Subwaywalk

#BestOf2011 Top 101 Songs Of The Year

2011-12-31T17:36:00.000-08:00

Dear Friends, my family...

This comes with astory:

I started making playlists not for me but for others, someonespecial, that someone I would like to remember me by, or simply the joy ofsharing music with people that has less free time, less ability to find newmusic or people that has less age and want the little music knowledge one canhave in a few years more of active Internet surfing... I kind ofliked to see it as my little contribution to people giving them the superficialthings that truly matter in life, such little thing like that little love songthat tells the story you were eager to hear, or that makes the politicalstatement or that song that's just perfect for right now.

Time passed and Istarted sharing a little bit more than a mixtape, one of my best friends (with whom Ishared, talked, knew new stuff and breathe passion for music) started giving mea purpose: why don't I start reviewing the music I get in one year and sharingit. That was the story behind Subwaywalk and that was the beginning of mylittle theme mixtapes formy friends and my annual list of the best songs. The only thing I wanted everynew years eve was the recognition of this good friend telling me if he lovedit, and also all my playlists weredirectly or indirectly directed to him...This year my friend passed away and heno longer can say if he liked the playlist ornot but all the music I listen will always have him in some way awaiting hisreply...all musicwill sound like him and all my playlists willstill be dedicated to him forever...one thing he liked to tell people was"Never lose your coolness" and I hope that in time I never lose mycool and keep finding his voice in every feedback and every album I come acrossevery year.

No matter thereasons that made my year sucked, personally I've been through a lot of goodthings and bad, I mastered my thesis on one hand and got shot by robbers a fewmonths ago on the other hand. For one reason or another all the people I knowhave been through a lot too, my playlist isfull of that feeling of hopelessness or grief, but if one thing I have startedto learn is to enjoy the little things, live every day like it can be the last,try to be happy and do things that can take me there and try to be above thesituation keeping my cool...It's a hard thing to do, at least for me, but we'llalways have music and 2011 was an amazing example of how a terrible year canhave the best soundtrack.

One thing I cantell about 2011 is that the harder the year is, the better the music can get,maybe the reason is not because the music itself, but because all that one canproject to music in difficult times, I'm the kind of people that tend to relyon music sometimes as an escape, sometimes the opposite, but music is always asafe place, sanctuary. This year my best of 2011 is that soundtrack, sometimesit can get a little sad, but also can have a lot of heart, hope, swag andcoolness. I really hope you start 2012 remembering 2011 and all that it gaveand took...In the end nature is wise and everything someday will make sense,the exercise of retrospection can be hard sometimesbut with "The Best Of 2011" it will always leave a smile on your face(no matter if there's a tear in your eye)...

The cover arttells that story, sometimes life can knock you down, but if you don't get up,might as well convert it to a beautiful picture ;-)

I really wish avery Happy New Year to all of you, blessings, hugs, and remember that goodthings come for those who wait...

Dedicated to my friend Luis Carlos, I miss him terribly, but I'll keepmy cool

DOWNLOAD IT!!!

For more detail on what you're about to download, check out the detailed list...

101. Friendly Fires - Live Those Days Tonight
Album: Pala
Video: Live at Jools Holland

100. Lykke Li - I Know Places
Album: Wounded Rhymes
Video: Live on the Moon

99. Ford & Lopatin - Too Much MIDI (Please Forgive Me)
Album: Channel Pressure
Audio: Hypem

98. A$AP Rocky - Leaf (Feat. Main Attrakionz)
Album: LiveLoveA$AP
Audio: Hypem

97. King Creosote & Jon Hopkins - Bats In The Attic
Album: Diamond Mine
Video: Video Version

96. Air France - It Feels Good To Be Around You
Album: YOURS172
Audio: Hypem

95. Keep Shelly In Athens - Hauntin' Me
Album: Hauntin' Me EP
Video: Official Music Video

94. The Sandwitches - Summer Of Love
Album: Mrs. Jones' Cookies
Video: Live In a Bathroom

93. Stephen Malkmus and The Jinks - Senator
Album: Mirror Traffic
Video: Official Music Video

92. Ane Brun - Alfonsina Y El Mar
Album: It All Starts With One

91. Death Cab For Cutie - You Are a Turist
Album: Codes and Keys
Video: Official Music Video

90. The Rosebuds - Go Ahead
Album: Loud Planes Fly Low
Audio: Hypem

89. Jan Pawel - Un Paseo Antes De Partir (Con Enrique Alossi)
Album: Demasiado Viejo Para Morir Joven
Audio: Bandcamp

88. Blood Orange - Can We Go Inside Now?
Album: Coastal Grooves

87. WhoMadeWho - All That I Am
Album: Knee Deep

86. White Denim - River to Consider
Album: D

85. Feist - Comfort Me
Album: Metals
Audio: Hypem

84. EMA - California
Album: Past Life Martyred Saints
Video: Official Music Video

83. Apparat - Song Of Los
Album: The Devil's Walk
Video: Official Music Video

82. Wu Lyf - Concrete Gold
Album: Go Tell Fire To The Mountain
Video: Video @OWS

81. Dum Dum Girls - Coming Down
Album: Only In Dreams
Audio: Hypem

80. The Throne - No Church In The Wild (Feat. Frank Ocean)
Album: Watch The Throne
Video: Official Music Video

79. WIN WIN - Interleave (Feat. Alexis Taylor)
Album: WIN WIN
Video: Official Music Video

78. Death Grips - Takyon (Death Yon)
Album: Exmilitary
Video: Official Music Video

77, The Streets - Going Through Hell (Diplo Remix)
Album: Going Through Hell EP
Video: Official Music Video (Album Version)

76. Deerhoof - No One Asked To Dance
Album: Deerhoof vs Evil
Audio: Hypem

75. Akron/Family - Light Emerges
Album: S/T II: The Cosmic Birth and Journey of Shinju TNT

74. The War On Drugs - Brothers
Album: Slave Ambient
Audio: Hypem

73. Washed Out - Far Away
Album: Within and Without
Video: Live For YoursTruly

72. Wale - Ambition (Feat. Meek Mill & Rick Ross)
Album: Ambition
Video: Lyric Music Video

71. araabMUZIK - Streetz Tonight
Album: Electronic Dream
Video: Official Music Video

70. tUnE-yArDs - Bizness
Album: W H O K I L L
Video: Official Music Video

69. Tapes n' Tapes - Freak Out
Album: Outside
Video: Official Music Video

68. Craft Spells - After The Moment
Album: Idle Labor
Video: Official Music Video

67. Natural Child - Crack Mountain
Album: Natural Child 7"

66. The Drums - Money
Album: Portamento
Video: Official Music Video

65. Cut Copy - Take me Over
Album: Zonoscope
Video: Live at KCRW

64. The Strokes - Machu Picchu
Album: Angles
Audio: Hypem

63. Theophilus London - I Stand Alone
Album: Timez Are Weird These Days
Video: Official Music Video

62. Junior Boys - Banana Riple
Album: It's All True
Video: Official Music Video

61. Mogwai - Hound Of Winter
Album: Earth Division EP
Video: Fan Video

60. Wilco - One Sunday Morning (Song For Jane Smiley's Boyfriend)
Album: The Whole Love
Audio: Hypem

59. Juliana Barwick - Flown
Album: The Magic Place

58. Beirut - Port Of Call
Album: The Rip Tide
Audio: Hypem

57. Villagers - Cecilia & Her Selfhood
Album: Cecilia & Her Selfhood (Single)
Video: Official Music Video

56. Wavves - I Wanna Be Dave Grohl
Album: Life Sux EP
Audio: Hypem

55. Radiohead - Lotus Flower
Album: King Of Limbs
Video: Official Music Video

54. King Krule - The Noose Of Jah City
Album: King Krule EP
Video: Official Music Video

53. TV On The Radio - Will Do
Album: Nine Types Of Light
Video: Official Music Video

52. Fergus & Geronimo - Powerful Lovin'
Album: Unlearn
Video: Live For YoursTruly

51. Kate Bush - Snowflake
Album: 50 Words For Snow
Audio: Hypem

50. Twin Sister - Stop
Album: In Heaven
Video: Live For YoursTruly

49. Neon Indian - Polish Girl
Album: Era Extraña
Video: Official Music Video

48. Frank Ocean - Novocane
Album: Nostalgia / Ultra
Video: Official Music Video

47. Holy Ghost! - Wait And See
Album: Holy Ghost!
Video: Official Music Video

46. Shabazz Palaces - Endeavors For Never (The Last Time We Spoke You Said You Were Not Here. I Saw You Though.)
Album: Black Up

45. James Blake - A Case Of You
Album: Enough Thunder EP
Video: Official Music Video

44. The National - Think You Can Wait
Album: Win Win OST
Video: Official Music Video

43. The Weeknd - What You Need
Album: House Of Balloons
Video: Official Music Video

42. Tyler, The Creator - Yonkers
Album: Goblin
Video: Official Music Video

41. Timber Timbre - Bad Ritual
Album: Creep On Creepin On
Video: Official Music Video

40. SebastiAn - Embody
Album: Total
Video: Official Music Video

39: Adele - Someone Like You
Album: 21
Video: Official Music Video

38. The Black Keys - Gold On The Ceiling
Album: El Camino
Video: Live On Letterman

37. Big K.R.I.T. - Another Naive Individual Glorifying Greed and Encouraging Racism
Album: Return Of 4Eva

36. SBTRKT - Wildfire
Album: SBTRKT
Video: Official Music Video

35. Wye Oak - Civilian
Album: Civilian
Video: Live on a Balcony

34. Young Galaxy - Cover Your Tracks
Album: Shapeshifting
Audio: Hypem

33. Battles - Ice Cream (Feat. Matías Aguayo)
Album: Gloss Drop
Video: Official Music Video

32. Beastie Boys - Make Some Noise
Album: Hot Sauce Committee Part Two
Video: Official Music Video

31. Active Child - Playing House (Feat. How To Dress Well)
Album: You Are All I See
Video: Official Music Video

30. KAUF - Relocate
Album: Relocate (Single)
Audio: Hypem

29. Little Dragon - Crtystalfilm
Album: Ritual Union
Audio: Hypem

28. Zoo Kid - Out Getting Ribs
Album: Out Getting Ribs (Single)
Video: Official Music Video

27. The Mountain Goats - Age Of Kings
Album: All Eternal Decks
Audio: Hypem

26. Yuck - Get Away
Album: Yuck
Video: Official Music Video

25. Girls - Vomit
Album: Father, Son, Holy Ghost
Video: Official Music Video

24. The Antlers - Every Night My Teeth Are Falling Out
Album: Burst Apart
Video: Official Music Video

23. The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart - My Terrible Friend
Album: Belong
Audio: Hypem

22. St. Vincent - Year Of The Tiger
Album: Strange Mercy
Video: Live 4AD Session

21. Gotye - Somebody That I Used To Know
Album: Making Mirrors
Video: Official Music Video

20. Jens Lekman - An Argument With Myself
Album: An Argument With Muself EP
Audio: Hypem

19. Real Estate - It's Real
Album: Days
Video: Official Music Video

18. Kurt Vile - Baby's Arms
Album: Smoke Ring For My Halo
Video: Official Music Video

17. Atlas Sound - Te Amo
Album: Parallaz
Audio: Hypem

16. My Brightest Diamond - I Have Never Loved Sompeone The Way I Love You
Album: All Things Will Unwind
Video: A Take Away Show

15. Gang Gang Dance - MindKilla
Album: Eye Contact
Video: Official Music Video

14. British Sea Power - Who's In Control
Album: Valhalla Dancehall
Video: Official Music Video

13. Mogwai - San Pedro
Album: Hardcore Will Never Die But You Will
Video: Official Music Video

12. Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues
Album: Helplessness Blues
Audio: Hypem

11. The Decemberist - June Hymn
Album: The King Is Dead
Audio: Hypem

10. Smith Westerns - Weekend
Album: Dye It Blonde
Video: Official Music Video

9. PJ Harvey - The Words That Maketh Murder
Album: Let England Shake
Video: Official Music Video

8. Nicolas Jaar - Colomb
Album: Space Is Only Noise
Audio: Hypem

7. Tom Waits - Talking At The Same Time
Album: Bad As Me
Audio: Hypem

6. M83 - Midnight City
Album: Hurry Up, We're Dreaming
Video: Official Music Video

5. Metronomy - The Bay
Album: The English Riviera
Video: Official Music Video

4. Bon Iver - Holocene
Album: Bon Iver
Video: Official Music Video

3. James Blake - Wilhelms Scream
Album: James Blake
Video: Official Music Video

2. Destroyer - Suicide Demo For Kara Walker
Album: Kaputt
Audio: Hypem

1. Lana Del Rey - Video Games
Album: Video Games EP
Video: Official Music Video

#BestOf2011 Top 30 Albums

2011-12-17T14:40:00.000-08:00

My selection of Best Albums of 2011 is very diverse, from straight up pop to avant-garde experimental music, I take the opportunity to introduce to you these albums and invite you to take a look and open your mind to the ones that you don't really get, google a little about their history and sit back and enjoy some of the most experimental, sweet, sexiest and reflective albums I came across this year.

As you will see, I go from number one hit billboard dance records, a rock n' roll hall of fame legend and a grammy nominee album, to some other material sometimes simple and sometimes edgy.

This list doesn't necessarily reflect the albums that had the best songs, it's more about the artists that created a well rounded concept (Tim Hecker, PJ Harvey...), that handled well in terms of production (Metronomy, Twin Sister...) or simply the ones that did something no one never did before them (Colin Stetson, Shabazz Palaces...)

Ofcourse there are some albums that are not in the list that define the 2011 sound, such is the case of M83, Adele, EMA, Jamie XX or The Weeknd, and I'll leave these 5 like my honorable mentions, the 30 below still will make your 2011 experience a very complete one.

Enjoy!

30. Twin Sister - In Heaven

29. The Black Keys - El Camino

28. Big K.R.I.T. - Return of 4Eva

27. Battles - Glass Drop

26. SBTRKT - SBTRKT

25. Shabazz Palaces - Black Up

24. Beastie Boys - Hot Sauce Committee Part 2

23. Kate Bush – 50 Words For Snow

22. Little Dragon – Ritual Union

21. The Mountain Goats – All Eternal Decks

20. The Antlers – Burst Apart

19. Young Galaxy – Shapeshifting

18. Atlas Sound - Parallax

17. Real Estate - Days

16. St. Vincent – Strange Mercy

15. Yuck - Yuck

14. Girls - Father, Son, Holy Ghost

13. Kurt Vile - Smoke Ring For My Halo

12. Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues

11. Mogwai – Hardcore Will Never Die But You Will

10. Tim Hecker – Rivendeath, 1972

9. Smith Westerns – Dye It Blonde

8. James Blake – James Blake

7. Colin Stetson - New History Warfare Vol. 2: Judges

6. Nicolas Jaar – Space Is Only Noise

5. PJ Harvey – Let England Shake

4. Tom Waits – Bad As Me

3. Metronomy – English Riviera

2. Bon Iver – Bon Iver

1. Destroyer – Kaputt

#BestOf2011 Top 10 EP's

2011-12-13T11:38:00.000-08:00

10. Philip Selway – Running Blind EP

9. Burial – Street Halo EP

Burial - Stolen Dog by elisaveta

8. Dum Dum Girls - He Gets Me High EP

Dum Dum Girls - He Gets Me High by subpop

7. Robin Pecknold – Three Songs EP

Robin Pecknold - EP by Folk Radio UK

6. Wavves - Life Sux EP

Wavves - "I Wanna Meet Dave Grohl" by rockedition

5. King Krule – King Krule EP / Zoo Kid – Out Getting Ribs 7"

King Krule- The Noose of Jah City by truepanther

4. Colin Stetson – Those Who Didn’t Run EP

Those who didn't run (excerpt) - COLIN STETSON by Constellation Records

3. Nicolas Jaar – Don’t Break My Love EP

NICOLAS JAAR / Don't break my love EP by Clown & Sunset

2. Natural Child – Natural Child 7”

14 - Natural Child - Dogbite by KingQuiet

1. Jens Lekman – An Argument With Myself EP

Jens Lekman - An Argument With Myself by snipelondon

#BestOf2011 Top 15 Videos

2011-12-08T08:13:00.000-08:00

See my collection of dramatic, sexy, minimalistic and entertaining videos of 2011. Hope you enjoy them as much as I did.

15. St Vincent - Cruel

14. Battles - My Machines

13. The Sound of Arrows - Magic

12. Memory Tapes - Yes I Know

11. Gruff Rhyss - Shark Ridden Waters

10. Beastie Boys - Fight For Your Right (Revisited) Full Length

9. SebastiAn - Embody

8. James Blake - The Wilhelm Scream

7. Radiohead - Lotus Flower

6. Is Tropical - The Greeks

5. Tyler, The Creator - Yonkers

4. Destroyer - Kaputt

3. Villagers - Cecilia & Her Selfhood

2. Woodkid - Iron

1. WhoMadeWho - Every Minute Alone

Twin Sister - In Heaven

2011-09-28T09:42:00.000-07:00

Last year I kind of overlooked at Twin Sister, not because I didn’t knew the band, I certainly had to look what was the buzz about, but the music was all into detail, thing that got me thinking that the haziness of the production and droned soft melodies were kind of toning down the potential that the band really had. Is the same feeling I get when I listen to the Puro Instnct LP. I sure had to wait and see how this band could sound in the LP and I knew that I couldn’t entirely give up on them. In 2010 Twin Sister was all about some hazy songs with an exciting 80’s revival pop tune loved by many, and the home run achieved by “All around and away we go”. Don’t get me wrong, I loved this song as well, and I liked the EP, but even though I overlooked at them in my best of 2010 list I didn’t completely forgot them.

In the wait, between the two past EP’s, Twin Sister had a direction, they just had to follow the path and enjoy the ride; and then came In Heaven, back with all the production and focus to fully take advantage of the bands potential. The LP is less about the haze and more about taking each and every detail and giving them time to shine.

Even though In Heaven takes time to make room for details, this doesn’t mean that’s going to be boring, for example, the first single “Bad Street” takes a lot of references of club disco music, kind of reminding me of Chic’s “Le Freak”, is one of the finest party songs I’ve ever heard from a dream-pop (ish) band, and shows the wide rage of styles and influences Twin Sister can have.

