(i went to a pug costume party on sunday. this dude ruled.)
Another great haul of new arrivals today — I decided to break it out into “Known” and “Unknown.” And we’re off!
The Known:
Neon Indian, Psychic Chasms: The most recent recipient of Pitchfork’s coveted “Best New Music” designation, Neon Indian are weird and warbly and synthed-out, a fantastic, endearing collection of warped ’80s-derived pop music that keeps giving and giving and giving. Highly recommended
Thao, Know Better Learn Faster: New Thao! Our Douglas Wolk sez:
Her guitar pokes gingerly around these songs, as if it’s trying to avoid direct contact with something that’s still too sore. The rest of the band is punchy and celebratory, for the most part: there are backing vocals, keyboards, boisterous appearances by horns and strings. The centerpiece of every arrangement, though, is Nguyen’s bruise-tender voice — part Cat Power, part Beth Orton, giving every carefully measured-out word precise spin. “What am I, just a body in your bed?” she yelps in the chorus of “Body,” and every time she hits that “bed” it turns into a razor-sharp blue note slipped between the melody’s ribs.
Joan Baez, How Sweet the Sound: A companion album to a documentary of the same name, How Sweet the Sound collects some genuine Baez chestnuts, including her heartfelt take on “The Night they Drove Old Dixie Down” and “I Pity the Poor Immigrant,” a duet with Bob Dylan.
Harper Simon, Harper Simon: Son of Paul. Really! He even kind of sounds like him — light and tender folk songs reminiscent of Elliott Smith in lots of places. These are effortlessly melodic songs, and fans of folk music with minimal accoutrements will find much to love here.
Bad Lieutenant, Never Cry Another Tear: New band from Bernard Sumner and Stephen Morris of New Order, which should give you an idea what to expect: bright, ringing guitars, Sumner’s classic, aching vocals, and hooks huge and immediate. Sounds to these ears like the last few New Order records. Also, remember that song “Crystal”? What was that lyric? “Here comes love, it’s like honey / you can’t buy it with money”? Except you totally can buy honey with money. So WTF are they talking about.
Snoop Doggy Dogg, The Lost Sessions: The upside of Death Row being revived is that they appear to be cleaning out the vaults. First came the stash of unreleased tracks on The Chronic, now comes this haul of rare, vintage Snoop stuff. I only sampled, but it sounds pretty tight to me (the song “O.G.” especially). Worth a spin for fans of the vintage West Coast sound.
Boris, Japanese Heavy Rock Hits, Vol. 1: New Boris single, the first in a planned triliogy. eMusic’s Frank Neuman sez:
Over the course of their 15-year existence, experimental metal trio Boris have produced more material than nearly any act in the genre. What’s more, each release is a completely different experience. The creative minds behind the pseudonym-obscured group have no intention of creating a unified sound, and on their latest 7” single — the first in a series of three — the group has yet again tweaked their atmospheric hard rock. Nine minutes of Boris at their freshest and most daring should satisfy not only fans of heavy metal, but anyone looking for a different rock sound. If the first foray into this trilogy of singles is a harbinger of Japanese Heavy Rock Hits to come, this first effort may be the perfect introduction for those wanting to enter the always-evolving, ever-challenging world of Boris.
Lightning Bolt, Earthly Delights: New Lightning Bolt! Nasty and confrontational as always, Lightning Bolt bring the noise in the nastiest possible way. Percussive, rip-roaring, riveting.
Sene & Blu, A Day Late & a Dollar Short: New Blu! Even when not partnered with best-foil-ever Exile, Blu still delivers canny, heartfelt and nimble rhymes. I love this dude, and can’t wait to sit down and fully absorb this one.
Andrew Bird, “Anonanimal”: New single from Andrew Bird delivers as expected — as lovely as ever.
Franco, Francophonic Vol.2 : First of all, if you haven’t yet read Richard Gehr’s excellent column on Franco, do so immediately. This second compilation focuses on some of Franco’s later work — in his review for us, Gehr sez:
During the 1980s, the great Congolese bandleader spent most of his time in Europe until his AIDS-related death in 1989. (The final track, late 1988′s “Sadou,” ends with the French words, “The sick man exhales his last breath.”) During these years, each of Franco’s big TPOK Jazz bands — one in Belgium, another in Zaire — were almost exclusively recording side-long tracks, including the six (!) tunes comprising volume two’s first disk. Each of these exquisitely balances three or four lithe guitars and multiple sweet-voiced singers with gruff yet lovable horn riffs and Franco’s own commanding voice. “Sandoka” may well be the album’s highlight, but “Princesse Kikou” boasts quite possibly the most sinuously seductive guitar figure and vocal refrain Franco ever waxed. Disc two focuses on slow, simmering grooves at first, with Franco taking advantage of modern recording techniques such as overdubbed guitars and electronic drums.
