Atmosphere

These are two Canadian bands that I find myself putting on mostly when its raining outside or when I feel like trying to achieve that very pleasant, but difficult to find space between sleeping and being awake. Both play what I would describe as atmospheric music, but they do it using different means. Kepler uses quietness, subtlety and simplicity (with some loud guitar bursts thrown in for good measure) while Sianspheric uses every effects pedal in existence to create songs built around thick walls of distortion and white noise. In the end, both create some very organic sounding soundscapes. And both have new albums out.

Sianspheric - To Myself
I love how the vocals in this song have such a hard time competing with the gigantic guitar swells that seem to fill every space in the room when you're playing this. Obviously this needs to be played loud to be appreciated, and it pretty much goes without saying that you should also be lying on your back with your eyes closed. This song is from Sianspheric's new album RGB which is a kind of 'best-of' package and is a worthwhile introduction to the band if you're unfamiliar. It's originally from the great album The Sound of the Color of the Sun.
[Buy RGB from Sonic Unyon]

Kepler - Broken Bottles, Blackened Hearts
This song has the kind of understated, melancholy sound of much of Kepler's earlier material. I especially like how the song is built around a simple piano part backed by gently feeding-back guitars and the occasional cymbal crash. A lot of their new album, Attic Salt, is more pop oriented but, even as such, the songs still maintain the atmospheric quality that attracted me to the band in the first place. You can find some more Kepler MP3s from Attic Salt and earlier albums here.
[Buy Attic Salt from Troubleman Unlimited]

Diskettes!

Guess what!?
On Sunday September the 4th at 8 pm sharp
The Diskettes
and
Francois (with a little thing on the c) from Bristol, England

are playing in the court yard of the Vancouver Public Libray, central branch

Please tell all your friends! It will be a good time!

Get Together

All Creation Bows

I have to admit that I've come upon Lungfish in a backwards manner. I'd never given them a listen, even though I'd heard their name because they were on Dischord. I came across David and Asa's side project The Pupils based on its interesting cover and label. The album is fantastic, and I would post a song but the CD was recently taken from my car. I need to buy it again, it is so sad looking at the empty case. I'm glad I decided to check out Lungfish I love the guitar tone, it is so raw and alive, yet the music sort of lulls about. Beauty.

Lungfish - All Creation Bows from their new album Feral Hymns

Summer Soundtrack: Volume 4

In the course of about a week, summer went from being unbearably hot and disgusting to cold with tornado warnings. Needless to say, this is the last installment of the summer soundtrack series. And because I declare summer to be officially over, these songs have nothing to do with summer or how much this particular one sucked my ass.

Clem Snide - The Dairy Queen
This song has some amazing imagery that actually makes me feel nostalgic for my economically depressed and slowly disappearing home town.
[buy]

Mclusky - She will only bring you happiness
Funny songs are usually only funny for so long. But I still laugh when I hear the last verse, even after a few weeks of listening to this. It also helps that the song itself is pretty catchy and great.
[buy]

Frog Eyes - The Mayor of the Town Laments the Failures of His Many Townsfolk
This is easily the best of all the Frog Eyes recordings. It manages to capture a hint of Carey Mercer's frenzied vocal delivery but still sounds like it was filtered through an AM radio.
[buy]

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Posting will be light for the next few weeks. I'm trying to finish my MA thesis and it is destroying my mind.

Rock Bottom Riser

I saw Bill Callahan, aka Smog, play a show last week and it was unnecessarily good. Callahan seemed to acknowledge this during one of the few times he addressed the crowd. "I just wanted to note," he said, "that I'm singing very well tonight." Perhaps the quality of the show was due to the fact that the new Smog album, A River Ain't Too Much to Love, is clearly his best album to date, or maybe it was just that the sweltering heat was making me dizzy. Whatever it was, every song played, especially the ones off of the new album, felt like a classic. I was in a state of stupid grinning for the whole show it seemed, my heart rate rising every time he started in on another song.

This song is from a bootleg of the show. It is one of my favourites from the album and sounds just as beautiful here.

Smog - Rock Bottom Riser (live)

Jay already did a great post on the new Smog album, and you can read it here. You can also find one of the better reviews of A River Ain't Too Much to Love, written by Sean at Said the Gramophone, right here. If you're interested, here's a link to another amazing song from the album (via Insound).

Smog - I Feel Like the Mother of the World

Exclusive Goodness

I know I know. I have been really lax on my posting lately. I recommend using an RSS reader such as Bloglines, then you wont have to keep checking, yet you'll know when we post. I am here to redeem myself.

I just received a copy of some songs my friend Warren has been working on. Jacob who is recording the songs for Warren tells me they are a rough mix. The first song, Lie took over a month to record, though this was working in scattered evenings. Parts of the song have 30 different layers, to tickle your ears with. Though impressive the greatness of these songs do not lie in the layer count.

Warren has a voice like no other. Well more actually he has voices like no other, as he is singing all the various parts on each song. This is most impressive on the song Angst. I have a feeling it might be a love or hate type voice, because it is so unique, but I firmly fall on the love side!