Another difference that twin sister also have distinct to other dreamy bands this time around, is that they don’t compromise the quality of the music in the use of drones and shoegazy sounds that could drown the detail. It still has these sounds, for example, the last song “Eastern Green” or the recent single “Kimmi in a Rice Field”, the first one adding heavy noise guitars and the second one has long sounds and echoes but in both of them the aesthetic doesn’t drown the vocals and is completely intelligible.

Overall the LP was an improved Twin Sister and, for me, one of the best “dram-pop” albums of the year.

Tracklist:

1. Daniel

2. Stop

3. Bad Street

4. Space Babe

5. Kimmi In a Rice Field

6. Luna's Theme

7. Spain

8. Gene Ciampi

9. Saturday Sunday

10. Eastern Green

Rate: 8/10

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Wilco - The Whole Love (2011)

2011-09-26T15:49:00.000-07:00

Almost a decade has past since Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, the first Wilco album that granted them media exposure and worldwide success, and its only natural that Wilco, being as North American as they can be, had to earn a place in the worldwide music scene more than being one more American band; in time they’ve delivered a particular sound and the public has been starting to acknowledge that.

Strangely The Whole Love doesn’t go straight forward to this particular sound, thus the consistency in the album is not on sight, but the exploratory sounding on the high end of the spectrum make this a not so typical Wilco album, but for me, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

In The Whole Love we find a comfortable Jeff Tweedy in the front man seat, he’s come a long way since he’s rockabilly and country background since Uncle Tupelo split; but also its notable the very comfortable chemestry of the band rushing to experimentation back and forward, for example, the first song “Art of Almost” starts glitchy and muddy with heavy synths and amazing drumming, it goes building the sound contrasting the bands entire contribution and then a flawless set of strings, it also struggles with constant teasing sounds and false endings of the song, despite this, the best thing about it is a really spectacle between the band unspoken communication and contribution, every single member shine with something new to the table, creating a not typical Wilco vibe but leaving clear the capacity of any of the bands members; special emphasis in the guitar of Nels Cline hitting hard at the end of the song.

The second song and single “I Might” also has the presence of playfulness between the members but leaving to shine keyboardist Mikael Jorgensen and guitarist Nels Cline who play a sort of a jam feel with on and offs, also the muddy bass line of Pat Sansone give the song a deeper tone to the happy melody that goes around with the rest of the band.

“Capitol City” is another song that takes the listener to some new territory not so often seen on Wilco albums, in my opinion, the best vocals of Jeff Tweedy in the album and also a sort of city surfing sentiment on a summer day, it kind of reminds me the Feist feeling, good, cute, sweet and impossible to listen if you’re not having a sentimental journey to some cool big city lifestyle without loosing the small town warm welcoming people.

Ofcourse, this album has also a softer side, after all is called The Whole Love and it comes with songs like “Black Moon” and “Rising Red Lung” or alternative ballads like “Born Alone” or “Open Mind”.

But nothing says Wilco best than a good Wilco song, and probably the best over 10 minute song I’ve heard all year. This year has another artist with extremely long songs and critically acclaimed reviews: Josh T. Pearson’s new album Last of the Country Gentlemen and my point about that album was that the songs are too long, and they would be masterpieces if they were some couple of minutes shorter, just like he’s doing them live. But, returning to Wilco, “One Sunday Morning (Song for Jane Smiley's Boyfriend)” is a very repetitive song that has a lot of subtle transitions but never changes radically, and is 12 minutes of blissful singing about a weekend, and I was listening and thinking “man, this is how you do a 12 minute song”, for sure one of my favourite Wilco songs ever.

Overall the album has ups and downs, not all the songs are great but the album remains good with a fantastic opener and a killer (and I mean killer!) closing track.

Tracklist:

1. Art of Almost

2. I Might

3. Sunloathe

4. Dawned On Me

5. Black Moon

6. Born Alone

7. Open Mind

8. Capitol City

9. Standing O

10. Rising Red Lung

11. Whole Love

12. One Sunday Morning (Song for Jane Smiley's Boyfried)

Rate: 7.9/10

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Bon Iver - Bon Iver (2011)

2011-07-02T07:29:00.001-07:00

There's not much I can say about Bon Iver to people that already love them. But for the record: Bon Iver is a band, not a person (that because a lot of people mistake Justin Vernon with Bon Iver). These guys have been working a lot for the last years on separate projects or collaborating with other artists, like the song in the eclipse soundtrack with St. Vincent, the 2010 buzz worthy collaboration with Kanye West in not one but two songs, and also Justin’s electronic side project Vulcano Choir and S. Carey’s solo album; everything showing different faces of the Bon Iver talent.

Talking about Bon Iver self titled release will never be like talking about the previous releases just because the amount of fame and respect they’ve been getting since “For Emma, Forever Ago” make them a different caliber of artistry. That said, is normal that the buzz around this album overshadow everything that was good in “For Emma, Forever Ago” and over appreciate everything that good in “Bon Iver”.

For this album they play with every influence they’ve had in the past, it’s still Bon Iver being Bon Iver, but all the production tweaks inherited of Vulcano Choir adding a little electronic stuff and pumping up the variety in instrumentation. The opener “Perth” for example, it has the same song structure of old familiar Bon Iver songs starting slow, building up and then chilling down, the typical Bon Iver crescendo but this time around with a lot more of horns and instrumentation. And then you take the second song “Minnesota, WI” and do exactly the same but with electronic synths mixing with a banjo and some 80’s sounding sexy saxophone and electric guitars.

“Bon Iver” is bigger in terms of production and sound quality but in the same time some songs miss the intimacy that the acoustic simple songs tend to have in “For Emma, Forever Ago”. I can’t help to be a little bit on the fence in the case of taking the bigger Bon Iver as the better one, it is indeed a good album, I’d never say that is the best of the year (like Pitchfork pretends to be saying up to this point), but it is really a good album. I really loved how they included in every song a little bit of horns and sexy saxophones, this details make the LP more pop oriented and maybe that’s why it loses a little bit of intimacy.

None the less, I’m not resisting to the change and I’m sure it will grow on me, and even though is not the best album of the year it’s up there with the ones that stand out.

Tracklist:

1. Perth

2. Minnesota, WI

3. Holocene

4. Towers

5. Michicant

6. Hinnom, TX

7. Wash.

8. Calgary

9. Lisbon, OH

10. Beth / Rest

Rate: 8.5/10

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Junior Boys - It's All True (2011)

2011-07-02T06:21:00.000-07:00

Canada strikes back! Jeremy Greenspan and Matt Didemus together form the highly underrated electronic duo Junior Boys and for 2011 they follow up the amazing “Begun Dull Care” with the also amazing “It’s All True”. But before I get into the review (and since is the first review I make of Junior Boys) I’ll take some time to talk about their previous work.

In the beginning, Junior Boys were constantly rejected for their experimental and lo-fi room-made songs from 1999 to 2004 when they released their first LP “Last Exit” (some EP’s before that), a poorly produced album that demonstrated the awesome creativity of the band and the ability to create quirky synths to go along with the sweet vocals; this first album was like the little train that could and became a moderate hit of that year in some indie circles. Time Passed and for the 2006 release “So This Is Goodbye” everything changed, the production was sounding brilliant, the synths were tight and from beginning to end the album was 80’s revival and swag, relaxing airy songs but with seriously dance vibes that never made it to the party scene but could be really enjoyable. However nothing really matters when it came to the 2009 release “Begone Dull Care”, this was the million dollar baby, amazing production, amazing musical progressions and patience, they take their time to reach perfection on each and every song. Despite the awesomeness of the band “Last Exit” still sounded more quirky than the others and that’s always a beautiful thing.

The amazing thing about “It’s All True” is that Junior Boys are not trying to move forward with each and every album, the natural progression between the first three albums was not necessarily incoherent between one and another, but with the good production quality the quirkiness got lost on the way until this year. The opener “Itchy Fingers” opens with an upbeat move and amazing 80’s revival synths to then jump to the airy “Playtime” that has airy keyboards and in the middle Asian instrumentation. I also love how the quirkiness is back in every song.

On other note, if there’s one thing Junior Boys have mastered through the years is that they have the capacity to take a really long and soft song and keep you interested until the end, is something that this year can be compared to Cass McCombs or Destroyer as well, and Junior Boys always take time to work each song.

Another win for Junior Boys is the ability to give cohesiveness to all their discography with this album, I won’t say that this album is better than “Begun Dull Care” but I see myself being seriously addicted to this album in a similar way that I did with the 2009 release, in part because I’m patient with my music and I love the way that Junior Boys take their time to deliver every song.

This album is a High-Class-Pop-Dance glory and a world cultural reference tribute to the 80's dance pop, so I'm sure you'll enjoy it.

Tracklist:

1. Itchy Fingers

2. Playtime

3. You'll Improve Me

4. A Truly Happy Ending

5. The Reservoir

6. Second Chance

7. Kick the Can

8. ep

9. Banana Ripple

Rate: 8.7/10

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Cults - Cults (2011)

2011-07-02T05:12:00.000-07:00

Since the beginning of 2010 Cults has been consistently making a big buzz, from free giveaways to songs featured in HBO’s Weeds. But this indie fame doesn’t matter when it comes to the quality of the songs. Music tends to be in a way a revival of something else and Cults is no exception, they take all that was good from the 60’s and Phil Spector and take it again in the same level. Of course, this will always be a good thing, and if you like this kind of recordings you’ll like this record.

But now the downside, the few EP’s created such a buzz that made the wait for the album unbearable; if 4 songs together were amazing 11 were going to be pure bliss and in reality the album never gets to a point where any song is better than the EP’s, and the over exposure of the songs I already knew damaged the wow factor of the album, the best songs were already known and some of them since last year (already in my best of the year list).

This is not necessarily a bad thing; people will already know what to expect from this album, the moral of the story for the music lovers would be “don’t have any expectations”, because high hopes only work to be crushed down. The new songs “Walk in the Night”, “Never Heal Myself”, “Never Saw The Point”, “Bad Things”, “Bumper” and “Rave On” sound like Phil Spector covers and never really reach the level of the EP’s which is a shame because with the singles and the only song missing was “The Curse” of the 7” that was probably the worst song so that was a good judgment call. Overall the album is good to listen, short and sweet but contrary to what Pitchfork and probably the indie world thinks I don’t think this is one of the best albums of the year. For sure is a must listen and definitely popular, but the worth of the album is overshadowed for the fame of the songs everybody knew.

The 2011 singles are very good “Abducted” and “You Know What I Mean”; I really thought that the aggressiveness and heartache that these two songs had were going to set the tone for the new record but sadly no, the best songs were released separately from the album and some have a long time running around, is like the album is new and I’m already tired of it. Again, I like it and some of the songs I love, but as a whole, the album is just not making it for me as one of the “best of the year” is pretty standard good.

But you be the judge and listen to it, drop a comment, tell me that I’m crazy.

Tracklist:

1. Abducted

2. Go Outside

3. You Know What I Mean

4. Most Wanted

5. Walk At Night

6. Never Heal Myself

7. Oh My God

8. Never Saw The Point

9. Bad Things

10. Bumper

11. Rave On

Rate: 7.3/10

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Beastie Boys - Hot Sauce Committee Part 2

2011-06-12T14:20:00.000-07:00

This one is not as old for it to not be reviewed, in fact, even if it was; the Beastie Boys are the kind of bands that need to be talked about.

The beastie boys are the kind of band that has such a distinctive sound that if you like one song you’ll like every song, and this is not because they’re repetitive (or not just for that) but because they can make anything sound like them and no one else. Since the beginning they’ve been in the rock, the pop and the rap all over the place and never compromising the personality of the band.

Lately they’ve been exploring a bit more into more mature territories, just remember the instrumental 2007 album “The Mix Up” that had more of a funk and experimental old school sounds that were a little bit more adult. And later this year the remake of the “Fight for your right to party” video that was very fun.

But in the case of “Hot Sauce Committee Part 2” they stepped up the game with the sound, this album is very cranky, not in the same way of “Ill Communication” that had the really loud songs like “Sabotage” but in a really new sound and produced sound that can saturate a bit more the drums and the vocals, for me this was a good thing, what was the down side of the record? The collaborative songs featuring songs with NAS and Santigold weren’t really good because the invited artist tends to be overshadowed by the Beasties and their distinctive sound. I can agree with people that say that the Beastie Boys are so loud that they need really special people to work with; it doesn’t go right with anyone thrown into the mix.

If one thing I can say of this record is that the beastie boys can still bring new stuff no matter how many years pass, they are catchy and fun and that’s the greatness of them, is really hard to get bored by them if you like them already.

This time around, the beastie boys are no committing with one idea at a time like they did on many on their previous albums, this album seems more of a combination of everything in one; a travel through the history of the influences that have taken part in the band, punk, rock, hip hop, reggae, and new and old tricks of production. I’ve been enjoying this album a lot and if you decide to give it a shot you’ll probably won’t be disappointed. Everyone has had some sort of contact with the Beastie Boys in life, but if you’re one of those rare cases of people that never been around them, this record is a good way to start because you can have a glimpse of everything they’ve been about through out the years.

Tracklist:

1. Make Some Noise
2. Nonstop Disco Powerpack
3. OK
4. Too Many Rappers [new reactionaries version] (featuring NAS)
5. Say It
6. The Bill Harper Collection
7. Don't Play No Game That I Can't Win (featuring Santigold)
8. Long Burn The Fire
9. Funky Donkey
10. The Larry Routine
11. Tadlock's Glasses
12. Lee Majors Come Again
13. Multilateral Nuclear Disarmament
14. Here's A Little Something For Ya
15. Crazy Ass Shit
16. The Lisa LisaFull Force Routine

Rate: 8.5/10

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What was I about?

2011-06-12T14:17:00.000-07:00

I’m not going to take the time to review the albums I’ve been listening to this past months therefore I’m going to post a brief list of the top albums I’ve been over and keep moving forward with the blog and the music. The list is in no particular order.

The Antlers - Burst Apart
Big K.R.I.T. - Return Of 4Eva
Bill Callahan – Apocalypse
British Sea Power - Valhalla Dancehall
Cass McCombs - Wit's End
The Cave Singers - No Witch
Colin Stetson - New History Warfare Vol. 2: Judges
Craft Spells - Idle Labor
Deerhoof - Deerhoof vs. Evil
DOM - Sun Bronzed Greek Gods (EP)
EMA - Past Life Martyed Saints
Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues
Friendly Fires – Pala
Gang Gang Dance - Eye Contact
Gil Scott-Heron And Jamie XX - We're New Here
Holy Ghost! - Holy Ghost!
Kurt Vile - Smoke Ring For My Halo
Metronomy - The English Riviera
The Mountain Goats - All Eternals Deck
Natural Child – 1971
The Pains of Being Pure At Heart - Belong
Panda Bear – Tomboy
Timber Timbre - Creep On Creepin On
tUnE-yArDs - W H O K I L L
TV On The Radio - Nine Types Of Light
Tyler, the Creator – Goblin
Woodkid – Iron (EP)
Wye Oak – Civilian

These were just the ones I liked a lot, but there was a lot of music that if I’d had the chance to review It would have been very well rated as well, but these were my above 8 ranked albums this past time, now I’m going to move on and start reviewing, hopefully you’ll listen what I was up to on this hiatus when the best of 101 comes on December ;-)

Hiatus

2011-03-28T17:15:00.000-07:00

I'm on thesis...I need the time that subwaywalk is taking from me...I'll miss you...I love you and I will be back in the summer...

A Hawk and A Hacksaw - Cervantine (2011)

2011-03-08T20:15:00.000-08:00

Heather Trost and Jeremy Barns are no strangers, Heather formerly of the band FOMA and Barnes the former drummer of critically acclaimed band Neutral Milk Hotel, no need to say how big Barnes is in the music world, they’re also responsible on discovering, collaborating and putting on the music map a kid named Zach Condon, also known as non other than Beirut.

With only these references, there’s no need to say how much I expected this LP and how badly I love this band, while a lot of bands of the same scene tend to change the sound, they stick to the Balkan, Turkish and Eastern European sounds and the not compromising sound to a certain ethnicity in particular, each song is rich in influences, experimental and not over the top.

The relevance of this LP is that is the first one they do out of Leaf Records, that was their record label since the beginning, and the reason is that they decided to embark in the adventure of starting their new label called L.M. Dupli-Cations.

In this LP most songs are instrumental, but the focus turns to Stephanie Hladowski voice in the song “Mana Thelo Enan Andra” beautifully executed with Greek musical inspiration remembering the richness of the mix of cultures of the area, and also the more intentional reference to Turkish music in the song “Üskudar”, that mixes earthy sounds with a busy percussion and the perfect mix of nimble strings that go along side with the vocals and a tuba setting the sentiment in the foundations of the song.

The production is impeccable, and some songs mix a cinematic playing with the distance of the instrumentation, in “Cervantine” the strings back out to allow a protagonist lead to the wind instruments and the Arabic Percussion. But nothing sets a romantic landscape like “Lazslo Lassú”, an instrumental piece with accordion and violin that steal the attention of the listener with a crying melody.

This LP is a class act of what A Hawk and A Hacksaw are all about; it has both, sorrow and a playful nature, and ad interesting changes on the production, managing and mixing the sound in familiar ways but with what seems a more oriented purpose, previous releases were a mix of experiences and collaborations that reflect the idea of travels and ethnicity growing together in a jam session, but this time around the spirit is still there but the demonstration is that there is now a path followed and the sound has rested in what becomes a distinctive sound of A Hawk and A Hacksaw.

Being a fan of Beirut for some years now, I loved how they contributed to the sound of “Gulag Orkestar”, and their own records shared a lot of these sounds, but this time around it seems like they’re really reaching for a produced identity that doesn’t show the parade of experience they’re having in their travels, but shows the path that has been already followed, this is by far the most mature album they’ve made, no longer showing their past influences and experimentations of playful and messy nature, but really accomplishing a sound of their own in a very beautiful way.

Miguel de Cervantes would've been proud.

