gransdon?), their passion for the complexities and nuances of J Mascis build upon his work rather than trying to offer up a poor facsimile of the virtuoso.
Whilst it’s easy to focus on the increased depth and ferocity that the band has achieved in such a short time, it would mean nothing without the song-writing. Fortunately this has also grown in line with their other facets. Across a dizzying variety of styles there are infectious riffs and melodies a-plenty; album high-point ‘Touch’ instantly leaps out as a classic even on the first play. But after several weeks it will be standing room only in a subconscious populated almost exclusively by the puppets.
Pale Silver and Shiny Gold is a sophomore album that delivers on the promises made by their debut and then some. Too often bands best ideas are spent in the first year. But these cupboards are far from bare and if they remain on this trajectory world domination would seem like a real possibility.
-- http://www.thelineofbestfit.com/2010/09 ... hiny-gold/
I have to admit I've found the last couple of releases from Stars to be hit or miss. The last full length, In Our Bedroom After the War left me with a feeling of indifference. The stop-gap EP that followed, Sad Robot, blew me away with it's direction and potential for the future.
On June 22nd the band release their latest album, The Five Ghosts. A decade into their career and the Montreal band may have released their most consistent, engaging, and entertaining album to date.
The new album is a diverse collection of songs. The band's sound has certainly broadened since they first came into our nation's consciousness with Set Yourself On Fire. The gauzy swirl is still present, particularly on tracks like "He Dreams He's Awake" and "The Last Song Ever Written", but there is far more diversity now.
Earlier in their career, Stars never would have been able to execute a track like the album opener "Dead Hearts". That song is as grand in scope as it is in drama. The back and forth between Torquil Campbell and Amy Millan lends the piece a feel of a score from an indie rock Broadway show.
Continuing on their recent path, keyboards and synthesizers increase in prominence on the new record. The keys shimmer on "Fixed", but it's on "We Don't Want Your Body" where they really push the boundaries. That track has an indie disco flair, with Millan channeling Debbie Harry. On top of that, Campbell performs what verges on a rap, something that easily could have ended in disaster. Instead, the results are surprisingly fresh. It's a bold risk that pays off.
On "Changes", Stars reach back in time, performing the song with a '50s pop sway. With Campbell's sultry delivery and a modern indie rock charge, the track ends up sounding like Del Shannon passed through the prism of Stars.
Stars songs have always been about love and death, often in the same song (eg "Your Ex-Lover Is Dead"). That hasn't changed on The Five Ghosts. What has shifted is the tone of the tracks. Rather than being sombre and reflective, tracks like the fiery "I Died So I Could Haunt You" almost rejoice in positive memories.
Vocally there isn't much different on The Five Ghosts. That's a good thing though, as the pairing of Campbell and the ever charming Millan is one of the best male/female vocal sets in music.
With The Five Ghosts, Stars continue to solidify their place as indie rock elite. Moreover, they've given fans an album that's so consistently good from start-to-finish that it won't be leaving my iPod all summer.
-- http://www.snobsmusic.net/2010/06/stars ... eview.html
av Alexi » 2010-10-15 12:38
av FalloutBoy » 2010-10-15 19:42
Alexi skrev:Veckans fynd på Spotify är underbara Laura Veirs, så det bjuder jag på som en liten present inför helgen till er alla
Following on from the success of the critically acclaimed EP This Desert, Booklyn’s The Hundred in the Hands will release their debut full-length album on September 21st on Warp Records. Time Out New York says “The Hundred in the Hands’ music springs from that sliver of the early ‘80s in which pop was personal, arty and potentially angry,”
The Hundred in the Hands LP is an album of deceptively complex pop songs which hark back to the dance music of NYC’s storied underground. Where their recent This Desert EP feels like a summertime pop dream, THITH’s forthcoming album conjures the spirit of downtown’s mutant disco scene as made legendary by clubs like the Paradise Garage. It’s a product of DIY home-recording plus a series of studio sessions in London and New York with contributions by producer friends including Jacques Renault, Richard X, Eric Broucek and Chris Zane.
