I feel a special numerical affinity for Club 8. The number eight holds a particular significance with me, a significance that I don’t believe I’ve shared outright with our readership, which is surprising, even to me, because I’m quite obnoxious with it in person. Put it this way, I probably would’ve been much better at math if we worked off a base eight system. OK, I’ll put it another way: I wouldn’t get very far hitchhiking. Here, you’d better just have a look (Taken, probably ten years ago, by Mr. Lifto backstage at a Jim Rose Circus Sideshow. No it hasn’t been Photoshopped.). Now that we’ve established I’m a member of Club 8, onto the music at hand (pun not intended, seriously)…
Club 8 is the Swedish boy-girl duo of Johan AngergÃ¥rd and Karolina Komstedt, homemaking music since 1995. Incessantly smooth and gorgeous, both the singing and playing, Club 8 has toyed with different takes on their cozy pop sound: ’60s folk, trip-hop, and bossa nova. It’s been five years since the last Club 8 album due to the fact that both Johan AngergÃ¥rd and Komstedt also play in Acid House Kings, not to mention AngergÃ¥rd’s work with The Legends. Their new album, The Boy Who Couldn’t Stop Dreaming, promises to balance sunshine (“Heaven”) and melancholia (“Jesus, Walk With Me”—a quiet rebuttal to Sam Harris et al). In a word, stunning.
It worked on me. Dangerbird Records (home to 
Southeast Engine is fronted by a married, unemployed middle school teacher from Athens, Ohio. If that doesn’t tip you off to the manic melancholy you’ll hear in the music, then perhaps you were home-schooled. As the band’s bio says, Athens ain’t the cradle of democracy and it ain’t even the most famous Athens in college music circles. It ain’t truly the South nor truly the Midwest, either. Athens is perpetually something between here and there. You’ll hear strains of Bright Eyes, Will Oldham, Neutral Milk Hotel, Josh Ritter, and even Bruce Springsteen in these tracks. Yet the cornucopia of styles don’t clash, they just come together like good, honest music from somewhere in America.
I can’t promise you these tracks will be up long, so get ’em while the gettin’s good. Malcolm Catto leads the nine-piece Heliocentrics for a crazy, funked-up ride into the far reaches of jazz’s space time continuum. I don’t know what that means either, but it’d take up way too much space attempting to pin down The Heliocentrics sound. They didn’t call it Out There for nothing. It sounds retro, like a James Brown outtake, but Catto’s been spending the present-day diggin’ deep for funk 45s, drumming for DJ Shadow and Madlib, and releasing a solo LP on James Lavelle’s Mo’ Wax Records (the “Untitled” track below is a sample of an unreleased song from those sessions). “Sirius B” is just 1/24 of the electro-free-jazz-space-out The Heliocentrics have unleashed on an unsuspecting and unworthy world.
Lately, everything has just seemed charming. And my last few posts have reflected that. (Uh, I hope?) Ferraby Lionheart completes my “charmed cycle” and, with Clare and the Reasons and Jens Lekman, has been fillling my little apartment with happy sounds. He doesn’t sound like Ryan Adams to me at all, but somehow when Ferraby Lionheart is playing, my brain is somehow right back in Chicago circa 2000 listening to Whiskeytown and driving down Lakeshore Drive watching the leaves change. Or I am in Minnesota listening to the Strokes first album for the first time. In short, this is music to mark time to. Mr. Lionheart is a mishmash–there are strings occasionally, some Otis Redding style whistling, tics sometimes, a little harmonica and a small, appropriate amount of irony mixed up in this man’s music. But mostly its just pretty and solid, and tis the season for pretty, transporting songs.
Black Kites is an LA band that’s got a little bit of everything — male and female vocals, droning guitar, heavy drums, mellow synth — and it’s all dreamy & dramatic. I like the retro vibe they’ve got, especially in “Sadie.” Kind of old school, sort of new wave, it’s like I’m buying my first pair of Dr. Martens all over again. Apparently their cover of the Sisters of Mercy’s “Lucretia My Reflection” was once available on the Filthy Little Angels website, and it’s a drag I couldn’t find it. That would have likely been a rare and special treat. 
Last week while on a family bike ride, my ears suddenly heard the sound of drums pounding in a garage. As we got got closer, I was able identify this beat as a definite 80’s era hardcore punk beat, then gradually to hear distorted vocals and then the way too low guitar. Finally getting within range I saw a bunch of high school boys playing something I didn’t expect; I’m pretty sure they were covering Black Flag. Not like how Korn or Fall Out Boy would play Black Flag, but Black Flag like a bunch of kids in a garage would play Black Flag. I was impressed.
Office is to indie pop what Dilbert is to the comic pages. Early live shows featured the band decked out in office attire, suits, ties, blouses and sensible shoes. Each musician enjoyed an onstage secretary, ready at their beck and call. Lucky for the listener, they don’t sing about the drudgery of the 9 to 5 life (with the exception of “Company Calls” about a woman who insists on doing business on her cell phone 24/7 and the man who is in love with her), although they’re still prone to occasionally dress up on stage as if they just punched out. I won’t bother further trying to decipher what these songs are about when singer and guitarist Scott Masson 
Sean posted Psapp a few times, and they had a song on Grey’s Anatomy, and this post been one of 3hive’s most popular ever. Patrick Watson had a song on Grey’s Anatomy, so hey, give the people what they want, right? He also just won or was nominated for some Canadian music awards — Polaris Prizes, Juno Awards, that sort of thing. I’m thinking Waston and the rest of this Montreal quintet could call themselves M. Rufus Buckley and you’d all get the drift. These tracks are from the band’s 2006 album Close to Paradise, which had a US release the day before yesterday.
It’s fall. It may be 87 sacreligious September degrees in NYC right now, but as far as I am concerned it is fall. I want my braised meat, I want my long sleeve shirts, I want cups of tea and I want old school loungey twilight songs. Husband and wife duo Clare & the Reasons are perfecto for such seasonal urges. I think I once mentioned my secret compulsion to enjoy sappy soundtrack songs (it’s true, I’m sorry), and Clare & the Reasons (who named their album “The Movie”) are like all the joys of my secret musical vice without the any of the cringey guilt. Its plucky and sweet enough for my to get me my fix, but wacky and hip enough that I can play it for others and anticipate a jealous “wait, who is this playing??” Love that. Plus, the entire delicious album is on Emusic.