EPISODE 11: SUN!
Song: Living in America
Artist: DOM
Album: Sun Bronzed Greek Gods (2010)
Label: Burning Mill
It’s good to be back! Hope everyone made it through that long, cold spring. The Snob Cast is happy to be serving up a picnic platter of sunny hand-raisers starting with the ultra-facetious first track from DOM’s ‘Sun Bronzed Greek Gods’. Nobody knows much about these guys, except that that’s the way they like it, they don’t mind picking up where MGMT seems to have left off, and that cat’s name is ‘Bonchicha’ (and has a song named after it which the band jokingly claimed is their hometown American Hockey League team’s entrance music.) This album Is jam packed with multi track falsetto driven neon rock blown way out of proportion, then dumped to cassette for that nearly unusable supercompressed sound that makes sure you won’t be hearing this on a Gossip Girl ad any time soon. Great album, lots of great songs. Worth hearing and having.
Song: Go Outside
Artist: Cults
Album: (Free) Cults 7"
Label: Forest Family Records (2010)
A band called ‘Cults’ uploaded a free 7” worth of material to BandCamp (download it free now) a couple of months ago with no other band info, and the indie media circus began hours later. As much as most people know: members Brian and Maddy are film students in New York with no previous serious musical projects except that Maddy’s mom was Dee Dee Ramone’s art dealer, so ended up recording a track with him when she was 9. I agree with the band that none of this really matters, but I feel I have to write something here. Full length expected sometime this year.
Song: Sun
Artist: Caribou
Album: Swim (2010)
Label: Merge
The first time I saw Dan Snaith live, he, a Canadian Citizen, had just been sued my “Handsome Dick Manitoba”, some handsome dick in a US punkabilly band, for recording up until that point as ‘Manitoba’… the name a of a Canadian province. Once again – a US punkabilly singer whose STAGE NAME, (NOT the BAND name) included the name of a CANADIAN province sued an obscure CANADIAN electronic musician for recording under the CANADIAN PROVINCE name ‘Manitoba’. He had to change his name to Caribou, and had also changed his to-that-point gentle fieldy, Muskokan, folktronic sound to something requiring 3 drum kits played simultaneously for the entire show. It was unpleasant, but understandable given the circumstances. Since then Dan’s been making fans of critics turning out 3 of my favorite albums of all time, and winning the Polaris a couple years ago for his earnest attempt at structured song arrangement in co-operation with identifiable 60’s pop / Beachboys production and harmonies. THIS album has him meeting pace with long time colleague Four-Tet to turn the dancefloors a little stranger in 2010. It was a strange dancefloor indeed, and even if there’s no escaping a sound drum pummeling at the live show – seeing this track ‘Sun’ done live was worth my $17. He sings every word live, and the performance comes together in an unexpectedly epic way like something out of Underworld’s Everything, Everything, if that means anything to anyone anymore. Excellent record, check it out.
Song: Pleasure Sighs
Artist: The Morning Benders
Album: Big Echo (2010)
Label: Rough Trade
I heard the single ‘Promises’ a few months back, and immediately got very interested in The Morning Benders, only to eventually hear that production of their new album was being handled by Chis from Grizzly Bear, effectively raising my expectations to unmeetable heights. My first impression of the album was that it may sound like a Grizz Bear album…. but apparently there’s more to them than their sound. Still, everyone else seemed to love this album – and I’ve been wronged by expectations before. In fact, now there are a few songs on this album that I couldn’t live without. This one ‘Pleasure Sighs’ is a beautiful, sleepy, daydreaming in the sun kinda song that demonstrate a few of the Bender’s sound – the noise, space and harmonies in particular. Feel that sun.
Song: Baptism
Artist: Crystal Castles
Album: Crystal Castles (II) (2010)
Label: Last Gang
The new one is pretty good. I loved the uneven, raw production of everything of theirs I could find back when they broke their debut in 2008. Something about their approach to ‘chip’ music (bit thrash, more intuitively) is so unapologetically … thrashy… The new album seems a little cleaner, fuller, diverse and developed… descriptors which I’d expect to be bad signs – but I can’t help but admit that this album is even better than the last. They’ve matured, but are still fully in command of the crystal castles sound. It’s a good look for them. So well done. Development in a good direction is something that used to be very uncommon.
