Video: Cranking indie tunes over the phone never actually swoons a room full of ladies lying in their undies. Trust me, it doesn’t. It creeps them out.

Okay, sure, it’s a bit easy. Take a good indie song, or a well known classic rock jam that everyone loves, and add some reverby effects and beat the hell out of a bass drum on Garage Band. Repeat eighteen times, release the tracks on an album and get more famous than half the artists you mixed.

At any rate, Flagrant Foul’s Cousin Cole & Pocketknife are an eardrum’s sick little fetish, perverting innocent songs like Iron & Wine’s “Each Coming Night,” Panda Bear’s “Bros,” and even John Lennon’s “Oh Yoko!,” into twisted predatory dance-clubby versions of themselves. While it does get difficult to wade through the whole album and its everlasting entirety of obnoxious bass drum on every single beat, picking and choosing favorites to blast through your car’s woofers never really tires.

The promo video up above is exactly what you’d expect. They ripped a clip from a major motion picture (The Virgin Suicides) and put their own music into it. I can’t say it’s not great though. Check out the full track list for Tambourine Dream here, and click below to listen to Pocketknife’s Scowling Owl Remix of Joanna Newsom’s “The Book of Right On.”

Cousin Cole & Pocketknife - The Book of Right On

Pictured: “Oh, don’t get upset. We’re all ugly.”

The new Horse Feathers is the old Horse Feathers, in a very good way. In the way that their debut, “Words are Dead,” was a soft and touching album that went fairly underappreciated by the majority of listeners, so too is “House With No Home.” What could be called a lack of change on their sophomore full length, shouldn’t be called a lack of creativity or artistic integrity. Horse Feathers reinforces its eloquence, impressively-so, splashing melancholic violins and acoustic guitars together and giving base to Justin Ringle’s spotlessly-clear vocals, somewhat reminiscent of the Great Lake Swimmers’ Tony Dekker, while maintaining Sam Beam-like care for words.

Horse Feathers - Albina

Warning: Do not listen to upon feeling joyous. Save for bouts of sadness, possibly depression, and consume with hot tea, possibly alcohol.

Pictured: “I specifically asked for anything but flower print wallpaper.”

“I knew I wanted it to be rowdy,” says Eric Rykal, the man behind [Eau Claire, Wisconsin’s] dirty blues/folk carnival known as The Gentle Guest. “For the first time in my life I was going to play music that was fun for the listener….I wanted to shout and scream and stomp and yell.”

That he did on his band’s sophomore album, “We Are Bound to Save Some Souls Tonight,” which is due for a release on Amble Down Records on the last day of September. It’s nearly a complete departure from the five songs on “Our Little Ruckus,” the group’s soft and careful debut EP from almost a year ago. This time around, Rykal and friends slur through their new full length with a barrage of rustic and drunken Americana tunes, each tinted and twisted by a love for gospel songs, field hollers and old-timey delta blues.

“I felt like this music had some profound sense of time and place that I hadn’t found anywhere else,” says the 21 year old songwriter of the inspiration he found from vintage folk records. “We tried to take the music from that time and place and bring it to this time and place. We made it a little rowdier, a little darker and a little noisier.”

This is an excerpt from an article I wrote for Volume One Magazine. Please visit their brand-spanking-new website, volumeone.org, to read it in its entirety.

The Gentle Guest - Down At The Sill

Down at the Still is the frantically fantastic single from We Are Bound….

