posted by Leigh on October 17, 2011
CMJ Preview Series: Get Ready
I often hear the question “What does CMJ stand for?” Why, it’s the College Music Journal, no doubt, and the festival is at it again. More than 1000 bands confirmed, playing over the span of 5 days, October 18th – 22nd, in my very own New York. See what Indieball was talking about during last year’s festival at the following links: CMJ 2010, CMJ 2010 Highlights and CMJ 2010 Highlights Part 2.
Check out our recent post on Alamo Race Track, and get familiar with the other Indieball-featured bands who will be playing this year’s festival, including Alberta Cross, Dinosaur Feathers, Dry the River, Geographer and An Horse. See what we had to say about them at the links above, and enjoy the tracks below. See the official CMJ site for the full schedule; if you are in New York this week, be there.
Alberta Cross – Wait (Downloaded 663 times)
Dinosaur Feathers – I Ni Sogoma (Downloaded 305 times)
Dry the River – Weights and Measures (Downloaded 344 times)
Geographer – Heaven Waits (Downloaded 420 times)
An Horse – Not Mine (Downloaded 270 times)
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» Meaningless labels: Amazing Voice • Best Of • CMJ 2011 • Female vocal • Fuzzy • Male vocal • Poppy • Synth
(5 votes)
Loading ...posted by Leigh on October 11, 2011
CMJ Preview Series: Alamo Race Track
I often hear the question “What does CMJ stand for?” Why, it’s the College Music Journal, no doubt, and the festival is at it again. Almost 900 bands confirmed, playing over the span of 5 days, October 18th – 22nd, in my very own New York. See what Indieball was talking about during last year’s festival at the following links: CMJ 2010, CMJ 2010 Highlights and CMJ 2010 Highlights Part 2.
Alamo Race Track, from Amsterdam, has a fun, folky, punctuated sound, offering (my favorite) interesting, funny and introspective lyrics, told like the best bedtime story ever. Even when singing about a heart-wrenching topic, Alamo Race Track morphs the sadness into beauty and the beauty of that sadness becomes uplifting. Cathartic.
Their third album, Unicorn Loves Dear, was released last March. “Apples” has an upbeat foundation that just makes you want to do that subtle dance move that inadvertently escapes your body when you are bored out of your mind on a phone call that you would otherwise prefer not to be on. The pretty harmonies are an added bonus. “Motorman and Owls“ is the quintessential quirk meets folk, droningly lovely, comprised of mixed tempos that aid in the master story-telling. If you are in New York during the festival, be sure to check them out on either October 19th or 20th at The Delancey. See official CMJ website below for more information.
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Alamo Race Track – Apples (Downloaded 291 times)
Alamo Race Track – Motorman and Owls (Downloaded 236 times)
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» Meaningless labels: Clever Lyrics • CMJ 2011 • Folky • Harmonic • Male vocal • Quirky
(7 votes) Loading ...posted by Leigh on September 21, 2011
We only had to wait four years for Hysterical. Upon the first few listens, I wasn’t immediately drawn into the album like I was with the self-titled debut or Some Loud Thunder. For me, there was no immediately unforgettable refrain like “Satan Said Dance,” no stream of consciousness rambling instantly adhering to your psyche as in “Is This Love?” But, after about the fourth or fifth play of Hysterical, something grander steps out of the shadows, a slower compatibility and connection emerges and you see the forest, made up of all those individual trees, for the first time. I was irreversibly bonded with the music, with the lyrics, with the forest, in a way that was quite different from before.
Brooklyn’s Clap Your Hands Say Yeah has been with me since the beginning, forming part of the soundtrack of my life for the last six years. Not having seen them live since probably soon after 2007’s Some Loud Thunder, I was ecstatic to be able to hear them again at the Bowery Ballroom show in New York just last night, fresh off the release of Hysterical. They played the perfect mix of old and new, and didn’t just reproduce the songs as they were recorded, but, rather, made each song a novel auditory experience for the listener, while never losing the comfortability of a favorite sweater.
It was difficult to decide which tracks from Hysterical to share below. “Siesta (For Snake)” and “Maniac” show off the fast and the slow, while both making it impossible to overlook the beauty and effect of Alec Ounsworth’s vocals, the given lyrical ingenuity and the unfaltering and driven musicianship. Try the whole album out for size. Let it grow on you like moss, and look down from time to time to appreciate the beauty of this soft green plant that is now a part of you forever.
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah – Siesta (Downloaded 369 times)
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah – Maniac (Downloaded 291 times)
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» Meaningless labels: Amazing Voice • Beautiful Lyrics • Clever Lyrics • Driven • Male vocal • Psychedelic
(12 votes) Loading ...http://unumusic.bandcamp.com/track/sevilla
If you like them, you’d like this guy!
posted by Leigh on September 1, 2011
Radical Face fans wait no longer. The promised prequel EP, The Bastards: Volume One, is available as a free download below. This EP eagerly anticipates the first of the The Family Tree Trilogy of albums, The Roots, due out this October.
Note: If you aren’t already a Radical Face fan, and would like to do this all in a dignified and sequential order, then start with our previous post here, then return to this very spot and continue. We will then all be on the same page.
The Bastards: Volume One is expectedly pretty. Ben Cooper’s voice is, as always, lifting melodically and lightly out the musical foundation, crooning concepts that really matter and that we can all relate to and reflect on. He uses repetition to his advantage, touches us with us with the simplicity of the piano parts, and gets a bit folky at the jamboree at times, as you will hear in the track “We’re on Our Way,” included below.
Let’s thank Racial Face for the free EP download, and keep an eye out for the schedule of live performances as the release date for The Roots nears. Word is that Radical Face has something very special planned for the shows surrounding this release, involving choirs and charities around the US. Sounds pretty radical to me.
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Radical Face – Were on Our Way (Downloaded 454 times)
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» Meaningless labels: Beautiful Lyrics • Catchy • Folky • Fuzzy • Male vocal
(12 votes) Loading ...
March 6th, 2012 at 10:11 am
I love seeing Dry the River on this list. And Geographer! Check out Dry the River’s interactive sampler on YouTube. http://bit.ly/ypD2lD