You should check out Port St Willow. He's a close mate of The Antlers, and kind of takes their indie sound and stretches it out into a more atmospheric post-rock. Plus his voice is pretty remarkable.
I could also see you really loving my local pals Storming The Beaches With Logos in Hand. Doesn't totally fit your desire for calming post rock, but I think they're exactly the type of band you love.
As I mentioned before, I already knew Port St Willow and am still a bigger fan of his first album, but that one's grown on me now more with a few more listens. Stara Rzeka was pretty good, had no clue what to expect only that it's getting super hyped, I think not usually my thing but good music to study to.
Haven't actually been able to find any way to listen to Storming the Beaches with Logos in Hand, if you know of a place to find their music mecca that'd be great, I'd be curious to check it.
Shows:
This Sunday I saw The World Is A Beautiful Place and Foxing with Brightside and People Like You. People Like You is pretty cool, slightly jazzy sort of punk, really good fit with Foxing on the lineup. Their male singer's voice is OK, but his more spoken word delivery is his strength, and their female singer is really really good (also super nice, got to meet her after the show). Brightside's vocalist was trying so hard to be Thom Yorke it was almost laughable, but the most interesting part of their set was that the guitarist's wife just had a kid so the guitar duties were instead passed between the guy from Foxing and two guys from TWIABP. Foxing was awe-inspiring. The first show that brought me to tears. Everything the played was so heartfelt, so emotional, so all out, it was their last day of the tour so I think they were just putting everything in. And then ... TWIABP. Oh dear. I liked them as people going in. Not sure I do coming out. Their music I'd say is maybe slightly above average on albums, but their live performance was good but oh my god. One of the guys got just so incredibly drunk he spent 6 minutes talking in between songs. Then another 2 or 3 in between another. Combine that with an 8 minute long interlude while tuning and the set up for the finale which was 3 or 4 minutes, and the show just dragged to hell. The finale was really cool, all of Foxing, all of Brightside, most of PLY, most of the stage crew, and I believe a merch guy all came on stage together.
So yeah, Foxing was incredible. I'd love to know if Dakota or Gavin had similar experiences with TWIABP.
Also a really weird show cuz all of the friends that I was supposed to go with cancelled for a variety of reasons, so all the Foxing stuff hit even harder (and yes that was me being overdramatic but I don't even care)
this is cool. how did this commissioning come about?
Yo I'd missed this completely but basically the guy is retiring that moniker at least (I don't know if he'll keep making music otherwise) but put out one last batch of 10 songs and there was a sale to help choose what the final themes should be. We emailed for a bit and I told him how I really connected to a lot of the themes of overanalyzation on his other albums cuz that's something I really struggle with, talked some more about style, and a week later this was born. _________________
My friend and I have started running a really informal tumblr music blog here, so I need to finish my listening queue in the next week or so to have my end of the year list ready to go. As a result, all of the key albums I need to listen to/relisten to are my first priority. Here's the first chunk I've gotten through:
Huge surprise, great album, may end up finishing in or around my top 10. Cute pop rock with some interesting lyrics and some cool stuff going on musically underneath a pretty generic shell, reminds me of some of Paul McCartney + Wings' better moments.
I think I honestly prefer the EP over this, it just dragged on a little bit and got a little bit overly into itself and trying to be experimental for me, plus the Kele Okereke similarities became a little more exaggerated. Still great and very excited to see what else he puts out going forward.
An album I knew was really hyped but that was all I knew, turns out it's really pretty good rock music. Nothing that absolutely swept me away, but a pleasant listen.
My first album by these guys, a really cool blend of styles ranging from a variety of Afro-Beat genres to some almost funk and/or bluegrass ideas. A strange listen but something I'll revisit and that I think my dad would adore.
A totally OK album that would be a lot better if I smoked weed and understood all the references, because really everything here is just weed references. What it lacks in substance it makes up for with some really chill beats and overall catchy, good music, but it's not exactly the shining star in a year of such incredible hip hop.
5 really good ideas for EPs stapled together. The flow is actually alright, and I like the vocals a lot here, but each song is stylistically different enough I don't know how cohesive it is on the whole. I also didn't buy into the Sunbather hype as much as others, so maybe it's just not for me, but I think this was OK and a little overhyped.
