Spoon – Transference
The first minute of Transference sounds like a false start. Not since 1995’s Telephono has Spoon sounded so anxious. A skeletal organ leaks onto a drum twitch in “Before Destruction,” and then it all withers away, brushed aside on the eve of some contorted chorus. Britt Daniel is then left mumbling and crunching casually on a lo-fi acoustic, and he sounds like he’s not quite sure what to do next. These uncharacteristically unkempt moments riddle the whole of Transference. (more…)
This entry was written by , posted on March 24, 2010 at 8:42 am, filed under New Music and tagged Britt Daniel, Spoon, Transference. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
Surfer Blood – Astro Coast
Absorbing all ocean metaphors between the 60s and the late 90s, surf rock has long been the medium of summer fun. But in the last decade of DIY spectacles splashing up an ocean-like internet arena, listeners fervently watched innumerable bands take the plunge into a larger online medium that mostly sounds like disorder. Of late it’s been either wipe-out, wash up deserted, get caught in riptides of messiah-like hype or judgmental dissent, or ride the wave long enough to finally earn high marks on their out-of-ten-scorecards and still see modest digital sustenance, see for example Animal Collective/Grizzly Bear/Vampire Weekend. Watching these bands be tested against mega waves of reception is like wondering which kid is going to go first in Lord of the Flies. But here’s Surfer Blood, a lightning rod through the cutthroat internet canonization of 00s indie. Astro Coast is a skillful and patient balancing act calmly recalling an anthology of pop, new-wave, and underground influences and then deftly rerouting it to listeners lost between Pandora and Pitchfork.
Surfer Blood – “Floating Vibes”
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
This entry was written by , posted on February 1, 2010 at 5:05 pm, filed under New Music and tagged Astro Coast, Canine Records, Surfer Blood. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
“Swim (To Reach the End)” – Surfer Blood
This earnest anthem isn’t just for people that need to know how to swim. And Surfer Blood isn’t only for fun-in-the-sun pilgrims. Catapulting at the sound of the triple kick drum, the song delivers a trajectory that we all know as clean guitar jabs propel this perhaps inflated early single from Surfer Blood. Nothing to fret though, the rest of the album is how they earn a few gratuitous explosions.
Surfer Blood – Swim (To Reach the End)
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
This entry was written by , posted on January 23, 2010 at 6:45 pm, filed under New Music and tagged Astro Coast, Surfer Blood, Swim. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
Tom Waits – Glitter and Doom
Hearing Tom Waits live will never reveal the man behind the myth. In each of three live albums that span his forty-year career, Waits has always sounded near death, if not undead. Since his first live album, 1975′s Nighthawks at the Diner, Waits has drifted like a drunken ghost out of beatnik clubs to wander across the nocturnal Earth, growling out taller tales with each album. With his third, Glitter and Doom, Waits’ monstrous bellow has only grown as grotesque as the characters that haunt the vaudevillian graveyard in which he has always toiled.
This entry was written by , posted on December 29, 2009 at 1:53 am, filed under New Music and tagged Glitter and Doom, Tom Waits. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
Doby Watson – Twenty Two
It’s been said that the bone dry dirges of Doby Watson’s Twenty Two were inspired from the cornering crises of Watson’s own twenty-second year. But these intimate memories are much less the balladry of a suburban cowboy and more the disturbing moans of someone, anyone caught in the nightmare of the past. XXII nevertheless locates a point at the end of Watson’s youth, where his soft, contoured reflection in the mirror seems to have suddenly shattered under some enormous weight. What exactly Watson lost is never clear, but some grotesque fate robbed it from him and blindsided him into a confession of loneliness and despair. The songs of XXII recount in broad lyrical strokes the grueling salvaging process of Watson’s fragmented yet vivid musical identity.
Doby Watson – Twenty Two
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
This entry was written by , posted on December 1, 2009 at 5:17 pm, filed under New Music and tagged Doby Watson, Orchid Collective, Twenty Two, XXII. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
Forge Your Own Chains – Compilation
Psychedelia is an impossibly slow language to the soberer audience. It’s from the other side, communicating after reaching the brink of aphasia. In the translational effort of this often distorted language, Forge You Own Chains is the final presentation of an international dig for 15 psychedelic escape-artists once left behind, welcomed back neatly and preserved in vinyl reverie. Their wise jives from 1968-1974 are intimate signals that were saved from blaring acoustic towers of the psychedelic heyday. With beats too heavy to let wayward guitars wander in the clouds, these Ballads and Dirges revere the good Earth from its every corner, honing their trip rather than inflating it.
This entry was written by , posted on November 2, 2009 at 10:23 pm, filed under New Music and tagged Forge Your Own Chains, Heavy Psychedelic Ballads and Dirges 1968-1974, Now-Again Records, Stones Throw. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
Atlas Sound – Logos
As Atlas Sound, Bradford Cox is not a punk from Georgia anymore. And although Logos is two years and two albums removed from the memories of Deerhunter, his last noisy band, it nevertheless contents itself in remembering the murky, often eerie sound of the past. If Deerhunter was the sound of Cox as a thrashing punk grotesque with Marfan syndrome in the Gothic South, Atlas Sound is his inward journey to a more surreal plane.
Atlas Sound – Walkabout (ft. Noah Lennox)
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
This entry was written by , posted on October 12, 2009 at 11:29 pm, filed under New Music and tagged 4AD, Atlas Sound, Bradford Cox, Deerhunter, Kranky Records, Logos. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
Eleven Magazine
Music, Community, and Culture in St. LouisEleven is your source for everything music related in the St. Louis metropolitan area. We print a free, monthly magazine and keep you updated daily with our website. Come hang out with us and get involved!
