WU LYF-T R I U M P H

WU LYF created some of my favorite music of 2011. Their debut Go Tell Fire to the Mountain perfectly captured their self-dubbed "heavy pop": soaring and anthemic songs that never never collapsed under their grandness, instead being a near perfect cross-sections of gospel like energy over indie and pop. So it seems more than appropriate that WU LYF would go out on a song like "T R I U M P H". Allegedly the band's last song (or not, they have always operated on a cloak of misinformation and mystery), "T R I U M P H" is ever so different than everything WU LYF had created before. It's airier and brighter, the guitars chiming and popping, and the organ creating similar pop bursts rather than producing the atmosphere it had on their previous tracks. The lyrics were also posted along with the song. A small thing, but for a band that had always encouraged a sense of shouting along despite not know what was always being shouted, being presented the message from the start sets a different tone for the song. For "T R I U M P H" though, that's one of discarding apathy, running head long into the sunrise and not looking back. It's as glorious as it sounds.  

Links:

WU LYF's Website

Cold Cave-A Little Death to Laugh

Well, this is an awesome little surprise. Cold Cave announced a brand new single that will go along with their upcoming tour with Divine Fits. Band master mind Wesley Eisold made the three songs on the record completely by himself, probably between the line-up changes that have been occurring with Cold Cave. In turn, you can hear a real shift in sound with the title track "A Little Death to Laugh". Gone is the bombarding intensity and lyrical sprawl that made up most of Cherish the Light Years. Instead, it is a return of sorts to the Love Comes Close style of minimal arrangements, with sharp synth arrangements and stilted lyrical release making up the song's being. It is the return of Cold Cave in their detached, coldwave form, and it is still as great as well.



Links:

Cold Cave's Website
Pre-order the A Little Death to Laugh 7", from Cold Cave/Heartworm Press

Elephant 6 Documentary

This is just way too cool to pass up. For far, far too long their have been rumors in the works of an Elephant 6 documentary to capture the magnificence of these people, their bands, and the incredible music that they make. And always those rumors seem to be for not. Until now. The Elephant 6 documentary is a soon to be thing, and the trailer can be seen above. Watching Bill Doss, Will C. Hart, Robert Schneider, Julian Koster, and everyone else just talking about all this in this little three minute form is magical, and it's rough draft at that. A Kickstart is apparently in the works for the film, and that will be reported on as soon as more info becomes available. Until then, indulge in the magic that was, and will always be The Elephant 6 Orchestra.

Links:

Elephant 6 Documentary Facebook

Video: COLOURS-Without a Way

Wow. COLOURS have ever so slowly been building as one of my favorite shoegaze bands, and their new song and video "Without a Way" just firmly cement it. Like with his song "In the Summer", COLOURS has moved his styling more from traditional shoegaze more of a droney, dragging style that really emephesise the emptyness and pain in the songs. This is amplified with "Without a Way, as the sharp guitar riffs just fall on you again and again like ocean waves, while the industrial drum work just makes the song even more forbbiding. Not to mention the found fotage for the video, which just envoke pure pain and loss. It's almost heartbreaking to listen to, and hits you right in your gut. It's as painful as it is strangely beautiful.


Links:

COLOURS' Facebook
Get the track here, from Beko 100 

Video: COLOURS-In The Summer

COLOURS has been slowly trickling out some of my favorite guitar jams for about a year now. What started as a one man shoegaze band has deformed and morphed into something more elegant. “In the Summer” is a very harrowing new track from COLOURS, a wonderfully sad song of longing over the beautiful dream pop COLOURS is now crafting. Coupled with the imagery of the video, frantic colors (hey...) swirling around as COLOURS front man Tom Crandles stands stark playing his guitar, “In the Summer” emerges into something that will be sound-tracking dreams to come. The fact that COLOURS manages to do this in just under two minutes is just startling, and a testament to their ability to craft stunning guitar pop.

