http://schrodingersblog.com Fri, 30 Jul 2010 23:54:37 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 no http://schrodingersblog.com/2010/05/03/gusters-jonah-the-nationals-castle-track/ http://schrodingersblog.com/2010/05/03/gusters-jonah-the-nationals-castle-track/#comments Mon, 03 May 2010 22:40:21 +0000 Tom http://schrodingersblog.com/?p=747 http://schrodingersblog.com/2010/05/03/gusters-jonah-the-nationals-castle-track/feed/ 0 I was checking up on the Guster homepage, looking to see if they’re dropping any singles in advance of their new record, due later this year. I didn’t see anything quite like that, but they were pointing people to a “new song” called ‘Jonah‘ which is available as part of a benefit album for Haitian relief. They’ve been playing this live for a while now, but this is an actual produced copy that sounds pretty good. It’s not my favorite song of theirs, but the benefit album also contains a fantastic remix of Metric’s ‘Gold Guns Girls,’ as well as a live Dinosaur, Jr. track. Also, the money all goes to help out people in need, that that’s got to count for something! ‘Jonah’ [ mp3 ♫ ] Support the Cause, Download the Record: MusicForRelief.org // Download to Donate for Haiti In other news, today Pitchfork TV put out a really great video of The National playing ‘Terrible Love‘ in an old, abandoned castle. I have to say that this is probably my favorite song off of High Violet so far. I didn’t care for the album version’s production as much as I did their live performance, located below, but the only recording of that was their appearance on Fallon. This video features a pristine recording of that take on the song, and I was so excited I extracted out of the video for everyone to enjoy: ‘Terrible Love (Castle Rock Session)’ [ mp3 ♫ ] I was checking up on the Guster homepage, looking to see if they’re dropping any singles in advance of their new record, due later this year. I didn’t see anything quite like that, but they were pointing people to a “new song” called [...] http://schrodingersblog.com/2010/04/23/quick-updates-mgmt-she-him-rogue-wave/ http://schrodingersblog.com/2010/04/23/quick-updates-mgmt-she-him-rogue-wave/#comments Fri, 23 Apr 2010 23:24:20 +0000 Tom http://schrodingersblog.com/?p=713 http://schrodingersblog.com/2010/04/23/quick-updates-mgmt-she-him-rogue-wave/feed/ 0 So I’m trying to graduate from university, and that’s going on, taking time, etc. Among all that though, I’m doing my best to stay up on some music. Quite a few albums came out in the last month or two, and I wanted to weigh in on a few of them here. MGMT Congratulations So it’s not really what I expected. I don’t think it’s what practically anyone was expecting. Honestly, I don’t fully comprehend the driving force behind the MGMT hype, however. Their debut album had some high points, but I guess in my heart of hearts I don’t believe they’ll ever write a song that’s better than ‘Kids.’ In a deftly intelligent move it appears they won’t even be hanging around in a similar sonic genre to their earlier work. Problem is, even with different scenery, I still have the same gripe about MGMT as I ever did: They write a few stand-out tracks and bubble-wrap them with little pockets of vacuous music I don’t care about. Their albums lack a cohesive element that I really notice missing. ‘Flash Delirium’ is a great song, and even-later-in-the-album ‘Brian Eno‘ makes me want to root for these guys, but the other stuff, particularly the title track, just leaves something to be desired. ‘Brian Eno’ [ mp3 ♫ ] MGMT – Congratulations She & Him Volume Two With little to no exposure besides seeing Zooey Deschanel in movies, and know about Matt Ward’s association with the Monsters of Folk, I jumped into this record and was pleasantly surprised. It’s really quite pleasant music, which seems to be kinda rare these days. Hearkening back to an earlier age, to be sure, Volume Two is like a mild sedative: puts you at ease after just a little while, but can put you to sleep if you’re not careful. Tracks to pay attention to are ‘In the Sun,’ ‘Don’t Look Back,’ and ‘Over It Over Again‘. These were my favorite parts of the record, and they’d be well suited with about 6 or 7 of the other tracks in there, but as is the other material blends together a bit too much for me to fully get behind this work as top-tier. For sure, give it as listen. It’s harmless, and hardly off-putting, but if you’re looking for the drive of the better tracks, you’ll need to sift through a lot of material to find it. ‘Over It Over Again’ [ mp3 ♫ ] She & Him – Volume Two Rogue Wave Permalight