You are currently browsing the monthly archive for February 2009.
here’s some happy indie pop that’ll put some spring in your step…
Oh No! Oh My! – a four-piece indie rock band from Austin, Texas. Their music is rooted in an intricate melodic style reminiscent of The Magnetic Fields and Belle and Sebastian, fused with quirky lyrics and augmented by a diverse range of instruments.
Oh No! Oh My! – Between the Devil and the Sea EP (2007)
Bears – “It begins and ends in celebratory fashion with a series of handclaps and harmonies, taking on the true challenge of a great indie pop record: the blurring of complex lyrical matter and simple, upbeat musical themes.”
– “On the group’s second album, “Simple Machinery,” Clevelanders Charlie McArthur and Craig Ramsey orchestrate sugary, acoustic pop songs peppered with keyboards, handclaps, bells, glockenspiels and tambourines. They build on the simple formula of short and sweet, with only three of the 13 tracks breaking the three-minute barrier.”
Bears – Simple Machinery (2008)
Arms – “Instrumentally, Arms is all fuzz and clatter, splayed power chords and strung-out jangle. Goldstein, the guitarist, pursues the reckless good-enough aesthetic of mid-1990s lo-fi. Vocally, though, there’s a hint of Morrissey, tremulous ironies looped into manicured music hall flourishes.
You could dig through a whole month’s worth of fuzzy, home-recorded pop and not find a record as sweetly weird, as intelligently eccentric as this one. (Some of us have.) Kids Aflame is the good stuff, as loosely played as it is meticulously plotted.”
Miniature Tigers – “a tightly harmonious, sometimes synthy, playful pop rock sound with influences ranging from The Beatles to the Beach Boys to Weezer. Every song is a truly original and unique epic. “Volcano” is a light-hearted, fun album full of pop hooks and clever lyrics”
Miniature Tigers – Tell It to the Volcano (2008)
The Boy Least Likely To – “a charming rural pop sound with banjos, glockenspiels, acoustic guitars and fiddles thumping away in a home recording folk pop style. A proud exponent of a ramshackle bedroom aesthetic, the music is strangely uplifting hillbilly indie [quirky indie folk sound with a healthy lo fi feel], reminiscent of belle and sebastian, beach boys…”
The Boy Least Likely To – The Law of the Playground (2009)
where to begin with wham city… a glowing shard of creative DIYexperimentation driven into the eye of Americas’ status quo… a beacon of hope for community and the collective, laughing at the ideals of crumbling corporate america… its pure unadulterated ART!!! suck on it mass media, this is the assassin of generations of propaganda and non-relevance posing as culture and entertainment… this is an emergent phenomenon showing the world that 20-somethings in anytown USA can surpass anything being shit out of the corporate airwaves… Once this tanking economy levels out into an agrarian leisure soiecty, we could all see ourselves having unlimited time to devote to the arts, forming bands to entertain each other…reinventing our lives and creating our own ultimate reality… the fruits of such labors (fuzzed out nuggets of popfection, or schitzophrenic neon dancegrooves) form the namesake “fountain of gold” that re-energizes our spirit and can lead us to believe we could fly a crayola lightscribed rocket to the stars, powered soley by the goosebumps you get when you appreciate the movements’ magnum opus: Dan Deacons’ Bromst… or that anything is possible and experimentation is evolution… either one.
– interview w/ My Old Kentucky Blog
“In late January [2008], the CocoRosie-founded label, Voodoo-EROS, released a double album from Quinn Walker (also a member of the band Suckers) titled Laughter’s an Asshole/Lion Land. It managed to slip through the majority of the blog-buzz cracks, though I guess I can see why – debuting with an album that spreads 29 songs over two albums is a lot to ask of an unfamiliar audience. But to pan Quinn Walker for giving too much means only one thing. Missing out.” – MOKB
“sound[s] like an entire fun house orchestra dishing out madcap pop and a lost loner psych home recordist channeling his demons, all in the space of one section of one song.” – Stereogum : Band to Watch
“alternately beautiful, silly, fantastic, goofy, and wonderful mood pieces akin to the Animal Collective axis. It’s all so unpredictable, so inherently whimsical, colorful and kaleidoscopic, that it’s practically psychedelic by default. The lack of focus is the focus, and on those paradoxical terms it’s a pretty wild and wooly success” – Pitchfork
“electric, chaotic and sublime”
“With a full 12 albums by the man now, I gotta say that I’m gonna knock on all the wood I can find that he finds his place as one of our generation’s most respected artists, as opposed to burning out in some best-documentary-ever-fueling disappearance/suicide/whatever. I jest, but (in my mind?) he’s some crazy obsessive musical genius. The shit from 2001 is almost as good as the shit from 2007… maybe even more accessible? Whenever a random song of his pops on the ITunes the girlfriend and I instantly start drooling… like… every time.”