I think you just need to listen to these songs now. Warren is currently looking for a label to release this and a variety of other songs, email me and I'll pass on his contact information.

Lie

Angst

Diane Cluck

I've been listening to so much new music lately that I'm having a hard time keeping track. But even as new albums pile up un-listened to, I find that I've been playing this song at least a few times a day. I've been feeling an urgent need to share it, so here it is.

Diane Cluck - Easy to Be Around
I was lucky to have stumbled upon this song a while ago after randomly following one of the links on Largehearted Boy's daily list of downloads. I'd never heard of Diane Cluck, and wasn't able to find much useful information on her or her music after a cursory google search. Judging by this song, though, I assume that she sings with her eyes closed, swaying her body back and forth slowly. I also assume that soft drugs are involved. Regardless, she also knows how to write some fantastic vocal arrangements. Despite the simplicity of the guitar strumming and the lyrics, the harmonies seem to build up in complexity after each verse. By the end of the song the voices become a kind of wall of sound behind Cluck's own vocals, making the phrase 'easy to be around' sound a little bit different every time it gets repeated.
[Find Unhelpful Info on Diane Cluck Here]

Random Rules

On the subject of Pet Politics, there's a very good interview over at Pitchfork with that particular song's composer, David Berman of the Silver Jews. The interview is almost shockingly candid, with Berman discussing everything from the details of his finances to the evolution of his drug problems to the reason why the second half of Bright Flight was kind of disappointing.

While the interview got me excited about the soon to be released Silver Jews album Tangelwood Numbers, I'm still waiting for a follow up to Berman's amazing first book of poetry, Actual Air, which is easily the best book of contemporary poetry that I've read in a long time. Supposedly, Jens Lekman seems to think so as well - enough to unconsciously lift an entire line from one of Berman's poems in his song "You are the Light". (See Lekman's journal entry for March 8, 2005.) You can't blame him, though. I usually find that all of my most original thoughts are already lines of Silver Jews songs. Elsewhere, Said the Gramophone recently had a good post on the phenomenon of bands named after Silver Jews lyrics (which is where I found the interesting tidbit about Lekman).

Anyway, enough rambling. Here's two spoken word versions of poems from Actual Air that I've borrowed from the unofficial Silver Jews website, the Corduroy Suit. (It's a great website, you should check it out.)

David Berman - Governors on Sominex

David Berman - My Life at Home During Banking Hours

Pet Politics

my name is Magnus Larsson and I'm from Gothenburg, Sweden.
I'm calling myself Pet Politics when I'm creating music.

This email showed up in my inbox a few days ago, and when I checked out the music (as I always do) I was very pleasantly surprised! I hate throwing around names but Pet Politics sounds like a smaller less sexual Pink Mountaintops. I have been especially enamored with the song In my head which I have been playing over and over. It is the kind of music that makes me want to make music. Smart and good yet simple enough that it puts thoughts of productivity into your mind. This a great thing because that is what rock and roll was all about and Magnus is a rock and roller. I although have a few questions for Magnus.

1. Is Pet Politics a one man outfit?


2. Is there an album available ? If so where can I get a copy?


In my head

The Next Big Thing

I really wish that what these two bands are doing would become the 'next big thing'. Please, no more new wave or garage revival. No more dance punk or saccarine Beach Boys emulating pop bands. I don't know how you would describe what they're doing, but it's inherently unpopular. It's music that's hard to dance to. It's chord progressions that are unexpected, tempos that are constantly changing. I guess you could call it 'progressive' if that word wasn't tainted by cheesy badness. Call it what you will, it is just good and I've missed bands that play like this over the past couple of years.

The Burdocks - Turn of the Century
This song is progressive in the way that the Shellac or the Archers of Loaf or Fugazi are progressive. It's fast pased, melodic rock music that manages to avoid the most common rock cliches without sounding pretentious or boring. Did I mention that this is a great song?
[Buy the Album What We Do Is Secret Here]


The Metic - It's Always There
If a guitar solo could last for an entire song, consist entirely of obscure yet beautiful chords, have its own verses and choruses, and mangage to sound absolutely nothing like a guitar solo I might not hate it with a passion as I do with (almost) all other guitar solos. It would also probably sound a lot like this song. This is what prog should sound like. (This band is only a guitarist and a drummer with no overdubs. They are seriously awesome.)
[I don't know where you can buy this, but if you're interested Jay might be able to hook you up. Email us for more info.]

Infiniheart

Chad VanGaalen's Infiniheart is at once sappy, sentimental, overwrought, and filled with falsetto vocals. Normally these are things that would lead to my avoidance of the album on principle, but unfortunately it's just way too good. I really had no choice but to buy the album after hearing it's opening track, "Clinically Dead". By the time I heard the bouncy rhythm of the first verse break in to the xylophone and distortion pedal laden chorus, my critical defences had been breached. (And the chorus even includes the phrase "Dream on" repeated a few times! I mean, seriously!). The rest of the album, which mostly consists of VanGaalen himself playing all of the instruments in addition to recording the songs, has this great claustrophobic feel to it. There's also a kind of science fiction, dystopian future theme mixed with other pretty bleak subject matter, giving the album a kind of melancholy thematic unity. The arrangements are dense but very organic sounding, despite the frequent use of sequenced drums and synths. Supposedly, a number of the dozens of instruments he plays on the album were homemade, including a violin, finger piano, harp, and clarinet - which doesn't really surprise me given the fact that he's obviously ridiculously talented.

