Carl Sandburg Visits Me In A Dream

Liverpool collective Wave Machines have released their debut proper LP Wave if You’re Really There, and boy am I excited about it! Aside from the fact that I’m near certain they will explode onto the blog scene, there’s a lot to like about Wave if You’re Really There.

Wave Machines is where The Postal Service meets Animal Collective, in both style and substance. The dreamier “You Say the Stupidest Things” is an excellent practice in creating emotive faux-minimalism, while “Carry Me Back to My Home” just wants ‘the world to know that you helped carry me back to my home’ over glazed guitars and triangles. “I Go I Go I Go” is an 80s homage ripe with fuzzy synths and enough pinball sounds and reverb to satisfy you for several days. The lead single “Keep the Lights On” will remind you of MGMT’s “Electric Feel” as the funky bass kicks along with the falsetto chorus. “The Greatest Escape We Ever Made” effervesces with 20th century wit and moxie, while the Loney, Dear-esque “I Joined the Union” rings with the delicacy of a celebratory hymn.  The descending boppiness of “The Line” is as buoyant and cheery as you’ll find, only to lead in to the contrasting “Dead Horses” that sounds like its straight out of the mind and mouth of Jose Gonzalez.

So what are you waiting for? Get a copy of Wave if You’re Really There.

Download “Keep the Lights On” for free from the Wave Machines website.

Listen to “The Greatest Escape We Ever Made“

CSV favorite David Gray has ended his hiatus and has returned with his much-anticipated 8th proper LP Draw the Line, due out September 22nd.  Having not released any new recordings since 2005, Gray decided to turn over a new leaf with Draw the Line: he actually self-produced this album, and put together a new band to back him up. Listeners will be thrilled to hear that the likes of Annie Lennox and Jolie Holland will be featured on this album as well! For a track listing of the album, go here.

In order to kick off Draw the Line, Gray has released the single “Fugitive” which can be streamed below. As the story goes, “Fugitive” was written as Gray felt trapped in the studio recording songs for Draw the Line. The result? A delightful, forward-looking song that showcases Gray’s surprisingly great vocal stylings and his unique ability of effectively communicating ideas to his listeners. What with the raindrop piano and the appearance of an electric guitar in “Fugitive”, Draw the Line looks to be very promising.

He will also be making a quite extensive tour of the US (see dates below), so maybe he’ll be coming near you!

Tour Dates:
August 15 – Mountain Music Fest – Redmond, Washington (PRE RELEASE)
October 23rd – Boston, MA – Wang Theatre
October 24th – New York, NY – WAMU Theater
October 26th – Toronto, Canada – Massey Hall
October 27th – Upper Darby, PA – Tower Theatre
October 29th – Chicago, IL – Chicago Auditorium Theatre
October 30th – Minneapolis, MN – Orpheum Theatre
November 1st – Denver, CO – Paramount Theatre
November 2nd – Salt Lake City, UT – Kingsbury Hall
November 4th – Portland, OR – Arlene Schnizer Concert Hall
November 7th – Oakland, CA – Paramount Theatre
November 9th – Los Angeles, CA – Orpheum Theatre

Though perhaps you’ve never heard of them before, Irish collective Bell X1 are no rookies. Their fourth proper LP Blue Lights on the Runway hit this side of the Atlantic back in March, but they are just starting to pick up steam now (i.e. I hadn’t heard about them until a couple of weeks ago). Blue Lights is really a celebration of rock, a vast foray into the old and the new that culminates in one damn good album.

I’m not sure what to make of the aviation theme going on with Bell X1 but it’s certainly something worth looking into. Perhaps its the immense space created by the album–its lazy basslines wading through the air 30,000 feet up, its tinkly dusting of high-pitched ebony and ivory peeling the corners back. “The Great Defector” sounds like an unintentional homage to Led Zeppelin that begins ominous but explodes into a delightfully cheerful and brilliant chorus of “I love the color of it all”. “Amelia” is an achingly sweet rock ballad that relies heavily of gentle vocals to complement the airy piano and synths. “Amelia” bleeds into the ethereal and genuine “A Better Band”, whose captivating bassline proves true as the vocal harmonies and subtle cowbell drive the track forward.  The cheeky “Breastfed” is certainly the loudest track on Blue Lights, showing that they can rock it out with the best of them. Though I’m still not entirely sure what it means for blue lights to be on the runway, I’m certainly not complaining–this album is a must-listen.

Get a copy of Blue Lights on the Runway. Go on now.

