STREAM: Woods - "Sun and Shade" (Full Album Stream)
Soundcloud Stream Entire Cults Record
Track Of The Day: Nerves Junior - "As Bright As Your Night Light"
It's been over a year since I saw Nerves Junior open for Cults at Zanzabar in Louisville. I immediately asked for some tracks to post on WLFY because the live show was unlike anything I had ever seen or heard. Unfortunately they didn't have anything recorded and said something would be available soon. Weeks turned into months and I moved away from Louisville to Los Angeles. Today, the best record store in America, Ear X-Tacy, posted on twitter a link to listen to Nerves Junior's first recorded track.
"As Bright As Your Night Light" is a track without any concrete comparisons. Some of the electronics feel like Nine Inch Nails or Radiohead, but the overall sound of the track doesn't quite fit into any specific genre or comparisons with other bands. For me, that makes this track all the more special as it's captured the same jaw on the floor reaction I had to their live show. The drums that come in on the track are large and imaginative, the electronics are slick and unique, and the vocals feel like the essence of cool (calm and in control). My favorite part of the song comes at the 1:50 mark where the thick chorus drops off and the lead singer says: "Sending signals, only you and I know/flip your hair if the answer is no/crack your knuckles/blink three times/grab your coat and I'll grab mine". With that, the track explodes back into action, with huge drums and out of space keys rattling around the headphones. I've been mesmerized by their live show, this track proves they can write an infectious song, now it's time for them to tackle a full length record.
Thanks to Ear X-Tacy for the heads up
Mother Mother - "Simply Simple" (Live MP3 XM/SXSW 2011)
I don't think a week has passed since Mother Mother has released their wonderful LP Eureka that I haven't put the vinyl on the turntable and enjoyed the spin. The band recorded an acoustic version of the track "Simply Simple" for XM radio while at SXSW this year and now it's available for download. I love the songwriting and more importantly the swirling of majestic voices that enter the ears and float around in the mind. Beautiful is an overused word but concerning Mother Mother it's even not enough to explain their magic as a band.
REVIEW: Cults - Cults
Cults - Cults
Release Date: June 7th, 2011
Label: Columbia/In The Name Of
Cults are polarizing. It’s not the typical love/hate debate, but a newer
conversation concerned with "how did they get so big so fast" and "do they deserve
the buzz?". It’s been over a year
since their first single “Go Outside” darted around blogs, radio stations,
labels, pr firms, and to the ears of listeners across the globe. Conspiracies of how a buzz band went
from self-releasing two singles to releasing a debut LP on a major label
off-shoot (Columbia/Lily Allen’s label “In The Name Of) was the main topic
concerning Cults. Are they
marketing/social media geniuses?
Has this whole thing been set up by Columbia from the beginning? Did Gorilla vs. Bear hype Cults to the
point of instant success? Tracks,
albums, and bands all have different paths and as with life, a million
different paths are passed and not traveled. Every decision a band makes is picking a path and decisions
fans/bloggers make create even more paths. There is never a single answer to how a band “makes it” or
why a band doesn’t. It’s my theory
that “Go Outside” was a spectacular track that was enjoyed by all types of
music listeners and no matter the path it took, it was bound to find
success.
After listening to the self-titled debut from Cults, I’m
certain that the conversation will only slightly shift from “how did they get
so big so quick?” to “does this album prove they deserved the buzz?” In short, yes, they definitely deserve
the buzz/praise. My long form
answer:
While the songs are sugary pop on the surface, Madeline
Follin and Brian Oblivion (Cults) are smarter than many would expect. From their branded black white album
art that’s a tip of the hat to Jorgen Leth’s The Perfect Human or their deep
understanding of early 60’s music pioneers Leslie Gore and producer Joe Meek;
influence is only wet cement for the two twenty year olds to make a unique mark
on. It’s this obsession with the
early 60’s that might cause a misleading listen for many. In the early 60’s it was common for an
artist or band to put out four to five 45’s and then release a full-length
album around those songs. What’s
odd is that Cults are releasing a “greatest hits” record as their debut LP and
many won’t know how to take such a record.
It will be tough to find a better opening run of three
consecutive songs than the Cults offering of “Abducted”, “Go Outside”, and “You
Know What I Mean”. Any of these
songs could end up at the top of best tracks of 2011 list (“Go Outside” was
2010, but considering 2011 LP cuts).
