I need to do something to keep track of new music.
I'm seriously downloading between 10 and 15 new albums a month, and I'm not always listening to all of them. Every once in a while, I'll come across something I downloaded (and, hence, paid for - I don't do the whole copyright violation thing) that I haven't listened to. And it'll irritate me because I'll either have let something good fall through the cracks, or I'll have just utterly failed to recognize its true genius. Either that, or I'll wonder why I downloaded it.
So, from here on out, I'll provide some reviews of albums I download; sometimes they'll be short, and sometimes they'll be longer. Level of detail is commensurate with the level of detail I think the release deserves.
New releases: The first new album I listened to in 2008, Black Mountain's "In the Future," actually sounds pretty old. Both the music and the production hearken back to the days when Zep was king and Stoner Metal was awesome, but after five or six listens it failed to excite me any more beyond just the killer lixx and hott riffs. The second release was Vampire Weekend's self-titled debut. Now, I've already written about the numerous reasons to hate Vampire Weekend, but in terms of their album, it merits a play every couple of weeks, especially as the weather gets nicer. Their sunny blend of afro-pop beats and melodies, Strokes-ish guitar lines, and too-clever lyrics ("spilled keffir on your keffiyeh" being one in particular that makes me roll my eyes) will probably get me through the summer, along with Thao and the Get Down Stay Down's "We Brave Bee Stings and All." Thao's music is a bit more straightforward indie-pop: a handful of lightning-fast acoustic guitar strums, some quick drumming, and the occasional trombone part. Its general cutsieness might make me want to puke if the lead singer had a too-precious voice like Stuart Murdoch of Belle and Sebastian, except for the fact that Thao Nguyen has a strong, adult, female voice that comes across like a rootsier Feist. That, and her backing band is tight as hell - check out the lovely bounce of "Swimming Pools," wonderful, loping "Beat (Health, Life, and Fire)," or the Lonesome Crowded herky-jerk sound of "Bag of Hammers"
Biggest disappointment of the year so far is British Sea Power's "Do You Like Rock Music?" I'd gotten the advance E.P. "Krankenhaus?" which had both "Down on the Ground," a driving anthem with a late 80's U2 chorus, and "Atom," which showed the band's skill with controlled explosion, but the rest of the album is so bland and watered down that it just bores me, rather than getting me to pump my fist in the air. I also doubt that Atlas Sound's "Let the Blind Lead Those Who See but Cannot Feel" is going to get another shot any time soon, given that it's the sort of enveloping, claustraphobic ambient album that plays well in the winter. I also have a hard time getting past the first track, "A Ghost Story" on the grounds that the track mostly consists of a kid telling a ghost story, and both the kid and the ghost story are really really annoying. I think that Valet's second album, "Naked Acid," is going to suffer the same fate for the same reason, and honestly the two albums are pretty similar. I can see why both received plaudits from Pitchfork. However, I do have to say I was pleasantly surprised by the unplaudited Grand Archives self-titled debut. I expected it to sound a lot more like Band of Horses, given that one of the many members of the Archives just split off from that outfit, but instead I got a late-70's California pop album, somewhere in between Fleetwood Mac and the Eagles. I anticipate this getting more spins during summer nights, at barbecues, spent outside with a beer.
Speaking of barbecues, Kutiman's self-titled debut was supposed to be a fun mismash of afropop and techno and jazz and blah blah blah but instead it sounds to me like a cruddy white-boy funk album complete with bass slapping. To be avoided. Likewise, High Places's 03/07-09/07 sounded pretty cool on the first few listens, but the lyrics are full of that Beat Happening sort of cutesiness that makes me want to roll my eyes and sic Paul Westerberg on people. Speaking of cute, though, pretty much all of the ladies in Welsh septet Los Campesiños! are pretty cute, but that doesn't really matter in terms of the music. Their debut "Hold On Now, Youngster," however, is brilliant, which makes it a lot easier for me to stare with googley eyes. The band rips through their songs with the breakneck abandon of youth, but they never neglect to jam pack every song full of hummable hooks and silly call-and-response lines like "In conversations about which 'Breakfast Club' character you would be, I'd be the one that dies / (No one dies) / Well then, what's the point?" Highly recommended for anyone who likes '90's indie rock or bands like the Spinto Band.
