Top of The Blogs – October 10th, 2007
Each week we take a listen to some of the top songs from elbows, review them and then give our selection of alternative tracks that we believe should be getting more recognition
Ravens & Chimes “General Lafayette”
Really enjoying the indie popfolk that this band is putting out, at least the few songs I have heard so far. They have been compared to bright eyes, but this music is more hopeful (so more in line with oberst’s more recent Cassadega outing), less cynical and biting. The drums carry a swift kick and the song has a genuine whistling flow. My only criticism is that it ends a bit abruptly.
The Octopus Project “Truck”
I caught them for the second time live opening up for Aesop Rock at the Ottobar a few weeks ago and was still impressed. The band just looks like they are having a great, almost orgasmic, time onstage. I enjoy their experimental nature without being over-the-top and they aren’t trying too hard to be different to where they are almost a novelty act. “Trunk” is off their CD Hello Avalanche. It’s an album that might have gotten lost in all the Radiohead Hoopla for it came out August 9th, but it is completely worth looking into if you have listened at all to their previous outings.
Mobius Band “Friends Like These”
The sound to this is almost unbearable warbly, especially with the nasal vocal tone of the lead singer, almost like an electronic Elvis Costello. It’s got some electro-pop savy to diminish some of its obnoxiousness, an incessant bleepy percussion brings in a fun aspect to the song. What bothers me about the song in the beginning resides and by the end you’ll be slightly bobbing your head.
Radiohead “BodySnatchers”
This song absolutely rocks in a really scary way. I was listening to the song with headphones on, laying in bed last night and some of the sounds they make on this are discomforting. The end makes your head spin in a really good way.
Jens Lekman “The Opposite of Hallelujah”
Lekman creates dischord on this tune by mixing some happy tropicalia music with heartbreak lyrics. Most songwriters who go this route are usually fairly succesful in creating a complex sound. It’s another product of swedish pop that I havenlt been able to get enough of recently.
Tullycraft – The Punks are Writing Love Songs”
This is like doo-wop punk, I would imagine girls in poodle skirts listening to this as if buddy holly had returned from the dead. It’s along the same lines as the pippettes or the long blondes only with a lead male singer that sounds a little like pee-wee herman. Is this the best that Twee pop has to offer? I wouldn;t know I’m not much of a Twee pop enthusiast.
Robert Pollard “The Killers”
I read a recent post about the former Guided By Voices singer where it compared his prolific songwriting to Ryan Adams. Looks like I will have to start listening more to Robert Pollard, but I will give him more of a chance than I did on this song. It’s quirky, pretty creative, and definitely has some originality to it on one hand, but on the other hand it’s kind of all over the place and is incredibly short to the point where it never really establishes itself as a song.
Here are a couple other songs you should check out and deserve a little more attention.
m83 “Waves Waves, Waves”
M83’s new ambient album Digital Shades Vol. 1 is absolutely beautiful and is a great meditative album, good to go to sleep to, for those late night or early morning hours, or whenever you get home from a stressfull day at work. Although I would like to hear more of m83’s “traditional” songwriting, I love the fact that they are going in this direction. It’s some orchestrated beauty in the vein of some of the best of Brian Eno.
Say Hi To Your Mom “Northwestern Girls”
I really got into this great “band” this year with their great album Impeccable Blahs released in 2006. I use band in quotes because Say Hi To Your MOm was just one man for a while, but most recently has added a couple of full time band members. I had forgotten about them for the middle part of the year and hadn’t even realized a new album was being released until today. This song continues from previous albums with the same great simplistic pop hooks that made discosadness and impeccable blahs so tastey.
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Dude, all Pollard songs are short and meander. The guy toured with a band that was huge in indie circles for fifteen years on that kind of crap. Just download Alien Lanes or Under the Bushes, Under the Stars. You don’t really need any other Guided By Voices/Pollard crap.
on October 17th, 2007 at 5:11 pm