This blog is for all my friends who do not have the time to comb the internet for the latest and greatest in new music. I found these songs for you.
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Wye Oak are beautiful, and honest, and powerful and a little bit scary. Like a madman on the bus. Like a large mammal that could trample you. Like a crazy horse. Like Neil Young.
That’s right, I said it. Wye Oak remind me of Neil Young with Crazy Horse. Jenn Wasner sings with an earnest tenor and shreds on the guitar like Shakey. This track is from their last album. I’ll post more when i get their new one.
Wye Oak | For Prayer | The Knot I 2009
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Miike Snow are catchy as hell. There are two eye’s in Miike and two elle’s in hell. They have written songs for Madonna and Kylie Minogue, and won a Grammy for a song they wrote for Brittney Spears. Embarrassing, I know. Don’t hate them because they know how to write a hook. It means they made enough money to quit their day jobs and build a killer studio to record their debut album in.
Buy their record. Listen to remixes.
Miike Snow | Black & Blue | Miike Snow - 2010
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Blitzen Trapper are smooth. They’re smooth like the Yacht Rock era family of songwriters - Loggins and Messina, Michael MacDonald, Steely Dan, and Christopher Cross.
But Blitzen Trapper are also cool. They’re cool like Dylan, Bowie, or Elvis Costello. There’s a confident swagger in their songwriting, and deservedly so. Blitzen Trapper opened for Guided By Voices’ recent reunion tour. That’s super cool in my book.
Buy their new album Destroyer of the Void. And it couldn’t hurt to buy their last album as well which features the title track ‘Furr’ - one of the most played tracks on my computer and my iPod. Evah. They’re in the UK this week, but they tour the states quite a bit, look out for them in your town.
Blitzen Trapper | Evening Star | Destroyer Of The Void - 2010
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This is some straight-up Ethiopian funk with a creamy Motown center.
How is it, that this was recorded in Brooklyn last year, and not in 1972? How do they get 13 dudes on stage?
Just listen. These guys are killing it. I’m dancing in my chair.
Budos band are playing the Bowery Ballroom on December 3rd and you can buy their recorded music here.
The Budos Band | Rite of the Ancients | The Budos Band III - 2010
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I’m really digging this debut album by Phantogram. They remind me of a happier Portishead, a less lovelorn Postal Service and - keeping it in the P family - Nina Perrson of The Cardigans. Not to mention the poppy choruses.
You’d never be able to tell that this album was recorded in a barn 90 minutes north of Albany. For real. There are some heavy trance, hip-hop, and glitch production values woven throughout.
They also get a nod for having the balls to live in Saratoga Springs, NY, which is home of The Skidmore College Wombats, Sheldon Solomon’s doughboy, and the place where m.headphone was conceived. Balls, I tell you.
You should purchase Eyelid Movies by Phantogram here.
Phantogram | As Far As I Can See | Eyelid Movies I 2010
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Menomena hail from Portland, Oregon and released their fourth LP, ‘Mines’ in the summer of 2010 on Barsuk Records. For a small indie label, Barsuk has a roster packed with some of my favorite bands. John Vanderslice, Nada Surf, The Long Winters, Death Cab For Cutie, Mates of State, and my newly minted crush, hailing from Saratoga Springs, NY, Phantogram, all call Barsuk home. More on Phantogram later.
Anyway, Menomena are a three man act that writes and composes using a proprietary computer program that one of the band members wrote for an assignment in college. It sounds as though they play passages or fragments of tunes and the program slices and dices them into different arrangements until the three musicians are satisfied. Some real Ron Popeil shit here, folks.
Their sound is unique, often incorporating saxophone and piano, and features drumming that is more percussive than groove-driven. As you may have noticed I’m really high on bands that feature three or four part harmonies and shared lead duties. Menomena toss in multi-instrumental talent and great song writing as well. In addition to their latest album, their last one, ‘Friend and Foe’, also kills.