Song: No F***ing Around
Artist: Rafter
Album: Animal Feelings (2010)
Label: 2010 Asthmatic Kitty Records
I didn’t expect to buy this whole album, but I had to have every one of these songs. Not sure if fans of Yacht will love this or hate this – I’m a bit of a fan of Yacht, and I like this for all the same reasons. The sound may be similar, but Rafter does a couple of things that score crucial individuality points: a) the tongue in cheek is more pronounced (I just love how rough and don’t-give-a-shit the vocoder is performed on the track) and b) the album is satisfyingly diverse musically. He does everything he does very well. Anyway – this review shouldn’t be about the fact that he reminds me of Yacht, or that he’s proficient and lovely – the record is FUN. It’s a fun, summer-jammin’ indie-pop-tronic-or-whatever record that’s a lot of FUN. Check it out.
Song: Get Yo S***
Artist: Black Joe Lewis
Album: Tell ‘Em What Your Name Is (2009)
Label: Lost Highway Records
Bid thanks to our man deep inside the world of Austin music festivals Adam DeWitt for bringing this 2009 SxSW breakout band to our NxNE attention. Great album that does the Otis Redding / James Brown Motown era thing very well. There’s something very period about Joe’s fluid jive-slurring spoken sections that you don’t get to hear outside of blaxploitation flicks. I also love that a lot of the singing is just a part of the saturated gut-busting choruses – I mean – whatever he’s singing is obviously the point of the song, but what it is is obviously not as important as singing it loud. Great record, great substitute for anyone with dashed expectations for the new Jamie Lidell album.
Song: Cannibal Resource
Artist: Dirty Projectors
Album: Bitte Orca (2009)
Label: Domino Records
Last season, we were big on the 2009 phenomenon of the big payoffs of suddenly galvanized, accessible yet starkly unique, mindblowing albums from bands who had intrigued and repelled in equal measure in previous albums. We focused on Grizzly Bear’s Veckatimest, Animal Collective’s Merriweather Post-Pavillion and Phoenix’s Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix. We left out Dirty Projector’s Bitte Orca. On the first listen we, like so many people, were so taken with the first single ‘Stillness is the Move’ (still a great track) that we kinda thought we’d naturally play that track here sometime, and mention that the rest of the album was probably ok too. Turns out, I totally forgot to buy this album! Realizing this in the hiatus, we torrented then immediately bought a copy. LOVED it start to finish. This is the first cut, and highlights the brilliant move of the 3 part vocal harmonies that we can only hope will stay in the Projector’s arsenal form here on out. Really great, refreshing album that we wish we’d have been listening to this often a lot earlier. Gives the ‘pop’ section of your brain a shake up and a work out, and rewards with paybacks of equal measure. Feels good. Check it out.
Song: Magic Arrow
Artist: Timber Timbre
Album: Timber Timbre (2009)
Label: Arts & Crafts
We’re tempted to just live a ghostly empty space here in respect and reverence. Everyone needs to check this thing out. Haunted, immaculate, essential, gothic, ghostly, spooky folk. The arrangements are so sparse and minimal and that in certain stretches you might not at first notice that all instrumentation has dropped out completely, leaving this inCREDibly conceived and executed vocal style leading some sort of post-burial resurrection procession out of them foggy hills of the precambrian shield. Caught him live last week – I think there were no more than 2 applause breaks in an hour and a half of spellbinding. Essential album, we’re not kidding.
Song: David
Band: The Radio Dept.
Album: Clinging to a Scheme (2010)
Label: Labrador
Been sitting on this single for almost a year now, waiting for the album to finally drop so we could finally give it a play at the Snob Cast. Been huge fans of the last album from like 2006ish ‘Pet Grief’. These guys mastered the weightless shoegaze meets electro sound back then, and make a timely return (after about 2 years of teasing) with a catchy, poppy variation on the blissy fuzz and frosty vocals of their near-perfect last album. Lots of people are loving the new ‘beaty’ groove of the two sunnier beach friendly singles, we’ll stick with what got us hyped about this album in the first place – enjoy ‘David’.
