2012 So Far

It's June.

It's June!

The end of June too, which means it's approximately the middle of the year and it's time to go over some releases that have come out in a decidedly "better than 2011" year. We're going to do things a little different and have quick micro-reviews of 10 albums or singles that were liking this twelfth year of the new millennium.

Shearwater - Immaculate from Animal Joy

Animal Joy is a near flawless set of art-rock songs fronted by one of the best vocalists around at the moment. Jonathan Meiburgs ambitious falsetto rounds the set of band talents including an impeccable sense of catchiness, and an unpretentiousness that is hard to find in indie music with this much depth and romanticism. It's rare that one good listen to an album can solidify it as an instant favorite not just for 2012 but for years to come. Immaculate is a concise and rousing introduction to the album's more aggressive side. You think the jangly guitars and bass groove are all well and good until that vocal melody. I've had it stuck in my head for months.


Shearwater - Immaculate

Here We Go Magic -  Make Up Your Mind from A Different Ship

Nigel Godrich jumps on board as producer on the third full length from Here We Go Magic, the most quirky band since the Talking Heads. He widdles the band down to their absolute essentials highlighting Luke Temple's impeccable songwriting, and giving the production a welcome polish. Make Up Your Mind is without a doubt the highlight of the album and a perfect introduction to Here We Go Magic's brand of too neurotic to be dance-y indie pop. The manic energy in that guitar riff is contagious, and don't even get me started on that chorus. You'll be singing it in your head the rest of the day.

Here We Go Magic - Make Up Your Mind



Exitmusic - Passage from Passage

If you're looking for an alternative to Beach House's flavorless gossamer routine but still want your indie rock with that valium in  a tank of post-punk paraniahs flare, look no further than Exitmusic's excellent debut album: Passage. Unlike many of their contemporaries, an indulgence in reverberated ambiance and atmosphere does not mean a loss of emotional connection and immediacy. The strange but beautiful vocal inflections of singer Aleksa Palladino fill in the title track as it's propelled by a sinister bass line picked into a chorus containing the most powerful vocal delivery I've heard in a long time. This is only the first track, and it sets the tone for an amazing debut.

Exitmusic - Passage



Starlight Girls - Gossip from Starlight Girls EP

60s girl group, doo-wop, and surf rock influences have been making their rounds in the indie-rock sphere for a couple year with bands like Cults, Best Coast, etc. and it's always come off as a fun but annoyingly derivative gimmick. Somehow Starlight Girls have written a collection of songs with those same influences but sound like none of those bands you'd expect them to be touring with. It's the crunchy organ, and the decidedly less "sunshine pop" chord progression of Gossip that make the whole affair fun AND legit. This EP is free on their bandcamp and is by far my favorite random find of the year. 

The Starlight Girls - Gossip

Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs - Trouble from Trouble

Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs obviously gets points for the name, but they get more points for being so enjoyable despite all of the elements of the music trying their hardest to keep me from liking it. This album sounds like it wanted so hard to be an early-2000s house record, but somewhere along the way got sidetracked by Beck, El Guincho, and the fractured textures of IDM. Frankly it's baffling how TEED isn't more popular with the dance crowd because it's the perfect light hearted summer dance album. The title track summarizes the highlights with it's hazy synths, frail vocals, and pulsing 4/4 Detroit beat.

Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs - Trouble



AU - OJ from Both Lights

Whether you like AU's third album Both Lights or you don't, It would likely be the only thing like it you'll hear this year. The music that classically trained pianist Luke Wyland writes can be described using lots of adjective but when it comes down to it we're hearing experimental rock, borrowing from math rock and Frank Zappa as much as The Polyphonic Spree and glitchy electronica. OJ is the fractured and frantic album highlight. There's no doubting that it's from the future when you hear the mastered playing of instruments not even invented yet. Both Lights is a rollercoaster ride through the mind of one of the most singular and underrated songwriters around.

