[ download ] [tweetmeme] The recent collapse of the Borders Books & Music chain became much more understandable to me when I visited the half dozen or so locations in my area during their last week in business. In each store, I discovered around a dozen compact discs by The Dutchess and the Duke remaining on the picked-over music shelves. It was puzzling, to say the least. In what reality were the music buyers for Borders living, that they would stock their shelves so deeply with The [...]
In a desire to share even more great, free music with you, the Sunday Sampler offers a handful of tracks without the usual critical and biographical write-up. Less talk, more tunes. [tweetmeme] Eight Bit Tiger "Numbers" from Parallel Synchronized Randomness [ released 10/25/11 | indie rock, dance-punk ] [ download ] Today the Moon, Tomorrow the [...]
[ download ] [tweetmeme] Fifteen years ago, Fountains of Wayne released their eponymous debut LP, a near-perfect set of twelve power-pop songs supercharged with clever lyrics about life on both sides of the bridges and tunnels which connect New York and New Jersey. The second single from that record, " Sink to the Bottom ," managed to turn the line "I just wanna..." into a powerful B chorus. Even this many years later, it's impossible to hear Jersey quartet Big Troubles turn that [...]
[ download ] [tweetmeme] After many repeated listens, it all boils down to this: the problem with Devon Williams ' "Your Sympathy" is that when ends after three and a half minutes, you're just going to want to listen to it again. However, further spins only amplify the issue, making you more inclined to want to hear it once more. It's a powerful feedback loop-this song is a mesmerizing enchantress. "Your Sympathy" was first released as the A-side of a single back in late June [...]
[ download ] [tweetmeme] With its lilting accordion melody, "Underwater Savior" by San Diego's Adams and Eves sounds like a tune playing at a Parisian café on a sunny spring day as Audrey Hepburn stares wistfully across the boulevard – at least until vocalist Adam Powell joins the proceedings, sounding for all the world like a well-intentioned spaniel who's acquired the power of speech. His endearingly artless voice lifts the song out of its Gallic-pop trappings and drops it firmly in the American indie field – no actual Parisian [...]
We were busy moving on Sunday and didn't get to post these songs, but we think that the temporal displacement has aged them to perfection. (Who knew they only required an additional 24 hours in our oak barrels?) In a desire to share even more great, free music with you, the Sunday Monday Sampler offers a handful of tracks without the usual critical and biographical write-up. Less talk, more tunes. [tweetmeme] Gold Beach "Diving Bell" from Habibti/a> [...]
[ download ] [tweetmeme] In an overzealous moment, we've all made the mistake. You twist the cap off a new bottle of soda (or pop the cork off some bubbly), and you pour yourself a glass too quickly. The liquid isn't the problem-it's those tickling bubbles who climb their way upwards and ultimately cascade over all the edges. Long Island, New York act Twin Sister 's "Bad Street" is just as effervescent a moment, providing all the enjoyment with no sticky cleanup. A refreshing bit [...]
We were busy moving on Sunday and didn't get to post these songs, but we think that the temporal displacement has aged them to perfection. (Who knew they only required an additional 24 hours in our oak barrels?) In a desire to share even more great, free music with you, the Sunday Monday Sampler offers a handful of tracks without the usual critical and biographical write-up. Less talk, more tunes. [tweetmeme] Echo Lake "Another Day" from the [...]
[ download ] [tweetmeme] Shoegazing started out as a guitar-based genre, seeming to require layer atop opaque layer of gauzy guitar feedback in order to achieve its swoon-inducing combination of pop hooks and sonic disorientation. Then M83 came along early in the last decade and showed that the same vertiginous effect could be achieved with glistening sheets of keyboards as with shrieking guitars, and the shoegazing/dream-pop genre got a fresh second wind as a result. Stockholm's Maria Lindén definitely attended the M83 school of dream-pop, and her band I [...]
[ download ] [tweetmeme] It was 82 degrees where I live on the day I wrote this, but the forecast is for highs in the 40s by the end of this week. Summer of 2011 is definitely a thing of the past in the northern hemisphere – the trees are shedding their leaves and the temperatures are preparing to embark on their inevitable march downwards. Snow flurries are just around the corner, at a distance now measured in weeks rather than months. So perhaps we come to "Summer Jam" by New [...]