The Hundred in the Hands is Eleanore Everdell and Jason Friedman. The two live in Brooklyn and discovered their shared sensibility for early hip hop, French house and disco, ska and dub, post-punk, British invasion-mod and girl pop from the 60’s through the 80’s and decided to form a band. Their first song—the post-punk rave-up “Dressed in Dresden”—was written and recorded in a couple of days, released online, picked up and released as a 45 by a record shop in the U.K. where they were soon playing shows and coming to the attention of Warp Records. Meanwhile, the two retreated to the bunker to write and record. During that time, Friedman and Everdell focused on deciding exactly who they wanted to be. What they discovered and emerged with were 11 startling new tracks and a precise and deliberate sound.
-- http://themst.com/videos/the-hundred-in ... um-release
av Alexi » 2010-10-15 21:40
Okej, jag sökte på bara på Veirs och fick inga träffar.FalloutBoy skrev:Alexi skrev:Veckans fynd på Spotify är underbara Laura Veirs, så det bjuder jag på som en liten present inför helgen till er alla
Ja, hon är grymt bra. Har rekommenderat "July Flame" tidigare i tråden, men hon förtjänar rekommenderas igen!
av FalloutBoy » 2010-10-15 22:00
Alexi skrev:Okej, jag sökte på bara på Veirs och fick inga träffar.
av Jansson » 2010-10-19 17:44
av TCM » 2010-10-21 22:20
av zidanefromhell » 2010-10-26 10:57
av FalloutBoy » 2010-10-27 16:38
Karaocake’s debut album on Clapping Music was recorded with Stéphane Laporte, aka Domotic (also responsible for the latest Konki Duet’s ep or the ambitious Characters by The Patriotic Sunday), a friend she had longed to work with for years, with additional help from Tom Gagnaire (Charlotte Sampling, who also plays live with them). Rows and Stitches ideally extends Karaocake’s universe from Camille’s bedroom to the stars up and to the History of Rock Music and opens the door onto her secret world as well as on the big world out there, the one filled with nature and crickets from Chambon-sur-Lignon. With it, Karaocake defines their own aesthetic contract, with a humble yet upfront approach on the one hand and a passion for sound and a real pop ambition on the other hand, as well as inventing a world their own stories can unfold.
Like « Eeeeerie » the comet echoing Phil Spector’s productions or the hit-singles « Medication » and « It Doesn’t Take a Whole Week » (the first single to be released as a 7 inch), Rows and Stitches isn’t a simple take off, it is a real transfiguration. The beats from the Casio keyboard are the same as the ones on the first demos, Camille’s voice is still fragile and the major Cs are still major Cs. But everything else is bigger than life : polished with electricity emerging from the spring reverb and an old German console, illuminated with radiant guitar and analog keyboard themes, clouds of saturation and twists of dusty organs, Rows and Stitches hits right into your heart and stands imposingly next to some classic 60s records or Broadcast’s vintage and extraordinary albums. And if you can forget for a moment everything you’ve ever read about content and form, this is no coquetry : surely, it is through this cloud of luminous dust that Karaocake’s music opens up, in its barest and most beautiful self.
-- http://shop.ascorpus.com/karaocake-rows ... p-826.html
av FalloutBoy » 2010-10-28 15:30
Edinburgh band Meursault‘s 2008 debut Pissing On Bonfires/Kissing With Tongues fused together folk and electronic music resulting in a unique and brilliant sound. Their sophomore effort All Creatures Will Make Merry is equally unique but ultimately grander.
The album shows its urgency with opening track ‘Payday’. Lead singer and songwriter Neil Pennycook’s foghorn voice grabs you instantly as over a whiring harmonium. ‘Payday’ then launches into the epic ‘Crank Resolutions’ which hits you at a rate of knots; a tale of feeling forlorn on New Years Day accompanied by thunderous percussion and soaring electronica is an urgent and rapturous way to start the album. ‘All Creatures Will Make Merry’ features its fair share of epic tracks in a similar vein to ‘Crank Resolutions’. The title track is a more restrained number but equally as grandiose while standout track ‘What You Don’t Have’ is a soaring mixture of drum samples, strings and Pennycook’s exquisite lyrics (“it’s not about what you don’t have, it’s the little you’re given and how far you can run with it”). An ode to a German artist of the enfants terribles variety in the form of ‘A Song for Martin Kippenberger’ is the album’s most audacious and ambitious song. A multitude of slow building instrumentation erupts in Pennycook’s vocals announcing “please don’t send me home” in a truly magical and hypnotic fashion.
