Right, I stumbled upon this here on the Forkcast earlier this week - it's 'Ordinary Dream' by Valleys. It does become a bit to noisily psych at times, but I do find it quite enjoyable.
In other news, some new interesting stuff is shaping up in the world of electro. I guess I would never forgive myself, if I let 'Not In Love', the all-star collaboration between kings of electropunk Crystal Castles, and Robert Smith of The Cure fame. Especially because it's a pretty nice corner of CC's otherwise sometimes very unaccessibly noisy sound spectrum.
A few of my more peripherical acquaintances maintain the blog HoerLigeHer.dk, which is often a good source of music. They honestly have their fingers on the pulse much more than I have, such as the case of new Swedish outfit The Amplifetes, which sounds armed and ready to take over the airwaves massively - try listening to 'Somebody New' - stinkingly catchy, huh?!
I'll give them this: It was a pretty difficult task for The Rumour Said Fire to really capture the crowd at Studenterhuset yesterday, performing after Treefight For Sunlight. Not only because the young warm-up band is musically vastly their superior, but also because a sizable minority of the audience was indeed there not for the big name on the bill, but for the "homecoming" of the locally born and bred new fast cats of Danish indie.
You probably already caught the knish: The main act was honestly a quite bland experience. I had perhaps hoped they could convince me to go buy their recently released debut album, The Arrogant, but sorry guys, that's not gonna happen. There there just isn't much zest to neither their music nor their performance, and they seem to have tough time building up anything substantial around their improbable, ultra-minimal breakthrough hit, 'The Balcony', which features a whopping four of the six-piece live line-up playing percussion. There's nothing wrong with percussion at all, but I didn't really like the impression of a band, who have achieved success on a sound which is a so massively stripped version of themselves.
On the other hand, Treefight For Sunlight was an interesting experience. As with their album, the rumor had run ahead, and had perhaps led me to having very high expectations, once again ending up with their splendor being somewhat matter-of-factly. The bands high degree of advanced vocal work was executed spotlessly, and the entire performance was very professional for a still relatively unexperienced foursome. I would almost define the performance as grave, which at times seemed awkward juxtaposed with the band's merry sound. But when the shit hits the fan, it's all about musicality, which is definitely in abundance with Treefight For Sunlight. The first few songs, the same first three as on the album, weren't as strong live as on the album, but the rest of the set was very impressive, especially 'What Became of You and I', which is definitely not one of my favorites on the album, and the darker, heavier songs 'Time Stretcher' and 'They Never Did Know'. Indeed a very exciting band to follow, and one that more than likely hasn't reached their full potential yet.
So, while Halcyon Digest still hasn't dropped in my mailbox (seriously, fuck you Play.com, it wasn't free!), and while I can't access my e-bank to get an overview over how much I can afford to spend on new records tomorrow, I do have other things to look forward to. The next month and a bit is an extraordinary abundance of interesting concerts, which is nice, of course. Here's the calendar:
Tomorrow, on October 29th, I'm gonna see The Rumour Said Fire with Treefight For Sunlight. Let it be no secret, that I'm gonna be there primarily for the latter, but as regards TRSF, they might be able to convince me to buy their record. We'll see.
Next friday, November 5th, I'm off to Århus for Spleen United, which is gonna be massive. I have only seen them live once, and I've been listening to them much more since then - especially the first album, Godspeed Into The Mainstream, off which they're unfortunately probably not gonna play much. But what's gonna be really interesting is that they're showcasing a lot of new stuff from their forthcoming album - exciting! Also, Kenton Slash Demon are performing alongside them, which is gonna be massive too!
Friday, November 12th, it's back to Aalborg for Figurines and The Kissaway Trail. I've seen Figurines a few times live, and even though it's gonna be interesting to hear their new stuff, I'm again primarily there for the smaller act. I've been listening a bit to The Kissaway Trail the past half year, and it really bugs me that I've never seen them live.
A fortnight later, it's at Studenterhuset in Aalborg again, for Casiokids with Vinnie Who - perhaps the most interesting international name to come by since RJD2 a few years ago. I think it's gonna be awesome!
The real heavyweighters lurk at the end, though, as Saturday, November 27th, it's Klaxons at Amager Bio. This is gonna be seriously insane! I'm glad the new album has picked up pace on me, and together with a few of the classics off Myths of the Near Future, it's gonna be sweat-drenched for sure!
Finally, on December 3rd, it's Foals at Vega. This is probably the show I'm looking forward to the most. I've never seen Foals live, and with a sophomore album that is even better than their debut one, it can only be good!
So, that's whats in store - be sure to check back for comments on all these rad shows!
This Philly-bloke Kurt Vile has been buzzing in my radar the past week, showing up here and there, and I decided to check him out. He's pretty good - really chill. I'm constantly on the lookout for chill stuff these days, I guess its fall making me sombre. Try and check out 'Blackberry Song', which is a really enjoyable tune. The only thing I'm not crazy about is the vocal mix - why does it have to sound purposely sloppy and low? No thanks.