Tracklist:

1. No Rest For the Wicked
2. Mana Thelo Enan Andra
3. Espanola Kolo
4. Cervantine
5. Üskudar
6. Lazslo Lassú
7. At the Vulturul Negru
8. The Loser (Xeftilis)

Rate: 8.3/10

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Noah And The Whale - Last Night on Earth (2011)

2011-03-08T18:31:00.000-08:00

It seems like a good idea to think that is time for Noah & The Whale to start pursuing different sounds, the reason is because there are a lot of bands that are getting not only dangerously close, but also are doing it just as good; the case of Mumford & Sons and their critically acclaimed debut album to set an example, and the personal sounds of indie folk that Noah & The Whale are going after were going to be awfully predictable and painfully failure if they would be hitting the same way.

This change was very much taken seriously with the third record of the band called “Last Night On Earth”, and for them the change started with the free download of “Wild Think” that was a good change for the band with the distinctive voice of Charlie Fink over ethereal synths and a very atmosphere quality of airy guitar and a little bit of electronic drumming, a really beautiful song that was pretty far from what the band was used to because this was not trying to approach some folk sound.

Everything became more evident when the lead single hit the scene “L.I.F.E.G.O.E.S.O.N”, that is a happy pop tune with pretty lyrics and a very upbeat spirit, a little bit of banjo but a distorted base. This song is a good one, the thing is that for the ones that are use to the previous work of the band it may come as a Californian sell out of the sound they had previously.

I think that the more relaxed and self aware epic sound that they were pointing previously is good, because at least they were trying to do something different, and not hang to the success of the sound and put themselves maybe like competitors against newcomers that are also doing good and probably would have done better than them in their old sound. It’s always good to have a band resign to their successful sound to conquer some new arena.

Now, the downside of the experiment is that there is never a really up point, is a very linear LP with not a single bad song and not a single good one, and not only is a good album but also the most fun that they’ve ever delivered, and I don’t know if I’m resisting to change, but I like to get my heart broken by a Noah & The Whale song every once in a while, they’re not the kind of bands you go looking for when you want to go dance on a beach in a pop scene, making songs like “Give It All Back” a real low point in the LP, the fun songs used to be really epic and now they’re just missing something, maybe is what happens when great folk musicians start exploring with electronic sounds, they get minimal and lose their epic qualities, it kind of happened with Beirut as well, but he managed to keep the same soul, which in case of Noah & The Whale they just get lost in this sort of happy and then suddenly getting dangerously close to some U2 kind of bull shit.

The old works of the band were good music, but this time around the album is catchy, and I don’t see anything wrong with being catchy, but seems like they’re approaching new markets and I fear that this catchiness could convert into making a bad record in the future, this one is not bad, at all, but is not better.

Tracklist:

1. Life Is Life
2. Tonight's the Kind of Night
3. L.I.F.E.G.O.E.S.O.N.
4. Wild Thing
5. Give it All Back
6. Just Me Before We Met
7. Paradise Stars
8. Waiting for My Chance to Come
9. The Line
10. Old Joy

Rate: 6.5/10

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Burzum - Fallen (2011)

2011-03-08T16:34:00.000-08:00

Burzum is a musical project of Varg Vikernes, he does all the instrumentation and his music outside the Black Metal or Dark Ambient sphere is not as known as his personal conflicts with the law, both with murder and church burning; he’s also related to some racist controversy and paganism; because of murder and church burning he did jail time the last 16 years and produced a lot of his music in jail with help of a fan that made a record label just for the purpose of putting out his music. In Norway the Black Metal has had very serious controversy and from the people’s point of view it has been a very criticized genre due to the people that started, involved in sever acts of vandalism, murder and very nasty and absurd suicides. So yes, Black Metal has had a very doubtful start in Norway but for many people this has been part of the charm of it. My opinion is that if you need to like the music for the personal history of the artists you’re more into it as a form of dogmatic religion and not as a music follower. Let’s face it, I love Bob Dylan or Cat Power, and probably I admire things about their personal lives, but that’s not what makes their music good, because I recognize that they’ve had terrible albums as anyone could.

That was the case of Burzum’s “Belus” LP, it was his first LP after more than 10 years and the first one he released since Vikernes got out of jail, and maybe had to do with that sense of freedom but the album was so loud that lost the qualities that Burzum had in the previous releases. Of course, the violent nature and the tinning guitars overshadowing every other sound in the record found some experimentation that were interesting in comparison to previous albums, this was finding Vikernes vocals clean on some moments and not this very agonizing wolf deep voice he’s characterized. In terms of Buzz, probably “Belus” had more buzz than “Fallen” has had this year, but musically speaking, Fallen is an honest attempt to push the previous sound of Burzum without destroying it in a very violent way like “Belus”.

I’ve never been a fan of Black Metal or almost any kind of Metal, and I hardly compromise to one genre, that’s why probably my critique of this record this time around can be easily criticized by some hardcore Metal fan, but we’re not talking about a closed logia, since the beginning the buzz around Burzum has crossed over to other listeners, thing that made him had conflict of ingresses with the record label of his later murder victim Øystein Aarseth (Deathlike Slice Records).

In terms of sound Fallen seems much more calmed, it has 7 songs but two of them are intro and outro very spacey and slow with different instrumentation from the rest of the album, so is practically a 5 songs album of almost 50 minutes. The songs have a production and structure very similar to other Burzum records and still retain some of the heavy grips of “Belus” but more soft with the Lo-Fi qualities and the wolf like voice is actually soft and almost haunting when the choruses of the songs come, for those into Black Metal this will not only be a good album, but the return of Burzum’s sound without sticking to the 90’s concepts, taking what was best from “Belus” and blending it all to the sounds known in classics like “Det Som Engang Var”.

Tracklist:

1. Fra Verdenstreet
2. Jeg Faller
3. Valen
4. Vanvidd
5. Enhver til Sitt
6. Budstikken
7. Til Hel og tilbake igjen

Rate: 7.2/10

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#FlashbackSunday Leonard Cohen - Songs Of Leonard Cohen (1968)

2011-03-06T10:08:00.000-08:00

Of all the singer-songwritters around the music world probably one of the most iconic of all is Mr. Leonard Cohen. He was the first folk artist to make approach to the sound without being part of a political folk movement, such as Joan Baez or the king Bob Dylan, and though he has been an inspiration to everyone that takes a guitar in his hands and tries to become a singer-songwritter the real contribution of Leonard Cohen is the expansion of the genre of folk.

The nature of his songwriting is very lonely and with literal references due to his past as an author on both poetry and a novelist, he touches with complexity stuff like love, relationships and religion. Something that inherited from novels and poetry his songwriting is the expression, only a novelist is capable of creating characters that discover each other without saying who they are, sort of mirror characters that reflect realities of another, the way of composing his songs have this sort of story telling complexities, and everything started in 1968 with “Songs Of Leonard Cohen”, it was his first album at 33 years old and started with his version of “Suzzane”.

“Suzzane” is one of the most iconic songs of Cohen, first recorded by Judy Collins in 1966 then when he made his album he recorded his version, this songs is the one that has most covers of Cohen, covered by artists like Neil Diamond, Nina Simone, Halley Belafonte, Peter Gabriel, Tori Amos and many other influential artists, not to forget the Beck tribute to Cohen making the complete album along side with Devendra Banhart and MGMT in 2009, for one of his record club albums.

Also in the movement of creating a new kind of folk, Cohen was on the center of the movement that later reached maximum capacity with other singer songwriters like Joni Mitchell, Neil Diamond and Tim Buckley (father of another legendary artist Jeff Buckley, who someday I’ll flashback to him as well).

I’m just here to say that this album has is great or that it has historical importance, but in part is important to understand a lot of artist who admit and covered songs of Cohen due his amazing influence such as Nick Cave, Jeff Buckley with his famous cover of “Hallelujah”, Nirvana with the unplugged “Pennyroyal Tea” and the list goes on.

Part of the good music I cover in this blog has Leonard Cohen written in the veins, that’s why I thought it would be important to take some time and pay my respect.

Tracklist:

1. Suzanne
2. Master Song
3. Winter Lady
4. The Stranger Song
5. Sisters of Mercy
6. So Long, Marianne
7. Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye
8. Stories of the Street
9. Teachers
10. One of Us Cannot Be Wrong

Rate: 10/10

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Those Dancing Days - Daydreams & Nightmares (2011)

2011-03-02T20:18:00.000-08:00

I heard this second release of Those Dancing Days a few times because a lot of people were talking to me about them with a lot of love and respect, and I’ve tried to understand the reason why but, in the end, I just don’t get it. Back in 2008 I never really got into this particular band (though I listened to the singles) and the music was the kind I don’t care so much; but instead of closing myself with prejudice and for the sake of democracy I decided to give it a try on this second LP (and also looking back to the previous release). It’s called Daydreams & Nightmares and though I didn’t see a lot of daydreaming I had a few of those Nightmares.

Some songs were OK, like I’ll be yours kind of reminding me a Diamond Rings with a little bit less of an edge or enough novelty that kept me interested, and this was one of the songs I remember thinking that was kind of strong of the album, and by strong, I mean average. The instrumentation here doesn’t have the kind of innovation that the band should be having after the 2008 record, maybe back then the sound was not so new because we didn’t know Linnea Jönsson vocals yet, and if “In Our Space Hero Suits” (the first record) this didn’t made the music worth it without the vocals holding it for this second time I guess the move had to be bettering the sound a little and depend less on the emotion that the vocals can bring to the mix.

Over all, everything sounded like a middle point between Florence + The Machine and Paramore taking distance on the possible rock sounds that could get out of this and trading it for text book indie pop, and sadly that’s the only thing that are maintaining them away of sounding like something like Pink, and I even get flashes of shit like that. Even songs like “When We Fade Away” that try to make musically something a little bit more reflexive and less standard pop the only thing saving the songs is the powerful croon of Jönsson who’s shoulders cat bare the album to make it stick in the memory, for me most of the songs are just forgettable.

For people that like their lead singers quiet and enjoy the music, this is not the way to go, but if you like the power voices and you don’t get bored of listening only the tricky power voice trying to sustain an album this most definitely could be an add to your musical library. I see people that are into mainstream pop entering in the indie pop scene thanks to works like this ones, something that doesn’t damage; I can also see former emo that didn’t evolve with Bright Eyes into his Americana music and stayed on the fence waiting for some sort of screaming emotion without being hardcore also liking this (that I’m not so sure if can be a good or a bad thing).

The only good thing I can say to Those Dancing days is to dissolve, and to Linnea Jönsson I can advice to find some interesting way to use her voice, maybe starting to do more collaborations that take her out of her comfort zone, I apologize with my friends and everyone that liked this, I understand that people might like this kind of sound, but for me, this is just not adding anything new and exciting, is repetition of text book indie pop, and what's worst, repetition of themselfes in the 2008 record, still remember this is my opinion. I hate this shit, but you be the judge on the goodness or badness of it.

Tracklist:

1. Reaching Forward
2. I'll Be Yours
3. Dream About Me
4. Help Me Close My Eyes
5. Can't Find Entrance
6. Fuckarias
7. Forest Of Love
8. When We Fade Away
9. Keep Me In Your Pocket
10. I Know Where You Live pt. 2
11. One Day Forever

Rate: 3/10

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Alexander - Alexander (2011)

2011-03-02T18:14:00.000-08:00

The only word to qualify an artist like Alexander Eberet is “Amazing”. This guy has been in music for more than a decade and has participated in several bands, two of them still active, those two bands being Ima Robot and Edward Sharpe and The Magnetic Zeros, with the Magnetic Zeros he’s been getting special attention and has been very busy; for that reason, seems incredible he got the time to start juggling with a solo project and specially a solo project turning out to be good.

The debut couldn’t have any other name than Alexander and shows a lot of sides of Ebert that we’ve never seen before, specially his multi-instrumental abilities. For Alexander he made absolutely every sound, percussions, strings, wind, clapping, backing vocals, the sound is very full and still doesn’t loses the intimacy. If you Know Alexander’s past work you’ll definitely will want to come check this out, specially if you’re more into Edward Sharpe and The Magnetic Zeros.

With Edward Sharpe, Alexander has done exceptionally good joined work with the band members, and the song structures here is very similar but have that intimate sound and less band touch taking notice that Alexander is doing everything, that’s why it seems to present a more aesthetic performance and less a sort of musical experience that can be Edward Sharpe, but this doesn’t take away the effort, this doesn’t mean that the concept or intention of the record is not clear, because the only thing that is clear is that is a personal journey through life and spiritual search.

The money makers on this record are the sing along kind of songs, cheerful tunes with joyful spirit, but for me the slow songs create another level of intimacy needed to get a glimpse of the true nature of Alexander the joyful and Alexander the pensive, both in songwritting and in composition the result turns out to be absolutely stunning.

It might be a little protective to have a 10 band member band playing with you, and for a lot of artists of many bands, as creative as they are, don’t show solo material for fear of being too intimate or fear of sucking, a fear that Alexander might have had specially with the notoriety of Edward Sharpe. He even tells the story about never touching violin and wanting the bridge of “Glimpses”, and in the end, instead of calling someone to do it he took the risk and the song turns out to be Alexander as vulnerable as he can be, a very slow ballad, tender singing, echo that give a sense of church touching music, and then the bridge grows stunning in with a shy violin on the back adding simple charm. This little detail makes the album an even more honest one.

The sounds tend to have more awkward charms like with the plays of clapping and mouth sounds in “Let's Make a Deal to Not Make a Deal”, and in general the album is less crowded and more intimate than what you can find with Edward Sharpe.

So yes, Alexander is amazing, and the word to describe this album is “stunning”.

Alexander Ebert :: "Truth" by NaturalBeardy

Tracklist:

1. Let's Win!
2. Awake My Body
3. Truth
4. In the Twilight
5. Bad Bad Love
6. Old Friend
7. Million Years
8. Remember Our Heart
9. Glimpses
10. Let's Make a Deal to Not Make a Deal

Rate: 8.6/10

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Papercuts - Fading Parade (2011)

2011-03-02T07:07:00.000-08:00

Papercuts fifth album is a warning to all the young artists that want to start making music inside the Lo-Fi arena, it’s a trend with a lot of repetitions and only if you’re really good at it the production will help you, if not, the production will kill you, is that simple; and that’s the case of Papercuts, a very talented band that for their first big LP in a new “big” small record label (Sub Pop); instead of pushing the sound to another level, they did the same of their previous album and not updating their style, but leaving it exactly there, and the last time around, in the 2009 “You Can Have What You Want” they were capturing what dream pop is all about.

The Dream Pop sound should be about atmosphere and not about a clear picture, the music must express things in a sort of a haze but the music also needs to have a direction, that’s why the appreciation of details inside the atmosphere of the music only adds charm and makes the listener enjoy the little dots of focus here and there. When the Dream Pop becomes more of a dream and the haziness becomes more of a deep fog that doesn’t let you see anything you’ve got a problem, and Papercuts are guilty as charge in this LP, they put the dream on Dream Pop and all you want to do is go to sleep while the album is happening.

But don’t get me wrong, I love sleeping, the thing is that when your music knocks you out the value is not to enjoy it but to leave it there as a quiet companion that keeps you out of the addiction of sleeping pills, so in a way this kinds of records are a life and family savers, but don’t add anything to music.

In terms of the songs, none of them are bad, they get kid of all over the place lost in the reverb, and instead of becoming sort of cloudy like in Deerhunter’s albums, or become incredibly loud building from a straight silence to be elevated to a dream like M83, this band just gets lost behind a cloud, and you can almost hear that something cool is happening but is so far away that instead of pushing a right button gets exhausting, so listener finally gives up in trying to grab something out of it and settles for the blur.

I see a lot of people liking this sound for different reasons, it never gets hateful, and is never really awful, but in the end it’s just another dream pop band in the spectrum, and having to be there without adding anything special is just sad. I know every song might’ve been better if all the cloudy reverb would’ve been turned down a little to let the listener appreciate what was happening, but not even live their sounding that way. Again, I get why people like this, is just that I don’t get it. Why put the dream on Dream Pop if you can make an exciting dream? And if you’re going to make a dream about dreaming why not making it epic and do a sort of inception kind of dream? Do it epic or don’t abuse of the reverb, keep it simple, sometimes less is more.

The album is called "Fading Parades" and the reality is that it just fades away. For me is very Average, not bad, not good, just average, with good moments that could be great but are not. Some songs remind me of Seabear, and I love Seabear, but I rather listen to Seabear, there is really not much pulling me to say that this LP is great. It's a cute LP, listen to it, perhapes you'll like it, all I know is I don't hate it.

Tracklist:

1. Do You Really Want To Know
2. Do What You Will
3. I'll See You Later I Guess
4. Chills
5. The Messenger
6. White Are The Waves
7. Wait Till I'm Dead
8. Marie Says You've Changed
9. Winter Daze
10. Charades

Rate: 6/10

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DeVotchKa - 100 Lovers (2011)

2011-03-01T19:29:00.000-08:00

DeVotchKa has had a lot of ups and downs in critiques opinions, some love them and some hate them, but the real deal is that nobody keeps far away from an opinion; the music they do is very complex due to a multi cultural influence and for sure this sort of experimentation can be very good or very bad, DeVotchKa has been guilty of staying in the gray area, not completely good like Beirut but not near bad either like say maybe Shakira. In terms of influence the new LP “100 Lovers” has every sound expected of one of their records; a little gypsy, a little cabaret, a little mariachi, a little merengue, a little tango, a little bolero and a lot of Eastern Europe folk music (Greece, Romania, Balkan), and the special blend of punk and rock music around this. This alone is a lot to chew, and they never seem to quite get a correct way of organized expression. None the less, the reasons mentioned are what make the albums less than mind-blowing, but they’re far from sucking completely.

“100 Lovers” have more Arcade Fire than I expected, and since the “Little Miss Sunshine” Soundtrack and a Grammy nomination they got to much more fame that even they could expect. Probably that fame is the one that leads to critiques to have two sides of the story they told and tend to judge harshly the fact that mixing all the sounds they do shoes very little commitment to genre and it’s hard to get a grip on what they’re all about, something that sounding more like Arcade Fire will not work. Still the music have a lot to offer, songs like “Sunshine” show a very sort of cinematic psychedelia as the blend with a merengue trumpet and tango violins give a sort of fresher look of the picture in “Contrabanda”, not to miss the centerpieces of the record, more classically DeVotchKa, being “100 Other Lovers” a very Arcade Fire kind of ballad, “The Man Of San Sebastian”, very tango and overly dramatic gypsy act, “Bad Luck Heels”, that mixes mariachi with a very Calexico (ish) sound.

