On The Drums‘ gorgeous (and potential modern classic) “Down By The Water”, one of two songs to hold residency on both the band’s fantastic 2009 EP Summertime! and their even more fantastic 2010 self-titled full length, the Brooklyn four-piece, for once, avoid trying to hide their emotions behind a veneer of perky, surf-pop.
The song, with it’s spacious, doo-wop prom ballad sway, still keeps them on the sand circa 1960′s, but here, the sun has long since left and most of the beach party have vacated the scene, leaving only frontman Jonathan Pierce and his girl on the moon-lit oceanside to gaze longingly into each other’s eyes as he professes his eternal devotion to her. “If they stop loving you/ I won’t stop loving you/ If they stop needing you/ I’ll still need you, my dear,” he promises in a piercing, edge-of-range wail, as if he’s straining for the entire world to hear his words.
Sure, the “forever” he vows could very well end in a week’s time, but as an earnest moment captured in time (and future “cell phones in the air” standard), “Down By The Water”‘s retro-pop-infused romanticism resonates beautifully.
When Living Days frontwoman Stephonik Youth utters “Let’s kiss”, it doesn’t sound like she’s begging for a simple smooch.
Dramatizing the two words in a deep and seductive, near-orgasmic gulp, Youth makes it sound like by “kiss”, she wants her and the object of her affection’s respective souls to literally melt into one for all eternity, making it an intriguingly dark addition to the otherwise sprightly synth-pop happenings chugging on behind her.
In short, the cut, from the Brooklyn five-piece’s forthcoming debut EP Make Out Room Part 1 (due in August), is like if one of those creepy-hot True Blood sex scenes married a-ha’s “Take On Me”: a weird, but mucho alluring, combination that strikes catchy pop gold to our ears.
Clearly inspired by the sounds of ’60′s and ’70′s pop/ rock, boppy new single “Electric Eye” breezes by on delightfully crisp guitar work, groovy horn bursts and some sweet male harmonies, all in the name of the title subject’s mysterious pull.
“There’s no shutting it off,” frontman Ben Trokan explains, though he could just as well be referring to the sheer contagiousness of this ditty.
Look for the 7-inch of “Eye” (backed by the equally pleasant retro dip “Face In The Fog”) to drop on June 8th via Engine Room Recordings, followed by a digital release on June 22nd.
An ear-(and speakers)relieving oasis perfectly situated in the mid-section of the distortion-bathed, crunk-metal-cheerleader pop extravaganza that is Sleigh Bells‘ amazing debut Treats, album cut “Rill Rill” lands as the noise-pop duo’s best shot at garnering some crossover love, finding the Brooklyn duo stepping back from their gargantuan sonic assaults for a light and easy melancholy trip.
Polished up a bit from it’s original demo form (when it went by the name “Ring Ring”), “Rill Rill” can best be described as the ideal lazy summer afternoon banger; y’know, the kind that The-Dream wheels out with ease, where subtle drum knocks and sharp finger snaps add weight but don’t distract from the dreamy melodies at the song’s core.
Those dreamy melodies appear in two glorious forms here: in “Rill Rill”‘s main musical attaction, a breezy, acoustic soul loop snagged from Funkadelic’s 1971 Maggot Brain gem “Can You Get To That”, and in the ever-nonchalant chant-coos of vocalist Alexis Krauss, who strings together random conversation bits/ boastful phrases probably overheard in the hallways of high school by rival cliques (“You’re just a weatherman/ We make the wind blow”), forming all kinds of delectable mini-hooks along the way.
Stream the rest of Treats over at NPR or pick it up on iTunes.
In an effort to prove that we’re not completely out of the loop when it comes to what’s been making waves within the music blog scene in recent weeks, enjoy this quick run-through of some of the more high profile new videos/ releases we’ve missed out on commenting on due to…uh, we’ll just say “real life” (and a few WordPress issues) getting in the way:
Sleigh Bells “Tell Em”
Anything you’ll ever read about this Brooklyn boy/girl noise-pop duo (vocalist Alexis Krauss and songwriter/ guitarist/ producer Derek E. Miller) is bound to note the band’s love for insane volume levels just as much as it’ll hype how crazily infectious the tunes hidden beneath all the ear-punishing distortion are.