Caught in the Trees, out today on Secretly Canadian, is the album that I’ve been waiting for Damien Jurado to make for years. It is a combination of everything he’s done right in his career and surprise, it’s a great album. I blame Jurado for my expectations. I’ve really liked three or four songs on every album over the last several years, but with each I couldn’t help but feel like he could do better. That’s what happens when you have a perfect song on your resume. Ohio, the opener to his 1999 album for Subpop, Rehearsals for Departure, is the culprit; four chords, one harmonica, three immaculately constructed verses. It might be really lazy fandom on my part, but that song tinted my opinion of everything else he’s done. That said, Caught in the Trees makes good on the promise of Jurado’s unmistakable talent as a songwriter.
Some credit should go to the supporting cast. This album is more of a team effort than anything before it. If the songs weren’t so good, long time collaborator Eric Fisher would have stolen the show like a gypsy in the night. His guitar work is subtle and ballsy, also like a gypsy. Electric guitar, especially on what is ultimately still a folk album, needs a contextual heart. ‘Tis best to be understated. Thanks Eric. Jenna Conrad adds some lovely strings and the lady harmonies that have always complimented Jurado’s voice. While not the voice of past harmonizer, Rosie Thomas, she is no slouch. Not at all.
Jurado has the gift of melancholy. His best stuff is sad. He claims to have two sorts of songs: happy-sounding with semi-dark lyrics or sad-sounding with dark lyrics. Songs about asking god to kill your mentally ill brother is what he means by dark lyrics. I happen to think that the sad ones tend to be more compelling. So I’m a sad sack, sue me. The new material seems to stray from the narrative nature of his previous work into something more personal. Maybe it’s still fiction, but it feels less so. Maybe that’s good fiction.

Damien Jurado - Go First

Pictured: Sea Wolves trying hard to not stick out in a crowd.

Our friends Nick and Adam almost saw Sea Wolf live…almost. Like myself at the time though, they hadn’t heard Leaves in the River, so they left before the band played. A few weeks later, they and I realized their mistake. The songwriting that makes up Leaves in the River thrives on a sweet honesty, like Sea Wolf could have made ten great songs with nothing but an acoustic guitar and softly sung melodies, but it wouldn’t be nearly as exciting as the moments when distorted guitars and clunky dance beats chop into them. It’s those bits of disruption that ends up making the album so memorable and repeatable.

Sea Wolf - Black Dirt

Black Dirt is a great example of the genre-shifting I’m talking about.

Sea Wolf - Middle Distance Runner

Middle Distance Runner is my favorite song from Leaves in the River. I’m also recommending that you watch the video of Sea Wolf performing this song on Hard To Find a Friend’s Backstage Sessions.

Pictured: Yeah, no one’s ever questioned this guy’s love for National Geographic.

It sounds fairly trite, the idea of a band writing its music based on National Geographic articles from the 50s and 60s, but Portland, OR’s Bark Hide and Horn finds its inspiration from these little gems. Articles written about a grizzly’s great revenge on the hunters who killed his mate, honey ants slaving their lives away, a spider who fell in love with his insect-food, and so on and so forth, all become ideas for folkie rock songs. Somewhere in the vicinity of Conor Oberst’s lighter work with a Sufjan-ish style for arrangement, Bark Hide and Horn is mostly soft and careful, floating around acoustic guitar and very prominent lead trumpet parts, but they’re never afraid to throw in a few surprises (spoiler alert: electro-pop parts) to keep our interest.

Bark Hide and Horn - Treasure of the Everglades

Treasure of the Everglades is about two snails breeding. It was instantly good for me, and I think it can be good for you too. Snail breeding, that is.

Pictured: Hospital Ships’ Jordan Geiger with big-head cheat code on.

Songwriter Jordan Geiger is (un)known for his writing and singing in Minus Story, and recently for his trumpeting in the band Shearwater. With his new project, Hospital Ships, Geiger steps into his own even more.

The creativity that flows through Oh, Ramona is similar to that heard from Islands. The layers and layers of nasally vocals are nearly the same at times, and songs use heaps of keyboards and organs on top of less dense guitars. Where Islands has a flare for the silly and overly dramatic, Hospital Ships manages to stay a bit more low key and straightforward, making them slightly less difficult to relate to at times. That’s not to say that songs like Bitter Radio Single and I Want It to Get Out are anti-climatic though, as most of the album works by building up to giant choruses of overlapping parts and colorfully laid vocals.

Hospital Ships - Bitter Radio Single

Geiger hits it perfectly on Bitter Radio Single. “Screw this fucking city,” in the bridge explodes into the song’s ending.