Buy ‘Mines’ and “Friend and Foe’ here, or here.
Menomena | Taos | Mines I 2010
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I absolutely love this evil trio Helms Alee from Bellingham, Washington. Their music is an expanse of doomy fuzzed-out metal riffs in odd time signatures, yet at times certain dreamscape passages are strewn with hazy vocal shimmers of Sonic Youth and the half barked nursery rhymes of The Pixies.
I was lucky to see Helms Alee open for Red Sparrowes and Boris at the Great American Music Hall in late summer 2010. The rhythm section was furious and 100% female. All three musicians sang harmonies with haunting effectiveness. I watched from the third row with a slack jawed grin. In my opinion, they mopped the floor with the two headliners that night.
Purchase ‘Night Terror’ by Helms Alee here or here. Listen to more of their punishing beauty here.
Helms Alee | Paraphrase | Night Terror I 2009
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This is the first in a series of posts by guest editors. This deep track comes from the vault of Erik Grimaldi…
A sorrowful tale of remorse told over a quiet piano, Springsteen’s “The Promise” is one of the bleakest tracks he has ever recorded. It is made all the more so as it name checks a familiar cast of characters who have populated his songs since “Born to Run” back in ‘75. This song was written during the sessions for ‘78’s “Darkness on the Edge of Town” but it never made the album. The track featured here first appeared in 1999 when Bruce decided to open the vaults and release the four CD box set “Tracks” — a collection of material including early demos, studio outtakes and notable concert staples stretching across 25 years. The CD “18 Tracks” is a single disc highlighting the Best Of from that collection plus three additional tunes (including “The Promise”). A savvy marketing move, to be sure. What’s even more striking is that in closing out this entire endeavor with “The Promise”, Springsteen finishes a triumphant run with an unsettling coda to a career’s worth of scrappy vitality.
Even those listeners with just a cursory knowledge of his back catalog will recognize the recurring themes of blue collar folk working hard just to get by while struggling for happiness as they yearn for escape. Johnny, Billy, Terry — they’re all here. So are the old cars and drive-ins, the dead ends, the two-bit bars, broken spirits and spilled secrets found in his songwriting universe. What’s fascinating is that this time around youthful optimism and the fighting spirit are replaced with battered hopes and a clear sense of resignation. This song may have been written by Springsteen in his late 20’s, but it’s fitting that it wasn’t released until he was approaching 50 and had sat down at the piano again to give it another go. He reprises his refrain “thunder road” repeatedly in “The Promise” — it’s as if the Springsteen of “Thunder Road” looked back down the highway years later to discover that he’d reached the end of his travels and not only was the romance gone, it had been a cruel game all along. Never has he turned the tables on his audience like this.
A heartbreaking song sung with wizened restraint, “The Promise” reveals an aged Springsteen declaring defeat. Most truths never sound so lovely in their despair.
Bruce Springsteen | The Promise | 18 Tracks I 1999
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I literally cannot get enough of this debut album by Los Angeles-based band Local Natives. I’ve played it twice a day for six weeks. Yeah… that obsessed. I’m convinced their wax tipped moustaches and steam punk beards are Beatle mop tops for the new millennium.
I first heard them perform a 4-song live set for the music blog Aquarium Drunkard. Among those songs were a cover of ‘Warning Sign’ by the Talking Heads and an original tune called ‘Sun Hands’ that sold me instantly.
They’re already NPR darlings, touring the European festival circuit through August, and will be touring the States in the Fall. This is the first cut on their killer debut album, ‘Gorilla Manor’.
Buy their music here, and go see them live in the US this fall. Not kidding.
Local Natives | Sun Hands | Gorilla Manor I 2010
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I’m not going to waste my words or your time.
Love, Dod
Arcade Fire | We Used to Wait | The Suburbs I 2010
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This blog is for all my friends who do not have the time to comb the internet for the latest and greatest in new music. I found these songs for you.