But other songs like “All the Sand In All the Sea” are a display of what DeVotchKa can deliver with a more conceptual songs and transform their typical influences to a regular Indie Rock sound, I’m getting mixed feelings about this, the more I listen this songs the more I like them but the more they sound less a DeVotchKa song, and this talks good about the songs but bad about the band, because somehow I’m starting to doubt about the capacity to keep the sound together. For example, everyone has seen how Beirut pulled of one electronic EP and still sounded like Beirut, no matter if he’s playing with electronic music or with the typical world references of Balkan traditional music and Mexican style inspired songs, and on the same boat millions of artist can stand triumphant, from Calexico to Beck. The mixture turns good only in songs like “The Common Good”, which mixes Middle Eastern violins, with Spanish claps and then a guitar reverb sets noise and sound, but then this experiments of traditional sounds turn back again into indie rock formula.

If one thing they have credit on this album is that is their most accomplished record to date, the production of Craig Schumacher that produced Neko Case and Calexico, and also counts with collaborations of Thom Yorke’s band Atoms for Peace and (not to sound redundant (Calexico), and their rock edge is maybe what keeps them far of sounding as elegant as the rest of the excellent artists that pursue this kids of influences and get them misunderstood. Still is a great record, but not amazing.

Tracklist:

1. The Alley
2. All the Sand In All the Sea
3. 100 Other Lovers
4. The Common Good
5. Interlude 1
6. The Man From San Sebastian
7. Exhaustible
8. Interlude 2
9. Bad Luck Heels
10. Ruthless
11. Contrabanda
12. Sunshine

Rate: 6,5/10

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Lykke Li - Wounded Rhymes (2011)

2011-02-28T17:22:00.000-08:00

Lykke Li has an outstanding capacity of expression in her music, something of value taking notice that she’s only 24 years old, for a young woman she has an exceptional profound lyrical understanding of love, heartache, deception and all those human emotions that make songs so great, but unlike other pop artists she doesn’t put the simple words to express emotions, she captures the complexity of relationships and doesn’t go straight to say I love you when she loves, but somehow you feel the love.

For “Wounded Rhymes” Lykke Li pushed the production to a bigger scale with Björn Yttling of Peter, Björn and John in charge, therefore, the sound quality is more expensive just in the first listen, and on her account the song writing is much more mature. The album has the trademark voice of Lykke Li already known for a lot of people, but brakes up the sound adding this time much more eloquent sounds, the percussion pound a little bit harder, thing that can already be seen in the two singles that are out “Get Some” and “I Follow River”, and the formula repeats itself in some other tracks but the ones that attracted my attention were the ballads that can be beautifully depressive, melancholic, vulnerable, complex and show the real evolution of the artist.

Simple songs with old soul like “Unrequited Love” remind heartache ballads compared to the quality of El Perro Del Mar, Camera Obscura or St. Vincent, and if in the past she was singing about being just “a little bit in love”, this time around she jumped in with both feet and felt incredibly hard just to fail in the end, elevating the lyrics to phrases like “sorrow, the only lover I ever known” in “Sadness Is a Blessing”, definitely one of the best songs of the entire LP.

What charms me the most about Lykke Li is her old soul mixed with her youth appeal, and for sure she’ll keep the hype of the upbeat songs to get the album running, but once is established in the public I would love to see a video of one of the sad songs, maybe “I Know Places”, and make everyone cry and be incredibly touched by image like she did with the minimal video of “Tonight”.

She kind of reminds me of Fiona Apple, the way that she’s able to make heartache sound beautiful when said harshly, of course, Lykke Li is way too depressed and tired to fight her emotions, so she’s less of a fighter and more the existential kind, who knows well that the good days might be good, and the bad days hit hard, but lets the river flow until the rapids end hoping to survive in the end, specially if she´s not really sure. The power of love most definitely is one of the great mysteries that cause angst to people around the world, and what Lykke Li does is not distract this feeling with a silly little love song that will take you appart from the reality, but also doesn’t leave you inside with no way out; she walks through with you not giving hope but as a loyal companion.

Lykke Li - Get Some (Director: Johan Söderberg) from Lykke Li on Vimeo.

Lykke Li - 'Untitled' from Lykke Li on Vimeo.

Lykke Li - I Follow Rivers (Director: Tarik Saleh) from Lykke Li on Vimeo.

Tracklist:

1. Youth Knows No Pain

2. I Follow Rivers
3. Love Out of Lust
4. Unrequited Love
5. Get Some
6. Rich Kid Blues
7. Sadness Is a Blessing
8. I Know Places
9. Jerome
1o. Silent My Song

Rate: 8.3/10

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#FlashbackSunday #Oscars2011 (Ryan Gosling) Dead Man's Bones - Dead Man's Bones (2009)

2011-02-27T17:32:00.000-08:00

For the last flashback I’m going to talk about one of my favourite actors and his music project that not a lot of people know, Ryan Gosling is the other half of the Zach Shields; they met when they were dating sisters and in time they started a music project. Now there’s a lot of reasons to be sceptic about this project, for starters, not all actors that make music do it good, and the band was getting inspiration from everything dead, zombies, corpses, heartbeats, and this sort of theme of making music is not very attractive and the last part is the featured voices of “The Conservatory of Music Children’s Choir”, some hipster kids contributing in every song.

The sound of all of this together seems awful, one that only talent could really put together, and the harmonies that they get in here are ones that could make Arcade Fire jealous, they march through a very dense lyrical contents of allegoric and poetic power and the instrumentation goes from interesting percussions to even one song of synths and electronic indie rock that can also remind some of the moments in Oracular Spectacular of MGMT, without making the influences of all the names I’ve said sounding out of place.

Putting kids to say inappropriate stuff like “My Body is a Zombie for You” can also be a treat of this record, and also the playful nature of the kids singing on the top of their lungs and not paying attention to the real intonation but just having fun with it gives it a naivety that’s refreshing. Poetry, sultry, innocence, heartache, zombies, death, wolfs and ghost make of the first album of Dead Man’s Bones a very underestimated album of really epic music delivery.

I really hope this two keep making music and have a better chance of promoting it than they had this time around, if you saw my 2010 best songs list you can find that even last year I was still in love with this Halloween record of 2009 that stickled around long gone Halloween.

In the movie Blue Valentine Ryan Gosling sings to Michelle Williams a version of “You Always Hurt The Once You Love”, which it was a part of the movie trailer and got a space in the Grizzly Bear amazing soundtrack, but this flashback was not about soundtracks but about actors that were not nominated tonight, just a film in which they act, hope you enjoy the awards that are already happening.

Tracklist:

1. Intro
2. Dead Hearts
3. In The Room Where You Sleep
4. Buried In Water
5. My Body's A Zombie For You
6. Pa Pa Power
7. Young & Tragic
8. Paper Ships
9. Lose Your Soul
10. Werewolf Heart
11. Dead Man's Bones
12. Flowers Grow Out Of My Grave

Rate: 9.4/10

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#Flashback Sunday #Oscar2011 Justin Tumberlake - Futuresex/Lovesounds (2006)

2011-02-27T16:23:00.000-08:00

Another actor who’s got a movie nominated tonight is Justin Timberlake. He’s better known as a singer and a well respected one, but since 2006 he doesn’t make an album and have been doing decent in the movie industry. Its common for a lot of singers to cross over from acting bus as a musician Timberlake has done a lot of things, from boy band cutie to well respected music solo artist. In his first LP Justified he did a very pop Michael Jackson album, and the results were big, he did better than with ‘N Sync and had the opportunity to dance and flash his singing as a solo act.

The kid was known for beat box and everyone could predict that on any minute he’ll become another white guy with hip hop sensibility and would look for the way to relate to that with baggy jeans and sneakers, and the idea will always be to sing and dance and make a big show. Surprise to everyone, in 2006 he’s last album to date amazed a lot of people, he took hip hop beats and made them flirt a little bit more with synthesizers and the flashy voice was toned down, also the image changed, he became this cool guy with swagger. The entire concept had a primal idea, bring sexy back, and he did so well that no respectable music critic judge the record as a disposable pop record, everyone knew that he was in the beginning of a huge success.

This LP was changing stuff of the mainstream pop and taking it to unexplored levels, not necessarily experimenting with sound to a big level, but giving personality to the project adding early hip hop sounds, funk and a flow between genres not common for a mainstream pop record. The contribution of Timbaland in this record adds a lot of power and crank to the songs, but the talent of Timberlake and personality is what definitely makes the record, or else Timbalad’s works would have been more critically acclaimed than this.

In music land, Timberlake made a big tour with Christina Aguilera, popped a booby of Janet Jackson on the live Superbowl broadcast, and then started to peruse a movie career no real steps in wanting to come back to music, but one thing he accomplished was that as a musician he’s not only a selling force of mainstream proportions, but also he can deliver respectable music quality that have the consumers happy and the everlasting pop culture impression insured.

Funny Fact: He made one of the videos with Scarlett Johansson, who's also in this FlashbackSunday of 2011 Oscars with two different movies nominated.

Tracklist:

1. Futuresex/Lovesounds
2. Sexyback
3. Sexy Ladies/Let Me Talk To You Prelude
4. My Love
5. Lovestoned/I Think She Knows Interlude
6. What Goes Around.../...Comes Around Interlude
7. Chop Me Up
8. Damn Girl
9. Summer Love/Set The Mood Prelude
10. Until The End Of Time
11. Losing My Way
12. (Another Song) All Over Again

Rate: 8/10

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#FlashBackSunday #Oscars2011 Scarlett Johansson - Anywhere I Lay My Head (2008)

2011-02-27T14:40:00.000-08:00

Tonight is Oscar night, so I decided to post actors who have music projects and also acted on a movie nominated on anything this year, being Scarlett Johansson one of these actors. In 2008 Scarlett made a record called “Anywhere I Lay My Head”, containing Tom Waits cover songs, it was amazing to listen how a beauty of the proportions and fame of Scarlett didn’t turn to music to become even more famous, doing a crossover with blond bimbo quality like Mandy Moore.

The album is full of references of the tom waits sound but in moments she makes them darker and add instrumentation making them a little bit more epic sounding than the original songs, also the sentiment she uses when singing shock a lot of people, singing her songs almost like she didn’t care how they were sounding, just needed them to come out; it was that feeling of unawareness of the voice just putting the emphasis in the sentiment.

Another beautiful side of this LP was the echo and Shoegaze that she created in every track; it was really a smart way to not wanting to be better than Tom Waits, but to update the songs and the sounds with a smart approach to some other music genre, something that a cover is all about. This was a smart album and is not a milestone in the history of music but adds to Scarlett’s mystery and charm as an Icon, no mater if is for the fashion, indie or movie industry.

She explored the blues and the jazz and mixed it with Shoegaze and synths getting close to Dream Pop in some songs, she later got out the album she made with Pete Yorn, but this was her first solo music project, might not be a successful one, but it was a good one.

For 2011 she acted on Iron Man 2, big blockbuster that landed nominations of Visual Effects, today I’m not celebrating her as an actress but taking the opportunity to talk about her music. Hope you like it.

Tracklist:

1. Fawn
2. Town with no cheer
3. Falling down
4. Anywhere I lay my head
5. Fannin' street
6. Song for Jo
7. Green grass
8. I wish I was in New Orleans
9. I don't want to grow up
10. No one knows I'm gone
11. Who are you?

Rate: 7.6/10

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Rafter - Quiet Storm (2011)

2011-02-25T21:48:00.000-08:00

Up until now, Rafter Roberts has had a very playful experimentation in his music; I have compared him to a lot of sounds until I got to a formula that was 20% Chromeo, 20% Of Montreal, 20% Passion Pit and 40% Originality. If you already know Rafter’s work, you’ll know he’s cool, with swagger and pop sensibility; but that things that seemed part of his nature were dismissed for this LP, this time he goes straight up experimenting big time, the sounds are very Lo-Fi and the production has the idea of broken saturated noise.

The first two songs I was waiting for Rafter to come out, you can recognize the old stuff but hidden behind a bunch of noise and is until “Nothing Here Worth Stealing” (the third track) that it sinks in that this is not what you expected, the sound is very Lo-Fi, and is so repressed that the only thing coming through is noise with a washed dark metal guitar and sporadic acoustic pop overtones. For the track “Innocence, in a Sense” the guitar riff really gets heavy and tends to be a little bit flashier and 80’s like.

The reason, as Rafter himself explains, is that when touring around with the “Animal Feelings” promotion he kind of got into Metal; though this influence, still the songs conserve a little bit of his characteristic sound, but is so drowned and washed out by Lo-Fi effects that make each track very hard to digest. When asked about the record he said “we listened to a lot of black metal demo tapes in the car... it was really inspiring, extreme, blown out, ridiculous but heartfelt... I made this album, fed by those inspirations and a wave of existential freakout, human mind explosion. in my fantasy, it's like darkthrone meets the kinks meets lee perry...”.

The record is a little bit under 30 minutes and is so heavy that it gets actually really long, none of the songs are great for me, not even the ones that conserve more of what Rafter is all about, and keeping up with my composture, I guess I won’t talk about how disappointed I am of this record because I consider Rafter an amazing artist, and I’m not disappointed because he did different, in fact, I applaud the brave concept he pulls off. If something you get loud and clear from this album is that in fact a Quiet Storm of really epic proportions is happening.

But non the less the concept is well putted together, and you get that everything is intentionally, the reasons of the album are an artistic expression so closed to only Rafter’s understanding that even to his most loyal fans is hard to get, if something, this LP will open the door to new listeners and probably a lesson to not making expectations on his music but never giving up on it, because you never know what you can get, and this element of surprise can be risky, but I'm still waiting to see what next stuff he can come up to.

Still remembet that this is my opinion, and you can listen and make your own, so stream the LP in bandcamp down here and come to a conclusion.

Tracklist:

1. Convenience or Death
2. Fire Fire, Water Water
3. Nothing Here Worth Stealing
4. Innocence, in a Sense
5. Sick Princess
6. U Used Me Up
7. Interlude
8. Coldness of Space
9. Braden's Song
11. Oh No
10. Pummelled
12. Born Again

Rate: 3/10

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Tim Hecker - Ravedeath, 1972 (2011)

2011-02-25T21:12:00.000-08:00

Tim Hecker is a drone artist whose albums always have a deep sense of concept. For his sixth LP he became obsessed with sonic decay, and the consistency of the concept this time around is so obviously wonderful that could easily be an installation on a museum. The record is called “Ravedeath, 1972” and the cover art shows people destroying the first MIT Baker House Piano in 1972, this story began with a project of some students to make an assignment for a professor of the university, and has something to do with alums wanting to film the piano drop with a high speed camera; the project got an A and the piano drop became a tradition in the MIT Baker House dorm since then.

I’m sure the idea of the MIT tradition had something to do originally with the project; and Hecker made the record in two stages, the first one being a church in Reykjavik, Iceland; where he recorded the echo and distant sound of a groaning pipe organ to make the base of the entire LP. The second part was released in studio under the production of Ben Frost (who’s well known for very heavy toned ambient experimentations as well that goes from the minimal quietness of ambient to the powerful noise of black metal). The studio part of “Ravedeath, 1972” incorporated the drones and sounds that Frost is accustomed and shows the capacity of Hecker to play with heavy synth and noise until the experimentation becomes a powerful shoegaze sound very claustrophobic at times.

The first track “The Piano Drop” starts with a lot of violence, with a heavy electronic scratch over the pipe organ, the synths tremble back and forward and sometimes allows the listener to come inside the melody and suddenly backs him out again with another scratch, a very interesting layered opener that plays with static and ends with abrupt silence and the sound of the piano drop on the beginning of the second track. This act of violence against the piano sets the mood and starts giving all sorts of tones to the constant presence of the church’s organ pipe and goes trashing that sound with incredible violence through out every song, a feeling that gets unbearable in the “Hatred Of Music II”.

It always seems that the message Hecker is trying to get behind the noise is that the way we consume music with technology sometimes doesn’t add to it beauty but destroys the concept and opens it until the message gets lost behind everything. Kind of remind me the reading I did of the concept behind the Alexander McQueen’s fashion show named “Weird Science”, if in that moment McQueen was talking about the aggressive nature that technology can have against fashion and humanity when not used properly, Hecker is communicating exactly the same but with music, maybe is a little harsh for a fashion designer destroy the closing dress with mechanical arms throwing paint at it, and is the same idea of Hecker throwing trash sounds over a pure sound. But in the end Hecker’s message goes further, everything doesn’t get lost, because “In The Air III” two songs after the “Studio Suicide”, the studio sounds finally die, and all that’s left is the sound of the pipe organ and a piano recorder live from the church.

I see this record (no matter the unbearable that it can seem to get and the claustrophobic nature it has standing in the listener point of view), a quality of spectacle that not much artist attribute to modernity and Hecker seems to know very well, these age could be about destroying and pure creations are about surviving, this is a performance piece of theatrical quality that portrays the survival of music, no matter how much trash you throw over it, in the end music will always survive on a pure state.

Tracklist:

1. The Piano Drop
2. In The Fog I
3. In The Fog II
4. In The Fog III
5. No Drums
6. Hatred Of Music I
7. Hatred Of Music II
8. Analog Paralysis, 1978
9. Studio Suicide
10. In The Air I
11. In The Air II
12. In The Air III

Rate: 8.6/10

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Win Win - Win Win (2011)

2011-02-24T21:41:00.000-08:00

Win Win is the project collaboration of two DJ’s; Alex Epton (XXXChange, member of Spank Rock and producer of bands such as The Kills and others) and Chris Devlin (Of Devlin & Darko, also known as the tour DJ’s of Spank Rock); one thing these two guys have is talent and connections, both things great to make an excellent record, not only did they wanted to do the Win Win project, but also they had A list collaborators, such as Gang Gang Dance’s Lizzie Bougatsos and Hot Chip’s Alexis Taylor, two of the biggest names featuring this LP. The record label backing up the project is Vice, known for outputting some of the best party hip musicians out there, such as Chromeo, The Streets, Justice, etc.

