1. French Kicks - "So Said What"
This band only had live videos of this song on YouTube, and that is not the way to listen to this, so I took the liberty of uploading it myself. It's a great, simple song, that echos a lot of the old Beatles' style vocal harmonizing. I haven't really been too fond of most of their other stuff, but this one is worth downloading. (Legally of course)
2. Throw Me The Statue - "Lolita"
Fans of the novel, Lolita, a Nabokov classic, are certainly familiar with the amount of music that has been composed as a tribute to the book. (The most loved being Serge Gainsbourg's 1971, Histoire de Melody Nelson) Anyway, this is a nice little tune from an underrated folk-rock band regarding everyone's favorite nymphet. It also has a weird video to go along with it.
3. School of Seven Bells - "Half Asleep"
This song has been around for a while, but it was released on School of Seven Bells' debut album, "Alpinisms", last October. EDIT: I have so far listened to this song over twenty times in the past three hours. Also, I wrongly listed the release date as this July; I had it confused with another album, although "Alpinisms" was released in 2008, so it's fairly recent. I feel that this song has one of the best choruses I've heard all year.
4. Paul Banks aka Julian Plenti - "Only if you Run"
I am not a fan of this album, but after giving it a second chance during some Marvel VS Capcom 2, (I had it playing in the background) I've come to the conclusion that the mass amounts of 6.0 scores that the album has so far received, pretty much describes it. Some of the experimentation is... alright, but some of it is downright offensive, such as Paul Banks sampling a spoken-word section from the HBO Documentary, "Methadonia", on the track, "Madrid Song". Liking maybe two or three of the songs on "Julian Plenti...Skyscraper" didn't really change my former opinion; I still don't like the direction that Paul is going in, but considering how far off a new Interpol album is, we'll all just have to wait.
Here are some random bullets:
- The VMA nomiations were released and the "Breakthrough Video" category is composed almost entirely of Indie bands. The VMAs, (And MTV as a whole) are complete horse-shit, but I'm all for Matt and Kim getting more exposure. (Seriously, they nominated JUSTICE for video of the year one time, why couldn't they do that for Matt and Kim for the "Lessons Learned" video?)
- Someone turned me on to this really weird ambient group called Belong. They don't even have a Wiki page but they have released one album and one EP on Itunes. Their music sounds like...psychedelic-rock but under a water filter.
- I might write up a blog going in-depth on the history of certain, lesser known genres. If you guys are interested in this, let me know. The first one I would be doing is "Post-Punk".
- Beirut is awesome. Go listen to "Elephant Gun" and the two LPs that he has released so far. (The Holland EP is good as well)
- Isn't it funny how we completely forgot the last Killers album? It barely went Gold in the US, and in the UK it didn't do much better. They really had to hit a home-run to make up for the inconsistency of their last two records, and well, they didn't. Their hits are still great....though I do find it odd that rarely will a Killers fan acknowledge "Read My Mind" as their best song, which it is.
- Muse is going to perform at the VMAs, hopefully it's something old because their new song sucks.
- My top five albums of the year (so far of course) are as follows:
1. St. Vincent - Actor: Actor is a terrific album by a terrific artist. St. Vincent debuted as strong as she could with "Marry Me", and evaded the sophomore slump by somehow managing to top her first album in every way.
2. Beirut- March of the Zapotech & Realpeople - Holland: This EP is worth it for the Realpeople section alone; "My Night with the Prostitute from Marseille" is my song of the year, without question.
3. Camera Obscura - My Maudlin Career: They deserve to be a household name. Much like The Strokes brought back good ol' fashion Garage Rock in 2000-2001, Camera Obscura brings back Pretenders and Blondie style rock, with a bit of Morrisey thrown in for good measure.
4. Matt & Kim - Grand: Overall, it's not the best album in the world, but the singles and a few of the other songs are just filled with great melody and a forgotten Pop-Positivity."Daylight" can put a smile on anyone's face.
5. Grizzly Bear - Veckatimest: I am not of the opinion that "Veckatimest" is a strong album overall, but it's three lead-singles all have a place on my "Song of the Year" list, so it has to be on here.
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