It's hard to add anything to what's already been said about Lucky Soul everywhere else: They're the perfect combination of the Mowtown bent of the first two Saturday Looks Good To Me records and the borderline insipid female brit-pop-not to be confused with britpop-tendencies of The Pipettes . In so many words, they're your favorite band for the next three minutes. "Add Your Light To Mine, Baby" [MP3]
Amazon is hosting a performance of "Side With The Seeds," recorded live in Wilco 's Chicago loft. I forgot how amazing Nels Cline's solo during the first freak-out is. [ via Pitchfork ] A royalty increase which would effectively kill internet radio has been delayed by two months while more appeals are filed and Congress addresses the issue . Here's the issue in a nutshell: The royalty increase will double expenses for large stations-WOXY will now cost ~ $2-million to run-and cause a ten-fold increase in expenses for smaller stations, in those [...]
It's not entirely clear to me that power pop is a viable-critically viable, anyhow-sub-genre in the 21st century, what with Fountains Of Wayne having gone the direction of "Stacy's Mom" and We Are Scientists -the indie rock Blink 182 -not having been that good to begin with. But every now and then I stumble upon a track like "Technology," a fuzzy gem from The Whigs about a girl too fixated on technology to step away for a moment and kiss her boyfriend, and it soothes me to know (if only for a second) that [...]
From Arts & Crafts comes Young Galaxy , a Montreal five-piece that's been drawing comparisons from everyone from Pink Floyd to Luna to label-mates Broken Social Scene and whose ethereal rock songs aren't so much in soaring in the stars as they are hovering in the fog around a glacier. "No Matter How Hard You Try" shimmers without shoegazing and concedes "You won't get out of this world" before gliding off on background "aahhhhh"'s and guitarmalade, while "Come And See" is as straightforward a pop song [...]
Manchester-based Polytechnic have an arsenal of riffs and a similarly large amount of Clap Your Hands Say yelp-rock enthusiasm, but there's something about their aesthetic on their promising debut Down Till Dawn that they may need to reign in . Indeed, frontman Dylan Giles' vocals are soaring on "Won't You Come Around," but at times he's elevated (octivally speaking) so far above the his bandmates that it proves difficult to pay attention to either party. It's a testament to how good they are that the song succeeds despite this. [...]
From the Esopus #8 compilation, an entire CD about SPAM emails, comes the new Final Fantasy song "Flare Gun." Between the piano part (which exerts itself far more than it does in, say, "This Lamb Sells Condos") and the fiddle-N.B. that I didn't call it a violin -this is the perfect tune for the next time you're out GAME HUNTING FOR FOXES or something. Thanks to reader Mike for the tip. "Flare Gun" [MP3]
So Much Silence has an MP3 of "Brass Ring" from The Broken West 's recent sessions for eMusic, as well as their complete set from last week's KCRW sessions. The Chicago Tribune asks: "Hey, have you guys heard of these things called music blogs?" While even some aficionados of online tunes lament the gradual disappearance of bricks-and-mortar music stores, the fact is you can get lost in online music for many more hours than you ever could flipping through stacks of a store's records or [...]
If it seems like I'm repeating myself here, it's in part because Mystery Jets -three young chaps from Eel Pie Island and one old chap from Eel Pie Island-are repeating themselves as well. (At least, the people responsible for releasing their music are.) Zootime combines the best of their UK-only debut Making Dens with the best of last year's Flotsam & Jetsam EP with the best of this year's Errol Alken-produced "Umbrellahead" single with good sequencing to make one hell of a proper international debut. That having been said, [...]
The "which Wolf Parade front man is better?" debate was never waged because Spencer Krug turned around so quickly after Apologies To The Queen Mary and distracted us with the release of a Sunset Rubdown record. He won by default. But the more I listen to this new record from Handsome Furs -Wolf Parade other -front man Dan Boeckne and his fiancée-the more it becomes apparent that Boeckne, not Krug, was more instrumental in crafting that signature sound-the same slightly broken, memorable chord progressions and wailing, almost Cobain-esque [...]
Part of me takes offense to Pitchfork heralding "Red River" as indicative of some kind of return to form for The Walkmen when I never thought they lost it to begin with: I really liked A Hundred Miles Off and grew to like it even more after seeing the band play that material three times in three different settings last summer. "River" is typical Walkmen-chiming guitars, swaggering vocals, a confident rhythm section-but it's not fit to hold "The Rat"'s jock, nor is it a quarter the gourd-shaker that "Emma Get Me A [...]
