SXSW Week continues here at Faronheit. Follow along on Twitter for more details. I’ll also be making whatever updates I can on the main page, so if you came here via direct link, click on the top banner and see if I’ve got some juicy details about great new bands to discover or secret shows I stumbled into. In the meantime, please keep yourselves occupied with these songs in today’s Pick Your Poison. Thumbs up goes to tracks from Benjamin Francis Leftwich’s take on a Beatles classic, Bonaparte, Fear of Dawn, Maggie Bjorklund, Rhett Miller (of Old 97s), Sea of Bees, and Twin Steps.
Hello. I’m currently soaking in an extreme amount of music via SXSW. I’ll be posting details on all that when I have the chance or if I’m not suffering from collapse-inducing exhaustion. In the meantime, please enjoy this edition of Pick Your Poison. I’ll recommend tracks from The American Dollar, Caltrop, Delicate Steve, Hollis Brown, Lemonade, Mayda, Ramona Falls, Sleep Maps, Torche and Twerps. In the Soundcloud section please enjoy streaming tracks from Gemini Club and Guided By Voices.
It’s SXSW Week here at Faronheit, and I’m pleased to say I’ll have reports direct from Austin starting tomorrow. Er, probably Thursday or whenever I have time. I plan on bouncing from venue to venue and showcase to showcase from about Noon-4AM the next few days, so filing reports might be tough. Keep up with me on Twitter for short, up-to-the-minute updates. Hopefully there will be some genuinely great discoveries made during my time there. Of course you can make your own music discovery right here and now, via Pick Your Poison. That’s kind of the point. Today’s highlights include tracks from Beast Make Bomb, Christopher Paul Stelling, Island Twins, Lightouts, Radiation City, and The Spring Standards. In the Soundcloud section please enjoy streaming tracks from 2:54, Gary Go and Monument Valley, among others.
Yellow Ostrich began as a solo project Alex Schaaf started a few years back in Wisconsin. Unlike fellow Wisconsin native Justin Vernon of Bon Iver, Schaaf didn’t lock himself away in a remote cabin in the woods to make music. He did almost the exact opposite, in fact. After developing a strong local following, he packed his bags and moved to New York. There he hooked up with Bishop Allen drummer Michael Tapper to develop Yellow Ostrich’s second album The Mistress. That earned the attention of Barsuk Records, who signed the band and re-released that sophmore full length late last summer. By that time multi-instrumentalist Jon Natchez had joined the band and they were already in the early stages of developing a follow-up. Strange Land is the result, and the triumvirate of collaboration broadens their sound more than ever before. The earlier Yellow Ostrich efforts were built largely on a mixture of guitars and vocal loops, but this full band approach appears to be the sort of medicine needed for them to truly break out of the shell they’ve been hiding in. They now appear as a band prepared to conquer the world with these songs, and they’re practically built for a uniquely engaging live show. Yet all is not well in Yellow Ostrich’s world. In spite of the record’s overwhelming enthusiasm, the band takes its eye off the prize more than a few times. A number of tracks, including “Daughter” and “I Want Yr Love”, skate perilously close to the 5 minute mark, and listening to them can sometimes feels more like a chore than an enjoyable experience. Longer songs aren’t bad, but when you realize there was a great cut-off point that went ignored 2 minutes earlier, frustration quickly sets in. Quite simply, the band gets a little greedy and can’t always keep their melodies as sharp and focused as they should be. It doesn’t help that they produced the album on their own, because nobody was around to teach them about streamlining their approach. Nobody told them what a memorable hook sounds like either, apparently. You may come away from Strange Lands being unable to recall much of it. Playfulness and energy, not to mention the sonic innovations compared to the last record, doesn’t make up for a touch of restraint and one more wallop of the chorus. But Yellow Ostrich is still a growing band, as clearly evidenced by the personnel expansion over their last two albums. In spite of its faults, Strange Lands shows a band with great promise for the future. Now might be a great time to start paying attention.
Happy Monday to you. Hopefully it’s nice weather where you’re at. In Chicago, temperatures are about 20 degrees above normal for this time of year, meaning that it’s 60 degrees and sunny. Needless to say, it’s awesome. Spring is but a couple weeks away (officially speaking), but already there are rumors of 70+ degree days before the end of the week. I’ll be in Texas for much of it, and ironically the weather will be about the same. But rainy, I hear. More on my SXSW adventure later. In the meantime, please enjoy today’s Pick Your Poison. I’ll point you in the direction of some fime tracks from Bear in Heaven, Cuff the Duke covering Sonic Youth, James Apollo, Jenny Gillespie, Paperfangs, and Twin Trip. In the Soundcloud section you may be interested in streaming tracks from Blaustarr, Dragonette and House of Wolves.
