jj sign on to Secretly Canadian records + announce tour, new album.

jj - jj n° 3 (March 2010)

(Indie Pop/Dream Pop/Electronica)

JJ are a mysterious Swedish pop band about which little other is known than the names of its two members, Joakim Benon and Elin Kastlander. No-one would even have known they were a duo if it hadn't been confirmed by the Tough Alliance's Gothenburg based electro label Sincerely Yours earlier this year. With such little information, one can't help reading into the facts we do have, and i'm sure a band of conspiracy theorists somewhere are going to interpret their latest signing, to Secretly Canadian records (home of Yeasayer and The War on Drugs) , as some sort of subtle sign or clue from the so-called Swedes.

With such a mysterious air surrounding jj (always lower-case, for some reason or another, as are their song titles), it logically follows that, as with fellow Swedes The Knife/Fever Ray, the music should also possess a certain uncertain quality, and that to an extent is true of jj. They put a 90s ambient house/dance edge on to dream pop, leading to numerous accusations from Oakenfold and Pete Tong fans around the world of a heavy influence from the Ibiza movement of Balearic dance music which, driven by the pioneering duo, caught well on to the London club scene at the turn of the century. Whether they were influenced by Tong and friends or not, there is a lot of influence from contemporary ambient music on this cannabis leaf fronted collection of 3 minute pop songs.

The genre they involve themselves with most comes in the form of dream pop, which tends to go almost hand in hand with any kind of pop music with an ambient influence. What follows on is an ecletic and accented combination of fellow Gothenburgers such as Pacific!, The Tough Alliance and Air France into a reflective, dancefloor compilation of indie pop music, starting to verge upon ambient dance at times. Some parts of their discography would proudly take up their places on any 90s chillout dance compilation, but other parts, with their reggae influenced pop sensibility, expansive electro-string sound and twee pop vocals couldn't be further away in terms of style. Despite the features of this band which place them at opposite ends of the genre spectrum - the music is all ultimately drawn together by its ever-present sound pallete, which whilst creating some very different songs, creates only one distinctive and inspiring sound.

For a band with no identity and even less regularity, they've been extremely busy in the studio of late, and their first emergence on the popular world music scene came only in March 2009 with their release of jj n° 1 on Sincerely Yours, followed closely by their debut full length, the nine-track LP jj n° 2, on July 1, 2009. It was on December 24, 2009 that they announced the biggest news of their year, that their follow up album, the inspiringly titled jj n° 3, would be coming out in March of this year on the aforementioned Secretly Canadian label. If this wasn't news enough, they also revealed a full tour with British post-punk/rnb band The XX in March/April 2010.

jj n° 3 is out March 2010 on Secretly Canadian records.

jj n° 2 on Amazon MP3

03-22 Baton Rouge, LA - Spanish Moon*
03-24 Atlanta, GA - The Earl*
03-25 Carrboro, NC - Cats Cradle*
03-28 Washington, DC - Sixth & I Historic Synagogue*
03-29 Philadelphia, PA - First Unitarian Church Sanctuary*
04-05 Columbus, OH - Wexner Center*
04-06 Bloomington, IN - Buskirk-Chumley Theater*

*w/ The XX (currently also on tour with Hot Chip, Friendly Fires and Holly Miranda)

File Next To - The Tough Alliance, Pacific!, Air France

jj - things will never be the same again (MP3)
jj - baby (MP3)

Rural Alberta Advantage - Four Night Rider/Luciana

Rural Alberta Advantage - Hometowns (July 17, 2009)(Country/Indie Pop/Garage Pop)

The Rural Alberta Advantage are a band I missed this year until quite recently, and without a doubt, if i'd listened through their album earlier than I did, it would have made an appearance on my albums of 2009 list. Hometowns was originally released independently by the band in early 2008 - but following an Emusic artist of the month feature in November 2008, The RAA signed onto Saddle Creek Records, and re-released Hometowns on July 7, 2009.

With all the lo-fi rock nostalgia of Jeff Magnum and Neutral Milk Hotel's On Avery Island, The Rural Alberta Advantage make hyperactive indie pop with wailing boy-girl harmonies, heartfelt acoustic interludes and coarse electric guitars. There's stomping percussion and checkered shirts galore - as well as horns and occasionally keys added into the mix. They are currently touring extensively across the USA, moving on to bigger and better things as their popularity grows. Based in Toronto, Ontario, having grown up in rural Alberta, the band describe themselves below..

"The Rural Alberta Advantage play indie-rock songs about hometowns and heartbreak, born out of images from growing up in Central and Northern Alberta. They sing about summers in the Rockies and winters on the farm, ice breakups in the spring time and the oil boom’s charm, the mine workers on compressed, the equally depressed, the city’s slow growth and the country’s wild rose, but mostly the songs just try to embrace the advantage of growing up in Alberta."


Four Night Rider, live from The Bell House 5/4/09, via wingedfeetxc on Youtube.

