The Reid brothers of the well-nigh peerless Jesus and Mary Chain continue the collaboration they began with their Reid sister Linda on Munki. The name notwithstanding to the contrary and other stuff, it's anything but vanilla. The mighty Pitchfork has two of them, so go get the other one there. Merz at Mars Needs Guitars has another one by Sister Vanilla, Ms. Reid's terrific Munki-shining "Moe Tucker," and several other JAMC goodies.
Hope you weren't expecting a lot of words? Goooood. . . (The Persil pic captures my joy.) Click thou the artists' names and receive thou enlightenment.
Feeling a bit lethargic today, so maybe these first four will get things moving. If it works, we'll be ready to be wispy again with #5. All five bands are scheduled to be at SXSW next month. Attention, new visitors: this is not our usual fare, so do scroll down the page for less caustic product. If The Paybacks and Dirty Fuzz aren't working, click to go to the SXSW site and you can hear them. They've been kind of off and on. It's pretty easy to tell who's raising a lovely little stink in the picture.
I recently found a Dutch blog that is fast becoming one of my favorites. Hot Stof is the English version and extension of Heet Stof, which began operations in January of last year. Heet likes a lot of the same artists I like, but he's also tracking down lots I hadn't yet encountered, which, when the music's good, is always exciting. I'm posting below some of my favorites I found there (they're all available at record and band sites), plus a link to the original post at HS. Each post has one or more additional songs by each artist. [P. S.: Are we through with SXSW artists? Not necessarily.]
I hope that one-day layoff from South by Southwest bands wasn't panic-inducing for you. Breathe easily and indulge. Oh, and do please say "hello" (or "goodbye") to Au Revoir Simone (pic).
No big setup needed, as we continue our preview of some of the talent soon to descend on Central Texas. . .Yeh, everybloggy uses this picture, but that's cuz it's a cool picture.
As with yesterday, I'll here post five South by Southwest Festival artists that are new to me and five I've known for awhile. Click artist names for more information. Oh, and today's award for Track That Was Originally Working Fine But When Shove Came To Push Refused To Work Properly goes to: none of the below; they're all working mighty fine (at final check).
We continue our preview of the upcoming South by Southwest Festival, but let's try something different. Today we have two sets: New to Me/Known to Me. You wanta talk creative? Wow.
After knockin' ya upside the noggin' with 35 big ones yesterday, we'll tone it down a touch. Here are ten more from bands scheduled to play at Austin's South by Southwest Festival next month. Glancing up at the old Powerpopulist masthead again, I would say these tend more toward the "indie" and "whatever we like" side. Not to every taste perhaps, but each had some tone, grind, hook, voice, quirk, or whoknowswhatery I somehow needed. Except for Calla and Protokoll, each was new to me (so feel free to smirk condescengingly, cogniscenti!!!). I'm ready to post a lot of songs by better-known groups, the kind that are flooding the blogs right now. I'll post those in a few days, but for now, I thought it might be nice to hear some lesserknowns. I do hope you find some to like. Oh, and if you want to feast on a clickable list of what appear to be all the mp3s submitted by SXSW bands, click Hear Ya! (Thanks to Dodge at My Old Kentucky Blog for the headsup--as if that Lord of the Blogs would ever notice this lowly netserf. Still. . .I do thank his lordship.) Once again, this idiot Blogger program (or maybe it's just this idiot blogger) is messing up. You'll probably have to click on the band name and go to Finn's Motel's SXSW site to hear their song. It's worth the click.
It's always exciting when South by Southwest announces its schedule and posts songs by many of the bands that will be appearing at the festival. I just spent several--okay, six--pleasant hours making my way through the entire list from Aa to zZz (I skipped +/- because they didn't provide a sample mp3). I admit I didn't listen to every single song. Certain categories didn't really interest me, not yet at least. But I did give ear to everything labelled rock and pop that I didn't already know, plus a few others. I actually want to go back and listen to a few more categories, but I've compiled a list of a couple hundred tunes that I liked. The eternal question at a blog: to post only a few at a time or post the whole lot? I know it's daunting to see a long list, so if you're interested, you might only want to sample a few at a time. Hopefully they'll be here for awhile. SXSW seems to leave them posted semi-permanently, as I showed with my recent posts for SXSW 2005 and SXSW 2006. Anyway, enough chatter, let's to the tunes. I begin with the ones that comport most closely with two of the three terms at the masthead of this blog: powerpop and indie. I've got a bunch more, especially of the indie variety, but most of those have pp tendencies. I'll be posting some of them over the next couple of days. Here are a stingy baker's three dozen. Links are provided to the SXSW band sites.
Nuff sed.
Hey, DJr fans, here's the way we remember Dinosaur Jr, as if they'd never been away. Sadly, of course, they kind of have been, but Beyond, their first album in ten years, is due for release on May 1. Very darned exciting, this! And the song? Goofily grinning 360, laughing aloud with pleasure. Thanks to the mighty Pitchfork for making it available!
Mark over at Fanatic Promotion sent some very satisfying listens my way today, and here're what I liked best. Links are provided for more. Among other things, you are visually beholding Chicago's The Safes.
There's a lot of love out there right now for Sweden's Loney, Dear, as well there should be. Yesterday I posted the popular "I Am John," but some of you might have missed my December posting of "The City, The Airport." (After all, those were the early days of Loneymania.) So here it is. You can also hear a number of samples at the Loney, Dear song site and full-length streams at his MySpace site. Enjoy.