So, next week is SXSW. I’m pleased to say I’ll be making the trek to Austin this year for the first time. If things seem a little odd with postings on the site, that’s the reason why. At the moment I’m planning to keep Pick Your Poison running at its normal daily schedule, but should things go a little nuts (it’s certainly possible), I’ll have plenty of content and music for you when I return. I have a feeling it’s going to be a blast. If you’re going to be in Austin, get in touch via email or Twitter and we can talk some shop over free drinks and tacos. Let’s get to today’s weekend-starting Pick Your Poison then, shall we? I’ll recommend tracks from Digits, Kitty Clementine, Punches, and Siddhartha. Rewards’ remix of School of Seven Bells is great as well. In the Soundcloud section, you can stream tracks from Deportes with Lykke Li, Pond, and s / s / s, which is Sufjan Stevens, Son Lux and Serengeti.
Ceremony are old school punk rockers. They take pride in avoiding social media of any kind, emphatically stating on their website that they do not have Twitter, Facebook or Myspace. When preparing their new album Zoo, singer Ross Farrar chose to write a letter using traditional pen and paper to outline for fans what the music was going to be about and how things had changed since their last album. “There are songs on the record that sound fast, slow, eerie, full, or abrupt, each one different, but at the same time very similar,” he wrote. That’s a very accurate way of describing it, and for the band’s biggest fans, that’s probably not good news. Quick and dirty has been Ceremony’s ethos for their first three records, and that’s not quite the case anymore. Moving from underground punk label Bridge 9 Records and onto indie superlabel Matador certainly didn’t win them any cheers either. Yet punk band labelmates Fucked Up have done a nice job proving that you can have success without losing any of your edge. The same can be said of punk supergroup OFF! and young upstarts Iceage, both of whom have been doing great work in reviving a genre that once called Blink-182 a member. That said, it’s a little unfair to call Zoo a hardcore album. It lacks the sharp edge and white knuckle energy to earn such a descriptor. The easiest way to describe this record is to slap a post-hardcore tag on it, which is a fancier way of saying the music is heavy but not quite heavy enough to kick you in the teeth. This more tempered approach enables the band to experiment a bit without ever straying too far from their base. Only “Citizen” really sounds like classic Ceremony. Most of the time the band seems like they’re aiming for garage rock and using early 00’s bands for inspiration. At any given moment a track bears the markings of The Hives, The Vines or The White Stripes. “Quarantine” does a surprisingly good job of re-creating the sound of pre-Dookie Green Day, and the driving bass on “Hotel” gives it a very Joy Division feel (who, of course, they’re named after). There are also potions of Zoo that pay tribute to the godfathers of punk rock. You can absolutely hear the influence of Pink Flag-era Wire, This Nation’s Saving Grace-era The Fall, and even a little Metal Box-era Public Image Ltd. on bits like “World Blue” and “Community Service”. The worst part about the similarity is that Ceremony isn’t quite in the same league as those heavy-hitters. There are a lot more hooks on this album compared to the band’s older material, yet most of the songs are shockingly unmemorable. John Goodmanson produced it, and he turns out to be a positive influence on the overall sound of the record, adding depth and color to even the most plain-sounding songs. Unfortunately, there are quite a few of those plain songs on Zoo, and it causes 12 tracks and 36 minutes to sound like something much longer. Ceremony may have broken free from their hardcore punk habitat to try and explore other options available to them, but this record is evidence enough that some animals truly belong in cages.
Happy International Women’s Day. It’s about 3x better than Talk Like A Pirate Day and about 10x better than International Pancake Day. How do we come up with these holidays? There really is something for every day of the year. In terms of International Women’s Day, I should comment that I prefer to celebrate women every single day. It’s upsetting to me that gender inequality is still an issue in today’s society, and that it takes a day like today to help push awareness of it. Treat everyone equally and we’ll be a better society for it. Please note I’m not talking about socialism’s idea of equality involving money, goods and services. Respect one another is what I mean, to perfectly clarify. Okay, Pick Your Poison for today is excellent, so let’s talk about that. Highlights today include tracks from Blue Foundation, Magical Mistakes, MUMBLS, Parallels, Stars in Coma, and Super Water Sympathy.