"When I think about this record, I think about that Bob Dylan song 'Sara'. He always wrote cryptic and poetic lyrics, but on the song 'Sara,' it's just plain and to the point. He's got nothing to hide behind, and you can hear the humanity in his voice-the triumph of living, the loneliness, eagerness, and all that's in between-not the rational or the stagnant. I feel that this record is just that." – Shannon Wright On "Everybody's Got Their Own Part To Play," a song that often reaches glorious, anthemic heights, Shannon Wright certainly [...]
By now you've likely heard gushing from every corner of the internet (particularly this one) about Beyond , Dinosaur Jr.'s first album in 15 years and first with Lou Barlow in even longer. Well good news, those of you who still respect release dates: It finally hits shelves tomorrow . Sure, they may look a lot older than last time-more precisely: they like the kind of aging rockers who see shows at your favorite venue on the nights you don't-but they don't sound a day older than the members of Sonic Youth: Mascis [...]
Fair warning: You will fall both in and out of love with this song exactly once before it's half over, and these instances (thankfully) fall in the right order. Verity Sussman's vocals are so flat at the beginning of "To The East" that they're completely incoherent; you trust the driving bassline and the synths that back them but only as far as you can throw them. By the time she gets to "I want to hear you say come back, come back, come back to me" two minutes into the thing, she's emerged from her intentionally self-conscious [...]
Having read nothing about the album before my first listen yesterday, part of me grew slowly enraged as I listened to the opening notes of the title track from Charlotte Gainsbourg 's 5:55 because of just how similar the thing sounded to a really awesome b-side from Air 's Talkie Walkie . As it turns out, this is roughly the case: Jean-Benoît Dunckel and Nicolas Godin-a.k.a. Air-actually wrote the thing (with help from Jarvis Cocker, as if you needed to be sold any further). Consequently, it should hold [...]
"Alone/Alive" may have been the much-heralded comeback song from a band that technically released an album eight months ago, but it didn't answer the same questions that "The Taste In My Mouth" did-among them: Where do Shapes And Sizes fit into the roster at Asthmatic Kitty, a label player-managed by Sufjan Stevens ? Cue the sad, swelling horns (which seem to appear almost exclusively in scores to World War II movies and Sufjan think-pieces), a banjo essentially being used as a guitar, and vulnerable vocals from front woman Caila Thompson-Hannant-a [...]
I'm not sure that I have patience left for people who categorically refuse to like Art Brut . I understand the complaints, certainly, which all boil down to the fact that Eddie Argos talk-sings, but I just think that one's ability or inablity to sing is a ridiculous thing to harp on. What about melody, which Art Brut has in spades? And what about lyrics? How do people ignore (or refuse to appreciate, rather) the fact that Eddie Argos is possibly the most likable character in music, having taken the anger from punk music [...]
If you've been an avid reader of the site since its inception, you may recall that I used to use just about anything as an excuse to write about Final Fantasy , whose Polaris Prize-winning Sophomore album He Poos Clouds was just dropping as I was just getting started. (If you haven't been an avid reader of the site, then trust that this is pretty much what I did.) Here's another excuse: A week and a half ago, Owen appeared on CBC Radio with Cadence Weapon -former Pitchfork scribe turned [...]
There's so little written on the internet about Missouri six-piece White Rabbits that a Google search for their debut album Fort Nightly causes one of these: It's good, then, that almost everything you need to know about them can be ascertained from the final two minutes of "Kid On My Shoulders"-that album's first track-which reveal two drum sets, two vocalists, and an odd calypso vibe that spiral out of control in a wonderfully grandiose, deftly non-late era Trail Of Dead sort of [...]
Very rarely is an album so accomplished that future recordings go on to be categorized based on when they came out relative to its release, but Wilco 's Summerteeth might just that: There have been at least two recordings this year that are positively post- Summerteeth pop albums. The first is The Broken West 's I Can't Go On, I'll Go On , and it's unquestionably one of the year's best records. The other is Morningbell 's Through The Belly Of The Sea , which takes a divergent path [...]
In an article today on their news site , MTV tried to declare the follow-up albums from Arctic Monkeys , Bloc Party , Clap Your Hands Say Yeah , and Arcade Fire commercial failures-this, despite the fact that Arcade Fire have scanned several hundred thousand copies of their Sophomore album already and Arctic Monkeys once again find themselves with one of the fastest selling albums in the history of their country: Of course, this phenomenon is in no way the fault of the artists. They did what good bands are supposed [...]
Wolf Notes
Monday Music – 28 May 2012
Bison - Quill
