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av Alexi » 2010-04-27 12:26
av SuperB » 2010-04-28 11:59
av FalloutBoy » 2010-04-28 17:59
The Art Museums derive their sound from a very specific time and place. The time is the mid-'80s, the place is the Television Personalities’ rehearsal room. Glenn Donaldson (who’s also in the Skygreen Leopards) and Josh Alper have made a thorough study of the whimsical, undeniably catchy mod-pop that the TVP’s and other bands released on head Personality Dan Treacy's short-lived label Wham Records. The results of this education are displayed on the duo’s debut mini-LP, Rough Frame. On it they deliver nine songs that are true to the spirit of their heroes’ sound, to the point where their slightly shambolic, lo-fi songs sound like they could have been released on Wham Records Well, maybe with a little polishing, that is. The Art Museum’s sound is more 2010 lo-fi than 1987 lo-fi, with more echo and fuzz than a band on Wham Records would have used. (The drum machine the Museums use also sounds like a more recent model.) It’s one of the things that keeps them from being mere copycat revivalists. The other is that the songs are hooky. Too many bands think that recapturing a lost or forgotten sound is enough and they forget to write songs that have memorable choruses. These guys didn’t skimp on that, as just about every song on Rough Frame is blog-worthy. It’s a promising debut that packs a nostalgic punch. Dan Treacy would be proud.
-- http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=am ... fixzwsld0e
av shifts » 2010-04-28 18:12
av FalloutBoy » 2010-04-30 17:07
Full of subsonic bass rumble and glitchy polyrhythms, Growing’s debut for Vice finds the group fully transformed from their modest beginnings as a band using guitar crunch to make ambient soundscapes into a fully focused (and completely trippy) electronic force. Pumps! picks up where 2008’s All the Way left off in a wash of a drone and noise, and adds forceful beats throughout. Driven by a pulsing kick, Growing’s palette of fuzz shards, goopy gurgles, and vacuum suction is transformed from whispers in the ether to block-rocking beats from a Martian club. As well as becoming more danceable (in a freaky, frenetic way), the band incorporates a vocalist, Sadie Laska, who delivers spoken echoes in the styling of Miss Kittin over “Camera 84”’s techno pacing. It’s not as if the duo has gone all FM radio, though. Everything is twisted and blurred to the point that only the patient and experimental-minded will sift through the murk to find the hidden grooves. Closer “Mind Eraser” manipulates the phrase “I love drugs” in and out of a clubby dub-skitter, along with what might be German elves yelling in an echo chamber. Yeah, it's that stoney and weird, but it's also really, really good. Potentially their most accomplished work.
-- http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=am ... ftxzqsldae
av FalloutBoy » 2010-05-07 18:55
The artwork of Speculation, To Rococo Rot's seventh album and their first in six years, sees an arm reaching into grey space to unlock a panoply of coiled, wound, frayed and notched wires. Though circling in on each other, and replicating structures across the visual field, there's something unruly about the way the dense, steely material folds and curls on itself. Here's the thing: Through repetition, incremental change becomes apparent, and everything's connected, even at its most improvised and uncertain. It's as good a metaphor for To Rococo Rot's music as you're likely to get.
If it's brave for a group to go out in their 15th year and call their album Speculation—by now, according to rock lore, they should be on the downward slide, repeating one idea to diminishing returns—it's also a good marker of how To Rococo Rot continue to function. Back in 1997 they were calling their instruments "tools," analogising their laminar, instrumental songwriting with the fluidity of the contemporary, multimedia arts that were burgeoning across the EU, and thinking through relationships between their micro-managed riffs and the repetitions of everyday life. Nowadays, To Rococo Rot sometimes sound vaguely anachronistic, given the way minimal techno has leapfrogged electronica and IDM in the collective conscious of electronic music fans, but this works to their advantage: there's really still nobody who does this thing (ticking, shuttling, film-projector rhythms, Stefan Schneider's plangent, melodic bass melodies, the clicks, hums and gurgles of their collective kit's central nervous system) remotely as well—if ever.
