Saturday, March 21, 2009
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
New Music Tuesday: The Love Language
Heed my words, these guys are going to explode very soon.
Comin' at ya from Raleigh, NC, I recently saw this awesome band open for The Rosebuds (also an awesome band) back in January at the Middle East. I had just seen some band whose name I can't remember chug through a few closing tracks that sounded like terrible Jimmy Eat World songs and had very low expectations. Needless to say, they rocked, and I've been listening to their album that they had for sale ever since.
Imagine my surprise to see that the album's actual street release date is today of all days! So, I am here to laud them, as hopefully other, more influential blogs will be doing in the coming days.
The album:
This is The Love Language's unabashed debut, largely the work of frontman Stu McLamb, and apparently recorded nearly in entirety by him alone in a storage area with a 4-track recorder. The result is a concise, but brilliant, 9-track lo-fi masterpiece, with a fuzzed out sounded akin to the Walkmen, Neutral Milk Hotel (well, without a million other instruments), and Funeral-era Arcade Fire (I'm a Neon Bible hater, apologies). McLamb guides you around emotional highs and lows, from hushed, strained piano all the way to freewheeling romps like a Devendra Banhart dance party, and even manages to throw in a little country-- recalling Okkervil River or The Avett Brothers (particularly in his vocals).
Anyway, I could go on longer but it would do you better to just give a listen, so I present my track picks:
Nocturne
Sparxxx
Hear more at their MySpace
Live:
Ivan of the Rosebuds heard McLamb's album, and invited him to assemble a full band and head out on tour with them. Thus, the 7-piece touring ensemble of The Love Language was born. As good as the album is, the music is even better live. The songs yearn to be fleshed out and they do it, amazingly. Check out this live video of "Lalita" featuring the lovely and charming Missy Thangs on tambourine:
Attn Northeast:
They will be at TT the Bear's in Cambridge on April 23 and The Bellhouse in Brooklyn on the 24th. Do yourself a favor and GO!!
Comin' at ya from Raleigh, NC, I recently saw this awesome band open for The Rosebuds (also an awesome band) back in January at the Middle East. I had just seen some band whose name I can't remember chug through a few closing tracks that sounded like terrible Jimmy Eat World songs and had very low expectations. Needless to say, they rocked, and I've been listening to their album that they had for sale ever since.
Imagine my surprise to see that the album's actual street release date is today of all days! So, I am here to laud them, as hopefully other, more influential blogs will be doing in the coming days.
The album:
This is The Love Language's unabashed debut, largely the work of frontman Stu McLamb, and apparently recorded nearly in entirety by him alone in a storage area with a 4-track recorder. The result is a concise, but brilliant, 9-track lo-fi masterpiece, with a fuzzed out sounded akin to the Walkmen, Neutral Milk Hotel (well, without a million other instruments), and Funeral-era Arcade Fire (I'm a Neon Bible hater, apologies). McLamb guides you around emotional highs and lows, from hushed, strained piano all the way to freewheeling romps like a Devendra Banhart dance party, and even manages to throw in a little country-- recalling Okkervil River or The Avett Brothers (particularly in his vocals).
Anyway, I could go on longer but it would do you better to just give a listen, so I present my track picks:
Nocturne
Sparxxx
Hear more at their MySpace
Live:
Ivan of the Rosebuds heard McLamb's album, and invited him to assemble a full band and head out on tour with them. Thus, the 7-piece touring ensemble of The Love Language was born. As good as the album is, the music is even better live. The songs yearn to be fleshed out and they do it, amazingly. Check out this live video of "Lalita" featuring the lovely and charming Missy Thangs on tambourine:
Attn Northeast:
They will be at TT the Bear's in Cambridge on April 23 and The Bellhouse in Brooklyn on the 24th. Do yourself a favor and GO!!
Friday, March 13, 2009
The Friday Find: Aloha & Brendan Canning
No reviews today, just some great stuff I thought I'd share ranging from not-so-old to a little bit old.
