Indies & Exposure: Oh No! Oh My!

Tuesday, July 03, 2007

I know it's been forever, but I'm back in business. Here's the newest addition to the I&E series: Oh No! Oh My! To me, these guys are kind of happy, fun indie band that doesn't get annoying despite being jangly. The lead singer sounds a little like the singer from Blind Melon, at least in terms of tone. Musically, they are sort of like a mixture between Modest Mouse, (early) Built to Spill, and maybe Tokyo Police Club (although the band's site claims they get their influences from the more 60's retro sounds of Belle and Sebastian & Magnetic Fields). Most of the songs are sung with a sort of chorus-style effect over the vocals to give them some depth. The music uses a lot of layered sounds, usually underlain by handclaps and simple repeated keyboard melodies.

The band is made of up 3 guys, based out of Austin, Texas. I suspect they made a lot of hay at the SxSW shows. Their "indie pop" sound is pretty infectious and I often find myself reaching for them when I get bored with whatever I've been listening too much of recently. They are about to release a new ep and they have been touring like crazy, so they are probably coming somewhere near where you live (although no me!).

I was first exposed to Oh No! Oh My! by my trusty friend Karen, who had wedged some stuff from their self-titled first album (released last year) onto a disk of music she made for me. I've been wanting to put them up on the site for a while now, but I kept getting deterred by things. Anyhow, you can check out some of their music, including one song from their new EP at they myspace page (I haven't found any direct links).

Labels: music

Author: CHUNK » Comments:

Indies & Exposure: My Brightest Diamond

Monday, May 14, 2007

I'm trying to slowly gain ground on my I&E series by posting them a little earlier than the last week each time. This week my recommended band is My Brightest Diamond. The band is mainly one person, Shara Worden (pictured above), and they are signed to the indie label run by Sufjan Stevens, called Asthmatic Kitty Records. Like several other bands on Asthmatic Kitty, Shara Worden was a background musician in Sufjan Steven's band at some point. Now she's on to doing her own thing.

My Brightest Diamond sounds to me like a perfect mixture of PJ Harvey and Portishead. The dark moody guitar with these soft, breathy, Kate Bush-like vocals over top. Lyrically, the songs are thoughtful and even somewhat poetic, usually they tell a sort of dark or mysterious story, often with a transfixing imagery. They don't have that electronic feel that Portishead had, but the texture of the music is still surprisingly similar - as is the vocal style in places.

I came across MBD from several sources - probably the first of them was my friend Erik who was a post-doc here at UNL with me. We had strangely similar tastes in music and he is a huge Sufjan fan, so I'm sure he found MBD while digging around on the Asthmatic Kitty website. Even with Erik's head's up, though, I didn't seriously start listening to the band until we got the XM radio for Christmas, because they started playing some of the songs regularly on XMU and K and I both got sucked in a bit (I think my friend Karen also sent me some stuff in there at some point as well).

For those people who might be interested in the band's history, they used to go by the name Awry (see this link)and under that moniker the band looks like it was even more artsy. There are some links to their previous releases as Awry on that site, but I haven't really listened to them. The band also has their own website away from the label and that site has a lot more music available for download and a ton of other information, photos, video and whatever else.

Downloads and other junk:

From the album Workhorse:
Something of an End

From an AK sampler:
Riding Horses

There are also a bunch of radio performances and other sources of music to listen to that are available on the music section of the MBD website.

And of course there is always the band's myspace site.

The myspace site also has this photograph of Shara in a superhero costume complete with a cape and a sword, which cracked me up.

Labels: music

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Indies & Exposure: Owen

Thursday, May 10, 2007

Well, I'm a zillion weeks behind on my I&E series, but that doesn't mean I won't try to make it up somehow. This week we will cover the band Owen. It turns out that the band Owen is just one dude, but his name isn't Owen (it's Mike Kinsella, go figure). The band is really a solo project for MK, who was previously in a bunch of smaller indie bands that all faded to the background.

Owen's sound is actually quite different from MK's earlier projects - he's transitioned to almost a folk singer, most of the songs are just him with his guitar playing these soft, intimate ballads - telling entrancing stories, usually without distinct-sounding choruses (or sometimes choruses that come across more like bridges).

I came across Owen more of less by accident while browsing around at other bands from Polyvinyl. I wasn't familiar with his non-solo work, but as Owen, MK has been sort of releasing a lot of great music that seems to have stayed under the radar and that makes him a perfect candidate for my little series - even if only a couple more people might hear about him as a result. I got his latest album (At Home with Owen) for Christmas from Judi and they also included this awesome panda sticker, which I promptly scanned and made into an avatar for some of the forums where I post.



There's a ton of music available to check out for free; Owen was recently on Daytrotter and Polyvinyl has several MP3s, so you can definitely get a good idea of what he is like.

Downloads:
Bad News
She's A Thief
In the Morning, Before Work
The Ghost of What Shouldn't Have Been
Places to Go

More Songs @ Myspace Site

Even More Songs @ Daytrotter

Labels: music

Author: CHUNK » Comments:

Recent Concerts

Tuesday, April 24, 2007

So, I had a bunch of deadlines come in around the same time and haven't really had much of a chance to post. K and I have been to see two concerts (shows) since the last time I posted. The latest was Aqueduct, who we saw the past Sunday night at the Sokol Underground. There were three bands present: Canasta (Chicago), What Made Milwaukee Famous (Austin), and Aqueduct (Tulsa/Seattle). I know it was a Sunday night, but there were so few people at the show that I was sort of embarrassed for Omaha. Not that Aqueduct or WMMF are huge bands, but they are smaller indie bands that are making waves in other parts of the country (they sold out shows in NYC). Despite the abysmal number of people who came out to see them, the bands played well and even the opening opening band (Canasta) was pretty good.