Pictured: The band was doing just fine until Steve Nash showed up on keys(far right), wearing his favorite collared shirt and that damned howling wolf tank top again.

Let’s be honest, I’m a sucker for songs with lots of bells, and Deleted Scenes carves itself around them on the song Ithaca. I know what you’re thinking, but really, this is a good rock band and there’s no cutesy toy xylophone ridiculousness involved. Instead, a constant tonal ringing is a frame for the band’s somewhat afro-cussion, bright, accommodating guitar melodies and Menomena-esque double-vocal lines(ehh, two posts in a row with mentions of Manenema?). They get themselves worked up every once in a while, but for the most part my beloved bells keep Deleted Scenes in a sleepy, laid-back and lovable sort of mindset. Plus, one look at their Myspace page, equipped with small tour dates, cheap EPs and mega-appreciation for slowly growing press, and it’s hard not to root for guys like these.

Deleted Scenes - Ithaca

Click, click, click.

Pictured: Sing, scream, repeat.
Justin Vernon is one bad-ass dude. He grows beards, he pushes people around in the post, and he writes records that everyone loves and wants to buy. That’s a big three for three. This is from an album he did before the glory (but when he was still pushing people around in the post.) Vernon recorded and released this in Eau Claire back before Deyarmond moved to Raleigh.

It’s funny how much this bridges the gap between Deyarmond, both musically and ideologically. There is still the same loneliness, the same isolation that so many people have come to relate with Justin’s current work, but there’s still something folky and earthy about the Hazeltons recording as well. This is Justin stripping down, calling us out, and getting out before anything hits the fan. Oh, and the music is unstoppable too. That helps.

It’s pretty hard to find this recording, but if by magic you find it, immediately pick it up. It’s not only a portrait of the artist as a young man, but a portrait of the rest of us too. Sheesh, who knows what I’m saying anymore. Just listen.
Justin Vernon - Hazelton

Pictured: Daredevil is ready for some quality D&D. Hope you brought Cooler Ranch.
As you may or may not know, Kyle and I play in a band called Laarks. We recently went on a tour with the very incredible, “The Daredevil Christopher Wright”. I know it probably isn’t proper to put their name in quotation marks, but it seemed like there were a lot of “the”s in a row without it. Anyway, this comes from an EP that they put out in support of their most recent tour. Every one of them was hand painted and came with a mis-labeled mp3 tag. The former was probably intended, the second was probably not.

Anyway, this EP is solid stuff. The first track is from their forth coming EP, a cute little mid-tempo song about a brother moving to the east coast. It is titled (appropriately enough), “The East Coast”. This is not the song we are posting. Look for it soon. I’ve heard the whole album, and it kills me a little bit everyday that I can’t put it up on here.

The next track is a 7 minute epic that has some of the weirdest, greatest harmonies I’ve heard from a band in a long time. We aren’t posting that one either.

“Ian,” you are saying with the knowing smile of an older sibling, “What could you possibly be putting up? What could possibly be as great as those other songs?” Well, let me tell you, friend. “Old Time Love Songs” is a beautiful, short, little gem that manages to unlock that part of your brain that says, “Ah yes, there it is. THAT is what I’ve been looking for.” There is organ, there is guitar, there isn’t really any drums. It’s virtually perfect. The low-fi recording (the band did it themselves on a ratty old laptop) only adds to the charm. Do yourself a favor and check it out before they blow up big-time. We’re talking, “Grey’s Anatomy” big.

The Daredevil Christopher Wright - Old Time Love Songs

Pictured: Murdocks only travel one-by-one, in a straight line. Buddy-system style.

I want to drink beer with this band, and I want to be as loud and reckless as they are when I do it. I want to be sloppy drunk while we parade around town and spit in the face of the whole damn thing. It doesn’t need to be the weekend. It could be Tuesday. It could be noon. That way we’d be more out of place and cause more of a disturbance.

