When I first stumbled upon Cleveland's Cloud Nothings , I was immediately impressed with the stylish simplicity of their melodic and raw recordings. Laden with pop-punk energy and layers of indie influences, their snappy, short songs still manage to elicit excitement, which is quite the feat in this era of lo-fi, garage-band sound saturation. When I discovered that these songs are the product of Cleveland's resident kid-brilliant, 19-year old Dylan Baldi, I was even more thrown, and shocked that someone so young was capable of writing such gems...as well as a bit jealous that I wasn't this [...]
Son Volt is an American band in the same way that Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen are American artists. All three capture a unique part of America's essence by looking at their environment and their inner selves and translating what they see into song without being flamboyantly nationalistic. Based in St. Louis, Missouri, Son Volt find themselves both in the heart of the Midwest and at the gateway to the West. They don't see a land of unlimited potential and bountiful resources like the pioneers before them, however, but rather a divided nation watching its once great [...]
Bad Veins - or the trio of Benjamin Davis, Sebastien Schultz and a 1973 reel-to-reel player named Irene - may come from the humble midwest, but their music is nothing short of epic in scope. The band's self-titled debut is packed with three minute dramatic opuses. Davis' low bellow pushes each tunes' driving guitars, oft-pulsing synths and car-crash percussion into a hugely catchy frenzy. This isn't the type of music two men can make alone with their own human hands; here's where Irene comes to play. The hulking piece of machinery plays upwards of 70 [...]
MP3 : Avi Buffalo - Truth Sets In (live on Laundromatinee.com ) Avi Buffalo , from Long Beach, California, is the project of songwriter Avigdor Zahner-Isenberg. The band, full of kids barely out of high school, has signed to Sub Pop Records and will release their self-titled debut this coming April. Avi grew up with skateboarding aspirations, but when he couldn't conquer the fear of dropping into the half-pipe, he turned to guitar. For the uninitiated, [...]
MP3 : We Were Promised Jetpacks - An Almighty Thud (live on Laundromatinee.com ) 2009 was a great year for the latest wave of Scottish bands, particularly for Fat Cat Records labelmates Frightened Rabbit, Twilight Sad, and We Were Promised Jetpacks . Laundromatinee.com had the chance to record with both Twilight Sad and We Were Promised Jetpacks at the 2009 Monolith Music Festival. The interesting thing about We Were Promised [...]
Austin-based songwriters Rob Lowe and Michael Muller, the core duo of the band Balmorhea , will release their new full-length, Constellations , through Western Vinyl on Februarly 23rd. About a year ago, Balmorhea stopped through for a session with Laundromatinee.com. Tragically, our videographer lost a hard drive in a lightning strike and our session video with it. Recently, Balmorhea has previewed Constellations with the track Bowsprit , but at the time of our session the band shared [...]
MP3 : Horse Feathers - Curs In The Weeds (live on Laundromatinee.com ) Justin Ringle's songs sound like the soundtrack to Flannery O'Connor stories: emotive, dark music that feel like they should be sung in abandoned old churches set against dark stormy skies. His solo work under the name Horse Feathers attracted the attention of fellow Portlander Peter Broderick of Norfolk and Western who lent his arrangement talents to Ringle's lyrical talents. On cold winters nights like these, there [...]
Let's be honest here: Cleveland gets a bad rap. There's the depressing weather, the losing football team and the over-arching notion that there just ain't much happening. Now those first two — sure, true. But the third? Well, it's hard to bash the city's goings-on when a band as inventive as Mr. Gnome calls it home. The guy-girl duo plays huge post-rock that whispers like a scared kid afraid of monsters one minute and explodes into the screaming demon that haunts him the next. Singer/guitarist Nicole Barille sings [...]
MP3 : Mat Kearney - Nothing Left To Lose (live on Laundromatinee.com ) When Nashville-based Mat Kearney released his first album on Columbia Records in 2006, he toured, incessantly, with the likes of Sheryl Crow, John Mayer, Jason Mraz and the Fray. To say his brand of pop music is simply accessible would likely be an insult. His songs have been featured on a slew of hit TV shows including Grey's Anatomy [...]
