It worked on me. Dangerbird Records (home to Silversun Pickups, Peter Walker and The One AM Radio) recently revamped their website and scooted Darker My Love into the studio to begin work on a new record. They thought giving away the last Darker My Love record might interest a few people and send them sniffing around the new site. I’m happy to help in this effort. Darker My Love first caught my ear by naming their band after a rare T.S.O.L. song and kept me listening by resurrecting L.A.’s Paisley Underground sound. They play a tougher and denser version of Rain Parade’s ’80s psychedelia. It’s Summer of Love 3.0.
Southeast Engine
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.
The Heliocentrics
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.
Ferraby Lionheart
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
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.
PS Thanks to everyone who pointed out to my numb skull that “Lucretia” is still available for free and legal download. I’ve added it to the rest of the tracks offered by Black Kites.
Ravens and Chimes
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.
So how does that tie into this post about NYC’s Ravens and Chimes, a decidedly non-punk band of NYU students? Like our little punk friends in the garage, what they are playing is unexpected. In the case of Ravens and Chimes and their debut album Reichenbach Falls out October 9, their indie pop folk rock, like a younger, peppier Bishop Allen influenced by Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen (their cover of his “So Long, Marianne” is below), displays a maturity that is a bit of a surprise. Perhaps their devotion to their influences has led them to play more from the heart. And perhaps as a thirtysomething I’m not giving the kids, be they liberal arts college students or high school boys in a garage, enough credit these days.
Office
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 explains them himself. Suffice it to say Masson does an amazing job at recreating a dream in “The Ritz” and his background notes behind “Oh My” are as hilarious as the video. The best part about Office is, of course, their music. Any band who aspires, and succeeds!, to blend the sounds of Neil Diamond and Daft Punk, The Beach Boys and Wire is plenty capable of knocking you out of your own 9 to 5 funk.
Office is now on tour with Earlimart.
Patrick Watson
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.
Clare & The Reasons
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.
Oslo
I’ve been following Oslo for a while and I’m geeked their debut album is out today via finer digital retail outlets. Next month SideCho records will release the CD. SideCho is a great label out of Long Beach and consistently surprises me in a good way with their offerings. Oslo produces moody, brooding music in the vein of early ’90s bands like Catherine Wheel. Enjoy this first bite then dig in for plenty more!