2-7-12 - "Glowing Mouth" ~ Milagres

Just found this band thanks to 1,2,3's facebook post regarding upcoming shared tour dates.  This song is delectable and transcendental, with ambiguous yet intriguing lyrics.  A slow vibe that just draws you in.


Album version:

And of course, if there's a sweet acoustic rendition on youtube, I'm obliged to include it as well:

"When the tide is low we’re digging through the loam..."

PS - free download of the track on bandcamp! (and at least one more freebie if you poke around there...)


PS2 - check out the whole session on biguglyyellowcouch (including downloads of 3 tracks).  


PS3 - holy crap there's a Daytrotter session (also with free downloads!)  It's like freakin' Christmas in February!

2-3-12 - "Sequel" ~ TeamMate

Here's a sweet new track from a sweet new band.  A band comprised of Scott Simons, an expatriate of West Virginia who's been living in LA, and Dani Buncher, a Pittsburgher who you might know from my ramblings about Big Hurry and Big Snow Big Thaw (the other two bands for which she is the drummer)  I'm not gonna lie, I'm a bit disappointed this band isn't called "Big TeamMate" or something to that effect...


Oh yeah, and the duo used to date for, like, ten years, so that adds an interesting dynamic.  This is their debut single, just dropped last night.  It deals with their breakup and some of their story, some pretty rough relationship stuff set to infectious upbeat pop sounds.  If this is any indication, they'll be quite a fun show at Brillobox next weekend...

Oh by the way, free download of this track on their facebook page.  Bangarang.


"Sometimes all you've got is too much
sometimes nothing's ever enough..."

12-28-11 - "Sprawl II" ~ Arcade Fire

If you've been paying attention, you'll know that I love juxtaposition.  First, the word itself is something special.  Second, the contrast between joyful music and depressing / somber / provocative lyrics or imagery, or maybe satirical commentary on modern civilization, or just plain self-destructive tendencies.  This song is just that - if you listen to the tune without paying attention to the lyrics, it is inconceivable that you won't be dancing, or at least tapping your toes; but if you pay close attention, the song is about the never ending consumerism, drudgery, and mediocrity that is suburbia... not quite as cheerful as the sonic array would lead you to believe.  I choose to view the music as giving a hopeful edge to the lyrical bleakness, and lines like "dead shopping malls rise like mountains beyond mountains" do indicate the expanse of the blight, but "mountains beyond mountains" also rings of hope.  The phrase is partially a tribute to a book by the same name, by a doctor who has spent significant time in Haiti working with disaster relief efforts.  To quote the description: "At the heart of this book is the example of a life based on hope and on an understanding of the truth of the Haitian proverb 'Beyond mountains there are mountains' – as you solve one problem, another problem presents itself, and so you go on and try to solve that one too."  I have yet to read it, but it's high on my list for the new year.


If you want to dig deeper into the lyrics and their meaning, this one's a good one to pull up on songmeanings.net - complete with a plethora of comments discussing things.


Now for some fun.  Arcade Fire recently released an intense and awesome and epic (further superlatives escape me) website / interactive music video.  If you have a webcam, I highly recommend using it - and if you don't have a webcam, you can still experience (some of) the fun by clicking around during the song:

 Sprawl2.com 

(If you are lacking confidence in your dance skills and need inspiration, watch this and this first.  And if you're totally lame, you can watch the "traditional" version of the music video on the site instead of the interactive version...)


And just for you audiophiles or lovers of Arcade Fire, here are some live performances to further sate your appetite:


 (live studio acoustic session)

(New Orleans Jazz Festival 2011, with special guest Cyndi Lauper - yes, that Cyndi Lauper)

(different song, but had to include - the prelude to the above, in which Arcade Fire's encore began with a cover of Lauper's "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun"... featuring the original artist herself.  If you're clever, you'll watch this one *before* the above...)

(plain ol' music video, for you lame folks)

"They heard me singing and they told me to stop

quit these pretentious things and just punch the clock

sometimes I wonder if the world's so small

can we ever get away from the sprawl...?"

12-19-11 - "Top Bunk" ~ Gauntlet Hair

I'm going to be honest: I'm not precisely sure what's going on here.  But I like it.