If there is any questioning the hype surrounding Cults, the first three
tracks should quiet detractors with a sonic pimp slap.
“Abducted” starts like a lot of Cults tracks, as the sounds
are pushed to the background, almost as they are being played and recorded
through a speaker. Then the song
explodes with a drum hit and the track takes off. Speed is brilliantly tampered with on “Abducted” as Madeline
pours her heart out over driving drums and a quickly stroked guitar only to
slow down for Brian to deliver a calm and cool break. “Go Outside” plays in the shadows of
happiness with a sunshine melody that feels a little off center. It’s instantaneously infectious and a
smart take on the “sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows” themes of the early
60’s. While the song feels bright,
it’s content is focused on a doomed relationship between someone who wants to
live and someone who wants to hide.
“You Know What I Mean” is a slow dance that plays like a confessional
from a teenage girl on the brink of losing her mind. Madeline really shines on “You Know What I Mean”. It’s a simple melody, which with any
other front woman/man could easily fall flat. During the chorus of the song, Madeline delivers her lyrics
with all of her emotions exposed.
It’s powerful and is a moment on the album that is hard to forget long
after the listener has taken off the headphones. In the end, these three tracks are successful because they
overflow with life. Each track is
alive with introspection, emotion, and most importantly undeniable
passion. For a band releasing
their first album, these three tracks highlight Cults’ unflinching command on
songwriting and their massive personalities that they aren’t afraid to show
off.
The rest of the album is sprinkled with good to near great
tracks. “Never Saw The Point”,
“Bad Things”, “Rave On”, “Walk At Night” and “Never Heal Myself” are nice hints
at what Cults have to offer down the road. Be it the addition of an acoustic guitar on “Never Heal
Myself” or the crashing keys on “Bad Things”, Cults are definitely not
satisfied with making copies of their hit songs. These tracks could easily be standouts on another record,
but in the shadow of the first three tracks, they feel more like three star
filler behind the four star opening tracks. When a music critic is citing three star tracks as negatives
you know a band is doing something right.
The album isn’t without faults. Both “Most Wanted” and “Oh My God” both feel a bit childish
and not as thought out as the other nine tracks. It’s like diet Cults or Cults zero. Both of these songs are what I imagine
out of the bands that will eventually use Cults as inspiration. These tracks
would typically be a problem for me when looking at the overall quality of the
record, but this is not your current album release that is one singular
thought. It’s a greatest hits
album and unfortunately for my own taste, “Oh My God” was a hit among many of
their listeners, so it’s on the record.
The highlight of the album comes from the track
“Bumper”. It’s a wonderful
guy/girl exchange that’s funny, heartbreaking, and a great piece of
storytelling. “Bumper” is the best example of how the album presents the band’s
attraction to playful darkness and their successful attempt to translate the
theme into song. Madeline sings “I
threw his shit on the floor” followed by a cute 60’s “la, la, la” and again
with “I started crying my eyes out” “la, la, la”. Look no further than the 1:43 mark of the song to see that
Madeline and Bryan are master songwriters ahead of their time. Madeline sings: “and give up all my
hopes for…” and then everything drops out. Conventional songwriting would hit back in with a “you” or a
“him”, but Cults refrain and leave the drop out silent. When they pick up, the previous verse
is left as an interrupted thought, a common experience in life, but rarely
displayed in song writing.
While there isn’t a wrong way to listen or judge an album, I
encourage listeners to examine how albums were made in the early 60’s and think
about how Cults present their eleven tracks with that in mind. This self-titled release is a really
hard piece of art to fully grasp because the album sounds innocent during the
first spin, but as the wax rotates, new layers and moments of brilliance are revealed. Cults made a promise with “Go Outside”
that proposed a re-imagination of the early 60’s sound and an exploration
between brightness and the darkness that hides behind loveable pop songs from
the early 60’s. A year later they
have delivered on that promise and it will be interesting to see where they go
next with their sound. After this
debut LP I have full confidence that Cults are not a flash in the pan, rather
they’re a band with a vision all their own and the talent as songwriters to
constantly challenge and surprise.