File Next To - Harlem Shakes, Neutral Milk Hotel, Japandroids

The Rural Alberta Advantage - Four Night Rider (MP3)
The Rural Alberta Advantage - Luciana (MP3)


Hometowns on Amazon

Real Estate - Beach Comber/Snow Days

Real Estate - S/T (November 17, 2009)
(Surf Pop/Psychedelic/Chillwave)

I've been meaning to post something for weeks and weeks about Brooklyn band Real Estate, another pioneering group in the increasingly popular psychedelic surf pop movement which i've been heavily over indulging myself in recently. In the same vein as all my blog favourites such as Surfer Blood, Girls and Best Coast - Real Estate make snippets of 60s pop psychedelia coated in fuzzy reverb and drenched in sunny harmonies. The difference between this band and the others is the total chillout mentality they show across their entire self-titled debut album, leading to a whole load of comparisons to the other chillwave bands of late.

Unlike their synth laden companions such as Toro y Moi, Washed Out and Neon Indian they make chill out surfer pop music with more of a classic rock influence than one from electronica. Again, another feature sets them apart from bands like Surfer Blood and Woods is the fact that they coat their meaningful and heartfelt lyrics in meaningful and heartfelt music. As with most of the albums I've been posting about recently, this is another one for your Sunday morning collection.

Real Estate is bassy and slow-paced with occasional bursts of energy across the ten-track Woodsist Records release. The spaced out vocals of Martin Courtney don't feature heavily - and when they do, its more the notes they hold than the lyrics they deliver. It's not shoegaze, but at times the lyrics make more of a background appearance in relation to the simple melodies than a dominant one.

File Next To - Best Coast, Ganglians, Toro y Moi

Real Estate - Snow Days (MP3)
Real Estate - Beach Comber (MP3)


Real Estate on Amazon

One To Watch In 2010 - Flotilla

Flotilla - One Hundred Words For Water (November 2, 2009)

(Indie Pop/Classical/Chillout)

Canada, as a music scene, is definitely doing something right; the sheer volume of incredible female vocalists coming out of there in recent years (particularly its major cities, Montreal and Quebec) might be quite shocking, but remains warmly welcomed by people such as myself. As you may have guessed, I'm quite a sucker for dreamy chamber pop bands with female vocalists like Stars, The Most Serene Republic and Feist. Another of my favourite female vocal styles originates from across the pond in Bristol, UK where in the 90s, Portishead and Beth Gibbons started out the wave of trip-hop and quivering female voices that aided the popularisation of bands such as Massive Attack. Flotilla, hailing from Montreal themselves, do a good job of combining the two styles into a chillout pop album of light classical indie, with occasional progressive and trip-hop influences.

As a five (and occasionally six) piece, headed by Veronica Charnley, Flotilla create a layered and minimalistic selection of well-placed riffs and sounds - giving the unnervingly intertwined organic sounds of piano, harp and strings an individuality which they themselves produced in recording. Certain songs (notably Charlie, I'm Through) do break convincingly into a full band sound, but at all times the voice remains the focus of the arrangement. There's even an erratic disco piece towards the end of track Clouds. However, never does an instrument break out of the background, and even amongst such an accomplished set of gifted musicians every single one knows well his or her place and boundaries. They manage to provide an ecletic backing to a confident singer - with an experimental edge reminiscent at times of Portishead, occasionally parts of the more experimental side of Radiohead, but more often than not of bands like The Most Serene Republic, Feist and St. Vincent.

Although their album came out in 2009, I count Flotilla as a band to watch in 2010; their first album never really caught on, and for that reason such a stunning follow-up will take its time to be appreciated. They have touring planned for next year in the USA, where if they don't start to take off, something is seriously wrong.

File Next To - Joanna Newsom, Kings of Convenience, St. Vincent

Flotilla - Charlie, I'm Through (MP3)
Flotilla - Meet Me Outside (MP3)

Buy One Hundred Words For Water Direct Via Flotilla.

Odawas - Harmless Lover's Discourse

Odawas - The Blue Depths (Feb 17, 2009)

(Dream Pop/Ambient/Folk)

Odawas have three albums to date, ranging back as far as 2003's Aether Eater, and as far forward as February 2009, where The Blue Depths became Jagjaguwar's third full length Odawas release. Its an album of swirling post-folk music, with electronic string arrangements and airy, synthesized euphoria. Filled with Sunday night sounds, this is a concise yet trippy album of awe and childish wonder, revealing more about itself with each listen.

Michael Tapscott mans the microphones and the guitar, and his musical partner Isaac Edwards deals with the experimental backing through everything from synths to keys to setting the structure. The sound on the synthesizers isn't far off from that of M83, but the way it is used is quite different - whilst the latter operate with a determined purpose and grand execution - Odawas appear more concerned with what doesn't feature than what does. The music constantly keeps you wondering what is still to come - and what does come is beautiful. Their execution is grand in an essentially different way.

The feel of these songs is predominantly choral and folky; Odawas most of the time sound more like an early morning Fleet Foxes drug trip than an indie pop band. Their music, particularly on this album, falls quite comfortably within the realms of psychedelia, and at no point does it look back. Occasionally Edwards will add some hazy percussion to the mix - driving forward his songs to step out of their comfort zone to grab your attention. It is only then this album looks for you. Harmless Lover's Discourse (MP3 below) is about as proactive as Blue Depths gets.

Finally, the Virginia born duo recently recorded an acoustic (well, minus the electronics) daytrotter session in October, featuring live versions of new tracks in the studio. Take a listen and download them via the daytrotter website.

File Next To - Fleet Foxes, The Blue Nile, Slowdive

Odawas - Harmless Lover's Discourse (MP3)

The Blue Depths on Amazon