Yeasayer - Odd Blood (Feb 8, 2010) ALBUM REVIEW

Yeasayer have been an extremely busy band since their debut came out in 2007; they quickly found themselves on tour with MGMT (an arrangement which becomes less surprising with every release), guesting on Bat For Lashes' Two Suns and contributing the vocals of their lead singer to Simian Mobile Disco's Audacity of Huge. The industry connections and widespread exposure granted them not only the freedom to take a lot of time over their follow up, but also to hone it into one of the strangest installments of psychedelic pop music 2010 has seen yet. Far more polished, and infinitely more expressive - Odd Blood is a far more charismatic and overconfident version of All Hour Cymbals. The days of downbeat acoustic songs for charity compilations are over; because nowadays everything about this Middle Eastern-psych-snap-gospel band screams DANCE; and not in your conventional sense. This is hipster dancefloor 80s inspired funkpop with the sensibility of Peter Gabriel, worldbeat percussion and the downright quirkyness of Gang Gang Dance and Dirty Projectors' endless list of mad collaborators.

The only real anomaly on the album comes before you're even paying any proper attention, in the form of opener The Children, building up with Animal Collective style waterboard synths and an equally overmanipulated fuzz drone of a vocal. After a just-about-bearable amount of time a Fuck Buttons-esque drone emerges and Phoenix style skewiff melody takes its rightful place above the cascade; and a few seconds later, Odd Blood really kicks in. Ambling Alp is a killer lead single from the album that's been around on the internet for months, and from airy keys confidently explodes an infectious lead line and philosophical lyrical content "And if anyone should cheat you, take advantage of, or beat you//Raise your head and wear your wounds with pride." The song develops as furiously as its intense and bipolar lyrics suggest - into a synth heavy bout of anger with squealing falsetto vocals, and euphoric 80s pop post-chorus.

You barely get a break across the entire album, only 80s power ballad track I Remember ("You're stuck in my mind, all the time") and off-beat psychedelic interlude Strange Reunions detract from the huge mood this album expresses. The latter is where Animal Collective's offbeat vocals and weirdo sound pallete shine through again rather than the usual of Montreal styled indie funk which rings loud and clear on number 9 Mondegreen. The chunky brass sections of Mark Ronson's Version combined with the rushed dancefloor vocal of Michael Jackson take precedence here as ever, driving this overpopulated dancefloor filler to ever more intense heights.

If people say that this album loses its sheen as it progresses, or bunches its singles at the start, I'm going to directly disagree; its not that this album becomes filler, its just that it becomes infinitely weirder as it goes on. As if the beginning wasn't strange enough? Single Ambling Alp, Gang Gang Dance psych-dance track Madder Red and perhaps my personal favourite O.N.E are all single-worthy and lie in the first half, but you only need to take a look at the titles of the last two songs, the manic saxophone filled ska track  "Mondegreen" and anomalous album ender "Grizelda" for confirmation that the ending is really going to live up to the name 'Odd Blood'. With such a huge range of sounds, structures and melodies flying off in all directions - Odd Blood is a genuinely ecletic album, drawing comparisons to everything from Michael Jackson to High Places or Panda Bear, and at no point does the album get too weird. Yeasayer have succeeded in exactly what Vampire Weekend have already failed to do in 2010, producing a second album which has added depth not at the expense of appeal, freshness or their long-running fanbase.

8.4/10

File Next To - Gang Gang Dance, Animal Collective, of Montreal
Yeasayer - O.N.E (MP3)
Yeasayer - Ambling Alp (MP3)
Buy Odd Blood on Amazon.com

Introducing.. Golden Ages - Tradition (2010)

Golden Ages is the anonymous bedroom electronic music project of one man, a Philly native, who supposedly dubs himself creator of psychedelic pop, as arrogant as that may sound? But if you have time to have a listen to a few of his tracks (download below) you'll come to realise that whether he created psych-pop or not, you have a quite special guy on your hands. Merging luscious M83 style melodies and soundscapes with the looping, whirring and structurally challenging creativity of Fuck Buttons, Golden Ages is as much a part of the emerging dreamwave market as Toro y Moi or Gold Panda. He released his first EP Sitting Softly On The Sea in 2009, and its follow up Tradition, is out now at Itunes and Insound.

Electronic/Experimental/Psychedelic/Chillwave
File Next To - Toro y Moi, Panda Bear, Gold Panda
Golden Ages - Everything Will Be Alright (MP3)
Golden Ages - Be Cool (MP3)

Technoir MA - 2/B EP REVIEW

Technoir MA - 2/B (Feb 2, 2010)

Post-Punk/Alternative Dance/Live Electronics

Yesterday saw not only the official release date of Technoir MA's debut EP '2/B', but also its perfectly timed arrival in my letterbox, and by that time, unbeknownst to its creators, it had become a certainty for me to review. Justin Vassalo and Colin Green have featured before on my blog - i called them a band to watch in 2010 back in January - and i make no apologies for featuring them again in a very much positive light. Their brand of New Order meets tech-dance drum machine pop music has been captivating my recent listening to a stage high enough that i've been excitably jumping at every parcel waiting for this one to arrive in the last week or so, and here's why. Richly decadent lead guitar lines intertwine amongst themselves, subsiding only for short and euphoric sections of clear cut overdrive - which, all the time almost drowning out the distinctively New Order-style vocal sound in its entirety, make for 4 minute interludes of intense and euphoric guitar pop music. Heavily instrumental, the two musicians masterfully wind their full sounding melodies around each other, and let the Alesis SR-16 retro drum machine sit in the driving seat. Building to almost mechanical peaks, their awkward and colourful flamboyances excel through stunning guitar work into a four-track masterpiece of brilliantly and tactfully written alternative guitar music. Technoir MA are nothing short of a thrilling new pop duo from Massachussetts who wear their Joy Division and New Order influence on their sleeve (they even name their tracks in exactly the same style, rarely using more than one word in their song names), and with a clear enthusiasm for high octane pop music this hard-hitting, its difficult to blame them. Return however is a melancholy and drooping shoegaze anthem with the awkward vocal styles of Ian Curtis and controlled background overdrive of his more downbeat punk contemporaries. Use Of Force is a nine minute outro to the EP which at first swaps the guitars for airy synthesized swirls before developing into a crunchy and upbeat, if slightly erratic, ending song to 2/B. The length and accomplishment of the ender matures the album from the two opening tracks of the four, which seem to portray a much younger band obsessed with floor filling drum beats and shiny leading melodies. 2/B is a short EP at 22 minutes, and definitely starts off better than it finishes, but as long as the band continue churn out music with enough of a new angle on what has gone before it, they shouldn't have a problem in building up some serious industry consideration in the coming months.