Speculation was mostly recorded at the studio of Krautrock legends Faust, which accounts for Jochen Irmler's appearance, on spiky, treble-overload organ, on the ten-minute unravel of the closing "Friday." It's nice—To Rococo Rot goes out to sea with their predecessors—but what comes before is the revelation. While they've often included acoustic instrumentation, or simulated acoustica, in their armoury, on Speculation it's often upfront, structuring the songs. The three-note piano refrain that serves as "Seele"'s backbone is oddly reminiscent of The Cure's Seventeen Seconds, and "Forwardness" brings the piano back to duel with Reichian marimba patterns. "Place It" offers an orchestra of bass, from plucked harmonic chimes to sliding, rolling patterns, weaving through electronic melodies in miniature, with the trio's crackling hand claps running interference, all while ghostly waves of synth strings coast and coat the song.
For anyone disappointed by the hermeticism of this album's predecessor, Hotel Morgen, Speculation will pleasantly surprise. Its generous openness recalls To Rococo Rot's signal album, 1999's The Amateur View, and like that record, its melodic flourishes prove the group are no shirkers when it comes to pop music. But I sense something else going on here, perhaps an intensification of character that comes from meeting in such a focused setting after having spent a longer time apart than usual (all three members, Stefan Schnieder and brothers Ronald and Robert Lippok, are busy with extra-curricular activities), leading to a re-tooling of their wonderfully "systems"-oriented approach to making music. Most of all, Speculation reminds that there's always been something deeply human about To Rococo Rot's music, and the way they bring "artificial worlds into correspondence with nature"—as they once described the presence of the tulips that stretch across The Amateur View's front cover—is on fine form here. A very welcome return.
-- http://www.residentadvisor.net/review-view.aspx?id=7236
av FalloutBoy » 2010-05-10 19:16
In a music industry that's becoming increasingly fixated on overnight, flavour-of-the-month success stories and general disposability, it can only be regarded as a great positive that The National are a band whose appeal continues to grow after some ten years of recording together. Despite not being the fresh-faced pups normally required to cause such a stir, High Violet is one of 2010's most talked about and anticipated albums, following on from the massively acclaimed Alligator (2005) and Boxer (2007). The lead-up single 'Bloodbuzz Ohio' previewed the impressive sense of scale this band aim for, and subtly, throughout High Violet they adorn their already very expressive core sound with orchestration (some of which is arranged by Nico Muhly) and big-name guest spots from the likes of Sufjan Stevens, Bon Iver's Justin Vernon and Richie Reed Parry of Arcade Fire fame. None of this detracts or distracts from the continuity and general magnificence of the album, which seems to serve up highlight after highlight: if opener 'Terrible Love' sets the bar awfully high as a first track, 'Sorrow' and the stunning 'Anyone's Ghost' see the standard rising ever higher - seldom has an album's opening fifteen minutes so persistently threatened to raise the hairs on the back of your neck. In a sense - and I urge you not to be put off by such statements - The National are the very thing that Coldplay would probably most love to be. Here is a band unafraid of making big, emotive, ambitious music that treats its audience to grand choruses and guitars that stay just the right side of stadium-rock, all the while preserving a just-enigmatic-enough indie persona so as not to stray into outright schmaltz. If all that sounds a tad calculated, well it's probably not an entirely fair portrait of The National, but somehow they do manage to pull off the trick of sounding like a band for all people at all times in a way that steers clear of wince-inducing cliche or populist hysterics. Whilst coming across as eminently intelligent and credible, you could imagine festival circuit live renderings of 'Conversation 16' and 'England' making U2 sound like Thee Oh Sees. There's considerable depth behind all this cosmetic bombast, however, and High Violet quickly proves itself worthy of the not inconsiderable press attention that has already been afforded it. This is one of the big, 'event' albums of the 2010, and actually, most likely it'll also prove to be one of the year's finest.
