Final Fantasy - Oh Heartland, Up Yours! (live, acoustic) The one album for which I am truly excited at the moment is about an imaginary world, and its inhabitants - who all worship their creator, Owen Pallett. Heartland is going to be amazing, and I am already sure of it. The above song, which hasn't made it onto the Internet yet, as far as I know, was recorded at night in a Cardiff car park, and for some reason, the slight background noise makes it sound more like a field [...]
{best animal ever} Samamidon - Head over Heels (Tears for Fears) There's a certain mood that this song helps make. Like a weird sense of wonder, and dazed detachment. An odd amusement at your own odd self, kind of like suddenly realising you had misjudged the time, and there are far more hours left in your day than you'd thought, or that you'd taken more pills than you meant to. It's a little feeling of retreat, [...]
Land of Talk - May You Never Elizabeth Powell's voice is many things. It is, as far as I can make out: the Pacific Ocean, wind racing through grass, as seen from the windows of a warm home on a stormy night, vodka coursing down your throat, someone holding your hand in theirs while they dance, pepper, lying down on an empty beach, a murder of crows, And many more beautiful things besides them. Correspondingly, Land of Talk's music is a mix of angry songwriting and beauty, both rough [...]
Fanfarlo - Comets It starts all small and intense, like someone delivering the news to you, quietly, sitting beside you in the kitchen. A voice rings out, cracked and worn, and there's hard times ahead. But in the chorus, there's that familiar change, the minor fall and the major lift, and there's something to aim for. As hard as it is to hold out against the tears now, these days and these sorrows will eventually be gone. I might have been a bit disappointed by Fanfarlo's debut, but there's no doubting that they're [...]
Arcade Fire - Burning Bridges (live) Sure, the album won't appear until next Spring or so, but this certainly is something to get happy about: Ten days earlier: That's some pretty spectacular praise, even if it is a little hyperbolic. Here's hoping they've recorded a proper version of the above unreleased track... though since an instrumental version was used for Miroir Noir , I kind of doubt it.
Paolo Nutini - Wake Up (Arcade Fire) This is a pretty good effort at a fairly uncoverable song. Smoky and sleepy, like the morning after, waking between the sheets, lazing in the sunlight, delaying the simple job of a fun breakfast, knowing it'll be a good day. Not a bad effort at all. {Thanks Joel}
{ via } Burywood - Dead Oceans Pull Apart Hello shakers and synths! Hello interference and distorted vocals! I haven't heard you in a while, and I haven't heard you sounding this good in even longer. But even better, that melody running around underneath you like someone hiding in bedsheets, that's gorgeous. Someone should start playing this song to all those mopy teenagers out there, to give them an idea of [...]
Dappled Cities - Apart If you were putting on a show for a friend, this would be the song at the very end, the one you play as everything in the story is happily resolved. This is what it sounds like, letting unhappiness fall behind you like an autumn leaf, and moving on. Getting out of an unhappy bed and going out in the world, enjoying it while the sun shines. Getting on a plane in the depths of winter and getting out where it's sunny. Little acts like that, the kind of things that [...]
{ via } The Antlers - Shiva This song, put simply, is for when everything is somehow, very slightly wrong, and you can do nothing, but try and make yourself okay with that. { More from the makers of one of the best albums of the year.}
Richard Godwin - Spy vs Spy There's a moment here, just over a minute in, when a second guitar joins the song, and it's like colour spills into the scene, the sun rising in the distance, and illuminating a landscape. It's beautiful touches like this that make Richard Godwin a fine songwriter. The lyrics tell us of a pair of lovers left without trust, trailing one another down streets, barely keeping the other in sight. It's tense and desolate and sweet all at once. [...]
{ via } A Classic Education - Spanish Harlem {Phil Spector} When we found out my dad had cancer, my parents and brothers and I went to a small pub near here, overlooking the cliffs, and got drunk. I was pointed towards the piano, and let the tipsy locals sing their Let It Be, and their Raglan Road, until at the end of the night. With the bar empty, and just us [...]