K had made plans to buy some stuff and we were browsing the merchandise table when we first got there. Turns out the main guy from Aqueduct (Dave Terry) was out wandering around, talking with other band members and he ended up at the table while we were buying some t-shirts, so we got him to sign them. He seemed sort of shocked that we recognized him, because no one else there did, I guess. He and some of his band members were standing right next to us watching Canasta for about half of their performance. I guess I could have made conversation, but it was kind of loud in there. They also ended up right behind us during about half of WMMF's performance too, although we had moved up.

Overall, the show was very good. I also came away from the merchandise table with an older CD that you can't really find anywhere (Power Ballads), which has some old songs that aren't on any of the other releases. The small crowd managed to get them to keep playing after they had finished their set and they played some funny stuff like the theme song to Walker Texas Ranger and I'm So Excited (Pointer Sisters).

Several weeks back we also went to see Neko Case play at a club downtown. It's nice when we don't have to drive to Omaha and the club was one of those converted theater sort of things - and we had noticed Neko was coming very early on, so we got great seats in the second row, center stage. That place was packed and it seemed like most of the people knew most of the songs, which surprised me a little for Lincoln.

That was a great show and I couldn't believe how completely flawless Neko Case was. Her voice is stunning on the albums, but she sings everything live with the same perfect execution. They played a ton of songs and it was really lively, fun, and it didn't hurt that we were so close. I guess there are some advantages to living in a smaller city.

Anyhow, the next show we are planning on seeing is Tapes 'n Tapes (another band I reviewed). They are coming to Omaha sometime next month. I am hoping that I can get back into posting regular reviews again - I'm still quite busy writing and trying to keep up with the other demands of my job, but things are a little less hectic now.

Labels: life, music

Author: CHUNK » Comments:

Indies & Exposure: Jose Gonzalez

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

This week's band is a guy named Jose Gonzalez. His name is Argentinian, but he was actually born in Sweden. He is essentially a classical guitarist, but he signed to an indie label and is generally grouped with indie bands as a result (he plays at indie venues, he's played on indie radio). The moral of the story is that the indie community can love anyone, as long as they aren't down with The Man.

Jose Gonzalez really only has one full album to date (Veneer), which was originally released in 2003, but not in the US and UK until 2005. Probably another reason why Jose Gonzalez gets jumbled in with other indie bands is that he associates with them. He's done some covers of indie bands (the Knife, Massive Attack) and he is currently entrained in the British band Zero 7 (he's touring in the band and sang on 4 songs on their latest album). He also apparently listens to and is directly influenced by prominent indie bands (including my favorites: Tortoise, Elliot Smith and Cat Power).

Musically, Jose Gonzalez sounds a lot like someone used black magic to reincarnate Nick Drake and then trained him as a classical guitarist. He utilizes the same minimalism that is common in both Drake's and Elliot Smith's work and often has a dark emotional element combined with a gentle, uplifting melody that completes both of those associations. One can only hope, however, that Jose Gonzalez will not meet the same ultimate fate as both of those influential musicians.

Par for the course, I was introduced to Jose Gonzalez by my friend Karen. His music has been used on the previously-discussed TV show Friday Night Lights and increasingly in commercials. You can listen to the whole album streamed from his website and from his my space page. I'd also recommend checking out the live concert performance that he did as part of the All Song Considered program for NPR.

Note: his name is actually spelled with accents over the first e and the a, but Blogger made the characters into funny symbols.

Labels: music

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Indies & Exposure: Camera Obscura

Monday, March 05, 2007

I have a lot of stuff to talk about this week, so I hope to get some of it written up and some photos from our trip as well throughout this week - but I thought I would push ahead with the recommended band of the week: Camera Obscura. I liked Camera Obscura when I first listened them, but I have to admit that I am a big fan of Belle and Sebastian and that really primed my tastes. I knew of the band because their third album (Let's get out of this country) was released last year and the store where I buy CDs had them on display right next to the cash register for about half of the year. But, the first time I really had a chance to listen to them was when Karen sent me the first wave of music.

The band is a natural selection for anyone who listens to Belle and Sebastian. In fact, the drummer from Belle and Sebastian stood in for them for a time initially, because when the band first formed, they didn't have a drummer at all. But the band 'sounds like' Belle and Sebastian in the sense that they have a really retro sound (60's retro, not 80's retro!). The band has a lot of simple rhythms and catchy hooks, they use an organ and strings in a lot of songs, there's a lot of hand-claps and a tambourine, and the vocals are mixed with a sort of AM Radio sound effect to really give you that old-time retro feel. If you didn't live through the 60s, you might hear them and, at first blush, think someone switched the radio station to an oldies; but there are some important differences in the composition. Unlike the happy retro feel that the music portrays, the band's lyrics tend to be much darker than anything that ever came out back then - and that contrast between happy music and dark lyrics is where the mixed-messages sent by bands like Belle and Sebastian, Camera Obscura, and (going back farther) The Sundays move from just anachronistic to something bittersweet and fresh.