-- http://boomkat.com/vinyl/298328-the-nat ... igh-violet
av FalloutBoy » 2010-05-13 16:29
Grey Oceans is the fourth album from sister duo Bianca and Sierra Casady, and continues to chart CocoRosie's departure from their much-beloved but ultra lo-fi debut, La Maison De Mon Reve. After the atmospheric acoustic-electronic fusion of 'Trinity's Crying', 'Smokey Taboo' arrives as a slow-burning treat, colliding tabla rhythms with electronic tones whilst Bianca and Sierra layer their very different vocal styles: while the classically trained Sierra opts for an almost operatic approach, Bianca tends to sound like she's voicing a Tex Avery cartoon. The voices compliment each other beautifully and always ground the album in something substantial and accessible, even when the sonic backdrop is at its most fanciful. In one of their finest moments, the sisters make like a tag team on the outrageously bizarre 'Hopscotch', switching between hauntingly maudlin verses littered with electronic beats to honky-tonk piano choruses accompanied by throbbing sub-bass - it's like a collision between vaudeville-style variety theatre and dubstep during its weirdest stretches. Also of note, the lovely 'Undertaker' fashions an arrangement for an old recording of what is apparently the sisters' mother singing in her Cherokee, and 'R.I.P. Burn Face' develops a kind of melancholic sample-driven swagger. This latter track underlines what the duo do best on the new album: introducing their established fairytale language of glockenspiels, toy instruments and far-fetched yarns to a more sequenced and rigidly programmed approach to arrangement. If anything, the electronics seem to further facilitate CocoRosie's forays into fanciful, adventurous songwriting, making possible a surreal and inimitable brand of music hall electronica.
-- http://boomkat.com/cds/294584-cocorosie-grey-oceans
av FalloutBoy » 2010-05-13 16:44
shifts skrev:Årets absolut värsta skivomslag. Det lär inte gå att finna ett fulare.
av FalloutBoy » 2010-05-13 19:08
Way back when, Kurt Cobain was denied an album title much like Xiu Xiu’s on the grounds of damaging sales. Mega-sales aren’t a problem for Jamie Stewart, however, who has in the past made being an Ian Curtis and Morrissey fan into an artform, while ensuring the music never becomes too easy on the ear. As ever, Stewart veers from acoustic singer-songwriter fare (albeit hyperbolically self-lacerating) to rough-edged electro-rock reminiscent of Joy Division on the cusp of becoming New Order (think also: early singles by The Associates, and The Human League before they became pop monstrosities).
The opener, Gray Death, is an instant new favourite, with a strident refrain (“beat! Beat! Beat! Beat to death…”) and alternating solos for phased guitar and reverbed piano, all as massively catchy as Smashing Pumpkins, but with gritty production. Chocolate Makes You Happy maintains the pace, but brings in chirpily naïve keyboard lines much like The Cure undercutting their own epic-gothery with a Lovecats or The Walk. Thing is, Xiu Xiu have another three decades of sounds / apps / plug-ins to play with, meaning that the menagerie of robot animals frolicking in the background variously sound like entire pieces by Autechre or Matmos (that’d be new synth-player and programmer Angela Seo, and various members of Deerhoof guesting).
Slowing down toward the record’s middle, for Hyunhye’s Theme, Stewart picks out a delicate guitar motif while championing a hard-working Asian girl, but there’s no slowdown in creativity: instruments snuffle and plink like a barn at night, before overwhelming the song with riotous cacophony. In a sense, that’s the whole aesthetic: the title-track has a killer hook, and grabs your heartstrings with its mournful synth organ, but all the other sounds are determined to subvert the song’s prettiness and (potentially) cheap emotion.
After seven albums and various EPs, Dear God… is as engagingly weird as anything before, but flows so much better by incorporating the customary sonic terrorism into verse-chorus-verse songs, rather than breaking off for performance poetry about living in the shadow of suicide, or (say) war as legitimate barbarism for jocks. Nevertheless, the limited edition LP comes with a T-shirt decorated with real blood. With it out on February 15th, it’s an ideal Valentine’s present for the deviant in your life.
-- http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/reviews/b5cg
av FalloutBoy » 2010-05-15 16:17
Critics like to cite musical references in reviews a lot; it helps give the readers something to auralise as they read, as well as allowing for a comparison of tastes. Woodpigeon have made it at once very easy and very hard for this writer. Within the space of 16 tracks they manage to sound like (amongst others) The Shins, Andrew Bird, Jim Noir, 'Bends'-era Radiohead, Belle & Sebastien and any number of musical theatre chorus lines. This is easy, because I can describe to you, the reader, just how varied the sound of this album is throughout. This is hard, because I now have to explain why those references don’t mean that Woodpigeon lack in originality.