Anyway, first up is a stellar track by a sometimes-stellar band called Aloha.
Forming in Cleveland, Aloha started out in the late 90's and put out their first (and best, if you ask me) album That's Your Fire in 2000. I didn't get into them until much later, probably 2005 or so, but their early work is fantastic and some of their more recent albums have a few great songs here and there.
The real great thing about Aloha is their sound-- floating around somewhere in between indie, post-rock, and free jazz, their songs rarely follow a straight form, always evolving, always taking an unexpected turn into something different. Oh, and did you notice in the picture up there that there's vibraphone?? Yeah, that is what really makes their sound awesome and pretty unique. Unfortunately, their more recent albums have sort of downplayed their earlier innovation and become more predictable.
Still, their vibraphone chops are brought to the foreground here in the highlight of That's Your Fire, the sprawling, 9-minute "Heading East." A looping guitar and spacey bass groove loop set the stage for some great vibraphone work and sparse, at times off-tempo drumming. Three minutes in, the song pulls itself together for some vocals, with great lines like "it's times like these I swear that inspiration is locked down in a closet," or, "I'm having dreams I shouldn't share." With three or four minutes left, the vocals cut, and the song deconstructs itself in a glorious wash of delayed piano and more vibraphone awesomeness.
Download it! Aloha - "Heading East"
---------
Second, OK, a lot of people LOVE Broken Social Scene, but their two most recent efforts under the guise of "Broken Social Scene Presents:" (essentially solo projects of the two most focal members of the band, Kevin Drew and Brendan Canning) largely flew under the radar of a lot of fans. These are really great albums on par with, if not better than, a lot of BSS material. Particularly good was Brendan Canning's 2008 album Something for All of Us. Here I give you the very creative and enjoyable video for the track "Churches Under the Stairs:"
Anyway, first up is a stellar track by a sometimes-stellar band called Aloha.
Forming in Cleveland, Aloha started out in the late 90's and put out their first (and best, if you ask me) album That's Your Fire in 2000. I didn't get into them until much later, probably 2005 or so, but their early work is fantastic and some of their more recent albums have a few great songs here and there.
The real great thing about Aloha is their sound-- floating around somewhere in between indie, post-rock, and free jazz, their songs rarely follow a straight form, always evolving, always taking an unexpected turn into something different. Oh, and did you notice in the picture up there that there's vibraphone?? Yeah, that is what really makes their sound awesome and pretty unique. Unfortunately, their more recent albums have sort of downplayed their earlier innovation and become more predictable.
Still, their vibraphone chops are brought to the foreground here in the highlight of That's Your Fire, the sprawling, 9-minute "Heading East." A looping guitar and spacey bass groove loop set the stage for some great vibraphone work and sparse, at times off-tempo drumming. Three minutes in, the song pulls itself together for some vocals, with great lines like "it's times like these I swear that inspiration is locked down in a closet," or, "I'm having dreams I shouldn't share." With three or four minutes left, the vocals cut, and the song deconstructs itself in a glorious wash of delayed piano and more vibraphone awesomeness.
Download it! Aloha - "Heading East"
---------
Second, OK, a lot of people LOVE Broken Social Scene, but their two most recent efforts under the guise of "Broken Social Scene Presents:" (essentially solo projects of the two most focal members of the band, Kevin Drew and Brendan Canning) largely flew under the radar of a lot of fans. These are really great albums on par with, if not better than, a lot of BSS material. Particularly good was Brendan Canning's 2008 album Something for All of Us. Here I give you the very creative and enjoyable video for the track "Churches Under the Stairs:"
Monday, March 9, 2009
The Friday Find: Ocean Colour Scene
Ocean Colour Scene - Moseley Shoals [MCA, 1996]
[click to download]
4.5/5
OK, it's not really Friday. Sorry I've been behind, but to make up for it I'm bringing a truly wonderful album out from the annals of history. Well, 13 years ago anyway, cmon, that's old!
