Dignan is a band you’re gonna want to check out if darker indie/rock is your thing. I’ll be as bold as to compare them to (some of) Arcade Fire’s older work. The band is currently touring around the mid-west with Farewell Flight, another group we’ve mentioned plenty of times.
Song to start with: “Charlatan”
As soft and subtle as ever, Andy Shauf keeps plucking along with quiet acoustic songs made for seasons like Fall. “I Don’t Really” opens with a lyric that connects this new release to the last album, in the same way a runner would hand off the baton to the next person in the race. With this record being even more delicate than the previous though, it will take some real quality time to see the nooks and crannies that make it special.
Release Date: 9/28/10
Listen to Andy Shauf
For all those waiting, the time has come. You can now stream Anberlin’s new album, ‘Dark Is The Way, Light Is A Place’ on MySpace. While you’ll listening, be sure to read our full review and leave a comment with your thoughts.
Seems like this, middle of the week, day was busy one.
The music magazine, Paste, has suspected [read: stopped] the print business. On their site they announced that they were still pursue digital content, but that things were still up in the air. Paste almost went out of business awhile ago but was saved by a last minute deal. Official Paste site
Like you didn’t hear, but today Apple announced new iPods and a new AppleTV. The thing I’m more interested in is that the new iTunes 10 comes a new social network, similar to Twitter or Facebook, called ‘Ping’ baked right in to the program. The new service will include ways to purchase concert tickets directly in iTunes through Live Nation as well as provide ways to share pictures and follow friends. I’m wondering if this music network will also track my listening habits like Last.fm does, and if anyone will use Ping. iTunes Ping site
Update: I have now downloaded iTunes 10 and am using Ping. If you’d like to follow, please do so here. [Link opens iTunes]
I haven’t been a huge fan of The Dangerous Summer in the past, but the pop/punk band just released a new song, “Good Things”, and I gotta say, it’s good. In line with how other similar style bands have been maturing musically, The Dangerous Summer appear ready to make an even bigger impact on the scene. You can listen to the new song on Facebook (exclusively) or purchase it on iTunes.
I Can Make A Mess Like Nobodies Business, or Ace Enders, asked a few days ago on Twitter if anyone would want an all request acoustic album of ‘the hits’ next week and apparently the answer was yes. Next week he’ll release ‘Dust’n Off The Ol’ Gee-tar’. The album will include one new song along with older ones; track listing is below.
1-Growing Pains [New]
2-Baby Blue
3-Body Like Mind
4-No Good at Saying Sorry
5-Sesame Smeshame
6-When I Hit The Ground
7-Pretty Pretty
8-Something That Produces Results
9-1000 Times a Day (remix)
10-I Want to Hear You Sad
11-Decoration
Visit the site at Icanmakeamess.net
If you didn’t make it to Warped Tour this year, or just want to re-live it again, be sure to check out, photographer, Jered Scott’s photos from the few days he spent on the tour.
If you enjoyed Fred Mascherino’s solo effort, The Color Fred or his work in Taking Back Sunday, I don’t really see how you wouldn’t love Terrible Things. Andy Jackson also adds touches of Hot Rod Circuit to the mix that comes through perfectly. The back story of the album being about an arsonist in Fred’s hometown bodes well on tracks like “Up At Night” or “The Arsonist’s Wife”, but it fades from the forefront on most other tracks. All in all a good, but ultimately forgettable album.
Release Date: 8/31/10
Listen to Terrible Things
Starting with “We Owe This To Ourselves”, moving to “Impossible” and creeping into “Take Me As You Found Me”, Anberlin’s 5th studio opens with a bang big enough to convince even the biggest skeptics or faded fans, looking to be wooed again, that this is the album they have been looking for.
Music out today worth buying
* The Graduate – Only Every Time
* Terrible Things – Self Titled
Other music out today
* Comeback Kid – Symptoms + Cures
* Disturbed – Asylum
Anberlin has already proved, with a solid track record, that they are the real deal, but I have no doubt that ‘Dark Is The Way…’ will be the band’s defining album in the eyes of the mainstream. With only 10 songs and each one staying focused, the question turns from whether the band did anything wrong to whether they did enough different to rekindle long time fans fading love. At first glance and on first listen, it does appear that they found a great mixture of old and new.
Read the full review
Release Date: 9/7/10
Listen to Anberlin
I think Reamonn may just be the perfect culmination of mainstream pop/rock. With pieces of Athlete, The Fray, The Killers [Sam's Town years] and Train, the band’s new ‘Best Of’ album, ‘Eleven’ is a good mixture of their past material. Maybe it’s just me, but I’m wondering why I’m not more familiar with the band and why they’re not a bigger name.
Arcade Fire, Chris Milk and Google teamed up to create a music video for the song “We Used To Wait”. The video uses some new web technology [HTML5] to open new browser windows inside a window to give the video a multi-dimension feel. If that wasn’t enough, you type the city you grew up in before the video starts and it incorporates Google maps and street view into the video to personalize it even more.