AU - OJ



iamamiwhoami - Sever from Kin

There are just some musicians who know melody, and how to write them to hit you right in the chest. Others have their singular talents: atmosphere, passion, technicality, storytelling, etc. Somehow iamamiwhoami has developed a bit of it all hanging out in the camp of The Knife, Planningtorock, and Bjork. Sever is the emotionally powerful opener of Kin. It's a perfect intro to the heady and dense pop songs that follow it. Where Fever Ray is the dark witch in the swamp, iamamiwhoami is her glossy transparent ice queen sister. You get that metaphor, right? Don't forget to check out her YouTube channel to see the music videos for every song on the album. They are all quite awesome.

iamamiwhoami - Sever



Savages - Husbands from Savages Single

Savages are four angry females playing a refreshing brand of ethereal post-punk. BTW, they never said they were angry, that's just my confident assumption. Riot Grrrls they are not, but I'm sure they could tell you all about them because Husbands incorporates everything you love about early post-punk with a fresh coat of black paint. Husbands is the only officially released track of the band who has existed for only a little over a year, but we're hoping it's an apt taste of things to come. Their debut double A side single Flying to Berlin b/w Husbands will be released digitally on May 28.

Savages - Husbands




Daniel Rossen - Silent Song from Silent Hour / Golden Mile EP

Indie music darlings Grizzly Bear began as the solo project of singer-songwriter Ed Droste in 2004. Over the course of 4 releases and the addition of several new members, including Rossen, things have changed drastically. It takes only one listen of Silent Hour / Golden Mile to see who's project Grizzly Bear is now. This EP, and first solo release from Rossen delivers the hazy psychedlic folk of Veckatimist in stripped down unpretentious wrapping paper. In Silent Song, Rossen's mastery of songwriting so apparent; it's easy to see why Droste may have let go of the reins.

Daniel Rossen - Silent Song



First Aid Kit - Emmylou from The Lion's Roar

"Leave it to two sisters from Sweden to show Nashville what they've been doing wrong for the past 30 years," read a YouTube comment below the music video for Emmylou, the second single from First Aid Kit's debut album. Maybe a tad harsh, but it's a comment that succinctly cuts into who and what First Aid Kit are. For any other song to name drop such revered artists like Emmylou Harris and Graham Parsons it would come off as brown nosing an entire genre, but what First Aid Kit do, golden age country Phd. with a minor in vocal harmonies, is so masterful  it doesn't even cross your mind to be that cynical. 

First Aid Kit - Emmylou



Other releases of note:
Perfume Genius - Dark Parts from Put Your Back N 2 It
Rufus Wainwright - Montauk from Out of the Game 

mewithoutYou - All Circles from Ten Stories 

Purity Ring - Obedear from Shrines 

Dan Deacon - Lots from America

The Dirty Projectors - Gun Has No Trigger from Swing Lo Magellan

Kishi Bashi - It All Began With A Burst from 151a

Beginner's Flowchart: The Flaming Lips

Hey guys, here's a new Beginner's Flowchart and a little update to say that mixes are coming. In the works are the second release in the Essential Zappa compilation and a mix of bands from Sweden. Stay tuned!

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Most times discovering new bands or artists you love is a great thing. The only thing that can sour that experience is finding out the band has a huge output. Sometimes there's just not enough time in the day to spend weeding through a vast, eclectic, or confusing discography.

With Beginner's Flowchart, I hope I can make that a little easier for some people by helping the new listener know where to start, and what to listen to next.

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This installment focuses on the prolific modern psychedelic kings; The Flaming Lips. All of their albums are not featured on this chart. I've covered the ones that are most important to a new listener.

(click here for full size)

The Best Albums You've Never Heard: Ambulance LTD - LP

"Never heard" may be a stretch for this particular album, especially if you were attentive, or lucky enough during the mid-'00s to catch the single Primitive (The Way I Treat You) on MTV2 or Much Music. Chances are you weren't and like all great things that end up on TV, by the time you realized you miss it: it's too late. Another song from the debut, and only, album from Ambulance LTD was featured in the movie P.S., but lets be honest: that's not going to mean anything to anybody.





The album that accompanied this neglected track was, aside from a handful of mostly approving critics, also fairly overlooked. It's really hard to understand why that'd be.


Ambulance LTD spend the entirety of LP, just shy of an hour, trying really hard not to be a pop band while taking a tour of the last 50 years of guitar music. Sugary sweet melodies and a masterful display of songwriting are employed while taking stabs at shoegaze (Heavy Lifting), AM radio soft-rock (Young Urban), early psychedelic rock (The Ocean), americana (Anecdote), 80s alt-rock (Ophelia). There is an unprecedented quality of songwriting displayed (every. single. song.) for such a young band. You'll swear multiple times "that's a Beatles lick, I swear". You'll at least partly be right.