Camera Obscura is from Glasgow, Scotland. As I mentioned above, they were originally a 3-piece band without a drummer, but they've gradually expanded to include 6 members. You can easily pick out most Camera Obscura songs by the sound of the lead vocalist, Tracyanne Campbell, who has a distinctive voice that sounds a little like the dreamy tone of Harriet Wheeler (The Sundays) sent back in a time machine. When American interest picked up in the band, around 2004, they had already released two albums (Biggest Bluest Hi Fi and the cleverly entitled second album Underachievers Please Try Harder). They signed to Merge Records sometime around then, but really started getting some attention last year with their third full release.

I'd recommend Camera Obscura for a general audience, but I think I would qualify that recommendation by saying that most people probably aren't going to love them right away unless they already like some retro bands. Still, they are worth giving a listen and I think they also help to showcase the beloved diversity of sound for bands under the umbrella of indie music.

The band's website is actually well-kept, but it is one of those sites where you can't really directly link anything, so I am just going to give some links and let you struggle with it:
-There is some media on their website
-Their myspace page
-The band's Merge webpage

-And for those of you who are interested in following a bit more closely, they keep a BLOG.

Labels: music

Author: CHUNK » Comments:

Thursday, March 01, 2007

I wanted to mention that my weekly music recommendation series seems to be slipping by one day each week and that is partly because I have been busy trying to get some things together for a manuscript on the Lake Malawi project (and now have a review paper, another Lake Malawi manuscript, and a Foy Lake manuscript that I need to get together soon, so it won't be slowing down any time soon). But this weekend I will have a 'legitimate' excuse to not get my recommendation in by Friday, because I will be visiting some friends in DC and won't be back until Sunday night. However, my friend Karen (who supplies me with new music on a quasi-periodic basis) has just mailed me a monstrous selection of new stuff (seriously, it was well over 700 songs) and I am slowly working my way through it - so it's not like I will run out of material any time soon.

Also, while in DC, I will be hitting two hockey games, and in one of the two we will be crazy-close to the ice (not unlike the Chicago game from around x-mas) so I hope to have something to say about that when I get back.

Finally, I should add that today was K's birthday. Happy Birthday!! Hopefully there will be time to celebrate in DC, because we spent most of today preparing for the trip and working.

Labels: hockey, life, music, science

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Indies & Exposure: Explosions In The Sky

Wednesday, February 28, 2007

This week I am focusing on the band Explosions in the Sky. I 'discovered' Explosions in the Sky completely by accident one day. Sometimes when I am bored I like to browse bands that my friends talk about and I was trying to decide if I should get one of the albums from Godspeed! You Black Emperor (who my friend Leon was talking about) and I saw that Amazon recommended another band (EitS) if you liked them. So I was following that link and noticed that they had some other bands that I liked listed as 'if you like this', although at this point it was so long ago that I don't remember who they were, so I thought I would give them a shot and dug around for some music clips to listen to and read up on some reviews and ultimately decided 'what the heck?' and bought an album.

Explosions in the Sky is from Austin, TX. They are, as far as I can tell, always instrumental only. I have been hearing a lot of them recently, because Karlyn watches this TV show "Friday Night Lights" and their music is, collectively, like the show's anthem. Of course the show is filmed in Austin and the high school football team that is portrayed in the show is also from Texas, so on some level it would make sense to include their music, but they are about as far from 'football music' as it gets. I didn't realize this until I started looking around at their website to write this up, but EitS actually made the soundtrack for the Motion Picture of the same name (and general storyline).

Part of the allure of the band, in my mind, is that even without any sort of vocals, the music seems to tell a story. Almost every song they have done has a series of themes and the music just sort of builds and builds and then like a huge thunderclap in a summer rainstorm, explodes, pretty much like the band's name. Sometimes those explosions are cacophonous and sometimes they break from that build into a gliding emptiness, where you can just sense that something is going to happen but you don't know what. The themes they use are often subtle and recur throughout a single song, although slightly twisted. They can be loud and sometimes driving but always scuplted in such a way that it really does feel like they are relaying a story.

When I first started listening to them, I immediately associated them with other instrumental indie bands (particularly The Dirty Three) where it just doesn't feel like adding vocals or lyrics could make the music any better than it already is. Also, like The Dirty Three, it takes a little bit of time before you become familiar enough with the songs to hum along or know which theme is coming next, so I don't recommend this band for people who aren't going to give the music a chance to grow on you. They take a long time to write songs and (not unlike last week's I&E) their songs are often quite long and thematically complex.

Explosions in the Sky, however, has a very good website (link above) with a lot of free content available for download, including at least one song from every album, so I won't shirk anyone on the downloads this week. If you want to check out some more of the band you could also check out the TV show Friday Night Lights - their music is in the opening and is often used throughout the show in places. I should also point out that the image above is the album cover from their brand new album "All of A Sudden I Miss Everyone" (came out last Tuesday, I think) and I've listened to it enough to know that it is just as good as their older stuff, all of which I also have. If you are wondering about the weird album name, they are all like that. Here is a link to the album part of their website that contains all of the following downloads - I really like how they bothered to explain every album in detail and provide you with some context for when they were writing the songs and what they felt about them. It's clear that they want to connect with their audience both musically and emotionally.