FREE DOWNLOAD from amazon: “The Great Defector”

Listen to “Amelia”

Listen to “A Better Band“

You’re born in Toronto to Trinidadian Jehovah’s Witness parents; your life is bound to be interesting by chance. k-os’s life journey is certainly worth your time, but I won’t divulge it all here. From Joyful Rebellion to Atlantis: Hymns for Disco, I’ve been a big fan of Canada’s finest hip-hop artist k-os. He was accessible, erudite, and had knack for great beats.  I had good reason to come into his latest LP Yes! with great expectations, but I ultimately ended up coming away from the album with a big ‘no’. Yes! is k-os’s most esoteric work to date, and while that doesn’t always have to be a bad thing, it is in this case. The silky smooth rhymes, the wonderfully infectious rhythms–where did they go?

The one thing I’ll give k-os is that the content of his music hasn’t lost a step. On the pensive wah-wahs of “The Aviator”, he sings “Watchin’ how time can turn enemies into friends / and friends to enemies / why did he envy me? / is it because I emceed breakin’ in social scenes?” That sense of paranoia/perceived hostility continues on the self-explanatory “Burning Bridges”, but the wordplay is still as fresh as ever: “Cause the left hand knows what you’re doin’ with your right / when the right hand glows left is jealous of the light / so you put ‘em both together and you pray for your life-time.” He confesses that he doesn’t care that he’s burning bridges, and I’m entirely sure if he’s talking to his critics or his listeners or neither. The comically titled “I Wish I Knew Natalie Portman” expresses a sentiment that it seems many have lately. And if the beginning of “Zambony” isn’t a perfect insight into the mind of k-os, then nothing is: “Do you have any idea of the chaos you have caused around here? Nobody knows what you’re doing?……That’s exactly the way I like it.”

Buy a copy of k-os’s Yes!.

Listen to “Burning Bridges”

Listen to “I Wish I Knew Natalie Portman“

I’ve thought about doing a “revisiting” feature for a while, bringing forth each time a great album from the past that this blog never reviewed.

Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo (the robots on the left)  probably don’t mean much to you because they don’t want to mean much to you. They’d prefer to be referred to Daft Punk, in the guise of their technological wizardry and sampling prowess. Perhaps no one in the history of music has done what Daft Punk has done to such success. Essentially, they took the principles of hip-hop and disc jockeying and set the bar as high as anybody could. The secret to DP’s success is a relatively simple formula: a short intriguing sample from past song + dynamite, danceable computer instrumentation + kitsch.  And though I’ll be the first one to tell you that Daft Punk have hit and missed quite a bit, there’s no denying that Discovery will go down as their greatest and one of the greatest albums of this decade.

Though Discovery wasn’t their first foray into electronic music (see Homework), it was their first endeavor in creating infectiously addicting synthpop.  But the true genius is turning each sample they used into an instrument in their own regard. Who would have thought that Eddie John’s “I Put a Spell on You” would have been so excellently melded into the leading track “One More Time”? The escalating guitar solo of “Aerodynamic” crescendos right in to a sample of Sister Sledge’s “II Maquillage Lady”, only to succumb to the cosmic reverb of a synth and the ringing of a single bell. George Duke’s “I Love you More” gets new life as part of the pop-friendly, auto-tuned “Digital Love”, which by all accounts is actually how a computer apparently professes its love for a counterpart.  And we know that Kanye’s listened to “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger”, and unfortunately we know that some of Kanye’s listeners have never heard of Daft Punk. And if you listen closely to “Face to Face”, you’ll find that ELO’s “Evil Woman” finds its way into the song (with that little guitar run just before ELO sing the song’s namesake).

As if Daft Punk’s legacy hasn’t already been properly taken care of (what with the crazy life tours they’ve done), they teamed up with childhood hero Leiji Matsumoto to create an animated visual realization of Discovery, called Interstella 5555: The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem. I have yet to see it, but I hope to get a copy of it soon.

Get a copy of Discovery.

Listen to “Superheroes”

Listen to “Digital Love“

UK duo Psapp (Carim Classmann and Galia Durant) have continued to solidify themselves as child musicians in adult bodies with their unique brand of toytronica. The esoteric clicks, the otherworldly blips, the raucous bangs of child’s play are all simply instruments in the minds of Classmann and Durant. And the kitsch doesn’t stop there; the two have an odd obsession with cats, which pops up everywhere on their albums and on stage (they thrown handmade cats into the crowd).