I have challenged myself to enjoy The Gutter Twins' "Saturnalia" given that I enjoy both The Afghan Whigs and the Screaming Trees, and given that the new band is a product of the lead singers of both the Whigs (Greg Dulli) and the Trees (Mark Lanegan). But my two or three listens haven't really gotten anything new to stand out to me, and I kind of wonder when they're going to dispel the gentle fog of the album and break out with the thunder and lightning, especially since Dulli's other band, the Twilight Singers, are at their best when they explode in a full-on anthem of a chorus (like they did on their 2006 album "Powder Burns"). Likewise, I don't quite get the people going apeshit over Crystal Castles, whose 8-bit pop sounds to me almost exactly like what Ladytron would if they made videogame music for the old Nintendo. But maybe I'll get there eventually. And, despite Oakley Hall's jaw-dropping live set opening for the Constantines, I find their album to be aptly described as "Neil Young + some chick who only knows two chords."
However, one band that I'm really getting into more and more as time goes on are Fuck Buttons, who have a terrible band name, but make pretty, ear-shattering (!) ambient (!!) music that consists of long distorted drones, very few beats, and pretty melodies. In a lot of ways, their debut "Street Horrrsing" does to Mogwai what M83's "Dead Cities, Red Seas, and Lost Ghosts" did to My Bloody Valentine, i.e. take their sound and digitize it. The results are pretty stunning, especially when you're in the right mood. Along with Fuck Buttons, however, the Dodos are another of my favorite new bands. Though their setup is simple (acoustic guitar, drums, and occasionally one guy playing keyboards or a trombone), the music is technically complex and intricate. There are some quick-shifting finger-picking patterns, lightning strums, drilling drumrolls, and fluid beats. On top of all that, though, the music sounds a little bit freak folk (Animal Collective are a good reference point), but with a singer whose full voice and gentle, straightforward style tie the whole thing down to Earth and make it a lot more accessible. Another band that I'm enjoying are Foals, whose math-rock-meets-post-punk sound gives a much-needed update to a genre that's been forgotten too long. Yeah, math rock isn't for everyone, but I enjoy it at least, and Foals kind of come off like a June of 44 and Bloc Party hybrid.
April has been a good month for some of my old favorites. April 1st, first and foremost, saw the release of Sun Kil Moon's new album, appropriately titled "April." It doesn't break much new ground for Mr. Kozelek and crew (for those not in the know, he's the master of sadness behind the similarly brilliand Red House Painters), except for the fact that Kozelek really allows his songs to stretch out in ways they haven't before, which will either bore you to death or make you fall in love. Me, I'm in the latter camp. In the more compact direction, the Constantines' new album packs a wallop; it's filled with songs that tensely build to explosions (the chugging "Trans Canada," the milder "Life or Death") and songs that bust out of the gate running ("Hard Feelings," "Credit River", "Shower of Stones"), but it also has some pretty classic rock anthems ("Brother, Run Them Down", "Our Age"), and gorgeous ballads ("Time Can Be Overcome," and the Feist/Constantines duet on "Islands in the Stream"). This is probably one of my more serious contenders for Album of the Year. April also saw stateside release of Elbow's new album, "The Seldom Seen Kid," which I feel is a giant leap forward for the Mancunian quintet. Elbow has always been one of the more original British bands displaying a really strong Radiohead influence (lesser examples that come to mind are Coldplay, Keane, and Muse), but their real strength lay in the fact that their arrangements took more cues from late-period Talk Talk than Radiohead. On "The Seldom Seen Kid," they throw aside the curtains on Talk Talk's nocturnal vibe and instead let the sun shine through, particularly on songs like the bright, cheery "Starlings" and the breezy "Weather to Fly." Elsewhere, they let the songs build up to brief explosions (see "The Bones of You" and "One Day Like This") before backing off.
April also has some pretty awesome 80's mining. Cut Copy's "In Ghost Colors" is another serious contender for album of the year, especially given how effortlessly it aims for (and hits on) the dancefloor. But it's wouldn't be so great if it didn't somehow mix 80's dancefloor hits, early-90s electro, and a little bit of 60's psychedelia to give it a bit of a sun-kissed vibe; it's one of the few dance albums that sounds as good early in the morning as it does late at night. And even though it's hard to choose standouts on an album full of them, the C&C Music Factory-aping "Hearts on Fire" is one of my favorite tracks, as is the heady guitar-rush of "So Haunted." Likewise, in the 80's mining vein, M83's new album, "Saturdays=Youth" draws less from the dancefloor and more from the sparkling sounds of the Cocteau Twins and Kate Bush, straight down to the gorgeous female vocals on tracks like "Skin of the Night" and "Up!". Even still, however, the album comes off as something distinctly M83, and in places plays like a highly restrained version of "Before the Dawn Heals Us." I have yet to hear an M83 album that I don't like, though, and this one is no exception.
