PHW - May 2010

MP3 :: Vibrations - Great Elk
MP3 :: Valley Farm Song - Marah
MP3 :: The Suburbs - Arcade Fire (Hype Machine link)
MP3 :: All I Want - LCD Soundsystem (Hype Machine link)
MP3 :: Tell ‘Em - Sleigh Bells
MP3 :: Leave Everywhere - Toro Y Moi
MP3 :: What Did My Lover Say? (It Always Had To Go This Way) - Wolf Parade
MP3 :: Cloudy Shoes - Damien Jurado
MP3 :: No Ghost - The Acorn
MP3 :: Your Hands (Together) - The New Pornographers
MP3 :: Year’s Not Long - Male Bonding
MP3 :: Hope Child - Free Energy
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[video] Great Elk - "Bow Echo" & "Further North"

BUZZsession: Bow Echo - Great Elk from the WILD honey pie on Vimeo.

A few weeks ago I introduced you to Great Elk - today the Brooklyn band tipped me off to two in-studio live videos that have been featured over at The Wild Honey Pie. Watch the guys perform “Bow Echo” and “Further North” from their excellent upcoming debut EP, Great Elk(self-released, 6/22), and check out the free studio version of “Vibrations” below if you haven’t already.

MP3 :: Vibrations
(from Great Elk. Info here)
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BUZZsession: Further North - Great Elk from the WILD honey pie on Vimeo.

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LCD Soundsystem - This Is Happening

This Is Happening is the latest album from LCD Soundsystem, and finds James Murphy setting himself further apart from every other band out there walking the line between indie-rock and IDM. For me, the most interesting aspect of Murphy’s songs are not their explosive arrangements (though the way “Dance Yrself Clean” brings down the house just after the 3-minute mark might make me rethink that statement), but how he manages to inject so much gut-wrenching, heart-on-the-sleeve passion into a genre that often forgets that side of songwriting. Having only made myself familiar with a handful of their songs (“Daft Punk Is Playing At My House”, “Losing My Edge”) prior to 2007’s Sound of Silver, that album’s 1-2 punch of “Someone Great”/"All My Friends" was completely eye-opening for me - I don’t think I ever heard music that so many would classify as “dance” with so much heart. That aspect of Murphy’s songwriting continues to come through loud and clear on the new record. Though the smarter-than-you’d-think-but-still-kinda-ridiculous “Drunk Girls” was released as the first single, it’s “All I Want”, in all its “Heroes”-aping glory, that’s the most unforgettable song here - a tour-de-force homage to one of the most classic classic-rock songs in existence. Elsewhere, electric guitars fight with quirky, 80s synths for prime positions (usually to lose), and the clattering beats continuously make me shake it like a Polaroid picture, when no one's looking of course. The album’s not perfect - “Somebody’s Calling Me” plods and the first two and a half minutes could be cut from “You Wanted A Hit” without altering the song's impact - but, for the most part, Murphy nails it. Whether earnest, sobering, self-deprecating, or deadpan, this album shows an artist with the ability to write songs equally interested in your ass, your brain, and your heart.

Stream :: This Is Happening
Video :: Drunk Girls
(Buy here)
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[mp3] Toro Y Moi - "Leave Everywhere"

Chaz Bundick, better known as Toro Y Moi, has gotten a lot of blog-love over the past few months for the warm, sleepy glo-fi/chillwave sounds that populated his recent debut, Causers of This. On July 20 Carpark Records (home of Dan Deacon, among others) will release a new 7” single called “Leave Everywhere” that finds the normally beat/synth-dominated songwriter expanding into the realm of guitar-based garage-pop. The result is this really terrific song that’s been circulating around lately.

MP3 :: Leave Everywhere (via Pitchfork)
(from the forthcoming Leave Everywhere 7”. Info here)
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[video] The Mynabirds - "Numbers Don't Lie"

MP3 :: Numbers Don’t Lie
MP3 :: Let The Record Go
(from The Mynabirds’ What We Lose In The Fire We Gain In The Flood. Buy here.)
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The Black Keys - Brothers

After several unsatisfying albums this year from bands I love (Transference, High Violet, The Winter Of Mixed Drinks, Heaven Is Whenever, etc.), The Black Keys’ Brothers is like a breath of fresh air. For their sixth album, the Akron, OH duo has once again delivered a batch of gritty, dirty blues-rock jams that don’t so much show musical growth as a honing of the particular sonic aesthetic that the band absolutely owns. This isn’t to say that Brothers is simply "more of the same", though if you aren’t into the Keys’ straightforward sound by now this record won’t do much to change that. 2008’s Danger Mouse-produced Attack & Release was a career peak, but I think they’ve outdone themselves once again on their latest. What Brothers does so effectively is extend the subtle differences between Attack & Release and their earlier material - there’s more of a soulful feel to many of these songs (as on “Everlasting Light” and “The Only One”), singer Dan Auerbach successfully sings in a falsetto on several songs (including the dazzling “Never Give You Up”, which you’d swear was some old Motown gem), and the grooves are ominously heavy throughout, even on the slower songs. “Howlin’ For You”, with one of the album’s most old school-blues melodic structures, even sports a pure Gary Glitter thump. But scattered throughout are some of the band’s most arresting scuzzy blues-rock songs - “Tighten Up” (the only Danger Mouse-aided track), “Next Girl”, and the Old Testament heavy “She’s Long Gone”. Sure, reinventing your sound and approach is a tremendous accomplishment when bands successfully pull it off. On this instantly familiar album, The Black Keys prove that knowing what you do well and delivering can be just as exciting.