"Wait," you say, "if they sound like all of that, aren't they just ripping off the classics?". Sure, Ambulance LTD are not the most original sounding band of all time. They wear their influences on their sleeves. You could pick out pieces and parts from each song and attribute them accordingly. It's the execution of LP, though, that keeps any of this from being a problem.


It's such an easy sounding record--it sounds like a band who's been around for years doing what well established bands do. Lead man Mark Congleton delivers apathy like a mischievously confident choir-boy, in fact, the whole record feels so confidently executed that you just buy it, and you would even if the songs weren't so goddamn good. Nothing about it sounds like a debut album. The production is slick, but just lo-fi enough to be pink in the middle.


After releasing LP and a follow-up EP titled Young Urban, Congleton began working on a new full-length with The Velvet Underground's John Cale. These recordings would, so far, never turn up after TVT, the label Ambulance LTD were signed to went bankrupt in 2008. The next 4 years have been incredibly quiet from the band. There's never been an official statement that the band was no more but Mark Congleton, who was the only remaining original member in 2008, has been working on new material as Drug Cabin, so it's probably safe to say that it's over. 





Ambulance LTD did give us something that most bands never do in their entire run, an absolutely flawless, yet extremely under appreciated, album. Enjoy all three singles released from LP in the YouTube boxes above, and when you're smitten like you should be, you can click right here to stream the whole album from GrooveShark.

Imaginary Sounds Feature: Jenny Hval

This article features embedded songs and videos. To play them, click the play button beside their name. To download the songs, right-click and click "save as".

Name: Jenny Hval
Genres Associated With: Folk, Experimental Pop, Avant-garde 
For Fans Of: Joanna Newsom, Kate Bush, Cocteau Twins
Country of Origin: Norway
Age: 32


If you are reading this from Europe, you may have already heard Jenny Hval's name. Maybe it was only in passing, but for those of us in the States the name is relegated to obscure music blogs where, even then, her amazing 2011 album Viscera was largely slept on as a year best contender. And it sure as hell was not because it wasn't good enough to be one. She is, according to Wyndham Wallace, one of the most powerful and distinctly feminine voices at work in music today, and I agree. If you're not entirely convinced with her early stuff (I'll be going in chronological order) stick around till later: you won't be disappointed.

Scandinavia, the northern land of Europe, where, between Sweden (The Knife/Fever Ray, jj,  Lykki Li), Denmark (Mew, Under Byen, Efterklang), Iceland (You should already know), and Norway (Sondre Lerche), there's been a renaissance of experimental pop music happening over the last 5 to 10 years. Hval is from Norway, but started her musical career playing in a folk band while studying creative writing in Melbourne, Australia. Norwegian was, of course, her native language, so to help learn the English langugage better, Hval began writing poetry and recording her own voice reading passages. She became fascinated with sound and how intonation and diction could be manipulated into an art itself. Language, and her experimentations with it, gave her a new creative outlet. Upon returning to Norway, in 2006, she recorded her first solo album under the moniker Rockettothesky titled To Sing You Apple Trees.

Rockettothesky - Barrie for Billy MacKenzie 
Lead single Barrie for Billy MacKenzie made a nice (and surprising) splash in Scandinavian radio, thrusting her into the popular consciousness and grabbing a nomination for best new act at the Norwegian Grammy's. The song is a fine introduction to Hval's bi-polar falsetto and vocal quirks. Lyrics are faily obscured, making her voice more instrument than anything, calling to mind Cocteau Twins' Liz Fraser, from whom Hval takes obvious influence.

For all intents and purposes, Apple Trees is a pop album, it's sonic palette not unheard of in alternative rock at the time, though there already seems to be a little of the magic that would flourish in her songs later; the lush instrumentation and moody atmosphere, her study of pronunciation and diction influencing the way poetry floats from her lips: often she hums or makes playful sounds with her mouth, percussing the melody along.  

