Maybe you've noticed (total absolution if not) we've been nicely moved by Seattle band, Telekinesis. We've posted some and bought more, enjoying each and every musical moment we spend together. We wouldn't yet call ourselves desperate, but we are very much looking forward to the release denominated above. You can listen/download the other free and legals we've posted here. Feel free to buy anything you like at that Amazon mp3 page, but the band we're lauding is found in Items 1, 2, & 3.
This gorgeous song by Vivian Girls bassist/singer Katy Goodman's new band, La Sera, has us eagerly anticipating their debut album, which is supposed to come around in February. The single, backed with "Behind Your Eyes," is available at sites below.
Yes, we know we should post more mp3s, but perhaps you won't mind taking one extra step for each of the following. We didn't, but that's just we. Thanks, hosts!
We're awfully glad that Scott over at the excellent Pretty Goes With Pretty ushered us to Louisville's The Decibel Tolls to read an interview about Spiderland, his new book on Louisville's Slint. What a great blog! (It tolled sonorously for us. It was to die for, indeed, i.e., was quite a-pealing. It made big, beautiful bongs. Etc.) "Kenny Bloggins" posts an excellent mix of psych, shoegaze, garage, and other delectables and discusses them quite cleverly. We've barely begun to ring the changes of the great music "Kenny" (aka "Michael") has posted, but here are some of our favorites so far.
I share the sadness of fellow and sister powerpoppers at the news that powerpop giant Bruce Brodeen is closing the doors of his online store and label, Not Lame, on November 24. I've gotten a lot of great music at Not Lame the last few years and am genuinely inspired by the joy, passion, and personal touches Bruce has brought to my enjoyment of music. So I also join poppers world-wide in thanking Bruce for this and look forward to his next venture, Pop Geek Heaven, to be launched in January. Click the link in the previous sentence or click here to get on the mailing list for updates and more information. Here is Bruce's moving and articulate good-bye/hello.
Second blob to the right of the hand-for-hook. (Click to enlarge, maybe zoom, if "necessary.") We like Harlem, too.
If we had 'em, we'd post 'em. Unfortunately, we do not. Fortunately, they do. (See below.) And we thank them. Profusely (if laconically). Rock on, rockcats. That is all. Peace out. (Idle times, oui?)
The Who - Pictures of Lily - Infrasons - Sarkozy's first (Is this a joke? My French isn't up to subtlety.); purt near my favorite by The Who; Nic and me: what a pairing/whodathunk?
We're continuing to work our way back through our long list of unposted yet highly pleasing songs. This third set runs the gamut from present day to a year or more ago. You can find the first set here and the second here. Many thanks to Insound and IODA for making the songs below available. In addition to the fact that we very much like-to-love each precious ditty, these songs have something else in common: when you left-click each one, a dialogue box will open, giving you the choice either to listen or to save. (Please feel free to do both.) Yahoo Media Player will not pick these up, so you will not see the cute little "Play" arrows in this post. If that disappoints you, well, that makes us very sad. Happy listening.
We're delighted with the powerpop, indiepop, psych, and garage we bought at eMusic the past four months. Do we like or love all 271 songs? ABSO LUTELY. Favorites? Too many to name. Click here to see and sample for yourself.
"Or is that too many for one post?" we muse. We actually have a baker's dozen more, all from the same site. Should we post them now or put them in another post? Ah, what the heck, let's do it, mainly because we don't know how long they'll be available.
Taylor over at Music for Kids Who Cant Read Good has a fantastic three-part series on songs that begin with the incantatory "Boom! Boom-boom, cha!" beat of The Ronettes 's Spector-produced "Be My Baby." These are our favorites; maybe you'll prefer some of the other 43.
Three weeks ago we posted a mighty fine song by Washington, D. C. band Impossible Hair. Today we received and posted a second mighty fine one. Click here to hear/download both.
We previously posted this Minneapolis sextet's collab single with Ariel Pink and Gary War and very much like these two songs from their forthcoming third effort with Moon Glyph. These two songs are a bit more poppy than the spacy "Get Out," although we happily swing (or sway or sit smilingly immobile) either way. Well, here's what we mean.
As we recently mentioned, we've got a lot of songs we just haven't posted, so we're trying to catch up. (It's not gonna happen, but fondly may we dream.) For this post we drop down to the chronological end of our queue. Frankly, we're not exactly sure when we found these, but it appears it was in late 2008. Try not to settle into any particular mood, for this lot is all over the lot.
A couple of post-posting notes: The Yahoo Media Player plays the Dead Meadows song fine in Firefox but not in Windows Internet Explorer or Google Chrome, on my 'puter at least. You can download it, though, with right-click/Save Target As. YMP is not picking up the East Hundred song, but it will launch by left-clicking and will download with the usual right-click/Save Target As command. Sorry for any inconvenience.
Des Moines folk rocker Matthew Garcia's 12-song debut "ranges from folk to pop and back again"** Our blogname gives an idea of which sector we like best, but we have long-digging folk roots as well. Thanks to Candice Jones and the folk at Team Clermont for floating our boat with this excellent song.
You may have noticed last month we were pretty excited to hear of forthcoming releases from the fabulous Rainbow Quartz label. And we still are. We promised we'd post free and legals as soon as we got them. Well, we just got them. And even though it's 5:14 A.M., this is more important than that vastly overrated thing called "shuteye." So here we go.
We'll begin with three LPs that are already available for purchase.
As we near our blog's fourth anniversary, we've noticed literally hundreds of songs we've queued up but still haven't posted. (Some reach back a year or more.) We won't go into the boring reasons why this has happened, but over the next couple of weeks we're going to try to play a little catch-up.
