This week, in no particular order: tracks from Splash by Jeremy Jay, Make You Mine by Best Coast, Looking for Some Action by Bare Wires, Travellers in Space and Time by Apples in Stereo, and Hologram Jams by Jaguar Love.
Author Archives: morgan
February Party at Royal Oak
Thanks for coming out, everyone. Royal Oak was so crowded they had to call in the owner and an extra bartender to keep everything under control. We all had a great time DJing and seeing you, and I’m pretty sure that the police showed up at least once. Here’s to doing it again in March.
As a [...]
YellowFever: Yellow Fever
This isn’t really a new release, per se. It’s a collection of songs that were originally released on EPs and singles over the past few years, all of them strangely overlooked during the late-mid aughts despite the singer/guitarist’s Voxtrot pedigree. As far as I can discern, these songs have been unearthed because the band has decided it wants to make a more serious go of things, touring nationally with Woods last summer and signing with the panache booking agency according to myspace.
But you know, if Mission of Burma, Polvo, and all the rest have taught us anything, it’s that there ARE second acts in showbiz, and YellowFever (one word, apparently) fully deserve theirs, courtesy of this disc.
Night Control: Life Control
Night Control (or Christopher Curtis Smith, the name he likely uses when making airline reservations) has just released a second LP, Life Control, on Kill Shaman. Considering that Smith’s well-received 2009 full length, Death Control, trimmed down a decade’s worth of self-recorded sound experiments to a 19-track “greatest hits” album, the year that Smith spent on Life Control speaks of conversion to a comparatively brutal efficiency.
In case you were waiting with baited breath: Life Control defies any assumption that newfound acclaim and revised recording methods have led Smith towards rapprochement with the Other Music “in” section.
Harlem: Hippies
The key to Harlem is that they’re a straight-ahead rock band: they don’t traffic in difficult production values, math-rock time signatures, or vocals that “need to grow on you.”
Wetdog
While Wetdog aren’t the best band I’ve ever heard in my life, they make for a pretty solid start to the decade. Basically, they’re a cheeky trio of Brits with a rumbling low end and a strident set of pipes up top. I imagine them dancing around their rooms at a younger age to Talulah Gosh and the Slits before getting drunk on Laser at some sidestreet punk-rock flat off the Cowley road. ‘Ello, Guvner!
Slept-On in 2009
Let’s devote one last post to “guten times 2009.” Specifically, a couple of bands whose work I slept on last year: Screaming Females’ Power Move and Christmas Island’s 7″ on Captured Tracks and full length, Blackout Summer, on In The Red.
Days In The Wake
There’s a new Beach House album out but, lah-dee-dah, it sounds exactly like every other Beach House album that’s ever been released. The real excitement here in Morgantown is the Beach Fossils album being prepped for release in March, which I somehow neglected to include in last week’s list of most-anticipated 2010 releases.
2009
My look back at the year that was. Plus a delicious chili recipe…
Julian Koster
Color me merry, kids: my apartment was chosen last week to be the site for one of Julian Koster’s caroling sessions. I’ve loved Koster from the moment I first encountered his hot banjo, bass, musical saw, accordian, and synth licks on Neutral Milk Hotel’s In The Aeroplane Over The Sea, and I’ve loved Christmas ever since the first night that I chewed on my stuffed Santa’s yellow hat, listening for reindeer hoofs out the window.
Thanksgiving Edition
I am thankful for the nameless couple that danced, alone, to all of the following indie pop songs, which to me (and apparently only me) are way dancier than anything by Jay-Z.
Hush Arbors
These are classic songs, very consistently written and recorded. As always, there’s a death-hippie Laurel Canyon feel that I think maybe Devendra Banhart also strives for but never quite achieves. For Hush Arbors, the vibe seems to come effortlessly, like an uncalculated way of life.
Digital Leather
Digital Leather makes hard, catchy, synth-based rock music, of the sort that Jay Reatard used to make pre-Matador, through his Lost Sounds and the aforementioned Terror Visions projects.
Would You Rather?
I am spectacularly indifferent towards this week’s new releases, newly hyped releases, and highly anticipated upcoming releases.
JEFF The Brotherhood
These guys are actually brothers who look like they just stepped out of a shag carpeted, hot-boxed van parked somewhere in the mid-70s (the decade, not the lower portion of Carnegie Hill). Basically, these southern gents are what Kings of Leon would aspire to be if they had a soul.