Zola Jesus is Nika Roza Danilova, a classically trained vocalist and Julliard reject by the age of 10. With this re-recording of the massive “Sea Talk”, which features on the Valusia EP released just today, she continues her proclivity for creating huge, swelling pop songs with a gothic synth twist.
Halloween is coming up in a matter of weeks (one of only 11 Irish festivals, so enjoy it while you can!)
This year, Insane Clown Posse – Michigan’s scariest, most grotesque rap duo since Kid Rock and Joe C. – have decided to mark the occasion with a brand new song entitled ‘This Halloween is Crazy.’ Well it certainly is that.
You thought rainbows were insane? Just you wait for this Halloween – it’s crazy. Magnets… confusing? Wait until it starts raining pumpkins up in this bitch. Spooky, spooky! A witch smacks into a tree? BOOM! Welcome to Detroit, bitch.
Insane Clown Posse – ‘This Halloween Is Crazy’
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There’s a sweet spot in my heart for this Sydney four piece – not only do they craft some of the best alt-pop tunes I know, but they do it with a lush grandeur that so few others ever have. On the back of their brilliant and shimmering Dark Strom EP, released yesterday, here’s Mace Spray the first single to be released:
The Jezabels – Mace Spray:
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And just for kicks, and because it’s pretty, here’s the official video for Hurt Me from their second EP:
Remember the last time a couple of tracks rocked as hard as Broken Social Scene channeling Black Francis via Dinosaur Jr with a detour past the Japandroids? We do, and it was right about every time we spun the red hot singles from PS I Love You‘s upcoming debut Meet Me At The MusterStation (Paper Bag), set to drop on Oct 5th. Fuzzy, fun and wild eye’d, here’s a taste of some Facelove with a hint of 2012 thrown in just for kicks:
PS I Love You – Facelove:
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PS I Love You – 2012:
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I’ve had enough, these salty tears
I’ve caught a thousand of them, filled a hundred cups.
And bit by bit, they grew and grew
So I began to turn them into something new.
Every hour of every night
My little soldiers drew a breath and came to life.
One by one, they formed a line
And pledged allegiance to this salty heart of mine.
Filled the house in shallow waves
I fed them only on revenge and shallow rage.
And they grew up, angry and tall
Lo and behold I have the coldest sea of all.
I built a boat made out of ice
To sail the frozen ocean of my own device.
And there I float, and there I freeze
The commander of her fleet, queen of the sea.
Remember when all that crazy news about Justin Vernon working with Kanye broke? Remember how we didn’t know what to think? Had Vernon sold out, or was Kanye collaborating with people who could really bring his vision to fruition? Well, Yeezy released “Monster”, which was the first taste anyone got of the Vernon/West collaborations, but it was a sort of after-thought verse tagged at the end of a bloated song. Nicki Minaj had already turned in the best verse of her short career, and Vernon’s slow-burning melodicism was perhaps too much of a contrast.
Now, “Lost in the World” has leaked, and it’s a true monster. The song begins innocuously sampling Vernon’s auto-tune experiment “Woods”, but quickly, it becomes a dark, twisted dancefloor jam that samples Gil-Scott Heron and hardly even features aside from some sing-a-long and a concise but consistent verse. “Lost in the World” is easily the best track to come from Kanye’s lengthy, prodigious leak campaign to promote his latest album (wait, what is it called again?).
I’d attribute the source of the leak, but I think you can figure it out from the most annoying tags since Beggars. Someone forgot a “w”.
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This might be my favourite track to come out this year. It’s by Adam Haworth Stephens, who you might know from his work in Two Gallants, and it sounds like if Bob Dylan re-wrote “Another Brick in the Wall”. It’s off his first solo release, We Live On Cliffs, which is out today.
There’s almost nothing better than some funk in your folk.
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Singer/songwriter Darren Hanlon is reasonably well-known in his native Australia, but he’s a complete unknown almost everywhere else. So US indie Yep Roc’s decision to fly him over for the big international release treatment is a bit of a risk then, right?
