You might want to listen to this load of MP3s from Fat Wreck Chords (geddit??!!) in San Francisco. Most songs less than 3 minutes. Thrashing guitars. Titles like: ‘the irrationality of rationality’. Oh happy days.
The Album leaf put out an ep at the end of May, The Seal Beach EP.
First - let’s hear it for bands producing EPs, or as they should be called ‘albums without the fillers’. So much more manageable.
Second, let’s hear it for The Album Leaf they do make lovely clean ambient stuff, and this is perfect for watching the rain on a summers evening.
Put it on a playlist with Halloween Alaska and Telepopmusik’s latest: Angel Milk and you will be a very relaxed human being indeed.
It’s on Amazon and iTunes.
I have a mental list of ‘where are they now’ artists - normally people who released one album that I completely loved, then sort of disappeared.
Whatever happened to Clarksville following the wonderful Half Chapter? [now mutated into the Deciphers, it turns out - with a full explanation here]; and has there been any news of Trashmonk following 2001’s Mona Lisa Overdrive?
Another on that list was My Computer. A few years ago, I listened to their debut album, Vulnerabilia, dozens of times on a walking holiday in France. It was a surprisingly melodic bit of electronic messiness - and I bloody loved it. And then they sort of disappeared. All the interviews I read with them was basically tales of two guys who’d take some pills and noodle away on computers to quite wonderful effect. Nice work if you can get it, I thought…
Anyway - you might have noticed they’ve got a new album out: No CV, produced by John Leckie. It starts with a right old screechy racket , and then calms down into a sea of utter piano loveliness, and over 12 tracks it bounces around genres. There’s a whiff of prog-rock epic seriousness to bits of it, a bit of dancefloor-ish mayhem.
And, there’s even a track where they basically say ‘fuck you’ a lot. And as we all know, swearing in songs is very big and very clever and almost always to be applauded .
What makes it all work and be something more than a load of experimental nonsense is that it’s really quite melodic with some rather lovely songs on it.
Anyway - I suggest you buy it. It’s about a million times more interesting than James Blunt.
How about Craig says relax?
iTunes + podcasts + del.icio.us = you can’t really tick any more boxes than that (and it works, as well…). Now, if only there was some way to get Flickr in there as well…