Archive for the ‘indie’ Tag
Wilco
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Noting a new Wilco album as I’m busy preparing for my August trip. See you guys in September! Check out the music and feel free to drop some comments about it.
The Rumble Strips – Welcome To The Walk Alone
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Don’t let this album pass you by. Seriously. It’s probably the best typical British album in a long time – strings, trumpets, piano, bittersweet melodies with the accent. And unexpected, at least judging by how little there is about the band on the web. We’ve been listening a lot to it in the office, and you always feel like you need to play it one more time. Thanks, Strips.
The Decemberists – The Hazards of Love
My only fear before hearing this album for the first time was that perhaps The Decemberists‘ Colin Meloy has run out of good ideas, that the poetic moments such as those on Picaresque, which was my first encounter with the band, will begin to repeat in a parodic familiarity. None of this is fortunately the case, as The Hazards of Love sees them moving on and stretching in a brilliant… rock opera. Yes, and there’s nothing wrong with that, because it works. Totally recommended.
Yeah Yeah Yeahs – It’s Blitz!
Yeah Yeah Yeahs return with an album which brings more subtle melodies, sometimes ethereal, sometimes being indie-dance, and almost no garage-like energy, although its title and song names such as Hysteric might suggest it. And for better I’d say, as the sound it both so familiar and distinctive – perhaps for the first time. I love how they and The Kills are shaping.
The Pains of Being Pure at Heart – s/t
It’s hard to give the band a name more indie than this; anyway, these people are a promising act and deserve your attention. A sweet semi-amateur interpretation of the late 80s, sounding like a cross between Vivian Girls, The Jesus and Marie Chain and The Meeting Places that’s non-stop running. Not particularly original, but sincere and fun it is.
Update: This album gets better and better after each listen. In my ears all the time – album of the month I say!
Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion
Merriweather Post Pavilion is one of those albums which, after you’ve listened to it for the first time, you don’t really remember a lot, it leaves you overwhelmed with sounds but you just know that you’re gonna love it as you listen to it again and again. My ticket to the strange world of Animal Collective was the adorable Panda Bear’s solo album.
The songs here are a constant overlapping celebration, odes to joy wrapped in synthesized sounds. Most of the sounds actually come from various electronics, yet there is no sense of artificial or alienation – on the contrary, it is so much more human than anything. Like our thoughts and feelings, they unpredictably meander and twist between familiar (the sky-high melodies) and unknown (the psychedelic electronic sounds). It’s most likely one the albums which will mark the year ahead of us.
The Raveonettes – Beauty Dies EP
I’ve said that Lust Lust Lust was their best album, and they just keep getting better. Four new songs in a short and sweet fuzz package.
Belle and Sebastian – The BBC Sessions
Of all Belle and Sebastian, I only listened to If You’re Feeling Sinister a few times before, but now I think I properly get their music. A nice companion to feeling … quietly awesome in a november fog.
Love Is All – A Hundred Things Keep Me Up at Night
Filed under: music | Tags: disco, indie, pop, post-punk, rock
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Love Is All are a Swedish indie-garage-disco-punk band led by Josephine Olausson. They come with eleven songs on their second album that will most probably make you stand up, move and remember them. Meanwhile it’s actually a soundtrack to the young modern folk’s solitude despite a hundred things. Olausson’s tiny voice yells about how shitty movie romance portraits are, walking home with the last guy at the bar, being inside 19 walls and all in between.
Little Joy – s/t
Little Joy are a candid, a bit upbeat and late night experience at the same time. I’ll be lazy and throw a bunch of quotes if you wanna know more:
Little Joy is Rodrigo Amarante (Los Hermanos), Fabrizio Moretti (The Strokes), and Binki Shapiro – three friends who got together to demo songs and produce this self-titled debut, named after their corner bar. Produced by Noah Georgeson.
Through a chance encounter at a Portuguese festival in Lisbon, where both Amarante (Singer/Guitarist of Los Hermanos) and Moretti (drummer of The Strokes) had performed, the two chatted well through the night and into the morning by the side of the river, humoring the idea of working together on music that had no affiliation to their particular bands.
A year later, Amarante traveled to the United States to record with Devendra Banhart on his Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon album. On the off hours of an arduous recording process, Amarante would meet with Moretti to discuss anything but music.
Binki Shapiro, musician and native of Los Angeles, was introduced to the pair through mutual acquaintances and became a fast friend, encouraging the two to focus on the music they had spoken of long before. Through the process of late night “show-and-tell” the three developed and arranged songs Moretti had begun and soon after started writing original music for the group as a band.
A couple of months later they all moved into a house in Echo Park to demo songs and soon after, with the help of producer Noah Georgeson, who had recorded Banhart’s album, they finished their self-titled debut, Little Joy, named after the cocktail lounge just down the street from their home.