If you’re not using Google’s web browser, Chrome, or Safari or Firefox, there’s a good chance the video won’t work.
Imagine Source: TechCrunch
It’s hard to believe that the first Lakes EP came out in 2006 and that ‘The Agreement’ is the first new material since then. Of course many will remember frontman, Seth Roberts from his previous work in Watashi Wa. Unlike Watash Wa’s brazen enthusiasm for pop/rock though, Lakes embraces a post-emo style, better described as weathered vocals accompanied by a solid mix of upbeat and toned down rock music.
Every month we go through at least 30 daily recs, several full reviews and a number of 1 liners. I’m sure most of you don’t, or just can’t, check out each one. In an attempt to further highlight my favorite music, here is a few of the best recs from the month along with a review in a single post, a post which should not be missed.
Centrevol
RIYL: Seabird, Cartel
Aiming for bands like Runner Runner, The Summer Set and other semi well-known pop/rock bands, Steal The Scenery definitely have potential. The biggest downfall is that the current crop of the songs are a little rough, production wise, but “You & Me” does seem to be pointing the band in the right direction.
I’m a sucker for a good Brit-pop record. And One Night Only’s self-titled is both good and very British. The album kicks off with “Say You Don’t Want It,” the single that is without a doubt, far and away the best track on the album. In a way, starting with “Say You Don’t Want It” sets the rest of the album up for disappointment as the rest of the album doesn’t live up to the lead-off’s big production, soaring vocals, and surprisingly eloquent lyrics. On the other hand, “Say You Don’t Want It” ought to be celebrated for the stand-out song that it is and keep listeners looking ahead. With this kind of potential, One Night Only could go anywhere.
Musically, Lakes continues to be the constant incarnation of Watashi Wa or Eager Seas but, Seth, the driving force behind the band, also continues to keep maturing as a musician. ‘The Agreement’ employs a dynamic range throughout with tracks like “Sweet Dream” or “Loose Fix” venturing out in a safe, but experimental way. As a collection of songs, ‘The Agreement’ feels the same as your favorite movie or a great heart to heart talk with a friend, this album provides a fullness and completeness that you won’t be able to or want to easily forget.
Read the full review
Release Date: 9/3/10
Listen to Lakes
New York Summer is an interesting band to try to describe, but ultimately I think they fall on the indie side of acts like Three Doors Down, Goo Goo Dolls and other similar suspects in that style. The band has a mainstream sound without a mainstream feel, if that makes any sense. “More Than This” is a slower track off the band’s new album, but also one of my favorite off ‘Ticking Clocks and Masquerades’.
Possible indie super group, Terrible Things has put their debut album up for streaming on MySpace. The album comes out next Tuesday (31st). The band includes Fred Mascherino [Taking Back Sunday], Josh Eppard [Coheed and Cambria], and Andy Jackson [Hot Rod Circuit].
Condition’s new album hits the sweet spot when it comes to aggressive alternative rock filling the void for Cauterize fans. ‘Fluorescent Youth’ tends to play it safe, but in doing so also succeeds at providing a consistent and enjoyable experience from start to finish. To be relevant a band either needs to be doing something new and different or nearly perfect; ‘Fluorescent Youth’ is nearly perfect.
Release Date: 9/14/10
Listen to Conditions
Releasing October 12th, ‘The Age Of Adz’ will be Sufjan’s first full length with original songs since 2005. If you thought Sufjan Steven’s next album would feature one of the remaining 48 states, you’d be wrong. Track listing after the break.
The Age of Adz (pronounced “odds”) differs from Stevens’ previous works in its lack of conceptual underpinnings. The album relinquishes the songwriter’s former story-telling techniques for more basic proclamations unhindered by concepts: there are few narrative conceits or character sketches, no historical panoramas, no civic gestures, no scene, setting, conflict, resolution or denouement. Rather, the themes developed here are neither historical nor polemical, but rather personal and primal: love, sex, death, disease, illness, anxiety and suicide all figure in the songwriting.
The title The Age of Adz is a reference to the apocalyptic art of Royal Robertson (1930—1997), a Louisiana-based sign-maker (and self-proclaimed prophet) who suffered from schizophrenia. Robertson’s work depicts his vivid dreams and visions of space aliens, futuristic automobiles, eccentric monsters and signs of the Last Judgment. Portions of Stevens’ album use Robertson’s work as an idealistic springboard and a selection of Robertson’s drawings (his primary media were poster board, magic marker, and glitter) appear throughout the album art.
This has been posted around and then taken down so if you haven’t gotten a chance to hear the new version of “Stop” that will appear on ‘Invented’ you can over at The Hype Machine. If the track sounds a bit off and doesn’t start right away that’s because it was recorded off vinyl.