People Under the Stairs, Carried Away: Admirable in their reliability, the latest from People Under the Stairs actually sounds pretty good — tight throwback beats and limber rapping. A totally decent outing.
Grant Lee Phillips, Little Moon: Phillips applies his soft, tender voice to more lovely acoustic-based pop songs. He’s never quite recaptured the sublime mystery of his days in Grant Lee Buffalo, but this is a solid and rewarding collection nonetheless.
Erin McKeown, Hundreds of Lions: Quirky, spunky pop music that doesn’t sound at all like I thought it would. This should appeal to fans of, say, Nelly McKay or even Fiona Apple. Worth a sample.
Forro in the Dark, Light a Candle: I don’t know much about these dudes except that people like them. Worth checking out!
Skeletonwitch, Breathing the Fire: I love this record, but I’m not gonna push too hard. Ohio band combines thrash fury with black metal vocals and surprisingly melodic guitar leads. Hot.
The Unknown:
Various Artists, Reggae Antholgoy: Winston Riley, Quintessential Techniques: Excellent roots reggae comp featuring the work of producer Winston Riley. Riley began producing in 1968 at the age of 22, and as you can hear from the tracks assembled here, his work is exceptional. He may not be as well known as, say, Coxsone Dodd or Joe Gibbs but, man, can anyone fuck with a track like Johnny Osbourne’s “Come Back Darling”? Fantastic, and well worth the downloads.
Hospital Productions: I just want to shout this label out because I like them a lot. New York-based Hospital Productions (they own a store on 3rd St by the same name) specialize in dark, black, unholy noise — atmospheric, unsettling, really really excellent stuff. I know few people share my affection but, just in case: Hospital can’t be beat. Try Creamations by Cold Cave. That’s their idea of “accessible.”
Ah Holly Fam’ly, Reservoir: Tiny, demure folk-pop, shy and retiring vocals over plaintive strums and odd atmospherics. Sounds very promising.
Bear in Heaven, Beast, Rest, Forth, Mouth: Hazy, woozy pop music, similar in some ways to Neon Indian. A quick sample sounds nice: wonderfully lo-fi with prime slack vocals.
Black Feelings, Black Feelings: This one is appealing to my inner goth — dark, doomy sounding music, with bottom-of-the-well vocals and nasty, scraping guitars.
Nihil, Grond: Awesome, 11-plus-minute-apiece black metal jams. The guitars go so fast that they start blurring together at a certain point. Sounds amazing.
The Heavy, The House that Dirty Built: Scuzzy R&B-based rock music, similar to the Dirtbombs. Our Tim Chester sez:
Make no mistake, the Heavy know how to make an entrance. The second you’ve passed the ominous B-movie sample that opens their [second record], they fire a short, sharp garage sidewinder in your face: “Oh No! Not You Again!” is a sub-two minutes Sonics boom of scuzzy guitars and frenzied drums, backed by The Noisettes’ Shingai Shoniwa on “uh huhs” and “oh yeahs.” It comes across like The Dirtbombs at their grimey finest.
no Raincoats?
Also today:
• Chromeo’s entry in the DJ-Kicks series
• J Dilla’s Dillanthology (Vol. III)
Any word on the new Grant Hart disc?
No Raincoats. Learned on Friday we would not be getting it, sadly. It doesn’t look like anyone has it — I don’t think they have the digital rights for it.
No word on the Grant Hart yet.
So many little things today
That Arthur Russell track that the Grizzly Bear producer dug up,
Come To Life
– http://www.thedailyswarm.com/headlines/grizzly-bear-dude-releaese-lost-arthur-russell-track/
Jah Wobble 7″ from Pressure Sounds. The remix is better than the original, in my opinion.
I don’t know much about Thomas Function, other than that they had an EP on Tic Tac Totally. But their full length, In The Valley of Sickness has a nice obnoxious bite to it. And I’m pretty sure “Belly of The Beast” is a Billy Joel rip-off.
The Del The Funky Homosapien and Tame One full length, Parallel Uni-Verses.
And finally, this really great comp from World Village, The Silk Road Ensemble, which features a lot of great contemporary composers that I know little to nothing about, but it sounds great!
