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The Shins will be releasing their first single off their upcoming album Port of Morrow next week (on Valentine’s Day no less. That’s cute James) on a 7″ – you can already check out that single here . James Mercer and company, meanwhile, just released the B-side to that single yesterday, and it’s a lovely, slower tune that, along with “Simple Song,” is really amping up expectations for Port of Morrow. Check out the video below.
Another Beatport hit for the Estonian Ecstasy. The flagship artist of Plasmapool’s dominating melodic electro-house lineup, Mord Fustang still remains one of the best at striking a nice balance between spacey melodies and the kind of fist-pumping womp that goes down well in clubs. “We Are Now Connected” is a fine example indeed. Have an epic Super Bowl everyone.
Mord Fustang – “We Are Now Connected”
The lovely Cate Le Bon is an English/Welsh singer-songwriter whose been around since 2008, most notably in support of Super Furry Animals’ Gruff Rhys, but it’s her sophomore record Cyrk that is just starting to get some attention stateside. It came out January 17 and is a wispy bit of Nico-influenced dark pop with a tinge of St. Vincent. RIYL: indie pop, accents.
Cate Le Bon – “Puts Me To Work”
Canadian artist Grimes (aka producer/singer/songwriter Claire Boucher) is a bit of an enigma in the indie scene: her debut was released on a cassette in 2010 and her biography uses phrases such as “religiosity and psychedelic revelry” and “hyper-futuristic filter.” So, it’s pretty weird stuff at times, but with Visions, her third proper album and the first on label 4AD, it comes together more coherently than anything she’s put to tape before. It’s an intriguing mix of trip-hop, ambient, witch-house (ugh) and whatever else you want to call a distinctly pretty disembodied female voice percolating over spacey soundscapes. Visions is out February 21.
Another debut album I criminally missed out on in 2011, Sleeper Agent’s Celabrasion is a taut little set of garage-rock jams that puts to good use the dueling girl-boy vocals of Alex Kandel and Tony Smith. Check it out if you like Girls, Cage the Elephant, Wavves, etc. etc.
Sleeper Agent – “Proper Taste”
Beef Theatre is a Austrian electro duo with a good sense of humor – their influences include “girls on the toilet” and that above photo is nothing short of priceless. Dumme Jungs is a slightly more well-known German duo that give this remix no mercy. It’s a good mix between car-alarm house and an in-your-face electro punch that reminds me a bit of StereoHeroes. Check them both out and support some rising European stars.
Beef Theatre – “President Evil (Dumme Jungs Remix)”
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Finally saw Wilco for the first time Tuesday night as they played their first night of a three-night stand in Los Angeles at the Hollywood Palladium. Although Kicking Television (where this song is from) is one of my favorite live albums, I had little idea just how good they would be live – they destroyed my expectations. Jeff Tweedy and company, especially face-melting guitarist Nels Cline, dispelled any notion of Wilco as a “dad-rock” band, a label unfairly heaped on them thanks to some of their newer albums. I’ll be the first to criticize Sky Blue Sky or Wilco (The Album) for sounding uninspired, but hearing those songs in a live setting, with the entire band nailing time changes, solos and improvised codas with ease, transforms them into an altogether different beast. And they performed “Handshake Drugs,” one of my favorite live cuts.
Wilco – “Handshake Drugs (Live)”
It’s a bit counterintuitive, but early 40-somethings Nada Surf seem to be growing less and less jaded and cynical as the years wind by. They were big once, properly alternative-rock-radio big with 1996’s snarky hit “Popular,” and the only place it got them was the one-hit wonder section in your local FYE’s bargain bin. That is so often the problem with novelty hits, which the spoken-word, eminently contemptuous “Popular” obviously was, and Nada Surf have since made a career out of being the most earnest band in indie. In the hands of another group a painfully wide-eyed title like The Stars are Indifferent to Astronomy would likely be the setup to a contradictory punch line – under the direction of the same band who named a song “Always Love” without a hint of artifice, it’s just another example of the kind of unfeigned sincerity these aging optimists do so well.
For most of The Stars are Indifferent to Astronomy, Nada Surf are a blur of high-energy power chords and a hard-charging rhythm section in bassist Daniel Lorca and drummer Ira Elliot that plays in a remarkable lockstep with each other. Aside from first single “When I Was Young,” which slows things down to focus on predictably cringe-inducing lyrical nostalgia, everything is tight and focused, polished clean and dashed with a healthy bit of punk-influenced crunch courtesy of producer Chris Shaw. Vocalist Matthew Caws still has that flawless alto that gives his vocals an eternally youthful vigor, and Shaw’s work in focusing the mix on his inimitable voice while maintaining a strong focus on the power of Caws’ guitar gives The Stars are Indifferent to Astronomy a pleasantly gutsy live feel. It’s the right call for an album that is filled to the brim with enthusiastic statements like “it’s never too late for teenage dreams” and other assorted feel-good credos. Caws may be approaching middle age, but he has rarely sounded as conflicted and/or hopelessly romantic as he does here, one minute lamenting the expectations of youth on “When I Was Young” and the next sounding utterly pleased at the results on “Teenage Dreams” – “sometimes I ask the wrong questions, but I get the right answers.”