And so, after making some noise (pun intended) in the electropop genre, Psapp has gone back to the old hard drives and dug up some of their earlier cuts and whatnot for Early Cats and Tracks Volume II. Truthfully, these tracks are not too unlike those on Tiger, My Friend.  “Northdown C” seems to have taken the rain from the beginning of “Tiger, My Friend” and given it new life with a hand drum beat and the bright tinkle of a plaything in the distance. “Happy Lamb” sounds like a typewriter bred with an organ and had children proficient in the marimba. Though many of the tracks on here appeared on earlier EPs or Psapp’s debut Japanese-only release Northdown, the true highlight of this EP is “Who Knows My Ohs”, featuring Durant’s sultry sweet alto vocals laced craftily over a strumming guitar and the frenetic plucking of a toy.

Check out Early Cats and Tracks Volume II (Galia does all the album’s artwork herself!).

Listen to “Who Knows My Ohs”

Listen to “Happy Lamb“

It’s a story that’s as old as record companies. Singer-songwriter is unknown. Singer-songwriter finally makes it. Singer-songwriter becomes huge. Singer-songwriter releases backlog of unreleased and out-of-print tracks–the masses go crazy for it. But here’s the part with which I have the most trouble: isn’t there a reason why these tracks were unreleased and out-of-print? Shouldn’t we expect and want the artist to have some discretion about what we, the listener, hear from them? Instead, we go googly-eyed and begin drooling over every little Sufjan scrap or Iron & Wine iota or Death Cab diatribe (for the sake of alliteration).

Despite this small rant of mine, I have to tell you that Iron & Wine’s Around the Well is quite excellent. There’s very little of  that lo-fi, unedited, unpolished dredge that one expects from these type of albums. While Beam’s cover of The Postal Service’s “Such Great Heights” has been around the blogosphere quite a bit over the past year, most of the tracks here are new to the casual Beam listener. Leading off the album is  “Dearest Forsaken”, a twangy bluesy folk number whose amber tones are as deep as Sam Beam’s beard.  “Loud As Hope” is as sweetly enticing a song as I’ve heard in many moons, with I&W’s gentle rasp softly swaying with the ebb and flow of the waves on some remote shore in a parallel world. And with titles like “Friends are Jewels” and “Communication Cups and Someone’s Coats”, there’s something for even the most literary of listeners. “Belated Promise Ring” is an easygoing playful piano ditty, and the inherent irony in the song is not to shabby either.

There’s something here for everyone: the novice, the casual, and the experienced I&W listener. This is not your run-of-the-mill backlog album, this is a great album in its own right.

Grab a copy of Around the Well.

Listen to “Loud As Hope”

Listen to “Belated Promise Ring“

The former frontman of the Scottish collective Love and Money, James Grant finds himself exploring blues-folk fusion on his solo effort Strange Flowers. Dually dark and hopeful, introspective and passionate, Strange Flowers is an interesting foray into the waning field of talented singer-songwriting. And though Grant doesn’t totally hit the bullseye here, he certainly seems to be (as he sings in “Darkstar”) ‘just on the cusp of something’. Check out the tracks below, and make sure to check out Strange Flowers.

Listen to “Darkstar”
Listen to “The Bay at The Nape of Your Neck“

Thought everyone needed a nice, shiny, bright song for an equally stupendous day.

Ingrid Michaelson – “Be OK” [removed by request]

The sophomore self-aware release from Canadians The Most Serene Republic …And the Ever Expanding Universe lacks the coherence and thoroughness of their debut release, but there’s certain maturation of this band into some electrofolk-pop mutant that will be deliciously sweet one day not too far from now. …And the Every Expanding Universe misses a great deal more than it hits, failing to find the catchy hook or infuse familiarity into their eccentric rhythms. But twice on this album do the cosmic forces (i.e. the band) bring forth a wonderfully delightful track. “Heavens to Purgatory” opens with a strained vocal wailing, servicing the banjo and a subtle breakbeat to burst open the song to emotive folk anthem. “Vessels of a Donor Look” begins with classic 70s rock piano chords, and as the drums come in, you won’t be able to tell the difference between The Strokes and TMSR. Pulsing bass lines, an absolutely infectious chorus, and the slight tremolo of strings all linger in the air long after the 2:55 closing mark.

Get a copy of …And the Ever Expanding Universe (officially drops July 14th).

Listen to “Vessels of a Donor Look”

Listen to “Heavens to Purgatory“