Here's a quickie...descarga aqui.
Friday, August 31, 2007
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Atlas Strategic: "Rapture Ye Minions" ('01)
Canadian rocker Dan Boeckner is a busy, busy man. After high school and the inevitable small-time bands, he got organized with some friends and made Atlas Strategic, a rolling, blues-esk, electro-rock ride that has a schizophrenic, chaotic quality to it, not dissimilar of Tom Waits' work. And just like Tom, they can make weird noises sound normal, and vice versa. But, though the ride is wild, it always returns to a steady path, which gives the album a fun, but conscious feel to it. It still remains bound by this cohesive, (and crucial, if you want the album to be listenable) lyrical style that makes the album feel coherent, because we all, overtly or secretly, hate the fuck out of jam-bands. Get bent, Jerry Garcia.Though these guys only recorded one more album before their '02 breakup, (That's Familiar!, released that same year) Boeckner went on to work in indie-rock with fellow busy-man Spencer Krug (of Swan Lake, Frog Eyes, Fifths of Seven, and Sunset Rubdown) in the immensely popular Wolf Parade. He now is working with his wife, Alexei Perry, on the amazing (and already posted) side-project Handsome Furs, but still tours with Wolf Parade, and even contributed guitar-work on the Islands' debut, Return to the Sea.
descarga aqui.
Note: Here's another band with a great album, but an awful fucking cover. Seriously guys, people sometimes make purchasing decisions based on album-art, as dumb as it sounds. Would you have picked up Electric Light Orchestra's pop-masterpiece Out of the Blue based on the cover, if you had never heard of them before?
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
The Fiery Furnaces: "Blueberry Boat" ('04)
Brother-and-sister duo The Fiery Furnaces form an odd yet hypnotic amalgam of traditional instruments, computer-techno beats, and oddly traditional-sounding vocals, an odd choice for a band in the eclectic and ever-changing field of "electronic-pop". Some songs are lead by the instruments, and then perfectly inter-cut with the electronics, making a very solid and fulfilling-sounding album.descarga aqui.
Monday, August 27, 2007
The Go! Team: "Proof of Youth" ('07)
Today, we have another guest-writer, Kevin. He's a tall & handsome young gentlemen, and his birthday is a mere 2 days after mine.
The young but already experienced band proves their viral energy in this satisfying sophomore release. The bands newest LP begins with a classic Go! Team feel in the for lack of a better word bumping intro track Grip like a vice. The album maintains the fun jumbled sound going into the next track Doing it Right, and then takes break with the third installment on the album My World which gives us all a break from dancing with its mellow horn driven ballad. The unobtrusive mood is not held for long when the scorching horn section kicks in on Titanic Vandalism with shrieks of the teams towering tone and ending the song asking us if we’re ready for more, with the obvious answer of “hell yes.” The next few tracks are a perfect examples of The Go! Team’s prolific style of meshing fuzzy precise drums with powerful but still melodic chanting vocals. The culmination of the album comes in Flashlight Fight the tenth of elevens songs. The air raid siren of guitars keeps you franticly listening to the atomic bomb being dropped into your ear drum. You can only expect this type of smooth flow but still eccentric frenzy from The Go! Team who bid farewell to you in the heartfelt conclusion Patricia’s Moving Picture. With no need to prove their youthfulness the six piece ensemble does so while also asserting the credibility they have earned in the indie culture.
Descarga aqui.
Video: "Grip Like a Vice"
The young but already experienced band proves their viral energy in this satisfying sophomore release. The bands newest LP begins with a classic Go! Team feel in the for lack of a better word bumping intro track Grip like a vice. The album maintains the fun jumbled sound going into the next track Doing it Right, and then takes break with the third installment on the album My World which gives us all a break from dancing with its mellow horn driven ballad. The unobtrusive mood is not held for long when the scorching horn section kicks in on Titanic Vandalism with shrieks of the teams towering tone and ending the song asking us if we’re ready for more, with the obvious answer of “hell yes.” The next few tracks are a perfect examples of The Go! Team’s prolific style of meshing fuzzy precise drums with powerful but still melodic chanting vocals. The culmination of the album comes in Flashlight Fight the tenth of elevens songs. The air raid siren of guitars keeps you franticly listening to the atomic bomb being dropped into your ear drum. You can only expect this type of smooth flow but still eccentric frenzy from The Go! Team who bid farewell to you in the heartfelt conclusion Patricia’s Moving Picture. With no need to prove their youthfulness the six piece ensemble does so while also asserting the credibility they have earned in the indie culture.Descarga aqui.
Video: "Grip Like a Vice"
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Yeah Yeah Yeahs - "Is Is" EP ('07)
Hey there! I'm Sacagawea, and I'll be popping in & out of here, so get used to it!
Sometime building up to the YYYs infamous lyrical growth-spurt, the Is Is EP emerged. Written in-between their first full album, Fever To Tell ('03)and their sophomore, Show Your Bones ('06) the five-song EP echoes the earlier sound, which was harder around the edges & simply described as "dirty fun." The tracks were first revealed to the Ys truest fans & followers at a show in Brooklyn, where they played in complete darkness. Can it get any more intimate than that? The energy peak is snug in the center of the EP, with "Kiss Kiss," a song about which that is almost impossible to decipher, but is clearly meant to sound sensual, & bring a bang of a performance. The powerful wrap-up track & my personal favorite, "10 x 10" put images in mind of a tantalizing Karen O leading a march into a murky ocean, lightning bolts penetrating the earth with every count-of-eight.
K.O. & the boys proved that they had grown with experience through songs like "Turn Into" and "Way Out" with the launch of Bones last year,and also added a certain personable quality to Karen, showing us that she is a real person and tender lyricist, not only the performing robot facade she took on. But now the band sends us a message with Is Is that though they're all grown up, they are still the same colorful, young, and daring band we knew years back.
Decharge ici!
"Down Boy" Music Video (from the Webster Hall performance)
Sometime building up to the YYYs infamous lyrical growth-spurt, the Is Is EP emerged. Written in-between their first full album, Fever To Tell ('03)and their sophomore, Show Your Bones ('06) the five-song EP echoes the earlier sound, which was harder around the edges & simply described as "dirty fun." The tracks were first revealed to the Ys truest fans & followers at a show in Brooklyn, where they played in complete darkness. Can it get any more intimate than that? The energy peak is snug in the center of the EP, with "Kiss Kiss," a song about which that is almost impossible to decipher, but is clearly meant to sound sensual, & bring a bang of a performance. The powerful wrap-up track & my personal favorite, "10 x 10" put images in mind of a tantalizing Karen O leading a march into a murky ocean, lightning bolts penetrating the earth with every count-of-eight.K.O. & the boys proved that they had grown with experience through songs like "Turn Into" and "Way Out" with the launch of Bones last year,and also added a certain personable quality to Karen, showing us that she is a real person and tender lyricist, not only the performing robot facade she took on. But now the band sends us a message with Is Is that though they're all grown up, they are still the same colorful, young, and daring band we knew years back.
Decharge ici!
"Down Boy" Music Video (from the Webster Hall performance)
Saturday, August 4, 2007
Wednesday, August 1, 2007
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