Downloads:
Welcome Ghosts
Your Hand In Mine
Yasmin The Light
A Song For Our Fathers

Labels: music

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Indies & Exposure: Joanna Newsom

Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Joanna Newsom is one of those artists that really exemplifies why indie music isn't a genre, it is more of a musical ethic. I say this because her music is about as different from the other bands I have covered with the I&E segments as it gets, and yet her music is embraced by "the indie community" without hesitation. JN's music is distinct and readily identified by her otherworldly voice, that sounds simultaneously like a singer from the 1930s and like some kind of elfin child (which is not to dissimilar from her appearance). The music itself has a complex structure, often with multiple choruses, themes, and bridges in the same song. This also often leads to epic-sized songs (especially on her new album, Ys, which has only 5 songs, but the shortest of these is over seven minutes and the whole album is still nearly an hour long). Oh, and did I mention that aside from her voice, JN's primary instrument is a harp?

Despite having picked just about every possible feature that wasn't en vogue with modern music, Joanna Newsom's music is still captivating and quickly grows on you. The structural complexity actually makes it possible to listen to the album several times in a row and still not get bored with the sound or the underlying anthems in the songs. It is a mellow, acquired taste, but one that swells with emotion and sucks you in to its depth. Joanna Newsom seems to draw most of her sound from folk music, although whether that is derived from Appalachian back country or the interlocking rhythms of African folk musicians is debatable.

As a short anecdote, I stumbled across JN's music while scanning review pages for new music and I noticed that the album Ys was getting a lot of attention. It ranked unusually high (top 10?) on Pitchfork Media's top 50 of the year (even a blind squirrel finds a nut!) and I think I first heard of her through NPR's All Songs Considered, where she did an interview discussing her latest release. Not surprisingly, my friend Karen asked me about her shortly after that, and (for once) I was ahead of the curve - I had put both albums on my x-mas list about two weeks earlier. Unfortunately, Drag City's idea of prompt meant that I didn't actually get the albums until nearly the end of January (sometimes dealing with labels has consequences). Judi (K's mom) was a little perturbed that it took so long for me to finally get all of my x-mas gifts from her, but it was like having an extended x-mas as gifts came trickling in - plus my music playlist was extra-saturated around x-mas, anyhow.

So, on with the links. Unfortunately, I had a hard time trying to find much to showcase Joanna Newsom's work. There's a video of a song from her first album, which I will link below. Her website is essentially just the label's little page that doesn't have much else. Her myspace page isn't much better - it has the same song as the video and links to this fansite. There is also this site, which is hosted by a fan that has some other bits of her music from live shows and other stuff.

Watch the video for Sprout and Bean:
http://www.dragcity.com/video/JNewsom_sm2.mov

Labels: music

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Kristin Hersh in Omaha

Monday, February 12, 2007

We went up to Omaha on Friday to the Homer's (that's a local independent music chain) up there, because Kristin Hersh was doing an in-store performance and both K and I are fans of her music. We got there a bit early and spent about a half an hour digging through the music bins trying to find something to buy. There wasn't much new out that I felt like buying, though I did find an EP from the band Beirut. So, KH was really quite late showing up for the performance, but we found out later that their car broke down on the way there (actually it ran out of gas, but the floater in the gas tank was frozen to the side of the tank, so they didn't know that).

It was sort of funny, though, because there were about 60 people (maybe?) in the store standing around and we were all waiting for them to show and they called ahead to tell the store that they would be late, but when they finally did show, it took a while to get situated and KH ended up standing right next to us with her kid trying to get someone to point out which way the bathroom was. I noticed someone asking about the bathroom, but K actually realized it was KH while we were standing there, she just wasn't certain.

Anyhow, I think she played 6 or 7 songs, mostly stuff from the new album, although some of it was stuff from Strange Angels and one song from Hips and Makers. She has this really amazingly-raspy voice and when she performed the stuff live it sounded basically exactly like it does on the album, although at the in-store it was just her and her guitar, so it was a little more interesting in some ways.

After the short performance, she stood behind a little table and signed CDs and basically mingled with people. I thought she was really very patient, because there were a lot of weird or creepy sort of people who lined up in front of us and they wanted their photos taken with her and one guy had like 10 things he wanted signed and she didn't flinch at any of it. There must have been 8 people who she let come around to her side of the table and she stood there with her arm around them and let them click photos. I think it is pretty awesome to be fairly well-known and be that accessible to your fans.

It was a cool little show, and it was free and K and I had her sign our CD and one that we bought for a friend of K's who likes KH a lot. She also said that they were trying to get a show booked for this spring sometime in the Omaha area, so maybe we will be around for that as well.

Labels: music

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Indies & Exposure: Figurines

This week (again, a little late) the band is the Figurines. I really like the Figurine's sound - I think they sound a lot like an early Built to Spill, at least in terms of the singing sound. I probably would have put them up sooner, but for some reason I thought I had already presented them. That might be partly because I did some research into the band when I was first trying to decide to buy the album. The Figurines are one of those bands where I just sort of stumbled across them while exploring for something new to listen to and decided that I really liked them.

Part of what impresses me about the Figurines is that they sound basically like an indie band from the US, but in reality they are all Danish. And apparently in 2003 they were all over the tops of the Danish alternative music charts. Generally when I hear indie music from non-UK European bands, I find it fairly annoying and not usually very listenable - but if you didn't look at the names of these guys or dig around on the CD or the band's website, you probably would never even realize they were European. Their sound is pretty much dead-center indie, the subject material of their songs is comparable, and they never seem to derail from that - and there just aren't that many bands European bands that can make that sort of claim.