Not really. Hanlon’s fifth album, I Will Love You At All, fits snugly into the M. Ward/Andrew Bird canon, with the singer’s mild Aussie twang the only potentially divisive feature of an otherwise terrific album. (And everybody loves Aussie accents, right?)
‘All These Things’ isn’t the best song on the album, or even one of the best, but it is a nice jumping off point in that it sort of condenses the entire record into an upbeat four-minute pop song. Strummed mandolin shows off Hanlon’s prowess in the mini-guitar genre (he’s also a decent banjo player), while piano and tuba lend the track some welcome gravitas. The best part, though, is the simple call-and-response routine generated between Hanlon and Portland singer Shelley Short.
Darren Hanlon’s I Will Love You At All is scheduled for release in the United States on September 21.
Darren Hanlon – ‘All These Things’
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Darren is currently on a mini-tour of the US with Billy Bragg:
09.08.10 – Minneapolis, MN @ Cedar Cultural Center
09.09.10 – Milwaukee, WI @ Turner Hall
09.10.10 – River Forest, IL @ Dominican University
09.11.10 – Ann Arbor, MI @ The Ark
09.14.10 – Indianapolis,…
Baths‘ new album Cerulean has been blowing me away for only twenty four hours but I must share its excellence with the world. I’d write a review but the video for “Lovely Bloodflow” is memorable and haunting enough make the sell on my behalf.
Besides having really great album art and a frustratingly hip name, Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. have talent. They can write a damn good pop song. “Vocal Chords” is one of three examples off their Horse Power EP, which also includes a cover of the Beach Boys’ “God Only Knows”.
Have a listen:
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To the uncultured ear (and that includes my own), searching for good post-rock can feel like a hiding to nothing. It’s not that there isn’t plenty of good material to choose from – there is – but otherwise it can take an awful long time to figure out that something is, in fact, shit.
Irish trio Halves gave me no such trouble – featured tune ‘May Your Enemies Never Find Happiness’ practically assaulted me the first time I heard it. It’s not that it’s particularly loud – they don’t seem to go to the same ear-splitting levels as other, more conventional bands (on record at least) – but it builds slowly and deliberately with soft vocals and a chiming blues guitar motif, so that the inevitable crescendos are just an aspect, rather than an aim, of the song.
It sounds like a typical post-rock track, and it is, but it’s also an incredibly moving one.
‘May Your Enemies Never Find Happiness’ is taken from the seven-track EP Haunt Me When I’m Drowsy.
This fall Cee-Lo will release The Lady Killer, his first solo album since 2004’s Cee-Lo Green…Is the Soul Machine. Appropriately enough, “Fuck You” is the first single off The Lady Killer, a song that soulfully belts about a gold digging woman in such a graceful fashion. Honestly, it proves how fickle curse words are and how beautiful they can sound. If you hadn’t figured it out, this song has a few curse words, so be mindful of your surrounding before listening, even though I’m sure no one will care, but rather sing along.
In my last post on this blog, I spoke of my ‘long hiatus’ (it was all of two weeks). This time, I’ve upped the ante and have refrained from posting for a full 4 months. After some effort, the Norwegians have managed to drag me out of my self-imposed literary slumber. Celebrate by checking out Royksopp’s latest mashup: ‘This Space’
This was released online a couple of weeks ago, but I totally had no idea Ra Ra Riot were even releasing a new album until last week. Since then The Orchard (which comes out 8/24) has been pretty much all I’ve been listening to. Can’t say I was a huge fan of their debut, which reeked of a bit too much Vampire Weekend, but their new album is far more stately, pushing the strings (and those gorgeous girls) to the front of the mix and generally slowing the pace down. Of course, “Boy” differs from most else on the album by being ridiculously bubbly, but it’s also infinitely catchy and is just the kind of summer tune I want right now.
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