So I was just talking in the past week with a rather new friend about our top 5 albums. So I made my list after much internal debate, and when it came to adding Wire, one of my favorite bands of all time, I had such trouble deciding between their albums Pink Flag and Chairs Missing. I ended up going with the former, but Wire is not just musical nostalgia; the old lads are still making music, as heard in the song “23 Years Too Late” below from their November 2007 release Read & Burn 03. Many more free songs available from their website.
Canon Blue
You diehard 3Hivers (we love you!) will recall that Canon Blue was originally posted just three months ago. But Daniel James is giving away the new Halcyon EP for free, and it’s so lovely (especially the title track) that I felt it deserved a little more plug time. Unzip and enjoy! Canon Blue is the creation of Daniel James, a Nashville-based do-everything musician who came to my attention not through any tangential southern connection but through his European label Rumracket. That could be because he’s not your typical Nashville kind of dude. Or is he? James may prefer digital to analog, keyboards to six-strings, drum machines to high-hats, but at heart he’s a singer-songwriter in a town that cultivates and nourishes them. Good thing because Canon Blue’s helium-filled harmonies, industrial beats and sweet falsetto deserve all the cultivation they can get.
The Hermit
I found out about The Hermit after checking up on
Paper Moon, one of my favorite Canadian bands. The brainchild of musical experimentalist/drummer Hamish Thomson, The Hermit also features — with greater prominence on their most recent release, Turn Up (the Stereo) — the alluring voice of Allison Shevernoha from the aforementioned Paper Moon. Samples from the new spin can be heard over on MySpace; I like “Si vous me quittez” a lot. The tracks available here are winners from a remix contest, based on The Hermit’s 2005 album Wonderment, and they are sweet and pleasant things to listen to.
Malajube
Sometimes one’s computer dies. And it takes with it thousands of un-backed-up songs, hundreds of un-backed-up pictures and well, your whole electronic life from the past 5 years. We’ll skip past my stages of grief, denial and rage and go direct to the fact that I have many kind friends to thank for an influx of mix cd’s, emails with links to things to cheer me up, It mostly cheers me up. Amongst these desperately needed donations, Malajube turned up. And while it seems to me that there are many a sound that could be described as belonging to Montreal (lo-fi loveliness like the Unicorns; gorgeous string infused songs for depressives like Owen Palette; etc.)–the one I need right now in this moment of return to my 1999 boom box is this one: scratchy guitared, French-Canadian, happy, bouncy indie-pop. In French. I need a little bum-bum-bum-budumpbadum in my life. Don’t we all?
Ben Benjamin
I’ve been busy the last two weeks. Busy doing nothing. It’s been nice, but it’s time I start catching up on a few things. First up, outta Sam & Joe’s hood, more or less, from Ypsilanti, Michigan give it up for Ben Benjamin. Formerly of Midwest Product, Ben Benjamin, AKA Ben Mullins, splits his time between this solo project and PostPrior, his neu-wavish duo also out on Ghostly. Between his myspace and Ghostly pages you can get a good feel for his debut full-length, The Many Moods of Ben Benjamin Vol. 1. “Selective Periphera” showcases Mullins strength—his ability to elaborate, with both electronic and organic instruments, on a simple riff for an absolutely hypnotic effect. Run this track into your skull and your life, regardless of how mundane it may be, will resonate with cinematic panache.
Holland Buffalo
Yay! It’s always a good email day when something comes from The Harvey Girls. You’re never sure what it might be – concept album, tribute, covers, et. al. – but you know that it will have a healthy dose of sweetly melancholic harmonies wrapped in a subtle sonic blanket that’ll keep you warm and cozy. Well, it turns out that for the past year or so they’ve been collaborating with the lovely and equally adventurous UK outfit Feedle, latter-day ambient wizards who make lo-fi electronic music that in more devious marketing hands might be called “lifestyle music.” What happens when the two come together? Layers upon layers of pop bliss. Plus, you can download the two tracks here and then go to Amie St. and get the other two for 26 cents, or be a real champ and buy the whole EP for a mere 52 cents. Yay!
The Martial Arts
If you’re resolved to improve your self-defense this new year, may I suggest The Martial Arts. They may not improve your karate kicks or your break-bricks-with-head skills, but they’ll do wonders for your cardiovascular health as you find yourself bopping around the room to their bouncy rhythms. Their timeless throwback pop sound is influenced, according to their myspace page, by “Partridge & Moulding” (XTC) and “Holsapple & Stamey” (the db’s). It’s rare for young bands these days to name such pairs as influences, rarer still to pull off a comparable tune, but Paul Kelly & Co. have succeeded in doing just that. Surprisingly, the band (Scottish themselves) is only beholden in Sweden to Groover Recordings. This is one band I’ll definitely be keeping my eyes and, more importantly, my ears on in 2008.
P.S. The band was offering their album, Your Sinclair, as a free download through Christmas, but guess what? It’s still live. So grab it while you still can!
hollAnd
Let me end 2007 with hollAnd, one of my favorite all-time bands, who I first wrote about on 3hive in May 2004, although it’s not so much a band as it is one Trevor Kampmann, musician/producer/former-child-TV-actor extraordinaire. A dozen (or more, depending on how you count) releases, along with even more production credits, over the last dozen or so years. From the day I bought the Sea Saw (his first moniker) seven inch Stereo on a whim at No Life Records in LA until the recent release Love Fluxus and my new favorite hollAnd song “French Grass” (replacing his cover of Human League’s “The Lebanon”), I’m man enough to say it’s been a love affair.
4Hero
Today’s selection is actually a nice bookend to Lisa’s Hello, Blue Roses post yesterday, albeit 4Hero has always been more of a sweeping club fave than an electronic bedroom dweller. Way back in 1999, I took a job in Los Angeles and drove down the very next day in my Chevy Sprint Turbo (yes, turbo), and 4Hero’s Two Pages, which came out a few months before, was about the only cassette I had that would play in my cheapo radio. Unlike the CD release, the promo segregated the darker drum’n’bass onto one cassette and the more chilled-out, string-laden fusion stuff onto another. As the title suggests, one was a great antidote to the other. In the central Utah mountains? Time for Ursula Rucker’s smooth spoken-word over lovely breakbeats and sweeping strings. Trudging the home stretch through the Mojave? Bring on the sci-fi jungle. Since that bygone era when we were all going to be dot-com millionaires, 4Hero has gravitated more and more toward the groove, and “Morning Child†has the feel of both a return to form and a culmination of the form. It also sounds like a lithe and lovely summer song, so perhaps it’ll warm up your new year a few degrees.
Hello, Blue Roses
Today I will be brief in favor of yet another satisfying nap. I love slow, electronic-ish, mixed-voice fare. I really, really love it, actually. And from this vantage point, Sydney Vermont and “her man” [direct quote from Myspace bio, interesting…] Dan Bejar (who spends some time with Destoyer and the New Pornos as well) are yet another antidote to seasonal indulgence. This one was recommended by my dear friend Seth, who will leave New York City this week for more verdant vistas. How appropriate and delicious the melancholia.