The rhythms and beats inside this record go from cool guitar riffs with synths to chill pop structured songs and Dub, everything with the one intention of having fun and going straight to the top in club scenes; they’re not attempting the reinvention of the weal, they stick to a very classic electronic club beats and play with indie pop winks every now and then, they manage to blend electronic music genres and maintain the sound without sounding monotone or boring,

The first single “Release RPM” features Lizzie of Gang Gang Dance, and though is excellent to dace along and sing, the sound that they produce is very quiet; with intoxicating synth loops and Lizzie’s voice very ethereal on top of the mix manipulating her voice with simple effects that make variation of the tone while saying “All I need is some form of release”; the song has the chillness of good relaxing clubbers that dance with their hands on the air, really a great song for a Friday night cocktail after work. But this airy singles match with some really heavy straight up party songs, like “Not Too Late” that play with a drum loop on top of very spacey synth and chipmunk voices singing “Is not too late for me and you”, sounding more like The Prodigy crossing the street to party with Boys Noize.

And don’t forget the strong second single “Interleave With You” featuring Alexis from Hot Chip, a very reflective slow song, not made for the club on the original version and conquering the melancholy that hot chip tends to do when making a slow song. This Poly-Tronic super group makes a classic electronic sound that doesn’t pretend to be more than what it is, confident of what it has and knowing that by keeping the basics with quality the rest adds up to the formula. This is a humble excelent electronic display of what two great producers can deliver, it gets better with every listen.

Tracklist:

1. Planet Playground Interlude
2. Victim
3. Future Again (Oakland)
4. Mother Mary Interlude
5. Release RPM (ft. Lizzie of Gang Gang Dance)
6. Interleave With You (ft. Alexis of Hot Chip)
7. Cada Buen Dia
8. Pop A Gumball
9. Distort Reality
10. Glen Beck Interlude
11. Ghosts Delerium
12. The Nature Of Transendent Forces
13. Not Too Late
14. Not Too Late Pt 2

Rate: 7.8/10

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Puro Instinct - Headbangers In Ecstasy (2011)

2011-02-22T14:34:00.000-08:00

The girls of Puro Instinct are two young sisters that dropped out of school to make music; they got into the Shoegaze inspired sounds and (one more line to the tiger) entered the world of Lo-Fi artists; for their first full length, they teamed up with none other than critically acclaimed underground artist Ariel Pink, and that alone created a huge expectation. The bands original name was Pearl Harbor, under that name they released an EP, but when they changed to Puro Instinct some things started to change.

For starters, the sound keeps being very California, a lot of sun and beach and boys and heartache, The difference is that in Pearl Harbor the sounds where clearer, and this time around the message gets lost in too many production tweaks, the voices are unattainable, hidden far away behind reverb and overwhelming bass line, and on top of it the singing is always a little bit out of key, something that did not happen when they where Pearl Harbor. Now is just sloppy and lazy, and it seems on purpose; just not cute like in the Scarlett Johansson cover record of Tom Waits (for example). For this new project they relied on the reverb and the sounds happening and not on the quality of what was coming out. Of course, even this fact doesn’t make the LP a terrible one, just never nails a pretty high up. In the “California Shakedown” track, for sure one of the already known ones of the LP, accompanied with very somber guitar arpeggio, a very protagonist bass and a guitar solo with a very shy singing under that overdone reverb, the song still doesn’t come out with the same freshness as the ones in the Pearl Harbor EP.

For an album called Headbangers In Ecstasy, it comes a moment when the headbanging and the ecstasy just gets lost, the interludes hardly make sense or accomplish the idea of making the album sound like a complete music experience. The songs go from sexy and fun to somber, or overwhelming lost between production tweaks; for example “Lost At Sea” has the beach summer love tune, with a lot of indie pop of the late 80’s and early 90’s musical references singed slightly out of tune, still the naivety of the music reflects a lot of immaturity and stand on the production and not on the quality of the song on its own.

In the somber sides of the LP, when the headbanging and the ecstasy is already lost, great moments appear, but they are not well used, take for example “Escape Forever”, when the use saxophones starts to make the song rather sexy, airy and kind of resembling a wet dreamy, and then you hear chilled guitars on top of dry drums that don’t seem to mix with the rest of the instrumentation at times, the airiness you where feeling just starts to fade away, but still all the variations are interesting and enjoyable, making possible to overlook everything, but the singing is what really kill the song (for me) , once again shy and out of tune voices hidden in the background. If the album was called “Slightly Out Of Tune” everything would have made a lot more sense.

I love the fact that this girls are young and interesting, and are not afraid to embrace psychedelic noise and mixing it with dream pop and indie pop, the idea of not wanting to do a straight forward album and complicate it a little is very respectable. What’s actually good about this album is that it is very South Carolina but didn’t settle to do another Lo-Fi record following the steps of Best Coast, these girls are very promising and I’m sure I’ll be expecting to hear more from them, for a debut of two young high school dropouts they demonstrate that they can do something productive with their time. The LP is not mind-blowing but is pretty descent, not a single song I hated, nor a really solid, excellent one.

Tracklist:

1. KDOD 1

2. Everybody's Sick

3. Lost at Sea

4. KDOD 2

5. Silky Eyes

6. Slivers Of You

7. KDOD 3

8. Stilyagi

9. Escape Forever

10. KDOD 4

11. No Mames

12. Vapor Girls

13. California Shakedown

14. KDOD 5

15. Luv Goon

Rate: 6/10

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Toro y Moi - Underneath the Pine (2011)

2011-02-22T07:31:00.000-08:00

This time around Chazwick Bundick takes distance from the Chillwave movement he was sort of being part of, he admitted that he didn’t want to be labelled like a Chillwave kind of musician; on this idea he took different elements and dived into a new sound, and for an artist like Chazwick this elements were traditional, guitars, pianos, bass, and real drumming, all of them refreshing the sound and making the Toro y Moi experience a different one that anyone could expect.

If compared to Causers of This (other than the vocals), this are two different sides of making music; this time around since the intro “Intro Chi Chi”, Bundick separates the sound starting with a very distorted guitar and a tambourine, also a piano set to the back in echo and voices on top of it, for some seconds this sound maintains until it brakes down to tropical real drumming and funky bass lines; this sets the beginning of a new way of approaching sound, transforming the Lo-Fi Chillwave into a Funk experience.

The single is another example of this new sound, on purpose named “New Beat”, because the feeling that drums and bass can add to Lo-Fi and a guy that knows this kind of production too well make a completely new experience for Bundick, there’s some disco beats, playful production tweaks added to real instruments and its a much more clean production this time, still in tracks like “Good Hold” the sound fades away for a while and all you have left is the echo on the distance that suddenly rushes back to the front, distance and closeness forced by sound tweaking of the production, but everything sounds more planned and less accidental (though the accidents of sound production in ‘Causers of This’ are completely intentional and an important part of the charm), and then “Divina” brings piano to the table, and then “Before I’m Done” intentionally adds acoustic guitar to the formula. What makes it Toro y Moi is the playing with the sides of the headphones, where the sound will come from, “Before I’m Done” also ends up with ambient electronic after he well played the acoustic and the funky drums and bass.

But probably the best songs in this LP are not the ones that make us remember what use to be Toro y Moi, but the ones that shows us that new sound, songs like “New Beat”, “Still Sound”, and a kind of psychedelic experimental rock song like “Light Back” that reminded me a little to the sort of experimentation that MGMT were making with their last LP if it were had been a little bit more Lo-Fi. It was a surprise to listen this side of Toro y Moi, not because in the past it wasn’t there because songs like “Imprint After” had the funk hidden behind the chill, is just that this time you don’t have a musician with different digital sounds mixing them in a basement with a tape recorder, this time is “real music making” with real instruments; maybe some will miss the old romance of a solo artist with the tape recorder and the computer, but I liked this new twist. Now to the question is it better? Is it worst? That’s something that can’t be said, is different and probably will appeal to a different audience or to a more open kind of listener but you can’t compare winter and summer, each season has its charm.

Tracklist:

1. Intro Chi Chi
2. New Beat
3. Go With You
4. Divina
5. Before I'm Done
6. Got Blinded
7. How I Know
8. Light Black
9. Still Sound
10. Good Hold
11. Elise

Rate: 7.2/10

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Nicolas Jaar - Space Is Only Noise (2011)

2011-02-21T19:39:00.000-08:00

Nicolas Jaar is a 21 year old DJ that’s been around since he was only 14 years old, and for his debut full-length he brings something completely left field in the electronic arena, this LP is called “Space Is Only Noise”, and it takes pretty well both concepts, this LP for sure has strange noises but all of that adds up to a very basic and calmed area that finds “Space”.

Jaar’s LP takes a lot of similarities from other electronic music produced over the years, Ricardo Villalobos being one of them, and also I find a lot of moments that reminded me Fight Sounds of Cirqlesquare and in some other he reminded me a much slower version of Nôze. It seems like all the electronic music is made to be danced and to be empowered with a sort of sexual energy, but the interesting thing about Jaar is that he’s music doesn’t have this pretention, but doesn’t turn to the slow overly conceptual electronic slow music, so in a way if traditional techno is about sex, Nicolas Jaar is about love making, an observation probably accurate, because the music doesn’t concentrate in the beat, but also in everything else that’s happening around, just like in sex the importance of the beat takes off the romance but in the love making is all about the caress and the kissing and the dirty words whispered in the ears without being completely dirty and sexual.

Another non usual thing in this LP are the piano samples and the jazz inspired instrumentations around, clapping, a very zen like sound of water and what seems to sound like nature maybe wood, or winter ice (sounds that maintain themselves through out the entire LP); also plays with Ray Charles, tango beats (something that maybe has to do with Nicolas roots in Chile), its always about a mix and a self cantered way of making music, giving the sense of something personal and intimate, almost sacred. Less than 50 minutes of really soft progressions inside very calmed emotions.

The voice in this LP is fundamental but also out of focus, is not only confused in the blurry details of the music surrounding the beats, but also the lyrical minimal context, sampling Ray Charles, dialogues form films and his computerized slightly manipulated voice repeating stuff that really pose as proposals full of aesthetic meaning, truly work of art, paying respect to classic jazzy and bluesy rhythms and reconstructing the dialogue to the listener in his own way. The LP can be weird but so well putted together that you dive into it without even knowing.

This is an LP you can easy lose yourself and get severely addicted, it has the techno logic but is not made to be danced and its calmed, slow, not boring at all and an interesting proposal on electronic that doesn’t get to the extent of experimentation of instrumental masters such as Four Tet (because the fact of adding voices seems to make the concept more intentional and less propositive), but also puts some new elements like slow calmed space into the mix.

Tracklist:

1. Être
2. Colomb
3. Sunflower
4. Too Many Kids Finding Rain In The Dust
5. Keep Me There
6. I Got A Woman
7. Problems With The Sun
8. Space Is Only Noise If You Can See
9. Almost Fell
10. Balance Her In Between Your Eyes
11. Specters Of The Future
12. Trace
13. Variations
14. ^Tre

Rate: 8.6/10

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Yuck - Yuck (2011)

2011-02-21T14:35:00.000-08:00

When it comes to the trend of Lo-Fi and Shoegaze artist there is not that much innovation and experimentation around it, most of the successful artists that pursue this sound go straight to the point with a simple formula, such is the case of bands like Wavves and the list goes on, where the songs are not too long, they keep a basic beach fun and fuzzy feeling, and just do what they do in this kinds of productions; this sound has been so successful that’s also a trend these days. If this is the case, what’s a band like Yuck bringing new to the table, why everyone is talking about the relevance of their music and what are they doing different than the other bands that have the same kind of production and sound? The answer is not a straight one, but I’ll try to take my shot and say what I thought about this record.

Yuck is a band that comes from the continued project of two of the members of the UK band Cajun Dance Party (Max Bloom and Danny Blumberg), that teamed up with guys from other countries and music backgrounds; Yuck forms part of the long list of artists that attempt the revival of 90’s sounds. The point in where Yuck sounds different than all the other bands comes in the different influences, they don’t sound like the standard garage rock like Wavves or Best Coast or Ty Segall, etc, but they have the influence; also some songs go from the standard less produced mainstream alternative rock of the 90’s like Hole or Foo Fighters to the more serious sounds like Pavement, never forgetting the profoundly British sounds of bands like Belle and Sebastian. Another important aspect of the band is the naivety in which they present emotions; a sort of expression of the sentiment without giving very serious thought, something very common on indie pop productions.

This said, though everything about this band come from pretty standard good stuff around, they focus in presenting it in an uncommon way, much longer song structures of the same catchy riff, good guitar solos, even moments of something that sound like elevator music between Belle and Sebastian (ish) acoustic guitars. Each song bring something new to the table and the common ground ends up being the production, each song could be from a different band, with different genres but still Yuck maintains all of this sounds sounding part of one big picture.

The album is very enjoyable, and wont lent down to the people that was following them through out the EP’s and singles, a lot of ballads (something I didn’t expect) and in the end a very youthful modern sound, appealing, with Lo-Fi Indie Pop quality and a Garage Rock overtone, mixed with reverb and Shoegaze and even a bit of Grunge. Definitely it’s the most accurate record I’ve found around that has nailed perfectly the reinvention of 90’s alternative rock and pulled out a really cohesive well produced album.

Stream the Album and Enjoy!

Yuck - Yuck by Yuck

Tracklist:

1. Get Away
2. The Wall
3. Shook Down
4. Holing Out
5. Suicide Policeman
6. Georgia
7. Suck
8. Stutter
9. Operation
10. Sunday
11. Rose Gives A Lilly
12. Rubber

Rate: 8.3/10

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#FlashBackSunday Tom Waits - Alice / Blood Money (2002)

2011-02-20T09:28:00.000-08:00

Tom Waits has a very interesting story and persona surrounding him; in love with a woman with a successful marriage of more than a decade, artistic personality, talent, and a persona that can be both, enchanting and deeply mysterious. In concerns of his music career, it has had commercial ups and downs, but always a vision, always a sound, always a direction, always a commitment that only true artists have. Not to count points that he has one of the most expressive voices out there. He recently entered to the Hall of Fame, so I don’t have to spend a lot of words talking about him, for he is a true living legend, but I decided to do my tribute talking a little bit about him.

The power of his expression comes from he’s existential search of how to portray his feelings, since early on he had poetic and acting sensibility, read and was involved in the beat movement and had a passion for Jazz, blues and naked emotions, so it was only a matter of time for him to explore these sounds to express himself. It starts with a waits sounding like someone else and finding his true self along the way, and that’s the amazing thing of listening to his records, you can actually know this journey of self discovery without knowing anything about his life, in time he became a success as a Broadway and off Broadway actor, published author, monologue writer, and a true artistic reference of the music history of US of A, but with that also a great inspiration of global recognition in being someone with a unique sound in music.

But lets talk about 2002, he did something very bold and fantastic, he had material to make a new record, but he saw that he had two different visions, a romantic and fatal melancholy side on one hand, and an ironic, strong minded and political side on the other, and before putting out a set of songs that had nothing to do with one another he decided to take one at a time, so he published two albums, “Alice” and “Blood Money”, both with songs that have find a cult following and was the introduction of Tom Waits talent to a younger generation. Don’t forget even Scarlett Johansson’s first LP that was a cover ode to Tom Waits, some covers of this LP’s.

The fist one in alphabetical order, “Alice” is a heartbreaker that has a lot of sentiment, talks about love, suicide, death, and the adventures of "Alice in Wonderland" by Lewis Caroll, music like has just little polka characteristic sounds of Waits, you find the his vulnerable side, the soft side, the side that you can fall in love with, the waits of the whisky bar, the late night Waits with the original mystery edge in songs like Lost In Harbor or Watch her as she Disappears, and the killer (and I mean Killer) theme song Alice, a song so good that I don’t see anyone on earth not liking it somewhere along the way, one of those songs that in life you’ll get to like at some point.

Blood Money on the other hand has a different nature, more animalistic, more messy, dark in a more playful kind or way, also more political messages since the open track “Misery Is the River Of The World”, a stronger voice, from the whisper of Alice that speaks to your ears to the Waits that screams to your chest that gives vertigo and frightens you, don’t forget fantastic songs also in this LP like “God’s Away On Business”, “Everything Goes To Hell” and the softer side that remember the early years with a higher tone like “A Good Man Is Hard To Find”, every song hidden behind drunk trumpets and smell of cigars and alcohol.

These are two really great albums of the past decade that introduces one of the great ones of history of music (for me and for a lot of people), I’m sure there will be some other tom waits flashback in the future.

Alice Tracklist:

1. Alice
2. Everything You Can Think
3. Flowers Grave
4. No One Knows I'm Gone
5. Poor Edward
6. Table Top Joe
8. Lost In The Harbor
9. We're All Mad Here
10. Watch Her Disappear
11. Reeperbahn
12. I'm Still Here
13. Fish & Bird
14. Barcarolle
15. Fawn

Rate: 10/10

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Blood Money Tracklist:

1. Misery Is the River of the World
2. Everything Goes to Hell
3. Coney Island Baby
4. All the World Is Green
5. God's Away on Business
6. Another Man's Vine
7. Knife Chase [Instrumental]
8. Lullaby
9. Starving In The Belly Of A Whale
10. The Part You Throw Away
11. Woe
12. Calliope
13. A Good Man Is Hard to Find

Rate 10/10

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Radiohead - The King Of Limbs (2011)

2011-02-18T19:45:00.000-08:00

Not so long ago Radiohead announced their eighth record coming out and in a week everything has been a total anxiousness, with this they demonstrate that they are Radiohead, they can conquer all and they’ve don it all, from big company campaign to free download to twitter frenzy, Radiohead just keep doing it over and over again standing like the true artists that know first handed the time they’re living and the people that consume their art. And what can people expect from a band that knows their time in terms of their music? That’s the question that has tricky answers, because if one thing Radiohead doesn’t do is please the public with predictable material, so the correct answer one could say is that always expect the unexpectable.