So, the setting: England, 1996. Oasis and blur have just utterly ripped the britpop scene wide open with 1995's (What's the Story) Morning Glory? and 1994's Parklife (respectively) and it seems as if the rest of the country couldn't care less about any other bands. Ocean Colour Scene had already had a bit of a flop in their 1992 debut and were now trying to get back in the limelight. What's a fledgling guitar- and piano-rock band to do??
The simple answer is to make an incredible well-crafted album full of more hooks-per-minute than you can imagine. With one listen, you can easily hear how vocalist Simon Fowler sings drawing upon McCartney/Lennon, Jagger, and his contemporary Noel Gallagher of Oasis. It's quite a statement to compare Ocean Colour Scene to three of the biggest bands of all time, but thanks to championing from Paul Weller (of The Jam) and Gallagher himself, Ocean Colour Scene quickly rose up to iconic status in the UK with psych-tinged classic rock goodness that is Moseley Shoals.
Opening strong, "The Riverboat Song" packs a bluesy punch and shows off some of the slick guitar work of Steve Cradock (who played with Paul Weller previously) as he really brings out the old psychedelia influence of the band. The psych is at its strongest on other tracks like "You've Got It Bad" and the epic closer "Get Away." Tremelo and phase shifting across left to right (especially remarkable while listening on headphones), the light addition of psychedelia really takes Ocean Colour Scene's music to the next level on this album, as opposed to getting comfortable with arena-rock bombast akin to other big British bands (cough... Oasis).
However, OCS didn't jump to the top of the British charts and go multi-platinum (there, not here in the US) from a few great psych tunes-- where they really excelled (both musically and in terms of public appeal) was in their piano-stomping pop gems like "The Day We Caught the Trains" and "40 Past Midnight." They could even tone it down and produce some quality ballads ("The Downstream" is practically perfect, though, I really could have done without the rather forgettable "It's My Shadow"). Their ability to really craft an album full of varied styles and emotions is what makes Moseley Shoals so widely enjoyable.
In the end, it was largely due to their well-connectedness and praise from Weller and Oasis (who loved their album and invited them on tour) that propelled Ocean Colour Scene to the apex of their fame, but in the case of Moseley Shoals, it was very well-deserved success. If you like music, you will like this album (well, or at least a few tracks!)
Track pick: It's so hard to choose... I'll go with "You've Got It Bad."
[click to download]
4.5/5
OK, it's not really Friday. Sorry I've been behind, but to make up for it I'm bringing a truly wonderful album out from the annals of history. Well, 13 years ago anyway, cmon, that's old!
So, the setting: England, 1996. Oasis and blur have just utterly ripped the britpop scene wide open with 1995's (What's the Story) Morning Glory? and 1994's Parklife (respectively) and it seems as if the rest of the country couldn't care less about any other bands. Ocean Colour Scene had already had a bit of a flop in their 1992 debut and were now trying to get back in the limelight. What's a fledgling guitar- and piano-rock band to do??
The simple answer is to make an incredible well-crafted album full of more hooks-per-minute than you can imagine. With one listen, you can easily hear how vocalist Simon Fowler sings drawing upon McCartney/Lennon, Jagger, and his contemporary Noel Gallagher of Oasis. It's quite a statement to compare Ocean Colour Scene to three of the biggest bands of all time, but thanks to championing from Paul Weller (of The Jam) and Gallagher himself, Ocean Colour Scene quickly rose up to iconic status in the UK with psych-tinged classic rock goodness that is Moseley Shoals.