Depending on when and if you start school, this is probably the last podcast of the Summer. Hopefully it conveys the end of summer as we transition into Fall. Apparently it looks good for us, the more people who subscribe to the podcast in iTunes and so if you want to help us out, that would be a really fast and simple way to do so.
iTunes Link
Zune Link
Direct MP3
Track Listing
1) Centrevol – “On A Roll”
2) Soletta – “This Road”
3) Monarch – “Need It”
4) The Radio Dept. – “David”
5) Lissie – “Everywhere I Go”
Listening to ‘The Orchard’, I can’t for the life of me remember why I was avoiding Ra Ra Riot before now. I’m not sure if there was one song a long time ago I didn’t like, or what, but the new record is brilliant [much like a lot of the past material I'm re-discovering]. If you crossed the rigidness of The Shins with the vocals of Tokyo Police Club and threw in backing stings on most songs, then you start to get close to describing ‘The Orchard’. I can’t say enough good things about this album, but its one downfall is only having 10 songs.
Release Date: 8/24/10
Listen to Ra Ra Riot
Song to start with: “Too Dramatic”
We are now two weeks away from Anberlin’s 5th studio album one that is sure to be an important one. Even though, “Feel Good Drag” wasn’t native to ‘New Surrender’, this was the album that propelled the song to national recognition, or maybe it was the opposite.
There have now been 3 full songs officially released to the public, the latest of which was “Pray Tell”. You can of course hear samples of each track, but somehow it still doesn’t tell you what everyone’s dying to know, “will this record be good?” Please feel free to weigh in with your expectations and comments about the new Anberlin album.
Read our initial review of the album
I am by no means an expert on the timeline of instrumental rock bands and the music, but the first time I remember experiencing it was from The Appleseed Cast. Of course, the band did include singing through out their albums, but I do remember getting to the end of a song and realizing, “Hey there wasn’t any singing on that track”.
It seems in the last few years, however, that more and more bands are jumping on the instrumental rock bandwagon, or maybe it’s just that these bands are actually getting signed and being heard. Deep Elm Records seems to have an affection for this music and these types of bands because the label’s last two releases from Dorena and Last Lungs have had barely a word sung on either album.
Deas Vail has decided to release 2 B-sides from the ‘Birds & Cages’ sessions, “Under Our Skin”, along with “All Eyes Are On Your Now”. I haven’t found a place to hear these except on iTunes and Amazon
Music out today worth buying
* Death In The Park – Self Titled
* Eels – Tomorrow Morning
* Sufjan Stevens – All Delighted People EP
* Ra Ra Riot – The Orchard [$3.99 on Amazon Today
Other music out today
* Never Shout Never – Harmony
Singles
* Deas Vail – “Under Our Skin”
* The Scenic – “Uh Oh”
Pre-Order [i.e. Listen to clips]
* Anberlin – Dark Is The Way Light Is A Place [iTunes Link]
Sometimes you just need help relaxing and falling to sleep, well these song should help with that.
Track Listing
1) The Album Leaf – “Summer Fog”
2) Alexi Murdoch – “Love You More”
3) Aqualung – “California”
4) Denison Witmer – “Are You A Dreamer”
5) Sleeping At Last – “Naive”
6) The New Frontiers – “Passing On”
7) Copeland – “Hold Nothing Back”
8) Jon Foreman – “A Mirror Is Harder To Hold”
9) Coldplay – “Strawberry Swing”
10) She & Him – “Swing Low Sweet Chariot”
Without trying, Carter Hulsey easily poses a threat to Dashboard Confessional’s Chris Carrabba for the top, acoustic based, solo artist. “Black & Blue” cries out, “I’ll love you till we’re black and we’re blue…” in a more traditional ballad type, while “A Note In Your Pocket” infuses Cater’s folk side. If you’re excited about Never Shout Never’s new album, you may want to check out this one instead.
Release Date: 6/22/10
Listen to Carter Hulsey
I really wanted to believe that every song on the band’s self titled album was going to be as inescapable as “Say You Don’t Want It”, but they’re not. To be fair, my expectations may have been a bit high and even though I consider this record mediocre, most people will probably be more than happy with this Brit-rock album that’s 2 years too late.
Release Date: 8/23/10 [UK]
Listen to One Night Only
Normally the arrogance displayed in lyrics of “On A Roll” is a dangerous thing, but in this case, Centrevol, or more aptly, ‘Momentum’ does a tremendous job proving that any ounce of praise it will undoubtedly receive is fully earned.
For those actually looking for something new, you’re going to want to listen to I Am Arrows. With lots of rhythm and movement, the songs are interesting throughout. Sadly, internationalism has taken its toll again, so those outside the US [UK specifically] can purchase the band’s new album, while those of us in the US will have to settle for a few select songs.
Anberlin - Dark Is The Way, Light Is A Place
Lakes - The Agreement
One Night Only - One Night Only
Lissie - Catching A Tiger
The Graduate - Only every Time