Radiohead always move forward, and these 8 tracks are no exception of the extent of creativity they can have without being pretentious or over experimental, in fact, they always seem familiar never mind how far they take their experimentation. This time around they’ve produced another solid gold record, with mind-blowing proportions and if you don’t pay attention you won’t even notice. What’s interesting about this new sonic adventure is the amount of difference, contrast and cohesive sound they accomplish track by track. The opener “Bloom” display sounds of ethereal bells in the back with a very front protagonist tropical drum frenzy and synth to find in the middle jazzy trumpets and a lot of echoes creating a sort of ambient feeling, then jumps to “Morning Mr. Magpie” that leaves the third world drums behind and opens with amazing work of Philip Selway’s capacity of creating guitar sounding beats effects as a drum, and post-rock sounds that reminded me of the works Battles were doing in 2007 and a master intervention of bass and ethereal sounds that give a sense of mystery that only can be calmed out with Thom Yorke’s falsetto, calming any sense of paranoia that the music could have if it was any other band’s attempt to nail this feeling.

The third track “Little by Little” changes the mood with a sort of hypnotic western guitar, very trip hop and as psychedelic as you’ve never heard Radiohead before, just to be continued with the trip hop beat by “Feral”, an amazing electronic song with space elements in the voice and a really dry drumming, with no echo added to it but church like elements in the back and combination of solid sounds with space and a sort of liquidity that match tribal electronic voices with unintelligible languages. Then comes the single that has this sort of up-tempo tango beat with flamenco claps but echo that abruptly interrupts the dry sounds.

And for those that still remember the sounds of The Bends and Amnesiac with nostalgia; they come back giving new life to those old sounds, reinventing “No Surprises” or “Fake Plastic Trees” with songs like “Codex”, a space ballad with piano, violins, cellos, and an echo from a deep throat on the back, that comes to wave hello from a near by friendly dark land that adds mystery in a romantic kind of way. “Give up the Ghost” samples natural sounds, acoustic guitar and simple space folk that put layer over layer of sounds and create a brilliant structure of new old songs we love like “Nude” saying goodbye with “Separator” the typical standard Radiohead song (and that’s not a bad thing to be”.

This LP reaches almost all the moments of absolute brilliance and again, reminds me of a revisit of the early sounds without being nostalgic, if you think that Amnesiac or The Bends, if you dig the space sounds in OK Computer, and if you think that In Rainbows was brilliant because it represented a sort of synthesis of what all of Radiohead discography stands for, then you should come check this out and see what Radiohead sounds like walking forward.

For sure you can see how Radiohead is adding up to contribute to the new sound and about to be born genre of post dub-step artists like Burial or James Blake, not only nailing the experimentation level you need to start considering the birth of a new sound but also making it really accessible, like if it always existed, they master so well the fine art of experimenting in this record that you wont look back.

This LP is almost perfect now, I can't imagine how can it be if it grows on me even more!

Tracklist:

1. Bloom
2. Morning Mr. Magpie
3. Little By Little
4. Feral
5. Lotus Flower
6. Codex
7. Give Up The Ghost
8. Separator

Rate: 9.6/10

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Julianna Barwick - The Magic Place (2011)

2011-02-18T18:41:00.000-08:00

Make no mistake when comparing Julianna Barwick to other artists, some people say that she’s sort of the dream pop version of Björk’s Vespertine, and even though this may sound interesting I believe nothing can be further from reality. The works made by Björk when arranging voices is very northern, barbaric, and also a dream pop version of the playful nature of Vespertine is still a non explored territory, something that emerging Icelandic artists into Lo-Fi sounds maybe could explore, but the true nature of the composition in Björk is so sui generis that the only thing that has similar to Julianna’s work is the fact that voices are main part of the instrumentations, also on that note, people should really stop comparing Björk to anything that sounds “odd”.

That said, for a while now I’ve been following singer songwriter Annie Clark’s project under the name of St. Vincent, since a little bit before she hit the road with Sufjan Stevens (who I love even more); Annie does interesting incorporation of voices to decorate her songs, but Annie is not Lo-Fi and she mixes that little playful voices with heavy guitars and strong drums, then the name of Julianna Barwick came across in some work she did with St. Vincent and I knew I could expect great things from her, in 2009 there was one LP called “Florine”, and now Julianna is back with a wonderful second LP called “The Magic Place”. Immediately I wanted to know this place and wanted her to guide me there.

Julianna carefully puts layers of sound and echo siren like voices with deep mystery sounds, each song with a sentiment that grows layer by layer into almost unintelligible sounds that get closer until they finally break in this fantastic place. The LP is a concept that has life on its own, and the magic place is a dark sound running away until the break of dawn, when the sun shows what’s next to come, that moment on earth is captured with tribal African inspired singing and church like humming, an occasional piano give a severe look on details but in the end the light always come.

This LP is as beautiful and hypnotic as it can get, surely that’s why the music not only brings you to a place, but also lets you know in tiny details of sound that that place is magical, you can find peace, and rest. This time around there are no imperative intelligible words, still the music go from a simple proposition to a main argument, this is what Lo-Fi experimental folk is all about, some people say that dream-pop is somewhere hidden in this Magic Place, but I’ll let you be the judge of that while you enjoy this record.

Tracklist:

1. Envelop
2. Keep Up the Good Work
3. The Magic Place
4. Cloak
5. White Flag
6. Vow
7. Bob in Your Gait
8. Prizewinning
9. Flown

Rate: 8/10

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Siriusmo - Mosaik (2011)

2011-02-18T17:25:00.000-08:00

For many years Siriusmo has been making EP’s and 7” around in different labels, and the display of variety making remixes or original material display not only versatility but also great creativity. When judging a DJ’s work, creativity has a heavy influence and the other important aspect is the capacity of mixing different stuff and its here when Siriusmo does it best. Like some of the Ed Banger label, more hard edge DJ’s have been following the path of labels fronted by other respectable DJ’s like Apparat, Ellen Allien and Modeselektor, the last one making the record label that signed Siriusmo (Monkey Town Label).

Siriusmo has the kind of creative freedom and independence that allows him to push the music to different levels, highly experimental DJ’s take sounds from jazz, pop or rock and turn them to eccentric sounds, such as Mr. Oizo that refuses to be normal but makes very catchy strange mixes, some of that is present in Siriusmo, but he shows less commitment to the genres and does whatever the mix is telling him to do, so there are times you can flow from hip hop to ambient, from hardcore metallic drums to abrupt silence in a distinctive dub beat, from minimal to IDM, and the journey goes on, making Siriusmo a pariah of electronic music that deserve acknowledgement from the public.

In terms of the concept regarding the album, the title is pretty much self explanatory, is a Mosaik of everything he’s done over the years, you can find songs from the early EP’s to the newer ones and exciting new songs, this leaves the LP kind of messy as an entire concept, also there are too many songs, with acid hardcore metallic sounds and experimental loops of everything that can get a little over the place, for someone getting into Siriusmo it can get a little bit overwhelming, and that is a downside because after falling in love with the chaotic cohesive sound he delivered on EP’s like “The Uninvited Guest” I feel that it looses quality to have a little bit of everything to understand the genius.

Still is one of the most anticipated hardcore electronic albums I’ve waited for a long time and though the expectation can kill it still stands up above everything else because of its originality, also it has a moment for everything remembering sounds of party, and also hardcore hip hop acid stuff, and the usual chilled dance song. It has a little bit of everything and the mess gets completely justified with the cover art and the name of the LP, is doesn’t have the intention to have a cohesive sound or a coherent concept. Mosaik is a Hot Mess!

Tracklist:

1. High Together (Album Version)
2. Feromonikon (CD Edit)
3. Sirimande
4. Call Me
5. Mosaik
6. Bad Idea
7. Lass Den Vogel Frei!
8. 123 (Album Version)
9. Idiologie
10. Einmal In Der Woche Schreien
11. Good Idea
12. Nights Off
13. Peeved
14. Feed My Meatmachine
15. Goldene Kugel
16. Signal
17. Red Knob

Rate: 7.4/10
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(Video) Cut Copy - Need You Now

2011-02-17T08:16:00.000-08:00

What a better way to make a video than to make it epic - ridiculous?

Cut Copy - Need You Now (Stereogum Premiere) from stereogum on Vimeo.

Bright Eyes - The People's Key (2011)

2011-02-16T18:17:00.000-08:00

Connor Orbest for the seventh record of Bright Eyes has decided to go sci-fi, with a very sort of mystical discourse and time and throwing up lyrics with religious perspectives and no commitment, in that note, this record goes straight up Sinicism about meaning of life, something that’s not completely left field in Orbest songwriting because this things are present since early on in the Emo era of early works and kept on going with the Americana music that came along down the road.

What this LP has in difference of the rest is that the instrumentation is more intentionally produced for the purpose of the LP, is not only about a sentiment being expressed but this time the synths and sound effects serve the expression of emotion and not the emotion, boosts the sentiment, thing that in the past only served to the sentiment as a concept, so in that sense this LP has a more laid back feeling with more effects serving the singing.

If you go to criticize the cohesiveness in the concept probably you don’t find enough depth, or things that made Bright Eyes characteristics unique in the past that went beyond the way of singing of Orbest, that’s why some critiques find that this LP has just good production and missing Orbest’s personality and cohesiveness songwriting, this might also have a prejudice build thanks to the comments of the band saying that they were a little tired of themselves, giving the impression that for this LP they’re just tired of giving a discourse to a complete LP. But no matter what the critiques say, this LP will satisfy fans of Bright Eyes, especially when touching common grounds with songs like Ladder Song, which stands alone in the whole instrumentation of the album and pleases the desire of a much more depressed Connor Orbest and not the ironic one.

Despite of the speculations that this could be (or not) the last Brigh Eyes LP, this LP for me stands on its own like one of the better versions of the Bright Eyes trajectory, and I completely disagree with those who say that this LP portrays the band not wanting to do this anymore and doing this just to get it out of the way.

Tracklist:

1. Firewall
2. Shell Games
3. Jejune Stars
4. Approximate Sunlight
5. Haile Selassie
6. A Machine Spiritual (In the People's Key)
7. Triple Spiral
8. Beginner's Mind
9. Ladder Song
10. One for You, One for Me

Rate: 6.8/10

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La Sera - La Sera (2011)

2011-02-15T19:48:00.000-08:00

La sera is the solo project of Katy Goodman, better known for being one of the Vivian Girls, and this band is been one helping shape post rock and noise and establish a powerful presence among the all girl bands, beating up other attempts and reminding great ones like Black Tambourine. That said, it can be completely expected that Goodman will try not to do some Shoegaze on her own, but inspired in 50’s and 60’s pop, therefore less punk and less noise.

Alone the idea of the project seem beautiful, and the single “Never Come Around” seems to point to a right direction, putting Goodman in a position to return to the romance of sounding like an amateur performer acting for the first time, the Phil Spector nostalgia comes in times but never really accomplishing the true sentiment of the era that is trying to portray, also with vary plane sounds that don’t change, everything in the same volume at once, this is something that Phil Spector probably could do but the arrangement that create the wall of sound go building the space, in Goodman’s case this sound is attempted repeatedly but never quite accomplished.

The songs have a very straight forward simple pop melody, the themes are boys and shit, and something that lacks is the personality enough to pull off the project as a solo artist, the level of expectation of one of the oh so great Vivian Girls working on her own never quite expected a project that sounds like Best Coast meets She & Him, and less having less personality that either one (I’m not saying that Best Coast or She & Him are bad), if one thing I think about this LP is that Goodman made a great song and single and then tried to fill it up with some other songs that doesn’t really stick to your head or have something interesting to put to the table.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Vivian Girls, and I love the 50’s and 60’s Phil Spector produced records, I also love the Shoegaze that tries to sound this way and is not a secret my love for Lo-Fi, I just judge this LP harshly because this is no new girl in town trying to do something Lo-Fi; this album still has charm, non of the songs are really to hate but it doesn’t have enough personality to stand on its own.

P.S: The video is one of the best videos of this year so far...it won't be forgotten <3

Tracklist:

1. Beating Heart
2. Never Come Around
3. You're Going To Cry
4. Sleeptalking
5. I Promise You
6. Left This World
7. Hold
8. Under the Trees
9. Devils Hearts Grow Gold
10. Dove Into Love
11. Been Here Before
12. Lift Off

Rate: 5.7/10

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PJ Harvey - Let England Shake (2011)

2011-02-15T18:35:00.000-08:00

PJ Harvey celebrated the release of their tenth studio album with a Live show from Paris you could stream on Internet, and the best way to get into an LP is by listen it live, there’s something about the energy and the emphasis that the artist can do live that can be hard to show on the studio record. But live show aside, is amazing how PJ Harvey passes from one record to another never giving up experimentation, eccentricity, weirdness, creativity and quality, a trademark that has endured the years.

Now on a more specific note, Let England Shake is by far the darkest album of PJ Harvey and her band, with very political and drastic lyrics, for sure people will have a hard time getting into the content and in time we’ll be capable of revealing the messages hidden into the entire concept. Of course darkness is a constant of the theme but the feeling is very global, war, death, violence, murder, without leaving behind the fantastic instrumentation with each song, carefully putted together.

It’s hard to say if the genius of this album will be shattered by its weirdness, but if one thing is sure, this record is both, genius and weird, hard to digest but like everything weird, take some time to settle, but I’m sure that once the weirdness is settled the other half will still remain, the genius part, that will still give you something to think about long time from now.

I would say that Harvey is not only shaking England but taking every fan around from storm with this hardcore dense LP, for sure revealing yet another Harvey that delivers consistency into inconsistency, or order inside the chaos. Even with the straight forward songwriting and the internal discourse is not something intentionally made in the LP by itself, it takes part in the interpretation of the listener, a history is told but the meaning is intentionally giving to the one that is in presence of it, there for the album has no complete meaning until the interpretation; this is not a weak thing, it just makes it more a piece of art that reaches objective meaning in a subjective reading, like every piece of modern art, misunderstood by a lot of people, judged harshly but never disposable.

Tracklist:

1. Let England Shake
2. The Last Living Rose
3. The Glorious Land
4. The Words That Maketh Murder
5. All and Everyone
6. On Battleship Hill
7. England
8. In The Dark Places
9. Bitter Branches
10. Hanging In The Wire
11. Written On The Forehead
12. The Colour Of The Earth

Rate: 9.3/10

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Mogwai - Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will (2011)

2011-02-15T17:08:00.000-08:00

Usually people associate Mogwai to very heavy instrumentation that builds from very quiet to very loud and then back to quiet in a very particular way, since 1998 Mogwai is the perfect band to build up the noise and give you very long and perfect musical masterpieces with careful crescendos, heavy guitars, bumping bass and solid drum banging; if this bands says that Hardcore Will Never Die, instantly you start wondering what’s it all about.

Over the (more than) 15 years Mogwai have been making music this LP, for me, marks a new approach to a more straight forward music, if the depression they transmitted on their previous albums was not your cup of tea you should check out this more straight forward sound, after all, that’s what hardcore is all about, straight forward, not so calm crescendos, and a build of music making a straight up in your face kind of melody that strikes you with amazing natural force.

It’s strange that in an album that is called Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will the opening track called White Noise doesn’t commit to noise or to hardcore, and is not until Rano Pano (the first song revealed and available as a free download) that the album starts to get the feeling of something really in your face, this doesn’t mean that the others don’t have this heavy hardcore hidden some place, in the case of Mexican Grand Prix the hardcore is present in the mechanical modifications of the vocals but not really in the instrumentation; and this certainly doesn’t mean that Mogwai loose the ethereal sounds that made them great their quiet moments of previews releases, just makes the experimentation of the sound less depressing and predictable…always waiting for the crescendos.

I always find refreshing when amazingly depressive artists find a light and give you hope in a believable way, this has happened to me with people like Sigur Ròs, Antony And The Johnsons or Jay-Jay Johanson, and now beautifully accomplished by Mogwai, I’m really enjoying this LP and hope you do as well.

Tracklist:

1. White Noise
2. Mexican Grand Prix
3. Rano Pano
4. Death Rays
5. San Pedro
6. Letters To The Metro
7. George Square Thatcher Death Party
8. How To Be A Werewolf
9. Too Raging To Cheers
10. You're Lionel Richie

Rate: 8.3/10

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Young Galaxy - Shapeshifting (2011)

2011-02-12T08:53:00.000-08:00

If there’s one thing I can say about Young Galaxy’s new record is that every song have individual charm, some of them with too thumbs up and some of them jumping from boring to good or very good and then back to “I’m not really caring about this particular song”, but even in those songs this record is a grower.

The production is really clean, it never has a silenced moment or a very loud one but that doesn’t allow it to be standard, even with the singing it jumps from male to female vocals, but the indie rock is not so present in this LP like in the past, they now embrace a much more dream pop sound without getting shoegazey putting too much sound making the voices lay in the back, sometimes the voices take part in the ethereal instrumentation but this LP is meant to be understood, the lyrics are a main part of the picture.

Song by song starts really strong through out the first four songs that go right to where they want, very straight forward, then in the song For Dear Life they start the changes of instrumentation and tempo, they pass straight up electronic to dream pop but in a very serene and severe way, only to end in a very cheerful dance beat with 80’s pop influence without loosing a layer of dreamy waves. There are some other sexy beats and songs with space tropical pop in Peripheral Visionaries, probably the best written song in the entire LP and beautifully crafted.

There were songs I didn’t really cared about, the case of High And Goodbye, B.S.E., and the main song of the LP Shapeshifting or the one that gives the title to the album, each for different reasons, High And Goodbye because of it bores me to death, I didn’t understand the lyrics, the song is too slow and I didn’t care about the effects and the instrumentation, while B.S.E. and Shapeshifting are growers but not so obvious. I probably would have liked a little bit more of silence and airy spaces a little bit longere specially in Shapeshifting that tries to be quiet behind a wall of sound but never really gets shoegaze or dreamy enough.

Tracklist:

1. Nth
2. The Angels Are Surely Weeping (featuring Hanna)
3. Blown Minded
4. We Have Everything
5. For Dear Life
6. Peripheral Visionaries
7. High And Goodbye
8. Phantoms
9. Cover Your Tracks
10. B.S.E.
11. Shapeshifting

Rate: 7.8/10

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The Streets - Computers and Blues (2011)

2011-02-11T19:17:00.000-08:00

Two posts in a row, now is time for the second and last Album Review of Mike Skinner’s album with The Strets A.K.A *sigh*, this last production shows Mike Skinner at all his game, and is an album that will definitely will put a milestone on the followers of the musician. Is a look back into all the phases that Mike Skinner has in The Streets, the upbeat songs, the aggressive verses, the heartbreak and the light, also some new interesting twists.