He's not an artist that readily lends himself to comparisons, but at least a few come to mind when I'm listening. Musically, I kind of hear a more subdued Grandaddy circa the Sophtware Slump or a more folk-inspired Flaming Lips Soft Bulletin. I also hear a similarity with the lonely-epicness of Modest Mouse's This is a Long Drive album, although the two albums really sound nothing alike. Infiniheart is all over the place, though, so I imagine bad critics like me could probably get away with comparing it to any indie rock album from the last ten years.

VanGaalen's Canadian label, Flemish Eye Records, has been kind enough to post three fairly representative MP3s off of the album for your listening pleaure, so here they are.

Chad VanGaalen - Clinically Dead

Chad VanGaalen - Somewhere, I know there's nothing

Chad VanGaalen - Traffic

I think the album has been available in Canada for more than a year now, but it will soon see US release on Sub Pop.

Ze Crip

So popsheep friend Ze Crip emailed me this song, and I need to share it. Here is what he had to say:

Attached is a song you might like. It's by Gasali Mates II String Band of the Mount Bosavi area of Papua New Guinea. The string bands that have emerged there over the past fifteen or so years have been influenced by church music, in which certain vocal harmonies are used and everyone is encouraged to sing as loud as possible; however, the musicians have clearly made many refinements and innovations (the half-step harmony in this piece, for instance, is unlike the popular worship music I know). If I remember correctly, it's not uncommon for a string band in the area to be led by a married couple of which the wife is the sister of the wife whose partnership leads the string band of the next village- or is it that the husbands of two bands are brothers who have exchanged wives? Anyway, what I am sure of is that the new music scene there must have some interesting politics.

Now if only The Gasali Mates II String band could have been perched on a rock as my friends and I enjoyed a day of bounding off a diving board someone ingeniously affixed to a 35 foot cliff face. To complete the Swiss family Robinson feeling of the "secret" spot there was a rope swing and giant hammock. I love Vancouver!

Gasali Mates II String Band - Really Hungry!

Niblett

Scout Niblett - Drummer Boy
This song starts off sounding remarkably similar to something you've heard before, but don't let that deter you. While it maybe seems a bit too derivative at first, I assure you that it's derived from the purest mid- to late-90s indie rock and is as at least good as any songs from this period you might want to compare it to. I've included this handy summary of the song in case you don't actually feel like listening to it.

The singer sounds kind of melancholy or maybe even a little tired of playing the guitar at first. Then, quite suddenly, someone decides the song isn't going anywhere and the guitars start to meander somewhere else entirely, getting progressively louder until they explode into this awesome power chord laden, sludge rock attack on the earlier part of the song. The singer comes back a few more times during the moments where the guitars and drums quiet down, and she sounds much more animated than before and seems to be almost chanting the lyrics. After two or three verses, the song switches unexpectedly again, speeding up substantially but sticking with the same grinding rock sound. The singer returns a few times, but she's now yelling the verses with some intensity. She sounds totally different than the person who started off singing the song, almost like someone who'd threaten to punch you in the face if you said she sounded like cat power.
[Buy the album I Am here]

Auger

Adam Fiore is Auger. I have this yet to be released (In fact I don't know if it will ever be released) recording that my friend passed onto me after he had done some mastering work for Adam. The music consists of banjo, piano , slide guitar and voice and much more. As far as I know all the sounds are made by adam. Rather than working as one might expect, adam records every part alone to a DAT machine not utilizing multi-tracking recording. He then later takes these segments of songs and weaves them together which makes for an interesting structure. The songs also have a feeling that Adam recorded them the moment they came to his mind, the manner in which the vocals fumble at the end of the song with vocals indicates this to me.

Song 1

Song 2

Weakest Shade of Blue

Pernice Brothers - Weakest Shade of Blue
When my brother was in town from Denmark recently, I took him to a Pernice Brothers show for lack of anything better to do. I was initially kind of hesitant because, despite owning one of their albums, I've never really considered myself a fan. I occasionally listen to Yours, Mine and Ours, but I've never thought of it as anything particulalry special. At the show, though, I found that I was starting to get really excited whenever they played songs off of that album. It was the kind of feeling you get the first time seeing a band you've been waiting to hear live for years, which is weird because the Pernice Brothers play Vancouver and Toronto pretty frequently and I've never really been motivated enough to see them. I wasn't really into the new songs I heard, but I came to the realization that Yours, Mine and Ours is filled with some pretty perfect pop songs and I've been playing it daily ever since.

The song posted above, in particular, seems to have all the ooohs and ahhhs in the right places, and is almost ridiculously melodic. The rest of the album is filled with the same kind of power pop, a la the New Pornographers although in a less wall-of-sound sort of way. I recommend that you check it out.
[Buy Yours, Mine and Ours Here]