INDIE MUSIC 4EVER - best indie music, indie music: 08/01/2011

August 31, 2011

Trophy Wife

Bruxism (EP)

01. Canopy Shade
02. Bruxism
03. Seven Waves
04. Sleepwalks
05. Wolf

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
MySpace

August 30, 2011

CD 1:

01. Intro (ft Zola Jesus)
02. Midnight City
03. Reunion
04. Where The Boats Go
05. Wait
06. Raconte Moi Une Histoire
07. Train To Pluton
08. Claudia Lewis
09. This Bright Flash
10. When Will You Come Home
11. Soon, My Friend

CD 2:

01. My Tears Are Becoming A Sea
02. New Map
03. OK Pal
04. Another Wave From You
05. Splendor
06. Year One, One UFO
07. Fountains
08. Steve McQueen
09. Echoes of Mine
10. Klaus I Love You
11. Outro

Release date:
18.10.2011.

COLLOSAL EPIC ALBUM ~ AWESOME

M83.

August 25, 2011

Florence And The Machine

What The Water Gave Me (Single)

AWESOME

Official

August 24, 2011

Psychic Babble

My Brother’s Ears/My Sister’s Eyes

01. Five Fold Kiss (Don’t Sleep)
02. Nothing Familiar
03. Samantha
04. Radio Songs
05. You Said It
06. Crocodile Tears
07. Boulevard
08. Let Me Change
09. Follow Your Bliss
10. Harper

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
MySpace

August 21, 2011

The Weeknd

Thursday

01. Lonely Star
02. Life of the Party
03. Thursday
04. The Zone
05. The Birds Part 1
06. The Birds Part 2
07. Gone
08. Rolling Stone
09. Heaven or Las Vegas

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
Official ~ Download

August 20, 2011

Still Corners

Creatures Of An Hour

01. Cuckoo

02. Circulars

03. Endless Summer

04. Into the Trees

05. The White Season

06. I Wrote in Blood

07. The Twilight Hour

08. Velveteen

09. Demons

10. Submarine

Creatures of an Hour, the debut full-length by Still Corners, glows with the delicate vocals of singer Tessa Murray and the atmospheric, cinematic influences of songwriter Greg Hughes. Still Corners capture both the youthful tone of French New Wave and the unease of Italian horror, from the projections (created by band member Leon Dufficy) that feature heavily in their live performances, to the free-floating grace of Creatures of an Hour. “There’re just certain things in certain movies, like older horror movies and other foreign films, that you see sometimes. They just have a certain vibe and atmosphere,” says Hughes. “All these little bits, these tiny moments. That’s what I was trying to go back to. To bottle that up and put it into a song.”

Recorded at Hughes’ own studio in Greenwich, the devil is truly in the details of Creatures of an Hour. Fusing whispered intimacy to the emotional expansiveness of composer Ennio Morricone, Hughes crafts deceptively simple songs that linger like half-remembered dreams.

Lead single “Cuckoo” shines in its simplicity, a single drumbeat, ghostly guitar, and distant organ highlighting Murray’s haunting soprano as she asks, “I’d like to read your mind/can you read mine?” “It’s about confusion,” explains Hughes. “It’s about being confused. Am I going crazy? Does this person like me? What’s happening? That’s the vibe of the whole record really.”

For the time being, Hughes is happy to maintain Still Corners’ musical mystery. “I don’t like to talk too much on decoding the songs. It takes the mystery away,” he says. Reviewers like Gorilla vs. Bear, Pitchfork and Drowned in Sound however have proven more than happy to sing the praises of the pop beauty of Still Corners. So grab some popcorn and stick around—for Still Corners this is just act one.

Released: October 11, 2011

AWESOME
Label

August 16, 2011

Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks

Mirror Traffic

01. Tigers

02. No One is (As I Are Be)

03. Senator

04. Brain Gallop

05. Jumblegloss

06. Asking Price

07. Stick Figures In Love

08. Spazz

09. Long Hard Book

10. Share the Red

11. Tune Grief

12. Forever 28

13. All Over Gently

14. Fall Away

15. Gorgeous Georgie

While many '90s bands have reunited in recent years, it's important to note that Pavement's Stephen Malkmus never truly went away. Easy as it's been to pine for Pavement, it's also easy to have forgotten that Malkmus continues to evolve and experiment, toying with synthesizers and electronics and with shape-shifting prog-rock, both solo and with his band The Jicks. So, while Pavement fans may have to wait a little longer (if not forever) for new songs following last year's reunion, Malkmus' latest Jicks record, Mirror Traffic, is among his best post-Pavement offerings to date. It's certainly the most mature.

That's a credit to Malkmus and fellow "slacker" iconoclast Beck — who produced the album — because the former's music is not always an easy listen. While his songs are often impeccably arranged with catchy, sing-song melodies, there's always been an off-kilter quality to his music, making it feel like it's about to fall apart. Chord progressions don't resolve where you want them to, he regularly changes keys mid-stream — often only for a few bars — and there's enough dissonance and squawks of guitar noise to give the songs a sneering edge.