“Pattern is Movement’s music could perhaps best be described as math-rock-via-minimalism, but its true genius lies in that it encompasses both — the tricky weaving polyrhythms of the former and the emphasis on repeating themes of the latter — without sounding remotely like either. Like fellow Philly mates Man Man, Pattern is Movement’s music is unique unto itself, equally kinetic and calming, filled with hollering and drum-pounding energy while at the same time staid and exquisitely constructed.” – Free Times : Colombia News and Arts, Patrick Wall
‘Creeps Collage’ was what first hooked me on woods… they would get into some apocalyptic, haunted, back-woods crooner jam/groove – and then stop the track abruptly with a needle scratch or a psychedelic fading/looped trail-out, and burst back into the middle of a timeless melody… genius experimental lofi tape-hiss folk from the woodsist haunting the upstate wilderness
– a slightly more eloquent LAST.FM bio –
“infectiously bent acid folk mashed into faust IV style electronically dosed pop grooving, all awash in odd studio effects, motorik percussion, cracked fuzz, unique vocal gush, twisted lyrics, and burning psychedelic jams.”
“San Francisco’s Sleepy Sun is one of those every-so-often bands that absorbs, processes, and spits out its influences in such a way as to make pee run down the pants legs of music reviewers everywhere. From the heavy-thunder freakout of “New Age” through the gospel-tinged lament of “Lord” to the straight-up bad trip on “White Dove,” the band’s lysergic emanations, delivered through copper plumbing, are all flowery footpaths, winding streams of Robitussin, and nitroglycerine shrieks. They are designed to explode the most expanded of frontal lobes. Even the annoying parts resonate, so it’s better just to sit back and wait for the moment you missed to finally broadside you as revelation. Because that’s exactly what an album like this promises.”
– sfweekly.com : J. O’Neill
To me they sound like a mix of Brightblack Morning Light and the newer classic rock/soul-era Portugal the Man… which is a cross-pollination recipe for success… alacalituckylaskancisco… mmm everything at the same damn time…
(Olympia, WA)
“Kickball are everything that is vibrant and exciting about DIY music. Their fourth release, Everything Is a Miracle Nothing Is a Miracle Everything Is, is an indie gem, equally melodic and danceable, that captures the endearingly awkward energy the Olympia trio bring live to living rooms and small clubs across the country.”
-The Stranger
– this reminds me of everything good about minus the bear/chin up chin up/look mexico… noodly guitar dockside ‘cool dudes chillin’ math-indie bands…
So I discovered {{{Sunset}}} from a SoundOpinions thread rec on psychedelic pop, and was captivated by the squigly brackets (simulating rays of sunlight)… I immediately scoured the internet and bounced between myspace rips, and Live in-studio performances, until I acquired Bright Blue Dream… and loved tracks like Old Bull Sandy Lee and I Love My Job…
Then came “The Glowing City”, released on Autobus records in Austin last spring…
This cd was perfect psychadelic-pop/ indie-folk bliss, and stayed on constant rotation for a good month straight, and came out as my #2 album of 08…
I was on such a Bill Baird frenzy, and was surprised Waterloo Records in Austin didnt have his tape-only “Pink Clouds”… long story short, i finally found a pink clouds tape-rip, downloaded some live stuff he had up on his site, and just recently enjoyed “Songs the Sound of Myself, As Recorded by Others”, a collection of cover songs… and the lo-fi video for Zombies is pretty cool too
– from Carpark Records
“Adventure is 24 year-old North Carolina native and recent Baltimore transplant Benny Boeldt. His ultra-melodic synth compositions pull from his earliest exposure to the 8-bit soundtracks of the Sega Genesis video game catalog.”
“If Game Boy made soul music, it would sound like this. Both rinky dink and rapturously melodic, Adventure programs dense layers of synth lines and shifting beats that fall together like sonic Tetris. As addictive as a good video game – and you can’t lose.” -SPIN
He has a 12″ split out with Dan Deacon that should gain him some hype-age soon…I like to start my morning with a little adventure : travel kid + civilization as i mass-transit my way to work en el tren… which is an adventure in itself not to get mugged for my laptop or shanked for my sacajewea gold$$$
Some People Ride the Wave 