The last great Tuesday of the year for new indie releases is a real beauty: Yeasayer, Blues Explosion, Black Dice, Vampire Weekend and many more.
Yeasayer, All Hour Cymbals: Far and away the best album released today in my estimation, chances are pretty good that All Hour Cymbals will end up my top five for the year. I talked a little bit about them yesterday, but to boilerplate it, Yeasayer are from Brooklyn and they’re basically a musical gift basket: just an oddball collection of sounds/treats/instruments. At times it can veer into cultural tourism a little bit, but the music always feels very natural — not forced. Very highly recommended.
Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Jukebox Explosion: Hey! It sounds just like… a Blues Explosion record! And way better than I thought it would! I’ve already talked quite a bit about Spencer before on this blog, and, especially in light of the dulldulldull Heavy Trash stuff, you’d think that I’d be 1000% not into this. But based on an admittedly fairly cursory listen, it sounds pretty damn tight.
Vampire Weekend, Mansard Roof: Two more spectacular tracks from everyone’s favorite preppie Afrobeat fans (the first song, “Mansard Roof,” might be my favorite of theirs). PS: Don’t hesitate to check out Vampire Weekend’s new Daytrotter session that went up yesterday. PPS: I forgot to mention before that Yeasayer and Vampire Weekend are friends/play a lot of shows together here in NYC. Makes sense.
Modeselektor, Happy Birthday: This came in over the weekend (Todd and I have been impatiently awaiting its arrival for a month now), and let me just add to the chorus about this one: it’s really damn good. In particular I’d like to recommend the title track — I had to program a couple of eMusic-related mixes for CMJ, and I always included this track and without fail people would come up and ask who it was.
The Besnard Lakes, Volume 1: I was kinda cool on the Dark Horse record that the Besnard Lakes released earlier this year, but I have been enjoying Volume 1 quite a bit the past few weeks. It was actually recorded four years before Dark Horse, and has a slightly more primitive feel. Here’s a line from Jon Weiderhorn’s review: “the songs revel in their limitations, turning conventional rock instrumentation into hazy, sometimes urgent psychedelic journeys in which melody is always present, but clearly secondary to atmospheric exploration.”
Black Dice, Load Blown: Their DFA stint apparently over, Black Dice go indie again for Load Blown, which is way more melodic than I remember them being (I didn’t listen to the last record, so maybe this is not a new development). Basically the template is this: hissy recording aesthetic, little warbling keyboard melodies, backing accompaniment that sounds like “Kid A.” Anyone looking for something a bit outré would do well here.
Comedian Harmonists, International: Jewish a capella group popular in Germany during the Third Reich Weimar era. There’s a Ryko comp of their stuff that I’ve always loved — primarily covers of American showtunes and standards in German — and this collection mines similar territory. More than just a curiosity.
iLiKETRAiNS, Elegies to Lessons Learnt: From Craig McLean’s review: “All this doom and pretension can be as irritating as their ‘radical’ approach to capital letters and the use thereof. And yet, if you immerse yourself in this defiantly contrary music, a melancholy beauty does, eventually, fitfully, peek through. It’s a Sigur Rós for moody Goths and suicidal emo-kids everywhere.” Also, the dudes in the band showed up to eMusic’s CMJ pizza party last week, so brownie points to them.
Castanets, In the Vines: Messy, furious and mournful country-rock, kinda like Palace with traditionally better vocals.
Ray Davis, Working Man’s Café: New solo album from the Kinks frontman.
A Mountain of One, Collected Works: Daniel, you take care of this one in the comments.
LOL. Happy to. AMO1 updates 70s prog with modern indie rock sensibilities, in the process sounding mostly like a Balearic Fleetwood Mac. The songs are unhurried, dreamy anthems; smooth guitars, bouncing basslines and 80s rock vocals/harmonies create a dizzying, swirling song structure. Also, the songs really groove, in a way that a lot of indie rock doesn’t. I suspect the fellow that wrote that article in the New Yorker lamenting the lack of “Black Music” in indie rock would approve of AMO1.
Virtually all the songs are compelling, but standouts — for me, anyway — are “Ride,” “Innocent Line” (which is a bit too new age-y and/or Christian Rock-y for some people, but whatever), and “Brown Piano.” One of the best, most satisfying discs of the year. Totally worth your downloads.
What about Tullycraft?!?
Also, the Comedian Harmonists were popular during the Weimar period. They were quickly banned during the Third Reich era (precisely because they had three Jewish members).
Sorry for being so (a) longwinded and (b) inarticulate!
“Armchair critic syndrome,” I guess.
thx for the correction ben. fixed in the post.
Perhaps the reason the new JSBX sounds so awesome is that… it’s actually (mostly) a collection of 7″-only releases from the early ’90s?…
hahaha. and perhaps i am an idiot!
The Jon Spenser cover is a nice takeoff on the Back from the Grave LPs.