na: odds & ends
(photo by emmedibi)
Some odds & sods in the last few days of new releases. Here’s a quick rundown of stuff that seemed exciting:
The International Noise Conspiracy, The Cross of My Calling: Everyone’s favorite Swedes return with a record that finds them moving even further away from their chaotic garage roots to throwback melodic ’60s guitar-pop. We did an interview with Dennis, which should be hitting the site soon. Fans of gliding power pop should dig.
Bing Crosby, Hey Jude: So this is totally extraordinary. Der Bingster himself croons his way through the title track, as well as Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now,” “Little Green Apples” and quite a few more. Plus, it’s got incredible cover art. Definitely worth checking out.
Waylon Jennings, Waylon Forever: Final recordings from country legend, sounds somewhat promising.
Shoreline, Time Well Spent: Some lovely, sparse, twinkling indie. I’m into this — hushed, ethereal vocals, brittle, plucked guitars,
Arch Enemy, Tyrants of the Rising Sun: One of my favorite metal bands live in Japan. It should be noted, for those unfamiliar, that Arch Enemy’s singer is a woman. Take that, Sia. You can watch a trailer here to see just how fucking badass she is:
The Red Shore, Unconsecrated: More metal, fierce, angry, etc. I like.
Jedi Mind Tricks, Violent By Design: People who like Jedi Mind Tricks say that this is the one to get. These guys never really clicked for me, despite the fact that a) I love hip-hop and b) I love Philly. I’m going to give it another try today.
Clairaudience, POWWOW THREE: Weird, guitar-driven indie, somewhat experimental. Not sure what’s going on here, but can’t quite ignore it, either.
Fuzzy Lights, A Distant Voice: Calm, kinda atmospheric instrumental indie — somehow calming and spooky all at once.
Momus, Joemus: New Momus. Once upon a time, I would have been very excited about this.
The Nerve, Seeds from the Electric Garden: This is a psych band from the….90s. Don’t hold that against them: there’s enough incense and peppermint to satisfy tie-dye aficionados. In what I find the weirdest twist of all, someone named an actual garden after this record. Not the other way around.
Thee Vicars, Back on the Streets: Some good, lo-fi semi-garage — though to these ears, this is wayyy spazzier than actual garage. And I mean that in a good way. Jabberjaw vocalist and some crazy, sugary riffs.
The Threads, Step Back in Time: Melodic quasi-mod from the 80s, with the third track sounding like something left off a Clean record.
Nucular Aminals, Nucular Aminals: Super lo-fi indie rock, sparse and amateurish in good ways. Sounds decent.
Various Artists, Hot R&B Singles from the Future: The only way these tracks are from the future is if you’re reading this post from 1984. Three great, silky, modern R&B tracks, one by Ralph Tresvant.
ZOMG that “new” Waylon sounds amazing (well, except maybe White Room). Not available in my country, natch but still, top stuff.
i agree with you on Jedi Mind Tricks. they just seem like a bunch of braindead overly aggressive angry white boys to me. the kind of rap show where drunken idiots start mosh pits and dump their drinks down girls shirts. plus, while homophobia in rap lyrics is unfortunately pretty commonplace, these guys take it several steps too far by threatening actual violence against gays. really, guys?
Loving The Nerve, who open with a cover of The Nazz, “Open My Eyes,” which in turn unapologetically channels early Who. Swap organ for 12-string Rickenbacker, and “House of David” begins with a melody almost exactly lifted from “If I Needed Someone”..which George Harrison wrote as a tip of the hat to The Byrds, whose entire early sound was a tip of the hat to George’s playing in The Beatles.
Needless to say, both Open My Eyes and If I Needed Someone spun off sounds of their own…and not just to The Nerves, who’ve simply done what you hear in those songs too: make clear-eyed, wide-eyed references to yet other references…each of them oddly fresh in their own ways. Not a whiff of cynicism in sight.
Recursive much? Yes, please. I’ll take two.
jrn: yeah, i dunno about those dudes either. so many people swore by them, but i just can’t deal. give me blu & exile or johnson & jonson — or, hell, Nas or Jay-Z or early OutKast — any day over this.
i feel kinda the same about non-phixion. i remember really loving the future is now when it came out, but all of the offshoots were too stomach-churning for me.
Hey this one may have passed people by too
http://www.emusic.com/album/The-Edge-103-9-Acoustic-Live-and-Rare-2008-MP3-Download/11336673.html
Including Acoustic Songs from Gogol Bordello, Cold War Kids and (yuck) The Gin Blossoms
Two Jedi Mind Tricks tracks to check out (from Violent By Design):
Animal Rap (feat. Kool G. Rap)
Speech Cobras (feat. Mr. Lif)
also honorable mention to
Tibetan Black Magicians (feat. Canibus)
I totally feel what you guys are saying but check these tracks.
You know Mr. Lif has it going on…
LOL! All those tracks except Speech Cobras are on Visions of Ghandi..my bad.
Anyway, yeah Speech Cobras is the track I recommend from that album.
I’m really digging both the Clairaudience and Nucular Aminals albums, or at least from the samples. I SFL’d both.
I will definitely check out those tracks, porieux – thanks for the heads-up!
Ptolemy I did the same thing with Nucular Animals, but was less into Clairaudience somehow. What can I say, I like a vocal with my rock music.
I finally grabbed Nucular Animals–love it! Fits right in with some of my latest lo-fi faves of the past year: Prussia (“Dear Emily, Best Wishes, Molly” is on Emu and is incredible!), First Communion Afterparty (available at CDBaby, so hopefully will turn up on Emu soon so I can sing endless praises of them), and Suave as Hell (which will hopefully get a proper US release at some point)–all three of these ended up in my Top 15 of 2008. Turns out that NA are label mates of Desolation Wilderness, a band Alex dedicated a whole post about last month.
Comment 12 is spam AFAICT