By now you've probably found a lot of these elsewhere, but we'll post them anyway. You will not grieve to hear we will be writing even less than usual. The music's what matters, and we trust your ability to do GoogleBingYahooAskWhatever searches. The following don't necessarily have a lot in common except a) we very much like-to-love them and b) we're posting at least two songs per artist. Hope you enjoy.
We love both these bands and faced a profound blogger moment quandary ("blogmoqua," as it's known in the business) as to which bandname should come/go first. We hope neither will mind (and won't, as neither will notice).** Anyway, the song was a joint venture just prior to recently hitting the road together, and we think it's superswell. ("Interesting" observation: After seeing numerous instances of the acronym SSLYBY, we noticed that if you ssnakily ssay the first two letters, it kind of rhymes with "flyby." Ssaves a lot of time talking to myour hipster friends.)
It was also nice to learn about Chicago powerpunkpoppers Green in the bargain.
Here are a couple of wonderful songs we've previously posted by the two groups, along with infolinks and purchasepoints, all of which we've heartily, greedily, and happily employed.
By the way, I recently found another excellent--ready to practice??--SSLYBY song, "Think I Wanna Die," at last.fm. I tried posting it again here at Powerpopulist, but it had "issues" with the Yahoo Media Player widget. I've posted it here at a ridiculous little blog I set up a few years ago to tie in with a couple of posts I'd done in our blog's infancy (or toddlerhood).
**No telling what kind of jealousy won't break out when they don't see the relative sizes of the paired pictures up there.
Back in August we guided you over to Covert Curiosity to check out this lo-fi Austin band and then lifted over to eMusic to see what they might have. Lordy, what a payload! We purchased 16 right on the spot from their first two LPs. (We feel lucky if we find one excellent song on an album, but scoring seven on one and nine on the other is almost unprecedented.) We'd grooved on the goodstuff for a month, when out of the blue rocketdog7, aka Aaron Rimbey,* aka guitarist for WOFR, invited us to friendship at last.fm. "Hmmm, might this be an opportunity to host a couple of the excelentes right here at our humble little blogchild?" wondered pp. "Yes," said newfriend Aaron! So there they are, in launch mode up yonder. (Hopefully you've already taken the rocket ride. . . ."Come on, grab ahold of my rocket" indeed. Shameless, weren't they? Ace nevertheless. But I digress.)
Aaron got our bp rocketing up a bit with the news WOFR** will be releasing a new LP in a month or so. Telepathic War Machine will initially be offered as a free download at the band's Bandcamp site. He also said a free EP is available at the Bandcamp site and will remain so-unpriced until the LP is released. Needless to say, we got our aspirations over there lickety split, did the dl thing, and are highly grooving on the results.
We are grateful to Aaron for the permish and also to Mr. Curiosity for the initial headsup and for directing us to the excellent Austin Sound, which has lots of valuable info, plus a couple of other WOFR songs we especially like.
**The band was first formed by David T. Jones (guitar/vox) and also includes Lucas James Urbanski (bass) and Richard Galloway (drums). The Austin Sound article says Jonathan Terhaar plays drums. And that could well be.
We identify closely with the D. C./Baltimore band's name and even more with the excellent song, whose title, as you've maybe noticed, is quite doable. Many thanks to Candice Jones at Team Clermont for her part in getting it to us.
Update, 1Nov10: We just received this second free and legal from the above-named Impossible Hair LP, still due out tomorrow. Thanks again to the above-named Candice Jones of the above-cited Team Clermont for augmenting the coif. We're loving The Whoish, "I Can't Explain"-ish left-ear-->right-ear-->top o' the chop-->full spectrum opening riff sequence thingy. (Sorry, didn't mean to get so technical.)
***Update, 1Feb11 - Now you own "You Can Own" by clicking here.
My little iPod's doing a better job lately of keeping this blog on track than I am. (Of course I am responsible for the care and feeding of the playah, but still. . .) On the way to work today, the lovely tones of the above song ushered me the last mile or so to the gates of the (metaphorical) factory, simultaneously reminding me I needed to post it post haste. So here it is, one of many fine tracks on the excellent Athens, Georgia band's tenth, self-titled LP.
While we're at it, we'll add two much-loved previously posted songs.
This might make us look like geeks, but we'll try to stay humble.
We came across a little websurfing technique we find useful, and you might, too. Have you ever been listening to a song on Yahoo Media Player or some other player at a blog and while grooving mightily, decided to click on a link to another page? Suddenly the song crashes to a halt. The groove is gone. The buzz is harshed.
Well, try this: click the link with the mouse scroll wheel. That should open the link in a new tab. Left-click the new tab, explore the new page, and the song continues to roll (or rock or both) merrily along. You can close a tab by clicking the "x" or by clicking the tab with the–you guessed it–mouse scroll wheel.
Here, try it out, if you like. Start the song below and then click the LP title or MySpace link with. . .what? Yes, very good, the mouse scroll wheel.
If you're not using a mouse (e.g., on a laptop), do Ctrl-left click. MacBookers do Apple Command-click.
By the way, you don't have to be listening to a song to click links with the mouse scroll wheel. Sometimes I have fun just opening new tab after new tab after new tab, ad joysium. But then I live an impossibly solitary, nasty, brutish little life (except for the music).
Of course, you could also open a new window with Ctrl-N or Apple Command-N. But let's not get carried away here. Or should we?. . . . .Nnnnmaybe. . .
One more thing: At SXSW 2006, Echo & The Bunnymen put on one of the most powerful shows I've ever seen or heard; yes, more powerful than Metallica on the And Justice for All Tour (and with far less spitting). But I ramble.
We're only countin' 8, but math ain't our forte. Hep us, MBL!