Opening strong, "The Riverboat Song" packs a bluesy punch and shows off some of the slick guitar work of Steve Cradock (who played with Paul Weller previously) as he really brings out the old psychedelia influence of the band. The psych is at its strongest on other tracks like "You've Got It Bad" and the epic closer "Get Away." Tremelo and phase shifting across left to right (especially remarkable while listening on headphones), the light addition of psychedelia really takes Ocean Colour Scene's music to the next level on this album, as opposed to getting comfortable with arena-rock bombast akin to other big British bands (cough... Oasis).
However, OCS didn't jump to the top of the British charts and go multi-platinum (there, not here in the US) from a few great psych tunes-- where they really excelled (both musically and in terms of public appeal) was in their piano-stomping pop gems like "The Day We Caught the Trains" and "40 Past Midnight." They could even tone it down and produce some quality ballads ("The Downstream" is practically perfect, though, I really could have done without the rather forgettable "It's My Shadow"). Their ability to really craft an album full of varied styles and emotions is what makes Moseley Shoals so widely enjoyable.
In the end, it was largely due to their well-connectedness and praise from Weller and Oasis (who loved their album and invited them on tour) that propelled Ocean Colour Scene to the apex of their fame, but in the case of Moseley Shoals, it was very well-deserved success. If you like music, you will like this album (well, or at least a few tracks!)
Track pick: It's so hard to choose... I'll go with "You've Got It Bad."
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Thievery Corporation
It's been brought to my attention that copyrights may have been infringed upon in my last post which has now been removed by blogger. Henceforth, I will probably be sharing songs from albums rather than full albums, since every blog and their mother does that anyway. Still, I am going to try to share full albums when possible.
Mostly, I'm shocked that somehow this little blog got read by someone who felt it necessary to report it for posting the album Tight Knit by Vetiver (which I gave a 4.5/5 and you should listen to its folky goodness). Thanks for reading, random person! I am quite curious as to how anyone high up in the corporate mechanisms of labels or recording associations stumbled upon this fledgling effort of mine.
Oh well, stay tuned-- the Audiobahn will not be derailed so easily.
Mostly, I'm shocked that somehow this little blog got read by someone who felt it necessary to report it for posting the album Tight Knit by Vetiver (which I gave a 4.5/5 and you should listen to its folky goodness). Thanks for reading, random person! I am quite curious as to how anyone high up in the corporate mechanisms of labels or recording associations stumbled upon this fledgling effort of mine.
Oh well, stay tuned-- the Audiobahn will not be derailed so easily.
Friday, February 6, 2009
The Friday Find: Byrne - Slowly and Gloriously
[click to download]
5/5
Byrne's Slowly and Gloriously has been one of my most listened to albums (well, its an EP if you want to get technical--only 6 tracks) since the day I bought it on a whim from a Newbury Comics used bin for 50 cents. I was drawn to the eerie cover art, the fact that their band name caused mild confusion with David Byrne, song titles like "Waiting for Winter" or "Drink All Day."
This is certainly not a pop-accessible album (with the exception of "Tidal Wave," their "single"), full of melancholic piano, humble vocals, low tempos, and sparse (if not absent) drumming. Many songs tend to chug along on one-chord for their entirety. While this may sound boring, it is anything but. The atmosphere created by the music is beautiful and haunting, hopeful and devastating, other cliché paired antonyms. Fueled by the "byrnetempi," or singer/writer Patrick Byrne's self-modified electric keyboard, the album has such a unique sound it is quite difficult to really compare it to any other artist.
Opening with "Waiting for Winter," Byrne dive right into the kind of song you'd expect to hear based on the cover. Light piano, ghostly "oohs," echoes of harmonica, and eventually a simple electronic beat back Byrne singing about waiting for the winter while standing in the sun, or, looking for the bad times while still in something good--a sort of nervous apprehension that tends to reverberate through the rest of the album.