Rain or shine, the folks at Parasol gotcha covered. (Snow is problematical.) I selected the following from four pages of info and offerings, leaving behind probably two to three times as many free and downloadables as are posted below. Information on each artist is available at the Parasol website. The links to pages 2, 3, and 4 are found at the bottom of the website's first page.
My explorations at IndiePages earlier in the week led me to Humblebee Recordings, where I found the following delightful offerings. I wasn't sure if I could link directly to these songs and therefore thank Chris at IndiePages for giving the green light. As I said before, he has a host of good sounds at your beck.
Yes, I've loved Game Theory very much for a long time now. Beautiful instrumentation, incredibly clever lyrics, some production by Mitch Easter: does it get any better? A friend even got me Scott Miller's autograph, along with a personal message to someone he didn't even know. Wow! As best I can tell, GT's products are no longer available new, and the used versions are higher priced than standard, but well worth it. (Just to clarify, if you click the Amazon link, I am not referring to "Game Theory" by The Roots. Not at all.) I've kicked myself many a new one for not buying Lolita Nation in CD back in the day, but at least I have precious vinyls of it, along with vinyls of all their other lps. Please read the AllMusic summary, where you will note that Miller went on to form a new band, The Loud Family, who just released a new album, What If It Works?,this past fall. You can disport yourself happily at The Loud Family website, reading cool insights by Miller and downloading beaucoup mp3s by both TLF and GT. I think you will agree that the producers of a popular t.v. series wisely did not choose the following as the theme song. If all goes as planned, it will be posted for seven 24's.
I highly recommend the excellent Obscure Sound’s post on Kentuckians Ideal Free Distribution. Following his cues took me to hhbtm records, where I found links to songs by boyracer (left) and Poison Control Center I already owned but also to a bunch of nice things by artists I didn’t know and am glad I now do. I hope you’ll like them, too. I'll post five for now. To avoid possibly fatal confusion, I should note that hhbtm lists The Maybellines under the category, "Inlaws." Clicking the artists' names below should augment your knowledge and put you in touch with other of their recorded product.
I'm very glad to have found links to the following faves. Click band names for info. Apologies for skimpy verbiage.
The excellent Chromewaves posted The Yoko Casionos back in October, but I only caught up with them today. These Vancouverites lay out fabulous powerpop in no uncertain terms. I'm posting "Cameras On," which is available at the band's website. You can hear more at their MySpace site and download the equally superb "Loose Cannon" at Chromewaves. Thanks to Frank for this exciting discovery.
Here's the perfect antidote to a testosterone-drenched Sunday (this side of the Atlantic/Pacific, anyway). I'm sure some of you found IndiePages'ssss Best of 2006 lists long ago (maybe even in 2006). My embarrassment at having done so only tonight is as nothing to the pleasure derived from what I found there. Please click on the IndiePages link if you haven't already been. You will find an abundance of great music. BTW, can you tell by their zany antics and the smidge of letters I left whom are pictured? They are sending a message. (Apologies to band members whose feet and/or toes were excised so that the clues would not be too obvious.)
The response to last week's Big Bloc 1 posting of selected mp3s from SXSW 2006 was vast, although largely invisible but to the practiced eye. Here's a list I put together of three dozen songs I like from SXSW 2005. Again, if you find yourself wanting more, click on the two SXSW's above. As I did for Big Bloc 1, I am retaining original spelling, deleting "mp3" so as to make it easier to browse the list, and leaving it to you to Google for more artist info. So here we go with Big Bloc 2, chip off the. . .nevermind.
Making the rounds tonight, I found some hostings you might like. First, several blogs are posting songs off The Shins' new album, Wincing the Night Away, which I recently posted on, as well. Music for Kids Who Can’t Read Good has "Australia," Bows+Arrows has “Sleeping Lessons,” and An Aquarium Drunkard has “Sea Legs.” I don't know if Heather over at I Am Fuel, You Are Friends is projecting, but she is posting one of my very favorite songs by Guided by Voices, "Chasing Heather Crazy." She also posts The Smithereens covering The Beatles' "All My Loving," off the recently released tribute album Meet the Smithereens. The always excellent Mira el Péndulo has songs I enjoyed/downloaded by two lesser known groups, Sourpuss and Tender Engines. (Click the band names for Mira.) This next song didn't immediately kick into me, but it began to make nice moves after a bit: The Wannadies' top 20 British hit, "Hit," found at the consistently rewarding mp3hugger. And, yes, I will myself post a song by super Canadians Sloan that I found at the ever-generous Amp Camp. Sloan are picced, which may or may not be a word, but this is a colorful freakin' post, man.
Janne over at Evil Robotics has a fantastic series of classic powerpop tunes up and running. So far he's six-for-six, with postings by Really 3rds, The Keys, The Nerves, The Beat (Paul Collins'sss), Artful Dodger, and The Only Ones. A few clicks and I've no doubt you will agree that Janne be good!
In case you're new to this blog, for several weeks now I've been posting three or four favorites per week from the late 80s/early 90s. This was a heyday of musical discovery for me, hence the incredibly clever title of the series. Chicagoans Material Issue were definitely one of my favorite bands from the era, producing pure powerpop produced (on two albums) by fellow Hoosier Jeff Murphy, member of one of the purest of all powerpop bands, Shoes. (I've posted about Shoes here, here, and here.) As usual, I'll let the music do the talking. Read a good summary of Material Issue here, sample and buy here and here. "Renee Remains the Same" is off their debut full-length, International Pop Overthrow. The song is posted for one week. (There are lots of links in this paragraph, so hover and discover.)
Found and very much enjoyed during the last week or so. Great Danes Mew, left.