Remember the band called The Music? Well the first single is featuring The Music’s frontman Robert Harvey, and he features in two more songs, as far as lyrics has very clever lines like “at the end of the tunnel there’s always a light….it just might be a train”, and this sort of ironic and dark analogies go around the album every once in a while, it takes things like plane life, love, technology and the internet like a truly existential theme., a reality that has became in part the centre of contemporary time. Inside Outside, the opening track sets the mood with a guitar but a lyric that doesn’t distinguish between real lives being outside or inside, “the world is outside but inside warm / inside informal outside stormy inside normal”, an invitation to join the world and escape from the fuzzy cloudy things that keep you in house without interacting.

This idea is through out the whole album, the idea of real interaction and the question of what’s real in the end, that’s why the perfect concept of the album ends up being Computers and Blues, there is nothing coming out of the left field but songs like We Can Never Be Friends have the sort of pop structures of songs that were in Everything is Borrowed and on the other hand very raw songs like A Blip On A Screen, that take a bit of the sound displayed in The Hardest Way To Make An Easy Living, in the end this really is a look back to all the trajectory of The Streets and says goodbye with a great album.

The goodbye of The Streets still has a few interesting stuff regarding on the promotional sphere, that is because Mike Skinner in the tradition of making contact with the fans using technology converted the concept of Computers and Blues an interactive self made youtube series of videos that allows the viewer to decide the steps that the story can take, making alternative ends and leading to the songs that can portray the twists the viewer is choosing. You can enjoy the interactive film below and also enjoy the video of Going Through Hell. Cheers!

Tracklist:

1. Outside Inside
2. Going Through Hell
3. Roof Of Your Car
4. Puzzled By People
5. Without Thinking
6. Blip On A Screen
7. Those That Don't Know
8. Soldiers
9. We Can Never Be Friends
10. ABC
11. OMG
12. Trying To Kill M.E.
13. Trust Me
14. Lock The Locks

Rate: 8/10

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The Streets - Cyberspace and Reds (2011)

2011-02-11T18:35:00.000-08:00

Cyberspace and Reds is the release preview to the last record ever that will make Mike Skinner with the A.K.A The Streets, but the recording is actualy after the album had been already recorded, so tecnicaly this is the end before the end but set in time after. Lets hope that he doesn’t disappear; its understandable the idea of wanting to create some music that doesn’t comes into The Streets, you could say that this new technological twist that The Streets is making is also the last prophesy of the urban poet saying that the new urban landscape is behind technology, no longer in the streets.

The mixtape is called Cyberspace & Reds and let me tell you that this thing is hardcore, the beats that Skinner pulls off here are wicked and definitely reminding Original Pirate Material and everything that made him famous in the first place, also one thing that makes this mixtape a fantastic thing to listen is the constant and extended collaboration of different hip hopers that put amazing lines on display.

A lot of influence of the dub step sound and really upbeat rhythms, this time we see again a political Mike, something I personally missed on Everything is Borrowed. But if one thing I must confess I’m a fan, and a sucker for this guy, so he does no wrongs, just less goods, and he’s been so consistent in this last project that he even started using internet as an effective channel to establish communication with the consumer of his art, shame that in the end he’s saying goodbye when most closer to the public.

In terms of the mixtape, every single track was made in the eyes of the public, almost all posted on youtube when Mike was giving birth to the beats and the lyrics, and all of them are filled with theme songs about internet, rights, globalization and capitalism, blogging, robots, technology, even personal space and privacy relating to leaks of sex tapes, this mixtapes shows him in what I consider the ultimate lyric creating of Skinner since he gave up writing, just a fantastic display of his ability to create urban poetry.

Tracklist:

1. Came In Through The Door (Feat Kano)
2. 4 O'clock
3. Don't Hide Away (Feat Wiley, Rinse And Ice Kid)
4. Too Numb (Feat Roxxxan)
5. Backseat Barz (Feat Loudmouth)
6. Tidy Nice And Neat (Feat Ghost Poet)
7. The Morning After The Day Off On One (Feat Trim)
8. Cinema Barz (Feat Jammer)
9. Breakbat Barz (Scru Fizzer)
10. Something To Hide
11. Robots Are Taking Over (Feat Envy And Elro)
12. Cross That Line (Feat Fumin)
13. Minding My Own (Feat Wretch32)

Rate: 8.4/10

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Madlib - Madlib Medicine Show No. 11 - Low Budget High Fi Music

2011-02-11T15:26:00.000-08:00

When talking about hip hop producers and talents Madlib is definitely one of the big names, behind success of a plethora of records and since last year he’s been putting out a project of several mixtapes named Madlib Medicine Show, each one with a different theme showing off his amazing musical knowledge in almost every music genre and his also great hability as a DJ.

These days is not necessary to defend the intellectual process of the DJ’s or the process that they have to make of their profession an art, though is true that not many DJ’s set their beats to an enjoyable and commercial purpose but also a very high artistic quality, that’s why all of the mixtapes of Madlib Medicine Show have had a huge artistic value to the profession of the DJ, because the structure is almost like a performance, a very consistent consciousness of spectacle, that is what ultimately the people look for in all sort of aesthetic manifestation.

In the Madlib Medicine Show No. 11 the intention is to display Low Budget High Fi Music, and starts with an intro highlighting the errors and troubles of sound when making a record, the sort of errors that can give that mystery that we all look for when purchasing a Lo-Fi recording, but in this case is full of different genres and old records, overlaying sounds with MC’s and making mixes very short keeping you interested. The entire album has 28 songs and is only one hour long, making almost every song of 1 minute or less. This is a display of overwhelming talent of mixing and a bunch of mixes so well crafted that you almost don’t feel time is passing or songs are abruptly changing, this just adds to the concept very well.

Supreme Team (Madlib & Karriem Riggins) - Interview #4080 by stonesthrow

Tracklist:

1. The Loop Digga- Sounds Of The Studio - Prelude
2. The Professionals - Madlib & Oh No- Hold Up
3. The Loop Digga- Handmade Hustle - Instrumental
5. Guilty Simpson- Thoughts On An Old Flame
6. The Loop Digga- Minze - Come Closer
7. Madlib- Louder - Blast Your Radio Theme
8. The Loop Digga- The Ride - Nightcoastin' Instrumental
9. A.G.- O.G. Pt. 1 - Whirlwhind Mix
10. Oh No- O.G. Pt. 2- Underwater Mix
11. Frank Nitt- Stageridin' - First Demo Double Image Mix
12. The Loop Digga- Love,Hate - Instrumental
13. Strong Arm Steady- Loose Girl - Electronic Drunk Demon Version
14. The Loop Digga- Smoke Break - Whodat
15. Supreme Team - Madlib & Karriem Riggins- Interview #4080
16. The Loop Digga- Embryo Thought Instrumental
17. The Loop Digga- The Adventures Of Soul Bra And Docta Dick'em Pts. 1 and 2
18. Med & Poke- Cheaters - Episode #3
19. The Loop Digga- Interliberation Interlude
20. The Loop Digga- Mic Check - Smoke Break II
21. LMD- Real Talk
22. The Loop Digga- The Sound Of Champions - Instrumental
23. Strong Arm Steady- Charlie Hustle
24. The Loop Digga- Girls - Prelude
25. The Loop Digga- Same
26. MED- Snakes 101
27. J Rocc- Girls
28. J Rocc- Uh - Outro

Rate: 7.8/10
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Braids - Native Speaker (2011)

2011-02-11T07:01:00.000-08:00

When you say experimental and powerful female vocals many people go for the obvious and say Björk, and the people who know better then talk about Dirty Projectors, Glasser, and Animal Collective (including Panda Bear, Avey Tare, and whatever related to this band), such is the case with the debut of Braids, but they are not new in the scene, they started with the name of The Neighborhood Council and then with a change of city and a change of direction they created Braids, so let me talk about the band today and not what the band used to be.

The comparison with other experimental bands is not strange but also the similarities in here are too many, it starts with squeaking sounds very earthy and then starts breaking out of it becoming each time more unnatural, and though is not scary like in the case of Glasser’s Ring, also reminding a lot of the noises that sound in the background of Animal Collective’s work, and being compared to Animal Collective is never a bad thing, but its just that the level of originality that maybe is wanted is not achieved.

Still there are some highlights in the production, I absolutely love the idea of taking nature and take intervention of synths and echoes to convert it in something almost angelical and not so earthy, the track Plath Heart shows at its best the voices and has a very Dirty Projectors atmosphere going on, They take their time in most of the songs, the build is very precious and they don’t get too loud or they don’t do much a wall of sound, but they also take distance from typical dream pop, this LP pushes towards a much more experimental nature and it’s a very refreshing change from what this band was doing before they became Braids, definitely a change for the better for those who are into experimental music. They take the chance of seeing nature and expressing it in sound and in a different way, more like a performance kind of record, the sound has a visual potential and it explotes that.

Now the downside of the project is that though I liked every song I didn’t see originality in any of them, they’re not doing nothing new, they are just proving that when you do what is known to be good and you do it good you can pull off a good record.

Tracklist:

1. Lemonade
2. Plath Heart
3. Glass Deers
4. Native Speaker
5. Lammicken
6. Same Mum
7. Little Hand

Rate: 8.2/10

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Ducktails - Ducktails III: Arcade Dynamics (2011)

2011-02-10T08:27:00.000-08:00

I can agree that the Lo-Fi recording has been a trend for a while; with this tendency self made artists have been encouraged to release more material and get it out of the public. But the trend also has a reason of being, and that is that there is romance and passion involved in the idea of some artists locked in a room recording in cassettes and making layers and layers of sound, the effect of the sound has a very unique and appealing sound. That said, this makes a little bit hard the separation between good or bad, or makes a lot of self made records sound like more of the same, only the ones that have more creativity, more musical inspiration or ability to caught interesting ideas between the sound of the music stand in the crowed.

In the case of Ducktails second the LP III: Arcade Dynamics, the story is pretty much the same, self made, Lo-Fi, a bit more shoegaze this time around and the only thing that comes new is the record label. Ducktails is the solo project of Real State and Predator Vision’s member Matt Mondanile and this time he maintains instrumental songs but also adds songwriting and much more interesting guitar riffs and reverb, such as the song featuring Panda Bear Killin’ the Vibe, that sets apart from the tropical atmosphere of the first LP but stays close enough giving a chilled rhythm that goes great with the beach. I see it like the 2009 LP (Landscapes) was an album inspired in a summer day, and this time around the sound is more for a summer night.

There are still Hawaiian guitars, a lot more songwriting, and a really fantastic instrumental wrap up that plays with the sound of applauses and fireworks that give the feeling of a performance in a park one 4th of July after a day on a beach.

The curious thing about this record is that in general these music tend to blur in the background and you listen to it without paying attention but I find it impossible to do that with this LP, some songs just shout “stop what you’re doing and listen to me”, is that good for a Lo-Fi recording, I find myself distracted with stuff like Neon Indian, Toro y Moi, Night Jewel, even sometimes with Animal Collective, but this little piece of music without wanting it completely makes enough for you to stop, take a listen, reflect a little and then smile, like a little mischievous wink from someone you like, impossible to ignore, but still innocent.

This album is straight on surf pop and it’s truly a pretty and opaque LP that can worth the listen.

Tracklist:

1. In The Swing
2. Hamilton Road
3. Sprinter
4. The Razor's Edge
5. Sunset Liner (for e. young)
6. Little Window
7. Killin The Vibe
8. Arcade Shift
9. Don't Make Plans
10. Art Vandelay
11. Porch Projector

Rate: 8/10

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(Track Review) The Strokes - Under Cover Of Darkness (2011)

2011-02-09T14:05:00.000-08:00

The last few years have been full of creative creations of the guys from the strokes, Albert Hammond Jr. has becomed very well known for his own on a solo career, Julian Casablancas has been collaborating in a lot of stuff and made a highly electronic album and Fabrizzio Moretti made the oh so wonderful side project Little Joy with Binki Shapiro (his girlfriend) and Fabrizzio Amarante (of Os Hermanos), safe to mention that is has been easily my favorite project related to any of The Strokes.

The Strokes never really put an end and to the band and since last year the buzz of them getting back with another album not only promises greatness but also great anticipation.

The single is available as a free download on their web page and it’s a typical Strokes song maybe a little bit more upbeat and happy than usual but still sounds like strokes, it has variations that are not so common in previous songs and a very different singing emphasis on Julian’s voice, it’s a great pop tune for the winter with a warm and fuzzy feeling. Cuddle with the song and enjoy!

Rate: 7.8/10

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James Blake - James Blake (2011)

2011-02-09T08:47:00.000-08:00

To survive, music genres stick to other sounds, they evolve and turn themselves into other thing they weren’t before, on this note its logical that a genre so popular in the past like R&B evolved into new sounds and new forms of experimentation, that’s how in 2010 not only did Lo-Fi projects like How To Dress Well started creating a notoriety towards .R&B in the indie scene, but also started putting an end to the prejudice for some years I feel everyone has been putting to the genre.

I remember loving R&B even before loving hip hop, artists like Erykah Badu, Sade, Lauryn Hill or R. Kelly had this sort of pure vibe of hip hop but apparently that got old and R&B started to mix with pop, and some of them were nice, like Justin Timberlake bringing sexy back, but the thing is that R&B up until How To Dress Well was losing its appeal to the indie and underground movements, somehow it became too mainstream.

With the mainstream appeal of R&B is no wonder that Dub Step have had such a fast and consolidated growth the last years, and I say Dub Step because it doesn’t have the hip hop beats, and it kind of sounds like hip hop sometimes but has a bit more soul and rhythm, just like R&B, that’s why for some it might be a surprise to listen the new James Blake for some, if How To Dress Well was the R&B Lo-Fi attempt of R&B lacking production, James Blake is the sublimation of the sound.

Some songs recall sounds of Bon Iver and have a very experimental and ethereal edge abruptly interrupted by walls of sound and distortions of different kinds, also the most amazing surprise is that this UK DJ now sings and boy what a voice, the series of EP’s he had released last year capture his ability to create an atmosphere, his ability to make echo, void, emotions into sound with very few lyrics and voices, and for this LP the voice is used as one port part of the intentional atmosphere.

Some are saying that it lacks a concept, that is just a display of well produced sounds and that James Blake fans will say things like “you’re missing the concept dude…you just don’t get it”, my saying goes beyond…what is it to get? Why does it need to have a concept when what’s on display has enough quality to make you fall deeply in love with it, if so, the emotions and free interpretations are what this LP is all about, amazingly good echoes, amazing vertigo playing with silence and sounds, really good intervention of a really amazing vocals and even some piano ballads.

This is yet another amazing album of 2011, and if things keep going this way we’ll have a milestone in music history…the year is starting and there is still more to come.

Tracklist:

1. Unluck
2. Wilhelms Scream
3. I Never Learnt To Share
4. Lindesfarne I
5. Lindesfarne II
6. Limit To Your Love
7. Give Me My Month
8. To Care (Like You)
9. Why Don't You Call Me
10. I Mind
11. Measurements

Rate: 9/10

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Smith Westerns - Dye It Blonde (2011)

2011-02-09T08:01:00.000-08:00

I don’t know if it’s accurate to say that Smith Western used to be a Garage Rock Lo-Fi band of Chicago, Illinois until this LP came along; this because Dye it Blonde takes distance from the fist Self-Titled album with a much more produced sound and much more catchy structure.

Dye it Blonde is the LP to really put them in the map, they’re now touring with MGMT and approaching to a wider audience, in 2009 they were just another good indie Garage Rock band, and though the garage feeling is still here in this record the reverb and the smell of oil is less present to instead charm the listeners with a much more classic rock sound with smell of beach and summer smell. Imagine, Pt 3 for example has a very 60’s Shoegaze sound, and the 60’s inspired melody reminds the good old Phil Spector era that never goes out of style, a feeling that is always on the single Weekend (also the first song) that sets the best mood to start the record.

All songs are really amazing, in The Smith Westerns of 2009 they had a very youthful kick that has matured in this LP and probably fans of the previous record or fans of the Lo-Fi trend will think of this LP like a step back, but in my opinion they’re just exploring new ways of recording and moving forward.

Definitely the influence here are bands like Beach Boys or The Beatles, a lot of guitars, elaborated chorus with uh uh’s and ah ah’s that gets you loving and gets you moving, I simply adored this LP and wont get tired of recommending it, deffenetly one of the best LP’s of the year.

P.S: When listening don't forget this guys are kids...that makes it even more amazing!

Tracklist:

1. Weekend
2. Still New
3. Imagine, Pt. 3
4. All Die Young
5. Fallen In Love
6. End of the Night
7. Only One
8. Smile
9. Dance Away
10. Dye the World

Rate: 9/10

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Destroyer - Kaputt (2011)

2011-02-08T17:39:00.000-08:00

If I tell you that there’s an album with chilly airy guitars, saxophones, sexy girls chorus, an occasional flout and 80’s light rock vibe and on top of it that it’s good I’m sure that pretty much everyone would look at my like I finally snapped. The worst part that that’s what I’m about to tell you.

There’s a band called Destroyer, known for 60’s inspired songs of indie rock and a notorious influence of Pavement and Bowie, this band has been around since the 90’s and a lot of times has been a one member band fronted by Dan Bejar, also part of The New Pornographers, part of indie super group Swan Lake, collaborator of Bonaparte, and other half of Hello, Blue Roses. This guy is true royalty and has made an album called Kaputt with his band Destroyer…and Kaputt it’s about a very accurate title for the album because is a very calmed explosion that will take over my music year.

Bejar has passed through a lot of genres (Folk, Chamber Pop, Shoegaze, Glam Rock), but Kaputt is kind of a really new twist because it takes things that in time just haven’t been part of the “good music” scene, or the “indie” scene, or the “hipster” scene or really any scene for the last years, adding very kitsch instrumentation but ambitioning a sincerely good effect, of course I’m talking about the distinctive 80’s saxophone light rock, the flout, and the watery guitars sticking to a very classic serious light rock, it seems like saxophone, 80’s and good music could only be together if the intention of the music is going to be “C0heese and Corn”, if not then we have to fear failure, and that’s kind of the fear I have when mixing seriousness with 80’s and saxophones.