I’m not sure where I will put this album on my “best of 2011” list (as
it’s not an albums’ album). The Cults debut is a record with four of the best
tracks I’ve heard in years and even after close to fifty plays, the last
seconds of the Cults debut LP are always met with the same result, clicking
back to the first track and starting over again.
REVIEW: My Morning Jacket - "Circuital"
My Morning Jacket - Circuital
Release Date: May 31, 2011
Label: ATO
Ok so, let's recap. First MMJ were alt-country darlings (see The Tennessee Fire, At Dawn). Then, they were stoner, southern rock gods back from the dead (see It Still Moves). After that there was the back-to-the-land prog fantasia (Z) and then the cape-wearing, scatterbrained pop band (Evil Urges). And along the while, the group transformed themselves into an arena rock monster -- selling out shows in Madison Square Garden -- with legendary shows that are few and far between these days. So, it may seem odd for a band this established part of the fun of unwrapping your new copy of Circuital is wondering which band is going to show up. And the answer is all of them.
The title, Circuital, promised a return or a kind of culmination or return to the band's past. And, if I'm not mistaken, for those of us on the mailing list, the record was touted as a continuation of the evolution began on Z. As a long-time MMJ fan, I have to say I had no idea what that meant and listening to this record, it would be difficulty to drawn any sort of a straight line between Z and Circuital. The easiest album to draw a comparison to is (and some hardcore fans may shudder when I say this)... Evil Urges. In fact, at times Circuital seems like Urges 2.0 -- only this time less goofy masquerading as serious (or vice versa) and more supercharged. But, while Evil Urges came off as a polished romp taking on everything from the Jacket's own past ("Aluminum Park") to old school rap (the lamentable "Highly Suspicious") to Karen Carpenter ("Librarian"), Circuital feels more carefree and more sincere. Oscillating between gargantuan riff-ripe tunes and soft acoustic tunes where you can hear a pin fall in the spaces between Jim James's trademark tenor, this album covers a lot of ground. What's obvious is that MMJ see themselves as the inheritors of a long rock tradition from Floyd to Skynard to Prine to Gaye and this album is huge as they begin not to explore as they did on Urges but actively try to bring everything into the fold. Into the Jacket, if you will.
If the result of Evil Urges was confusion. The goal here is fusion. Having put themselves out on about 5 different limbs in Urges, MMJ works hard to get back to basics on Circuital. The opener "Victory Dance" is a concert-ready foreshadowing of the rest of the album beginning with keyboard work that seems to emerge out of "Touch Me I'm Going to Scream" over which James's trills and spins as the song glides forward until the guitars slowly lose control as the rhythm section pounds leading us to the edge of a precipice that we never quite get over. It's followed by "Circuital" which harkens back to "Dondante" where an acoustic guitar glues a ponderous guitar line down while James riffs over top. "Day is Coming" follows with more James scat and a 60s psychedelic-inspired opening before pumping in some deep rhythm and strings. A sneaking question should be rising for you here: when did My Morning Jacket become a keyboard band? Those yawing guitar solos are absent so far. There's no doubt about the bands musicality, but everything in this album is played close to the vest with keyboards and guitars working as bedmates one laying down rhythm and melody the other popping over and above. Then an unexpected gem flutters out. "Wonderful (The Way I Feel)" is everything that "Librarian" should have been: vulnerable, somber and joyous. It's James's songwriting at its best, disjointed and honest, paradoxical and unmistakably moving. The next two tracks "Outta My System" and "Hangin on to Black Metal" represent the musical status quo for MMJ. If you had to take their band temperature, these two songs would be 5s on the scale of 10. "Outta My System" is an escalating ballad celebrating the follies of youth while "Hangin on to Black Metal" (with a riff that's going to stick in your head for days) is a giant song, kids choir thrown in with smashing guitars and electronic accents big enough to blow the top of the Louisville Palace, which I'm sure they'll do on Tuesday. What's notable about both tracks is the nostalgia that pervades the lines -- here's My Morning Jacket singing about how they used to rock hard. But there's little black metal to "Hangin on to Black Metal." The band reemerges in these tracks as less of the stoner rockers than they once were now with solos that sawed their way out of flying Vs and made your beard grow. There's horns and full orchestration and a fucking kids choir for godsake. It's ridiculously fun, and dare I say it...grown up.