Believe these words on both accounts.
“Tell Em”, the first single from the Sleigh Bells’ debut album Treats (due May 11th on Mom + Pop/ N.E.E.T.), may lead to one having early deafness, but bet you won’t be able to resist repeat doses of it’s rat-a-tat drum, turned-up-to-eleven guitar riffage and laser sound effects assault, nor Krauss’ pureform coos sweetly encouraging today’s young’uns “you can do your best today” betwixt it all.
Last summer’s chillwave/ glo-fi movement taught us the glories of music that was meek-sounding, of shitty quality and awesome; expect the upcoming warm weather season to be all about start-up bands/ acts co-signing the equally awesome louder-than-loud and shitty quality formula of the Bells.
We’ll politely decline from adding to the increasingly tiring “Is she copying Gaga?” rattle concerning Aguilera‘s new (meh) one, and just say this: when it comes to desperate slutty Christina, we’d rather give “Dirrty” a re-spin.
Is it bad that we wish we could just fast-forward to the next Aguilera album era already?
Christina’s Bionic drops June 8th.
Ciara featuring Ludacris “Ride”
Looking to get her career back on track after the commercial fumble that was her last album (2009′s Fantasy Ride), Ciara smartly hearkens back to a previous career highlight on new single “Ride”, re-heating the winning, “seductive ‘crunk & b’ crawl + Ludacris cameo” formula of “Oh” with an extra slathering of naughty sex kitten on top of it.
“I can do it up and down/ I can do circles/ To him I’m a gymnast/ This one is my circus,” she sings, nicely illustrating such bedroom talents with a slew of eye-popping body gyrations (amongst other “I’m not a little girl anymore” visuals) in the accompanying video.
Yeah, the hook claims it’s the “beat” that she’s riding “like a mother-[bleeping] freak”, but a ten-year-old could figure out what she’s really talking about.
Eminem “Not Afraid”
Capping months of track-owning guest appearances on joints alongside Drake & Kanye West, Lil’ Wayne and B.o.B (not to mention the killer freestyle track “Despicable”), Em‘s “Not Afraid”, the first taste off his next full length Recovery, lands as another lyrical stunner, with him surprisingly coming across as equally compelling when preaching positive about living a “clean” lifestyle as he does when he’s flexing his more loony and murderous-minded material.
Only problem is, while we’re excited to hear he’s become aware of how awful the various “accents” and pop star/ tabloid staple-spoofing had become, “Not Afraid” feels less and less interesting with each successive listen (maybe it’s that ’80′s arena rock-styled hook), and we’re not necessarily sure we’re ready for an entire album of Eminem getting all uplifting on us.
Surely Kim has done something scandalous in recent years to inspire at least one Recovery song that throws back to his bat-shit crazy rhymes.
Josh Ritter “Another New World”
From the critically-acclaimed folk singer-songwriter‘s newly released sixth set So Runs The World Away (currently streaming in full over at NPR.org), a seven-minute-long story song set atop beautifully sedative acoustic guitar pluckings and dreamily sirenic muted horns about an Arctic explorer and his crew and the tragic horrors that befall them in the midst of a voyage in search of the “new world”.
Doesn’t sound like your cup of tea? Take a chance and hit ‘Play’ and you’ll be surprised how misty-eyed you get once it gets to the part where the protagonist is forced to set fire to his beloved ship in order to stay alive.
Most attention concerning this final single from the nearly two-year-old I Am…Sasha Fierce will more than certainly fall on it’s strange, but definitely sexy, retro-themed video (with Bey once-again rocking the Bettie Page ’50′s pin-up look) rather than the song itself; but the cut (co-penned by sister Solange) manages to be somewhat fascinating in it’s own right with the steely-voiced diva turning herself inside-out trying to figure out why a man would choose to willfully bypass such a catch (especially one with “beauty”, “class”, “style” and, most importantly”, “ass”) to a tightly-wound ’60′s soul strut.