The band's bio claims that they formed in the mid-90's and that three of the four memebers were childhood friends. They started putting out albums around 2001 and their latest album, Skeleton (which I've owned for about 4 months or so now and really enjoy) was released in the middle of 2005 in Europe and then released in North America in April of 2006. The band has remained fairly obscure in the indie music scene here, although I did see Figurines on a few of the best-of-2006 lists. The downloadable songs from their website are characteristic for their sound, so check those out and see what you think.

From Skeleton:
The Wonder
Rivalry

From Shake A Mountain:
Bright
Debate Because It's Over

Labels: music

Author: CHUNK » Comments:

Indies & Exposure: M. Ward

Monday, February 05, 2007

This week's band (okay, really it was last week's, I'm a couple days late) is M. Ward. I think of M. Ward as a blues-based guitarist who has really defined his own sound. He sings just above a whisper most of the time and his guitar work is somewhere between a frantic locomotive climbing a mountain pass and the Sunday morning sunlight hitting dusty hardwood floors - which is my artsy way of saying that he is an amazing musician. For a guy who has put out four very solid albums on a great indie label, he's remarkably (and undeservedly) unknown. He's a very low-profile sort of guy, but I think the brilliance of his music and the esteem of his peers has finally started to shine a little light on his work.

I was first introduced to M.Ward by my friend Karen, who takes credit for a lot of the new bands I find and like. I think I have more of his stuff that she does now, though, because both K and I like him and we have a bit more money to spend on non-essential stuff than Karen does at the moment. It is hard to think of bands that are really comparable to M.Ward. He's sort of like Chris Isaak minus the lovesickness meets Neil Young's Deadman soundtrack. I give M.Ward a general audience recommendation - you don't need any special indie-band interests to grow to like his music - you just need to like guitar-based music.

If you don't think I'm steering you right, you can check out this list of media sources that gave M.Ward's latest release a "best of 2006" rating (from M.Ward's website): "Post-War - voted one of the BEST RECORDS OF 2006 by NPR, Spin, Entertainment Weekly, Pitchfork, San Francisco Chronicle, Boston Globe, Harp, PopMatters, Daily Nebraskan, Brooklyn Vegan..." You know you are underrated when you are listing who gave you props and you have both NPR and the Daily Nebraskan in the same sentence.

Downloads:
As with most bands on Merge, you can stream a bunch of songs from M.Ward from the label and you can check out his website as well. Also, you can hear M.Ward opening for the White Stripes live from the 9:30 Club (DC) on All Songs Considered.

Labels: music

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Indies & Exposure: Bottom of the Hudson

Saturday, January 27, 2007

One of the issues with doing one band a week is that sometimes I am struggling between 3 or 4 different bands that I really like and want to recommend, but I don't want to get carried away and throw out too many at once. So, K asked me to consider Bottom of the Hudson for this week, so that is usually enough to convince me. I discovered Bottom of the Hudson listening to my radio station on Pandora one day. Pandora is designed to find bands that match your taste in music and it does a half-decent job most of the time (of course you also get some real stinkers sometimes, but I think that overall Pandora has been a major contributor to my new music selections in the past year.

When I first heard the band Bottom of the Hudson, I wasn't paying close attention (I was working) and it suddenly dawned on me that the song I was listening to sounded a lot like an Archers of Loaf song. There aren't a ton of bands out there that I would say that about and Archers of Loaf is definitely one of my favorite bands all-time, so I did a little bit of exploring and heard a few more songs by Bottom of the Hudson and that cinched it enough for me to buy some music from them. Unfortunately, you can't just run to the store and buy Bottom of the Hudson albums in Nebraska. Every store I tried, they didn't even have the little cards with their names on it. Homer's (which is the local independent chain) is usually pretty good, but when I get some really obscure stuff, it's no use. After a while I got a little frustrated and thought I might consider just ordering it from the store, but one of the branches just happened to have the album I was looking for in their used CDs. Who knows where that person got the CD, but I was happy I found it.

Anyhow, Bottom of the Hudson is a 4-piece band from Charlottesville, Virginia (their myspace site says Philadelphia?), but it is mainly one dude (Eli Simon) who does all of the composition and he's basically the core of the band and has friends join him to play the other instruments. They initially recorded two demos, which were combined and released as an album on Absolutely Kosher Records in 2003. That album is (perhaps ironically considering I can't find it around here) named Omaha. So far I've only been able to listen to BotH's 2005 release "Holiday Machine", which is basically an EP (only 6 songs) - but I really like them - and a few other songs from their myspace site.

The band performed at the 2006 CMJ music festival this year and must have done quite well, because CMJ had them listed in their poll options (along with 5 other bands) for best of festival. I haven't really seen them get much attention otherwise, so I am pimping them a little this week in the hope that my few but faithful readers will give them a shot.

The music has been compared to Pedro the Lion, Bowie, Sebadoh, Guided By Voices, and Rogue Wave. I think it is interesting how much Eli changes his voice from one song to the next, going from nasally to gravelly, but filled with a sort of sadness. His lyrics are introspective and bittersweet. The music is usually driven by some little melodic guitar riffs and although is probably best described as indie-pop.

I normally link in the band's website somewhere in these, but the BotH site is non-existent and the label's page for the band, like all of the Absolutely Kosher band pages, look like something put together by a high school student, so I'm just going to link in the MP3 from the label site and then give you the myspace link so you can check out the songs there, a few of which can be downloaded.

