Indie Rock
A Great Big Pile of EPs
Brooklyn indie rock trio, A Great Big Pile of Leaves, will be releasing two new EP’s on November 1st. One EP is titled Live from the Living Room- Volume One, which was recorded in the living room of Motion City Soundtrack keyboardist Jesse Johnson. This is a joint release by Topshelf Records and Pressing Matters, which is run by Johnson. The other is a studio-recorded EP titled Boom, which will be released by Topshelf Records. Both EP’s will have new and re-recorded songs and will be available digitally and on vinyl only.
Recommended: wavepool abortion
From damn near out of nowhere (well, Russia actually) comes wavepool abortion (non-capitalization required), an exhilarating wreck of a band that has neither the interest or patience in, say, “building sound sculptures” or “rewarding repeated listening.”
The Russian duo keep the antagonistic spirit of rock alive, in all its celebratory give-a-fuck-ness. This is addition by subtraction, a reductionist equation that hands your ass to you and tosses you out of the sweaty corner dive, covered in alcohol fumes and (mostly) your own blood. The kind of music that used to be whipped up by teenagers with permanently sunken eyes and garages full of amplifiers. The kind of rock that crawls into bed after dawn and can’t get up before 2 pm, staggering back into existence slightly before dusk, looking like a million bucks, if a million bucks dressed in second-hand leather and was badly in need of a hepatitis shot.
Video: Y Luv – “All Night”
Not too long ago, I posted Y Luv‘s “All Night”, a straight-up jam from the Los Angeles based band. The short, infectious track was the single from Y Luv’s newest EP, How Chill Can You Let Go?, and now has a set of visuals that come straight out of Venice Beach. Don’t expect to understand what’s going on in this one, but hey, at least the song’s good, right?
MP3: Y Luv – “All Night”
Girls Play ‘Fallon’
Girls made their first ever TV appearance last night with a late night performance on Fallon, rocking out with a live rendition of Father, Son, Holy Ghost opening track “Honey Bunny”. They also stuck around for a web-exclusive encore performance of power-ballad “My Ma”, also a cut from the band’s new album. Check out both below.
“Honey Bunny”:
“My Ma”:
Father, Son, Holy Ghost was just released on September 12th via True Panther and has already garnered praise from a wide range of sources.
The Second Coming of College Rock: Nu-Gaze Edition
Presented for your consideration today: two fine New Bands whose aural tendencies echo the past, specifically that magical decade or so stretching from 1985-1995, when College Rock was actually a Thing. Good times, those what with talented and possibly drugged up students spinning everything under the sun that would never see the light of day on Top 40 radio.
Jangly arch-country from Camper Van Beethoven rubbing musical elbows with imported British takeover applicants The Charlatans UK (the appended UK gives it away). But first and foremost, atmospheric shoegazer epics drifted across the lower ends of the FM dial, carried by sparse megawattage that nearly allowed the signal to escape the surrounding parking lot.
This was before College Rock morphed into Alternative Rock (aided by MTV), which soon transformed (via the arrival of Nirvana and about a million bandwagon-jumping A&R men) into various shades of grunge, which a half-decade later got drunk and passed out in tattoo shop, awaking only to find itself the inadvertent caretaker of Helmet and Dr. Dre. Once it was discovered that talent skips a generation, this malformed child was christened “Nu-Rock” and abandoned in the care of a million frat boys, each of whom assumed growly yelling was a viable form of artistic expression.
BUT! These two tracks have nothing to do with a decade-long run of strangely earnest guitar wrangling in which louder always = better and melodies were something for the girls to enjoy along with their roofie-laced drinks. These two tracks bring back the “alt” in “altrock,” summoning up the swirling, hazy guitar anti-heroics of a short generation of pedal-pushing geniuses who operated under such unlikely names as My Bloody Valentine, Yo La Tengo, Catherine Wheel and Sonic Youth.