Something about the Murdocks’ album Roar! makes me feel this way. It’s a blaze of indie-rock gone pop-punk, full of simple power chords and nasally hooks, plenty of vocal lines involving meaningless sounds like “hey,” and “la.” This is pop-punk that kids who grew out of pop-punk long ago can still get excited for. Also, the album cover is pink and has a yellow Tyrannosaurus Rex on it. Awesome.

Murdocks - Playhouse Down

Playhouse Down is a fan fave, as in, I’m a fan and it is my fave.

It seems a little bit bandwagon to tout an album that has been in Paste, but I knew it first, so this is my call for cred. Doug’s Burr’s On Promenade was released last year by a small label in California, Velvet Blue Music. VBM is sort of my go to label. Because of gems like the initial release of Richard Swift’s The Novelist, Frank Lenz’s Conquest Slaughter, and LN’s Novel, when adequately financed, I will buy most anything they do. At this point it is safe to mention On Promenade in the same breath as any of the amazing albums put out by this definitionally independent label. Also, I obscenity in the milk of cred.
Doug Burr is what country music should be. He should be headlining Country Jam/Fest with Okkervil River, Songs:Ohia, Sixteen Horsepower, and Willie Nelson. Unfortunately, popular country and western music has become a purgatorial reflection of top forty radio pop, embracing all of the inherent flaws and mediocrity of music that has current mass appeal. There isn’t really a profitable place for songs of this sort. Songs that are important. For shame.
Burr’s writing can be both ominous and hopeful. Vivid descriptions of dreams and letters from painters are paired with lush instrumentation atypical of the sometimes austere alt-country genre. The album has a well crafted ebb and flow of tempo and mood making repeat listens genuinely enjoyable.
‘How Can The Lark (My Dear Theo)’ is presented as a letter from an aforementioned painter to his brother, a correspondence of love and pain and compulsion. The guitar swell at the end of the first verse may be my favorite moment in any of his songs, so pay attention. The song will leave you, the listener, hanging a bit as it fades absolutely perfectly into the next song. You’ll have to buy it or come over to my house to hear it in context. Open invite.

Doug Burr - How Can The Lark (My Dear Theo)

Pictured: Headlights must have reeeeally pissed off Oscar the grouch.
Headlights are a Champagne, Illinois that I could have sworn was British the first time I heard them. Maybe it’s my own prejudice, but when I hear a guy singing sweetly into a microphone while all sorts of cutesy bells and shit go on around him, I just think jolly old England. Is that me being prejudiced? Probably. Am I totally right usually? Undoubtedly. Anyway, that is neither here nor there, Headlights is a fun little diversion of the band that offers plenty of groany alt-country guitars, organ pads, and even the occasional hand clap. (for a while didn’t it look like banjos were going to be the new hand clap in indie rock? What a scary time.)

Headlight’s song, “Market Girl” is the embodiment of all the good things in this genre. It rollicks from the beginning (I don’t use that term lightly) and continues to do so until the end. In between their are string parts, boy and girl vocals, and yes, even hand claps. There is a deep dark fear in my heart that this song will be used for evil, like to advertise Target or Imacs or something, but until then I think we can enjoy this song with clean conscience.

These guys have played with Now, Now Every Children before (a peervalidated favorite), if you get a chance and have a girlfriend (or boyfriend) that loves to do that awkward indie-rock half dance, this is directly up your alley.

Headlights - Market Girl

Pictured: Someone yearns to be loved.

This is a badass playground. Kids chanting and dancing around a burning barrel and bashing it with sticks, one of the bandies fluting and the rest demanding attention and rejecting uneven distributions of power and gender roles. Some principal somewhere made some seriously bad decisions to get to this point of mutiny.

The Do - Playground Hustle

Playground Hustle. Viva revolution.

Really though, Olivia Merilahti and Dan Levy made some seriously good music on The Dø’s debut, A Mouthful. Parts jazz, folk, classic, African beat and mother’s good lovin’ meet in the middle and lounge.

The Do - Stay (Just A Little Bit More)

The song Stay (Just a Little Bit More) is softer and probably a bit more akin to the rest of the album.