I knew nothing about Rogue Wave except that I saw them open for Death Cab for Cutie in the summer of 2008 and that I did not hate their set. I looked into Permalight because it had a cool name, and I thought their earlier track ‘Publish My Love’ was pretty decent. The album frustrated me because there are such glimpses of potential, but most of them go unrealized. With no context, I’m not sure if that’s a phenomena limited to this album, or if I’d say that about most of their work. A few tracks, ‘Solitary Gun’ and ‘I’ll Never Leave You’ in particular, sound too much like Ben Gibbard vocals rip-offs, layered over songs Ben would never lend his voice too. They’re irksome, but not deal-breakers. The other irritation is there are just a few bad songs floating around in there. ‘You Have Boarded’ with its brash bravado and obnoxious key change destroys any emotional impact that quiet, brief, but well-crafted epilogue-track ‘All That Remains’ could have had. ‘Stars and Stripes’ is similarly devoid of anything interesting, with so many layers of gimmicks that you just want it to end so you can hear yourself think again; too much! I’ve griped enough though; parts of the album I really did enjoy. Solid tracks include ‘Permalight’, ‘Fear Itself’, and ‘Right With You’. They have catchy hooks that’ll get stuck in your head, and they don’t reach higher than the band can deliver on. The only think holding these songs back is a bit of overproduction, but not to the point that they’re unlistenable, as mentioned above. ‘We Will Make a [...] So I’m trying to graduate from university, and that’s going on, taking time, etc. Among all that though, I’m doing my best to stay up on some music. Quite a few albums came out in the last month or two, and I wanted to weigh in on a few of [...] http://schrodingersblog.com/2009/10/19/these-four-walls/ http://schrodingersblog.com/2009/10/19/these-four-walls/#comments Mon, 19 Oct 2009 05:57:36 +0000 Tom http://schrodingersblog.com/?p=520 http://schrodingersblog.com/2009/10/19/these-four-walls/feed/ 0 I’ve been meaning to do a write-up on this album for a week or two now, and the draft has been sitting in limbo for even longer after that. At the onset of listening to this record, I wasn’t expecting a whole lot. For some reason I was kinda thinking that perhaps Glasgow’s We Were Promised Jetpacks had exhausted their creative effort coming up with such a cool name. In spite of that, I sat down and gave it a shot. Right from the start, the band’s stripped down no-nonsense style was a welcome breath of fresh air from the synth-laden affairs that I so regularly frequent. Then there’s Adam Thompson’s unabashedly Scottish vocals; at first, I mistook it for a gimmick. How wrong was I! He commits to the accent, and embraces it, like any singer would otherwise do with their voice, and it works wonders. The opening track, ‘It’s Thunder and Lightning’, sets the tone for the record and is fairly representative of the material that follows it. Where Jetpacks really shines is how they play with pace. Like I said earlier, the texture of each song is more or less uniform: the instruments have little to no effects, and Thompson alternates between whispering/mumbling to screaming until his throat must be raw. I guess that sounds pretty unappealing, when read, but please believe me when I say ‘it works’. The quiet/loud changeup typically is hitched to the fast/slow transition, and the two shifts at once really work wonders as far as giving slow songs some punch, or making the more frantic tracks seem to have a bit more heart. Enough talking though, sample the goods: ‘Quiet Little Voices‘ [ mp3 ♫ ] One of my favorite parts of this record is the small little things that are done to unify the work as an album. Right at the tail end of ‘Roll up your Sleeves’ the lyrics encourage the object of the song to “keep warm, keep warm.” This is perfectly dovetailed by the penultimate track, ‘Keeping Warm‘, which not only elaborates on the lyrical idea of warmth, but also contains the title of the record. It’s maybe my favorite song on the album, with its slow build and somewhat less strained vocals… and so I guess I really like it in spite of it not sounding like the rest of the songs (which are also good!): “There’s nowhere to eat and / there’s nowhere to sleep / in these four walls.” [ mp3 ♫ ] So that’s that. I feel silly that I took so long to get this short little blip about We Were Promised Jetpacks together, but I’m glad I didn’t give up on it. This band is certainly worth a listen! We Were Promised Jetpacks – These Four Walls I’ve been meaning to do