Rockettothesky - A Flock of Chestshire Cats  


Rockettothesky - A Cute Lovesong, Please 
Another of the elements that sets Hval apart early in her career is the sexual subject matter that many of her songs take on. All love songs are really about sex, but she speaks frankly of the awkward and private parts of copulation that most people would not even let on to their best friends. "When you think of me / do you masturbate", she asks right out of the gate, "I want to know / that I can make a man ejaculate".

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Hval's voice can be quite divisive. Comparable to Joanna Newsom by way of PJ Harvey or a darker Kate Bush; all singers who are incredibly talented, hit their notes, and sound like nobody else, but still have been described by many as "grating" and "annoying". Perhaps Jenny said it best herself: "Why sing about broken hearts with powerful, controlled voices? The voice is so much more than control, restraint and perfection." 


There are so many other facets of her music that can be appreciated outside of a particular voice; especially the evolution taken toward the album Medea, the second and last release under Rockettothesky. It is here that the songwriting becomes more experimental; unpredictability arrives, born of improvisation. Medea explores the legends of mythical greek vindicator Medea in search of the sounds and stories of the deceased body. Where Apple Trees was whimsical, Medea is subliminal. The songwriting becomes looser and often calls to mind the icy-dark experimentalism of late-80s 4AD artists like the aforementioned Cocteau Twins, Dead Can Dance, and This Mortal Coil.

Rockettothesky - Song of Pearl
Jenny opens the album with her haunting spoken word poetry that doesn't always follow logic. It's more about what they convey than their literal meaning. Words are strung out like a long pull by the bow of a violin and transcend speech based singing. A pattern is created where some colors and shapes glow with clarity, "not yet, she says", and others are hiding between consonants. The song blooms suddenly into melody, and shrinks back in as if it's ashamed by the beauty and continues to float on aimlessly.



Rockettothesky - The Dead, Dead Water Lily Thing
Obvious inspiration is taken from Swedish electro-pop group The Knife on this track, which should not be surprising to anyone familiar with their stabbing synths and vocal manipulations. Hval has this way of treating her singing of melody in song with complete unpredictability in meter while always adapting to stay within the confines of the song. It's madness, but it's also logical. The combination, here, of non-traditional singing and dramatic spoken-word poetry make for an experience that, even if you don't like, you won't forget. 



Rockettothesky - Grizzly Man 

Grizzly Man hangs right on the edge of a beauty that's almost unsettling, as if there is a ghost haunting the space between her mouth and the microphone. Jenny tells the story of a woman who finds a "feotuslike" creature on a riverbank and nurses it back to health before taking the creature into her own body as a forever unborn child. Bizzarre, right? As dark as the song may be, it is framed in a densely romantic atmosphere. The music video features one of the most perfect marriages of sound and visuals ever.

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While recording Medea, Jenny continued to work with her background in literature on a book that melded her love of experimenting with language and of telling stories. Perlebryggeriet (translated as The Pearl Brewery in English) was finished and published in 2009. She says of the project: "I wanted to create a world which follows the rules of sound, that was only partly a written novel, so I could have space for this other part of language, the part that is music and sound." Click here to read and excerpt. The book is a brief and subtle tale of love, brewery operations, and the relationship between art and the body that takes inspiration from writers and feminists such as Anne Carson, Jeanette Winterson, and Angela Carter.

Hval's first album under her own name, Viscera (2011), shares many of the same inspirations and is the first album with a concrete and well executed concept. Viscera claims the body a living city and explores how that idea relates to sexual desires in the frank and honest ways she has mastered thus far in her career. If Apple Trees was organic, Medea subliminal, Viscera is dark, primal, and a much more organic affair. Viscera ramps up the hyper-sexual content. It is far from pop music, but even in the world of the avant-garde and indie music, sex is not a common topic of interest. Even when it is, it is passed off to metaphor and subversion, as, most indie musicians are more focused on credibility and coolness and most avant-garde musicians on...being avant-garde. 

Even pop and rap music, lyrically, can tend to be very quaint and most of the time teases sexuality, leaving all the work to the music's provocative avatars to be carnally appealing. It is in these titillating sirens that Hval finds catalyst for her sound: "I'm definitely working in reaction to the perception of the female subject which is so often reduced to photoshopped, perfectly shaven parts. I find this a very evil part of mordern society, obsessed with perfection and imperfection even more. So I really want to make music where there's room for lots of imperfections". 