MP3 : These United States - Get Yourself Home (live on Laundromatinee.com ) Based out of both Lexington, KY and Washington, D.C., These United States started out as the brainchild of Jesse Elliott and collaborator David Strackany (better known to most as Paleo), with an ever-changing, shifting collective of collaborators. The lineup has more recently solidified into its current incarnation (Elliott, Robby Cosenza, J. Tom Hnatow, Justin Craig, and Colin Kellogg). You can find [...]
MP3 : Wild Light - California On My Mind (live on Laundromatinee.com ) In 2008, Wild Light won "Outstanding Rock Act of the Year" at the Boston Music Awards, but in 2009 the band, a handsome young quartet from New Hampshire, saw their profile raised considerably this year. The band started off the year, along with Tapes N Tapes, on their first national tour. Obviously they turned a few heads and ears because they [...]
MP3 : Caitlin Rose - Sinful Wishing Well (live on Laundromatinee.com ) Wild as mink but sweet as soda-pop, Nashville based Caitlin Rose specializes in the drink-away-your-heartache Country-with-capital-C music that brings rhinestone legends Conway Twitty and Loretta Lynn to mind. There's a dose of the singer-songwriter, one voice/one guitar ethic of Kimya Dawson or Daniel Johnston thrown in there as well. Her voice is both delicate and twangy, like a banjo with butterfly wings. [...]
MP3 : The Antlers - Atrophy (live on Laundromatinee.com ) As I stated when we launched Laundromatinee's first session with The Antlers , we spent some great time with the band at The Monolith Music Festival. Despite their " Rising " and " Best New Music " status from Pitchfork.com, as well as the non-stop praise for [...]
MP3 : Generationals - Angry Charlie (live on Laundromatinee.com ) Many moons ago, My Old Kentucky Blog hosted a band from New Orleans called The Eames Era for an MOKB SIRIUS XMU Blog Radio session . With the band now defunct, two members of that band, Ted Joyner and Grant Widmer, formed a new project they dubbed Generationals . This year, they signed to Park The Van Records [...]
MP3 : Cymbals Eat Guitars - Tunguska (live on Laundromatinee.com ) It has been said, lately, that Cymbals Eat Guitars are so hot they're melting internet cables all over the indie music blog viewing world. The group and their 2009 debut release, Why There Are Mountains , are riding an 8.3/Best New Music rating by Pitchfork and a performance at the site's music festival. [...]
The Twilight Sad often draw comparisons to greats like My Bloody Valentine, Joy Division, Interpol and The Cure. Other reviews naturally lump them in with fellow Scottsmen like Arab Strap and Josef K. All can be true in various ways, but no matter what comparisions one might make to the past, there is one thing that is certain. The band is helping lead an invasion of incredible, modern, talent from Scotland. This year, the band toured the U.S. with two such talents, Fat Cat Records labelmates We Were Promised Jetpacks and Frightened [...]
MP3 : Blind Pilot - One Red Thread (live on Laundromatinee.com ) Portland, Oregon's Blind Pilot started as the two-man project between Israel Nebeker and Ryan Dobrowski. The duo made waves touring by bicycle up and down the west coast. In the last year, the band has expanded to six members to more accurately match their recorded sound. That sound, on their album 3 Rounds and a Sound , has [...]
Olga Bell was born in Moscow, Russia and moved to Alaska at age seven. She trained in classical piano for the next ten years, before graduating from the New England Conservatory in Boston at age 21. Upon completion, she moved to New York and discovered the thrill of improvisation and experimentation combining her classical sounds with modern laptop electronics, a little hip-hop and incredibly catchy, shimmery pop. Bell , her full-band project, a trio, has numerous free tracks floating around the internet these days, but [...]
Cotton Jones hit the road this September in support of their debut album Paranoid Cocoon . Primarily consisting of two former members of the now-defunct Page France, Michael Nau and Whitney McGraw have actually been touring pretty much non-stop throughout 2009. This tour has or will take them through four large festivals and ends in October. With all the touring, I'm not really sure when they had time to record it, but the band also released a new five-song EP, through Quite Scientific Records [...]
We spent some great time with The Antlers at The Monolith Music Festival over the weekend. Despite their " Rising " and " Best New Music " status from Pitchfork.com, and the non-stop praise for the 2009 re-release of album Hospice , the band remains as humble, friendly, hard-working and down-to-earth as you would hope. My Old Kentucky Blog brought the band to Indianapolis this Summer for an MOKB Presents show and the [...]
My Old Kentucky Blog
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