Gauntlet Hair is a noise pop duo from Chicago by way of Denver.  This track has looping guitar riffs and somewhat dissonant interludes, along with nigh-unintelligible lyrics.  (It's my custom to pilfer a line or two and include at the bottom of the post, but in this case, I can't make out enough of a phrase to put anything remotely meaningful.... so... yeah.)

It might not be your cup of tea, but then again you may find yourself drawn to it as I was.  Give it a click, and if it's not for you, just browse to another post, like maybe some Sufjan Stevens if you're a hipster, Arcade Fire if you only liked Sufjan before he went mainstream, Said The Whale if you only liked Arcade Fire before they went mainstream, William Fitzsimmons if you just went through a divorce or nasty breakup, Bob Marley if you're Rastafarian or just like weed, or.... you know what, just browse around!

12-15-11 - "By Your Hand" ~ Los Campesinos!

Indie pop from Wales, but not Welsh (at least according to Wikipedia...)  I guess stranger things have happened in this world.  Wherever they're from, they caught my ear, and lo and behold, now they have a chance to catch yours.


This track is a bit darker than you might think from the music.  Catchy and engaging synth and upbeat major chords won't have you thinking about your untimely demise, but that's the subject matter which belies the mood of the melody.  The accompanying video has some nostalgic moments with toys from our collective youth, but contrasts these images with some twisted and morbid scenes, a juxtaposition which is quite unsettling:

"By your hand is the only end I foresee..."

12-02-11 - "Boomerang" ~ Bassnectar

I've been in strange musical moods this week, or unusual for me, anyway.  Here's a little something you may or may not enjoy - but I enjoy it, and you won't know until you try!

12-01-11 - "Lofticries" ~ Purity Ring

A jumble of thoughts regarding this one:


>  Trippy, trance-y, transcendental track.  I listened about a dozen times and for some reason couldn't get past it; just one of those strange songs that I'm drawn to.  No guarantees that your tastes will agree with mine on this one.


>  Once I finally started paying attention to the lyrics, I noticed they drop "asunder".  Any band so eloquent is fine by me.


>  Abstinence until marriage, baby!


>  Anyway, here's the song:

< And here's the free download, if you're so inclined.


"Bring, bring the thunder

and the loud, loud rain

lead our woes asunder

'neath the proud, proud veins..."

11-18-11 - "Great DJ" ~ The Ting Tings

Quickie tonight.  This one may not be for everyone, but as always, I urge you to give new things a shot, because it's good for you.  Although technically this song isn't brand-spanking new, but rather a few years old...


The Brit-pop duo cranked out a catchy tune, a little on the repetitive side, but in a fun way.  And the video is... interesting.  How do you make a cheap yet somehow awesome vid for a song?  Two parts white people, one part deliberately terrible choreography, one part your cousin's videography skills:

"Your folks got high at a quarter to five..."

11-16-11 - "Houdini" ~ Foster The People

So I finally picked up Foster The People's album recently, because who doesn't love an album that's chock full of tunes just waiting for commercials to use them?  I mean, screw Corporate America and The Man, but dang is this album catchy!


After a handful of spins, this track has grabbed me the most.  The hook is off the hoo... wait I mean chain.  And the lyrics are actually fairly deep too.  It delves into the musician's dilemma - opening one's soul up to the masses. It speaks out against conforming and compromising due to fear, fostering the people (a bit of a stretch, I know, but deal with it) and encouraging them to stand strong and put their talents and skills to use.  And sometimes we all wish we could pull off miraculous escapes like Houdini...

And lest you think that they're just hiding behind all the electronic sounds and synths...

And here's a hybrid live performance from SNL which still has some of the synths, but brings more focus on the keys and vox while adding some sick horns... (hey, ah, Foster The People, you got a little, uh, Ben Stiller on your shirt...)

Also featuring Kenny G.  What.

"With the lights turned up, it's hard to hide
sometimes I want to disappear..."


(PS - Mark Foster kinda looks like Zach Braff...)

11-15-11 - "Slow Days It Was Super" ~ Moshimoss

Here's a little ambient / instrumental tune that caught my ear recently.  It's by a Japanese artist, and kind of reminds me of another instrumental track I posted which also has something to do with Japan.  This one has a gentle vibe of bygone years, with children's voices echoing over the subtle synthesizers and bells...