Song: Hurricane Jane
Artist: Black Kids
Album: Partie Traumatic
Label: Almost Gold
This is another album where we were a little late to the party, but now that we’re here, it’s also another one of those albums where it’s hard to choose only one song to play - so many songs being so catchy and perfectly pop-formatted. I’ve had this and the critically acclaimed ‘Wizard of Ahhhs’ ep on my ipod for a while now, but it’s taken until now for a shuffle to dig it up. A lot of the song are a LOT of fun, very cheeky and full of lots of refreshingly immature snot-nosed electro-punk lyrical hooks. If you like this track, you should probably have the whole record.
Song: Odessa (Nite Jewel Remix)
Artist: Caribou / Nite Jewel
Album: Odessa 12”(2010)
Label: City Slang (UK/Europe)
We’re happy to dedicate our first Snob Cast 'double play' to Caribou! We love ‘Odessa’, the first cut on the new Caribou album, but figured it’s probably already been blogged to death (if not, our apologies – please take a listen). However, we also very much loved this Ital-Disco flavored Nite Jewel remix from a European release of the Odessa 12”. Nite Jewel’s an excellent artist in her own right, and will likely make a upcoming appearance on the cast, though not much of her music shimmers quite like this. One more anecdote from the show, as related by our own Fantastic Africa:
“…this like perfect cliche 50 year old music store employee type guy was standing nearby – every time there was a part he liked he'd look around at the rest of us and say something like: "OH COME ON! HELL YEAH!" Like we were at AC/DC or something... then at the end of the climax of the final big song of the night, a split second before the first person cheered - he throws his clapping hands in the air and yells: "I LLLOOVVEE LSDEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!" HAHAHAHAH I'm still laughing out loud even typing this out. It was incredible.”
It’s great to be back, y’all. There’s a LOT of music to cover this summer, and so much from the back catalog we wanna turn people on to if they missed out till now – so keep it locked! SNOBS IN!!!
Artist: DOM
Album: Sun Bronzed Greek Gods (2010)
Label: Burning Mill
It’s good to be back! Hope everyone made it through that long, cold spring. The Snob Cast is happy to be serving up a picnic platter of sunny hand-raisers starting with the ultra-facetious first track from DOM’s ‘Sun Bronzed Greek Gods’. Nobody knows much about these guys, except that that’s the way they like it, they don’t mind picking up where MGMT seems to have left off, and that cat’s name is ‘Bonchicha’ (and has a song named after it which the band jokingly claimed is their hometown American Hockey League team’s entrance music.) This album Is jam packed with multi track falsetto driven neon rock blown way out of proportion, then dumped to cassette for that nearly unusable supercompressed sound that makes sure you won’t be hearing this on a Gossip Girl ad any time soon. Great album, lots of great songs. Worth hearing and having.
Song: Go OutsideArtist: Cults
Album: (Free) Cults 7"
Label: Forest Family Records (2010)
A band called ‘Cults’ uploaded a free 7” worth of material to BandCamp (download it free now) a couple of months ago with no other band info, and the indie media circus began hours later. As much as most people know: members Brian and Maddy are film students in New York with no previous serious musical projects except that Maddy’s mom was Dee Dee Ramone’s art dealer, so ended up recording a track with him when she was 9. I agree with the band that none of this really matters, but I feel I have to write something here. Full length expected sometime this year.