From there, the plodding "Sleeping Giant" comes in, hammering away on one chord for nearly 6 minutes, but still managing to take the music somewhere and build intensity with swirling organ, guitars, and bass (which really provides the variation from the single chord). This is my track pick for the album, by far. Byrne's vocals strike hard on the oft-repeated chorus, "if it's everything you wanted baby, you're never gonna get it all," building to a swirl of chromatic guitar that pushes the song to its climactic end, then gradually strips apart into the next track. "Greener" and "Tidal Wave" bring the focus back to acoustic guitar, and pull off lines like "the grass is always greener when it rains" or "everybody knows that when you're up, I'm down" without seeming over-the-top emotional, just brutally honest.
My other favorite track off the album, "Embers" is built on melodica and trumpet counter-melodies, while the lyrics evoke a scene in a smoke-hazed bar and the mystifying allure of a blues singer. The track builds to epic bombast, and then slowly deconstructs itself into a lone descending piano line. This paves the way to the album closer "Drink All Day," a song that features Byrne's vocals almost naked, with a barely-there electric guitar providing a base for his toast to lonely times. [A short two-minute instrumental hidden track follows later, a duet of bass clarinet and piano called "Ballad for the Wet Dog."]
The sad story behind Byrne is that in 2004, they posted a new, incredible demo on their website, promising new material to come soon, but then their domain expired sometime in '05 or '06 and there has been no official news of whatever happened to the band since (they were rather obscure to begin with, anyway).
Sometimes I feel like Slowly and Gloriously just completely synced with the person I was back when I bought it, and so it has a sense of nostalgia to me, but upon many many many repeated listens, each of these 6 amazing tracks still seem like something special to me, years later. Unless they lose their luster (something I don't anticipate happening), this album will always be perfect, to me. Give a listen and see if you agree.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
New Music "Tuesday:" Andrew Bird - Noble Beast
Alright! Welcome to the first real full-blown album review. I am going to try to post every Tuesday on something new (released within the last month), and then every Friday with an old find. Ideally, these will be albums, but should time be constrained I might limit to a track review, just so I am getting something out! Anyway, without further ado:
Andrew Bird - Noble Beast [Fat Possum]
4/5
Andrew Bird holds an interesting honor in my life of music-- he was the first artist where I purchased an entire album on the basis of hearing just one song. Back in 2005, I heard "Fake Palindromes" off of Pitchfork (back when they actually did constructive track reviews). What really caught my attention was how unique that song sounded-- the looping, lush violins, his distinct singing style, the odd vocabulary choices... it was something different, I thought. While The Mysterious Production of Eggs was certainly a pleasing album, what really got me hooked was his earlier forays with his project Andrew Bird's Bowl of Fire: unapologetic swing revival with ripping violin solos.
So, fast forward 11 years after the Bowl of Fire debut Thrills-- which sounds like it was recorded coming out of an AM radio-- to Noble Beast. As Andrew Bird's music has progressed, it has evolved from swing to chamber pop to violin-driven indie pop to... plain pop??
Probably the most striking part of Noble Beast was how long into the album it took to really hear a violin featured. Despite downplaying what you could consider his "signature" sound, this album is surprising enjoyable as an entirely different affair. On this album, much more attention is given to percussion and the interplay of acoustic/electric guitar. His violin playing now adds a richer layer to the music, rather than being the major focus of every song. Where the changes he made in 2007's Armchair Apocrypha bored me at times, the innovation he has made this time around is much-welcomed.
Opening with the great "Oh No," the album starts off strong, with a sound very reminiscent of his previous albums. By the second track, "Masterswarm," Bird switches gears from his trademark "bah-bums" and whistling into experimentation with Latin/Flamenco-style percussion with looped finger-picked violin that surprisingly blend together very well.
By the time the album comes to "Not a Robot, but a Ghost," I realized I hadn't been imagining the fuzzed bass and distorted guitar laced throughout the first few tracks, and that Bird had really been branching out into new territory. With a beat that would sound in place on any Radiohead album, his violin floats along with vocals that seem to channel a bit of Thom Yorke as well. This track was certainly the most surprising, but also one of the most enjoyable.
