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"It's all over now...Rock 'n' Roll is shit. It's dismal. Granddad danced to it. I'm not interested in it..I think music has reached an all-time low - except for The Raincoats."
That's one of the most blithely hyperbolic Johnny Rotten quotes, the kind that kept NME and Melody Maker all a-tingle for a good decade or so. While I'm not quite ready to sub London's Wetdog for the sublime Raincoats, I can definitely relate to Mr. Lydon's excitement at hearing the scraping and mewling of the new. "8 Days" has a simplicity and a lived-in newness that's both disarming and pleasantly off-putting, and I don't mind admitting that I'm a complete sucker for the British female voice. Their set was the centerpiece of one of my most enjoyable nights out in Albion, and I hope this song can do the same for you now.
Sounds Like: The Raincoats, Liliput, The Slits, The Fall
Alexandra Hope is a one of the brightest things to heat up the sub-zero New year....Minnesota-born but raised in Paris, she reminds me of a coy, guitar-totting Charlotte Gainsbourg infused with nonchalant sexy rock attitude. This song is a blissed-out folk ode to surviving the cold, luring us to huddle under the covers for another hour with the song on repeat as snow gracefully falls outside. She's cracking into the NY music scene with a debut album, "Invisible Sunday", produced by David Muller (Fiery Furnaces) and released on Manimal (Rainbow Arabia, Hecuba, Bat For Lashes). Watch out!
Amidst some aqueous organ and a few prophetic lines from leadsingerDjangoHaskins (yes, dude's name is actually Django,) "Til My Voice Is Gone" begins like it's actually being played from the "seawall" Haskins sings about, a place where we imagine you can see orcas and sea lions and the water isn't overly salty. Then the drums kick in, and this tune turns into something like Whiskeytown on anti-depressants, super-optimistic Americana for the weekend warrior crowd. The Old Ceremony's third album Walk In Thin Air drops on February 9, so make sure to pick that up if this is your speed, it's solid.
Bergen resident Bård Aasen Lødemel - occupying RCRD LBL's interests here as Skatebård - makes the kind of music that only ever seems to emanate from Scandinavia; his dance, while betraying the influence of Chicagoan house, Detroiter techno and southern European disco, is breatharian clean, virginal in its glacial freshness and epic in its questing gaze. Pulled from recent album Cosmos, "Skatebård Loves You" is representative of that LP's frosted sex, jacking synths spurred on and ahead by tight, insistent bass and the coy vocal refrain whose promise of love melts ice, setting goo flooding into your ears, warming insides in time for the drugged Morse and euphoric breaks Njaal brings to his version of "Kosmos".
No, your eyes are not deceiving you and I did not make a typo, Miike Snow really spell their name with two I's, making them possibly the most unGoogleable band of the moment (evidenced here, Illinois you're running a close second). Little is known about these guys other than the fact that they named themselves after Japanese cult film director TakeshiMiike, so their single "Animal" is our only source of info, a relaxed, beach-ready bit of electrolyzed pop that glides through its four-plus minutes on a bed of off-beat keyboard strokes. Our friends at Downtown roped in some great producers to version the tune, and we'll be premiering those over the next couple of weeks, beginning this morning with a refix from Fool's Gold's resident disco-house dude Treasure Fingers. Doing what he does best, TF adds some thick low-end and even more bouncy keys on top, conjuring something that sounds like Kavinsky doing the Buggles. Get into the tracks below, and make sure to come back on the next couple Mondays for more versions (including a few by some well-known Frenchmen.)
Having already been hailed by their city's Post (you know, the really good one) as DC's best live band by a long shot, the Points are something else indeed: purveyors of last year's best punk record. By a long shot. "Feeling Sorry" and "Never Trust My Heart" are two filthy yet lardless cuts from that self-titled full-length, one I really wish I could just share in its entirety. Your parents would hate this so much.
This is essentially the best T.Rex song Guns N' Roses never wrote. And yet, it's just so unimaginable that this song would be a big single today, even though the chorus has one of those lyric-less melodies you will never get out of your head. Does anyone else not remember those awesome keyboards at the beginning? They sound ill.
It's hard to talk about Baby Birds Don't Drink Milk without talking about Chomp Womp. BBDDM are three dudes from Lawrence, Kansas who make dreamy swirls of indie pop muted glory who have four categories of releases: Out Now, Featured On, Sold Out/Out of Print and Upcoming Releases. I don't even know which category "Fort Pork Chop" fits into, but it's real pretty. "Dry Depths" was featured on Chomp Womp Comp Vol. Tew, a free compilation from the folks at Chomp Womp, a Lawrence, Kansas based collective/label/family of kids who apparently love pop, shoegaze, beautiful tunes and good times. Listening to the comp and BBDDM's catalogue you get the feeling that in about 10 years these songs will be compiled on a Yellow Pills-like release and people will wish they "knew about them when..."
The always-killing-it dudes at Institubes have dropped their first heater of the year upon us, a "Lay Low" remix of Orgasmic and Tekitek's "The Sixpack Anthem" featuring Tallahassee "pop-hop" dude E.Mackey. Originally written as a tribute to the Sixpack clothing brand, Orgasmic's new mix basically sounds like Flo-Rida's "Low" if it'd been done by some Miami Bass dudes with a Franco-synth jones. We could try and explain how and why the song came together, but the Institubes guys (as usual) have done a much better job of that over at their RCRD LBL Blog, so head over there for the truth and some incredible gravity-defying promo snaps.
Sounds like: Flo Rida, DJ Craze, Michna
Apparently, when asked to turn in a debut album to their label, Bucks County, PA band Illinois (yes, the second band-not-from-the-locale-they're-named-after in two days) handed over a hard drive crammed with 114 home recordings. Impressed by the productivity, the band's label +1 Music decided to do something special and announced a six-month-long release schedule for a series of EPs and films that would, as a whole, serve as the band's full-length debut. That project is called The Adventures Of Kid Catastrophe, a tale based around a pseudo-alter-ego of frontman Chris Archibald. We've been given an exclusive track from the third chapter of the series (watch it on YouTube here, the music will hit iTunes next week,) a tightly-arranged Americana jam called "Are You Coming With Me?". There's piano, three or so chords, and Archibald's lyrics about getting someone out of a bad situation, so make sure grab the tune and find out more about Kid Catastrophe at the band's website.
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