Jenny Hval - Engines in the City 
One minte and twenty-five seconds into Viscera opener Engines in the City Jenny Hval has said the word "clitoris" and is singing about masturbating. Improvisational sounds from a guitar and other percussion mock the sounds of a busy city street. Our Victorian values force us to ask if such beauty should be cast alongside such vulgar themes, but our post-modern minds tell us that this does not have to be, and is not vulgar.

Jenny Hval - Blood Flight


Relentlessly dark, Blood Flight grows into a beast, and you can hear it's groans from the beginning underneath the poetry concerning senses. Trumpets honk like vehicles in traffic. It is a spiritual successor of Song of Pearl with it's blooming into beauty at unpredictable periods of intensity with Hval's characteristic bi-polar falsetto, and then sheepishly retracting back into the dark primal land this album inhabits.

Jenny Hval - Milk of Marrow


Jenny Hval - Golden Locks
Personally, I feel like Golden Locks has go to be one of the most beautiful songs ever written. At her most uninhibited and honest, Jenny compares hair and fingernails (objects of bodily vanity) with "waste products of the body", referencing "piss" and "golden showers". It seems by the end, after we've traveled through several different song structures, that Hval realizes that the body is composed entirely of these "waste products" and that no part is necessarily more special than the other. This is a perfect example of legible lyrics playing a greater importance. Somehow, though, the music has increased in production quality and finesse as well.

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Jenny continues to tour and work on music. On January 6th, 2012 she released an album of improvised free-form guitar/spoken word work in collaboration with Håvard Volden under the moniker Nude on Sand. As of March she was creating a sound installation art piece for the Norwegian Henie Onstad art center. Commenting on her next album, she's stated that it could be a heavier, even darker trip. Her poetry, feminism and experimentations are a continued commodity in the world of music, no matter what country. Check out an incredible full live performance (below) of some Viscera songs and the brand new opener The Seer, composed in commemoration of Bob Dylan's 70th birthday. Stay tuned to news at jennyhval.com

Dark Steering

So apparently Squarepusher was just joking around with us, pulling our leg, with his last few releases and just biding his time, waiting to release his come back. This song, and video are quite the seizure treat and have made me very excited for his new album Ufabulum to be released this May. Tom Jenkinson, the man behind the name claims that he's "started thinking about pure electronic music again. Something very melodic, very aggressive." 


My ears are already tingling. Maybe that's the tinnitus.

Beginner's Flowchart: Talking Heads

Most times discovering new bands or artists you love is a great thing. The only thing that can sour that experience is either finding out their material is too hard to procure, there isn't enough of it, or the opposite, there's too much. Sometimes there's just not enough time in the day to spend weeding through a vast, eclectic, or confusing discography. With the new feature Beginner's Flowchart, I hope I can make that a little easier for some people. What I intend to do with each new post in the series is to pick an artist or band, and create an easy to read, aesthetically pleasing chart to help get into the artist/band's discography and find the albums you'd most likely to enjoy. You might have seen these charts on 4chan's /mu/ board or even Reddit. Yes, I got the idea from there, and even used some charts that others have made as help in making my own. Whatever. Nothing is new on the internet, and I guarantee mine are prettier.

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This installment focuses on everyone's favorite post-punk nerds; the Talking Heads (unless your favorite is Devo, in which case, I apologize).

(click to enlarge)

Imaginary Sounds Mix 27: Understanding Boognish: The Best of Ween

(download full album) [135MB]

Even if you aren't fully aware you've heard Ween before, I assure you that you have. Within all popular music lies a little bit of the dormant DNA of the Boognish, and within Ween lies just a little bit of DNA from all popular forms of music. It's a cylical relationship, slightly parasitic. It has been told that one day The Boognish will consume all popular music and rule the world for a thousand years. In 1984, stoned and bored, Aaron Freeman and Mickey Melchiondo were called upon to carry the DNA and become the brothers Ween (Gene and Dean), the acolytes, priests, and prophets for the Way of Brown.