If Circuital is emblematic of anything for MMJ and its fans it should be that this band's chops are incredibly good. And they manage to unfold and unfurl something that has been a long time in the making -- an incredibly good rock album that fuses what past and present in one fell swoop. Evil Urges was a sign that the band that we knew wasn't the one that we would get anymore. Restless and schizo it's outdone by Circuital where the band is in control of their own destiny one that, it's clear now, will never be fully tied to the band's past.
When I was in Louisville last, I happened upon Jim James at the Z bar and did that thing that's so uncomfortable to do (for fans and, no doubt, the people that they're talking to). I thanked him for playing music, told him that it had meant a lot to me to see him in California when I was in grad school and that he had brought me home every time I heard him play. Jim seemed, shall we say, out of it. Disarmed but somewhere else. Maybe he was thinking that he'd have to throw it all away and start over again. Maybe he was thinking that he had an obligation to what he'd done. Maybe he was just high. I couldn't tell you. But, if I saw him, I'd thank him again. We need bands like MMJ -- where music still means something to them. Where songs sound the best as they come blasting out your windows as the summer begins to bake us in. We need bands that are willing to take on the Rock and Roll universe and change it. And particularly groups that are willing to change themselves.
Two New Arcade Fire Songs (Full Quality)
The expanded CD version of The Suburbs sees the original album augmented by a longer version of the track “Wasted Hours (A Life That We Can Live),” as well as the previously unreleased “Culture War” and “Speaking In Tongues,” the latter of which features David Byrne on additional vocals. Highlights of the DVD portion include the complete half-hour short film Scenes From The Suburbs, directed by Spike Jonze, the companion documentary Behind The Scenes From The Suburbs, and the music video for the track “The Suburbs.” The package is rounded out by an exclusive booklet featuring lyrics and 80 pages of photos taken during the Scenes From The Suburbs film shoot.
Tom Vek - "World Of Doubt" (MUSIC VIDEO)
Vek is back and better than ever. His new album Leisure Seizure is out June 6th.
Midpoint Music Festival Announces Bands
The lineup includes: Deerhoof, Cut Copy, Toro Y Moi, Xiu Xiu, Mates Of State, and The Dodos. (more to come)
They are also running a weekly summer stage series that will feature the likes of Neon Indian, Ted Leo, The Pass, and More.
This is a spectacular music festival ran a lot like SXSW with it's venues spread out over Cincinnati (but closer/easier to walk). Definitely mark you calendars and check in at their OFFICIAL SITE for more bands announced and news.
Track Of The Day: Conveyor - "Foreword"
"I think I think too much and maybe I have lost touch"
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah Announce New Record/Tour Dates
"We have a new album coming out! It's called Hysterical, and it will be available on September 20th in the US, and September 12th in the UK, Europe, Japan, and Australia. It was produced by John Congleton.
We're also re-issuing our fully remastered first album on vinyl. We always thought the vinyl could sound better - now it does! Available June 14th."
TOUR DATES
Aug 12 - 14 San Francisco, CA Outside Lands Festival
Aug 28 Los Angeles, CA Sunset Junction Festival
Sep 2 North Dorset, UK End of the Road Festival
Sep 6 Sheffield, UK
Sep 7 London, UK
Sep 9 Airport Temepelhof, Germany Berlin Festival
Sep 12 Paris, France
Sep 13 Amsterdam, Holland Melkweg
Sep 14 Cologne, Germany
Battles - "Ice Cream" (Music Video)
Between the two, I'd still say El Guincho's "Bombay" was better, but this is nicely done, too. And NSFW.
The Flaming Lips & Stardeath - "Borderline" (Madonna Cover)
If every Madonna song was actually burned and stricken from memory after being covered by the Flaming Lips and Stardeath, they would be up for a National Medal of Honor.
SOUNDCAST #003
With guests Franky B RockaFeller (Listen Before You Buy) and K.M. McFarland (AV Club).
Topics include Odd Future (P4K Review), the music industry, and the best things of 2011 (so far).
Topics include Odd Future (P4K Review), the music industry, and the best things of 2011 (so far).