You see, 'Die Stadt Muzikanten' doesn’t sound like that list of sounds, those sounds sound like this album. It’s testament to Mark Hamilton and co’s musical prowess that in one album they have created a completely cohesive yet entirely changeable set of songs. From the saloon piano melancholy of the title track to the folk-orchestral sweeps of ‘...And as the Ship Went Down You Never Looked Finer’, every track offers a new slant on the band’s sound as Mark Hamilton guides you through with the purest of vocals.
Because of its changeable nature, the album becomes not only an experience characterised by its songs, but by moments in those songs. When the quiet yearning of ‘The Street Noise Gives You Away’ is finally released, the drums pound and electric guitars kick in and you’re swept away with it all. ‘Empty-Hall Sing-Along’s dark, swirling indie occasionally gives way to the most perfect pop refrain, like a beam of sunshine through an overcast sky.
It can’t be overstated just how much of an achievement this album is – there’s a musical accomplishment at work here beyond what most bands will achieve in their whole career, whilst Mark Hamilton displays a nous for pretty pop that could hook the most sceptical of listeners. 'Die Stadt Muzikanten' is a triumph, and it’s unlikely you’ll hear something quite as complex yet perfectly accessible for quite some time.
-- http://www.thisisfakediy.co.uk/articles ... muzikanten
Treasury Library Canada, the follow-up to Songbook, last September's disarmingly accomplished debut from eight-piece Canadian collective, Woodpigeon, arrives with what appears to be unseeming but altogether welcome haste.
Saturated in a faux-fey and knowingly off-kilter nostalgia, it sidesteps the 'difficult second album' syndrome to produce another sweetly sophisticated display of music-making guaranteed to entertain, intrigue, beguile and charm.
That the world and his wife is now singing the praises of Woodpigeon means you won't be able to claim them as your own private pleasure any longer. Gone, too, is the opportunity to gain the grovelling admiration of those you might have otherwise introduced to this delectable concoction of fanciful lyrics, sing-along melodies and home-spun sentiment. But that's a small price to pay.
A more focused album than its predecessor, Treasury Library Canada gains immeasurably from the delectable contrariness at the heart of frontman and songsmith Michael Hamilton's eclectic and elegantly unassertive art. For all the seductive fireside cosiness and gently swaying, raised-lighters-in-the-night-air prettiness of the surface of Hamilton's meringue-light, sugar-dusted melodies, what lies beneath are beautifully crafted lyrics that excavate into the affairs of both the head and heart with forensic clarity.
Fourteen tracks are packed into this marvellously beguiling package, each and all dealing with returning home after self-imposed exile. Folksy, rootsy, pop-y, indie and all points, perspectives and colours in between, Woodpigeon combine rare intelligence with insight and inventiveness to produce songs that seep and surge into the imagination and linger long after there like bittersweet inherited memories.
-- http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/reviews/gm63
av FalloutBoy » 2010-05-20 15:31
Forgiveness is not a sentiment often associated with rock music. Anger, despair, infatuation, sure. But forgiveness is more complicated, and tougher to fit into a four-minute song. Broken Social Scene know all about heartbreak-- they've spent most of the last decade crafting songs about it with almost unparalleled zeal. Their story is filled with scurrilous encounters, backstabbings, and break-ups on par with most 70s arena-rockers, and they've crashed and rebuilt so many times that it's nearly impossible to keep track of who was where at any given moment. But they've also used that flexibility to their advantage: Their epochal 2002 breakout You Forgot It In People was the joyous sound of friends banding together to boost each other up, while 2005's Broken Social Scene was the dizzying sound of friends fizzing out into solo endeavors and outside pursuits.
Now they're back, and they're forgiving. Who, exactly? Each other, loves, bad decisions, humanity at large, worse decisions, the past, the future, culture, corporations, art, you, me, maybe even George W. Bush. (Well, maybe not him.) And while a 59-minute absolution session sounds excessive for even the most devout fans, Broken Social Scene aren't just throwing out hail marys here. Because forgiveness is hard, especially for a group this grand and this intertwined for this long. The album lets bygones go while acknowledging the pain and discipline involved, and does so while keeping with the band's indie-mixtape rep. There's a song that sounds like Pavement, one that sounds like the Sea and Cake (featuring Sea and Cake singer Sam Prekop), another like a Broadway adaptation of Children of Men, a weightless ballad that may double as an ode to masturbation, and a song that's basically five minutes of atmospheric pop perfection. Their ambition is intact.