So, from here on out, I'll provide some reviews of albums I download; sometimes they'll be short, and sometimes they'll be longer. Level of detail is commensurate with the level of detail I think the release deserves.
New releases: The first new album I listened to in 2008, Black Mountain's "In the Future," actually sounds pretty old. Both the music and the production hearken back to the days when Zep was king and Stoner Metal was awesome, but after five or six listens it failed to excite me any more beyond just the killer lixx and hott riffs. The second release was Vampire Weekend's self-titled debut. Now, I've already written about the numerous reasons to hate Vampire Weekend, but in terms of their album, it merits a play every couple of weeks, especially as the weather gets nicer. Their sunny blend of afro-pop beats and melodies, Strokes-ish guitar lines, and too-clever lyrics ("spilled keffir on your keffiyeh" being one in particular that makes me roll my eyes) will probably get me through the summer, along with Thao and the Get Down Stay Down's "We Brave Bee Stings and All." Thao's music is a bit more straightforward indie-pop: a handful of lightning-fast acoustic guitar strums, some quick drumming, and the occasional trombone part. Its general cutsieness might make me want to puke if the lead singer had a too-precious voice like Stuart Murdoch of Belle and Sebastian, except for the fact that Thao Nguyen has a strong, adult, female voice that comes across like a rootsier Feist. That, and her backing band is tight as hell - check out the lovely bounce of "Swimming Pools," wonderful, loping "Beat (Health, Life, and Fire)," or the Lonesome Crowded herky-jerk sound of "Bag of Hammers"
Biggest disappointment of the year so far is British Sea Power's "Do You Like Rock Music?" I'd gotten the advance E.P. "Krankenhaus?" which had both "Down on the Ground," a driving anthem with a late 80's U2 chorus, and "Atom," which showed the band's skill with controlled explosion, but the rest of the album is so bland and watered down that it just bores me, rather than getting me to pump my fist in the air. I also doubt that Atlas Sound's "Let the Blind Lead Those Who See but Cannot Feel" is going to get another shot any time soon, given that it's the sort of enveloping, claustraphobic ambient album that plays well in the winter. I also have a hard time getting past the first track, "A Ghost Story" on the grounds that the track mostly consists of a kid telling a ghost story, and both the kid and the ghost story are really really annoying. I think that Valet's second album, "Naked Acid," is going to suffer the same fate for the same reason, and honestly the two albums are pretty similar. I can see why both received plaudits from Pitchfork. However, I do have to say I was pleasantly surprised by the unplaudited Grand Archives self-titled debut. I expected it to sound a lot more like Band of Horses, given that one of the many members of the Archives just split off from that outfit, but instead I got a late-70's California pop album, somewhere in between Fleetwood Mac and the Eagles. I anticipate this getting more spins during summer nights, at barbecues, spent outside with a beer.
Speaking of barbecues, Kutiman's self-titled debut was supposed to be a fun mismash of afropop and techno and jazz and blah blah blah but instead it sounds to me like a cruddy white-boy funk album complete with bass slapping. To be avoided. Likewise, High Places's 03/07-09/07 sounded pretty cool on the first few listens, but the lyrics are full of that Beat Happening sort of cutesiness that makes me want to roll my eyes and sic Paul Westerberg on people. Speaking of cute, though, pretty much all of the ladies in Welsh septet Los Campesiños! are pretty cute, but that doesn't really matter in terms of the music. Their debut "Hold On Now, Youngster," however, is brilliant, which makes it a lot easier for me to stare with googley eyes. The band rips through their songs with the breakneck abandon of youth, but they never neglect to jam pack every song full of hummable hooks and silly call-and-response lines like "In conversations about which 'Breakfast Club' character you would be, I'd be the one that dies / (No one dies) / Well then, what's the point?" Highly recommended for anyone who likes '90's indie rock or bands like the Spinto Band.