7.5/10

Technoir MA - Sparks (MP3)
Technoir MA - Return (MP3)

 

buy the album direct from the band

Showstar - Think Ringo (Feb 1, 2010)

(Indie Pop/Alternative/Indie Rock)

Belgians Showstar have more in common with the indie pop from out of Scandanavia than they do with the indie rock bands sweeping the British charts throughout the 90s. Despite having toured throughout their 8 years together with the likes of The Rakes, The Thrills, Maximo Park and The Charlatans - to me they sound more like Finnish indie pop band 'Cats on Fire' or Swedish band 'Days' when i hear what their promo album has to offer me. Most of their 2010 bio, and indeed a lot of their activity to date, however, attempts to suggest otherwise. They quote Pulp and Blur as their main influences, and to an extent this is justified, but at the end of the day, if Blur played out some of the songs Showstar's third album Think Ringo has to offer, they'd be a far more interesting band than the real Blur could ever wish to be. This album is definitely not as Britpop as they claim it is, and it works to their advantage.


What I propose that Showstar actually are, is a vastly underrated European band who make radio-friendly indie pop hits. There's no shortage of eery pop chords, jarring basslines, crisp lead lines and cleanly recorded vocal harmonies which add urgency into the mix. The album is upbeat in its entirety and euphoric at times, see (Love) What's more, the band have been playing together years enough that they are tight as anything, and this really translates well on to their latest effort, produced in its entirety by Gareth Parton (Foal, Go! Team, Killers, Rakes) in London and Belgium. 'Think Ringo' is a logical continuation from 2006's Dot, an album which saw a marked rise in the band's maturity from their debut. In terms of genre, they lie somewhere between the 'Slag pop' of Dirty Pretty Things and the grainier vocals of bands like Mumm-Ra and Milburn.


The problem with this album is that whilst it has all the happy go lucky feel of the 90s Britpop scene, they play music of a style which in the eyes of many is dying. This album gets a decent mark from me because they do what they do very well indeed - just fails to get a plus mark because what they do has been done many, many times before - and keeping an album so rigidly styled interesting for more than 5 tracks or so is a feat they struggle to pull off. If solid indie pop/britpop bands are what you're looking for, look no further. If you're looking for an album which is innovative and forward-thinking, you've come to the wrong place.


(Love) is one of my favourite's from the album - its a nice and simple track with Carl Barat style guitars and classically Showstar, grainy but intense vocals. Have a listen below, or simply buy the album through the myspace of Vespasonic Records.

6.3/10

Showstar - (Love) (MP3)

Preview: New Yeasayer, Broken Bells, Caribou.

Yeasayer - O.N.E (MP3) (from Odd Blood, out Feb 8)

Yeasayer's Odd Blood is out this month on Secretly Canadian and to fuel our anticipation, which in my case is already to breaking point, they've dropped us another track by name of O.N.E. Its a glitchy psychedelic pop song, think MGMT messing with time signatures, with a punchy bassline and erratic synth lines. With the occasional reflective interlude, Yeasayer take a lot of time out of their songs to try and really mess with your head. Yeasayer in my eyes are getting 'madder' and more flamboyant by the second, and from the days of ambient pop folk on 2007's All Hour Cymbals, they've gone from an Animal Collective style weird cult following to a far more polished and expressive sound. What can I say, Odd Blood is shaping up to be one of my favourite releases of 2010 so far.

pre-order Odd Blood on Amazon.com

Broken Bells - Vaporize (MP3) (from Broken Bells, March 9)


Supposedly Broken Bells self titled debut album, due in March, has already leaked to bittorrent websites, but i'm faithful to to the industry like that, so i haven't touched it. What i have touched though is the latest track to appear in my itunes from the Shins frontman James Mercer and Black Keys producer (amongst many, many others) Dangermouse. As ever form these two, its oozing with 60s goodness, but this one provides a far more acoustic tone than the other two tracks i've posted a couple of months back. I really, really like this track - it sounds far more like Shins than the others.

 pre-order Broken Bells on amazon.com

Caribou - Odessa (MP3) (from Swim, out April 20)

Dan Snaith aka Caribou's last record Andorra was universally acclaimed and even scooped a Polaris Prize for its ethereal brand of psychedelic dance pop, and main man Snaith, a little over two years later, has announced his second effort 'Swim' for April 20th. He's already described its sound mainly in terms of water (hence the name) and is recently is quoted as having said that on the new album he aimed to make "…Dance music that sounds like it’s made out of water…”. He even uses the word 'slosh' to desribe its sound. The new track is definitely a signpost for what is to come - its a little more direct and definitely more danceable than his previous efforts. There's a solid beat, calm, soothing vocals and to top it off, strange, eery underwater sounds which litter the song-floor.