Stream :: Next Girl
Stream :: Tighten Up
(from Brothers. Buy here)
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There have been a few very funny videos so far from this album - here’s another, though Frank the dinosaur doesn’t make an appearance:

The Black Keys "Tighten Up"

The Black Keys MySpace Music Videos
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[video] Free Energy - "Bang Pop"

Bang Pop

FREE ENERGY MySpace Music Videos

Free Energy’s debut Stuck On Nuthin’ is full of 70’s rock-radio-aping gems like “Bang Pop”, whose new video captures exactly what my high school was like every single day. Yep.

MP3 :: Hope Child
MP3 :: Dream City
(from Stuck On Nuthin’. Info here)
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Male Bonding - Nothing Hurts

Like Sleigh Bells, Male Bonding are a young guitar band generating an enormous buzz. Nothing Hurts plays it pretty loud and fast - melodic punk full of fuzz and grit - that blur by in just under a half hour. Check out the two free downloads Sub Pop has shared.

MP3 :: Year’s Not Long
MP3 :: Franklin
(from Nothing Hurts. Buy here)
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Sleigh Bells - Treats

The internet has been ablaze with Sleigh Bells of late, and after spending the past 3 or 4 days with their debut, Treats, I can say the hype is completely understandable. The boy/girl duo combine the hardcore background of guitarist Derek Miller with the girlie-pop origins of vocalist Alexis Krauss to create an abrasive form of pop music that kicks a lot of ass. They first caught my ear last October when a few of their songs (including “Crown On The Ground”, which is revisited here) began circulating after their CMJ shows. Since then they were picked up by M.I.A.’s N.E.E.T. label and have been quickly building “next big thing” status ever since. Treats finally arrived last week and is quite the first impression - as if M.I.A. herself were recording with Deerhoof. Stereogum shared leadoff track “Tell ’Em” the other day, which you’ll find a link to below, but the showstopper for me, the song that forced me to hit repeat 3 times in a row my first time through the album, is “Rill Rill” (watch this), formerly known as “Ring Ring”. I haven’t heard a more immediate, more exciting pop song since “Paper Planes” exploded back in 2007. Throughout these 11 songs, Miller’s riffs pierce the ears while mimicking his classic rock heroes, the beats slam with an unnatural crunch, and Krauss’s vocals display a confident, sexually-charged vocalist capable of carrying the songs, but willing to be just one part of a better whole. Treats is an album that’s sure to be divisive - it’s “of the moment”, it’s distorted, M.I.A. tweeted about it, and, like Times New Viking, it’s just recorded so fucking loud. But it’s also 2010’s first great debut, has one (maybe more) of its best singles, and is stacked with unbridled joy. Dig in:

MP3 :: Tell ’Em (follow link to Stereogum)
(from Treats. Buy here)
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The New Pornographers - Together

Though the internet is virtually unanimous in declaring Together as The New Pornographers’ return to form (after the fairly blasé Challengers, save “Your Rights Versus Mine” & “Myriad Harbor”), I still think you need only look back to the underrated Get Guilty to see that the addictive melodies A.C. Newman has churned out for the past decade plus didn‘t disappear for long. That being said, Newman proves he doesn’t mind taking a back seat to Dan Bejar, Neko Case, or Kathryn Calder on this new one, as all but two of his lead vocal songs appear on the back half of the album. Overall, Together packs quite the wallop - it’s the most energetic Newman/Pornographers album since Twin Cinema, and perhaps their most flat-out collaborative since Mass Romantic. It also continues their path towards a more carefully orchestral sound, with a ton of ornate flourishes filling in the gaps on nearly every track here. Together shows The New Pornographers are still the best in the business at churning out blissful, heavenly power-pop. Neko Case’s lead on “Crash Years” is my early favorite, and was performed recently on The Jimmy Fallon Show.

MP3 :: Your Hands (Together)
(from Together. Buy here)
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[video] Here We Go Magic - "Collector"

Here We Go Magic’s autobahn-ready “Collector”, one of my favorite songs of the year, had a video premiere at Pitchfork earlier this week. Pigeons will be released on June 8th by Secretly Canadian.

MP3 :: Collector
(from Pigeons. Pre-order here)
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[video] Memoryhouse - "Lately (Troisieme)"

Here’s a video for that haunting new song from Memoryhouse, “Lately (Troisieme)”, that I shared a few weeks back. Beautiful on many levels.

MP3 :: Lately (Troisieme)
(from a forthcoming single on Inflated Records)
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