Although I am currently very much into innovative weirdos and cheesy 80s metal, I have to say that Jay Farrar and Ben Gibbard have done a mighty fine job with their soundtrack for the Jack Kerouac documentary “One fast move or I’m gone”.
The lyrics are actually taken from Kerouac himself, so this music is super-beatnik, although it sounds a lot more relaxed than you would imagine beatnik music to be (I don’t know, I always have irritating bongos and a shouting man in a black turtleneck in mind).
As one who really appreciates the thought of this movement but is secretly too conservative and self-conscious to live by it, I really appreciate this laid back beauty of a soundtrack that actually managed to calm me off after a really bad day.
I think everything that keeps me from bellowing at old ladies who walk too slowly in front of me is a thoroughly good thing.
These roads don’t move (by the way, they might look like it but they are not related in any way)
What a brilliant combination, nearly country-esque guitars or hymnal pianos that remind of The National mixed with the surreal vocal style of bands like TV on the Radio or Celebration. AU from Oregon are perfect to drift in and out of sleep. Their music is etheral and dreamy, yet never irrelevant and there is a brilliance in the dramatic assembly of the songs. It is as if you are on a ship on the sea and ride on the highest waves and you don’t notice from your standpoint because your on top of them but you feel that there is something significant going on and you feel the rush of the moment.
I am having high hopes that this trend of bringing elements of African tribal music into contemporary Indiemusic might get into 2010 because bands like Yeasayer, BLK JKS and forementioned TV on the Radio and Celebration are definitely showing that this can’t fail to amaze us all.
The only thing that fails to amaze me is the bandname: STOP GIVING YOURSELF NAMES THAT CAN’T BE GOOGLED PROPERLY! It’s a pain.
RR vs. D
(don’t watch this video if you’re drunk, this will not make it a better experience. It might, however, be a better experience with being high but you never know how the drugs work maybe you end up being totally paranoid hiding in the closet with your shoe as your only weapon to kill off the colours that definitely wanted to get through the screen and kill you – so stay sober and watch it or do whatever you want and just listen while looking at something unthreatening like…erm, kittens)
I feel like I’ve already said everything about this band since I’ve discovered them in July 2008. And since October 2009, their debut album “Sigh No More” finally* is available for our hearts and souls and moreover our ears (which are pretty necessary to enjoy this gem).
One might assume that their rural folk sound is carrying songs full of melancholy and despair but listen closely, Mumford & Sons offer glimpses of hope in songs like “The Cave” or “After the Storm”. Carried by banjos, accordeons and Marcus’ warm voice the band gives ways out of the dark in which we tend to get lost.
And so they hold hands and glue hearts together – preferably with violins and harmonic background vocals because it’s just too good.
Songs like “Thistle and Weeds” or the insanely powerful “Dustbowl Dance” are then again nearly violent, roaming through the room like wild animals. You can hear rainstorms gashing against your window when you listen to lines like “Seal my heart and brake my pride I’ve nowhere to stand and now nowhere to hide” with a roaring drum-solo at the end.
In the present folk scene Mumford & Sons are like a band that has travelled through time to give us those old tunes that will never lose their appeal and can inflame hearts and souls to help us through winter.
So here I am again, quite cheesy and teary-eyed because they continue to make my day and hopefully yours as well.
*FINALLY!
If you want to read more cheesy teary-eyed bits about Mumford & Sons, here they are, I shockingly wrote about them on a freakishly regular basis.
Yeah, everything that sounds like Timbaland wasn’t even in private-plane-sight of the production is already roaming myspace and the hip music magazines, there are hints of shoegazer coming back on the radar and of course, the quirky and raw soundbites of experimental postpunk and freak folk.
The band with the unforgiving name* “Woods” will therefore hopefully get a piece of the action because their music is a nicely carved out nightmarish vision of psychedelic guitar-fondling, overpowering atmosphere and great songwriting with music that avoids cheesy attitudes with contorted melodies and dissonant vocals but still manages to get you all emotional and teary-eyed with songs like the wonderful “to clean” or “rain on”. With the latter they do remind me of John Frusciante’s painfully intimate “To record water for only ten days” which is probably one of the best references you can get.