Downloads:
Riot Act
Motorcaid
MySpace site

Labels: music

Author: CHUNK » Comments:

Indies & Exposure: Band of Horses

Saturday, January 20, 2007

This week I have chosen to highlight Band of Horses. This is another in a long list of bands that my friend Karen has introduced me to. Most of the reviews on Band of Horses' album (it's basically a debut album) have compared the band's sound to some sort of landscape, which I suppose isn't odd, considering that softly-ringing guitars and mellow, pretty melodies that seem to the staple of most of their songs. The oft-retarded review site Pitchfork Media even conceded the 2006 release Everything All of the Time rated an amazing (for them) #12 in their top 50 albums of the year. While they compared the band's sound to The Shins and My Morning Jacket, I would contend that they actually sound a bit closer to a mellow version of The Arcade Fire, musically - although the singer (Ben Bridwell) sounds sort of like a mix between James Mercer (Shins) and Doug Martsch (Built to Spill).

The band has a fairly interesting history - it is mainly two guys (Ben Bridwell and Mat Brooke) and who played together for a decade or so in the Seattle band "Carissas Wierd" - who I won't claim to have ever heard. After that band split up, these two guys formed BoH and then started recording songs and eventually added other members and moved to South Carolina. I guess Bridwell must be the primary force behind the band, because sometimes Brooke isn't even listed as a member (like on the band's MySpace site). I was poking around on their official webpage and couldn't find a specific listing, but I did see that Robin Peringer (from Modest Mouse) and Matt Gentling (from Archers of Loaf) were going to be on tour with them this year, helping to round out their sound on guitar and bass, respectively. Any band that garners that sort of guest lineup on tour should at least be given a listen to, right?

Fortunately for you, the band is not shy about getting their sound out there in MP3 format - so you can use this time to get a solid impression of what the band sounds like without the filter of crappy review sites or my own biases. A couple final comments abouts: I really like a couple of tracks from Everything All of the Time a lot - I'm particularly fond of "St. Augustine" (the final track) which isn't available for download, but I think the two album tracks (Funeral and Great Salt Lake) are probably a bit more representative of the overall 'sound'. Those links (below) are album version songs, the last three links are from the band's website and claim to be from the album, but are not album songs (or not album versions of them, anyhow).

Downloads:
The Funeral
The Great Salt Lake
Dingle
(for) Wicked Gil (Internet Version)
Our Swords (Demo Version)

Labels: music

Author: CHUNK » Comments:

Indies & Exposure: Tokyo Police Club

Friday, January 12, 2007

This week the indie band is Tokyo Police Club. This is another in a long list of bands that my friend Karen introduced me to and I really like their sound. They have a lot of songs with really active bass lines and guitars using harmonics or droney sounds and they like to change up the pace. In terms of bands that they sounds like, well, I could pick some other obscure bands to compare them to, like say a 'poppier' Shellac or Slint but I would suspect that it wouldn't help most of my readers get a sense of the band. They also remind me a little of Cursive now and then - only more melodic - again, not much help, probably.

In any case, TPC is out of Toronto. They started out playing to small audiences in Toronto before being invited to the Pop Montreal festival, where they apparently were finally given a fighting chance to some larger crowds and their careers have since taken off. Their first album is actually called an EP - I guess because the songs are all sort of short and thus the album plays in only 19 minutes, despite being 8 songs long. But I have to say that I often listen to this album 3 times in a row just to get the full album time frame because I like the sound so much.

TPC is on the label Paper Bag Records and while I can't provide downloads for the band this week, I can direct you to the label's site of the band that offers to stream the whole EP album for you:

STREAM

And of course, the band and label have a myspace site where you can listen to some of the songs a bit more directly:

MySpace

Our robot masters will know how to clean this mess up and build a better world for man and machine alike, for the boys and girls who are slaves building spaceships at night in the florescent light.

Can you beat lyrics like that? I dare you to try. Check them out!

Labels: music

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Indies & Exposure: Two Gallants

Saturday, January 06, 2007

This week's band is known as Two Gallants. The pair of musicians originally started in California but somehow managed to get themselves signed to the Omaha label Saddle Creek. The band is basically two guys who really embody the indie spirit, starting out without an agent or a label and just managed to spread out on the strength of their friends, fans, and the internet and have recently started to catch a lot more buzz on a national level. I saw the band's lated album listed on more than a few Top 10 lists for those crappy end of the year lists that I don't like too much.

So, how to describe the band... Well, they are really raw, rambling, kind of band that seems to like to write long, soul-wrenching songs. They aren't the sort of band that I typically recommend, at least in the sense of indie pop bands. I would describe them as a rock (and at times almost ska?) band, really, kind of like a heavier, grittier, more intellectual Black Crows. K insists that they also sound a bit like Bright Eyes (in a whiny-vocally way), but I just don't really hear it (at least in most of the songs). In the end, you basically just have to listen to them and decide for yourself, I guess. I would put the caveat that they aren't for everyone, but I really like the way they jump from a bluesy sound to a much heavier rocky sound and back and even though the singer can be sort of screamy, he just seems to put his everything into the songs and I respect that.