Your Band Name v. Google, Featuring Belong
New Orleans ambient drone duo Belong showed up out of nowhere with the 2009 vinyl re-pressing of October Language, an album recorded in 2004 and previously released in 2006. A followup album (Common Era) was released earlier this year. Not bad for a group that’s been around since 2002 and whose Allmusic bio refers to a followup album being due sometime in 2007.
Perhaps the glacial pace of Belong’s release schedule has something to do with the glacial pace of the music itself. “Late Night”, a Syd Barrett cover, coasts along at a beatless pace that redefines “languorous.” (No. Really.)
lan guour ous (adj.) – dreamy: lacking spirit or liveliness; “a lackadaisical attempt”; “a languid mood”; “a languid wave of the hand”; “a hot languorous afternoon”
1. See: Belong – Late Night
2. See also: These guys, whose 1995 album A Stable Reference defined languorous up until sometime between 2006 and 2009 (depending on which version of October Language you picked up), at which point Belong stole the definition away in broad dusklight under the cover of the space between the notes..
3. See also also: Low, whose pace is so languorous that time slows perceptibly during live appearances, rendering analog clocks unusable and a number of their fans late for work.
It’s a thing of gauzy, womblike beauty. The vocals fade in and out of the background (which is also the foreground, apparently). The track itself is something you experience more than you hear. It takes concentration to get everything out of it, but it’s well worth the effort, especially as it heads towards a muted roaring crescendo. (I realize that phrase seems to make no sense whatsoever, but LISTEN TO THE TRACK.)
Now, if your interest is peaked, head right over to Google and search up a storm. Thanks to a pile of writeups from some influential music blogs, Belong’s various pages have risen towards the top of the listings, resting comfortably between a stack of dictionaries. However, things haven’t improved much on the image side. Google doesn’t read minds (still in closed beta) so sorting by relevance is about as useful as sorting by dartboard.
Now, if you’ve decided to name your band after a common English word, you should know you’re engaging in a uphill battle for SEO hearts and minds. Of course, you could just go another direction and claim popular profanities for yourself, thus ensuring that every venue will now have to invest in asterisks in order to display your edited band name on the marquee. See also: Fuck Buttons, Holy Fuck, Fucked Up, Fukkk Offf, That Fucking Tank, The Fucking Eagles, etc.
Back before they took off, there was no better way to see if you’d forgotten to turn Safesearch back on than aquick image search for Fuck Buttons. Of course, now that they’ve become one of the more prominent Fuck groups, the natural progression of organic SEO has filled the search results with images off two guys assaulting a table full of electronics, rather than various orifices being assaulted by various appendages.
But what if you’re not as popular as the Fuck Buttons? What happens if your band name keeps unfortunate company, image-wise? Consider Nashville’s finest (only?) drag/witch house group, Party Trash. If you’re looking for some “relevance” from the image search, well… good luck. If you just needed an excuse to eyeballyoung party fiends in various states of disrepair/disrobement (now officially a word!), “Party Trash” is all you need to know. And that’s with Safesearch on.
Speaking of witch house, what if you’re knee deep in triangle cultists with names like GuMMy†Be▲R! andℑ⊇≥◊≤⊆ℜ and †‡† and other Unicode horrors? Bad news, surfers. Google has no idea what you’re looking for.
So between the witch housers who don’t want to be found, the drone rockers who like to hang with Merriam (and Webster –alternating Tuesdays) and the others who turn your office computer into an inadvertent Bacchanalian slide show, what’s Mr/Mrs/Ms Internet to do?
Go to a trusted source. [Insert self-promotional link to website here.]
Oh, but before you go, take a listen to this track from Belong’s latest LP, which shows the pair up to their old tricks, only faster, louder, harder and more melodic. If “Last Night” is a lullaby heard through a wall, “Perfect Life” is the daunting leap into a frigid, rushing river without ever escaping the noose.
