Hey gang, it's been a solid two months since my last post. But a lot of good music has reached my ears since then from a variety of genres. Every time I make a new post I always say that "blah blah I'll start posting more often" and I never do. So hopefully this time I actually do post on here ore often. You'll need WinRAR to unzip most of the files posted on this fine music blog. Google it and download a trial. The trial mode will last you forever though because you can always just cancel the reminder telling you that it expires in 40 days. I've had my 40 day trial since 2007.
Wavves - King of The Beach
This is Wavve's third album, but his first album not recorded at his parent's house, also his first release since his onstage meltdown at the 2009 Barcelona Primavera Sound Festival. I kind of miss the Lo-Fi qualities of his previous albums, I love that shit. This is a real "fuck it have fun" album, it's really intended to be taken at face value, no deep examination of the lyrics is required. I also noticed that he kind of picked up some oldschool pop punk elements on King of the Beach. This album also has a good mix of tracks that are good for rockin' out ("Super Soaker", "Post Acid", "King of the Beach" and "Idiot"), and some nice relaxed and mellow tracks ("Linus Spacehead", "When Will You Come") with neither being better than the other in terms of quality. I also noticed that the album's name is sort of intended as a joke, where he is sarcastically dubbing himself the 'King' of the Beach (in reference to the countless new bands popping up with beach themed albums, band names, and tracks). Expect to hear tracks from this album in a bajillion skate vids in the near future.Download the album: http://www.mediafire.com/?zi5zejogng1Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti - Before Today
Ariel Pink has been around for pretty much ever (since 1996) making music spanning so many genres that it's damn near impossible to define his style music. He has recorded over 500 songs in his music career, mostly on cassette tapes in his home. However, like Wavves his new album is studio recorded, however it still sounds rather Lo-Fi to me, and this album will be his first to have commercial success in comparison to his prior releases. I even saw this album at Sunrise Records in the mall. Pink was first signed to Paw Tracks records (the record label owned and run by Animal Collective, which they have made most of their releases on) where he was the first non-Animal Collective artist to have a release from them. I hear a lot of styles of music on this album, from New Wave, to 60's psychedelic, and even Michael Jackson, especially on the track "Fright Night", which is one of my favorites on Before Today. What I really liked about this album was it's use of funk-sounding bass riffs and vintage synthesizers together, which really gave it a true retro sound. And this sound remains consistent throughout the whole album, with the outlier being the track "Butt-House Blondes" which had an '80s glam/hair metal sound, drawing heavily on highly distorted guitars and shridding riffs. I'd definitely recommend this album to everyone, there's so much going and so many genres spanned on in this album that chances are you'll at least like one track.
Download: http://sharingmatrix.com/file/7787557/Ariel_Pinks_Haunted.rar
The Drums - The Drums
Well it's the summer time right now and it's scorching hot outside, it's been over 30 degrees celcius every day for the past while, nevertheless school is still out and it's time for some summer fun! The Drums were obviously wanted some summer fun when they recorded this album, as their first self titled album sounds exactly like what I imagine summer fun would sound like if it were music. However there's also a very mopey side to this album too, with the band drawing some influence from Morrissey. It captures the fun parts of summer in music through tracks such as "Lets Go Surfing" "Forever and Ever Amen" and"Skippin Town" which have a cheery and happy summer sound to them, and there's some summer lovin' sounds in "Down By The Water" and "I'll Never Drop My Sword" with the lyrics drawing on love and that nonsense, and the Morrissey mope can be heard in "Short Stores", "We Tried" and "I Need Fun in My Life". My only problem with this album was the track "Skippin' Town". I really, really, really don't like it at all. It's just very headache inducing for some reason. Overall, this album is basically like Surf Rock meets The Smiths and Joy Division. The songs are very, very melodic, catchy, and appropriate for summer, and I'd strongly recommend you put this album in your summer playlist this year.
Download: http://www.mediafire.com/?jkjqd5tdom3
Male Bonding - Nothing Hurts
Male Bonding is another one of those fast paced heavily distorted noise pop bands, similar to No Age, the Vivian Girls, Wavves, and Best Coast. Coming from Dalston, London, they started out in the DIY community, and eventually released this album which turned out to be a hit. This album is chopped full of that lo-fi noise/punk sound that's become very popular over the last 2 years, albeit Male Bonding does a good job of not sounding too much like any of the other bands that fall under this new category. The tracks on "Nothing Hurts" also have a lot of really good hooks that do the whole indie-punk thing well without going too pop-punk-ish, which is one of the problems I had with Wavves' King of the Beach. Finally, another thing I really liked was the short song durations. Nothing bugs me more than a song that sounds great and hooks you in, then overstays its welcome with the same hook playing over for 5 minutes. The tracks are short and to the point.
Download: http://www.mediafire.com/?uhdwmkw2kww
Little Women - Throat
Before I begin, I must let you know that is album is not for everyone, I reckon maybe one or two of the people who will read this will actually like it, and even then I don't think they'd like it a lot. If you're searching for some melodic happy-go-lucky indie music try one of the albums listed prior to this one. Because you will hate this one. Hate it. Hate it like you wouldn't believe. Anyways, "Throat" is the first full length LP from the Avante Garde Free Jazz/Noise band "Little Women". It's very loud, fierce, and in your face with heavy saxophone dominating over the guitars and drums that don't seem to follow any particular beat or rythym at first listen, though they do, and you'll discover this after multiple listens as I did. Each track doesn't really have a particular name, they're just numbered from "Throat I" through all the way to "Throat VII". This album is like getting punched in the face by sound, but in a good way.