The brothers spent the next 10 years recording music. 9 albums were released chronicling their journey studying the Way of Brown and learning to harness the DNA of Boognish. These albums were rough, raucous, irreverent but matured with each subsequent one, and after releasing the 1992 album Pure Guava the brothers were visited by Boognish who told them they had finally reached the Bold Axis and were fully prepared to release the true way into the world. In 1994, Chocolate & Cheese was loosed upon the world. For 54 minutes and 47 seconds Gene and Dean Ween exercise the DNA of pop, psychedelia, 70s rock and roll, acoustic balladry, and funk in ways that those genres, on their own, had never utilized. It was enough brown to jettison them on a course through 6 albums and various other releases of pure, brown, Boognish gospel. 

If you're confused by all of this, then there's only one thing you can do: download this compilation and learn to understand Boognish. If you see the light and Boognish speaks to your soul, there are always others to help you in your journey.

Disclaimer: To those other Ween fans out there who have stumbled upon this: this is a late career mix. Though I respect what the band released previous to Chocolate & Cheese, I don't consider most of it essential or as important to the landscape of music as a whole. I know you're probably butthurt, but get over it. Make your own mix. : )

Tracklist:
1. Exactly Where I'm At
2. Learnin' to Love
3. Gabrielle
4. Blue Balloon
5. Spinal Meningitis (Got Me Down)
6. Buckingham Green
7. Ocean Man
8. Mister Richard Smoker
9. Zoloft
10. Where'd the Cheese Go?
11. Even If You Don't
12. Monique the Freak
13. Japanese Cowboy
14. It's Gonna Be A Long Night
15. Chocolate Town
16. Friends
17. Where'd the Mother Fuckin' Cheese Go At?
18. Stroker Ace
19. Roses Are Free
20. Hey There Fancy Pants
21. The Mollusk
22. Baby Bitch
23. Happy Colored Marbles
24. Transdermal Celebration
25. You Were The Fool

These mixes are compiled by myself to promote good music only, NOT to take money away from these artists. Please support the artists you like. And to make it fair, I ask you to delete these files within 24 hours.
btw, We're always curious to hear your feedback on mixes. Let us know what you think about this one, past mixes, or the site in general by leavin a comment. Please?

Monster & Maskiner

Here's a little unexpected treat; while doing research for an upcoming compilation on the Swedish music scene, I found this fun performance by cheesy synth-pop practitioners and The Knife friends Monster & Maskiner.

They're performing their highly-stylized inorganic brand of electronica on what appears to be Stockholm Public Access Television. If you're not too impressed with the first tune stick around for the second song, "Kill Him!", a standout from their second full-length album "Never Die!".

They will definitely have a spot on that Swedish compilation I mentioned.


Monster & Maskiner from Tor Rauden Källstigen on Vimeo.

New Sigur Rós Album, New Track

The greatest post-gaze ambient dream pop (you're supposed to laugh at that) band of our generation are back, and apparently they'll be running us over.

The new LP from Sigur Rós, to be released May 28th, is titled Valtari, which apparently translates from Icelandic to English as "steamroller". No, we're not in for a heavy metal album, but lead singer Jonsi says "...It's a beautiful steamroller...the music just kind of rolls over you..." Other adjectives used in the interview/press release were "introverted", "dreamy", and "eeriness". So, may we be in for a return to the band's late-2000s sound? We'll find out in late May. 

Here's a new track from the album, titled "Ekki Múkk":

Sigur Rós - Ekki múkk from Sigur Rós on Vimeo.

Beginner's Flowchart: Aphex Twin

Most times discovering new bands or artists you love is a great thing. The only thing that can sour that experience is either finding out their material is too hard to procure, there isn't enough of it, or the opposite, there's too much. Sometimes there's just not enough time in the day to spend weeding through a vast, eclectic, or confusing discography.

With the new feature Beginner's Flowchart, I hope I can make that a little easier for some people. What I intend to do with each new post in the series is to pick an artist or band, and create an easy to read, aesthetically pleasing chart to help get into the artist/band's discography and find the albums you'd most likely to enjoy.

You might have seen these charts on 4chan's /mu/ board or even Reddit. Yes, I got the idea from there, and even used some charts that others have made as help in making my own. Whatever. Nothing is new on the internet, and I guarantee mine are prettier.

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This installment focuses on Richard D. James' releases as Aphex Twin.

(click here for full size)