Forgiveness Rock Record's thematic bent is mature, and that sense of gravity is embedded into the music, too. Working with band hero, Tortoise/Sea and Cake drummer, and post-rock mastermind John McEntire for the first time, Broken Social Scene made sure to have their shit together. Considering the co-producer's experimental bona fides, it's surprising that this is the most song-based album the band has ever made-- every track but one contains vocals, and a couple seem to be filled with more words than the entirety of You Forgot It In People. Unlike their last album's sometimes indulgent cut-and-paste sonic collages, Forgiveness has distinct targets and leaves little room for wayward meanders.
The band's newfound tightness results in a few of the most chart-friendly songs in BSS history, although as usual, each seems to come with a built-in caveat to prevent the potential of radio play: the sweat-soaked "World Sick", with its massive crescendos building to one visceral, heart-pounding release after another, is nearly seven minutes long with extended instrumental intros and outros. "Texico Bitches", despite its misleading breezy accompaniment, is an increasingly topical indictment of big oil that repeats the word "bitches" 12 times. And the vocals on the beautiful, synth-laden "All to All" are serviceably performed by relative newcomer Lisa Lobsinger, where Leslie Feist's stronger, more possessed delivery may have pushed it into another weight class entirely. (Feist does show up on Forgiveness, but only for background vocals.)
As an alt-hippie with obsessions for Dinosaur Jr., Jeff Buckley, and Ennio Morricone, BSS main face Kevin Drew led the burgeoning band to somewhere completely fresh with You Forgot It In People, an album that read like a non-ironic, indie-rock Odelay for the early 2000s. For the most part, Drew and company are referencing the same beloved bands on Forgiveness, with one key addition: Broken Social Scene themselves. There are now marks that listeners expect them to hit, and they're nailed with focus and precision: the peppy, horn-laden track from Apostle of Hustle's Andrew Whiteman ("Art House Director"), the back-of-the-bus acoustic session ("Highway Slipper Jam"), the immense instrumental to end all immense instrumentals ("Meet Me in the Basement"). All of those tracks excellently fill their respective niches, but the fact that there are niches at all adds a bittersweet tinge to a band that once sounded like everything else and nothing else.
Which leads us to the indiscretion summary "Sentimental X's". It checks off another BSS box-- the subtly devastating Emily Haines-sung heart-tugger. "Off and on is what we want," sings Haines, narrating the band's gift-and-curse plight, "A friend of a friend you used to call/ Or a friend of a friend you used/ You used to call." Which is what Broken Social Scene is: a mess of friends using friends, loving friends, calling friends, wanting to call friends, and then not calling friends anymore. The connections are transitory but also indestructible. Ultimately, "Sentimental X's" is a love song; there's lots of forgiveness, but nobody feels sorry.
-- http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/142 ... ock-record
av FalloutBoy » 2010-05-20 15:37
One of the most promising developments of the last year or so in indie rock has been the removal of the Grateful Dead from the blacklist. Thanks to the valiant efforts of folks like Animal Collective and Arthur magazine, your average Brooklynite is starting to wonder why they ever hated the Dead in the first place. Truth be told, there's a lot to be learned from the Dead, and plenty of bands on both coasts seem to be taking notes. There's a re-emphasis on the live experience, on finding the psychedelic space within compositions, on not fearing the improv, on passing around music in cassette form. It's as refreshing as a 1967 Morning Dew.
Woods sound very little like the Dead; few of these bands actually do. But there's something of Garcia and co. in their DNA, most markedly in the free-form excursions of their live set, where the four-piece weaves through compelling improvisational passages. But the Grateful Dead made albums too, and the country-inflected indie pop that fills At Echo Lake, their fifth full-length and possibly their best, is a worthy heir as well. Loose, shuffling, and tuneful, the abridged Woods experience sounds more like Wowee Zowee than Workingman's Dead, but it hits just the right contradictory note of tight arrangements and breathing-room playing to get that back-porch, weird America vibe.