Blogs To Check Out
Music To Check Out
A History of Sitcom Jokes about Neutral Milk Hotel
If you don't watch "Parks and Recreation" yet, this might make you:
The Pass Play Another New Song
What is even more amazing is that one year earlier, The Pass was playing a pop up show on the streets of Louisville during the Derby. A year later they play the weekends biggest music event.
Van Dyke Parks Preps 7" Series
Legendary artist, composer and producer Van Dyke Parks has announced the launch of a unique series of 7" vinyl singles, the first new studio music in over 15 years since he released his acclaimed album Orange Crate Art. Each vinyl single is illustrated by some of the most important remarkable modern artists of the time. Out on his own label Bananastan and distributed by City Hall/ Runtworldwide, the singles will be released starting in August, available wherever vinyl records are sold, as well as online at the label's website, eBay store, and during live performances.
The iconic musician, who has been at the heart of some of the great albums of the last 50 years including Brian Wilson's 'lost' masterpiece 'Smile', Randy Newman and Ry Cooder's first recordings and Joanna Newsom's critically acclaimed 2006 album 'YS', intends to release six new singles over the course of 2011.
Parks has commissioned some of the top contemporary artists in America to illustrate each single with what he describes as "a work of art that relates to the music within." The first two singles to be released will be the Ed Ruscha-illustrated "Dreaming of Paris" / "Wedding in Madagascar" and the Art Spiegelman-illustrated "Wall Street" / "Money Is King." Van Dyke Parks said of the singles, "They are from highly different genres, each of them. They don't cohere. They belong somewhere. But the emphasis on the visual art is a big, big deal. These are the pre-eminent American artists of our time. We're calling it "Nouveau Niche."
The Featured Artists Include:
Frank Holmes
who created the sleeve artwork for the lost Beach Boys album 'Smile' over 40 years ago
Charles Ray
whose "Boy with Frog" overlooking Venice is the new hot topic over the Grand Canal
Art Spiegelman
Pulitzer Prize-winning artist/ author whose award winning graphic novel 'Maus' helped define the way Parks looks at life
Ed Ruscha
of Los Angeles (like Ray, an 8 -figure visual artist dominating the American Art scene)
the Alpha songwriter and vernacular artist, of the Appalachian Smokey Mountains
Sally Parks
Frank Holmes
who created the sleeve artwork for the lost Beach Boys album 'Smile' over 40 years ago
Charles Ray
whose "Boy with Frog" overlooking Venice is the new hot topic over the Grand Canal
Art Spiegelman
Pulitzer Prize-winning artist/ author whose award winning graphic novel 'Maus' helped define the way Parks looks at life
Ed Ruscha
of Los Angeles (like Ray, an 8 -figure visual artist dominating the American Art scene)
the Alpha songwriter and vernacular artist, of the Appalachian Smokey Mountains
Sally Parks
whose Mississippi birthright and ability as a watercolorist has made her the perfect candidate for Parks' new song about Katrina, called "Pass Christian."
In addition, Parks has confirmed the September 20th release of a compilation album of some of his greatest arrangements. Arrangements by Van Dyke Parks will contain 15 songs featuring artists including Arlo Guthrie, Ry Cooder, Little Feat, Sal Valentino, Mojo Men, Bonnie Raitt, Dino Martin, Lowell George and Van Dyke Parks himself.
Sunday, May 15th - Dublin, Ireland
Monday, May 16th - London, UK - Union Chapel
REVIEW: The Antlers - "Burst Apart"
The Antlers - "Burst Apart"
Release Date: May 10th, 2011
Label: Frenchkiss Records
For centuries, artists have obsessed over portraying love
and heartbreak in their respective mediums. The gambit of presentation concerning these two themes runs
from comical to metaphorical. The
results of such artistic exploration can ultimately be cheesy, cliché,
emotional, relatable, and occasionally transcendental. The commonality, no matter the result,
is the inherent urge for humans to investigate their own connections with love
and heartbreak through artistic expression. Love is hard to define, yet it has a great power to bring
happiness, a sense of purpose, and at times anger. This anger comes in the form of lost love or
heartbreak. Because love can’t be easily
defined, the loss of love is even harder to explain in emotional terms. Art is the format in which the
unexplainable can be recreated, bottled up, and articulated to others. Such is the case with Woody Allen’s "Annie Hall" (shown above). Even the
ending quote/metaphor Allen uses to sum up love is filled with the unknown, yet
everything he wants to say about love and relationships is summed up with the
reference to needing “eggs”. To
successfully avoid the most common presentations of these themes, the artist
must approach the creation of their piece of art differently than all those who
came before them. They must bare
emotions/experiences and delve into the most personal areas of their
lives. Be it film, painting, or
music; full transparency is crucial to delivering truth. Representations of love and heartbreak
can’t be faked. When they are, the audience/viewer/listener knows, because
these themes are universal… they live deep inside each of us.