Links:

COLOURS' Bandcamp

Internet Forever Releasing Their Debut Album

Internet Forever are back! Those are words I thought I would never get to type, mainly due to the attention removing ability of the internet, and the fact that Internet Forever hadn't made a musical peep in close to a year. However, that changed as Internet Forever announced their debut album, to come out on February 17. The band also dropped a video for their newly recorded album version of "Break Bones". The band has really morphed much the same way Trailer Trash Tracys did when they disappeared and reappeared; the music had become coated in a shell of studio production with the drums blasting through speakers crisp clear guitar work, but still has a wonderful indie pop nugget center. Also, be prepared to be lost in the deeply trippy day-glo infused Mexican art video.
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The entire album is not jsut hyper polished material from the band's singles, thankfully. "Center of the Universe" I think typifies what to expect from Internet Forever's debut. Explosive drums combined with a swirling cocktail of shimmering guitar and everywhere-at-once synth stacked upon singer Alex's sugar sweet vocals. It's overproduced indie pop to be sure, but the best kind of overproduced indie pop.



Links:

Internet Forever's Website
Pre-order the album here, from the band

Video: Youth Lagoon-July

This is Youth Lagoon's second video to accompany a song off their astounding debut The Year of Hibernation. The second to have the genius of Tyler T. Williams create it. And the second to be utterly visually and emotionally stunning. There's something to using nose bleeds as an abstract metaphor for one's entire world falling apart. Just watch it and be amazed, and try to avoid making to many Melancolia connections while you are.

Links:

Youth Lagoon on Facebook

Video: Parenthetical Girls-A Doughnut in My Hand

I will freely admit that I will post nearly anything concerning the Parenthetical Girls, whether to fanfare or complete general apathy of my viewers. However, even if I was not the massive fan of the band I already was, I would have still posted this video for how outstanding it is. Using the band's song "Doughnut" (from their 2009 10" of Ivor Cutler reinterpretations), the video is on the surface just a standard lyric video. Deeper though, it is one of the greatest tributes to vinyl fans/music lovers the world over who happily spend hours digging through crates of music to find that one hidden gem. As an added bonus, see how many different covers you can recognize/name.

(mp3) Parenthetical Girls-A Doughnut In My Hand

Links: 

Parenthetical Girls' Website

Video: Youth Lagoon-Montana

Permit me to descend into honest hyperbole for a second. This is Youth Lagoon. For the past few months they (or he, it's the project of one Trevor Power) have been getting a lot of attention for creating songs that morph from simple, quiet gems into huge, larger than life reflections, distilled in just a few minutes. And for a while, I wasn't on board. That's not to say I didn't like Youth Lagoon, but more that I thought the hype wasn't living up to the sound.

Then I saw and heard "Montana". In less absolute words, holy fuck! This video, as well as the song, are absolutely incredible in every way, and made everything about Youth Lagoon click for me. The song has the quiet to loud element that seems to bases of every Youth Lagoon song, but the way the piano melts so effortlessly into the drum beat, and then into the hidden then gorgeous guitar lines just explodes the mind. And the video; the painful, powerful, beautiful, heart touching video is something to behold. If you do not like any of this I question whether you truly have a soul.

The Year of Hibernation, Youth Lagoon's debut is coming out in a few weeks, on September 27 thanks to Fat Possum. I can't wait for it to come out and cause everyone to go even more crazy over Youth Lagoon then they already are.

Links: 

Youth Lagoon on Facebook
Pre-order The Year of Hibernation here, from Fat Possum

Video: Echo Lake-Breathe Deep

A little while ago Echo Lake dropped the reverb-based bliss that was the A-side to their new single, "Another Day". Now the band has released the B-side to the world's ears in the form of a new video. And wow, what an insanely gorgeous video. A mixture of HD VHS style recording (yes, I know that is an oxymoron), and multi-color strobe lights, it's more mind melting than their Young Silence video. Truly, this is what LSD imposed on a band playing feels like. Oh, and the song itself it as airy, elegant, and outstanding as always. I can't for Echo Lake to drop an LP.