Where previous records got distracted with lo-fi detours or lengthy workouts that didn't translate from the stage to tape, At Echo Lake is far more concise. Made up exclusively from the soft landing points that punctuate their longer live jams, it's a brisk listen, even down to its half-hour runtime. Only the brief near-instrumental "From the Horn", which sounds excised from a longer jam session, hints at the group's more exploratory and dangerous side. The rest is a sunset daydream flickering by with songs, often acoustic-based, rarely lasting longer than it takes to plant a melody in your head. The endearing nasality of Jeremy Earl's voice is sloughed off by a distorted effect on all lead and backing vocals, making the record sound like a patchy signal from a distant ham radio.
Successful as At Echo Lake may be, Woods are still more interesting live than on record-- a photo-negative of 99% of indie rock bands these days, who mostly remain content to jukebox their catalog on shuffle night after night. Adding a couple of extended jams might help make a Woods record a more accurate souvenir of the live experience, but is that really necessary? Perhaps the most important lesson to be learned from the Grateful Dead is that the show and the album can be discreet experiences, feeding each other, but not overlapping.
-- http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/14224-at-echo-lake
av zidanefromhell » 2010-05-21 16:27
av FalloutBoy » 2010-05-21 23:05
zidanefromhell skrev:Tjoho, inte fel att börja helgen med att lyssna på nytt från Lcd Soundsystem
Lcd Soundsystem - This is happening
av zidanefromhell » 2010-05-22 09:14
av FalloutBoy » 2010-05-27 16:56
Det var nästan ett halvår sedan den kom.Ton skrev::o Har helt missat att de släppt nytt. -Tur då att denna tråd finns
The brainchild of the young and multi-faceted Virginian, by the name of Jack Tatum (also of Jack and the Whale and Facepaint), Wild Nothing’s debut offers the sort of sophisticated multi-layered musicianship that is rarely seen on a debut album by someone at the age of 21. When “Chinatown” made it’s rounds not too long ago, It’s feel for Icelandic pop, angelic flutes and synths made it clear that Wild Nothing’ full length was something people needed to keep an ear out for in 2010. Gemini lives in the universe where it’s uplifted sense of melancholy makes you want to spend hours alone with your imagination and wherever it may may take you. Tatum’s successfully evokes a nostalgic element throughout Gemini that you can distinctively hear as familiar influences weave in and out within his song writing. From the downtempo shoegaze of “Drifter” and “Pessimist” reminiscent of Cocteau Twins through to hints of the Smiths carried by Tatum’s youthfully optimistic voice on “Live In Dreams” and “O, Lilac.”
the lyrics mostly feel like an after thought (something Tatum himself admits), work well nonetheless on Gemini. The stream of conscious approach to fit into the music works well with Wild Nothing’s youthful, carefree innocence; Anything more substantial and the songs would have felt weighed down and Tatum deserves credit for being able to integrate them with organic ease.
Gemini is the sort of light and breezy album perfect for a Summer. It is bound to be the soundtrack to many road trips to the beach or country side. Gemini may take a couple listens for those on the fence to truly appreciate the complexities and dreamy pleasures of Wild Nothing’s music, especially If you’re already not enamored with, or just over saturated by the throngs of new dream pop or shoegaze readily available. But I suspect even the skeptical will discover Gemini a beautiful and even challenging surprise if given the chance.
-- http://mishkanyc.com/bloglin/2010/05/25 ... ng-gemini/
av FalloutBoy » 2010-05-29 18:00
Debut albums are tricky things, but Sparrow and the Workshop seem to know that the secret to success lies in sticking to what you know, only doing it a bit better.
Ten of Crystal Fall’s tracks have appeared on previous EPs, this time produced with a slicker slight of hand. The new tracks fit the mould of a suitably ramshackle take on traditional alt-country with poppy sensibilities, with a healthy dose of boy-girl vocals, slide guitar and rustic, effective drums.