Happy Birthday Freddie Mercury
Very few vocalists have been given as high praise as lead vocalist for the rock band Queen. Known as one of rock’s greatest entertainers, Freddie Mercury would have turned 65 today and the band is making this event a very special occasion. Today, Google’s doodle is dedicated to him. For this event, the band has uploaded the entire video ofLive at Wembley Stadium. You can watch the video below.
Stream Laura Marling’s ‘A Creature I Don’t Know’
English singer-songwriter Laura Marling returns with her third album A Creature I Don’t Know, the follow up to 2010’s critically-acclaimed I Speak Because I Can. “The album is like a slap and a stroke,” Ms. Marling described to The New York Times, where you can now stream the album. “It’s done the thing it wanted to.”
A Creature I Don’t Know is set to be released on September 13th via Ribbon Music/Domino. Tracklisting available after the break.
A Creature I Don’t Know Tracklist:
01. The Muse
02. I Was Just a Card
03. Don’t Ask Me Why
04. Salinas
05. The Beast
06. Night After Night
07. My Friends
08. Rest in the Bed
09. Sophia
10. All My Rage
Jack Black + ICP and the Deftones + Witch House. If Anyone Opposes This Union…
So… this is a thing that happened…
For no discernible reason, Jack White has teamed up with the Insane Clown Posse and JEFF the Brotherhood to pay homage to the German affinity for all things anal[Editor’s note: Mozart’s “Leck Mich am Arsch”]. Since it’s been heavily reported and corroborated (and filmed), I’m relieved to note that this just wasn’t another fever dream resulting from an afternoon spent imbibing absinthe and pop rocks while filling out Mad Libs with the aid of a stack of Spin back issues.
While I can see ICP’s desire to work with actual artists, I’m more puzzled by White’s involvement. Perhaps the recent disbanding of the White Stripes has left him with an excess of free time, and lord knows there are only so many “interesting” mustaches you can grow. And I suppose JEFF the Brotherhood jumped at the chance to work with White but were (perhaps) not privy to all the details. (JTB walks into studio, sees ICP: “What the hell are you doing here? ICP: “Who the hell are you?”)
But, nonetheless, it has happened and there’s video proof. Enjoy?
And then there’s this:
Deftones‘ frontman Chino Moreno decides to throw his goatee into the ring and cranks out a witch house EP under the name †††. There’s nothing quite like an interloper insinuating himself into the genre du jour. This move will undoubtedly result in the unfortunately not-rare-enough double backfire as diehard Deftones fans reject this faster than a Canadian health care recipient’s body rejects a black market kidney. And the cool kids of death™ will have nothing to do with this nu-metal tourist.
See also: this statement from †‡† (a.k.a. Ritualz), who is upset that Moreno is stealing Unicode. The comment thread has clearly been given over to Deftones fans, whom I would gently like to remind that the band name is properly pronounced “Deft Ones.”
Listen: Bon Iver’s Solo Piano Version of “Beth/Rest”
“Beth/Rest” may just be this year’s most polarizing song. The closer to Bon Iver‘s sophomore album, the 80’s style soft-rock lullaby both stunned and wowed listeners. In his review, our own Darcy Morgan loved the unorthodox style and commented on how only Justin Vernon could pull off such a risky song. Vernon himself has repeatedly defended the “cheesiness” of the song in interviews.
Now, a few months after the song’s initial release, Vernon has given us even more to talk about. In his session for NPR World Cafe, the singer-songwriter performed a highly stripped-down version of the song on a piano bench. That’s right — no saxophones, no solos, no cheesiness. Just a performance of “Beth/Rest” in its most basic form, including some deep, nearly spoken vocals in the intro.
You can listen to the song here, as well as performances of “Holocene” and 2009’s “Blood Baby”. You can also stream/download the MP3 below.
MP3: Bon Iver – “Beth/Rest (Solo Piano Version)”
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