Girls: Broken Dreams Club EP. Just three weeks ago, when Girls announced the release of Broken Dreams Club, they also shared a sprawling, handwritten note penned by frontman Christopher Owens. On stationery flipped upside down, Owens scribbled enthusiastically that this EP was their (timely) way of giving thanks to listeners who've showered the San Francisco duo with love and support since Album, their lemons-to-lemonade debut, which arrived last September.
While insisting that his band's latest isn't the sound of them "all grown up," he described the six songs enclosed as a "LETTER OF INTENT," a "SNAPSHOT OF THE HORIZON," and a "step up" from its stunning predecessor. Girls have grown a lot in the past year. All that time on the road together has provided them with ample opportunity to develop into a tight, fire-breathing band. We know from interviews and reviews alike that Owens' back story is big enough to swallow just about any young band. This is still undeniably sad, unsettling music. Girls - Broken Dreams Club (2010. Swans, le retour brutal et beau du mythe US. Eteints depuis le milieu des années 90, les Swans, groupe mythique du rock lourd des années 80, avaient laissé place aux autres projets du leader, Michael Gira, dont on aime particulièrement les albums solo et le bon goût musical : c’est sur son label, Young Gods, qu’on avait pour la première fois entendu les complaintes revêches et abruptes de Devendra Banhart.
Ce Swans version 2010 est de haute volée, si puissant, tellurique que l’on a du mal à lui trouver des concurrents directs capables de se mesurer, cette année, à sa grande forme épique, son raz-de-marée cosmique. Tout y est brutal, à l’image de son morceau d’ouverture, mélopée rugueuse de neuf minutes, martyrisant des riffs presque monochromes, portée par la voix de Gira, qui, en vieillissant, n’a rien trouvé de mieux que de se patiner d’une touche vaguement métallique, légèrement acide. Et c’est bien sous le signe des fantômes de ce dernier groupe qu’il faut écouter ce nouveau Swans.
Swans - My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky [FLAC] Tyvek. Tyvek - Tyvek. Diamond Rings sur Myspace Music - Ecoute gratuite de MP3, Photos et clips vidéos. Diamond Rings: Special Affections. It's almost inevitable that the frontman of a rock band will eventually want to strike out on his own, often to showcase material that's more tender and introspective than an amp-cranking, four-piece line-up allows. However, it's rare that these solo sojourns wind up eclipsing the work of the mothership act, and even rarer when they reveal the singer-dude's fondness for lipstick and eyeliner, facility with choreographed dance routines, and eagerness to call his sexuality into question.
For those who aren't familiar with John O'Regan's workmanlike post-punk outfit the D'Urbervilles-- and, lamentably, few people outside the Toronto-Montreal indie-rock corridor are-- the magnitude of his transformation into lo-fi glitter god Diamond Rings can be quantified as such: imagine Britt Daniel decided one day that he really wanted to be Lady Gaga. Not one to forget who brought him to the dance, O'Regan drops "All Yr Songs" into the final-song slot. Diamond Rings - Special Affections (2010. Shout out Louds. Shout Out Louds : du bon boulot. Certains songwriters écrivent lourdement avec une plume d’oie blanche, voire son duvet ; d’autres se révèlent minutieux orfèvres en ne travaillant pourtant qu’au lance-flamme et à la lance à incendie.
Comme les Canadiens Wolf Parade ou surtout Arcade Fire, ces Suédois ont ainsi souvent dessiné des arabesques à base de lyrisme outré. Séduisants le temps de singles riches en cholestérol (autant de plaisirs coupables), ils étouffaient pourtant parfois leurs chansons dans l’emphase, le colossal. Peut-être la présence à la production de Phil Ek (Fleet Foxes, The Shins) : les grandes pompes et la Grosse Bertha sont ici en pénitence, laissant plus de place à la clarté pop de refrains toujours aussi exaltés mais nettement moins surchargés. A la Bats, à la Feelies, ils offrent ainsi un troisième album futé dans la futaie, plus garde-forestier que pompier.
Shout Out Louds - Works [2010-MP3-Cov][Bubanee] LITTLE DRAGON sur Myspace Music - Ecoute gratuite de MP3, Photos et clips vid?os. Little Dragon : "Gorillaz a rendu Damon Albarn très libre" Machine Dreams by Little Dragon (2009. THE HUNDRED IN THE HANDS sur Myspace Music - Ecoute gratuite de MP3, Photos et clips vid?os.
