"Our best gig ever!", three years on.

"Our best gig ever!" That's what Klaxons exclaimed towards the end of their legendary show at Roskilde 2007. A show bathed in glow-sticks and neon face-paint on youthful, sweaty, muddy, lusty bodies and young British musicians jumping off stage.


Quite a bit, it turned out, has changed since then. Saturday, when Klaxons went on at Amager Bio, there was no face-paint, no glow-sticks, and mostly men in their early twenties - guys who were there three years ago too, young and insane. Klaxons looked themselves. The femininely built James Righton is still clearly on the top five of men one would want to look like. He's one of the few guys who can hit the stage in a simple grey tee and a pair of jeans, and still have the attention of the entire female crowd. Jamie Reynolds is still his old, ungraceful self with his weird stance and his general ugliness, and Taylor-Davies is still the shy guitarist with his unruly shy guitarist-hairdo.


But still, something has happened. There was no crowd-surfing here (the meager crowd probably couldn't have withstood it anyway), and only a fraction of the insane energy of a few years ago. The sound however was sublime, and there's knack to a lot of the band's tunes that just makes it impossible to stand still. Amager Bio was only half-filled, but unless you looked backwards at the empty space, you wouldn't have noticed - the ones who were there clearly made it their business to rave on.


It does however seem as though this is a band inevitably on the decline. It was very clearly the Myths of the Near Future-tunes, of which we got a full seven, which excited the crowd the most, and it's not that Surfing The Void hasn't had sufficient time to sink in. Down the stretch, it just seems to be less elating than the old stuff.


It was however a good concert, and a well-crafted setlist, concluding with 'It's Not Over Yet', 'Surfing The Void' and 'Atlantis To Interzone' to send the aging ravers into the night.

Albums growing (like trees in suburbs).

I've got these three albums that have been growing a lot on me these days. I also (finally!!) got Halcyon Digest late last week, but the jury is still out on that one. It seems to be a quality album, but I'm not so sure how much I personally like it. It's the kind of album that needs quite a few listens. Anyway, the three albums on pace right now are:


The Suburbs, by Arcade Fire
This has been a classic slow mover, but I've now come to realize truly what a tremendous album this is. Truth be truth, there aren't really any that bad tunes here, anyhow not any irrelevant tunes. That's pretty impressive for an album that clocks in at an hour's length. Even tunes like 'Half Light II (No Celebration)' and 'Wasted Hours' are coming to me now, and the album impressively climaxes again and again, most prolifically with the haunting 'We Used To Wait' and the brilliant Sprawl-duology on the albums back part. I hope these guys will hit Roskilde next summer!


Troen & Ingen, by Søren Huss
I've been through this album five times now, and every time it hits me a little bit more, just how sharp it is. Huss balances masterfully on the edge of being sentimental without being whiny, but still being very evident and perceptible about the emotional landscape that has driven this record. It's a very pleasant and deep listen every time (still).


A Collection of Vibrations for Your Skull by Treefight For Sunlight
Back when this album came out, I doubted its longevity, so I think it's only fitting to take up this issue again. I've had the album for a month and a half, and my iTunes shows I've been through its (short) entirety 12 times. And honestly, I actually like it better now than I did after the first few listens. These guys seem to have legs, and the album is due for an international release next year, which is pretty cool!

Racy, funky new electro (and Finnish indie-schmindies).

I just browsed through the last few days of the Forkcast, while reading one of my buddies' travellog, and a lot of really interesting stuff actually showed up! I guess I'm in yet another electro phase, which will almost certainly not last too long, but right now, there's just a lot of tasty new stuff out there.

Most importantly, check out this track, 'American Mourning' by Bikini. It really amps up in a nice way at the end. I think it's a stretch to call them dance-pop as Pitchfork do - indie-house would probably be more appropriate.

Onra out of Paris, France is awesomely funky, in a laid-back, but not at all in an uneventful way. Try and check out 'The Perfect Match'. Oh, and never mind the bollocks lyrics, just keep it to the beatzzzz... 'All Around and Away We Go' by Twin Sister, is another track with a sweet, dirty groove.

My electro-wave might be sort of a counter-reaction to the wild and crazy lo-fi wave that's hitting indie right now. It's just sickening, and it's gone way, way, way, waaaay over the top! I mean, give White Fence a listen on 'Lillian (Won't You Play Drums?)'. Just too much.

I mentioned these Finnish Joe Shmoes in the header, which was mainly because they have quite another knish than all the club-tinged stuff. They're called French Films, and they've got a nice sorta The Drums'ey or late Raveonettes thing going on 'Golden Sea'. Very enjoyable!

Fuck, my tasteless flattie is amping up her Thursday with bone-dry, bland mainstream house - I think I'm gonna flee into my headphones with something nice and quiet!

You say yea, I say sayer!

Yeasayer's Odd Blood album has really been growing on me as of late. It's quite a tricky, quirky record, that can seem lengthy at first listen, but I've now realized that it's an absolutely splendid collection of tunes. Aside from the obvious crown jewel, 'O.N.E.', I've really been raving to 'Mondegreen' this week, it's such an awesome and powerful tune!