Pictured: The Small Cities are all cursed with varying degrees of bedroom eyes.
Hey all, it’s been a long while since I’ve posted on here. I really have no excuse other than the fact that I am a 100% lazy-ass, white bread boy. And the end of the semester was a big welt on my back-side, but who wants to hear that? Anyway, I hope to be posting 3-4 times a week for the rest of the summer; you know, unless lightning strikes or something. Andy is leaving tomorrow for Arizona, so hopefully we can shoot some video and get that up while he’s gone. We wish him the best of luck while on his scorpion eating tour. Sounds great.

Anyway, The Small Cities are a pretty great band from Minneapolis. They sound like David Bazan and Low blowing apart your hollow construct of reality. Oh, and their bass player is pretty durn good too. I can’t really pick which song to pick up, as all of the EP is a pretty good balance of fun and crying. The first track, “This City” is a down tempo crier with wailing guitars and, um, people. The second track, “Fargo” would’ve been on the OC if the OC was still around and set in a small midwestern town with a good sense of melodrama. The guitars are reverby, the drums are driving, just check it out.

These guys have gotten a lot of good press lately. If you are one of our friends who reads this blog and lives in the Twin Cities, be sure to check them out. These are just the tip of the iceberg.

The Small Cities - This City

The Small Cities - Fargo

Pictured: Lau Nau. Recording the first ever musical how-to album for DIY luring enthusiasts everywhere.

Laura Naukkarinen passes 5-minute long songs by like short whispers. Her Finnish words don’t quite register, but I can tell she means well. She probably means to give small secrets about the simplicity of her life. She definitely means to suggest a closer look and deeper appreciation for the natural world, things both big and small and a general blending of them all to create a grasp at understanding. And she’s all shushes and over the shoulder glances when you respond too loudly, like you might give away her favorite secret to someone passing by.

Lau Nau - Lue Kartaltar

Lau Nau just released a new album called Nukuu(Finnish for Sleep) on Locust Music. It’s full of dreamy little wonders like this song, Lue Kartalta.

Pictured: Now, Now Every Children. All pastels and droopy eyes. The way Easter should be.

There are two things we’re head over heals for at PV: really good music and local bands. So, oh my garsh if we can post about local bands making really good music! We like to think of our Minnesotan neighbors locally, especially those who make trips to play for us here in West-Central Wisconsin.

Now, Now Every Children is painfully introspective while taking in far too much of the world surrounding them. Their songs cast stories about complicated family situations or impossible friendships that give very few answers to the many questions they pose. Girly Eisley-like lead vocals ring perfectly true and clear through mounds of breathy keyboard and xylophone arrangements, clever percussion parts give much more than standard time and while guitars can feel a bit uncertain and a little chunk-chunky at times, they feel all the more genuine for it. It’s absolutely refreshing to hear a band who isn’t afraid to sound unsure of itself.

Now, Now Every Children - Everyone You Know

There are boatloads of good songs I could post for this band. This is the first song on the new In The City EP, a rockin’ cruiser, Everyone You Know.

Now, Now Every Children - Friends With My Sister

This is Friends With My Sister, the last song on the Not One, But Two EP. You must, must, must also go to Now, Now Every Children’s myspace page and listen to the demo version of the song Little Brother. So good, so, so good.

Sometimes I try to put together pieces of video that I’ve shot. I do my best to make these projects visually appealing by applying filters or slowing them down or through the use of other cheap iMovie gimmicks. It’s a pretty enjoyable process. All in all though, the most satisfying part of the whole ordeal is searching through my library and selecting a few pieces of music to accompany the video. Most of the time it only takes me a few minutes to find what I’m looking for; the themes of the footage often bring to mind albums or bands that I think would suit it perfectly.

But something weird happened last week. I heard Float, the first full-length album from Peter Broderick, and I experienced the reverse effect. This music is begging to be used as a soundtrack. Personally, I could see it as great for opening credits. As far as my own headphone usage, I would say it’s simply the ultimate walking-around-in-the-fall music. This album reminds me of being home–the Midwest–in the best way possible.