Check out the bandcamp page too

10-8-11 - "Gimme Sympathy" ~ Metric

(if anyone's keeping score, this is my second late post in three days... I blame Canada.)

The Peak came through with a bunch of good tunes during my time in Vancouver, and here's another one. A little bit electronic, a little bit pop, a little bit egocentric...?

And of course you know by now that if there's an unplugged version, I'll add it for good measure:

"After all of this is gone

who would you rather be,

The Beatles or the Rolling Stones...?"

10-6-11 - "Lights" ~ Ellie Goulding

So I made it 9 months without missing a daily post (although a few came an hour or two past midnight EST.)  But due to a combination of travel, a late night at the Penguins-Canucks game in Vancouver, and a crappy computer that wouldn't connect, I didn't get to post yesterday.  So here's yesterday's song, retroactively.


Heard it on 100.5 The Peak, Vancouver's awesome radio station, whilst driving up from Seattle.  One of a plethora of great songs they played, many of which will likely show up here in the coming days.  This trip is in some ways a mirror of the trip which originally inspired me to start this blog, and this station played a role in that.


This track is from a British songstress and is a bit on the dance/techno side, but it's enjoyable and has some interesting lyrics...

"...the queen has been overthrown..."

9-27-11 - "Wildcat" ~ Ratatat

Oh, just a little jam for you tonight.  Instrumental, más o menos.  With synthy, crunchy guitars and the roar of the wildcat, it's just loads of fun hitting your eardrums.  The duo from Brooklyn is fairly new to me, but after refreshing my Garden State soundtrack kick a few days ago, I thought I'd trust a tweet from the film's writer/director/star, Zach Braff, and check these guys out.  They may not ever top my list of favorite artists of all time, but I'll certainly give them some digital spins in the future...

"Rawr!"

9-24-11 - "Such Great Heights" ~ The Postal Service

Stayed home sick from a concert I was really looking forward to attending.  Watched "Garden State" instead, and was reminded of some good tunes from the soundtrack.  The film uses the Iron & Wine cover of this song (which is also awesome); I'm focusing on the original.

The Postal Service is (was?) a side project of Ben Gibbard (of DCFC fame) and Jimmy Tamborello.  The name was derived from the fact that they recorded tracks for songs and mailed them to each other to build the songs.  Kinda cool, eh?

The song is upbeat, electronic, and catchy, with lyrics celebrating finding one's soulmate... a bit cliched, perhaps, but still fun.  

Here's the Iron & Wine cover, too:

"And I have to speculate

That God himself did make us

Into corresponding shapes

Like puzzle pieces from the clay..."

9-18-11 - "Photograph" ~ Donora

My first experience with Donora was growing up in the Monongahela Valley ("Mon Valley" or simply "the Valley" for those fortunate souls who live there).  It may be that I'm the only one in the world amused by this, but Donora is three miles from everywhere.  At least, there were a few green and white highway signs that said so scattered about the Valley.  Interesting that all of these signs happened to be erected at points 3 miles from a certain town...


But enough about my strangely-wired brain.  Let's talk about the band whose name is derived from this great town.  Donora (the band) has overtaken Donora (the blue collar coal town) in fame, at least according to a Google search, and that's saying something, considering such folks as Stan Musial and Ken Griffey (senior AND Junior!) were born there.  They're baseball players, in case you didn't know - and pretty good ones, in their respective days.


I'd heard a lot about the band, but hadn't really heard them until their CD release show on Friday.  Fellow Pittsburgh rockers New Shouts were part of the celebratory concert, which made me that much more interested to attend and finally see what the hype was about.  I was pleasantly surprised by the other opener, Way Yes from Columbus, and New Shouts brought Casey on stage during their set for a fun and catchy rendition of one of the tracks from Donora's new album (but we can't talk about that yet - it's a secret!).



"Photograph" is one of the tracks that jumps out at me from Donora's first album, which I picked up at the show.  Their music is primarily lighthearted pop rock with some fun synths and loops, and this track is no different.  However, if one wanted to read into the lyrics, one could surmise that there are underlying intonations regarding the fleeting nature of human existence and emotion.  Change often comes (for good or bad), and we do well to cherish our experiences in memory, learn from the mistakes and look back on the good times to cheer us up in the bad times...

