“Spencer Krug, from such bands as Wolf Parade! and Sunset Rubdown! is coming to the Crocodile on Saturday!”
They Might Be Giants - Cloisonné
I don’t know if I’ve ever liked a They Might Be Giants song unironically. Sure, I love their kids stuff, and Flood is one of my favorite albums of all time, but I don’t think I could ever turn around and recommend it to anyone. But this song is here to prove me wrong. Wonder if the rest of their new album Join Us is as good as this is.
Pretty much exactly how I felt when I first heard this song last year. Congrats to Yellow Ostrich on their very first official Barsuk Records music video!
Watching the previously mentioned Battles video sent me down a long dark path of watching more videos by Daniels. This video, for “Simply Math” by Manchester Orchestra, is particularly moving, as the lead singer’s life story flashes before his eyes during a car crash.
Fantastic new video for Battles’ “My Machines,” directed by Daniels
One of my favorite bands, Noah and the Whale, performed an NPR Tiny Desk Concert, and here’s the video to prove it. Love these guys. Keep an eye out for their third album, Last Night on Earth, to make an appearance on the Top 31 of 2011.
Just stumbled across this this evening. Had no idea Built to Spill had any music videos, let alone for one of their best-ever songs, “Untrustable Part 2,” from their best album Perfect From Now On. Granted, it’s a truncated version of the song, but it’s still quite amazing that this got produced. Thinking the band had watched Tool’s videos from Undertow one too many times when they dreamt this one up.
Fascinating new music by James Blake:
With vocals that fall somewhere between Bon Iver‘s Justin Vernon and an auto-tuned Aaron Neville, on top of down-tempo, sparse electronic bleeps, bloops and digital beats, Blake is heading into uncharted territory.
Read a little more about it over at Another Rainy Saturday.
“For a band that’s been around just a little while but only now having settled into its current form and releasing an album, they sounded complete, well-rehearsed, and beautiful together.”
Me, over at Another Rainy Saturday:
After the Broken West became permanently broken in 2009, Ross Flournoy languished in obscurity for about a year. According to the Apex Manor page over at their label Merge Records, Flournoy was inspired to get back into songwriting by participating in a weeklong write and then record contest over at NPR’s Monitor Mix:
Now feeling inspired for the first time in months, Flournoy began writing at a feverish clip, penning more than 25 songs, nearly a third of which were co-written by Adam Vine. Flournoy then teamed up with former Broken West bandmate Brian Whelan to record some proper demos, and Apex Manor was born.
Haven’t had a chance yet to purchase the new Apex Manor album, which debuted on January 25, but if it’s anything like the above song, I’m all over it.
UPDATE: We would be remiss if we didn’t mention that Apex Manor plays at the Tractor Tavern tonight with Red Jacket Mine and Spanish For 100. It’ll be $8 at the door, 21+.
Live show review: Grace Potter and the Nocturnals at the Crocodile (from ARS)
My first concert of 2011 was outside the indie-rock realm, but at one of my favorite venues in Seattle.
Now, this is not to say that there aren’t any sexy female-led bands in indie rock. Chan Marshall, Neko Case, Liz Phair — these are all “sexy” women. But there’s is an understated sort of appeal. And there is nothing understated about Grace Potter. At 27, she’s got the band, the crowd, the scene all wrapped around her Flying V guitar.
Read my full review of the Grace Potter and the Nocturnals show at the Crocodile over at Another Rainy Saturday.
Fleet Foxes, with the title track from their forthcoming sophomore album, Helplessness Blues. Expanding from the Crosby Stills & Nash sound upon which they built their foundation, this new song has everything I loved about the Fleet Foxes from the very beginning: changing time signatures, echo-laden harmonies, and full, rich acoustics. Dig it.
Meanwhile, over at Another Rainy Saturday…
New for 2011: linking from The Bacon Review to what I write in other places (usually at Another Rainy Saturday). First up, a preview for tomorrow night’s Grace Potter & The Nocturnals show at the Crocodile:
Grace Potter, the 27-year old firebrand with the Janis Joplin gravel in her chest, leads the Nocturnals, her Southern Rock-based band, with anything but grace. Try blunt-force, ton-of-bricks, knock-your-socks-off electricity.
New URL means re-posted RSS feed
Yesterday I switched the URL for The Bacon Review from http://baconreview.tumlbr.com to http://baconreview.com. And of course, this means that the RSS feed has reset itself, presenting the most recent 20 entries for you to re-read. So sorry about that!
Hope you like the new look of the place, too. If you’re reading this in your RSS reader, please click here to jump over to the site and check it out. I’m simply using a great new Tumblr template called Effector Theme by Carlo Franco. I plan on tweaking some things to make it feel more like my own soon.
One of my favorites from 2009 is finally releasing a second album. Rural Alberta Advantage, the young threesome out of Canada, put together some of the best original indie rock stuff out there. Jaw-dropping drumming (listen closely to it on the above video upon your second time through the song), piercing and powerful vocals, and desolate lyrics born out of rural Canadian upbringing: a winning combination that I just can’t get enough of. Their new album, Departing, comes out March 1 (or Feb. 15 if you order from the Saddle Creek website) and they’re coming to the Tractor Tavern on April 10.
I don’t recall ever having seen a video that made me like a song less, but leave it to a band with a terrible name to find and exploit that untapped spot in my brain.
Even so, it’s a fantastic song. John in the Morning has been playing this song every day for the past four days, and he was right when he tweeted:
holy mother baby jesus on a cracker, “colours” from Grouplove?!?!?!? I’m freaking out. Its perfect. (sic)
Head. Explode.
Not so keen on the music — it’s not bad, but that’s not the story here. Just watch.
Directed by Cyriak Harris. Music by Eskmo.
One of the strangest videos I’ve ever seen. Good song, though. It’s the title track from Destroyer’s upcoming release “Kaputt,” out on January 25.
New video for fast-rising Seattle hip-hop star Macklemore. The man sure knows how to pull at the home-town heartstrings.
New Noah and the Whale song, “L.I.F.E.G.O.E.S.O.N.,” from their forthcoming album Last Night On Earth, which comes out March 8th. That chorus just sticks to you, like peanut butter.