Chaud, froid, sexy : The Hundred in the Hands. Comme chez les Kills ou Mazzy Star, petit couple modèle : du sexe, du cuir, des talons aiguilles, des moues boudeuses, des chansons qui tutoient le diable. A l’époque de son single Dressed in Dresden, à la fois dansant et déprimé, ce duo inventait, narquois, un sous-genre : le “summertime gothic”. On évoquait alors la rencontre d’une electro à cul chaud et d’une pop à sang froid : c’est toujours à cette température où l’on passe de la glace à l’ébullition que se joue leur instable premier album. Quand Jason Friedman fait danser le menuet à ses machines, quand il leur offre des mélodies-sourires, Eleanore Everdell leur impose voile de deuil et regard khôl-cold.
Et ainsi sont élevées les chansons du couple, tiraillées entre deux feux : enfants du désordre, des tubes pourtant éblouissants comme Pigeons portent ainsi des traces de conflits qui interdisent la banalité et la routine. The Hundred In The Hands - The Hundred In The Hands [CD] (2010)-320kbps. Silje nes. Silje Nes: Opticks. Silje Nes makes music that sounds incredibly private and intimate. She sings words, but they barely register-- her soft, wispy voice indicates a human presence and conveys a shy personality more than it expresses any specific ideas. Her arrangements are hypnotic and often quite beautiful, built upon layers of fragile guitar lines, warm bass notes, rhythm, and ambient tones. It's all very delicate and finely detailed, and it consistently calls the listener's attention to its own space and structure.
At least in the sense that putting on one of her albums can feel like entering a very specific space of her own devising removed from the logic and conventions of ordinary places, her music is rather like an audio approximation of installation art. Opticks, Nes' second album, isn't dramatically different in style and tone from her debut, Ames Room, but her craft and production values have improved in immediately obvious ways.
Silje Nes - Opticks (2010. KYLESA. Kylesa: Spiral Shadow. With 2009's astonishingly tight and fearsomely heavy don't-call-it-a-crossover crossover album, Static Tensions, still ringing in fans' ears, Kylesa burst back immediately with a "psychedelic" record that trashes everything you might expect from the genre in the 21st century, whether that means whimsical hippie folk or too-drugged-to-boogie sludge. A metal band to the bone, Kylesa stomp the clichés right out of psych-rock on Spiral Shadow. The Georgia band's new album, their fifth in less than a decade, is the next step in a pretty seamless evolution that's hidden increasingly complex (and catchy!) Music behind an attack that still hits with the in-the-red rawness of hardcore.
With two percussionists going full-tilt-- check the way they build to a Godspeed You! A groove band above all else, like so many of their swampy Southern forebears, Kylesa use their two-drummer setup not to show off their skill with complex polyrhythms but to give those grooves even more heft and drive. Kylesa - Spiral Shadow. Robert Wyatt: Rock Bottom / Ruth Is Stranger Than Richard / Nothing Can Stop Us / Old Rottenhat / Dondestan (Revisited) Robert Wyatt - Rock Bottom [Rykodisc] [ABR 192Kb/s] Weezer: Pinkerton [Deluxe Edition] / Death to False Metal. At one point, there seemed as strong a chance of Weezer's making an album as good as Pinkerton as there was of their reissuing it.
To say nothing of playing it live in its entirety. It's hard to think of a more fiercely beloved record a band has gone to great lengths to write out of its history. To recap: Weezer's self-titled Blue Album went multiplatinum on the strength of shiny power-pop and goofy videos anachronistic in the era of post-grunge. For the follow-up, Rivers Cuomo holed up at Harvard and made a disturbingly graphic, harshly recorded concept album that includes his sniffing the fanmail of an 18-year old Japanese girl while imagining her masturbating. Needless to say, it was not played for laughs. And who would want to do that?
And yet because of all of this emotional baggage, the cathartic power of Pinkerton is second to none. The supposedly juvenile feelings of Pinkerton still pack visceral power years after listeners would've supposedly outgrown them. Weezer - Pinkerton Deluxe Edition.