Not from the show I attended, but here's a live performance from a concert (which, unfortunately, I missed) earlier this summer:

"It was supposed to last forever

Every feeling we ever had

We said we'd remind each other

When we'd forgotten the lives

The lives we had..."

9-16-11 - "Tommib" ~ Squarepusher

I heard this song in the soundtrack for the movie "Lost In Translation."  It's used in a scene (see below) where a character is staring out her hotel room window over Tokyo, feeling alone in a big city, while her husband is off working.  I had a similar culture-shock experience in Japan a few years back - well, without the husband part, and I'm not as good looking as Scarlett Johansson.  But feeling isolated despite being surrounded by people - with that I can empathize.  As an American, the difference between visiting Europe and visiting Asia is drastic.  In Europe, I had at least a rudimentary grasp of German, Spanish, and Italian and used my recollections of high school Latin classes to decipher a decent portion of signs and whatnot in Italy.  But in Japan, ninety percent of what is written is in some combination of kanji, hirigana, and katakana.  Not as easy to get by over there.  Being the only light-haired person in a sea of black-haired folks is pretty surreal, too...

Anyway, the song captures the mood quite well, and is a very simple synthesized instrumental melody.  Check out both the scene and the original tune.

Tommib (audio):

Lost In Translation Scene (once again, YouTube and Blogger have bested my embedding skills!)

9-14-11 - "Polish Girl" ~ Neon Indian

This one is delightfully trippy, and the video matches that vibe.  I'm not quite sure what's going on in the song or the video, but this is one case where I'm fine with just enjoying the beat for now, and I'm sure everything will become clear next time I drop acid... wait I've never done that and don't intend to start.  And despite the fact that Neon Indian has a song titled "Should Have Taken Acid With You", I'm sure he hasn't either.  Drugs are bad, boys and girls.


Anyway, apparently there's this girl, see, and she hails from the land of halushki and pierogies n'at, which is fine by me.  Many Pittsburghers enjoy these fine Polish cuisines, and as a resident of neighborhood of Polish Hill(ish), I count myself as one of them.  So the girl cooked some Polish sausage and pierogies for Neon Indian, who in turn wrote this song to commemorate a lovely evening... yeah, that's a solid interpretation of the song.  I'm gonna roll with it.  Enjoy:

9-4-11 - "Help, I'm Alive" ~ Metric

Actually found this song on a free download mixtape from their label, Mom+Pop Records, and iTunes, which I heard about thanks to labelmates Freelance Whales.  Didn't realize before this, but Mom+Pop actually has a few other swell artists, such as Ingrid Michaelson and Sleigh Bells.


It's a catchy track with vague references to zombies, but probably she's really singing about trying to find her way in a dog-eat-dog world.


Electro-rock original version with somewhat trippy music video:

Chillaxin' acoustic version:

"Come take my pulse, the pace is on a runaway train..."

8-26-11 - "Green Light" ~ Leisure

Found this one thanks to the good people at Tympanogram.  The ethereal feel of the song is crafted from a dirty little piano hook slathered over a sparse drum loop, and the mournful vocals float above like the morning fog over the Allegheny River... or perhaps I should say the Charles, seeing as Leisure hail from Boston.  


The lyrics paint a picture of entropic developments, perhaps the waning of a fiery relationship.  

Green Light by leisure


EDIT 1-3-12:  Check out this awesome stripped-down (can't say "acoustic" because the guitar is still wired, but it's sans electronic effects) performance!

"And when the rain comes down and hits us

We'll be dying just to live..."

_________________________________

Oh hey so check Leisure's Bandcamp page for 2 free songs! (not this one, but hey, still freebies and if you like this track you might like those ones too.)  Also of note, apparently they played in London tonight and play in NYC tomorrow... not messing around with those travel plans...

8-23-11 - "Repatriated" ~ Handsome Furs

Sometimes a song just grabs your ear and won't let go.  I heard this on my commute home today, and fortunately caught the name so I could look it up when I got home.  It's catchy musically and thought-provoking lyrically, which if you've been paying attention you'll know is one of my favorite combinations.


I'll leave to your interpretation the precise meaning of the lyrics, but I think they're certainly a rally cry against apathy...

"The frozen land
I'm never going back there
It was a lie, a lie believing itself..."