Artigos com o marcador indie rock
Maplewood – Maplewood (2004)
22/07/10
Maplewood is a low-key indie rock supergroup with members of Champale, Koester, Cub Country, and Nada Surf gathered together in the spirit of ’70s canyon rock. Their self-titled debut brings back hazy memories of groups like America, Bread, and CSNY. The kind of groups who always seemed ready to break out their acoustic guitars and serenade the sweet hippie chicks around campfires and in hazy bars with heartfelt lead vocals and harmonies, ringing open-chord strumming, lazy tempos, and occasional pedal steel for added melancholy. There are also echoes of more modern bands like R.E.M. on “Darlene,” Lambchop on “Bright Eyes,” and Teenage Fanclub on the chiming “Morning Star.” The spirit of Matthew Sweet also hovers over the proceedings, as he’s been treading these light rock boards for quite a while. So there you have all the influences and connections, all of which don’t mean much if Maplewood can’t deliver the songs. Luckily, they do. Tunes like “Indian Summer,” “Little Dreamer Girl,” and the quiet epic “Desert Queen” sound like they were taken right off a Time/Life Sounds of the 70′s comp. The rest are solid and memorable too. They escape being mere revivalists by investing their hearts into the material. There is no winking or obvious lifting of melodies. They create the feel of the sensitive California ’70s with an easy, sweet manner and plenty of laid-back soul. Not bad for a bunch of short-haired, East Coast fellas. Line them up next to the lovely Autumn Defense and let the ’70s begin again. ~ Tim Sendra, AMG
My Rate: 8.8/10
Áudio de “Indian Summer”
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Mary Lou Lord – Got No Shadow (1998)
19/07/10
For many years in the alternative revolution of the early ’90s, Mary Lou Lord was touted as the next big thing by those in the know, but she never delivered a full-length album, preferring to turn out a series of indie EPs on Kill Rock Stars. It wasn’t until 1998 that she released her full-length debut, Got No Shadow. While many of the titles on the album may be familiar to longtime fans — “Lights Are Changing,” “Some Jingle Jangle Morning,” “Western Union Desperate,” “Subway” — the clean, polished sound of Got No Shadow might come as surprise. But the production actually does a nice job of opening up her sound, making it accessible like a Shawn Colvin record without losing integrity. Some critics may carp that Lord wrote or co-wrote seven of the 13 tracks of the record, with the rest of the songs devoted to covers of her longtime associate Nick Saloman (the Bevis Frond), and one tune apiece from Elizabeth Cotton (“Shake Sugaree”) and Freedy Johnston (“The Lucky One”), but that has the effect of strengthening the album, since there isn’t a weak song here. Lord has a sweet, thin voice that is surprisingly versatile, and she delivers Saloman‘s songs as convincingly as her own. Got No Shadow is a little subdued, but Lord’s charming performances, clever lyrics, and catchy melodies prove remarkably resonant. It may not have the unvarnished appeal of the early EPs and tapes, but Got No Shadow was worth waiting for. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, AMG
My Rate: 9/10
Áudio de “Some Jingle Jangle Morning”
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The Love Language – Libraries (2010)
15/07/10
MERGE RECORDS The Love Language is a fortunate by-product of frontman North Carolina native Stuart McLamb’s rudderless mid-20s, where a tempest of breakup, inebriation, and incarceration found the abandoned songwriter embarking on a storage-space recording project to slow his seeming disintegration. On sophomore effort Libraries, the equilibrium of frontman McLamb’s madness and producer BJ Burton’s discipline has rendered an album in the classic sense, in which no song is expendable and no passage is without purpose. Libraries captures Spector-esque walls of reckless sound, cavernous drums, middle-school percussion, and moody swells of stringed instruments, all decorated hastily with stray leads, which bleed beautifully all over everything.
