The Chap - We Work in Bars. It's rare to hear someone so excited about gainful employment. Are the Chap just victims of the poor economy and simply glad to have a place to work, even if it's a mundane job at the bar? Or are they mocking bars and bar culture? I'm going to have to go with the latter, right? Either way, the Chap have traded in some of their jagged edges for smoother hooks while retaining their trademark sense of pranksterism and ironic detachment. Does it still work? I'd argue that it works even better. Their...
The PDX Pop Now! Festival, to be held from July 30 to August 31, will raise money for PDX Pop Now!, a non-profit dedicated to supporting Portland's music scene. It looks like a pretty great organization, and if the lineup on the schedule is to be believed, this year's festival will have 50 sweet Portland bands. Tope & Epp (feat. Illmaculate) - The Basics. The organization also releases a compilation every year to celebrate the festival. "The Basics" is the first track from the 2010 edition, and it's a good way to get things going. The rest of the...
Tame Impala - Runway, Houses, City, Clouds. This is one the sound of getting lost in it. It starts in the middle, it ends in the middle. It's like eight different parts of middle. At first we find the band already launching into some kind of chorus and then, just eight bars later they launch into another chorus. It just rolls from there, rolls and rolls and rolls; sticky like a ball of honey rolling down a hill. It's seven minutes, you know. It's not tedious, it's not forced. It's not the "new sound of psychedelia" or whatever it...
Kathryn Calder - Slip Away. Kathryn Calder's got a new record out soon, and it's called Are You My Mother?. "Slip Away" is the first track from the album, and it may not sound like much at first. It's lighter than air, with a melody that seems vague and arbitrary. But then, as instruments come and go, and rhythms congeal, and the song finally snaps together, it all makes sense. You know Calder from the New Pornographers, but she's also a singer and keyboardist for Immaculate Machine, a great band that, like the Pornographers, specializes in a kind of...
Miniature Tigers - Gold Skull. I was supposed to see Miniature Tigers open for Free Energy and Jukebox The Ghost the other night, but their van broke down and they never made it to Boston. Bummer. I first saw Miniature Tigers, with their DHARMA-clad instruments, last year in Minneapolis. I was there for Bishop Allen, but it was the Tigers who impressed me most. Their melodies are funny things, snakelike and stealthy. They wind their way into your subconscious, and you find later that you have five or six Miniature Tigers songs in your head at once. This track...
It took me a while to realize I like Animal Collective. Dada Trash Collage - In Season. Well, as is the case with many artists, it depends on the song. When they give us something we can grab onto - "Chores" from Strawberry Jam, say, or "Summertime Clothes" from Merriweather Post Pavilion - it's all there for us to take in. I understand the appeal of their other work, but, for better or worse, I need a handle, a foothold. That's how I feel about Dada Trash Collage. There's so much going on here that I don't know where...
Phosphorescent - Mermaid Parade. We can walk the same streets each day and have it be different each time. The path we wear in the road will deepen, will wear in different spots, will reveal different layers beneath our feet. And each time we know the road a little better, letting us focus on smaller details, on the life around us. And while Phosphorescent's Matthew Houck wanders down the same melodic roads each time out, these trip yields new beauty, each step forward a literal and figurative one. And here we have his newest effort, the aptly titled Here's...
Peter Wolf Crier - Hard As Nails. The music of Peter Wolf Crier came out of a single summer night's writing session. I haven't heard the duo's whole record, but I could see how "Hard As Nails" would fit into this narrative. It's a stop along the way, a few hazy minutes in the life of its narrator. Peter Wolf Crier consists of Peter Pisano (formerly of the Wars of 1812) and Brian Moen (also a member of Laarks, the Shouting Matches, and Amateur Love). They hail from the midwest, where summer nights are summer nights - sticky, sweaty...
Get up! Fang Island - Daisy. I should probably wake up to this song every day, because it would beat the hell out of the ringtone that currently tries to shove me out of bed in the morning. In fact, it would beat the hell out of most things - those drums, those handclaps, that organ, and of course, those guitars. It's like Ratatat kicking Animal Collective in the shins and I love it. You've probably heard Fang Island by now, and I've been meaning to post it ever since our server went on the fritz a while back....