a write-up on this album for a week or two now, and the draft has been sitting in limbo for even longer after that. At the onset of listening to this record, I wasn’t expecting a whole lot. For some reason I was kinda [...] http://schrodingersblog.com/2009/10/04/buy-the-sky-sell-the-sky/ http://schrodingersblog.com/2009/10/04/buy-the-sky-sell-the-sky/#comments Sun, 04 Oct 2009 15:23:03 +0000 Tom http://schrodingersblog.com/?p=523 http://schrodingersblog.com/2009/10/04/buy-the-sky-sell-the-sky/feed/ 0 Greetings, everyone! I wanted to drop a quick update inspired by my trip to the grocery store. I was idling around, waiting for a clerk to help me with something, and suddenly, over the store speakers, I heard the opening bars to ‘Fall On Me.’ I’ve since fallen out of my R.E.M. phase that reached its peak in early high school. Really, In Time was one of the huge motivating factors in me getting into music. It’s funny, I don’t think I ever realized, that record chronicles R.E.M.’s music from 1988-2003, which at the time of its release encompassed my entire life! [ mp3 ♫ ] The band’s older work will always hold a special place in my heart, and it was nice to get an unexpected reminder of that fact. In Time – R.E.M. Greetings, everyone! I wanted to drop a quick update inspired by my trip to the grocery store. I was idling around, waiting for a clerk to help me with something, and suddenly, over the store speakers, I heard the opening bars to ‘Fall On Me.’ [...] http://schrodingersblog.com/2009/09/18/crossing-the-rubicon/ http://schrodingersblog.com/2009/09/18/crossing-the-rubicon/#comments Fri, 18 Sep 2009 13:00:17 +0000 Tom http://schrodingersblog.com/?p=500 http://schrodingersblog.com/2009/09/18/crossing-the-rubicon/feed/ 0 I’m not a HUGE fan of the Sounds at the time of writing, but the band has a lot going for them. In general, I think Sweden produces some of the highest quality indie music on the face of the planet (please refer to my love affair with the Shout Out Louds, my favorite band at the moment, who was in the recording studio this August!), and the Sounds are no exception. If I had to be critical, you could say that they’re a tad bit gaudy; their lead singer Maja Ivarsson being noted for her over-the-top stage performances, and so on. That all comes with the territory of a New Wave revival band, though, so I can’t be too hard on them. That said, I’ve enjoyed their most recent effort from just the beginning of June, Crossing the Rubicon, a lot more than I anticipated. ‘My Lover’ was OK as a single, but past that there are some other real gems on the album. I never get through one of these things without talking about the ‘balance’ of the album; this one is pretty strange! The bulk of the good tracks fall mostly in the middle. Sure, the opening ‘No Sleeps When I’m Awake’ is OK, but I kinda get distracted by what those lyrics could possibly be mean to really be into it. The previously mentioned ‘My Lover’ and the dance-y ‘Dorchester Hotel’ work as a nice pair, but then we finally get to ‘Beatbox‘. [ mp3 ♫ ] This is the Sounds at their best, flirting with hip hop influences through the medium of the electronic New Wave sound in which they are so at home. This is in sharp contrast to the last 3 songs at the end of the record where they turn off most of the synth and slow everything down. Man, it does not work at all. I can understand wanting to do something different, but you gotta know your forte, and it is always a little uncomfortable when a band pretends to be something they’re not. That’s just the end of the album though; I’ve got to reiterate the most of the first two thirds are the Sounds at their best. My favorite track on the record, ‘Underground‘, is a happy medium between the synth-heavy pop-beat tracks that are ‘signature’ for the group and their attempt to extend their range as a musical ensemble. The vocals are less urgent, and more empathetic, leaving one with not only the inclination but also the opportunity to ponder their meaning. ‘Midnight Sun’ is similar in this fashion, but represents the extent to which the Sounds should have pursued this musical line of thought. It would have made a fantastic conclusion, or even penultimate track. [ mp3 ♫ ] Crossing the Rubicon – The Sounds (Sorry I’ve been getting lazy about the purchase links; you should look into buying this album!) I’m not a HUGE fan of the Sounds at the time of writing, but the band has a lot going for them. In general, I think Sweden produces some of the highest quality indie music on the face of the planet (please refer to my love affair with the Shout [...]