Following weeks of heavy blog/ Twitter buzz in anticipation of his newest mixtape I Want You, Brooklyn rapper/ singer Theophilus London has further solidified his promise of being the next hipster hip hop sensation to likely break big (a la Kid Cudi and B.o.B) with the unleashing of the doper-than-dope full project on Thursday.
In line with previous heralded collections JAM! and This Charming Mixtape (the latter of which housed one of our favorite overall cuts from 2009, an infectious electro-rap re-haul of Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You”), I Want You‘s display of slick, non-gangsta rhymes atop blog-baiting samples (musical references here include Ellie Goulding, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, Tweet, Discovery and Vampire Weekend) offers an endlessly fascinating (and quite groovalicious) ride that should easily keep people satisfied well into next year.
Grab the entire set here (if only so you can boast of being a fan before London was enjoying multiple entries on the Hot 100, a future that seems to be a given), or simply check out some of our highlights below: the “Giving Up The Gun”-bootleg “Give It Up Dad” and the new wave-ish delight “Sorry To Interrupt”.
Tucked away in the mid-section of their hyped-to-the-heavens second offering Odd Blood, the admirably near-uncategorizable Brooklyn indie-rockers Yeasayer go even odd-er (if such a thing is even possible) by getting all early-00′s teen-pop on our asses with the computerized white boy funk workout of “Love Me Girl”.
Far different than anything they’ve ever put to tape, at it’s core, “Love Me Girl” teeters on being an awkward mess, it’s struggle at finding a comfortable common ground between New Romantic swooning and Timberlake-ian herky-jerk R&B glitch never quite gelling as well as the band seems to think it does.
So why do we stamp it as being an album standout, anyway? Partly because we kinda-sorta dig the nervous tension in the song’s lyrics (it follows one man on the verge of an emotional breakdown as his current relationship fizzles out before his eyes); but mostly because of it’s begging-to-be-looped two minute long intro, a dramatic synth-based build-up excitingly peppered with animal cackles and haunting vocoder tags that hints of the best rave ever bursting alive around you at any moment.
Take a listen to the amazingly launched cut below, followed by a bonus offering of The Very Best‘s merry overdub of Odd Blood‘s lead single “Ambling Alp” (shouts).
Isn’t it funny how “My Boo”, a thirteen year old R&B/ booty bass cut performed by an act a majority of folks (minus bloggers of course) probably wouldn’t be able to name without some Google aid, has suddenly turned into one of the most covered/ re-tooled tracks of ’09? Following DJ Solly’s chopped-up re-working of the Ghost Town DJ’s single (posted here back in July), the past few weeks has seen a few other new takes off “Boo” bubble their way to front pages all across the blog patch, and un-surprisingly, we heart every single one of them. Check ‘em out below:
American Dream Team “My Boo”
This Brooklyn-based squad of DJ’s, VJ’s, producers, designers and animators cover the record with a Cascada-esque dance-pop touch (though far less cheesy than that may sound), employing a slightly Auto-Tuned, anony-robo-female to mimic the song’s high school-age X’s and O’s sentiment in between a solid assortment of bloopety-bloop club noise. An ideal dancefloor delight.
Desktop is an synth-pop duo out of Detroit who have released two EP’s this past year that are both chock full of fetching, keyboard-dominant tunes ’80′s pop lovers should dig (Our favorite: the work-out inspiring “Fired Up”).
Their “My Boo” remake features a faint loop of “A Milli” in the background, a killer opening groove that’s just begging to be sampled for some new crunk & b confection, a talk-box (we think) assisted breakdown that’s still got our heads spinning in circles and a heavily distorted lead male vocal that makes the longing lyrics take on a intriguing stalker-ish bent that wasn’t all that easily apparent in the original.