After a doing a little research and reading some interviews, I found out Peter does quite a bit of film score work, so I guess it’s not a huge shocker that this stuff is similarly constructed.

Now, I don’t like to drop names in my reviews, but if you’re like me, and geek out over modern composers like Jon Brion or (Broderick’s labelmate) Goldmund, I would highly recommend mining this dude’s catalog.

Peter Broderick - A Snowflake

Check out Peter Broderick here, purchase Float here, and if you live on the East Coast or in Europe, see him on tour with Efterklang (as the violinist) at these places.

Oh yeah, he’s only 21. You and I ought to feel pretty lazy right now…

During my first two years of high school, my best friend Paul and I used to sit in bean bag chairs and listen to Weezer records. This might be the coolest thing we ever did. We weren’t doing anything else. Since those days, I’ve had my mind bent by a ton of great records, but nothing has really blown me away to the point of setting aside time to put a pair of good headphones on, lay down, close my eyes, and listen to music. I’ll admit that this is mostly my fault. I’ve been busy. It’s not necessarily that these songs didn’t deserve my full attention, I just didn’t make the time. The point is, Bobby & Blumm’s debut album, Everybody Loves… marks the first time I’ve really sat down with an album. You should too.

Well-recorded guitars are important to me. In fact, a fantastic guitar tone has, in my opinion, the ability to excuse a lot of awful things going in a song. These guitars are beautiful. Few instruments in this world can match the quality of a clean electric guitar. I’m at a point right now where I think almost everything recorded with an acoustic guitar could have been improved by substituting a clean Fender guitar.

Wait a minute. This thing also has boy-girl harmonies. Say what you will about the cheese factor of boy-girl harmonies, but these ones will destroy you, all the while being the most understated vocals you’ve heard so far this year.

This is gorgeous.

Bobby & Blumm - In Future Present

Visit Bobby & Blumm here, purchase Everybody Loves… here (or here if you buy vinyl), and go see them on tour whenever that happens.

Pictured: Credit to HowWasTheShow.com for this picture that I stole. Credit to the lighting crew at the Varsity Theater for being absolutely rediculous.

The story of Picking a Lock at the Speed of Light goes something like this, I gather:

a) boy likes girl,

b) boy also likes outer space, a lot,

c) boy takes girl to outer space in a rocket ship to impress her,

d) girl doesn’t like boy or outer space,

e) crap. Gigantic u-turn.

These Modern Socks tell their tale with a fairly adventurous exploration of cheap-beat electro-pop music and bits of fuzzy, overdriven guitars. There’s plenty of star gazing, gravity-free atmospheres and weird jelly food(i.e., funk) along the way, but in the end, both love and outer space are far out of reach for skinny-legged dudes with shaggy hair and bedrooms full of keyboards.

These Modern Socks - No One’s Gonna Miss Me

Here’s the album’s light-footed first tune, No One’s Gonna Miss Me.

These Modern Socks - On The Moon

And for comparison’s sake, the closer, On the Moon, after a visit to Radio-Friendly Rock Galaxy.

Pictured: Okay, yes, I do hate that I have to post this stupid picture. It’s the only one I could find on the entire internet!

Somehow this band is confident in epic proportions, unquestioned and walking stomping through uncharted lands that had only ever been feared from afar, and they’re completely nervous and unsure of it as well. If they flinch even the slightest, show the smallest bit of jittering or hesitance, they will lose the support of their less brave followers, so dark, space age keyboards overpower each other at their highest voltages, and Thom Stylinski pushes his vocals forward, almost too far forward, like he might push through the song somehow.

The Wiskers - Cogs

The Whiskers sort of make a big bloody mess out of pop-song frame working. Cogs is an example of them hitting me over the head with the dead body. Fact, the word ‘somehow’ both began and ended the previous paragraph.