Downloads:
Las Cruces Jail
Waves of Grain

Labels: music

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Indies & Exposure: Sunset Rubdown

Friday, December 29, 2006

Sorry about last week's post for indie bands, I was out of town visiting family for Christmas and didn't really slow down to post from Ohio. This week's band will have to make up for two weeks of bands. Sunset Rubdown started out (2005) as a solo project of the Canadian super-indie guy Spencer Krug (frontman of another great indie band, Wolf Parade and keyboardist for the indie band Frog Eyes). He added 3 friends to round out the lineup in 2006 and between popping out albums with both Frog Eyes and Wolf Parade, he had time to release an EP and the first full-length album with the whole crew in 2006. The Frog Eyes album and the Sunset Rubdown album both managed to make top 10 lists of all sorts of music critics as well - so it isn't like he is just throwing out junk to put something out there. As if that wasn't enough, he was also part of a 4th band, Swan Lake, that put out an album at the end of this year. Some people like to keep themselves busy, I guess.

Krug's sound is a bit of an acquired taste. He's kind of a whiny, Modest Mouse-esque singer and his songs tend to hang out somewhere between sad and sweet, but most of the time also rock out on a few tracks. I decided to put up Sunset Rubdown first (I will eventually get to his other bands, I am sure) because it seems like the most unique of the 4 bands and even though I am much more familiar with Wolf Parade, I really like the Sunset Rubdown combination.

I'm not sure if Krug is just not too concerned about websites or if he's too busy plugging out albums to get one designed to his liking, but outside of his myspace and the ridiculously-small site the label had dedicated to the band, there isn't much to post. Absolutely Kosher also only has one song available for download, so my links related to SR are going to be a bit light, I guess. Deal with it!

Download:
Stadiums and Shrines II
Winged/Wicked Things (daytrotter)

Labels: music

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Indies & Exposure: Regina Spektor

Friday, December 15, 2006

This week, I'm recommending Regina Spektor. To me, Regina sounds a lot like Tori Amos (in terms of song design, anyhow) before she started weirding out and making flaky albums. RS is a little kooky, at times light-hearted, but still, musically, very gifted and always listenable. Regina usually plays along on the keyboard or piano while she sings and most of her songs have relatively few other musical elements other than that.



I was hoping that for each of these bands that I recommend that I could always just put a link up with downloads, but I don't want to put up stuff to download that isn't already available at the author's site (or their label's) and RS (and the label) don't actually have stuff to download, but her site does have a little 'internet radio player' thing that allows you to listen to quite a few songs. Her "my space" also has songs on a player, but nothing to download. So this week you'll just have to listen through the site's player.

This is the site - to get to the radio player, you need to click the music link at the top. Begin to Hope is her latest album. Fidelity is the only song I have heard played on the radio, but if you are scanning for songs on her radio player, check out the song That Time, which is one of my favorites and shows a bit more of her spectrum.

She also has her own YouTube channel, where you can see some videos.

Labels: music

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Indies & Exposure: Beirut

Saturday, December 09, 2006

I've decided to give my posts on bands to check out a new name "Indies & Exposure". Clever (if you say it fast), I know, but it beats saying "my weekly band that you may not know that I think you should give a listen to", at least in terms of concision.

Beirut is basically a band with one person (Zach Condon) designing most of the songs and then with some help from some musician friends. Zach is young (19 years old) and he grew up in Albuquerque, NM, so I feel good about trying to boost the band's exposure, having lived in NM while in graduate school. Most people who have heard of Beirut probably came to hear him in a fashion similar to me - he has gotten a some exposure on indie sites and a lot of attention on some of the blogs, mainly because his music often resembles indie legend Jeff Magnum's (Neutral Milk Hotel) and it helps that a former band member of NMH plays on his debut album.

The band's debut album is called Gulag Orkestar, which you would (no doubt) understand if you heard it, because of the gypsy roots and rambling multi-instrumental songs. There are no guitars played on the album, although the mandolin and ukulele sometimes fill in the roll of a strummy guitar sound.

Despite the fact that I am a huge fan of NMH, I think I might have fallen for this album anyhow; it reminds me a bit of the soundtrack to the movie Latcho Drom. But, I will say for those people who've never heard of NMH and aren't closet gypsy music fans, it might take a few listens before it grows on you - but if you let it, it definitely will.

Listen
Postcards from Italy
Mount Wroclai (Idle Days)

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Friday, December 01, 2006

This week's obscure band with downloads is a band from Minneapolis called Tapes 'n Tapes. They are another band that my friend Karen found and passed on to me and I enjoy them greatly. They are a bit heavier at times, but they know how to change up their sound quite a bit from song to song so you don't end up with a band where all the songs sound similar. These two tracks are linked directly from the band's website and they do a decent job of highlighting their diversity. I particularly like the way that they write songs around the slappy-sounding bass guitar (see Cowbell) and the songs have a nice energy.

Give them a listen and if you like them, think about buying some or spreading the word:

Omaha
Cowbell

Labels: music

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Friday, November 24, 2006

So, K. suggested that I should try to encourage the people who visit my blog to check out some of the bands I listen to (and the labels that they are on) by attempting to post a link to one mp3 a week (I guess that is a minimum number). This week, I've managed to get K. a bit more hooked on this band that my friend Karen introduced me to, called Aqueduct. You might have noticed that I have already had a link to their website up on the music/bands links. That's because I think this band rules.

Aqueduct is basically a one-man operation (David Terry) with a bunch of guest members when he plays in concert. The music has a unique sound, which mixes this sort of drum-machine keyboard sound thing with hooky lyrics and melodies that is hard to put a finger on. It's fun, catchy, and has a perfect blend of dorkiness and sweetness that makes some indie music irresistible after a couple of listens.