My Rate: 8/10
Áudio de “Heart To Tell”
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Beat Happening – Crashing Through [Box Set, 7CD] (2002)
01/07/10
ALLMUSIC If context is indeed everything, then an artist’s step into the world of box sets signifies a major change in their positioning in the pop firmament. Box sets lend the music they contain a new sense of historical importance; with their retrospective booklets, wealth of unreleased material, and remastered sound, box sets possess an air of archival permanence, a library piece signifying that this is a history worth preserving and analyzing. Of course, Jethro Tull has a box set, so that’s another theory that’s shot, but in the case of Beat Happening, it truly means something. With the aptly titled Crashing Through, not only does the Olympia, WA, trio finally restore their catalog to record bins, but their music takes its rightful place alongside the true greats of the rock & roll canon. Primitives far ahead of their time, Beat Happening defined more of the spirit and aesthetics of independent music than any other band of the early ’80s. Fusing naïve yet dark lyrics, brittle but hypnotic melodies, and the wondrously off-kilter vocals of Calvin Johnson and Heather Dunn, the group championed a simplicity and honesty that punctured every last vestige of rock & roll excess, virtually creating the template for the indie pop to follow in their wake. Crashing Through brings together pretty much everything Beat Happening ever released: their five official LPs (Jamboree and You Turn Me On certainly the best), singles, that split EP with the Screaming Trees, and much more, including video content and a booklet authored by Lois Maffeo. Songs like “Midnight a Go-Go,” “Indian Summer,” “Cast a Shadow,” and “Tiger Trap” are quite simply among the finest recorded by anybody ever. Suffice it to say, essential stuff. ~ Jason Ankeny
Tracklist
Disc one
1. “I Love You”
2. “Cast A Shadow”
3. “Calvin Chat”
4. “Bad Seeds”
Disc two: Music to Climb the Apple Tree By (2003)
Collection of singles & compilation tracks
1. “Angel Gone”
2. “Nancy Sin”
3. “Sea Hunt”
4. “Look Around”
5. “Not A Care In The World”
6. “Dreamy”
7. “That Girl”
8. “Secret Picnic Spot”
9. “Zombie Limbo Time”
10. “Foggy Eyes”
11. “Knock On Any Door”
12. “Sea Babies”
13. “Tales Of A Brave Aphrodite”
14. “Polly Pereguinn”
15. “I Dig You”
Disc three: Jamboree (1988)
Original Album
1. “Bewitched”
2. “In Between”
3. “Indian Summer”
4. “Hangman”
5. “Jamboree”
6. “Ask Me”
7. “Crashing Through”
8. “Cat Walk”
9. “Drive Car Girl”
10. “Midnight A Go-Go”
11. “The This Many Boyfriends Club”
Disc four: Beat Happening (1985)
Original Album
1. “Our Secret”
2. “What’s Important”
3. “Down At The Sea”
4. “I Love You”
5. “Fourteen”
6. “Fun Down Stairs”
7. “Bad Seeds [live]”
8. “In My Memory”
9. “Honey Pot”
10. “The Fall”
11. “Youth”
12. “Don’t Mix The Colors”
13. “Foggy Eyes”
14. “Bad Seeds”
15. “Let Him Get To Me”
16. “I Spy”
17. “Run Down The Stairs”
18. “Christmas”
19. “Fourteen”
20. “Let’s Kiss”
Bonus Tracks
1. “1, 2, 3″
2. “In Love With You Thing”
3. “Look Around”
4. “Bonus Track 1″
Disc five: You Turn Me On (1992)
Original Album
1. “Tiger Trap”
2. “Noise”
3. “Pinebox Derby”
4. “Teenage Caveman”
5. “Sleepy Head”
6. “You Turn Me On”
7. “Godsend”
8. “Hey Day”
9. “Bury The Hammer”
Disc six: Dreamy (1991)
Original Album
1. “Me Untamed”
2. “Left Behind”
3. “Hot Chocolate Boy”
4. “I’ve Lost You”
5. “Cry For A Shadow”
6. “Collide”
7. “Nancy Sin”
8. “Fortune Cookie Prize”
9. “Revolution Come And Gone”
10. “Red Head Walking
Disc seven: Black Candy (1989)
Original Album
1. “Other Side”
2. “Black Candy”
3. “Knick Knack”
4. “Pajama Party In A Haunted Hive”
5. “Gravedigger Blues”
6. “Cast A Shadow”
7. “Bonfire”
8. “T.V. Girl”
9. “Playhouse”
10. “Ponytail”
My Rate: 10/10
Vídeo de “Cry For a Shadow”
Top Surprise – Everything Must Go (2010)
17/06/10
EP produced by Lê Almeida. Do yourself a favor, listen to “More Than Cool”… fantastic track, fantastic band!
