I guess no one can be in doubt that there must be something in the water on the right side of the East River. One of the noblest representatives of the 21st century Brooklyn indie explosion is Vampire Weekend, whose second long player Contra I just got a hold of. After still only a few listens, it seems promising. It's a bit more thick than the first record, but the curious potpourri of afro-beat, old world chamber strings and school-uniformed lyrics about academical subjects still makes your associations crisscross the Atlantic like the slave trade triangle. Another name very much in the mix for my Roskilde-schedule.
It's been around for a while, but I've only just embraced Jónsi of Sigur Rós fame's debut solo effort, Go, off of which 'Go Do' is easily one of the most uplifting tracks I've heard in a long, long time! I still very much dig Yeasayer (from guess where...), and their newest album, Odd Blood. I've fallen completely for 'Rome', which grooves in a completely unfathomably catchy way.
I finally got a hold of Conditions by The Temper Trap, and my god, what a blase flick at indie rock and it's folky and electronic twists and turns. This is proper indie rock as it once was, and apparently still is in beautiful Melbourne. On an album of many highs, 'Science of Fear' still ices the cake in my ears, with it's swagger and intensity. On the other side of the world, the Bergen indie-bossanovists Kings of Convenience are making ground on my priorities list for Roskilde. As I wrote earlier this week, I got a hold of their two newest albums recently, and especially Declaration of Dependence from 2009 is really beautiful, especially tracks like 'Me In You', 'Boat Behind' and the lovely 'Rule My World'.
Back to Brooklyn, I am finally eating slowly away at Animal Collective's Merriweather Post Pavillion, the consensus top album of 2009 across the reviewers' boards. It's a long, complicated, meandering devil, and it will take time for it to really take shape in my head, but 'My Girls' is ofcourse undoubtedly an awesome tune.