Mantler - In Stride. This is the sound of getting your shit together, as best as you can. Each morning we get up and do it. We recount our dreams, pile on our clothes, brush our teeth, stretch our legs. We get it together, one way or another. And when we sit down at our desks ready to chew up some of this day. I like this song from Mantler. It's a bit of not-quite contemporary craftmanship clacking along, taking unexpected chances while still sounding familiar. It came out this week on Tomlab. If you want to ease into...
Blitzen Trapper - Heaven and Earth. Here in the southland spring actually sprung a week ago after weeks of rain granted us with this brief window of lush greens and blossoming fruit before giving way to the brown and burn of the long, hot summer. And here we are, once again with a new song from Blitzen Trapper, having shed some of the scrapiness of youth in exchange for patience and grace. They'd been hinting at a ballad like this for some time, but this might be their most fully formed effort. The string arrangement from old friend Peter...
I don't know about you, but I'm sort of relieved that SXSW is over. Harlem - Friendly Ghost. Mostly because I've never been, and I get increasingly bitter about this fact every year. Anyway, this band, like many other in the country, had a few shows in Austin. Harlem, however, was already home when they were at SXSW - though their band has a couple of Arizonians and a North Carolinians, they're based in Austin. (They were also recently featured on Matador's Austin compilation, Casual Victim Pile.) Hippies is a lot of fun. I read something recently that referred...
Hot Chip - I Feel BetterHot Chip | MySpace Music Videos And that's how you make a music video....
Okay, I'm officially homesick. Dessa - Dixon's Girl. That is, homesick for a town that was never meant to be a permanent home. My wife and I caught a P.O.S/Dessa show while in Vermont last week, and it reminded me what I love about the Twin Cities scene: so much trying. P.O.S, Dessa, and Plain Ole Bill put everything they had into this show, even though the room was half-empty on a Friday night. Not to get all Garrison Keillor on us, but I think there's something to that "midwestern work ethic" talk - that's how I always feel...
There's rain in the forecast here in Boston, which doesn't make me want to play the usual TGIF song. (It's Phil Collins' "That's All", if you must know.) Holly Miranda - Waves. This one fits the bill just fine. It's atmospheric without being too dreamy, and the production - by TV On The Radio's Dave Sitek - is grounded enough to let the song levitate a bit. The Magician's Private Library is a good listen for a day like today, or any time you need a record to remove you from the here and now. The album's title comes...
Percussion! Electric President - Safe and Sound. When it comes down to it, that's what I enjoy most about the work of Electric President. It's all so tangible, with acoustic guitars and drums like gears, all of it grinding away to keep the whole enterprise in motion. Electric President hails from Florida, and they've put out two other LPs on Morr Music. This is their first record on Connecticut-based Fake Four Inc. The Violent Blue is a good album, full of what we've come to expect from Electric President and member Ben Cooper's solo project, Radical Face. You can...
We here at Music For Robots are pretty big fans of Titus Andronicus, if only for the crazy amount of enthusiasm with which they attack everything. Titus Andronicus - A More Perfect Union. Their new record The Monitor has a Civil War theme, but it's rooted in everyday life - which is a funny comparison, but one that makes perfect sense in context. "A More Perfect Union" is the first track from this album, and it's a great introduction. This album is as epic as they come, but it somehow feels intimate, too. I don't know how they pulled...
Eddy Current Suppression Ring - Anxiety. The funniest thing about the Eddy Current Suppression Ring is that they spent six hours and two hundred dollars to record their new album, and spent 800 dollars and just as much time flying their name on a banner behind an airplane for their album cover. It never occurred to them that they could just photoshop it in. And that tells us everything we need to know about Brendan and the rest of the guys. Without a doubt one of my favorite bands, I couldn't be more excited about this new record, Rush...
I don't know why I'm writing about Minneapolis so much these days. I think a lot of Twin Cities music has just come my way, for some reason. Dosh - Subtractions. When I lived in Minneapolis, I never fully looked into Mr. Martin Dosh and his amazing drumming, sampling, and looping abilities. I knew he was around, working with Andrew Bird and playing the Triple Rock, but I never listened as closely as I should have. Time to remedy that. "Subtractions" is from Dosh's new record Tommy. (I can't be the only one hoping this was a concept cover...
music (for robots)
Watch: Trailer for Dave Grohl’s documentary, Sound City
Conchord On Composing Music For Muppets
Webcast: The Kills’ 10th anniversary concert
Free James Blake live album given away