Artist: Caribou
Album: Swim (2010)
Label: Merge
The first time I saw Dan Snaith live, he, a Canadian Citizen, had just been sued my “Handsome Dick Manitoba”, some handsome dick in a US punkabilly band, for recording up until that point as ‘Manitoba’… the name a of a Canadian province. Once again – a US punkabilly singer whose STAGE NAME, (NOT the BAND name) included the name of a CANADIAN province sued an obscure CANADIAN electronic musician for recording under the CANADIAN PROVINCE name ‘Manitoba’. He had to change his name to Caribou, and had also changed his to-that-point gentle fieldy, Muskokan, folktronic sound to something requiring 3 drum kits played simultaneously for the entire show. It was unpleasant, but understandable given the circumstances. Since then Dan’s been making fans of critics turning out 3 of my favorite albums of all time, and winning the Polaris a couple years ago for his earnest attempt at structured song arrangement in co-operation with identifiable 60’s pop / Beachboys production and harmonies. THIS album has him meeting pace with long time colleague Four-Tet to turn the dancefloors a little stranger in 2010. It was a strange dancefloor indeed, and even if there’s no escaping a sound drum pummeling at the live show – seeing this track ‘Sun’ done live was worth my $17. He sings every word live, and the performance comes together in an unexpectedly epic way like something out of Underworld’s Everything, Everything, if that means anything to anyone anymore. Excellent record, check it out.
Artist: The Morning Benders
Album: Big Echo (2010)
Label: Rough Trade
I heard the single ‘Promises’ a few months back, and immediately got very interested in The Morning Benders, only to eventually hear that production of their new album was being handled by Chis from Grizzly Bear, effectively raising my expectations to unmeetable heights. My first impression of the album was that it may sound like a Grizz Bear album…. but apparently there’s more to them than their sound. Still, everyone else seemed to love this album – and I’ve been wronged by expectations before. In fact, now there are a few songs on this album that I couldn’t live without. This one ‘Pleasure Sighs’ is a beautiful, sleepy, daydreaming in the sun kinda song that demonstrate a few of the Bender’s sound – the noise, space and harmonies in particular. Feel that sun.
Artist: Crystal Castles
Album: Crystal Castles (II) (2010)
Label: Last Gang
The new one is pretty good. I loved the uneven, raw production of everything of theirs I could find back when they broke their debut in 2008. Something about their approach to ‘chip’ music (bit thrash, more intuitively) is so unapologetically … thrashy… The new album seems a little cleaner, fuller, diverse and developed… descriptors which I’d expect to be bad signs – but I can’t help but admit that this album is even better than the last. They’ve matured, but are still fully in command of the crystal castles sound. It’s a good look for them. So well done. Development in a good direction is something that used to be very uncommon.
Artist: Rafter
Album: Animal Feelings (2010)
Label: 2010 Asthmatic Kitty Records
I didn’t expect to buy this whole album, but I had to have every one of these songs. Not sure if fans of Yacht will love this or hate this – I’m a bit of a fan of Yacht, and I like this for all the same reasons. The sound may be similar, but Rafter does a couple of things that score crucial individuality points: a) the tongue in cheek is more pronounced (I just love how rough and don’t-give-a-shit the vocoder is performed on the track) and b) the album is satisfyingly diverse musically. He does everything he does very well. Anyway – this review shouldn’t be about the fact that he reminds me of Yacht, or that he’s proficient and lovely – the record is FUN. It’s a fun, summer-jammin’ indie-pop-tronic-or-whatever record that’s a lot of FUN. Check it out.
Artist: Black Joe Lewis
Album: Tell ‘Em What Your Name Is (2009)
Label: Lost Highway Records
Bid thanks to our man deep inside the world of Austin music festivals Adam DeWitt for bringing this 2009 SxSW breakout band to our NxNE attention. Great album that does the Otis Redding / James Brown Motown era thing very well. There’s something very period about Joe’s fluid jive-slurring spoken sections that you don’t get to hear outside of blaxploitation flicks. I also love that a lot of the singing is just a part of the saturated gut-busting choruses – I mean – whatever he’s singing is obviously the point of the song, but what it is is obviously not as important as singing it loud. Great record, great substitute for anyone with dashed expectations for the new Jamie Lidell album.