Beat Radio - Sleepwalking So one day, you're hid away in your room, playing guitar, trying to make sounds like thunder and rainfall and birdsong all at once, when boom! Your amplifier suddenly explodes, falls over, and keeps exploding. The temptation here would be to stop playing, and go look for an adult of some sort, but no! Instead you play on, using the explosions as rhythm, a kick drum beat that propels you on to make this whole mess into a gorgeous song, built on the one thing you're sure of - that this, [...]
Garry Schyman - Welcome To Rapture Now that I am no longer living in a vibrant urban environment, and have been called home to help my family with, you know, those terrible things that happen, I have time that I am not spending sampling the local Thai eateries or frequenting music venues, and with this spare time I have rediscovered video games. Garry Schyman - Cohen's Masterpiece [...]
DM Stith - Pigs (feat. Jefferson St. Band) Mr Stith is set to release another fine spin-off EP from Heavy Ghost , this time based around 'Thanksgiving Moon' - the album's dark heart, and the first song of his I wrote up. The first mp3 to surface is this version of Pigs, performed with a marching band, and correspondingly jaunty. It's the sound of David coming back after a tour, brasher and laughing louder, taking a knife to his songs and making them new. Pigs always had a kind of sneering [...]
Sunset Rubdown - Idiot Heart Dear long-suffering, oft-neglected reader! I present to you the most gorgeous descriptive writing I've read in days: the Schmidt Sting Pain Index . 1.0 Sweat bee: Light, ephemeral, almost fruity. A tiny spark has singed a single hair on your arm. 1.2 Fire ant: Sharp, sudden, mildly alarming. Like walking across a shag carpet & reaching for the light switch. 1.8 Bullhorn acacia ant: A rare, piercing, elevated sort of pain. Someone has fired a staple into your cheek. 2.0 Bald-faced hornet: Rich, hearty, slightly [...]
The Bruce Peninsula - Inside, Outside That was the day someone had stolen my violin. I spat and raged, and paced and pounded, and cursed and spilt whiskey, and threw glasses and bottles. My voice cracked, my hands grew calloused, my face spread into a scowl like a wound splitting open. Outside, the wind roared, and the rain lashed, and they howled at one another, threatening our windows. Outside, someone applied my bow to my violin strings, and choked out a reedy note, frayed with resistance and the nerves of the first playing. I sat [...]
The Innocence Mission - Brotherhood of Man This song always starts playing in my head whenever I'm in an airport. I think this is because airports make my head all funny. My mind moves onto some other level, and starts thinking thoughts that usually seem too heavy for it. It's the waiting, and being surrounded by people you're not talking too, inventing their pasts and futures, wondering who is leaving a loved one, and who is returning to someone else's arms. I sit back and think about how things have changed since I last wandered [...]
As mentioned previously, on August 8th, Final Fantasy performed with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, and it was good. From that performance comes this video of what is probably my favourite song of the year so far, 'Lewis Takes Action' sounding beautiful as it unfolds among the many instruments involved. Final Fantasy - Lewis Takes Action (live with the RSO)
As fan videos go, Gabe Askew's video for 'Two Weeks' is probably the best I've ever seen. Ed approves .
The Luyas - Spherical Mattress If you've had one of those dreams, you'll know the feeling. A night when unexpected emotional intensity gets into your head, from God Knows Where. Walking around, with everything tinted and changed, same skin but a different life, holding hands, or carrying the weight. It could be some new love or just the memory of it, but it's enough to leave you disjointed and half-grieving when you awake. You walk around trying to figure out how something you didn't even mean to imagine could have left this gaping hole in [...]
the torture garden
Bison - Quill
Neutral Milk Hotel- Aeroplane Over the Sea
Shinichi Osawa – Big Beach Mix 2012
