I cried when I heard Dobie Gray died today. Crazy, huh? But for some reason I can remember exactly when I first heard ‘Drift Away’, the song that would define his entire musical career, and what that time meant to me. I was only 14, but God…when I heard the twang of the guitar that opened the song and then his deep, buttery smooth voice, it just cut right through me. And 38 years later, if that song comes on I feel the same way I did on that summer day when it first played through my Dad’s car radio…
I have no meaningful excuse as for why I haven’t put anything from the latest Wye Oak album, Civilian, up on The List since it was released earlier this year, except my usual, “I’ve been lazy and neglecting my duties as your free pipeline to new music”…but I will try to rectify that today. I had been listening to a couple of early mixes from the album since late last year, but it wasn’t until this past weekend that I ponied up the cash to buy the record, and my God it’s good! Last on The List with ‘Take It In’ back in June of 2009, Jenn Wasner and Andy Stack have crafted a seductive lamentation of angst, apprehension, rebirth and redemption.On the title track, Wasner’s voice is carried steadily along by a chugging, locomotive-like beat that without warning turns into a wall of Neil Young-like reverb and noise that hits you like a punch on the face.
“I still keep my baby teeth
in the bedside table
with my jewelry…”
I don’t know why, but that lyric gives me chills.
And the other nine songs on the album are just as lush and tight and smartly written. Don’t let me go spending your hard earned cash for you, but if you like this song, then the album is a must-buy…head on over to the iTunes Store now! For you New Yorkers, Wye Oak is opening for The National on Thursday December 15th during their week-long stand at The Beacon and you can follow them on their website.
I’ve been playing songs from the Low Roar album nonstop ever since Ryan Karazija began leaking them to me months ago, and today he debuts a hauntingly beautiful video for ‘Give Up’, directed by his friend Ali Silverstein and shot by Brian Fawcett.
Maybe you’ve read about our album cover shoot, but now you can hear what all the fuss is about. Gabrielle Aimée has a new album coming out and stylistically it’s a huge departure from her earlier work. Some of that might have to do with teaming up with Leo Sidran who produced, arranged and played all the instruments, and Hector Coulon handling the recording and mixing, but from the first few chords on ‘I Know Better’, her vocals slide into a warm, comfortable place that instantly draw you into the song. Check out her new facebook Band Page, and make sure you listen to the bluesy ‘Have You Ever’, a song she penned with Song of the Day favorite Nadia Ackerman. And for you New Yorkers looking for something to do over the Thanksgiving weekend, Gabrielle will be playing at Rockwood Music Hall, Stage 1 on Saturday November 26 at 5:00PM
It’s been about 8 months since I gave you guys a taste of Cameras when I offered up ‘Polarise’ from their self-titled EP, but last week they finally released their first album, In Your Room, and I’ve had it locked on ‘repeat’ all day. I simply can’t get enough of Eleanor Dunlop’s beautiful, mystically dreamy voice and the way she can take the lyrics and swirl & spin them into her own shimmering, gossamer instrument. I dare you to decypher what she is singing on the first go-round, but once you figure it out you will melt…
I traded my heart For a new one I stole I stole I stole Away away away…
If you know me at all, you know I’m a sucker for exactly this type of lush, layered, shoegazey Pop, but I’ve been jonesing for this record from the moment I first heard ‘Polarise’, and these guys really delivered! I strongly advise a trip to the iTunes Store to pick this one up and then head over to facebook and ‘Like’ Cameras.
A few weeks ago the crew at Damn Ugly Photography took the ‘L’ Train out to Williamsburg for an impromptu cover shoot with Chiara Angelicola…Bird Call to the rest of you. She needed a photo for her jazzy new single and I’ve been dying to shoot her for a while, so was certainly willing to help out. That single…The Ballad Of New York…came out this week and I’m giving you guys an exclusive first listen here. Her smokey & souful vocal, backed up by the cascading piano and the oh-so-sad wail of the saxophone give me goosebumps every time I play this song. She co-produced ‘Ballad’ with Noah Hoffeld, and it will be featured on the new album she’s recording now. Unlike most Songs of the Day, I’m only attaching the mp3 player and not the usual full-download link (you folks on iPads will likely have to fire up the old desktop computer to listen), ‘cuz after all, Chiara is 100% indie and needs to make a few bucks every once and a while…if I go giving everything away for free she’ll be stuck eating pork ‘n beans, so please, head on over to her website (where you can also pick up her two earlier EP’s, “The Animals Know” & “Other Creatures”) or iTunes and show her some love ($) by downloading there!