Artist: Dirty Projectors
Album: Bitte Orca (2009)
Label: Domino Records
Last season, we were big on the 2009 phenomenon of the big payoffs of suddenly galvanized, accessible yet starkly unique, mindblowing albums from bands who had intrigued and repelled in equal measure in previous albums. We focused on Grizzly Bear’s Veckatimest, Animal Collective’s Merriweather Post-Pavillion and Phoenix’s Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix. We left out Dirty Projector’s Bitte Orca. On the first listen we, like so many people, were so taken with the first single ‘Stillness is the Move’ (still a great track) that we kinda thought we’d naturally play that track here sometime, and mention that the rest of the album was probably ok too. Turns out, I totally forgot to buy this album! Realizing this in the hiatus, we torrented then immediately bought a copy. LOVED it start to finish. This is the first cut, and highlights the brilliant move of the 3 part vocal harmonies that we can only hope will stay in the Projector’s arsenal form here on out. Really great, refreshing album that we wish we’d have been listening to this often a lot earlier. Gives the ‘pop’ section of your brain a shake up and a work out, and rewards with paybacks of equal measure. Feels good. Check it out.
Artist: Timber Timbre
Album: Timber Timbre (2009)
Label: Arts & Crafts
We’re tempted to just live a ghostly empty space here in respect and reverence. Everyone needs to check this thing out. Haunted, immaculate, essential, gothic, ghostly, spooky folk. The arrangements are so sparse and minimal and that in certain stretches you might not at first notice that all instrumentation has dropped out completely, leaving this inCREDibly conceived and executed vocal style leading some sort of post-burial resurrection procession out of them foggy hills of the precambrian shield. Caught him live last week – I think there were no more than 2 applause breaks in an hour and a half of spellbinding. Essential album, we’re not kidding.
Band: The Radio Dept.
Album: Clinging to a Scheme (2010)
Label: Labrador
Been sitting on this single for almost a year now, waiting for the album to finally drop so we could finally give it a play at the Snob Cast. Been huge fans of the last album from like 2006ish ‘Pet Grief’. These guys mastered the weightless shoegaze meets electro sound back then, and make a timely return (after about 2 years of teasing) with a catchy, poppy variation on the blissy fuzz and frosty vocals of their near-perfect last album. Lots of people are loving the new ‘beaty’ groove of the two sunnier beach friendly singles, we’ll stick with what got us hyped about this album in the first place – enjoy ‘David’.
Song: Hurricane JaneArtist: Black Kids
Album: Partie Traumatic
Label: Almost Gold
This is another album where we were a little late to the party, but now that we’re here, it’s also another one of those albums where it’s hard to choose only one song to play - so many songs being so catchy and perfectly pop-formatted. I’ve had this and the critically acclaimed ‘Wizard of Ahhhs’ ep on my ipod for a while now, but it’s taken until now for a shuffle to dig it up. A lot of the song are a LOT of fun, very cheeky and full of lots of refreshingly immature snot-nosed electro-punk lyrical hooks. If you like this track, you should probably have the whole record.
Artist: Caribou / Nite Jewel
Album: Odessa 12”(2010)
Label: City Slang (UK/Europe)
We’re happy to dedicate our first Snob Cast 'double play' to Caribou! We love ‘Odessa’, the first cut on the new Caribou album, but figured it’s probably already been blogged to death (if not, our apologies – please take a listen). However, we also very much loved this Ital-Disco flavored Nite Jewel remix from a European release of the Odessa 12”. Nite Jewel’s an excellent artist in her own right, and will likely make a upcoming appearance on the cast, though not much of her music shimmers quite like this. One more anecdote from the show, as related by our own Fantastic Africa:
“…this like perfect cliche 50 year old music store employee type guy was standing nearby – every time there was a part he liked he'd look around at the rest of us and say something like: "OH COME ON! HELL YEAH!" Like we were at AC/DC or something... then at the end of the climax of the final big song of the night, a split second before the first person cheered - he throws his clapping hands in the air and yells: "I LLLOOVVEE LSDEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!" HAHAHAHAH I'm still laughing out loud even typing this out. It was incredible.”
It’s great to be back, y’all. There’s a LOT of music to cover this summer, and so much from the back catalog we wanna turn people on to if they missed out till now – so keep it locked! SNOBS IN!!!
