Clay and I had this ritual in college where we’d turn down the lights, lay flat on our backs, and play certain songs over and over again. It served as a catharsis for us, often following a botched exam or “I like you…as a friend.” Our playlist included a variety of music, though most of it fell under the so-called “slowcore” and “shoegazer” categories. But not just any band with bad posture, pale skin, and walls of distorted guitars or mumbled vocals would do… You gotta have dynamics to pull me out of a funk. Build, crash, rebuild. Like waves, like Legos. The Very Hush Hush seem to have that dynamics thing figured out (could be their classical music training). Each of these tracks, if taken in one- or two-minute intervals, may seem shy or sullen, but taken as a whole will lift you up to where you can see more than just your shoes.
Wolf Parade
If you haven’t been already, brace yourself to get slammed with all things Wolf Parade at least through the end of the year. It’s all the rage with the cool kids, and they’re wrapping up a tour with The Arcade Fire this week, so their hip factor’s inching way up. Don’t believe a word of it until you hear it for yourself, at which point you very well may find yourself high-stepping proudly, baton in hand, leading Wolf Parade down your street. Hit the comments and let your fellow 3hive readers know where you stand…
Say Hi To Your Mom on the Road with Nada Surf
Clue to Kalo
You know that expression “the cobbler’s children have no shoes”? That’s kinda been the story of my household on the digital music front…until yesterday, when the Bose Sound Dock and my wife’s silver iPod Mini showed up on our doorstep. I don’t know who was more excited, her or me, but let’s just say I already had a 125-song playlist ready to for the occasion. The pulsing strains of Clue to Kalo’s “Empty Save the Oxygen” were the first to emerge from the Sound Dock. Velia’s jaw dropped as she turned to me and said, “This sounds amazing.” I’m sure she was talking about the speakers but she was right on both counts.
Hooray for Insound’s Back to School Sale
Valley Lodge
You heard it here first: The next old-ass band to be hailed better-late-than-never as influential pop geniuses is Electric Light Orchestra — good ol’ ELO. I’ve heard them so many times in commercials and elsewhere lately that I’m convinced an unseen cosmic force is watching me and that the next time I order Chinese food it’ll be Jeff Lynne holding the bag and telling me to read my fortune cookie very carefully. Perhaps it’s even Lynne who subliminally led me to Valley Lodge (well, Lynne and the 3hive suggestion box), who, despite not sounding much like ELO at all, share the infectious habit of overdubbed high-tenor harmonies with the erstwhile prog-pop gods. There are also guitar hooks, a bass of a thousand rhythms, and mixed acoustic and electric melodies to keep you right in time. These are men who know how to craft a slightly emo, slightly retro pop song – and why shouldn’t they when their members’ list of former and current projects include Walt Mink, Sense Field, Satanicide, and Uptown Sinclair? “All of My Lovin” is one of those tracks that instantly sounds like you’ve been bouncing to it all of your life. And there are a dozen more little beauties on the album. Even the bios on their website are more fun than a barrel of domesticated monkeys. But, if Valley Lodge ever hope to be as mega-influential as ELO, they really need to work on their album covers. The birds are nice, guys, but the Technicolor ELO spaceship kicks ass. You know it’s true.
Eavesdropping via RSS
Brokeback
Brokeback — a.k.a. Douglas McCombs from Tortoise and Eleventh Day Dream, and a few friends — offers dreamy release in this lovely track. Let’s see, how many soft and cushy adjectives can be piled up on “Name’s Winston…”? Ethereal, soothing, idyllic, pensive. There’s four, at least.
La Laque
La Laque is not a French band. Sure, they sing in French, and the name is French, but no one in the band is French. Les filles parlent francais, mais les garcons ne parlent pas francais (need to run that by Sam, 3hive’s resident Francophone). Regardless of origin, NYC’s La Laque do have a more eccentric pop outlook, and they’re not afraid to let the violin drive the song, as shown in “Secret” from their split single with PAS/CAL.
Silversun Pickups
I was lucky enough to come across Silversun Pickups’ self-released EP last year and was immediately smitten with the band’s relaxed take on rock ‘n’ roll’s melancholic side, and how, as they put it “get loud, get quiet, get ugly, get pretty.” I’m also lucky Joe didn’t beat me to this band, like he did with fellow shipmates, Earlimart.