I have challenged myself to enjoy The Gutter Twins' "Saturnalia" given that I enjoy both The Afghan Whigs and the Screaming Trees, and given that the new band is a product of the lead singers of both the Whigs (Greg Dulli) and the Trees (Mark Lanegan). But my two or three listens haven't really gotten anything new to stand out to me, and I kind of wonder when they're going to dispel the gentle fog of the album and break out with the thunder and lightning, especially since Dulli's other band, the Twilight Singers, are at their best when they explode in a full-on anthem of a chorus (like they did on their 2006 album "Powder Burns"). Likewise, I don't quite get the people going apeshit over Crystal Castles, whose 8-bit pop sounds to me almost exactly like what Ladytron would if they made videogame music for the old Nintendo. But maybe I'll get there eventually. And, despite Oakley Hall's jaw-dropping live set opening for the Constantines, I find their album to be aptly described as "Neil Young + some chick who only knows two chords."
However, one band that I'm really getting into more and more as time goes on are Fuck Buttons, who have a terrible band name, but make pretty, ear-shattering (!) ambient (!!) music that consists of long distorted drones, very few beats, and pretty melodies. In a lot of ways, their debut "Street Horrrsing" does to Mogwai what M83's "Dead Cities, Red Seas, and Lost Ghosts" did to My Bloody Valentine, i.e. take their sound and digitize it. The results are pretty stunning, especially when you're in the right mood. Along with Fuck Buttons, however, the Dodos are another of my favorite new bands. Though their setup is simple (acoustic guitar, drums, and occasionally one guy playing keyboards or a trombone), the music is technically complex and intricate. There are some quick-shifting finger-picking patterns, lightning strums, drilling drumrolls, and fluid beats. On top of all that, though, the music sounds a little bit freak folk (Animal Collective are a good reference point), but with a singer whose full voice and gentle, straightforward style tie the whole thing down to Earth and make it a lot more accessible. Another band that I'm enjoying are Foals, whose math-rock-meets-post-punk sound gives a much-needed update to a genre that's been forgotten too long. Yeah, math rock isn't for everyone, but I enjoy it at least, and Foals kind of come off like a June of 44 and Bloc Party hybrid.
April has been a good month for some of my old favorites. April 1st, first and foremost, saw the release of Sun Kil Moon's new album, appropriately titled "April." It doesn't break much new ground for Mr. Kozelek and crew (for those not in the know, he's the master of sadness behind the similarly brilliand Red House Painters), except for the fact that Kozelek really allows his songs to stretch out in ways they haven't before, which will either bore you to death or make you fall in love. Me, I'm in the latter camp. In the more compact direction, the Constantines' new album packs a wallop; it's filled with songs that tensely build to explosions (the chugging "Trans Canada," the milder "Life or Death") and songs that bust out of the gate running ("Hard Feelings," "Credit River", "Shower of Stones"), but it also has some pretty classic rock anthems ("Brother, Run Them Down", "Our Age"), and gorgeous ballads ("Time Can Be Overcome," and the Feist/Constantines duet on "Islands in the Stream"). This is probably one of my more serious contenders for Album of the Year. April also saw stateside release of Elbow's new album, "The Seldom Seen Kid," which I feel is a giant leap forward for the Mancunian quintet. Elbow has always been one of the more original British bands displaying a really strong Radiohead influence (lesser examples that come to mind are Coldplay, Keane, and Muse), but their real strength lay in the fact that their arrangements took more cues from late-period Talk Talk than Radiohead. On "The Seldom Seen Kid," they throw aside the curtains on Talk Talk's nocturnal vibe and instead let the sun shine through, particularly on songs like the bright, cheery "Starlings" and the breezy "Weather to Fly." Elsewhere, they let the songs build up to brief explosions (see "The Bones of You" and "One Day Like This") before backing off.
April also has some pretty awesome 80's mining. Cut Copy's "In Ghost Colors" is another serious contender for album of the year, especially given how effortlessly it aims for (and hits on) the dancefloor. But it's wouldn't be so great if it didn't somehow mix 80's dancefloor hits, early-90s electro, and a little bit of 60's psychedelia to give it a bit of a sun-kissed vibe; it's one of the few dance albums that sounds as good early in the morning as it does late at night. And even though it's hard to choose standouts on an album full of them, the C&C Music Factory-aping "Hearts on Fire" is one of my favorite tracks, as is the heady guitar-rush of "So Haunted." Likewise, in the 80's mining vein, M83's new album, "Saturdays=Youth" draws less from the dancefloor and more from the sparkling sounds of the Cocteau Twins and Kate Bush, straight down to the gorgeous female vocals on tracks like "Skin of the Night" and "Up!". Even still, however, the album comes off as something distinctly M83, and in places plays like a highly restrained version of "Before the Dawn Heals Us." I have yet to hear an M83 album that I don't like, though, and this one is no exception.