Berlin-based musical amazon Agnes Obel has garnered some pretty serious reviews for her new album, and 'Brother Sparrow' was on the Soundvenue High 5 until recently. It's a really graceful and pleasant tune.
The National's songs come creeping and crawling one by one these days, and right now, it's 'Val Jester' off Alligator, another good example of Matt Berninger's tremendously timely and witty lyrics:
All the most important people in New York are nineteen.
Guess it only goes down from here huh? Anyway, it's incredible how Berninger is able to very accurately and touchingly describe feelings that he hasn't necessarily had. He's an astonishing ghost-writer of sorts.
Finally, lets conclude with a group that has somewhat gone only ever downwards from their magnificent debut. It's Röyksopp, who just released their fourth full-length, Senior, which didn't really impress me. 'The Alcoholic' however is pretty sweet!
Halcyon Digest is still nowhere to be seen, and I am beginning to suspect Play.com, or the everyday devil we all know, the mailman, of fucking something up.
In the mean time, things have been really bloody quiet. I am in a tremendous musical void, to be honest, but out of voids, interesting tendencies tend to appear anyway. It's still mostly about The National's Cherry Tree EP, but being an EP, it doesn't exactly contain sufficient depth and inexhaustibility to bear endless hype. I'm also sorta coming around to The Suburbs, Arcade Fire's pretty damn well acclaimed third album, on which I was initially slightly lukewarm. Some of the gems have shined from day one, but many of the more anonymous and inaccessible tunes, initially seeming to be excess and overtime work for a band too flutteringly ambitious to fit a concept album into 40 minutes, are now emerging as strong songs in their own way. Today, I also finally downloaded a few of Beach House's tunes off Soundcloud (sorry). I'm really pissed their record is so impossible to get at, because a tune like 'Face It' is really enjoyable!
Finally, as the title states, I have had yet another revival of what seems to be the most immortal album on the face of indie Earth; For Emma, Forever Ago. I listened to it loudly and in utter darkness last Thursday night, when I had little else to do, and once again it slowly came creeping upon me, the greatness and total embrace of it all. Especially 'Blindsided', which also to me carries strong associations of last winter, when I came home from abroad, and everything was bloody cold as ice, and everyone were happy and rejoicing and some were dying and some were kissing, and all was bitterly cold and white.
I like fall, which is upon us now. Apart from the bitter cold, which is of course crap, I like when days are getting slightly shorter, when it's dark when you come home from work, and when colors are all grey and brown and even browner and orange. It's a time for melancholy, quiet musing and reflection and a slower pace.
I must admit I heard this tune primarily because of the title, as 'horse' is one of my favorite words. There's such a calmness and potency to it. Calmness perhaps isn't a fitting descriptor for Brian Eno's 'Horse', but there's something to it that made me return and listen again, regardless of the title. If you don't like Battles or Radiohead's 'Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors', this is however probably not for you.
Maybe Superpitcher is then. Distinctly German, but in a pleasant way. I find 'Rabbits In A Hurry' really catchy! It's got sort of a loungy laid-backness, but still doesn't become irrelevant. There's some sort of poise and edge to it.
The Danish electro scene has been booming in recent years. I guess after a few years of indie revolution, people needed something new to do. An interesting outfit is Kenton Slash Demon, who teamed up with Malthe Fischer of Oh No Ono fame for 'Matter', which really rocks. KSD are warming up for Spleen United at Train in a few weeks, which is gonna be rad.
Another interesting young artist is Oh Land, part of the crazy wave of female electro artists. Check out 'Sun of a Gun' (yeah, it's sun, not son, for some reason...), it's pretty catchy.
Another very catchy tune is WhoMadeWho's 'Left Hand of The Boxer'. Only thing is, I always get seriously irritated when Danes sing with a noticeable Danish accent - it just sounds so shit! (Carpark North anyone?).
Other than that, things are pretty quiet. I'm still waiting for Deerhunter's Halcyon Digest to pop into my mailbox. Where oh where has it gone, I wonder? I've been (very slightly) reviving Oasis, and also Danish band ENTAKT last week.
But October sure is quiet...
All right, so they slightly drowned in my sudden discovery of the Cherry Tree EP, but I bought two new albums last week, and they deserve a mention.
Worst things first: Mumford & Sons. I was introduced to them by two Maltese blokes while traveling this summer, and after I saw they were shortlisted for the Mercury with their debut album Sigh No More, I decided I had to get a hold of it. I don't know in which way it sounded different this summer, but I am slightly disappointed. If you asked ten people to place this band geographically in either London or somewhere in the American Midwest, nine of them would opt for the latter. Thanks to globalization and the ever-karrazzeeer mingling and criss-crossing of genres and influences, that's however not true. Now, I listen to much more music from London or Brooklyn, than from Seattle, but I don't think this is for me. It's purely a question of taste and preferences I guess, and I cannot completely rule out that Sigh No More will one day grow on me (can you ever, really?), but this is just too country for me. There's too much mandolin, too much banjo, and it seems to be applied very uncautiously.