[ download ] [tweetmeme] Goth and synth-pop weren't always so different as they might seem these days. Both genres started out in the early 1980s as fairly glum offshoots of English post-punk but eventually progressed into their own more cartoonish personas – Goth became the musical equivalent of Tim Burton movies, all cinematic darkness angd black nail polish and teenage girls pining for Edward Cullen, while synth-pop became the soundtrack for day-futurism and shiny happy mall culture. But in the beginning, there was not a world of difference between The Cure and OMD. [...]
In a desire to share even more great, free music with you, the Sunday Sampler offers a handful of tracks without the usual critical and biographical write-up. Less talk, more tunes. [tweetmeme] Little Deadman "Post Helado Madness" from the Shooting Seagulls 73 [ released 5/26/11 | indie rock ] [ download ] Sundress "Derelict" from the Sundress [...]
[ download ] [tweetmeme] The United States like to think of itself as the nation that invented rock 'n' roll, but anyone who has paid attention to music over the last sixty years or so knows that musical innovation has largely been an import in North America. Of course, in the most simplistic sens, rock music is all really just a manipulation of the blues-another American innovation-but it took foreign intervention to transform those sturdy roots into the expansive boughs of the musical family tree we enjoy today. For some reason, [...]
[ download ] [tweetmeme] It's not a surprise to discover that Andrew McAllister, the main man behind the Los Angeles combo Vanish Valleys , is a film editor by vocation. Film editors make their living by taking raw film footage and picking and choosing what goes where – in many ways, the editor has as much say in the final form of a movie as the director does. McAllister brings his editor's eye to Vanish Valley, mixing elements from different genres into an organic whole. [...]
[ download ] [tweetmeme] Edmonton's Doug Hoyer first came to attention in his native Canada back in 2004 as a cast member on the CBC reality show Rock Camp - a spin on School of Rock that followed musically inclined teenagers in their efforts to form bands at the titular camp. Since then, he's been releasing a steady stream of product that usually somehow manages to bring a synth-pop spin to the odd wave of ukulele music that's been all the rage of late. [...]
In a desire to share even more great, free music with you, the Sunday Sampler offers a handful of tracks without the usual critical and biographical write-up. Less talk, more tunes. [tweetmeme] German Error Message "In Comforting" from the In Comforting digital single [ released 5/4/11 | indie rock, indie-pop ] [ download ] Hess Is More "Creation Keeps the Devil Away" from [...]
[ download ] [tweetmeme] Alexandra Patsavas. The name may not be familiar to you but if you've followed music at all for the last decade, her tastes have likely had some bearing on what ends up on your iPod. Patsavas is the music supervisor behind such network tv shows as The O.C. and Grey's Anatomy , and in that role she has probably been more responsible for bringing relatively obscure artists to mass audiences than any other person operating during the same time period. While many will likely roll their [...]
[ download ] [tweetmeme] The college trip abroad is a time-honored method for broadening one's perspectives on the world and awakening creative impulses. College students are at best curious - and at worst, insufferable – in their desire to challenge all the assumptions they'd been raised with, and immersing oneself in the culture of a distant land is a nearly foolproof way for a student to jumpstart their adult persona. In the best cases, they gain insight into what's really meaningful to them in the world and it starts them on their path to [...]
[ download ] [tweetmeme] One of the most time-honored words that rock music has given the English language is the adjective "Beatlesque" – a word that surprisingly still triggers spell-check. One would think that the word would be in official dictionaries now. It's a very useful term that contains its own definition right there in it. It denotes something – generally a song, but sometimes just a sound or general artistic aesthetic - that resembles The Beatles. "Love Or Death," by Lawrence, Kansas' Hospital Ships [...]
[ download ] [tweetmeme] It's not just superheroes who require secret identities. Sometimes musicians stepping out from their day jobs feel the need to create a separate persona, just to underline the fact that they're doing something a bit different from their usual work. For as much as music fans want their favorite artists to experiment a bit, they also want them to not stray too far afield – recall Neil Young's "lost decade" back in the 1980s, when he decided he might like to sound like Kraftwerk or Merle Haggard for a change [...]
One Track Mind
![Niki & The Dove - The Fox [OFFICIAL VIDEO]](http://cdn.elbo.ws/youtube/l2f6UbMnlq4_130.jpg)
Chromatics: “Into The Black”
Download: The Violet Lights - "Sex and Sound"
[Listen/Download] Sean Nicholas Savage- She Was The One
Sunday Means Eight Of The Best
Listen: Burial - Kindred [EP]