Have you been following this Bradford Cox saga? It’s fascinating stuff, and just a little comforting to know he’s not completely off his rocker. The story goes as follows: Cox was playing a show in Minneapolis under his solo moniker Atlas Sound. He played pretty much his full set, and at some point during it a heckler decided it’d be funny to request “My Sharona” over and over again between songs. Tiring of such antics, Cox finally obliged and played “My Sharona”…for an hour straight. He recruited the opening band to assist him in such a task, and things only got weirder from there. According to reports, Cox asked the requester/heckler to come on stage and strip for the crowd. He also asked the crowd to lift their chairs above their heads. Eventually the whole crowd was invited to come up on stage, though by that point many had already left out of sheer boredom/disgust. It was a very punk rock thing to do, and Cox is not at all apologetic about doing it. He was simply having a little fun on stage and seeing how far he could take it. Consider him the Andy Kaufman of indie rock. Many probably won’t understand, but for those that do, it’s a good laugh. Sometimes you just need to go nuts in a room full of people. Okay, let’s do today’s Pick Your Poison. I’ll advise you to download tracks from Free Energy, The Hussy, Mirror Talk, Spencer Tweedy (son of Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy), The Young Evils and Zammuto. In the Soundcloud section be sure to stream tracks from First Love, Last Rites and The Pale Corners.
Happy New Album Tuesday, in which things arrive on store shelves both physically and digitally for your purchasing pleasure. Here’s a list of artists with new stuff out for your consideration, keeping in mind I give no official endorsement to these albums unless you specifically read a review of it. There’s new records this week from Andrew Bird, Ava Luna, Baby Eagle and the Proud Mothers, Balkan Beat Box, Bowerbirds, Bruce Springsteen, Ceremony, Dinowalrus, Eric Chenaux, Julia Holter, Kaiser Chiefs, Lovedrug, The Magnetic Fields, The Men, Miniature Tigers, Nite Jewel, Now, Now, Nu Sensae, Pond, Said the Whale, Tim Fite, White Rabbits, Xiu Xiu and Yellow Ostrich. There’s a handful of great ones in that bunch, and I’ll tell you about them at a later date. For now, let’s get to the Pick Your Poison business at hand. Today I’ll recommend tracks from Bear in Heaven, The Dandy Warhols, Kid A, The Lonesone Savages, Retribution Gospel Choir, Sandy Bull, Tanlines, THEESatisfaction and Theresa Andersson. There’s a new song from Rufus Wainwright in the Soundcloud section as well, and that’s pretty damn good.
Those that have caught onto Bowerbirds in the last few years, whether it was through their 2007 debut album Hymns for a Dark Horse or its 2009 follow-up Upper Air, probably have a pretty good grasp on what the band is all about. The word “rustic” gets thrown around a lot when talking about a band like this, presumably because they’ve got a down home charm that transcends all the way into their lyrics. So you get a lot of acoustic guitars and graceful pianos, maybe some violins and glockenspiel for good measure. Imagine a less inventive version of Fleet Foxes without more muted vocal harmonies, and Bowerbirds is a band that should come to mind. Perhaps it’s better to simply say they’re peers with Iron & Wine and Midlake in their pastoralism. Navigating an urban jungle while listening to their songs never feels quite as good as it does when it soundtracks your trip into the woods or through an open field. That was the case with the band before, and with their third long player The Clearing it’s essentially more of the same. The changes made to their sound are largely cosmetic, with the instruments a little less buzzy and the vocals a little more up-front in the mix. Bowerbirds have also grown a little in their compositional abilities. That’s clear from the opening track “Tuck the Darkness In”, starting with just an acoustic guitar and vibraphone but slowly building and adding more instruments until it explodes in a cacophony of noise for the final 90 seconds. Following that up is “In the Yard”, which invites a whole other collection of instruments into the fold paired next to Beth Tacular’s sweet vocal, also essentially a paradox to Philip Moore’s from the track before. This pair of songs is evidence of growth not because of how far apart they are sonically, but rather how close. They compliment one another to help form a fully functional portrait of the band. It’s a shame that can’t be said of every track on The Clearing, but there are definitely more winners than losers thanks to moments like “Stitch the Hem”, “Hush” and “Sweet Moment”. Most follow the same slow burn beauty pattern established at the very beginning, though it’s consistently fascinating to keep track of the many instrumental layers that are placed atop one another. Sometimes it doesn’t work, as is the case with “This Year” and “Overcome With Light”, both of which are burdened with the curse of being too conventional for their own good. Lyrically speaking the band continues on the path of their prior albums, using nature imagery as metaphors for our personal lives. Great as it all sounds when it comes together, so much of The Clearing feels like a musical safety net. There’s so much beauty in these songs, yet they often feel like things we’ve heard before in their catalogue and the catalogues of similar bands. Bowerbirds may have grown some on this record, but they’ve only moved a foot when a yard was needed.
I hope you had a grand weekend. Welcome to Monday, the stuff of workplace nightmares. To help you prepare for the five day battle, let’s jump right in and talk about today’s Pick Your Poison. Be sure to get your download on for tracks by Amanda Mair, Big Baby Gandhi, Dot Hacker, Mr. Gnome, Diplo’s remix of PO PO, Prevrat, Tortelsen, Tyburn Saints and The Voyeurist. That’s all the effort I can muster up for you on a day like today. We’ll talk more tomorrow.