‘Into the Wild’ illustrates from the off the importance of singer Jill O’Sullivan’s vintage-tinged vocal, a cappella over gentle waltzing verses before a cacophonous end of rattling, swelling percussion and jangly riffs. In ‘Blame It On Me’, her style calls to mind a more countrified Cat Power, with a soaring wail of a harmony developing as the song grows. Instruments are given space to breathe, with the format throughout the record seeming to go from lilting melodies in sparse, quiet sections to raucous thrashes and stop-start aggression.
‘Mercenary’ is a down-beat highlight, with muted percussion and gentle guitar picking in the opening bars supporting the soft vocal harmonies of O’Sullivan and drummer Gregor Donaldson. The occasional guttural guitar chord in the background again grows into a heavy ending, showing the three-piece know exactly how to work their dynamic builds by this stage.
‘Crystals’, the origin of the album’s title, sees bassist/guitarist Nick Packer unleash sounds akin to O’Death, the thick tones adding personality. The eerie quality of the female vocals offsets the bells and upbeat, thundering toms and snare fills, coming off at times Mama Cass or Karen Carpenter.
Jim James-style male vocals begin Swam Like Sharks over an almost post-rock instrumental rumble, a switch which adds variety to the format of the record thus far, before both voices are at work on the chorus harking back to June and Johnny. The waltz time signature is once again at play which, although fitting, is in danger of becoming overused at points through the record.
The melancholic delivery of ‘The Gun’ belie the lyrical claim that one day everything will be alright, whilst the aggressive vocal of ‘A Horse’s Grin’ juxtaposing its cutesy words. ‘Broken Heart Broken Home’ tells a lamentful tale of moving on. The offbeat drums with clicks and bells compliment the eerie violin which works as an eerie, extra voice throughout the track. Closing track ‘You’ve Got It All’ opens with quiet meandering guitar, sounding very like She and Him’s ‘You Really Got A Hold On Me’ with dual vocals and another comfortable delivery of the quiet/loud dynamic.
The confusing thing about this trio is that they are clearly making music which harks back to another era, yet it never feels dated, leaving it hard to put a finger on what exactly they sound like. What could have been a pastiche of sounds and influences is not, due to certain individual flourishes. With many musicians claiming to be folk-faced these days to jump on the band wagon of Fleet Foxes and co, it’s refreshing to hear something more authentic and clearly a product of the heart. Whilst hardcore Sparrow fans might feel these recordings lack the punch of their predecessors, the uninitiated will really never know, and be all the happier for it.
-- http://www.thelineofbestfit.com/2010/04 ... stals-fall
av FalloutBoy » 2010-06-01 16:06
Beach Fossils is the home-recorded work of Dustin Payseur, a hipster from Brooklyn whose guitar just happens to be blessed with a most magical jangle. Chiming those six-strings like a young Johnny Marr, Payseur cranks out spangly, jangly, glimmering, shimmering, lovelorned, forlorned, post-punk-ish indie-pop tunes athrill with daydream, romance, nostalgia, and an aching, inescapable sadness.
The few write-ups of Beach Fossils in the blogosphere thus far seem to portray the music as feelgood summer pop, but to me that doesn't stick. Hearing Payseur croon "I lost my heart for you" amidst "The Horse" is, contrary to ideas of mindless optimism, incredibly moving; the sad lament of a guy on the wrong side of a summer affair that never was.
Due to the slightly-fuzzy 'production' at play and his place on Captured Tracks, Payseur will get lumped in with the no-fi-garage-scuzz crowd, but to me Beach Fossils sound absolutely classic; those muffled drums and through-a-toilet-roll vocals and ringing-like-pealing-bells guitars sounding of no fixed era, part of no on-the-ground trend.
Beach Fossils' LP comes out May 25. I'd love to make some proclamation that it's bound to be a huge breakout, but I've long ago given up on trying to make rhyme or reason of why the things that are popular are popular. Just know that it's a really, really great album, well worth your loving.
-- http://altmusic.about.com/b/2010/04/26/ ... ossils.htm
av lazpete » 2010-06-02 11:23
av FalloutBoy » 2010-06-02 15:08
lazpete skrev:Jag har dock noterat att det saknas lite skitigare musik, så jag tar på mig jeansjackan, bootsen och skruvar upp volymen.