All Creatures Will Make Merry is really brought together by its quieter moments such as ‘Sleet’, ‘Weather’ and ‘One Day This Will All Be Fields’ with the latter sounding like an old 1920’s recording played on a gramophone. These songs truly demonstrate how brilliant the songsmithery of Meursault is. The closing song ‘A Fair Exchange’ which is a heartbreaking piano lead lament amplifies this with a haunting quality and lines as cutting as “some things take time, and some things time will take”.
The juxtaposition of the epic soaring songs and the folk lead acoustic numbers really gives the album a great balance. However, the production is reminiscent of Mount Eerie, Microphones and early Mountain Goats and works wonderfully on the acoustic numbers but often leads me wondering what songs such as ‘Crank Resolutions’ would sound like if not recorded in an ‘epic lo-fi’ fashion. It doesn’t take anything away from the album and it will no doubt endear a lot of people to the artistic value that it creates but I feel that songs of the caliber of ‘What You Don’t Have’ and ‘Crank Resolutions’ deserve to sound as immaculate as the songwriting that created them.
All Creatures Will Make Merry announces Meursault as one of the best bands in Scotland. The musicianship and songwriting is outstanding, it’s just a shame that sometimes this talent is not hammered home as much as it could have been. They are definitely a band that will keep you guessing and always produce something unexpected and exciting. Surely that is why we fall in love with bands such as Meursault. I already cannot wait for the follow up.
-- http://www.thelineofbestfit.com/2010/06 ... ake-merry/
av FalloutBoy » 2010-10-30 17:41
Righteous anger, fierce intelligence, vicious wit and lyrics so sharp they could slice the ears clean off of your head; it can mean only one thing- The Indelicates are back!!
After being tied up in red tape and doublespeak with their former record label for sizeable part of 2009, a frustrated Simon and Julia Indelicate instigated a course of action which would give cause for your average careerist musician to experience a loosening of the bowels, they demanded that they be dropped by their label! It seemed to be their only option after experiencing first-hand, the industries inability to embrace the digital age or even accept the blindingly obvious fact that the musical landscape had changed forever- the old model was dead and that continually pushing a door marked “pull” will achieve absolutely nothing!! Now free from the shackles of being a “signed” entity, Simon and Julia are poised to finally deliver a new album via their own label, Corporate Records, -“a record company designed for the music market that exists now, not the market that existed in the 80s”. “Songs For Swinging Lovers” is The Indelicates follow up to their critically acclaimed début “American Demo” and once again they prove that in terms of literate, angry, spirited, pop music they really do have no equal.
“Songs For Swinging Lovers” is a musical and poetic tour de force that tackles subjects with the sort of brutal honesty that would give most traditional record labels coronaries. Make no mistake this is a magnificent album that enthrals, shocks and delights in equal measure, full of dark poetic lyricism whilst demonstrating an unerring ability to cut through the bullshit and dismantle accepted societal truisms. “Europe” is the albums opening track and a song which Simon says they wanted to sound “as unpleasant and disgusting as possible- We had wanted to write about Europe for ages. Partly because we wanted to write a song about a major continental landmass on every album – but mainly because we don’t especially like it. If it seems a little bit hasty to dislike a continent in so sweeping a way then yes, it is. And we barely mean it. But there is something to be disliked. The way that class infects it at every level. The horrible tastelessness of high-european fashion with its well cut skirt suits and utilitarianally worthless polished stones. The way that we cling to cosy pacifism while relying on American treaty obligations to handle our security. The way we look down on America generally, while spivvily lining our pockets.*”
The Indelicates have certainly never been a band to pull their punches, take “Flesh”, for example, a sequel in many ways to “Our Daughters Will Never be Free”’. Melodically it’s a gorgeous, slow burning torch song, but lyrically is a biting polemic which reflects on the failings of “women who claim to be different, the young feminists and the gender identity literati”. It also addresses the obsession with body image and the plastic nature of beauty which seems to have been embraced as the only form of female empowerment. Other bands and artists have tackled this thorny subject with varying degrees of success, but there are very few artists who would start a pop song with an opening line such as “Come on girls let’s try and bring out the rapist in the new men” or manage, a few verses later, to quite literally, stop you in your tracks with “Hey Doc take a knife and carve my snatch into a smile/Strip me and dissect me, milk my tears and tap my bile ” Angry, direct and quite brilliant. “Savages” may be their most personal song to date, and in a direct reference to Huxley’s “Brave New World” Simon and Julia question whether people actually need tragedy and beauty and clever songs? And they wonder if maybe they are the problem, the outsiders, the“savages”.
