Wow...these band names are getting so long now.
Letting Up Despite Great Faults makes a kind of quietly shoe-gazey, guitar-fuzzed, synthesizer assisted pop, with the vocals (that's Michael Lee, the band's sole member, so it's all him) buried under a eider-down quilt of soft noise. There's an EP out now on Old Flame Records called Paper Crush which I like a whole lot. It reminds me of Maps' EP from a few years ago, which was so much better than the full-length. But anyway.
Here's the best song.
Letting Up Despite Great Faults - Teenage Tide by lettingup
Monday, October 17, 2011
Saturday, October 15, 2011
doumbia
Na Hawa Doumbia
La Grande Cantatrice Malienne Vol. 3
(Awesome Tapes from Africa)
Na Hawa Doumbia was just beginning a four-decade long career as one of Mali's foremost female singers when she recorded the four songs on La Grande Cantatrice: Vol. 3. This particular recording was one of three made in Abidjan, Ivory Coast in 1982, released in vinyl and for many years unavailable. It is the first physical release from Awesome Tapes from Africa, an mp3 blog which uncovers and disseminates music from rare cassette tapes from the African continent. [Crucial stuff at that. - Afrocentric Collector Ed.]
In 1982, Doumbia was just two years past her first public performance at the 1980 Youth Week in Bamako, where she won first prize for her song "Tinye De Be Laban". She had, only recently broken free of the caste restrictions that forbid people outside the Manding tribe from becoming musicians. A young woman, by the photo hardly more than a teenager, she was just beginning to win recognition for her warm, soulful interpretation of the Wassoulou tradition.
More
This video is from much later
La Grande Cantatrice Malienne Vol. 3
(Awesome Tapes from Africa)
Na Hawa Doumbia was just beginning a four-decade long career as one of Mali's foremost female singers when she recorded the four songs on La Grande Cantatrice: Vol. 3. This particular recording was one of three made in Abidjan, Ivory Coast in 1982, released in vinyl and for many years unavailable. It is the first physical release from Awesome Tapes from Africa, an mp3 blog which uncovers and disseminates music from rare cassette tapes from the African continent. [Crucial stuff at that. - Afrocentric Collector Ed.]
In 1982, Doumbia was just two years past her first public performance at the 1980 Youth Week in Bamako, where she won first prize for her song "Tinye De Be Laban". She had, only recently broken free of the caste restrictions that forbid people outside the Manding tribe from becoming musicians. A young woman, by the photo hardly more than a teenager, she was just beginning to win recognition for her warm, soulful interpretation of the Wassoulou tradition.
More
This video is from much later
Friday, October 14, 2011
Shayna Zaid & the Catch
Kind of a nice, jazz-into-earthy-Americana debut from Shayna Zaid, a Malaysian-born, New York-based singer. I like the quicker songs from the album's first half the best and "Lighthouse" maybe most of all. Later album ballads like "It's You" drift uncomfortably into "My Heart Will Go On" territory. Still, she's a strong singer, almost a belter, with enough taste to pull back when warranted, and her band is excellent.
Thursday, October 13, 2011
A preliminary stab at best-of
So Ian got me thinking about best of 2011 yesterday, and I've made my usual stab at irrelevance...all records that I enjoyed quite a lot, the top ten is pretty solid (by which I mean that I am personally solidly behind them). The second 10 gets a little goofy, I guess...anyway.
1. Skull Defekts, Peer Amid (Thrill Jockey)
2. Psychic Paramount, II (Important)
3. David Kilgour, Left by Soft (Merge)
4. King Creosote and Jon Hopkins, Diamond Mine (Domino)
5. Dirtbombs, Party Store (In the Red)
6. Gem Club, Breakers (Hardly Art)
7. Mogwai, Hard Core Will Never Die But You Will (Sub Pop)
8. Sidi Toure, Sahel Folk (Thrill Jockey)
9. UV Race, Homo (In the Red)
10. Veronica Falls, Veronica Falls (Slumberland)
11. Sole and the Skyrider Band, Hello Cruel World (Fake Four)
12. Demdike Stare, Tryptych (Modern Love)
13. Get Help, The Good Green Earth (Midriff)
14. Sam Phillips, Solid State (Littlebox)
15. Bad Sports, Kings of the Weekend (Dirtnap)
16. Obits, Moody Standard and Poors (Sub Pop)
17. Arrica Rose and the Dot, Dot Dots, Let Alone Sea (Poprock)
18. Faust, Something Dirty (Tapete)
19. Emperor X, Western Transport (Bar/None)
20. Washed Out, Within and Without (Sub Pop)
By the way, I have close to 4000 tracks from 2011 on my iTunes this year, so I may not have been listening to the right stuff, but I haven't been lazy.