Then there's young Danish indie-psych-poppers Treefight For Sunlight's debut, A Collection of Vibrations for Your Skull. I'm not quite decided on this one yet. That's a lie, actually. It's a bloody impressive album. I don't know, it's perhaps just all the hype surrounding the album - the 5- and 6/6 reviews and all that has led me to expect a masterpiece, and then it becomes sort of an anticlimax when the album, so far, turns out to be "just" very impressive. It kicks off spotlessly, with the two first joyful and pleasant tracks give way to 'The Universe Is A Woman', which is one of the albums definite musical highlights.
It almost becomes too rollickingly psychedelic and nauseatingly joyful at a few points, but only just about. The band cleverly keeps the sometimes slight over-the-top-ness in short leach, and turns it down a knot on pleasant tunes like 'They Never Did Know' and 'Time Stretcher', both of which are refreshingly finger-in-the-soil, and leave sufficient room for a beautiful escapade like 'Riddles In Rhymes'.
Then there's 'Facing The Sun'. It's often pretty hard to release a debut album on top of a highly successful hit single, but Treefight For Sunlight manage to overcome 'Facing The Sun's summer dominance - it fits pretty snugly into the whole ordeal, and while it by far isn't the most musically advanced track on the album, it's still an absolute favorite. I like it the same way I like Phoenix, for example, and even though it does seem slightly out of the place when the calendar reads October, it is a wonderful tune.
A Collection of Vibrations... is a pretty short and neat album, clocking in at only about 34 minutes. That's a good thing - sometimes young bands, especially very ambitious ones, tend to try and stuff much too much into their albums. To stay a bit within the genre, think of MGMT's Oracular Spectacular, on which, in my opinion, there's a pretty big drop-off between the 3-4 best tracks, and the less spectacular ones. Of course, there are tracks on A Collection of Vibrations... that are less interesting than others, but there isn't much of a gap. Another way Treefight For Sunlight manage to balance cleverly on the curious knife edge of debut records, is not selling out. Remember what happened to Oh No Ono between the Now You Know Oh No Ono-EP and their debut album? That's right - they became boring. Luckily, Treefight For Sunlight retain their confident sparkle.
So, what's the skinny on this? Well, it's a very good album. It's a very good debut album, which seems to have been what has propelled reviewers upwards, but it's a good album in it's own right, debut or not. It still very much remains to be seen how its longevity's like (I have my doubts...), but for sure Treefight For Sunlight have set a good benchmark for climbing even higher.
I'm waiting for Deerhunter's Halcyon Digest to drop in my mailbox. 9.2 on Pitchfork - that'll be rad!
I had a revelation yesterday! I was listening to The National's wonderful album Boxer, and as 'Gospel' rang out, it segued into the Cherry Tree EP from 2004, which I haven't ever really heard, for some reason. I'm not good at EPs to be honest.
But holy shit, why didn't I think of this one sooner? Cherry Tree is like a The National album boiled down to the most essential and touching parts. It's just so beautiful. Like the absolutely amazing 'About Today', or 'Wasp Nest'. I mean, what astonishing ballads! And they're just the top of the bunch, the entire EP is just so soothing, save for the kinda misplaced live version of 'Murder Me Rachael' perhaps. 'Cherry Tree' and 'All Dolled-Up In Straps' are beautiful little pieces too, and 'Reasonable Man (I Don't Mind)' is so fantastically intimate. And 'All The Wine' (which is on Alligator too) is exquisite too - it reminds me very much of Bloc Party's wonderful 'Kreuzberg'. These songs are exactly in lieu of some of my favorite songs from Boxer and Alligator, such as 'Slow Show', 'Ada' and 'Daughters of the Soho Riots', and they're just so lovely all together.
I'm really lost for words on this one... Just really, really do listen to 'About Today'. It's just splendidly beautiful!
Oi! A few tunes from the class of '09 have popped up this past week, that I wanted to share with y'all! One is one of the at first glance more anonymous tracks on Arctic Monkeys' Humbug-record of yesteryear, that's really a prime representative of the much dustier style of the Monkeys on their third record. It's 'Dance Little Liar', which really kicks off viciously at 3:16. This latter part of the track is to some extent a comely reunification of Arctic Monkeys' earlier, intenser style and their obscureness of late.
The other sits at the unforgiving last spot of an album that is very easy to lose focus on, and thus it has taken me a long time to really get into this. I haven't really gotten into the album yet, even though everyone seemed to rave about it when it came out (and still do). It's 'Brother Sport', from Animal Collective's Merriweather Post Pavilion, which is really a joyful and much more popish tune than many of the more oddball tracks on this album. Very enjoyable.
Just to add some new stuff, Four Tet have done this marathon of a remix of 'VCR' from The xx' Mercury Prize-winning, eponymous album. It's pretty chill!
I had an awesome few days in Copenhagen this weekend, and I'm really massively looking forward to moving there! To make time pass, I ordered a few new albums this Monday - more on that soon...