Links:

Echo Lake's Website

Video: Stay Calm-Take What You Need

This is Stay Calm. As alluded to by Zac Pennington in my interview with him a little while ago it's one of his new bands, along with Joe Kelly of 31knots and Panther along with Claudia Meza of Exploded into Color. It's incredibly percussion heavy band, and it would not be wrong of people to call this Exploded into Color 2.0. However, there is nothing wrong with that because a) Exploded into Color were horrible under appreciated while they were around, and b) this is some great...let's call it a new genre defying sound. "Take What You Want" sort of has a Bush Tetras edge to it, but not nearly as angular. Maybe if all the members has grown up in the country and out of the dark city. It's dancy, but not cliche, punky without being aggressive, plus a few of the best elements from a bunch of other genres. The result being the mini epic that is "Take What You Need".

Links:

Into the Woods' Website

Video: The Flaming Lips Feat. Lightning Bolt-I Wanna Get High But I Don't Want Brain Damage

A simple, unequivocal FUCK! This is the exact thing my ears needed after being so deprived of any new music for nearly two weeks. So few things speak for themselves, but just look at the title of this video and you get a near perfect image of what to expect from the music. It is disturbing and weird, but also insanely fun and possibly The Flaming Lips' best collaboration song to date. Keeping up with all their super weird releases these days is near impossible, but I want this LP with Lightning Bolt bad now.

Links:

The Flaming Lips' Website
Lightning Bolt's Website

Video: tUnE-yArDs-Bizness

I fell in love with tUnE-yArDs when I saw her and her band perform at the intimate yet spacious French Legation Museum at this year's South By Southwest (coverage to come). I was absolutely blown away, and every time "Bizness" comes out of the my satellite radio and pumped through my car's speakers, I go into a small world, completely memorized by the multiple layers of the song. Everything from askew drum beats, to the tribal style singing, or saxophones that feel perfectly in place when the come out of nowhere in the middle of the song. Everything within the song meshes perfectly with one another, it might just be my favorite song of 2011. Now the song has crazy video to accompany it. Watch as kids and adults alike do crazy dances to the song with band master mind Merrill Garbus, all matching in her signature face paint as well. w h o k i l l, her upcoming sophomore album is coming out April 19, and I am beyond excited for it.

(mp3) tUnE-yArDs-Bizness

Links:

tUnE-yArDs' website
Pre-order w h o k i l l here, from 4AD records

Video: Echo Lake-Young Silence

I don't post all that many music vidoes on this site, half do to it being a song I've probably already covered earlier, and half do to it being more difficult to put into words what's cool about a video than a specific song. However, British dream pop band Echo Lake's new video for their wonderfully...dreamy song "Young Silence" thankfully helpped me break this rule. I mean the video is gorgous, and sort of lower quality (in a good way!) take on what Radiohead did on their "House of Cards" video. The track is wonderful as well, something like a more blurred School of Seven Bells, with a nice added helpping of Galaxie 500 for good measure. Echo Lake will be releasing their debut 12" EP on No Pain in Pop on Febubary 14. Get excited.

(mp3) Echo Lake-Young Silence

Links:

Echo Lake's Website
Pre-order the 12" EP here, from No Pain in Pop

Video: No Joy-Hawaii

It's been awhile since I've posted about No Joy, but these Montreal girls have not been resting on their laurels. They just put out their debut album Ghost Blonde on Mexican Summer, and it is a true show of how they've expanded on their potential. For instance the track "Hawaii" is a blistering tart noise pop tune, combining their love of shoegaze and Sonic Youth into an ethereal mix that still containers the tint of beauty that lays in all their music. The video manages to portray the darkened beauty of the track, it a very abstract way that all music videos seem to do these.