1. Skull Defekts, Peer Amid (Thrill Jockey)
2. Psychic Paramount, II (Important)
3. David Kilgour, Left by Soft (Merge)
4. King Creosote and Jon Hopkins, Diamond Mine (Domino)
5. Dirtbombs, Party Store (In the Red)
6. Gem Club, Breakers (Hardly Art)
7. Mogwai, Hard Core Will Never Die But You Will (Sub Pop)
8. Sidi Toure, Sahel Folk (Thrill Jockey)
9. UV Race, Homo (In the Red)
10. Veronica Falls, Veronica Falls (Slumberland)
11. Sole and the Skyrider Band, Hello Cruel World (Fake Four)
12. Demdike Stare, Tryptych (Modern Love)
13. Get Help, The Good Green Earth (Midriff)
14. Sam Phillips, Solid State (Littlebox)
15. Bad Sports, Kings of the Weekend (Dirtnap)
16. Obits, Moody Standard and Poors (Sub Pop)
17. Arrica Rose and the Dot, Dot Dots, Let Alone Sea (Poprock)
18. Faust, Something Dirty (Tapete)
19. Emperor X, Western Transport (Bar/None)
20. Washed Out, Within and Without (Sub Pop)
By the way, I have close to 4000 tracks from 2011 on my iTunes this year, so I may not have been listening to the right stuff, but I haven't been lazy.
Still Corners...and Twin Peaks
My review of British dream pop outfit Still Corners' first album (Creature of an Hour) includes an extended, possibly overextended, comparison to Julee Cruise...Read all about it at Dusted by following the jump.
Still Corners
Creature of an Hour
Sub Pop
Still Corners lives in a shadowy, twilight world, the band’s melodies fogged in with ambiguities, but sharpened by an indefinable sense of threat. The core duo, songwriter Greg Hughes and singer Tessa Murray, work in the most delicate shades of noire, creating something like a Sam Spade novel realized in film by Jean Cocteau.
More
"Cuckoo"
Still Corners
Creature of an Hour
Sub Pop
Still Corners lives in a shadowy, twilight world, the band’s melodies fogged in with ambiguities, but sharpened by an indefinable sense of threat. The core duo, songwriter Greg Hughes and singer Tessa Murray, work in the most delicate shades of noire, creating something like a Sam Spade novel realized in film by Jean Cocteau.
More
"Cuckoo"
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
One More for the Owl...returning to Gabriel Miller Phillips
This probably the best self-release I've had all year.
Gabriel Miller Phillips
One For the Owl
(Self-Released)
Gabriel Miller Phillips' debut is a collection of ghostly, melancholy songs, begun, it seems on acoustic guitar, but fleshed out at times with spectral guitar effects. The sometime ballet dancer, sidelined with a tibial bone inflection, turned to songwriting at a dark intersection in his life, a period when he could hardly walk for pain.
That era produced his first EP Shoot the Moon, yet even now, a couple of years later, you get the sense of persistence through trouble, epiphany through disappointment and discomfort. These songs track lonely, late-night snow-trails through wintery Boston ("Memorial Drive") and diffident, unsuccessful attempts at connection ("Last Dance") with elegiac grace.
More
Gabriel Miller Phillips
One For the Owl
(Self-Released)
Gabriel Miller Phillips' debut is a collection of ghostly, melancholy songs, begun, it seems on acoustic guitar, but fleshed out at times with spectral guitar effects. The sometime ballet dancer, sidelined with a tibial bone inflection, turned to songwriting at a dark intersection in his life, a period when he could hardly walk for pain.
That era produced his first EP Shoot the Moon, yet even now, a couple of years later, you get the sense of persistence through trouble, epiphany through disappointment and discomfort. These songs track lonely, late-night snow-trails through wintery Boston ("Memorial Drive") and diffident, unsuccessful attempts at connection ("Last Dance") with elegiac grace.
More
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Shimmering Stars
Slumberland has been on a bit of a roll lately with that Gold-Bears record, and then Veronica Falls. They've got another good one in Shimmering Stars' Violent Heart, which came out maybe a month ago, and I am just catching up. The disc is, per the fashion, heavily reverbed, fuzz-dusted pop, indebted to Phil Spector and Brian Wilson and all their latter day followers (Panda Bear comes to mind).
I'm especially liking the track "I'm Gonna Try," and mostly the moment in "I'm Gonna Try" where the singer pauses, steels himself up for the confession, and says, "In my heart...is a violence." I'm not doing justice to it, but there's something there that cuts through the confectionery sweetness of pop, right to its desperate core...and I like that a lot.
Anyway, they're giving the single away on Bandcamp so you can listen to it yourself and tell me how full of it I am...
Benjamin Ewing reviewed it for Dusted, and said, "Violent Hearts occasionally plods, as on 'No One,' 'Other Girls,' and the opener 'Believe,' (at least before its delightfully messy climax). But more often it quietly impresses, revealing new melodic and harmonic strands with each subsequent listen. Put differently: male anxiety, swagger and romance slowly make their way out of the abyss of echo, and they are once again in harmony."
You can read the rest here, if you want.
I'm especially liking the track "I'm Gonna Try," and mostly the moment in "I'm Gonna Try" where the singer pauses, steels himself up for the confession, and says, "In my heart...is a violence." I'm not doing justice to it, but there's something there that cuts through the confectionery sweetness of pop, right to its desperate core...and I like that a lot.
Anyway, they're giving the single away on Bandcamp so you can listen to it yourself and tell me how full of it I am...
Benjamin Ewing reviewed it for Dusted, and said, "Violent Hearts occasionally plods, as on 'No One,' 'Other Girls,' and the opener 'Believe,' (at least before its delightfully messy climax). But more often it quietly impresses, revealing new melodic and harmonic strands with each subsequent listen. Put differently: male anxiety, swagger and romance slowly make their way out of the abyss of echo, and they are once again in harmony."
You can read the rest here, if you want.
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