They belong to the New Yorker label ” Woodsist Records” that apparently is a new haven for off-putting yet great alternative music.
To Clean (yeah, they got a video for that song! And it makes me feel weird…don’t know if that’s good or not)
*Try to google that name, it’s a nightmare and you will have killed at least one kitten out of shear frustration before you find something related to the band.
It’s not new but it has been a while since they have been in the spotlight. I am talking about quirky solo-acts, especially male ones because the females have pretty much flooded our playlists this year, that there probably was a secret testosterone-meeting at which it was decided to get going next year. And they already popped up here and there, Dan Deacon, Windmill, Kid Harpoon, Boy eats drum machine, Ramona Falls etc. The magic word is, however, not just ballsy men-songwriting but unique, weird stuff that might seem off at first sight but grows on you bit by bit until it reveals all of its beauty in a breathtaking epiphany. Ok, maybe a bit less dramatic. But there is this trend of opening up all limits of genres, styles and instruments, which makes artists like Boy eats drum machine so awesome because you just don’t know what comes next and isn’t this the most amazing feature of music, when it can surprise you over and over again? This doesn’t, of course, exclude quirky and weird female artists (I actually think that it is fantastic that there is such a vast amount of exciting women out there who don’t flash their panties repeatedly to cover up bad songwriting) but the males really have to prove themselves, so we don’t return to My Brightest Diamond, Joanna Newsom and Bat For Lashes and never look back. And after a long search, I also found a male solo artist whom I haven’t introduced already. Pew.
John Vanderslice
I am a huge fan of music with grand gestures. That’s why Rufus Wainwright and Sufjan Stevens are very dear to me. John Vanderslice shares those gestures, however, with electronic sweets here and there which turns his songs a bit askew, small dissonances, sounds and (scripted) glitches that punch cheeky holes in the otherwise dramatic compositions. Mr Vanderslice calls his sound occasionally “sloppy hi-fi” which has potential to make it into my music-almanac. Furthermore, he earns the term songwriter because his lyrics are highly referential to our culture, politics and society, so if you want to learn something just listen to him.
Fetal Horses (This must be one of the best song-titles I’ve ever encountered)
Sometimes, I could just hit myself in the nuts, that is, if I had nuts. We had Ramona Falls at the radio station since weeks and because it was inbetween shitty bands, I didn’t really pay attention but alas! It’s Brent Knopf, my favourite Menomena voice and apparently the man behind the haunting piano tunes. His solo stuff is a bit softer but just as Menomena so much more interesting than 99% of the present music scene AND it is beautiful beyond comparison. It’s actually quite sickening how talented Danny, Brent and Justin are, together and solo. Brent worked with dozens of people on this project which got its name from a waterfall of Brent’s childhood memories. Because there are so many people involved, I won’t name them, Wikipedia and probably the album cover will take care of that. Let me just say that I am in awe of Mr Knopf and his musical ideas and that I already cherish every single note of Ramona Falls. This is the kind of music that is so good that you actually feel as if you’ve just fallen in love when you listen to it. His album “Intuit” is out, so get it because it won’t get better than this.
Here’s some stuff with him and his Digital Loop Recorder making it look as if what you see and hear is totally easy and not awesomly brilliant
And here’s the first single “I Say Fever” (I get excited even thinking about it)
Here is a poorly written BEST OF of my favourite songs used in Horror movies, plus one that is not used in any horror movie but is just awesome and kinda fits the theme.
Ode to the 80s – Gerald McMahon – Cry Little Sister
Because The Lost Boys is the best Vampire Movie for teens and Twilight sucks pumpkins in comparison.
(I did the big mistake to fall into the great Sisters of Mercy mix-up that circulates around the internet, of course, it’s the multitalented Mr McMahon who performed this song for “The Lost Boys”)
Artie Shaw – Jeepers Creepers
I love the first 60 minutes of the movie. However, when you see the “monster” it goes downhill from then (it’s the good old “let’s completely overdo it”-mistake) and please,
never ever watch “Jeepers Creepers 2″, I died because I wasn’t drunk enough to laugh off the bad acting and the horrible script.