When you listen to The Hipstones, you get transported back to an era where jazzy horns, buttery guitar licks and smooth vocal harmonies ruled the day. Mark Palmer and Anthea White play off each other backed by a swirl of Steely Dan-like horn arrangements and the result is a loving wet kiss homage to 60’s soul and R&B. And next Monday, October 17th , they’ll be bringing the full 8 piece band…including a 3 piece horn section…for a special show (no door charge!) at the Rockwood Music Hall where they’re giving away an iPad 2 to the person who brings the most friends to the show! That’s right…you bring a bunch of your little pals out for a night of cool jazz and go home with an iPad! How do I get in on this deal, you ask? All you hafta do is pre-register a minimum of five (5) friends names and email addresses by 1:00PM Monday on the Hipstones Website and make sure they plant their asses in chairs at Rockwood for the show. Obviously, you wanna get as many of your friends as possible to turn up, but since the club only has 160 seats, your chances of walking away with a shiny new iPad are pretty good! So what are you waiting for?!! You can either drop them an E-mail or click HERE to enter, then jump over to their Facebook Page and hit the ‘LIKE’ button, and if ‘Spread It All Around’ makes you smile, you can pick up the album Dreamers on iTunes.
When Kate Tucker and Nic Danielson were little kids, they lived down the street from each other in middle-of-nowhere Ohio. Nic played the piano and Kate sang songs, but they were just far enough away that they never heard each other. They both dreamed of being rockstars, but Nic left Ohio before they could ever meet and form a plan. However, in a wonderful bit of cosmic kismet they found each other years later in far-away Seattle, when they both rented an apartment in the same building. Kate had teamed up with three local guys and formed Kate Tucker and the Sons of Sweden and for five years Nic was the driving force behind The Kindness Kind. And even when Kate moved to Nashville and cut off her hair and Nic folded up the tents on The Kindness Kind earlier this year, there was still a burning need to work together, so for the past months they have been collaborating remotely on new music. This week they released a few new songs as K+Nikku. The music has decidedly more electronic touches than anything Kate has ever done and it’s more Pop-driven than Nic’s work with TKK, but it perfectly showcases their songwriting abilities, along with Kate’s sweet, high-register vocals and Nic’s musical mastery. They call the new collection of songs ‘Antarctica’ and you can download all four for free over on their website…then head on over to their facebook friends and hit the ‘LIKE’ button.
OK…I gotta admit that until about twenty minutes ago I had never heard of the Scottish four-piece We Were Promised Jetpacks, but I was stumbling around the KEXP website looking for some new stuff to fill up my iTunes folder and how could I not give a listen to a song from a band with a name like that?!! And sometimes that’s all it takes…and it often proves to be great. These guys played their first gig at their High School’s ‘Battle of the Bands’ competition…and they won. Then they get signed to the Indie Power Label Fat Cat Records (Sigur Rós…they recorded their new album at Sigur Ros’ Sundlaugin Studios in Iceland, The Twilight Sad, Vetiver, Animal Collective…). ‘Act On Impluse’ is from their just-released second album, In the Pit of the Stomach. It slowly winds itself up with a thumping drum beat into a wonderfully grandiose anthem to disaffected youth…“…The smell of sweat really helps me sleep…we die alone…”. Check out We Were Promised Jetpacks on their website
I love The Radio Dept., so the news that they have canceled their tour of North America has me kinda bummin’ today. I was looking forward to catching them at the Bowery Ballroom in November, but “family related matters” have shut everything down. I’ve had Passive Aggressive: Singles 2002-2010…their compilation from earlier this year…on ‘repeat’ all day. Here’s hoping they reschedule, but in the meantime listen to ‘The New Improved Hypocrisy’, slide into a mournful groove and then check ’em out on their website.