The Antlers have taken on such themes with their album
“Burst Apart” and overwhelmingly succeed in defining the confusing, maddening,
and downright frustratingly beautiful aspects of imperfect love and crippling
heartbreak. As a critic, the way
in which The Antlers succeeded at this task is easy to define, but the process
in which they achieved such a goal must have been a lengthy and strenuous undertaking. “Burst Apart” sets itself apart in this
highly practiced exploration for two reasons.
First, the lyrical content (the stories of the songs) are
concerned with exploring the complexity and contradiction of love and
heartbreak. How could something be
both desired and repulsive at the same time? How could something that causes such euphoria eventually
lead to such great emotional pain?
The Antlers aren’t concerned with the smoother terrain of these
themes. Instead, the band goes off
the beaten path and decides to instead examine love’s lesser-explored
contradictions. They take on the concept that love isn’t a fairytale; that it is
complex and often times emotionally dangerous.
Secondly, the melodies on “Burst Apart” mimic this confusion
and pull the listener back and forth by layering upbeat tones on top of down
tempo sections. This creates
transference from the artists’ emotional intent to the listeners’ experience. The juxtaposition of these two opposite
components found in the melodies results in the very same reactions one
experiences when in love or when heartbroken. Ultimately this is the unstable
state of trying to make sense of the known, something which cannot be
described. The melodies on “Burst
Apart” are an exact representation of the album art for the record. The cover shows a cleared path through
thick brush and sharp hanging branches.
There are areas of darkness and specs of gold light that radiate from a
clearing in the middle of the darkness.
The melodies on “Burst Apart” play both in the darkness and the light,
sometimes simultaneously. The
layering of the two moods side by side creates an uncomfortable confusion, a
battle between two feelings. The end
result is an original listen; bold, daring music that doesn’t hold back any
punches when it wants to transport the listener into both the happiest and most
depressing moments of love and heartbreak.
The stories presented on each track could easily be placed
in a spectacular book of poetry.
The opening track, “I Don’t Want Love,” focuses on the contradictions
and often times frustrating aspects of love – specifically, wanting and not
wanting someone at the same time.
“You wanna climb up the stairs/I wanna push you back down/But I let you
inside/So you can push me around.”
You want to love me, I don’t want to love you… I love you; you don’t
want to love me. The track “Rolled
Together” is one of my favorite pieces of writing about love I’ve ever read or heard. The whole song is two lines repeated
over and over: “Rolled together with a burning paper heart/Pulled together but
about to burst apart.” This
visualization of love and its eventual loss is devastating: two people pulled together,
but the source of their passion is also the source of their combustion, and the
eventual destruction of their relationship. Every track is jam-packed with these kinds of thoughtful and
original approaches to the themes of love and heartbreak. The last track, “Putting the Dog to
Sleep,” ultimately displays the necessity that love has in giving life a
purpose. The song opens with,
“Prove to me I’m not going to die alone.”
At the end of the song the band shifts to “Put your trust in me/I’m not
gonna die alone./Put your trust in me/I’m not gonna die alone…I don’t think
so…”
The Antlers are not concerned with answering the questions
surrounding these heavily explored themes. The album ends with uncertainty, and never claims to offer
the listener any solutions. The
point with “Burst Apart” is that everyone has experienced love and heartbreak,
and what The Antlers have done is to attack these familiar themes with honesty
and harsh introspection. In doing so, they’ve created a piece of art that in
forty-one minutes successfully mimics the real emotional ups and downs of a
relationship.
WLFY's Ten Favorite Things Of 2011 (So Far)
10.) Beach Fossils @ SXSW
With seeing over sixty live performances, it's hard to stand out as the clear favorite of such a large music festival. I caught Beach Fossils twice and left stunned both times. Having seen Beach Fossils several times before SXSW, I was blown away by how much they had grown as a live band and taken their calm, driving guitar songs and transformed them into an unforgettable live experience.