Modern indie rock generally treats emotion as something that should be guarded or disguised. The Monitor does not subscribe to this viewpoint. On their second album, New Jersey's Titus Andronicus split the emotional atom with anthemic chants, rousing sing-alongs, celebrations of binge drinking, marathon song titles, broken-hearted duets, punked-up Irish jigs, and classic rock lyric-stealing. And through it all, they take subtlety out on the town, pour a fifth of whiskey down its throat, write insults on its face in permanent marker, and abandon it in the woods.
Loosely based on the U.S. Civil War, The Monitor may be one of the most absurd album concepts ever, invoking the battle that caused Abraham Lincoln to claim, "I am now the most miserable man living," to illustrate the sound and fury of suburban Jersey life in a shattered economy. In the annals of using historical metaphors for emotional communication, it's up there with Jeff Mangum empathizing with Anne Frank. But it all turns out so ridiculously fun-- with Ken Burns-style readings of speeches from Lincoln and Jefferson Davis, daguerreotype cover art, and song titles all participating in the reenactment-- that it never even begins to approach the pretentiousness these elements might suggest.
In the end, the Civil War is just a recurring theme, and one that's more personal than political. For stadium-rock inspiration, Titus Andronicus look no further than their home-state hero, paraphrasing Bruce Springsteen in the first song and name-checking him in the last. And while the central muse is obvious, there's a full menu of influences on display. There's the Hold Steady in its mythology of intoxication, the Pogues in its cathartic singalong gutter-punk, and Conor Oberst's Desaparacidos in its brazen earnestness. There's also the fatalistic fuck-all of early Replacements and the brutalist thrashing of east-coast hardcore in its violent instrumentation and apocalyptic worldview.
Somehow that laundry-list of inspirations all manage to make an appearance in the first two minutes of leadoff track "A More Perfect Union". After an opening half that's equal parts slop and ambition, the album turns a corner on "A Pot in Which to Piss" and settles into a reliable pattern, each song building from frontman Patrick Stickles' self-described "piss and moan" to a punk-rock fury, and finally to an instrumental call-to-arms. The repeated structure feeds the album's narrative arc and provides some much-needed breathers, until the record's big finale. At 14 minutes, "The Battle of Hampton Roads" adds a couple of extra X's to the already XL project: Oscillating even more wildly between the album's twin poles of suicidal ideation and vengeance fantasies, Stickles builds to his frothiest moment, spilling it all out in a verse that rivals Neutral Milk Hotel's "Oh Comely" for uncomfortable honesty. And in the end there's a bagpipe solo.
"The enemy is everywhere," Stickles keeps reminding us over the course of the record. It's difficult to tell what that enemy is, as Stickles' target moves from social anxiety to pure boredom to the symbolic frat-brahs of "Hampton Roads". But as the casualties pile up and the battle hymns keep egging on the troops, it becomes clear that the opponent isn't nearly as important as the fight itself. Catharsis is Stickles' fuel, and The Monitor is a 65-minute endorsement of angst and opposition as the best way to present that combustible sorrow: Light it with footlights, throw a giant shadow against the back wall, and rock the fuck out of it.
-- http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/14010-the-monitor/
av FalloutBoy » 2010-06-02 15:16
zidanefromhell skrev:Bara hoppas nya Teenage fanclub kommer upp på spoten, smakproven lovar väldigt gott!!
The eighth "proper" album from Teenage Fanclub delivers exactly what one expects: gentle, bittersweet guitar pop, which harks back to the 60s without descending into pastiche. Pick of the bunch this time out is The Fall, a meditation on ageing gracefully: "I light a fire underneath what I was/ I won't feel sad only warmed by the loss," McGinley sings in the song's coda, as guitars swell into bloom. The subject matter throughout reflects the band's actual age, rather than that implied by their name – even in Baby Lee, the most playful song on the album, Norman Blake begs not for wild nights, instead demanding: "Marry marry me, oh baby, now I am insistent." More than 20 years into their career, the Fanclub sound as if they could do this in their sleep, but their ability to deliver a quiet kind of joy is undiminished.
-- http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/ma ... -cd-review
av CODY » 2010-06-02 18:44
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Har helt missat att de släppt nytt. -Tur då att denna tråd finns