“Songs For Swinging Lovers” not only demonstrates the Indelicates trademark erudite lyrical dexterity and waspish sense of humour but also something that can often be overlooked, the fact they are incredibly talented musicians. Their ability to mix a wide range of styles, attack a myriad of targets and yet still have a coherent “Indelicate-sound” is something to marvel at. There’s the post punk anger of (“possible” anti-industry song,) “Your Money” (which contains one of the most memorable guitar riffs since “Another Girl Another Planet”) the almost gospel-esque sing- along chorus of “Jerusalem” (about private education) to the quite deranged and somewhat disturbing piano ‘murder- ballad’ that is “Roses”. “Songs For Swinging Lovers” proves that if anyone can save music from being sucked into the quagmire of inanity, it’s the Indelicates. They have more to say in the forty five plus minutes of this wonderful album than most bands can muster over an entire career. It’s powerful, angry and more personal than their début and yet is also laced with dark humour and proves that fun isn’t just the preserve of the feeble mined, it’s also the best British album since, well..,.”American Demo”… Why if they go on like this they might well be able to tempt me into believing in musicians again, which of course would be quite absurd!!
-- http://vonpipmusicalexpress.wordpress.c ... rs-review/
av FalloutBoy » 2010-10-31 16:00
Withered Hand is not, alas, a Jeremy Beadle tribute band. It is, however, the nom de plume of Edinburgh alt.folk messiah Dan Willson – and for said dude we should give thanks.
Willson is a curious pop disciple: a deadpan bard eternally vexed by the doctrines of God, the inconsequence of life, and the transparent nature of modern swimwear. Good News, his gorgeous debut album, delivers a compendium of warped-rock sermons that variously reference Seventh-day Adventism (‘Cornflake’); lyrical post-rationalisation (‘For the Maudlin’); and knocking one out on your paramour’s couch (‘Religious Songs’, his signature anthem).
Despite his dedication to a DIY cause that’s seen Withered Hand galvanise Edinburgh’s live terrain and perform with Jeffrey Lewis and Calvin Johnson, Willson’s quavering vocals and acoustic eulogies elicit heavy-hitters Bright Eyes (on woebegone porch-swing opener ‘Providence’) – and even Neil Young at times.
Fans will recognise much of Good News: previous Withered Hand singles feature, but they’re (needlessly) tweaked by producer Kramer (Low, Daniel Johnston). Hence deficit aria ‘No Cigarettes’ surrenders some of its vulnerability, while a refinement of ‘Religious Songs’ misplaces the hymn’s initial scrabbly desperation.
This is a minor quibble. Willson’s sing-a-long afflictions and satirical narratives are marvellous. ‘Lord... won’t you listen to me, your unfaithful servant’s filthy fucking language’, he importunes on ‘Love in the Time of Ecstasy’, a sonorous ‘so-what’ to the hereafter.
‘In the greater scheme of things, I am nothing’, he later claims – which just goes to show that, despite being splendid, Withered Hand is not always right.