Here are 2 songs from Aqueduct's website that you can listen to for free. My only request for new listeners is that you give the tracks a chance, listen to both songs (the whole thing) and don't judge it until you've had some time with them. The first song (Growing Up With GnR) is one of my favorites and the second song got stuck in K's head for a couple days earlier this week, and I'm not sure it isn't still lodged there.

Growing Up With GnR
Heart Design

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Sunday, November 12, 2006

I've been spending a lot of time lately listening to the recordings from this concert series that is put on by NPR called All Songs Considered. They basically just record performances of the more major bands (or indie bands of note) that come through the 9:30 Club in DC. When I lived in DC, I always went to see shows at the Black Cat, which I guess is sort of the competition for the 9:30 Club, but I never saw a show at the 9:30 Club. They usually had slightly larger bands (or maybe the bands I liked were less well-known at the time). In any case, the concert series is awesome. They do a great job on the recordings and they put up a set list of the songs played for most of the acts and all you need is a Windows Media Player or a Real Player and you can stream great bands into your computer whenever you feel like it. You can also listen to the bands live on NPR if you know who is coming and when they will be playing. I'm betting that information is on the site somewhere, but I'm happy enough to just stream them.

Labels: music

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Wednesday, November 08, 2006

I read on Pitchfork Media that one of my favorite indie-band labels (Merge Records) has picked up a new band, Oakley Hall. I'm kind of excited by this, because I had just started listening to some tracks by Oakley Hall on Daytrotter the other day and then all of a sudden, they are signed to Merge. Anyhow, I think the band is pretty interesting, sort of folky-indie and you can check out some songs for free from the band's website, or you can hop over to Daytrotter and check out some of their songs performed more or less live, there, for free as well (Daytrotter loads those pages slowly sometimes - probably as a by-product of being a site where lots of music gets downloaded, so be patient).



In other indie-band-from-Merge news, the Kansas-based band White Whale is coming to Lincoln this Saturday and playing at some place down in Haymarket that I haven't been to before. We're considering going to the show. You can listen to some of White Whale's music on Merge's site, where the album (I think the whole album) is being streamed. I really dig the album cover art (above).

Labels: music

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Wednesday, November 01, 2006

I found this cool music site today while I was digging around looking for music from some of the newer bands I have been checking out. The site is >>Daytrotter<< and apparently how it works is that indie bands will stop at this studio as their tours pass through and they spend a day recording songs (they are supposed to record 4, I guess) and then those 4 (basically live) songs then go up on the website and can be downloaded for free. It's a pretty awesome way to encourage people to check out new indie bands and to collect some live stuff from bands on tour that you might already like.

I went crazy-nuts with the downloading tonight and got the songs for Of Montreal, Page France, French Kicks, Frog Eyes, Hockey Night, Sunset Rubdown, Bonnie Prince Billy, and Two Gallants. Most of those are bands that I have been introduced to in the past couple of months. If you like indie and you like checking out bands you might not otherwise hear much about, you should spend a couple minutes checking it out. I don't think you would be disappointed.

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Friday, July 21, 2006

Lou Barlow was originally in the band Dinosaur Jr., but left that group fairly early (before I had even heard of them, and long before I started collecting Dinosaur Jr. albums). I heard of Lou through his relationship with Dinosaur Jr., however, because when I worked in a CD store, back in my days at Akron, there were a couple of people who were fans of Dinosaur Jr. and Sebadoh (the primary band Lou became associated with at the time). One of these fans was a real freak about Lou Barlow; he spent a lot of time digging around for obscure imports and rare performances and even had some albums that were just recordings Lou had laid down in his own house with a 4-track. At the time, I was pretty broke, so I stayed with the more mainstream stuff, but all of this was long before you could just click a few buttons on the internet and grab any album from the label's own website. I always figured that one day I would manage to back-fill in the albums I was missing out, and for a lot of the Dinosaur Jr. and Sebadoh stuff, this is true.

I continued following Lou's career - he has always had a tendency towards obscurity, which I admire in a great song writer like Lou and he's been instrumental in forming a number of side projects including his own self-titled stuff under the label of Sentridoh, Folk Implosion, and recently opting to publish under his own name with the album EMOH (which I am writing about now).

While there is no real difference between Lou's style on this album and his style on previous albums (for example the Folk Implosion stuff), I think this is perhaps his best release away from Sebadoh. There's something about the nature of this album that doesn't just endear you to Lou, but really can change your whole perspecitve about all of his other solo releases. It's a bit like finally understanding his concept for songs and style and when you listen back to his older stuff, all the same stuff is there, but somehow it just makes more sense now.

EMOH really has great song after great song, and it still carries some of the sillyness of Lou's other releases, but he seems much more focused and the playful songwriting is more integrated into the songs as an element.

As an example of this, Lou actually brings his melodic folk sound to cover a popular 80s hair band RATT "Round-n-Round". The first 5 times I listened to it, I couldn't decide if I should laugh or cry (about the fact that I can't purge that song from my brain even today). The song is followed by "Mary", which is a clever song that is sung from the point of view of the 'Virgin' Mary's neighbor, who she was secretly sleeping around with before feigning immaculate conception as an excuse for her sudden pregnancy. The album ends on a light note with "The Ballad of Daykitty" - which details the story of a neighborhood cat that wanders into the singer's life and he grows attached to. Between these songs, Lou lays out his emotions in a raw poetic way with his usual brilliant song-writing style.

I give this album my highest recommendation - all audiences, good for anyone who likes folky indie music.

Labels: music

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