I never would have thought I’d see the day when I would include Lindsey Buckingham among the ranks of ‘indie’ musicians, but even though he’s a gazillionaire and still tours with Fleetwood Mac, with the self-release of his sixth album as a solo artist, he apparently now falls into that genre as well. ‘Seeds We Sow’ is the title track of Buckingham’s new record and besides some pretty high-toned lyrics…‘Sweet things pretty things are dying/In the penny arcade of Edgar Allan Poe’…it’s really a showcase of his acoustic guitar-picking technique. ‘Seeds We Sow’ is available as an Amazon MP3 Exclusive for only $4.99 (or you can pay full price on iTunes) and you can check out Mr. Buckingham on his website.
I wanna close out the week with a bit of silky smooth Rhythm & Blues. I don’t wanna sound too old-fartish, but with Rap ruling 90% of the radio airwaves, it gets harder and harder to find real music these days. But with Adele’s latest album selling over 10 million copies and singers like Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings showing up on Craig Ferguson, there are glimmers of hope out there. Orly is a singer whose delivery is so strong & confident…and not to mention so damned sensual…that she could sing a Chinese takeout menu and make you melt. ‘Sit Back’ is from her recent EP, but she’s putting the finishing touches on her first album…and that’s where you can help. I’m reaching out to everyone on The List to ask that you visit her Pledge Music Page and kick in a few bucks to help her produce the record. And I know it’s not cancer or starving children or people left homeless by any one of the many recent natural disasters, but it certainly qualifies as well-intentioned support of the artistic community and if you kick in as little as $10 you even get a free album download! So jump over to Pledge Music and help her out and then go ‘Like’ her facebook page.
Andrew Belle recently dropped by the Daytrotter Studio and laid down a stunning cover of Counting Crows “Colorblind”. If there are any of you indie music fans who have yet to bookmark the Daytrotter site and visit it daily, you are missing out on a fantastic resource for new music. Not only will you get to hear new versions of songs you might already know, but there plenty of times like this when an artist will pull out something from left field that will prolly never get recorded anywhere else. Andrew was last featured on The List a year ago when I posted ‘Static Waves’, his duet with Katie Herzig. Head over to his website and give him a listen.
One minute and forty-eight seconds of snarling, snotty, ass-kickin’, three-chord punk rock that Joey Ramone would be proud of from three guys straight outta Denton, Texas! That’s Bad Sports. ‘Can’t Just Be Friends’ is from their second album, Kings Of The Weekend, a collection of 14 songs that clocks in at 30 minutes and 15 seconds and is guaranteed to get y’all sweaty after just one play. I don’t hafta say anything else…it’s punk rock…just check ’em out on their facebook page!
Dream Pop, Chill-Wave, Glo-Fi, Nu-Gaze, Shoegaze, Witch House, Freak-Folk…..Christ, if not for wikipedia I wouldn’t be able to keep track of all the new names that get thrown at musical genres these days! I’m beginning to think that if you wanna get noticed in the indie scene nowadays, you had better come up with a new name for exactly what highfalutin mood your music is meant to evoke. All of which brings us to what may be the first ‘Chill-Wave’ song to ever make it on The List. Washed Out is the alter ego of a rather harmless looking lad named Ernest Greene, who apparently put together his first album, Within and Without, whilst holed up in his bedroom with nothing but a laptop, some synthesizers and a dream. I gotta admit, before I heard a note I was initially drawn by the name of the song…Amor Fati…it had me thinking he was an aficionado of chubby lovin’, but apparently it’s a Latin phrase glommed on by Nietzsche meaning “love of one’s own fate”. My guess is that besides twiddling the knobs on those keyboards, Ernest is reading some pretty deep shit in that bedroom…probably why he looks so serious. The song itself is a fluffy bit of aural wallpaper, complete with the requisite angsty vocals and layers of deep & meaningful synth runs and would feel right at home playing as the credits roll in an 80’s John Hughes teen flick! And while that probably sounds like I’m being a tad dismissive, I actually like it! Hell…I used to listen to Howard Jones, for God’s sake…I got nuthin’ wrong with admitting that occasionally I get off on a sappy, poppy, electronic concoction! You can head over to Mr. Greene’s facebook page and hit the ‘Like’ button and if this sorta things gets your toes tappin’, you can pick up the album on iTunes. And for the rest of you, I’ll promise to find a song with some guitars next time…
I gotta thank Cheechasaurus Rex for letting me know (via her facebook page) that Cass McCombs is releasing Humor Risk…his second album in less than a year…and is giving away ‘The Same Thing’ as a taste of things to come. I’ve been dropping his songs on The List for years and have always been drawn to the way his subtle songwriting and delicate, Morrissey-like monotone can immediately pull me into his songs, but over the years any similarities to The Smiths have fallen away and he has become more of a sad folk-rock Troubadour…but if it makes any sense, he gives off an almost cheerful dreariness. Humor Risk is set to be released November 7th and in the meantime you can check out Cass on his website
Based on how their recent music was sounding, I never would have thought that Ladytron would be capable of composing a song so lyrical and dreamy and pretty….and just so bloody sweet…as today’s Song of the Day. But then I heard “White Elephant”, a leak off of their next album, Gravity The Seducer, due out in September. OK, let’s be honest…I know Ladytron ain’t exactly known for being hard-edged, but after their last album, 2008’s Velocifero, I was afraid they had made a creative shift towards being just another electro-disco/house group that I could ignore. Velocifero was a lightweight collection of blips and tinny drums and thumpy basslines seemingly aimed at the dance crowd, and quite honestly left me feelin’ disappointed. Aside from “Tomorrow”, the one track I actually liked enough to put on the SOTD (and they must have loved as well since they released a remix EP of 7 different versions) the album just seemed forced and overworked. I was probably in the minority however, cuz Velocifero has been their best-selling album to date.