LAST SPLASH BLOG \\ Para a Top Surprise, o mundo parece ter começado nos anos 80 – quando seus integrantes nasceram, e as guitarras adquiriram um volume insuportável. Então, de certa forma, nomes como J. Mascis e Thurston Moore fizeram o big bang do que culminaria no som do quarteto da provinciana Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais. Ainda nos anos 90, as gravações lo-fi do Guided By Voices transmitiram uma mensagem DIY muito mais contundente para as gerações X e Y (sim, é onde estamos agora) do que qualquer uma anterior. Mas a Top Surprise sabe que ruídos caseiros, ainda que maravilhosos, não enchem os bolsos de ninguém. Daí surge o contorno pop das melodias, que deixariam Phil Spector orgulhoso – ou talvez surdo.
Everything Must Go, estréia do Top Surprise, foi produzida por Lê Almeida (Coloração Desbotada) e Paulo Casaes (Fujimo) em dois dias de bebedeira no apartamento dos irmãos André e Daniel. Vocais foram gravados no banheiro, guitarras na sala e bateria no quarto do pai, para desespero dos vizinhos. O resultado soa tão forte quanto qualquer álbum recente rotulado como “shitgaze” – mas com um requinte estético que só quem trabalhou no ramo do telemarketing poderia conceber. Guitarras histéricas e batidas indelicadas explodem sobre as composições, com backing vocals femininos assemelhando-se a abelhas dentro das caixas de som. Da óbvia admiração pelo college rock americano a toques de pós-punk, o EP termina em uma incursão ao território de Jeff Mangum e Elliott Smith. Prova de que até mesmo a sincrética “geração Y” é capaz de momentos de ternura, ainda que em meio ao caos.
Everything Must Go é o segundo álbum da Pug Records. A versão em K7 está disponível na loja do selo. ~ Eduardo Vasconcelos
My Rate: 9/10
Áudio de “More Than Cool”
Autoclave – Autoclave (1997)
13/06/10
ALLMUSIC This CD offers a comprehensive overview of Autoclave’s rather humble existence. Compiling their two Mira/Dischord 10″ EPs and their song from the Simple Machines Lever 7″ this is the sum total of the band’s year-long career. Listening to it in hindsight, the album sounds quaint, but fun; imagine a seminal D.C. punk group with a serious devotion to Eddie Van Halen. It’s interesting to hear the high school musings of folks who would go on to become seriously influential musicians in the bands Helium and Slant 6 — especially the vaguely uncertain vocal delivery of singer Mary Timony — and, as such, this disc is recommended to serious fans of those bands. Outside of that, it’s simply an OK piece of D.C rock history. What really makes Autoclave worth the eight bucks from Dischord, though, is the short and funky demo of “Paperboy” tacked onto the end. It’s easily the grooviest, funniest thing in any of the band member’s catalogs. ~ Bryan Carroll
My Rate: 6.8/10
Vídeo de “Dr. Seuss” (audio only)
Male Bonding – Nothing Hurts (2010)
24/05/10
SUB POP Emerging from the fertile D.I.Y. rock scene in Dalston, a gentrification-proof London neighborhood with ample “lo-fi” bands and Turkish restaurants, noise-pop trio Male Bonding plays fast. Nothing Hurts, the band’s first full-length, gets it done in half an hour, and most songs clock in at around two minutes. But, there’s much more to Male Bonding than high-speed, high-impact punk. If you will know their velocity, you will remember their melodies. Every song on Nothing Hurts, whether a clipped, snarling rock anthem (“All Things This Way,” “Crooked Scene,” “Pumpkin”) or something more foggy and contemplative (“Franklin,” “Worse to Come”), carries a hook that’s immediate and permanent. Nothing Hurts was recorded in the fall of 2009 in New York and mixed and mastered by Pete Lyman at Infrasonic Sound.