Download: http://www.mediafire.com/?mqmoejndwdk
Tame Impala - Innerspeaker
Not gonna lie - I didn't listen to this album too, too much. Well not as much as the previous ones, but I did enough listening to have the confidence to recommend it, as well as be familiar with all of the tracks. But in a way that's kind of a good thing, because I won't get bored of this album as quickly. This is Tame Impala's first album release and it's a very '60s pshychedelic pop/rock sounding album. Lots of trippy guitar effects loaded onto this album, and the singer even has a voice somewhat similar to John Lennon's. If you love Jimmy Hendrix, or The Beatles or any of that nonsense, you'll really like this. I'm not much of a fan of that music, however I feel like Tame Impala took the common elements of the music of that time and the genre and updated it; made it more modern sounding, while still retaining its '60s roots. Probably would be a good album to get really baked and listen too, it's trippy but it's very chilled, you won't get bad vibes while listening to this.
Download: http://www.mediafire.com/?iyvg4t0ejin
Sleigh Bells - Treats
This is a real love-hate album. Certain music reviewers (such as the lovely folks at Pitchfork, jk lol) loved this thing probably as much as I did. While many other reviewers found this album to be weak, and dismissed it simply as simple no-talent Hipster pop music. To be honest I could see where they're coming from. The songs are very, very simple, but loud and feature heavily distorted guitar over very loud drums with a lot of bass, and vocals that are delivered in a manner almost similar to rapping (I don't mean real rapping, more like Uffie rapping). However I thought this album was fuckin' cool. It's very, very, very loud. It's fun as hell to listen to, and sure it's simple, but it's very effective. It's easy to tell how this sound was formulated, the guitarist Derek Miller spent his music career prior to Sleigh Bells in a Hardcore band, while the singer Alexis Krauss (who's incredible good looking, might I add) was in a teenybopper pop group called "Ruby Blue", it's evident that they fused dumbed-down metal-breakdown style guitar riffs, with pop drum beats and vocals and came up with this masterpiece. There's really been no other album like this before. The track "Crown On The Ground", my favorite on the album, is potentially also one of my favorite songs of the year as well. Check this out, it's a lot of fun.
Download: http://sharingmatrix.com/r000216945/14139901/www.NewAlbumReleases.net_Sleigh_Bells_-_Treats_(2010).rar
Caribou - Swim
This one came out a while ago now, but I haven't posted since it's release so it needed to be included. I think Caribou went back to his electronic roots a little on "Swim" in comparison to his two previous albums "Andorra" and "The Milk of Human Kindness". Daniel Snaith, the man behind Caribou is actually from Dundas, not too far off from where I live!
Download: http://www.mediafire.com/?ewomyinnljr
Future Islands - In Evening Air
I first heard about Future Islands because they opened up for Dan Deacon in 2009 in Toronto. They put on an excellent performance, and I became a big fan of them and their previous album "Wave Like Home" ever since. Well they just put out their new album "In Evening Air", and it is fantastic. Future Islands likes to combine New-Wave style synths, Post-Punk bass guitar hooks, and very, very passion filled vocals, provided by a man whose face resembles a mix of Jack Black and Lou Costello, but he rocks. I really don't believe this album got as much attention as it deserves, but I believe it didn't because Future Islands likes to tour with very obscure artists (excluding Dan Deacon, of course). Perhaps one of my favorite albums of the year, is this New New Wave masterpiece.
Download: http://www.mediafire.com/?gmyut2wqgzj
Crystal Castles - Crystal Castles (II)
I was debating about whether or not I should feature Crystal Castles' second self-titled album in this post because I thought everyone probably already knows about it, and its been out for a while, but then I thought "Fuck it" and I'm gonna put in in here anyways. Crystal Castles is perhaps one of my favorite artists ever, being an avid fan of all of their songs, even the ones that aren't on any legitimate album or EP, I've always loved them, both because of their music and because of their on and offstage personalities. Onstange they're absolutely crazy, they put on aggressive live shows with intensely fast strobe lights and Alice always manages to destroy something, yet once their set finishes they dissapear into thin air, they lead very mysterious lives. I'm not gonna lie though, did not like this album as much as the first one, I felt like they dropped a lot of their frantic 8-bit sound for more calm and collected electronic sound. Alice even sang in a few songs, what the fuck was up with that. However they still retained a lot of the things I liked in the first album in tracks such as "Baptism" , "Intimate", "Vietnam" and "Pap Smear". Ironically enough, despite my reasons for liking Crystal Castles so much, my favorite track on this album was actually the only one to be mainly non-electronic, "Doe Deer". Although I was kind of disappointed with this album, I understand why they didn't want to make the same kind of album again, it wouldn't have been a step forward for them, but rather more of a sidestep, and this album really updated their sound.
Download: http://www.mediafire.com/?fjqzv5zmjjn
PS: I'll try to post new albums as they are released, as opposed to a big bulk of albums every few months,
ttyl,
Alex.