-- http://www.list.co.uk/article/20688-wit ... good-news/
av FalloutBoy » 2010-11-02 17:02
Anna Bronsted follows up her 2008 album, When Your Blackening Shows with a beautiful second long-player. The Danish vocalist and songwriter has been known to play keyboards for Efterklang, but this album marks her out as an impressive musical force in her own right. Assisted by various musically-inclined friends (most notably guitarist/keyboardist Soren Bigum and bass player Moogie Johnson) Golden Sea quickly reveals itself as something really quite special; there's something about the overall sound of this record that intimates a nocturnal, bucolic feel, perhaps at times sounding like a more cinematic Bat For Lashes, glazed with a production aesthetic that has a partially dissolved, soft-focus feel. Gauzy opener 'The Departure' finds Bronsted's voice vanishing into a mist of electric pianos - it's almost ambient, yet follow-on track 'In The Lowlands' arrives with a tangibly rhythmic presence that hints at the far more in-depth soundscape featured on this album. The synths here (and on the Kate Bush-like 'Nightsong') have a wonderfully weird, dream-sequence feel to them, and later on, strings surge through mid-album highlight 'The Burial' hitting a similarly ethereal note. With Bronsted's songwriting sounding sharper and more assured than on her debut, Our Broken Garden is a project that's very much on the ascendance, and Golden Sea - without any prior expectations - sounds quite fantastic.
-- http://boomkat.com/cds/342859-our-broke ... golden-sea
av Jansson » 2010-11-02 17:07
av FalloutBoy » 2010-11-08 15:07
Athens band Azure Ray's sparse, folk-inspired music is often described as dream pop, but that's not fully accurate. The eeriness that flows through most of the tracks on the band's latest work, "Drawing Down the Moon," would make a better soundtrack to fitful tossing and turning.
The work of Azure Ray members Maria Taylor and Orenda Fink (the band broke up in 2004 but reunited last year) is often ethereal and breezy, but the duo's tracks are never fully stripped-down: With harp, bass, cello, oboe, violin, bassoon and drums, they often seem sparse but are truly multi-layered. "Drawing Down the Moon," which drops Tuesday, Sept. 14, marks the group's first album since 2003's "Hold On Love." The 12 tracks truly display the group's range, from barebones opener "Wake Up Sleepyhead" to the expansive "Make Your Heart." Taylor and Fink are superb singers, and they use their talent to create songs about bitterness and sadness that will creep into your brain and set up shop in its darkest crevices.
The album begins with "Wake Up Sleepyhead," which starts off with a lush harp from contributor Eliza Sydney. A tale of unsuccessful companionship, the song gives listeners an introduction to the kind of regret Taylor and Fink have mastered in a minute-and-44-second package of all that went wrong: "If you're leaving/All that we see, is it fleeting?/Hard to believe it was worth it/Baby, you took my heart." "Wake up, wake up/This is only a dream," the pair whispers, but it's hard to tell whether reality even matters in these discussions of plundered hope and innocence.
'Drawing Down the Moon' by Azure RaySome of the album's best works are its weightier tracks: "Don't Leave My Mind" benefits from keys and cooing harmonies as the pair murmur about the undeniable end of a relationship ("You can go where each day takes you/Someplace I can't find/But don't leave my mind"). "In the Fog" is heartily masculine thanks to a deep bass beat and aggressive distortion that give the track an almost dub-like feel. And "Silver Sorrow" tip-toes toward pop with its guitars, synths, church bells and omnipresent melodies.
The album is at its most sublime and eerie when Taylor and Fink channel their inner Stevie Nickses and bust out confessional lyrics and witchy atmosphere in full force, like on "Larraine," "Shouldn't Have Loved" and "Dancing Ghosts." With finger-picking guitar, strings, bells and whispered lyrics, "Larraine" is the saddest of them all, a song about a woman plagued by abuse and abandonment ("You spent your whole life/Trying to wash away the dirt ... The nightmares wouldn't stop/So you drank them to a haze"). "Shouldn't Have Loved," a tale of romantic regret, and "Dancing Ghosts," another sad look back ("Oh, I knew it would end this way/But I chose it anyway ... Was I lost enough to believe in us?") recall Nicks in the midst of her breakup with lover and bandmate Lindsey Buckingham.
With its mysticism and patiently pieced-together tracks about love and loss, "Drawing Down the Moon" is a welcome return for Azure Ray after six years apart. But if this is what dreams are made of, I'll sleep with a light on.