Malkmus' lyrics are constructed to be elusive. His oblique stream-of-consciousness songs, with their sardonic wit and hyper-literate descriptions of mundane observations, ask willing fans to parse the lyrics themselves. Malkmus writes lines as much for their encrypted meanings as for the way the words sound rhythmically against his abrupt melodies and messy guitar riffs.

Still, while Mirror Traffic's punchy urgency has the feeling of being loose and unruly, Malkmus and his Jicks are deceivingly turn-on-a-dime tight as a band, thanks to stellar musicianship from Mike Clark, Joanna Bolme and especially Janet Weiss, whose drums give every song a throttling pulse. (Weiss has since left the band to form WILD FLAG.)

Malkmus has said that he and The Jicks were looking for a like-minded ally like Beck for Mirror Traffic. But of all the artists with whom Beck has collaborated recently (Charlotte Gainsbourg, Thurston Moore), here he leaves the smallest musical footprint. Beck practically sits back and lets Malkmus and The Jicks play; there are very few of the production flourishes that have become Beck's calling card, though he likely played a small part in reining in Malkmus' jammier side, and in sweetening the songs along the way. If anything, Beck's influence shows in Mirror Traffic's sonic focus, even as the album presents a variety of microstyles: fuzzy garage rockers like "Tune Grief" and "Tigers," intimate tunes like the solemn folk song "No One Is (As I Are Be)," or the warbling, buzzed-out ballad "Asking Price."

One of the major overarching themes of Mirror Traffic seems to be a reflexive coming to terms with nostalgia and the boredom of adulthood. But "Forever 28" also references a crumbling relationship — "I can see the mystery of you and me will never quite add up / No one is your perfect fit, I do not believe in that s—-" — while "All Over Gently" includes the kiss-off line, "Stay if you want, but don't forget we're through."

Mirror Traffic, out Aug. 23, is about as brutally forward and honest as Malkmus has ever sounded, revealing a new side to the enigmatic songwriter. But it's also an album with plenty of hooks and lyrical surprises.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
Official

August 13, 2011

The Drums

Portamento

01. Book Of Revelation
02. Days
03. What You Were
04. Money
05. Hard To Love
06. I Don’t Know How To Love
07. Searching For Heaven
08. Please Don’t Leave
09. If He Likes It Let Him Do It
10. I Need A Doctor
11. In The Cold
12. How It Ended
13. Blue Stripes
14. What We Had

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Official

Memoryhouse

The Years (EP) *re-issue

01. Sleep Patterns

02. Lately

03. Modern, Normal

04. To The Lighthouse

05. Quiet America

On September 13, we, the people of Sub Pop Records, will release a fully re-recorded, remixed and remastered version of Memoryhouse’s The Years, adding two new tracks entitled “Modern, Normal” and “Quiet America.” While technically an expanded and improved reissue, this version of The Years will be the first time the EP has been made available on CD or LP. This is exciting. Also exciting: with the release of The Years the band will be touring the US as main support on a slew of dates with Peter Bjorn and John as well as The Radio Department (see below for a list of shows, with more dates to be announced soon.)

The band also has a new video for their song “Quiet America” which was directed by, and stars, Memoryhouse’s own Denise Nouvion, and was edited by Jamie Harley, who also happens to have directed Memoryhouse’s video for “Heirloom” as well as How to Dress Well’s “Decisions” video. We think this is all pretty swell.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
Official ~ Label

August 7, 2011

Feist

Metals

01. The Bad In Each Other
02. Graveyard
03. Caught A Long Wind
04. How Come You Never Go There
05. A Commotion
06. Bittersweet Melodies
07. Anti-Pioneer
08. Undiscovered First
09. Cicadas And Gulls
10. Woe Be
11. Comfort Me
12. Get It Wrong Get It Right

Feist’s stunning third album Metals - the follow up to 2007’s international breakthrough The Reminder - will meet the world October 4.

Fans can now view the album’s cover art, track list and third in a series of 12 video vignettes offering a glimpse into this intimate, transcendent record.

A special edition pre-order of Metals, bundled with tickets for the first round North American tour dates is also now available. Physical bundles include a commemorative fold-out poster and are available exclusively from listentofeist.com (click 'tour dates' to order). Fans in Canada can also pre-order Metals directly from Arts & Crafts' online boutique GalleryAC.com.

AWESOME
Label ~ Official

August 5, 2011

Ivy

All Hours

01. Distant Lights
02. Fascinated
03. How's Never
04. Suspicious
05. World Without You
06. You Make it so Hard
07. I Still Want You
08. Everybody Knows
09. Lost in the Sun
10. She Really Got to You
11. The Conversation