Destroyer are a band I enjoyed a few songs of in small doses. They're just a band that I couldn't really sit around and listen to for an extended period of time, I think due to his vocals. The lyrics are alright, the instrumentals are fairly unique and interesting, I just really actively dislike the vocal style, which is a pity. _________________
Which was a hugely surprising, great album. Very avant garde, bizarre electronic music with some R&B influences, some random latin influences, it's all over the place but gorgeous. Will be in or around the top 10 probably, maybe down a little, I need to let it sit. Also heard
And oh my god it's incredible too. Dark, eerie, musically deep landscapes that are creepy while still being really pleasant in a strange way. The best here is far and away "Survive", but the whole album is really good and feels somewhat like buying a Cocteau Twins 45 and spinning it at 33. I'm going to go through the rest of her discography once this bit of the project is done, it's that good.
Really, this is what everyone's been talking about? With the exception of some steel drums and Romy's vocals, really not anything special or different here at all. That being said, Young Thug's feature is actually really good and makes me think that this album might be useful for if I get back into making mashups, there's not much going on but if these were beats for other songs, it could be good. Dunno. _________________
Long before bands like The National were releasing their own takes on chamber pop with post-punk influences, Tindersticks pioneered dark chamber pop with their critically acclaimed 1993 self titled album. 4 albums and three soundtracks later, the band called it quits. In 2007, a reunion was announced, and 5 more albums have followed. While these albums have been fairly well received by critics, the band never found the mainstream success of other similar acts, and continued to change slightly with each album, getting more and more optimistic lyrically, with less goth influences and a generally more radio friendly outlook.
Here, in their tenth LP, the band appear to have settled back into a solid mix of their former outputs. While the sound is a little more Earth, Wind, and Fire and a little less Nick Cave than their early material, the lush orchestration associated with Tindersticks makes a shining return. More elements of jazz or even funk have been taken in, and the band's use of any number of live horns across all of the tracks really helps the album shine through as something unique in today's landscape.
Those familiar with the band may be a little tripped up by the new style. The first two tracks offer a melancholy atmosphere, aided by the production of the vocals on "Second Chance Man", sounding almost like singer Stuart Staples is underwater. The third track, "Were We Once Lovers?" remains dark lyrically, offering the refrain "How can I care if it's the caring that's killing me?", but the funk bass driving the tune offers something almost danceable. "Help Yourself" continues on this trend, with a really loud, driving bass and driving horns contrasting lyrics discussing suicide and a cracking voice that sounds near to tears to create some sort of hellish disco.
This drive dies and the focus shifts into the next track, almost certainly the best track on the album. "Hey Lucinda" is a very subtle duet between Staples' wavering baritone and a female vocalist, driven by bells and bass clarinet that slowly crescendo into more and more chaos as the two vocalists fight before resolving. The song finishes instrumentally, introducing strings, steel drums, saxophones, and a whole other cacophony of sound. The whole track is rather reminiscent of a more lush, refined version of San Fermin's past efforts.
The album is not without flaws. More than one quarter of the tracks are instrumental, and while they aren't bad, these obviously lose Staples' signature voice, and don't really stack up to the rest of the album as a result. Other tracks which do feature vocals simply drag on for far longer than needed without really going anywhere (see: "How He Entered"). As a whole, though, it's not dragged down by these tracks, and the mood is never really lost, only altered. _________________
First show of 2016 was last night. Some local rockers who sounded fairly different live than on recordings. Lead singer was really trying to do his best Cassablancas impression, but it actually fit in pretty well and offered a markedly darker sound than their album imo. Not exactly unique music - you could probably listen to Hot Fuss, Is This It, and The Blue Album and not miss a beat of what they did here, but pretty good live and there was a more serious take on that stuff that I can appreciate. The puns between songs were probably the best part of the night.
The other band, CRUISR, got some attention for opening for The 1975 on their most recent tour. Now, I don't have much of a problem with The 1975's music - Chocolate is a catchy enough single, and Sex had some genuinely interesting things going on for a radio hit (at least on my station) - but the fanbase is terrible. It's a lot of the people who would be into Twenty One Pilots but think that the music is too serious, but somehow want to fit in with the "scene" just to fit into something. Lots of green hair and piercings and giggling about how "awkward" their fairly confident, tattoo'd, backwards hat claden lead singer was.
Really, I think the show would've been pretty average without screaming fans, literally blowing kisses at the singer, who had no idea any of the songs. People knew one song, and that seemed to be about it, but some of them were really going all out, yelling his name and stuff. His constant replies to "put your hands up!" or such really just detracted from the music, but at the same time they were trying to be edgy in the lightest ways possible, the band as a whole dressed more like a Warped Tour wannabe than radio friendly pop. The music was average but the show was insipid. _________________
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