My Rate: 9/10
Áudio de “Year’s Not Long”
Teenage Cool Kids – Foreign Lands (2009)
19/05/10
SOUNDSXP Andrew Savage, also one half of the ace Fergus & Geronimo started this band in 2006 in Denton, Texas. Their second album was released in 2009 (on vinyl, I think) and the CD has turned up in shops here in a Japanese edition, hence this review. Unlike F&G, they’re heavily influenced by American indie guitar music of the 1990s – fans of the Pixies, Pavement, Built to Spill and even Grandaddy will find much to love. It’s fun, energetic and a little anarchic even, but sounds remarkably like the sum of its influences – and there’s a weird effect where the first half dozen songs are hard to tell apart so conventionally structured arte they. A lot of this is good fun and undemanding college rock but a number of these tunes stick out, like the pop-bright ‘Slave/Master’, the riffy Pavement-esque ‘Calm Me Down’ and the lively, woo-hoo-strewn ‘Foreign Lands’. ‘Crucial Talk’ shows off their wit as well as musical chops in a break up tale involving a mistimed mixtape with unsubtle titles on each side. A decent way to spend your time but nothing here would stop you dead in your tracks like a Fergus & Geronimo tune will. [by Ged M]
My Rate: 7/10
Áudio de “Crossing The Desert as a Stream”
Coloração Desbotada – Eu, Eu Mesmo e Os Vários Beijos Cafeinados
31/03/10
Genre: Lo-Fi / Indie Rock / Shoegaze
Based: Brazil
Label: Pug Records
Year: 2010
My Rate: 8/10
{ Download }
Primeiro K7 da Pug Records, selo brasileiro que propõe apenas lançamentos em fitas cassetes e mp3. Eu, Eu Mesmo e Os Vários Beijos Cafeinados é uma re-edição do EP de 2005 que saiu, em CD-R, pela Transfusão Noise Records e que traz ainda os primeiros registros caseiros do Lê Almeida. A versão digital é disponibilizada gratuitamente e vem com 4 faixas bônus. Lo-fi, DIY, Guided by Voices, Pop, Shoegaze, Lê Almeida; tudo numa fitinha só! Super recomendado.
PUG RECORDS Eu eu mesmo e os vários beijos cafeinados merges layers of distortion with gauzy pop melodies. Coloração Desbotada, however, isn’t another ethereal band emulating My Bloody Valentine. Despite the shoegazing references, Coloração relates more to american groups such as Pixies, Built To Spill and Gumball, as well as canadian favorites Eric’s Trip. Another strong influence is Guided By Voices, noticeable in the short songs and lo-fi production (the EP was completelly recorded using just one poor old PC mic). Lê Almeida, the guy behind Coloração, has even organized a brazilian tribute to Pollard’s group.
…Beijos Cafeinados marks the birth of Almeida’s DIY label, Transfusão Noise Records. The original CD-R pressing generated a bunch of new bands around Rio de Janeiro’s suburbs — many of wich have become Transfusão’s cast. The EP also represents the beginning of Pug Records, wich, celebrating the record’s fifth anniversary, developed an expanded version in cassette with unreleased songs. Some of these bonus tracks are available in this digital version, put out simultaneously by a lot of download blogs worldwide.
Beat Happening – Black Candy
09/03/10
Genre: Indie Rock / Lo-Fi / Indiepop
Based: US
Label: K
Year: 1989
{ Download }
ALLMUSIC As evidenced by its title, Black Candy is Beat Happening’s darkest, most deliriously ominous album; clearly influenced by the Cramps, the record is dominated by Calvin Johnson‘s coffin-creak vocals, with Heather Lewis‘ breathy sweetness rarely in earshot to lighten the mood. A less developed batch of compositions than the previous Jamboree, it strives to evoke the mood of a grade-Z teen horror flick soundtrack, with faux-creepy songs (“Pajama Party in a Haunted Hive,” “Gravedigger Blues,” “Bonfire”) and primal, drum-dominated production; less eclectic and nuanced than the trio’s other LPs, Black Candy quickly grows tiresome, although the oft-covered highlight “Cast a Shadow” is a treat. [by Jason Ankeny]
Vídeo de “Black Candy”
