LP Giveaway details at the end of the review. Local Natives Gorilla Manor Frenchkiss Records out February 16th 78/100 [Rating Scale]
One of my closest friends and best music aficionados just can’t get into the Local Natives. He doesn’t like the tribal chants at the opening of “Airplanes,” the name-dropping of NPR during “World News,” the obvious Fleet Foxes, Dodos, and Talking Heads influences. His overall assessment is that Local Natives are too manufactured, that they are trying too hard to be “indie.”
Funny enough, I love the Local Natives for the exact opposite reason: they’re so full of real emotion, so genuine, and so passionate. And more than anything else, they make great music.
Gorilla Manor is full of instantly memorable tunes and melodies, from the opening group harmonies in “Wide Eyes” (“oh some evil spirit, oh some evil this way comes”) to the heart-wrenching chorus in “Airplanes” (“I love it all, so much I call, I want you back”), to the rollicking breakdown amidst the rickety drums of “Sun Hands” (“And when I can feel with my sun hands, I’ll promise not to lose her again!”). And that’s just tracks one through three. Continue reading →
Broken Social Scene are back after five long years with their fifth full-length studio album entitled Forgiveness Rock Record due out May 4th on Arts & Crafts. Their album is once again being produced by John McEntire, who has also worked with acts like Bright Eyes and The Fiery Furnaces in the past.
To tide you over until May, Broken Social Scene are giving away the Forgiveness Rock Record’s epic seven minute long first single, “World Sick”. You can download it below:
Flying Lotus’s forthcoming full length opus Cosmogramma will hit the stacks on May 4th, just in time for my birthday. The album is expected to include a Thom Yorke-sung track and pick up where 2008’s Los Angeles left off. You can hear the ridiculously awesome first taste from Cosmogramma, “Computer Face//Pure Being”, below:
We offered plenty of great mp3-freebies in January, and here are the ones that were downloaded most. Follow the links to download the tracks individually, or grab the .zip at the end of the post.
And here it is, Vampire Weekend’s star-studded music video for Contra fan favorite (and my least favorite) “Giving Up The Gun”. Oh and you know cocky, drunk Tennis Superstar Jake Gyllenhaal makes this the best music video of 2010.
“My Baby Left Me” is the debut single from the UK’s latest soul-pop sensation, Rox. The rising chanteuse graced BBC’s Sound of 2010 longlist. While “My Baby Left Me” is getting its proper release on Rough Trade later next month, a demo version of the track has been circulating the interwebs since 2008. Both versions were produced by Al Shux, the man behind Jay-Z and Alicia Keys’ massive hit “Empire State of Mind”, or basically the man I’d want to produce my introductory single The new, single version streaming at Rox’ myspace page was produced by Al Shux, the man behind Jay-Z’s and Alicia Keys’ number one hit “Empire State of Mind”, the demo version was produced by Adam Midgely aka First Man.
You can listen to the new, updated “My Baby Left Me” at Rox’s Myspace page. The single will be out on March 15th via Rough Trade. You can listen to and download the demo version of the track below:
Guess now that “Little Secrets” is a bona fide alternative radio hit, it needs an update in music video wares. Seriously, this trend where 2009’s greatest songs are seeing the music video treatment in 2010 is about as stupid as it sounds, though it does make me feel some kind of nostalgic, but it’s way too early for that.
When Vampire Weekend write ballads they follow them up with barreling, kinetic punk jams. When Vampire Weekend close an album they close a fucking album and they close it with strings and looping keyboard and piano and Dave Longstreth-style guitar and falsetto Hegelian mediations on the dialectic. “Never choose between two.” The very nature of this band’s existence is choosing between two – yes and no, love and hate, brilliant pop music and overrated shit. Hegel would say that the synthesis of two choices serves to enhance a kind of collective knowledge. But what does that have to do with breaking up with someone?
In our review Adam Offitzer called “I Think Ur A Contra” the band’s “technically “best” track to date.” Maybe this is true. On Contra Vampire Weekend have just gotten better at what they were already doing well. “I Think Ur A Contra” is musically and lyrically mature, the kind of maturity that comes with age, with knowledge – not the kind of knowledge you learn in college (the kind of knowledge that defined VW’s first record), but with knowledge, wisdom, the kind of thing you learn from dealing with the real world every day, every minute, every second. Nothing is so easy as I am, and you’re not. Nothing is so easy as choosing between two. “I Think Ur a Contra” functions as a mission statement and a definition for a band that has been defined alternatively as the saviors of indie pop music and as bourgeois, exploitative cultural imperialists. But nothing is so easy as choosing between two, and Vampire Weekend are neither of these things. Vampire Weekend is a band making excellent music.
Mark my words: Pittsburgh’s 1,2,3 are going places. Big, important and awesome places, even. I’ve only listened to three tracks from these fellers, but I’m already getting that sick feeling in my stomach that I got when I first heard Free Energy, Chiddy Bang and Freelance Whales.
1,2,3 released their stellar debut 7″ single earlier this month on Ohh La La Records, which featured the sugary and infectious A-Side “Confetti” and the gritty, dirty, raw and (far) superior B-Side “Can’t Bride God”. With borrowed nostalgia and authenticity abound, a trend growing rampant in this climate, 1,2,3 sound completely original and interesting. We should all look forward to hearing more from these gentlemen in the coming weeks or months. Download “Confetti” below and stream “Can’t Bribe God”:
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Local Natives
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