It’s par for the course for Caws, who has made a career out of that ageless yelp and a decision to not worry too much about what he’s saying, instead focusing on how he says it. Caws’ energy is infectious – it’s impossible not to sing along with the sweet clichés he leaves hovering over raucous tunes like “Clear Eye Clouded Mind” or “No Snow on the Mountain.” Even when he’s wallowing in sap, you still get the feeling that he honestly just wants to let you know how he’s feeling, as directly and artlessly as possible. For all of “When I Was Young’s” oppressive sentimentality and cloying acoustic vibe, when Caws sings, “when I was young, I didn’t know if I was better off asleep or up / now I’ve grown up, I wonder what was that world I was dreaming of,” his frankness is enough to tug at the heartstrings of even the most jaded 9-to-5ers. Caws’ shock at the end of the album that he “can’t believe the future’s happening to me” is another likely touchstone for Nada Surf fans, particularly those who have stuck with the band for the long haul and are likely approaching that age where “Popular” is as anachronistic to them as the rest of those cloudy teenage years. Luckily for them, Nada Surf is proof that growing old doesn’t have to be full of regrets and missed opportunities – if their career arc proves anything, it’s that it’s never too late to reinvent yourself. They have kept going largely on an indefatigable attitude and a firm grasp of the finer points of the three-minute pop song, and few bands can regularly write the kind of hooks that The Stars are Indifferent to Astronomy builds itself around. Improbable but true; as these ten mostly filler-free tracks prove, Nada Surf only look to be growing more confident in their old age.
Nada Surf – “Clear Eye Clouded Mind”
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Along with the new (incredibly weird) of Montreal record, Cloud Nothings‘ surprising sophomore effort Attack on Memory has racked up the most listens in my iTunes in 2012. It’s an eight-song burst of noise rock, healthy layers of fuzz and Dylan Baldi’s ragged yelp masking some seriously strong pop hooks. Their debut, which dropped at the beginning of last year, didn’t really make an impression on me, but the band’s growth to songwriting of a substantial, lasting quality is quite noticeable here. Given Pitchfork’s recent Best-New-Music-ing of them and the goodwill buzz they’ve been building up since last year, it’s quite obvious this is the best thing Cleveland’s had to offer in years…
Bonus MP3: Nifty little garage-rock instrumental: Cloud Nothings – “Separation”
Saddle Creek mainstays Cursive will be releasing their seventh full-length I Am Gemini on February 21. According to frontman and main creative force Tim Kasher, the record is a concept album about two identical twins separated at birth. First single “The Sun and Moon” details the part of the story when the two first meet – and for a Cursive song, it definitely leans in a more pop-rock direction than previous efforts. That’s perfectly fine with me – whenever Kasher has turned down the vitriol and focused on his remarkable melodic gifts, I’ve always found Cursive to be more palatable.
Plasmapool, a German-based electronic label, has really been killing it with new discoveries lately, as exemplified by Estonian sensation Mord Fustang, who blew up last year with his melodic take on electro and dubstep sounds. Now they have a fresh-faced duo from Finland blowing up the Beatport charts. Trampboat are originally from Helsinki and focus mainly on dubstep, but “Ah!” is about as hard an electro house song as you’ll find these days. The drop and resulting fist-pumping chorus reminds me a bit of a Lazy Rich production. Definitely the most relentless song I’ve heard in the new year so far. Buy it on Beatport if you like it!
http://www.beatport.com/track/ah!-original-mix/3133529
Certified indie-pop nutjob Kevin Barnes and his constantly metamorphosing band of Montreal are releasing their eleventh album, Paralytic Stalks, February 7th, although a leaked copy has already found its way onto the web. It’s been a long, wild, occasionally annoying journey with Barnes and company, who rose from the ashes of the Elephant 6 record label and their peculiar brand of conceptual twee into increasingly oddball lyrical journeys and increasingly divergent musical tastes, culminating with Barnes’ role as a fictional transsexual musician named Georgie Fruit. 2010′s False Priest eased up on the weird throttle and got back to what drew me to of Montreal in the first place, namely Barnes’ penchant for melody and an appreciation of genres not normally seen in the indie pop game. Paralytic Stalks is sufficiently bizarre to qualify as another of Montreal release, but is firmly grounded in a colorful pop tradition. “Ye, Renew the Plaintiff” even has a pretty sick guitar solo that rips along before an extended outro takes things to outer space and beyond.
Check out the song if you’re an of Montreal fan and ready to subject yourself to another Kevin Barnes roller-coaster ride. And check out Pitchfork’s interview with the outlandish Barnes below.
Of Montreal – “Ye, Renew the Plaintiff”
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