Hey, I’m only a week late on the new Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin. Their last record was my favorite-album-that-took-me-a-year-to-listen-to. The CD kept getting shuffled to the bottom of my ‘listen to’ stack. Their name haunted me. I just couldn’t let go of a band called SSLYBY. To this day I still throw up a little in my mouth when I think of how much joy I missed by not having SSLYBY in my life sooner. From what I’ve heard, album number two from the Show Me State’s favorite indie sons, keeps the charming pop meter cranked up to eleven. Nothing groundbreaking except to say that their sophomore album is anything but sophomoric. New album and new tour NOW.
Think I Wanna Die [MP3, 3.9MB, 192kbps]
Murfreesboro, Tennessee’s We Were The States have taken their childhood influences, dozens of them from 70’s punk to 90’s indie rock and beyond, thrown them into the blender of their collective spirit, and come out with a version of post-punk/garage-punk rock that’s original and entirely their own. Brash, energetic, and no-fuss, their songs must make for a heckuva live show. Their debut LP Believe the Thieves is out now.
Eerie is one man, Eric Obo, who splits his time between Sweden and St. Helier, Jersey in England’s Channel Islands, who’s gathered his friends to create an intimate recording. His self-titled EP, offered here in its entirety courtesy of the generous Komakino label, is what I like to call whispercore at its finest. It opens with a straight forward acoustic track, a country-western Elliott Smith type thing, with just a hint of distortion swelling in late in the song. “In the Twinkle of an Eye” is about as upbeat as you can expect from Eerie, and equally as noisy. Which isn’t much. Obo’s languid vocals linger below sliding chords and gauzy guitars. Here his voice takes on a new wave air which adds an interesting dimension to the track. At the bridge he slows the pace and turns up the distortion. Coupled with this heat wave we’re experiencing out here in lower California Eerie has loosened my bones and I find myself melting into my chair…Ladies and gentlemen we’re slowly diving into space…
My opinion on and knowledge of Brazilian music and film are about the same: I like what I see and hear, but I can’t claim to have heard a whole lot. Although I will say that if you haven’t seen City of God you haven’t truly lived. That’s only a little bit exaggerated. I like what I heard of this Kassin+2 as well. Apparently they’re a pretty big deal on their home soil, and this record is a big deal for how, gasp, accessible it is. Yep, “Ya Ya Ya” is probably one of the more edgy tracks on the album—most of the rest plays out with the bossa nova warmth you might expect from the various members of the Gilberto clan. If they can get experimental with the same gusto that they get smooth, they’ll be spending plenty of time on my iPod as the weather gets warmer and the days get longer.
I so need this right now. Lately my brain has been swelling at the seams as I work through my first year of teaching (in the face of pending budget cuts that may very well force me into retirement decades too soon), grading (English teachers do too much), and, the really hard part: snowboarding, skateboarding, biking, legoing, and birthday-partying with my kids. Just as I’m about to lie down to sleep (quick usage 
I swear I must have llistened to “Right Hand on My Heart” a hundred times since I pulled it off the SXSW website a few weeks ago. The full-on power rock of Athens, GA’s The Whigs is pure excitement, from the driving, droning guitars to the tight drumming, and then the bass kicks in, whoo wee. This is a great ride to be on, with a band that clearly has their skills and history down. Best song I’ve posted in 2008? Without a doubt.
They’re on Abandoned Love records and of the song “Chemicals “Change” they say ” It’s been well noted by many music journalists that this was a break up record. Roger that.” So you can probably guess where on the lyrical spectrum that The Lovely Sparrows fall. But as with 
In one of Douglas Coupland’s novels, maybe All Families are Psychotic, there’s a passage about how we lived in a golden age, without pain or fear, something like that… When I found Tappan Zee one day last year while digging around the Internet, that idea came back to me. Check out their introduction on the Wormco website — “It’s 1999. . . . . and what have we got to show for it?” etc. Just a little reflection, like finding an old newspaper from before you were married or had kids, from before the war, before 9/11. I like “The Only Ones,” nice and simple indie rock from the good old days, eh? Whatever happened to Tappan Zee?
Sometimes I fall in love a little when I listen to the perfect music at the perfect time and it seems that the stars have aligned because I am listening to Bon Iver RIGHT NOW and I am definitely feeling musical butterflies. I’m not sure what it is, but I think its because the album “For Emma, Forever Ago” is just so damn pretty. Of course there is a whole lot of pretty music out there, but there is something truly simple and honest to this. The music is often bare, doesn’t fuss when it doesn’t need to and nods a couple of times to some of my musical favorites (Elliott? Bonnie?). Fortunately, a quick search of the interweb has confirmed that Bon Iver appears to be just as simple and honest and real as he sounds. Good thing since, lets keep it real, he is totally my new imaginary boyfriend.