Anyone who’s ever punched a clock has a work buddy. If you’re lucky, they might be a true friend; someone you spend more time talking with than you do with your family, maybe even your partner. Imagine if the two of you had the chance to leave your jobs behind and go on a crazy, incredibly fun, sometimes stressful but ultimately mind-blowing two-and-a-half-year musical adventure across continents and time zones, racking up accolades from the likes of Rolling Stone, Spin, People and Pitchfork.
To the Australian indie-rock duo of Kate Cooper (singer/guitarist) and Damon Cox (drummer/singer), An Horse — who went from rehearsing after hours in a Brisbane record store to playing “Camp Out,” the single from their 2009 debut, Rearrange Beds, on The Late Show With David Letterman — making their second album, Walls, isn’t just a chance to set the agenda for their next phase. It’s also an opportunity to reflect on the fantastical journey that has carried them here, a pipe dream made thrillingly real.
Anaïs (uh-nay-is) Mitchell, is an singer-songwriter from Vermont, USA, who attended Middlebury College. Anaïs’ voice is akin to Cyndi Lauper’s & song-writing / delivery’s inspired by the confessional styling of artists such as Ani DiFranco.
A rare musician who is equally comfortable wielding an acoustic guitar alone onstage, sharing a disc’s worth of alt-country duets, or scripting a vast operatic journey into the underworld. She’s a fearless explorer, and her world just keeps getting larger.
"Anaïs sings of love among the ruins, coming of age to find yourself an outsider looking for the place you belong, finding other strangers along the way. Details … are offered like clues or keys to the reality all of us sense is imminent and eternal beneath the surfaces of things."
— Hugh Blumenfeld, Sing Out!
The new direction that Ani DiFranco is taking on her new songs sounds promising. Acoustic and solo Ani also sounded the best. Although, this is not a new sound, it’s one that works.
A new Antony & The Johnsons EP has leaked today and that got us wondering about their new album. The band are set to release their fourth album Swanlights this october it will feature a collaboration with none other than Icelandic goddess Björk. The song will be called “Flétta” and will be the return collaboration on Bjork’s side after the melancholic “The Dull Flame Of Desire” on Volta. Click below for the tracklisting.
Recording : April 8th, 2010
Broadcast : May 24th, 2010
01. Private lawns
02. Hush
03. I'm not yours
04. Santa Monica dream
05. Black crow
06. Draw your swords
07. Bit jet plane
08. Yellow brick road
09. And the boys
Antony and the Johnsons follow up their 2009 opus The Crying Light with more luminescence-- new album Swanlights is out October 5 in Europe on Rough Trade and a day later in the U.S. via Secretly Canadian. Art book publisher Abrams will release a special edition of the album accompanied by a 144-page tome featuring paintings, collages, photography, and writing by Antony. That's all thats known at the moment, but feel free to gaze upon the album's cover up there for a few months.
Monday, April 19, 2010
Indie/Electro
Merriweather Post Pavillion (2009)
Tracklist
1."In the Flowers"
2."My Girls"
3."Also Frightened"
4."Summertime Clothes"
5."Daily Routine"
6."Bluish"
7."Guys Eyes"
8."Taste"
9."Lion In a Coma" (Animal Collective, Lathozi Mpahleni Manquin Madosini)
10."No More Runnin"
11."Brother Sport"
Merriweather Post Pavilion is the eighth studio album by Animal Collective.
With their constantly evolving sonic identity, in-your-face vocal mannerisms, and open-ended ideas about what their music might "mean," Animal Collective seem designed to inspire obsessive fans and vociferous detractors in equal measure. Merriweather Post Pavilion, their latest full-length, was anticipated to an almost ridiculous degree and soon became one of the best albums of 2009.
Animal Collective's two vocalists, Dave Portner (aka Avey Tare) and Noah Lennox (aka Panda Bear), have never sounded better together, and the way their styles complement each other is the story of the album. On the one hand you have Panda's straightforward melodies, his fuzzy, head-in-the-clouds dreaminess, and his instinctual trawl through pop music history. The tracks that favor his songwriting typically have an underlying sense of drone, with everything moving forward along a line in relation to some subliminal center: They begin, then build, expand, and contract. Tare, meanwhile, tends to work within a more classic pop structure, with clear bridges and snappy choruses, greater harmonic development, and a sharper lyrical focus.
This album, which finds Animal Collective completely owning their unique sound, feels like the crucial next step in that conversation. What they've constructed here is a new kind of electronic pop-- one which is machine-generated and revels in technology but is also deeply human, never drawing too much attention to its digital nature. It's of the moment and feels new, but it's also striking in its immediacy and comes across as friendly and welcoming.(Pitchfork)
Everyone should have atleast one Angus and Julia Stone album in their collection! (In my opinion)
Indie/Folk
(click image to download) Down The Way (2010)
Tracklisting
01 - Hold On
02 - Black Crow
03 - For You
04 - Big Jet Plane
05 - Santa Monica Dream
06 - Yellow Brick Road
07 - And The Boys
08 - On The Road
09 - Walk It Off
10 - Hush
11 - Draw Your Swords
12 - I'm Not Yours
13 - The Devil's Tears
"Australian brother/sister duo Angus and Julia Stone return with the follow up to their 2009 critically acclaimed debut A Book Like This. This sophomore album gracefully navigates through 13 tracks, exploring themes of desire, lost love, self-discovery and beauty in the most unlikely of places. Down The Way was self-produced and recorded between England, New York and Australia--from an old sawmill on the riverbanks of Fowey, Cornwall to a studio in Brooklyn, to a water tank in Coolangatta to the streets of London and back to Queens. Stand out tracks include the Brad Albetta (Martha Wainwright) co-produced "and the boys," the dark and driving "Black Crow" and the rustic and dreamy "Big Jet Plane.""