Pictured: The Wombats, pioneers in urban calisthenics.
Holy cripes. The Wombats are a completely exuberant band that thrives on soaring choruses, dance-rock guitars, and effing awesome lyrics. For real, these guys have a shout along part that goes something like, “This is no Bridget Jones! This is not Bridget! Bridget!” I mean, what the hell is that? pure genius.

Their newest album, “The Wombats Proudly Present Boys, Girls, and Marsupials” is one non-stop dance party. Yes, it is the British school of post-punk white boy dance, but The Wombats really succeed in infusing their music with true joy. The bass drives, the vocals waver, and the choruses rock with synth leads and weird drum beats.

In short, these guys are my new Bombay Bicycle Club. Youth never seemed so cool. Ok, maybe youth is always inherently cool, but these guys make me want to jump and live forever.

Here’s, “Kill The Director” (the one with the sweet-ass Bridget Jones kiss off)

Download audio file (02-kill-the-director.mp3)

I couldn’t leave it at just one.  Here’s a crowd pleasing rouser called, “Let’s Dance to Joy Division”  They have lil’ kids singing on it, how can you not like it?

Download audio file (08-lets-dance-to-joy-division.mp3)

Pictured: Retribution Gospel Choir is just here for the combs that they put in that blue stuff.  

Is Alan Sparhawk ever going to mess up?  Ever?  The mastermind behind The Black Eyed Snakes and indie-rock behemoth, Low is at it again.  This time his band-du-jour is psych-rock band, Retribution Gospel Choir.  Retribution alternates between 1990’s influenced pop rock, and stoner guitar solos.  The result is, as you’d expect, amazing. 

Sparhawk’s band contains current members of Low and the Snakes; their new album isn’t hampered by the awkward get-to-know-you stage that most bands go through.  What is present is a solid rock record that will kiss you right before it smacks you in the mouth.

Retribution’s new album was produced by Mark Kozelek (Sun Kil Moon), and in some ways I think it may have hurt the sound.  At times the drums sound tinny and far away.  This is not a large hamper on the album.  Look for Retribution on tour in support of the new album.  It is well worth it. 

Download audio file (choirwhatshe.mp3)
 

Pictured: Off to a good start(top left).

“Our child will never be right with the down crowd.” This is a conversation between parents about their son. He’s lanky and uncoordinated, severely nearsighted and struggling to fit in. He is unfamiliar and awkward in the presence of girls his own age and isn’t the type likely to overcome it anytime soon. He’s more the type likely to dress himself in cardigans and slacks and lead the varsity forensics team to nationals.

Really this isn’t about their son though, really they don’t have a son. This is a conversation about themselves, and really there’s only one of them. Really this is a song someone wrote about himself and how he became the singer in a band.

The Pica Beats - Right With The Down Crowd

The Pica Beats recently signed to Hardly Arts, a super-sweet division of Sub Pop. This song, Right With the Down Crowd, in all its wonderful glory, is from their self-released debut, All Mysteries Solve Themselves.

Pictured: “Oh, did you read what Peervalidated wrote today? Those guys are so funny and awesome!”

For the next week, in anticipation of it’s release in May, the entirety of Syrbis’ new album Into the Trees is streaming on the Absolutely Kosher site. For this reason I’ve been glued to my laptop more often than usual, oh, so anxiously awaiting this album in freer form.

I was set to compare Sybris with one of our favorite bands, Land of Talk(see this post), and upon intense research found that the two exchange nods on their Myspace Top Friends lists, aka the great teller of musical truths. The two do share similarities, obviously the female fronted vocals and jangly, light-guitar rock vibe, but Sybris ranges through a wider spectrum of attitudes and emotions on Into the Trees, slowing down and speeding up when we think we’re becoming familiar with the pace. Joyful dance-rock verses are interrupted by melodramatics and broken down bridges, and choruses don’t always scream in excitement for attention, rather each part helps put weight on the previous one. It’s a bit difficult to engage in an album when it’s only currently available as a stream for one week, but I’d recommend setting aside a nice little non-pornographic session with your computer to give this a good listen.

Sybris - Oh Man!

If nothing else, you know we bring you the goods, here’s the first single, Oh Man!