Fang Island - Redux

August 14 at Memorial Union Terrace

Free Show!!

Here's what I had written about them before when they opened up for Red Sparowes in April.  This is going to be a great outdoor show! 

http://drunkenattraction.blogspot.com/2010/04/fang-island.html

The Books

New Album - The Way Out

I  just got this album and I had only listened to it once, but man, is it pretty great.  Along with some of their more classic cello narration of sampled audio, they have included some more fast paced electronic sounds to some of their other songs.  Like previous albums, the audio samples they have found take precedence and through those sounds, they try and create a musical story.   On the song "A Cold Freezin' Night" you hear multiple children recounting some strong feelings from "I wish I was a boy" to a child recounting how he's going to torture and kill some Meredith (not as gruesome as you would think from this description.  Children have an imaginative and less horrific attitude towards what "torturing" someone would be.  Another song, "I am who I am" you hear what sounds like a preacher bellowing out that he is who he is which to me has a resonance of someone coming out as being something different then the mainstream.  As if the preacher is justifying who he is by repeatedly saying "I am who I am".  This music, labeled "collage music" by one of the duo of The Books, leads one to think more on what the song is trying to say.  On songs where there actually is a singer, the lyrics are just as cryptic and haunting, such as on "We Bought the Flood" which starts, "I was born with a teacup on my head;Copper tin and lead, ash and dust".  

My recommendation, get this album.  If you are like me and have "found" most of The Books albums online because they were out of print, redeem your love for this band by buying this album.  You won't regret it.

The Books

A Cold Freezin Night

Chain of Missing Links

Bear in Heaven, Twin Sisters and Mountain Man

Monday, July 19th at High Noon Saloon

On July 19^th, The High Noon is hosting a showcase of some amazing up and coming indie rock bands. Containing elements of psychedelic tribal sounds for one band to a minimalist instrumentation with harmonizing vocals for another, these bands may seem very different from one another. But they all have some of the most innovative song writing and 2 of them at least have some amazing vocals which is easy to see then why these bands are touring with each other.

Mountain Man is actually the first act of this night that I had heard of. I've been a huge fan of the resurgence of “mountain music” since I listened to the “O Brother, Where art Thou?”'s soundtrack. Mountain Man would have sound at home beside Alison Krauss. Mountain Man is composed of Molly Erin Sarle, Alexandra Sauser-Monnig, and Amelia Randall Meath. Three unique sounding voices provide the rhythm for every song these women sing with little to no instruments as support. The first song I heard by them was “Dog Song” which starts off with one voice and no music. Soon a second voice joins the first, sounding completely different even sometimes on a different key but still able to harmonize perfectly with the first. The third “voice” that makes this song is silence, which provides this sound of nothing that the voices keep diving in and out of. The second song that I have heard from them is “Animal Tracks” and this has been a more popular song on the music blogs out there. It adds only a banjo to their voices, keeping the song light and simple and also captivating at the same time. Hearing these women perform these songs live will be something that I'm sure will take your breath away.CHECK OUT THIS INTERVIEW OF THEM.

Twin Sister is an experimental chillwave band from Long Island. I have to admit, this is the only band I feel iffy about not liking although I really do love their music. And you can tell that they put a lot of time into their dreamy, trippy sounds. But when their lead singer comes in and her voice becomes the focus of the song, you lose me. I can understand that it is really hard to combine the perfect sounding vocals with such music, especially if you aren't distorting the vocals through a vocoder or with heavy reverb. The songs I heard without vocals or before the vocals started were amazing. I'm also going to give them leeway where I think they recorded the songs on their own and it could just be the vocals were not well balanced with the rest of the songs.

Bear in Heaven's first album, Red Bloom of the Boom is as experimental as you can get. With either a chord being played for an extended amount of time or just plain dead air in the middle of the song, I can see how it may be hard for many people to enjoy this album. The great thing about it is you can tell they really don't mind trying something different and don't mind changing the sound of a song 4 or 5 times before the song is over. With their latest release, Beast Rest Forth Mouth, they have been able to hone in that experimental sound into something that is really amazing to hear. Great vocals and a surreal yet familiar soundscape lends the listener to feel he or she is having a spirtual moment without feeling like it necessarily is caused by some Acid trip. The songs are beautifully created bringing pop, psychedelic and folk together all in one. 

Mountain Man - Animal Tracks 

Twin Sister - All Around and Away We Go

Bear in Heaven - Lovesick Teenagers
 

Blastoids

 Kids Hands Smell Like Glitter (2009)

According to Wikipedia, Blastoids are "an extinct type of stemmed echinoderm".  I have no idea how that correlates to this band, but I do know that these guys are no echinoderms.  Cause their extinct, of course.  Instead, these Blastoids are Tyler Walker, Joe Volmer and Charlie Hareford all part of some Tennessee cult/collective called the "Owlhead collective."  What other bands are a part of this collective of musicians?  I have no idea.  All I got for bands was one band called "Party Trash" and possibly another band called "Chomp Womp" which actually could be another collective of musicians.  So far what I've heard, there is some crazy good sounds being made in Tennessee.

Blastoids can be right away compared to Animal Collective.  Their vocals.  The setup of their songs.  The craziness of their music and samples they use throughout.  But the sound is all their own.  Being someone who gets bored easily with music, I love any music that is complex, multilayered, that changes completely throughout each song and that has some amazing percussion and vocals.  All I ask.  And this band does all of that.   And what is great is you can download their album for free off their Myspace page.  Hopefully they come up to Madison so we can repay them by rocking out to their show.      

Islands

July 10th on Memorial Union Terrace

via Pitchfork

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When Jamie Thompson and Nick Diamonds started their second post-Unicorns collaboration it made perfect sense that they should call it Islands. With breezy calypso rhythms, honeyed country-acoustic guitars, bubbly/silly synthesizer effects, and summery melodies, their debut, Return to the Sea, was a wonderful getaway soundtrack, obscuring its death-haunted lyrics with bright arrangements and rich, coconut-scented production

Vapors (2010)
 
Vapors