(mp3) No Joy-Hawaii

While we're on the subject of No Joy and their new album, a it should be noted that the band also dropped the equally as great "Headless" as well from that album. It's more on the dream-pop/shoegaze side of the band taking a page out of Lush's playbook, but if you shoved the vocals through a distorter. However, this is not at all a bad thing, and "Headless" may be the closest the band has come to making a straight (yet nosiy) indie pop song.

(mp3) No Joy-Headless

Links:

No Joy on Myspace
Buy Ghost Blonde here, from Mexican Summer

Video: School Knight-Prom Queen

(via Speaker Snacks)

What would happen if WAVVES decided to stop writing about only skating and getting high, and hadn't cleaned up his sound either? It probably wind up sounding close to what School Knight are doing. A duo from Denver, "Prom Queen" is that same wonderfully blown out lo-fi that has conquered the music scene for years now, a mix of Japandroids fronted by Dylan from Cloud Nothings, infused with a sense of nostagia for your don't-give-a-shit teen years. The simple video of one of the band members working as clerk manages to fit the vibe perfectly, and as some people can tell you, nostagia inducing videos of convience stores are always awesome. The track, along with the band's Rush SK EP will be released very soon on the constantly reliable Bridgetown Records.

(mp3) School Knight-Prom Queen

Links:

Schook Knights on Myspace
Bridgetown Records

Video Premier: Dead Gaze-A Simple Man

Following my tread of posting videos, here is a very cool video of one of my personal favorites, Dead Gaze, performing a frantic and energy soaked "A Simple Man" as the set closer to a Brooklyn show this past July. The video was taken by and sent over the always cool Tom Pavlich of the Great Pumpkin, who also has various other videos (and standard incredible pictures) of the show over at The Great Pumpkin. Other videos of the show can also be seen at Get Off The Coast as as well as Microphone Memory Emotion. Don't forget about Cole's upcoming 7" on Firetalk as well as a 10" on Group Tightener.

Links:

Check out the Firetalk 7" here

New Video: Coasting-Kids

Coasting is a female duo of Madison on guitar and Fiona on drums, straight out of where else but Brooklyn. For the past few months, the duo has been every blogger's head with their post-punky lo-fi jams and sugar sweet vocals. Till now I've been a bit resistant to their charm, that is until I saw this just great stop motion video of their tune "Kids". With one view you will be sucked into this tune's world, crafted from a broken drum set and the world's cheapest guitar that put together come out sounding like fuzzy bliss.

Links:

Coasting On Myspace
Buy their triple A-side single here, at M'Lady Records

Owen Pallett Covers Guided By Voices' "Game of Pricks"

For the past few weeks, The AV Club has been doing and filming the Undercover series, which is based around the idea of getting a bunch of current artists and having them pick a song to cover from a list of songs by older bands. So when they got Owen Pallet into the studio, him choosing to cover Guided By Voices' legendary "Game of Pricks" probably wasn't what they were expecting. But truth be told Pallet is actually a pretty big Guided By Voices fan and despite the fact that their styles couldn't be more different, he does a very good, and original, cover.

New Video: Gauntlet Hair-I Was Thinking

I was late coming to the Gauntlet Hair party, mainly because of all the glo-fi tag lines which were used whenever anyone would start talking about the band. However, after seeing their new video for "I Was Thinking", I think this might be a band I want to keep listening to. I can understand the why people would think this is glo-fi, but to my ears it's really more of some dance influneced lo-fi pop, with a ton of echo. Plus it has one key quality most glo-fi bands don't have: it doesn't completely suck. Either way, here is the new video for the Gauntlet Hair tune, a simple film of the band in the woods with their dog that completely manages to capture the song.

(mp3) Gauntlet Hair-I Was Thinking

Links:

Gauntlet Hair on Myspace

Get Gauntlet Hair's upcoming debut 7 inch here, from Forest Family Records