Muse – Newborn
If you haven’t watched “High Tension”, I dare you to, it’s so well acted and horrific that it is already a classic of the French cinema.
Also, I always thought that many Muse songs are perfect for depicting a mental breakdown.
PS: If you haven’t seen the movie but want to, rather wait with this music video as it may contain spoilers
Grandaddy – A.M. 180
Not only are they used for the intro of Charlie Brooker’s Screenburn (and we all know how brilliant Mr Brooker is), no, they made “28 days later” even more edgy. Apart from that, you all should have their albums at home because they rule.
The Andrew Sisters & Glenn Miller – Mr Sandman
To be quite honest, the first Halloween movie is creepy but I hate the ending because somehow, it doesn’t really have an ending. It’s as if the editor had enough of it and quit before assembling the last 5 minutes. However, the soundtrack is one of the best horror movie soundtracks ever made.
This is the one without the movie, but it’s about ghosts and stuff, you know…
Menomena – Ghostship
I can’t praise this band enough, they are inventive, weird and manage to really make you think about their music. I take it as a compliment that my superior once told me off for putting “The Pelican” into the day-playlist of our radio station because he thought it was too disturbing and weird for the common radio listener. Well, they breed emotions, whether you like them or not, which essentially is the main goal of music, isn’t it?
Ah, this band is made of greatness.
There are quite some retro moments, this glamorous 70s sound where everything was grand and delicious, yet without the sleakness. Rubik are noisy, orchestral and messy and all that fits so well that I rather not name the bands they might or might not remind me of, because we really don’t have the time to spend the rest of the day reading bandnames, do we? They are just too diverse to do that and therefore, I am not going to.
All in all, this bearded piece of colourful music and brilliant musicians is so full of ideas, that they resemble a children’s picture of a day at the fair, actually, remembering the joy and excitement of childhood fits very well to their sound. If you ever feel like autumn and winter are dragging you down, just tune in this indie-pop beauty and you won’t even remember what sadness feels like.
This might be a hot shot for the next big thing in 2010. I’ll be damned if humanity doesn’t love them by then.
Admittedly, the second album of the London-based Folkpop group is a lot less happy, perky and cheeky but as soon as you’ve settled with the new face of Noah and the Whale you will love the album because it’s a complex and beautifully arranged piece of work that is well crafted and best served from track one to track eleven without one skip.
And you will find the cheeky lyrics hidden in the slowly evolving pieces so don’t despair that there aren’t any “5 years time” or “two atoms in a molecule” anymore.
One of the highlights, nevertheless, is the uplifting “Love of an Orchestra” which might just as well be one of the best songs of 2009 and which is like a loud and cheery interlude.
Enjoy.
By the way, there is a movie accompanying this album, so watch out for it.
On his myspace page it says Turntable-Nerd which might be the first time, I heard those two words combined. I didn’t think that it was possible or would work but it does.
Boy Eats Drum Machine is a lot of fun, in fact “Two Ghosts” is next to Windmill’s “Big Boom” the one song that gets you out of every winter-depression (I know, it’s not even winter but we’re already depressed, gee…). Many of his songs are less silly and pop-inspired, he more often dives into turntable-weirdness, like a mad scientist/DJ but it’s mesmerizing because you want to know in which direction he turns the songs. And his voice is pretty awesome. In real life his name is Jon Ragel but Boy Eats Drum Machine is much more cooler, which means that whenever you meet him, you have to call him exactly that. Maybe with an added Mr, you don’t want to be impolite.
So here we go, some turntable-nerdiness by Mr Boy Eats Drum Machine:
The Crack In The Sea (he actually reminds me of Jamie Lidell, the way there are so many things going on, although the two girls in the background are a bit distracting in the way that they don’t remind me of Jamie Lidell.)
And don’t forget the homepage, it’s really sweet and was cooked with love, sweet love, you can tell by the smiling clouds.