Fanfarlo’s 2009 debut album Reservoir was quite a bombastic and enthralling indie pop record that earned them comparisons to early Arcade Fire. The melodies were big and often incorporated violin and horns into their vast soundscape. Singer Simon Balthazar can quite easily channel Zach Condon of Beirut on any given song, so it’s no wonder there were a few mentions of that band as well when making reference points. But no band wants to be pigeonholed, and bearing the status as a second-rate Arcade Fire or Beirut can be a little frustrating. Of course there are worse bands to be compared to. Still, Fanfarlo were conscious of this when putting together their sophmore effort, Rooms Filled With Light. They’ve expanded their sound and instrumental arsenal to work in more synths and samples, among other things. The results are still very indie pop-inspired, but with a heavier 80’s touch. It’s not so impactful you’ll think the band has gone new wave, but a few tracks might bring to mind some great Talking Heads moments. Have a listen to tracks like “Lenslife” and “Feathers” to see if you can hear some of that bleeding through. What’s utterly fascinating about the whole record is that in spite of its broadened influences and instruments, there’s nothing on it that feels retro or dated. The band’s ability to make older elements sound new again goes a long way towards proving they’re more than just a flash in the pan. Still, that pan has so much flash in it, as almost every song on Rooms Filled With Light is extremely well structured to maximize enjoyability and memorability. The band has already technically released 3 singles (or at least 3 music videos) for “Replicate”, “Deconstruction” and “Shiny Things”. Don’t be surprised if additional videos emerge for “Tunguska”, “Tightrope” and “Dig”, as they’re worthy of that sort of attention as well. Delightful as it all is, there are moments like on their debut where the band goes a little too cutesy or twee. They tread into the waters of Noah and the Whale, who are by no means a bad band, just a slightly misguided one. When you’re always looking to that next chorus repetition to hammer that hook home sometimes you forget that the road off the beaten path can sometimes be even more rewarding. For all the satisfaction that comes from broadening your influences, it means less if you play it safe anyways. Fanfarlo have made one of the more addictive records so far in 2012, but it satisfies with all the grace of a summer movie blockbuster. It’s big, loud, brash and will send a little thrill up your spine, just don’t expect to hear it talked about during awards season.
I try to keep things light and fun on Fridays, so I want to point you in the direction of two how new music videos. The first comes from Chairlift for their song “Met Before”. You can watch the video by clicking here. It’s a Choose Your Own Adventure video, which means using your arrow keys at various points will take you in different directions. It’s really cool and I’m kind of addicted to finding out how many different paths I can take. The second video comes from Grimes for the song “Genesis”. Claire Boucher hangs out at places you might not expect her to hang out at – a men’s locker room, a dirtbike race and a football game. The paradox of course is that she wears her headphones and dances around there with a smile on her face. It’s a great video, and you can watch it at my Tumblr. All that cleared up, let’s talk Friday Pick Your Poison. I’ll recommend tracks from Brendan Benson, Child Bite, Chocolate Robots, CSLSX & I Break Horses, PS I Love You and Young Hines.
As I was very distracted yesterday by Leap Day, I neglected to mention the death of Davy Jones, which was absolutely the music news of the day/week. The Monkees are not a band I love, but I did have a solid amount of respect for what they tried to do. To go from a fictional TV band, in which all your songs and instruments were created for you and then making an honest effort to do it on their own, it takes some guts. Talent, too. No disrespect to Mike Nesmith, but Davy Jones was my favorite of The Monkees, and that’s mostly because I knew a guy in high school named Dave Jones. One of my teachers made good use of it by singing “Daydream Believer” every time he called on him in class. That was really what I thought of when hearing of Davy Jones’ passing. One of my favorite Monkees stories was when Nesmith stopped by Abbey Road studios when The Beatles were recording. Nesmith reportedly asked Lennon “Do you think we’re a cheap imitation of the Beatles, your movies and your records?” to which John Lennon assuredly replied, “I think you’re the greatest comic talent since the Marx Brothers. I’ve never missed one of your programs.” While Jones wasn’t present for that meeting, it was nice for that moment to know that at least one of the Beatles had some sort of respect for those guys. So R.I.P. Davy Jones, you’ll certainly be missed. Onto today’s Pick Your Poison. I’ll place my yellow highlighter on tracks from The D.A., Dope Body, England in 1819, Gemma Ray, Gold Beach, Moonlight Bride and Vanbot. In the Soundcloud section you’re not going to want to miss streaming tracks from Bryan Scary, Dent May, Michael Kiwanuka with Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys, and Sean Bones.