From there, the album works to its close with a string of equally excellent tracks, with standouts being "Anonanimal" which features some of his best string looping/layering to date, and "Souverians," a sprawling 7-minute epic that has more musical ideas in one song than some bands can fit on a whole album.
The only real detraction from the album is the trio of "Effigy," "Tenuousness," and "Nomenclature." These three songs are all a little too similar in tempo (mostly downtempo) and feel to come right after each other. "Effigy" and "Nomenclature" aren't all too remarkable on their own, and when strung so close together I tended to lose interest during that stretch. Also a bit puzzling are the two brief instrumental interludes in the middle of the album, which don't seem to build off of the songs before them nor build into the songs that proceed them.
Overall, Noble Beast is a very enjoyable step in the always-evolving sound of Andrew Bird. This is a great album for first-time listeners (though, make sure to grab The Mysterious Production of Eggs ASAP) and should be a pleasant surprise for most long-time fans.
Andrew Bird - Noble Beast [Fat Possum]
4/5
Andrew Bird holds an interesting honor in my life of music-- he was the first artist where I purchased an entire album on the basis of hearing just one song. Back in 2005, I heard "Fake Palindromes" off of Pitchfork (back when they actually did constructive track reviews). What really caught my attention was how unique that song sounded-- the looping, lush violins, his distinct singing style, the odd vocabulary choices... it was something different, I thought. While The Mysterious Production of Eggs was certainly a pleasing album, what really got me hooked was his earlier forays with his project Andrew Bird's Bowl of Fire: unapologetic swing revival with ripping violin solos.
So, fast forward 11 years after the Bowl of Fire debut Thrills-- which sounds like it was recorded coming out of an AM radio-- to Noble Beast. As Andrew Bird's music has progressed, it has evolved from swing to chamber pop to violin-driven indie pop to... plain pop??
Probably the most striking part of Noble Beast was how long into the album it took to really hear a violin featured. Despite downplaying what you could consider his "signature" sound, this album is surprising enjoyable as an entirely different affair. On this album, much more attention is given to percussion and the interplay of acoustic/electric guitar. His violin playing now adds a richer layer to the music, rather than being the major focus of every song. Where the changes he made in 2007's Armchair Apocrypha bored me at times, the innovation he has made this time around is much-welcomed.
Opening with the great "Oh No," the album starts off strong, with a sound very reminiscent of his previous albums. By the second track, "Masterswarm," Bird switches gears from his trademark "bah-bums" and whistling into experimentation with Latin/Flamenco-style percussion with looped finger-picked violin that surprisingly blend together very well.
By the time the album comes to "Not a Robot, but a Ghost," I realized I hadn't been imagining the fuzzed bass and distorted guitar laced throughout the first few tracks, and that Bird had really been branching out into new territory. With a beat that would sound in place on any Radiohead album, his violin floats along with vocals that seem to channel a bit of Thom Yorke as well. This track was certainly the most surprising, but also one of the most enjoyable.
From there, the album works to its close with a string of equally excellent tracks, with standouts being "Anonanimal" which features some of his best string looping/layering to date, and "Souverians," a sprawling 7-minute epic that has more musical ideas in one song than some bands can fit on a whole album.
The only real detraction from the album is the trio of "Effigy," "Tenuousness," and "Nomenclature." These three songs are all a little too similar in tempo (mostly downtempo) and feel to come right after each other. "Effigy" and "Nomenclature" aren't all too remarkable on their own, and when strung so close together I tended to lose interest during that stretch. Also a bit puzzling are the two brief instrumental interludes in the middle of the album, which don't seem to build off of the songs before them nor build into the songs that proceed them.
Overall, Noble Beast is a very enjoyable step in the always-evolving sound of Andrew Bird. This is a great album for first-time listeners (though, make sure to grab The Mysterious Production of Eggs ASAP) and should be a pleasant surprise for most long-time fans.
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