Sure, we all can love a little bit of that era, and enjoy it, but it’s sort of something that didn’t necessarily had to come back until Destroyer got this LP out, it’s weird how it touches very well known areas of adult 80’s rock trying to gimmick jazz in the 80’s and still sound fresh, new, calmed and not nostalgic at all, you can’t mistake this LP with a time different than now, because the process of making it sounds like that it can only be possible after the 90’s, if one of the main influences of Destroyer is Pavement, in this LP I swear I hear Sade (or something like that), and I swear I love it.

The songs in here have very strange lyrics, about struggling with freedom and American, also girls, sensuality more than sex and drugs. It starts with Chinatown that really captures the sentiment of the album and all goes building until the middle with the truly amazing song Suicide Demo for Kara Walker and every now and then talks about songs for America until at last it gets to the actual Songs for America song and raps up with Bay of Pigs (kid of political but also kind of disguised).

This is an Album that is not worth reviewing per se, I just recommend it really hard because not one of this nine songs are out of place, and they are calmed and long and patient but also very entertaining, it’s really a quality album.

Tracklist:

1. Chinatown
2. Blue Eyes
3. Savage Night At The Opera
4. Suicide Demo For Kara Walker
5. Poor In Love
6. Kaputt
7. Downtown
8. Song For America
9. Bay Of Pigs

Rate: 9.6/10

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Cut Copy - Zonoscope (2011)

2011-02-08T16:21:00.000-08:00

One of the albums I anticipated the most for this year was Cut Copy’s Zonoscope, the follow-up of the highly successful In Ghost Colours. For this LP Cut Copy geared up to bring a very mainstream appeal without compromising the quality. I’m sure that if you read some influent blogs you’ll be pre-disposed on the idea that this LP could be good, everyone says is acceptable but nobody around is saying that its good.

There is one thing that critiques are not giving to Cut Copy’s favor, and this is that this band has the fame that it has for their amazing performances and concert appeal, making them first option of people attending to festivals everywhere, so if producing an album that is destined to be danced and enjoyed is a sin then you better take out the atomic bombs because this is a war that you’ll loose if you don't kill every single person in the festival; I’ve even read that the takes on Men At Works influences is a bad thing when Down Under still remains one of the catchiest songs ever, or that the synth scene and influences of the 80’s is La Roux like and though this LP has mainstream appeal never goes to the extent of battle off the fans of pop princesses like maybe La Roux or Robyn do. Reality is that Cut Copy take from everything and have enough personality to pull it off, contrary of what some others might think of them being too mainstream or too pop now.

I personally don’t mind to enjoy an LP that could sound great on a party or a festival; certainly this LP doesn’t have the swagger of Chromeo or LCD Soundsystem, but finds itself in the middle of these two, having the 80’s synth and the rock edge.

For Zonoscope Cut Copy plays with things that were already in the previous LP’s therefore it can be said that is less new this time around, but still not boring. Songs like Blink And You’ll Miss a Revolution or Take Me Over take that Down Under influence renewed; and other songs like Alisa or When I’m Gone explore a semi psychedelic vibe. The rest of the songs are synth fun 80’s fast and slow songs closing with 15 minute Sun God the most experimental song of the LP.

Definitely the money makers on this LP will be the up tempo songs but it is very worth the listen, don’t pay attention to the needle drop or DIY, they don’t know shit.

PS: Killer Cover Art!

Cut Copy - "Take Me Over" (Radio Edit) Premiere by modularpeople

Tracklist:

1. Need You Now
2. Take Me Over
3. Where I'm Going
4. Pharaohs & Pyramids
5. Blink And You'll Miss A Revolution
6. Strange Nostalgia For The Future
7. This Is All We've Got
8. Alisa
9. Hanging Onto Every Heartbeat
10. Corner Of The Sky
11. Sun God

Rate: 8.6/10

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Tapes n' Tapes - Outside (2011)

2011-02-07T19:17:00.000-08:00

Tapes ‘n Tapes are a Minneapolis based band that’s been around for over half a decade. Outside is their third LP and since late 2010 they released the single Freak Out as an example of what the album would be. The song was really amazing and I was looking forward to what the Album would have, sadly I made very high expectations thinking that the complete LP would have the quality (if not more) of the single but in reality I didn’t entirely understood the concept of the record.

The instrumentation in outside is very inconsistent and it seems like they thought of each song separately with no awareness of the complete picture they wanted to portray, therefore, listening to the entire 12 songs was not an easy thing to do, I had to take brakes, it was like running a marathon...there were good songs, but they were just not working well together as they did separately. For starters the mood in some songs is very dark or reflexive at times and then comes to a cheesy and happy mood almost like a parade or a circus.

I feel a lot of influence of Brit-Pop that sound like The Fratellis or Franz Ferdinand, and then they jump to some other influence and sound completely different, more druggy old fashioned and tormented, and none of this things are bad on its own, but they simply didn’t nailed it; this inconsistency killed the album for me as a big picture, there was not one song I hated, and I had to listen to it again and again to see if it was a thing that I wasn’t really understanding and I got to the conclusion that there were great songs but only when considered separately, I would have proffered a 6 song EP than a 12 song LP because it just didn’t fit.

Again there was no song I truly hated, but as a record is just not good enough…maybe if every song were made by a different band I’d love every song but listening to the band trying to achieve diversity didn’t work for me, sounded very forced and unnatural.. I’d say that the attempt is even very average and missed some layering and complexity.

Tracklist:

1. Badaboom
2. SWM
3. One in the World
4. Nightfall
5. Desert Plane
6. Outro
7. Freak Out
8. The Saddest of All Keys
9. Hidee Ho
10. People You Know
11. On and On
12. Mighty Long

Rate: 5/10

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Fergus & Geronimo - Unlearn (2011)

2011-02-07T17:41:00.000-08:00

Unlearn of Fergus & Geronimo captures the magic of vintage sounds of classic rock and a lot of consciousness of being in the vanguard. You can easily distinguish new and old influences. For starters, they come from Texas (and I'm not saying that if it comes from Texas is good...but if it comes from Texas is good) where the scene if very indie oriented and there are a lot of different streams running around allowing wonderful creative force.

They mix fun in a kind of Of Montreal way of making lyrics in songs like Wanna Know What I Would Do? and also mix very classic rock vintage melodies with straight up love songs like Powerful Lovin', followed right back with the psychedelic mood changing Baby Boomer/Could You Deliver, and then the 70's 90's vibe of with a dash of british post punk BMichael Kelly, followed by the kind of Rolling Stone sound of Baby Don't You Cry and so each and every song keep bringing new colour, almost each song could easy be related to one different influence and sound, but overall the LP doesn't lose it's cohesive discourse, only talent can make each and every song different and still sound like every song was meant to be.

Despite the previous garage sound they had in their 2009 singles, this time around they deliver a much more clean and produced sound, still with the feeling of being made in a garage but without the Lo-Fi sound of that sort of production.

The single Where The Walls Are Made of Grass is probably the most experimental with sort of ethnicaa Peruvian folk on the down with a very rock on the top and a drunk trumpet appearing every once in a while an acoustic guitar makes little interventions every now and then. From that moment on there's another rock, another ballad another new, another old, everything sounding in its right place and in the precise moment. I'd say this LP is not only one of the fun ones of the year, but also one of the best making seriously good music without taking it so serious, it shows that this guys are having fun but producing good thins out of it.

Tracklist:

1. Girls With English Accents
2. Wanna Know What I Would Do?
3. Powerful Lovin'
4. Baby Boomer/Could You Deliver
5. Michael Kelly
6. Baby Don't You Cry
7. Where The Walls Are Made of Grass
8. The World Never Stops
9. Forced Aloha
10. Could You Deliver
11. Unlearn

Rate: 8.6/10

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#FlashBackSunday Neutral Milk Hotel - In the Aeroplane Over the Sea (1998)

2011-02-06T09:11:00.000-08:00

What was Happening in 1998?, a lot of good mainstream for sure, remembering the scene, Natalie Imbruglia and Left of the Middle were still around, Lauryn Hill was the best that ever Happened to R&B in a while, Madonna had what is from many considered her best album to this day Ray Of Light, Glam Rock had Marilyn Manson and he had Mechanical Animals, Smashing Pumkings were huge with Adore, Hole had a their best album out and were getting very pop (ish) with Celebrity Skin, Massive Attack had produced a classic album in Trip Hop, Beastie Boys were out with Hello Nasty and their fantastic song Intergalactic (still in every party), Ricky Martin was not Living La Vida Loca and would be discovered by the world in the Grammys...Oh man! It was a great year for mainstream stuff and it was a time when even watching award shows was a treat because everyone was so good, no boy bands around, no child stars since Hanson, 1998 was the year most of the artists mainstream or not were making an album that will change the course of history and will remain classic for ever. In a few years Smashing Pumpkins wouldn't be around, Madonna never would be the same, Ricky Martin will be gay, Manson would become bling bling, but a question remains...who was in the tip of the iceberg?

For the indie scene The Boy With The Arab Strap was fantastic but never like If You're Feeling Sinister, Beck was delivering Mutations and starting his way into scientology, Cat Power had Moon Pix, Air had Moon Safari and Sexy Boy was very sexy and popular, Spoon was doing fine with A Series Of Sneaks, and PJ Harvey did another memorable album asking herself "Is This Desire?", but there was one band that had produced their second and last album, Neutral Milk Hotel with In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, and this was a special one from the cover art of REM's design team and Jeff Magnum to the music in it.

The producer of this album was singer/songwriter man of The Apples In Stereo Robert Schneider that teamed up to record the album in Pet Sounds Studios, every name here is now classic and the critically acclaimed album included a variety of multi instrumentalists and was made as one set story, all songs were connected with the next and the effect is magic to the ears, trumpets, drums, guitars, everything in the right place, this album remains a classic and still sales, it became one of the most soled albums of 1998 and it remains selling, maybe because also the band never made anything else.

This album is a classic, and this flashback is not a review, is just a remembrance that there was a great time in music when this LP entered the scene and if you don't know them you should start. The intention of the blog is to present my opinions on music that's coming out, and say my words on if its good or bad, the flashbacks are just a fun way to look behind and remember what was already a 10/10.

Tracklist:

1. The King of Carrot Flowers Pt. One
2. The King of Carrot Flowers Pts. Two & Three
3. In the Aeroplane Over the Sea
4. Two-Headed Boy
5. Fool
5. Holland, 1945
6. Communist Daughter
7. Oh Comely
8. Ghost
9. Untitled
10. Two-Headed Boy Pt. 2
Rate: 10/10

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Akron/Family - S/T II: The Cosmic Birth and Journey of Shinju TNT (2011)

2011-02-05T18:50:00.000-08:00

Akron/Family is a well known Post Freak-Folk band that have made experimentations but always very acoustic and easy to listen, that was until they dropped S/T II: The Cosmic Birth and Journey of Shinju TNT and not only because the music is very experimental, but also because of the freaky story behind the project.

For starters the producer behind the album is Chris Koltay (also producer for Holy Fuck!, Deerhunter and Liars), and also because of the weird circumstances that the album was presented to the record label. The press release suggested that the band submitted the album in a box sent via mail, and the declaration went like this.

Opening it revealed a sincere, but poorly made, diorama of futurist swirling spaces filled with toy astronauts and dinosaurs, four blown-out song fragments on a TDK CDR in a ziplock bag, three pictures, a tracklist written in crayon, and a typewritten note from Akron/Family. A post-it on the bag declared that the band refused to send the full album to anyone but the vinyl pressing plant, for fear of leaking and possible lost revenues.

The Album is full with very raw electronic and distortions with a variety of natures, some songs with very loud drumming. The thing that they don’t loose here are the vocals and the way of creation of the music, they reach a new weird seen in bands like Animal Collective but they keep their sound, it could seem that has no relation to the previous albums, with songs like Set 'em wild set 'em free with sweet vocals and sweet acoustic guitars, but as strange as can seem, this is still very Akron/Family hard to process but very cleaned up with the production.

This album reaches levels of absolute brilliant and shows a truly evolved and futuristic sight never seen previously in this guys, it stays true to sounds found in very original bands like The Books or Animal Collective.

Tracklist:

1. Silly Bears
2. Island
3. A AAA O A WAY
4. So It Goes
5. Another Sky
6. Light Emerges
7. Cast a Net
8. Tatsuya Neon Purple Walkby
9. Fuji I (Global Dub)
10. Say What You Want To
11. Fuji II (Single Pane)
12. Canopy
13. Creator

Rate: 7.5/10

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Sonic Youth - Simon Werner a Disparu OST (2011)

2011-02-05T17:51:00.000-08:00

The guys from Sonic Youth need no introduction, they are a band well know in the indie and mainstream scene doing what they do best...experimenting, they switch from one genre to the other always leaving a mark of their signature style everywhere, they are so unique that even when the members do individual stuff, the mystique and power of the band rises above and creates a personality of its own.

Sonic Youth might be known for a lot of guitar jaming and reverbed introductions to songs that build around the presence of Thrustone Moore, but for the Simon Werner a Disparu the instrumentation it’s all we got, and let me tell you its fantastic! The music has mystery and life, lonesome, despair, angst. Everything with the Sonic Youth trademark, very psychedelic and experimental, reaching high levels of noise and then echoic mysteries, but also use very dry drums and fun classic rock vibes, like in the track Dans les bois \ M. Rabier, the music in here has it all except voice, but remember after all it is a soundtrack, and a very good one. When people listen to scores like Tron with mega bands like Daft Punk you cant help but wonder what would people think of the work made by the duet in the score when compared to their previews work, and the thing is that one listens to Tron's score and there are very few moments you feel Daft Punk's presence, but in Simon Werner a Disparu this is not the case, there is a very traditional Sonic Youth sound made for the purpose of looking good in the screen and in for the image.

I say job well done, and they stayed true with who they always have been taking the opportunity to d0 something different with their signature style, not compromising their vision with the vision of the director.

Tracklist:

1. Thème de Jérémie
2. Alice et Simon
3. Les Anges au piano
4. Chez Yves (Alice et Clara)
5. Jean-Baptiste à la fenêtre
6. Thème de Laetitia
7. Escapades
8. La Cabane au Zodiac
9. Dans les bois \ M. Rabier
10. Jean-Baptiste et Laetitia
11. Thème de Simon
12. Au Café
13. Thème d'Alice

Rate: 7.6/10

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Cake - Showroom of Compassion (2011)

2011-02-05T17:10:00.000-08:00

In this album Cake demonstrate what they are all about...and that's being Cake, they are this kind of bands that when you listen to them you know who it is, and if you like one song you'll like all of them and this is not a mere repetition of hits or a boring way of not taking risks and do the same stuff; this band has made a name of their own just having personality.

When the album starts you just jump to the nostalgia of the other albums and listen to the same old Cake all over again, but this could go either way as something good or something bad. Ok, we know we love them, and we know we won't hate them ever, but did they gave all they have to give? This LP doesn't play with the expectations of the fans, does exactly what a Cake album should be about, sharp sarcastic lyrics, absurd and fun instrumentation, straight forward and in your face fun pop music, cheesy romantic tunes, trumpets, and all the good old fashioned stuff that made Cake who they are.

On the downside, the fact of the sound being familiar is making me question the capacity of the band to evolve, is it just that the Cake formula already gave everything that had to give? We've seen bands like Beastie Boys trying to make an effort of updating themselves without trying to be someone they are not, they've made instrumental albums, experimented with new beats, and its not because the hip hop or funk could be easy to experiment, in pop and rock it would be more accessible the capacity of incorporating new stuff without betraying the music you originally make. I see a lot of great Cake songs, and because I loved them I still do, but that's all I can say...nothing new...more of the same old Cake...and if you loved them before, you'll love them this time around, good old perfect circle.

Tracklist:

1. Federal Funding
2. Long Time
3. Got To Move
4. What's Now is Now
5. Mustache Man (Wasted)
6. Teenage Pregnancy
7. Sick of You
8. Easy To Crash
9. Bound Away
10. The Winter
11. Italian Guy

Rate: 7/10

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The Decemberist - The King Is Dead (2011)

2011-01-06T13:57:00.000-08:00

If you want to see what a cohesive discography is about you should be looking for all the 6 albums of The Decemberist, and a good way to start 2011 is this LP "The King Is Dead". It’s been a while since The Decemberist made a record of individual takes on each song, since 2006 they made two highly successful albums reminding the entire concept albums that Neutral Milk Hotel made on the mid 90's. These albums were "The Crane Wife" of 2006 and "The Hazards of Love" of 2009 (one reaching more spectacular music than the other). This time around they go back to their early sound, more simple and with a direct approach that some might miss from their first LP "Castaways And Cut-outs" from 2002 and for whom are not familiar with their early stuff this will be a not so different album from the past but just with the advantage that you can pick one song for a playlist and stop the fear that it will begin or end in the middle of a big picture.

The Decemberist are used to delivering beautiful songs with complex instrumentation, just like all the super multi instrumental indie bands, but this time the sound is much more discreet but yet the same, what changed for this LP is the complexity of the songs because they tend to be more direct and with no great instrumentals interluding or dramatic changes. A change some might hate it when listening to the record.

This LP is less epic than the rest and I believe that the intention is for it to be more accessible to a general audience, the mood in this LP is much more positive, upbeat and happy than the previous, I wouldn't say the best of The Decemberist, but definitely a good way to start the year that, the test will be if it was good enough to stick not only in their previous fans and generate a new fan base. Still with the less spectacular album, The Decemberist manage to make a few remarkable songs in this LP that don't forgive the less spectacular twist but demonstrate that this is a band that can still be great and there's no reason to stop watching them.

Still there are good songs worth the listen, with quality for any Decemberist record, these are January Hymn, June Hymn, This is Why We Fight and Dear Avery.

Tracklist:

1. Don't Carry It All
2. Calamity Song
3. Rise To Me
4. Rox In The Box
5. January Hymn
6. Down By The Water
7. All Arise!
8. June Hymn
9. This Is Why We Fight
10. Dear Avery

Rate: 6/10

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