I like to utilize every possibility I have to write horse on my blog, and it's only more fitting when it comes in the form of an interesting song. It's 'The Dwarf and The Horse', which is by Sleep Party People. The live take from the X-Sessions I've linked to, captures the rabbit-masked outfit's very intense live shows pretty sharply. The metallic drum pad percussion is sort of reminiscent to another masked group of much wider acclaim...


Finally, I'm often irritated by good intros or interludes that seem like sort of undeveloped tracks - as if they're the fetus from an aborted working process, to metaphorize. I often wonder how stunning tracks they could have become if they were expanded a bit. A good example is 'Intro' on The xx' xx. There's such etherealness to the guitar, and it could really become the most haunting, sweeping, murky tune. Now, it's not much longer, actually it's shorter, than the original, but curious Swedish outfit jj (what's with those lowercase double-letter-names anyway??), whom I've checked out way too superficially, have had a take on 'Intro', sampling it for 'I'm The One/Money On My Mind', which is kinda cool.

Leslie, you and I have been long overdue...

Oi, I've had quite a busy week, so I haven't had time to write a bit about my new albums yet. I got a few last week, and all are shaping up pretty nicely!

I'm especially pleased to finally have Leslie Feist's The Reminder in my collection. It is every bit as delightful as I remember from my first few listens (I especially remember a rainy day on the Great Ocean Road...), and it has been a welcome addition to my record collection as an album that works well on many occasions. It's pretty hard to distinguish the key tracks yet, but I enjoy 'The Park' and 'Sealion' very much. Also the pretty closer 'How My Heart Behaves' featuring Eirik of Kings of Convenience and the very Norah Jones'esque 'Brandy Alexander' deserves mentions.

I also got The Amplifetes' eponymous debut. I kinda bought that one on the spur of the moment, so I didn't really have huge expectations. It is however a decent album, highlighted of course by 'Someone New', which is a simply massive tune, unsurprisingly the highlight of the album. The oohntzy 'Blinded By The Moonlight' is good too.

Finally, and in a completely other ditch, I got Søren Huss' solo-debut Troen & Ingen. I guess sometimes good songwriters need to shed the weight of a band to truly shine. Huss is no Bon Iver, as one had perhaps hoped, but he fares very well in the maze that is making a sentimental album without ending up sounding like a wuss or an emo or both. The lyrical universe is very strong, and the musical is much more interesting than what he ever did with Saybia, seemingly mingling a lot of styles in the name of the lyrics and the concept being what carries the album, not its musical traits.

Heavy duty Spleen.

Yesterday, I went to Århus to see Spleen United, who are playing their (more or less) first concerts in Denmark in two years. They have let the word spread on a comprehensive change in style, spearheaded by this fall's single, 'Sunset To Sunset'. The new Spleen United is supposedly tougher and even more machine-like, which is pretty serious for an already very machine-like band, and the rumored change in style proved to be no fluke. 


Reactions to the new material, which has been played in Copenhagen and Århus the past two weekends, have been mixed, as is always the case when a band etches a new route - some will undoubtedly and unavoidably turn themselves against the new stuff, arguing not to change a winning team etcetera.


Truth is, Spleen United already turned a major corner when they developed from the slow-moving, Jean-Michel Jarre-inspired escapades of Godspeed Into The Mainstream into the more straight forward, club-oriented Neanderthal, although there are overlaps on both, such as 'In Peak Fitness Condition' and 'Spleen United' on the first one, and 'Heat' and 'Under The Sun' on the last.


To be frank, I didn't mind the new stuff. Especially the latter part of the new material was very interesting, and I also think it's really pretty limited how much of this will actually get on the third record, which the band announced to be out in "a year". They also said, that much of the stuff was made specifically for this occasion (probably in conjunction with their show in Copenhagen last week as well though). It was a bit too machine-like at times, as my friend Maria summed it up quite precisely at one point during the concert, stating that it could just as well have been The Chemical Brothers who had snuck on stage, but still I do think the third album will in some way have stylistic connection to Neanderthal as well as to the harder techno-house the band exhibited bits of yesterday.


Other than that, the band was intense and party-starting as always, and cleverly finished off with 'Dominator', 'Spleen United' and 'Suburbia', although they could have worked the show even more powerfully by not introducing these tunes as obviously as they did. The crowd was raving about, and really Train as a venue was perhaps a bit small. There was a lot of pushing and shoving - not the dancing way, but more the territorial one.


This viddy from Berlin showcases a bit of the new style!

Well, can I ask you about today?

It's no secret that one of the major musical stories for me the past months time has been the discovery of The National's old Cherry Tree EP, off which especially 'About Today' is staggeringly beautiful. I just wanted to point out this amazing live version of it, it's about four years old, but the sound is actually quite alright, and it's all just marvelous! The National, by the way, are swinging by Århus late February, which'll be awesome.


I've been ill the past few days, so I've been geezing a lot around Youtube, and I stumbled upon this feller Chris O'Riley, a classical pianist doing Radiohead-tunes. Some of them are very interesting, such as 'Exit Music (For A Film)' and 'Subterranean Homesick Alien'.


Also I've been digging more into Mumford & Sons' Sigh No More album, beginning to understand why it was a Mercury nominee, even though the mandolin is still a bit hard on my ears. Ordered a few new albums the other day, which should be here soon - sweet!