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?
Bon Iver
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.
Matthew Dear
Even if you’ve only listened to my radio show a handful of times, chances are you’ve heard me play Matthew Dear. His more immediate songs (the ones offered here are such examples) have chameleon-like qualities. They fit so well next to other electronic songs, obviously, but they also segue well with pop songs, new wave tracks, especially the darker ones (like Joy Division), and well, just about any other track I throw them up against. Ironically, Dear’s lackadaisical vocal delivery lends a populist air to his minimalist-techno tracks (it’s a warmer version of Kraftwerk’s robotic vocals) and with every release he gets deliciously close to busting out a crossover hit. When it comes right down to it, I just dig this stuff. Plus, his albums are easily accessible in the KUCI music library, just over my left shoulder, which saves my show from ever embarrassing bouts of dead air.
Sarandon
Sarandon’s new LP is titled KIll Twee Pop!, out April 22nd on Slumberland. And after listening to their feisty pop, you’ll actually hope they will.
Original post 10/8/2007:
My documented love affair with Slumberland Records continues with Sarandon, the South London pop, post-pop, post-punk noise outfit and not the American actress. Led by sole remaining founding member Crayola, Sarandon are irrepressibly catchy with slightly bizarre lyrics. They’re simple and possibly quite mad, to use the British meaning of the word, which explains why my seven year old says “The Linguist” makes her feel like wiggling.
Teargas & Plateglass
Label this track from Teargas & Plateglass “dark.” Not dark like teen angst dark, but dark like Darfur, like the Balkans, like Kenya, like Cambodia. Dark like genocide. Dark like 4,000 more U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq than W.M.D.s found in Iraq; that kind of dark. “One Day Across the Valley” is almost too much; the percussive drum track, the spoken word memory of pure violence, the sparseness of the sound. Like the photos from My Lai or Rwanda, you want both more and less in the given output — more justice, less brutality, more hope, less reality. “I felt a lot of pain,” says the narrator, and it’s hard to understand how this could not be a universal response. From the album Black Triage, with accompanying videos available on the band’s website.
Okay
The first time I listened to Okay was somewhat of a brief and cynical experience. Too cute in its depression, I thought. Their upcoming album Huggable Dust is made up entirely of one-word-title songs that run an average of about two and a half minutes. It’s quirky before you even press “play,” and it gets quirkier once Marty Anderson starts in with his lonesome little-boy quaver over an acoustic guitar and other sounds and instruments reach for a melancholy kind of folk-pop. Yes, it’s a bit of a lo-fi cabaret. But it’s one you won’t want to stop watching thanks to how personal those somber lyrics are made to sound through Anderson’s home recording aesthetic. Fans of Daniel Johnston, The Flaming Lips, and the Elephant Six collective will find much to like. The rest of you might, too.
The Strugglers
Brice Randall Bickford II + friends + Carrboro, NC = The Strugglers. It’s all about location, right? Grab the finely aged “Goodness Gracious” and bask in a little Southern twang & steel guitar — warm, sad sounds, protective like an grown-up version of your childhood blankie. Like he sings in the song: “Don’t you know what will happen with you staring at the world like this?” Or download “Morningside Heights,” the poppy, wise opening track from the band’s 2008 release The Latest Rights and get lost in the violin’s reel from down South to the Upper West Side. The Strugglers stripped down, sedate sound provide a nice reflection of place; that is, the U.S. of A.
Make a Muxtape
Man Plus
Seattle’s Man Plus is kind of like 3hive–a bunch of dudes, one girl and all about the music. When I run low on musical suggestions, I tend to stream KEXP radio when I wake up in the morning and when I did just that recently, I came across this. I was very happy about this find. I have to give much love to the good people at KEXP for always throwing up something new, something smart and being profound musical locavores. To my ear, Man Plus is definitely music from the Pacific Northwest. I have no idea how one really defines “music from the Pacific Northwest” in 2008–but I’m feeling like it has to be part rock out music, part semi-impenetrable lyric (see: “I want to be the number 12”) and, of course, part unrestrained angst (see: all those gloomy pretty guitars attended to by the tendency to move from pretty singing to expressive yell-singing). It has been the soundtrack to this gloomy but sweet morning, and to many others.
Bunnygrunt
A few months back while at my brother’s, I picked up his bass guitar and started absent-mindedly playing it. At one point I suddenly realized I was playing the bassline from a Bunnygrunt song, “Macho Beagle” from their Standing Hampton 7″ from 1994. Which lead me to wonder whatever happened to Bunnygrunt. The good news: Matt Harnish and Karen Reid, the brains behind this outfit, are still going strong. The bad news: “Me & My Vampire Friends” (in MP3 below) is too criminally short to give more than just a taste of their light-hearted, quirky, funny pop, but here you go anyway.