Don’t know if it’s known or unknown, but the new Black Cobra, out on Southern Lord, sounds amazingly kick-ass, at least judging from the samples: http://www.emusic.com/album/Black-Cobra-Chronomega-MP3-Download/11669358.html.
What about Little Girls? I love me some reverb served up with a side of distortion. Yummy!! I’ve been looking forward to Bear In Heaven and Neon Indian. Really digging The Heavy.
Hooray for All Holly Faml’y – you MUST hear “The Unfolding” to really appreciate what they do. It’s like Sufjan Stevens invited the girls from Dirty Projectors and Elvis Perkins to sit down for a spell.
Additional albums you haven’t mentioned that I’ve sampled and stashed cuz they sound pretty promising:
The Chinese Stars
Drink Up Buttercup (damn poppy!! loving it!)
Glass Ghost
Hollands (a duo but wow, they have crafted some great songs. with strings!)
Mates of State (remixes)
My Tiger My Taiming (EP but sounds promising)
Paper Planes (single – again, sounds promising)
The Young Republic
Hurrah New Thao (swoon)
) but I was just clued in on Capybara http://www.emusic.com/album/Capybara-Try-Brother-MP3-Download/11572207.html
Ummm this is cheating (becasue it actually came out September 1st
Very Dodos (hints to Ptolemyclark and Flamegirl and probably Daniel ESQ too)
“Very Dodos (hints to Ptolemyclark and Flamegirl and probably Daniel ESQ too)”
Coincidentally, while my iPod was recently set to “Shuffle,” I heard a song from The Dodos debut disc, and was blown-away by how good it sounded. A great, raw sound, especially the drums.
Good catches, flamgirl, and welcome back — I might be wrong, but I feel like it’s been a while since you were here last!
I just can’t speak highly enough of BEAR IN HEAVEN (ask flamgirl, I haven’t shut up about them in at least a week). Throw Yeasayer and “Waiter”-era Portugal the Man and you’ve got something similar to Bear in Heaven. I have been uber-impressed with recent Hometapes releases (see Megafaun)…definitely a label to watch.
I don’t know exactly when it showed up, but the full Gui Boratto album Take My Breath Away finally showed up. I have been waiting since March, it’s only been available on iTunes and Beatport.
Totally forgot about this: The Brooklyn What finally ended up on the site in the past couple of days. They’re a great garage band from Brooklyn, they actually consist of a bunch of guys from my High School.
The Brooklyn What For Borough President
That Franco collection is unbelievably freaking fantastic–even better than the first Francophonic, I think.
And the Arthur Russell track is really lovely, too!
Harper Simon spat on me once. Of course it was a tiny club in Moscow where he was playing with his old band Menlo Park and I was up the front, but still, its my rock claim to fame.
Fuck Buttons LP? Amazing…
http://www.emusic.com/album/Fuck-Buttons-Tarot-Sport-MP3-Download/11610223.html
Franco, reggae, noise and metal. good haul, thanks for the updates. i’ve been hoping Hospital Productions would start showing up here at some point, but (and i’m sorry for this, i’m basically over the new price structure, i’m not just trolling) the album pricing on Kevin Drumm’s Imperial Distortion is a damn shame as i’ve been waiting to pick that up for a while. i’ve also been waiting on Cold Cave though, so i’ll just get that and count my blessings.
@jrn: i hear you, man. i’m glad you’re into the hospital stuff too, tho! i almost bought the cold cave vinyl from the store on monday, but bailed on it at the last minute.
@joe – I apparently respond to yr blog here in fits and starts. ah well, I suppose it keeps you on your toes!
@nergal – FANTASTIC! thanks for the rec! I’ve stashed it for when my dl’s refresh. It’s the waiting that kills me.
I stumbled across a sneaky one too – The Growlers. I think they were a daily download a bit ago. Give them another listen. They got a killer groove.
are the Boris singles going to be available in the UK?
Hey who was it that kept wanting Female Japanese songs?
I think this MIGHT fit the bill
http://www.emusic.com/album/Small-Color-Hikari-No-Hana-MP3-Download/11668994.html
and it’s free
Hey Nergal, that would be me. Thanks for the link, I had already downloaded it (I don’t remember if it was free when I did though), so it does fit the bill! It’s just the kind of thing I’m looking for. They have an album called “In Light” (12k, http://www.12k.com/1057.html ) due on Oct 20th, which I hope will appear on emusic too. (Joe, can you say if we’ll get it (UK)?)