--http://www.expressnightout.com/content/2010/09/azure-ray-drawing-down-moon-album-review.php
av FalloutBoy » 2010-11-08 15:15
For this latest album, Mice Parade shift gear dramatically to incorporate elements of West African music and South American guitar styles into their evolving sound. Main player Adam Pierce remains a restless creative presence, but where it's previously been tempting to think as Mice Parade as a solo project, What It Means To Be Left-Handed finds him taking up a more clear-cut bandleader role. On this record Temporary Residence artist Caroline Lufkin, Doug Scharin (of HiM, Codeine, Enablers) and classical guitarist Dan Lippel play alongside guest artists such as Meredith Godreau (aka Fat Cat's own Gregory & The Hawk), Swahili singer Somi and kora player Abdou. These new combinations of artists immediately make a mark, bringing a fusionist highlife feel to joyous opener 'Kupanda' and a strikingly elaborate acoustic narrative to early standout 'In Between Times'. There's more striking applications of kora to be heard on 'Old Hat', whose tumbling arpeggios accompany Pierce's hushed vocal line and a massively compressed beat. Confirming that this is the most ambitiously diverse Mice Parade album to date, the second half of the record finds the more electronically produced and polished home-listening style sounds of 'Tokyo Late Night' rubbing shoulders with straight-up proto-indie strum-alongs 'Mallo Cup' and the excellent 'Even'. The album rounds off with a great cover of the Tom Brosseau song 'Mary Anne', parting on one of Mice Parade's more straight-forward moments that nevertheless rings out as mightily powerful.
-- http://boomkat.com/cds/335127-mice-para ... eft-handed
av FalloutBoy » 2010-11-08 15:39
Ja, även om de mesta de gjort låter snarlikt så finns det guldkorn att upptäcka på de flesta av deras album. Själv föredrar jag de mer avskalade låtarna, t.ex. "Raining In Athens" (från Burn & Shiver).shifts skrev:Gillade verkligen EP:n Azure Ray släppte för ett antal år sedan, men i övrigt har jag lyssnat väldigt lite på dem. Kanske dags nu då.
Known principally as the multi-instrumentalist composer of charming, rainy-afternoon-with-a-box-of-chocolates soundtracks to the movies Amélie, The Dreamlife of Angels, Good Bye Lenin! et al, Brittany’s Yann Tiersen is also responsible for a less heralded quintet of solo albums which mix dainty musette instrumentals, Michael Nyman-esque chamber orchestra essays and miscellaneous songs (his last outing, 2005’s Les Retrouvailles, featured vocal cameos from Cocteau Twin Elizabeth Fraser and Jane Birkin, among others). Tiersen is now a festival regular, too, latterly purveying his eclectic repertoire with a double drum kit and ondes Martenot-assisted chamber-rock combo.
All that diverse, protean musicality seems to have been poured into Dust Lane, the now 40-year-old Tiersen’s debut for Mute. Mostly recorded on Ouessant, the Atlantic gale-blown island off France’s northwestern tip which the composer calls home, its eight, extended tracks embrace a smorgasbord of styles: solo piano etudes, soaring choral anthems, indie rock-outs and synth-drenched soundscapes, often all of them in the same song. His guests this time include erstwhile Third Eye Foundation singer Matt Elliott, Breton chanteuse Gaëlle Kerrien and Gallic indie star Syd Matters; in harness with Tiersen’s band and orchestral players they make a mighty yet dreamy noise.
While the deaths of both his mother and a close friend during the album’s creation have lent Tiersen’s lyrics, mostly delivered in English, an understandably ruminative quality, much of the music is uplifting, nonetheless. The multi-voiced chorus of Amy has a coruscating, rock opera quality – a characteristic shared by the pounding title-track, a synth-suffused choral anthem that implicitly celebrates life even as it acknowledges the Dust Lane of death.
Tiersen gets political, albeit in an implicit, wonderstruck manner, on the less immediately successful Palestine – its title rather laboriously spelt out on the chorus – and returns to matters mortal on the initially doom-laden, ultimately hymnal Ashes which boasts one of the simple yet emotionally stirring string melodies which have become a Tiersen hallmark. The closing F*** Me, meanwhile, is the hook-laden coup de grace, Tiersen and Kerrien’s duet vocals ingenuously saluting the life-affirming joy of conjugal union while grinning banjos circle, Mellotrons wheeze and synths sigh orgasmically.
-- http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/reviews/xxvh
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