09.) Mountain Goats "All Eternals Deck" Vinyl Release
The most beautiful and clever vinyl release goes to The Mountain Goats who not only had sleek packaging with a gorgeous inner sleeve to hold the thick 180 gram pressing, the release was layered with limited blue (120) and clear (880) editions scattered throughout the release (some are still out there!). Fans who pre-ordered the record received a limited hand made cassette with demos from the record. Arguably one of the best Mountain Goats records in their close to twenty year career was honored properly with a stunning vinyl release.
08.) Dave Berman's Blog
Nobody took the news of the Silver Jews breaking up harder than Hank and I here at WLFY, but Berman took to blogging to fill in the void. Filled with poetry, videos, essays, and interesting stories...Menthol Mounatins is a wonderful and educating daily read from one of the great musical minds of our time.
07.) Paper Crane Collective
I'm a little biased here, because I'm one of the 27 (and counting) music bloggers that makes up the Paper Crane Collective. With regularly scheduled sections by each blogger, the content concerning music pumped out by this talented collective will not be found anywhere else on the internet. Check It Out.
06.) Van Dyke Parks Does Daytrotter
I'm still not sure how Daytrotter wrangled Parks to do a session, but it's welcomed with opened arms. This is the equivilent of having Tom Waits or Leonard Cohen do a Take Away Show...it's unimaginable. No need to imagine, it's real.
05.) Tom Vek Returns
After releasing his indie rock masterpiece "We Have Sound" in 2005, Vek disappeared without any explanation. Just as quickly as he left, he reemerged with a new album announcement and impressive new track/music video that signals Vek wasn't ever gone, he was just reloading his talent. With the announcement, Vek's album shot up the WLFY list of anticipated records of 2011.
04.) Matthew Friedberger 'Solos" Project
The most ambitious and fun creation for music fans of 2011 comes in the form of eight, yes eight, solo albums from Fiery Furnaces mastermind Matthew Friedberger. It's a gift that keeps on giving as a new vinyl is shipped every two months. The first two records showcased Friedberger only using the piano on the first and the guitar on the second. Limited to 700 copies (already sold out) this is quickly becoming the gem of my vinyl collection and every two months I wait impatiently for the mailman to deliver unexplored sound.
03.) The Deloreans "American Craze"
Our favorite discovery of 2011 comes from Louisville's The Deloreans. It fits right in with this new hip trend of looking to the early 60's pop vocals as inspiration, but does so better than the rest. It's the bands understanding of the time period and roots in studying classical music that makes their compositions complex, fun, and catchy. I highly recommend ordering "American Craze" on vinyl, along with their super limited 7" "Buffalo" (150 copies on pink vinyl). Bands like The Deloreans are why Hank and I run this blog, to constantly find new bands that surprise us in the best ways possible.
02.) Radiohead "Codex"
In the whirlwind of debate surrounding the new Radiohead record, the track "Codex" slipped past silently. Only being released for a few months, "Codex" has already jumped into my top five Radiohead tracks of all time. The breathtaking emotion and visual aspects of this song remind why Radiohead became such an important band in the first place. Press play and let Thom take you into another world.
01.) Tympanogram
While Tympanogram is not a blog that was created in 2011, they really hit their stride and found a strong voice this year. The site features three to four posts a day, each one concerning a specific band and MP3. This is not just a run of the mill music blog posting mp3's for hits, each post delivers high quality writing and deep thought behind why they are featuring a specific artist. Featuring music ranging all genres, there is something on the site for everyone. For those looking for something more than just right click download, Tympanogram offers a quick way to get your music and an education on each band/artist/track. In our opinion it's a daily must read.
Preview Of The Fiery Furnaces Duo Show
May 10 - Chicago, IL - Schubas
May 11 - Chicago, IL - Schubas
May 13 - Minneapolis, MN - Cedar Cultural Center
May 14 - Madison, WI - Majestic Theatre
May 17 - Los Angeles, CA - Largo
May 18 - San Francisco, CA - Cafe Du Nord
May 20 - Austin, TX - Lambert's
May 21 - Austin, TX - Lambert's