But for the new album, they’ve set up shop and recorded in the pastoral English countryside. The lack of distractions, rolling hills, hedge rows and chirping birds have obviously had a calming effect on the girls, cuz based on the two songs I’ve heard, they’re sounding a lot more like when they they released the seminal Witching Hour, with songs like “Sugar” and “Destroy Everything You Touch”. The first thing I noticed about “White Elephant” was the signature harmonizing between Helen Marnie and Mira Aroyo that got lost in a wall of electronic fuzz on Velocifero is now featured up front where it should be. The sparkling synthesized harpsichords dance and float and give the song an ethereal, lullaby quality…and I can’t wait for more.
For more Ladytron news and updates, visit their website.
And as an added bonus, you even get a video that looks like it was lifted from the early 80’s!
The temporarily Nashville-basedKate Tucker and her favorite video director, Miriam Bennett, have just released a short film based on one-time Song of the Day, ‘Bullet Train’, off the White Horses album. The film features Kate and Cleveland actor Darryl Dickenson and was shot over the course of a year in Akron, Ohio. If you look closely, you’ll also see members of the Akron pop group, Dolson, chewing up the scenery. You can follow Kate…and maybe find out where she’ll be living next…over on her website. And if ya happen to be in Nashville next week (August 8th), Kate will be playing with Johanna and the Dusty Floor and Bird Call as they make their way across America on tour…I predict a very cool show!
The Pack A.D. (After Death, I’m told) are a couple of hard-hitting gals from Vancouver who have been doin’ the White Stripes guitar/drum thang for a few years and have picked up a pretty impressive following along the way. That might have something to do with their playing a mind-numbing 157 live shows in one year, or it could just be that people finally wanna hear real music again instead of whatever chart-topping crap Rihanna trotted out this week! Their fourth album, Unpersons, is gonna drop September 13th and they just leaked this fuzzy, gritty, sweaty little gem. This is prototypical garage-rock, so comparisons to the White Stripes are kinda obvious, but when they veer off into a more bluesy zone, drummer Maya Miller and guitarist/vocalist Becky Black have a lot of folks also thinking of Black Keys, Soledad Brothers, and even the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion! I just know I’m gonna give a listen on September 13th when that album comes out! Check out The Pack A.D. on their website
Normally, when you start comparing a singer to anyone who came before him you’ll typically get shot a look of disgust and a response along the lines of, “Hey Dude, I just want to be judged on my own merits!”, but Bay-area based, neo-psych, garage-grunge, fuzzy-guitar-playin’ Ty Segall so embraces the obvious similarities to Marc Bolan that he actually released an EP of classic T. Rex covers called Ty-Rex a few months back! And now he’s out with a full-length album, Goodbye Bread, where alongside the obvious Bolan touches, he’s mixed in a little bit of John Lennon vocalizing and some dirty Neil Young & Crazy Horse garage guitar licks. Goodbye Bread is his first album with Drag City and you can pick it up on iTunes. And then check out what he’s up to over on his website.
Damn Ugly Photography 