Mariah Carey featuring OJ Da Juiceman, Big Boi & Gucci Mane “H.A.T.E. U (Remix)”
Last but not least, Mimi busts through with this remix of her Memoirs’ slow jam ballad “H.A.T.E. U”, and we must say, anticipating entering the angry phase after breaking up with her man goes down a lot better when supported by the light bounce of a “Boo” sample and smirk-inducing guest turns from OJ Da Juiceman, Big Boi (“I’m colder than a polar bear’s toenails”) and, the “Ludacris of ’09″, Gucci Mane, in what’s probably his two-hundredth appearance on a song in the past four months alone (and yet somehow we still crave more cameos from the “Wasted” emcee).
MJ. Prince. Parliament/ Funkadelic. Rick James. The Gap Band. The Time. Robert Palmer. Hall & Oates. Cameo: These are just a few of the names that enter the brain when immersed in the slick, ’80′s-era White boy funk/ R&B of Pink and Purple, the newest release from Brooklyn singer/ songwriter/ producer Alan Wilkes.
Sounding as if Chromeo had been brainwashed into spending a couple weeks watching nothing but early-era BET video playlists, this continuously entertaining six-song EP fits in perfectly with music’s obsession with all things ’80′s in recent years. But rather than simply using new wave-y synths, electro-funk glitz and synthethic drum sounds as mere accents, Alan Wilkis takes things so much more further, showcasing an amazingly deft education in that era’s vibe with tunes that actually sound as if it they could’ve been on the charts way back when.
So many times throughout the collection, Wilkis fantastically seems to hone in on the same mindframe of that generation’s musicians, and the joy they must have felt in first realizing the endless musical possibilities of this “new” digital-based technology when mixed alongside the live band textures they had previously mastered, whether it’s through the dramatic slow build of closing ballad “Time Machine”, the infectious “me and all my protogees just jamming around” glee of P-funk exercise “N.I.C.E”, or the web-like keyboard intricacies of the title track that give nearly every four bars a different sonic identity.
Trust us. Cop the set, then sit back and press play. By the time you’ve hit the mid-way point of the EP, you’ll be hit with feelings of sorrow because you’re either too young to have experienced this magnificent era in real-time or you were around back then and have just been re-reminded how so much of today’s pitiful excuses for R&B, funk and pop pale in comparison.
Ever wondered how Passion Pit’s “I’ve Got Your Number” would sound if stripped of all it’s synth-pop quirk and given a more straight-forward acoustic ballad treatment? Probably not. But that hasn’t stopped Brooklyn unit Phone Tag from doing it anyway with some surprisingly well-achieved results.
Frail falsettos that give way into pleasant male harmonies and a sparse backing of lone guitar noodlings and distant handclaps project an eerie intimacy throughout this reading, perhaps a more complimenting framing to the lyrics’ pondering confessional than the distracting in-the-red sonic explosions and tinny 8-bit jubilation of the original.
Listen to their solid cover below, then head on over to Phone Tag’s MySpace and peep some of the band’s original material as well as their interesting mash-up of Marvin Gaye’s “I Heard It Through The Grapevine” and Röyksopp’s current summer-friendly single “Happy Up Here” that somehow manages to transcend being a disorienting mess to emerge a delightful web-pop curioso.
As nice as it is to get free music, think of how much better your soul would feel if you purchased it the old-fashioned way.
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(MP3 posts are for promotional and/ or previewing purposes only; if any artist or their representation wish to have the links removed, contact me and I will happily comply!)
On The Drums‘ gorgeous (and potential modern classic) “Down By The Water”, one of two songs to hold residency on both the band’s fantastic 2009 EP Summertime! and their even more fantastic 2010 self-titled full length, the Brooklyn four-piece, for once, avoid trying to hide their emotions behind a veneer of perky, surf-pop.
Isn’t it funny how 
MJ. Prince. Parliament/ Funkadelic. Rick James. The Gap Band. The Time. Robert Palmer. Hall & Oates. Cameo: These are just a few of the names that enter the brain when immersed in the slick, ’80′s-era White boy funk/ R&B of 
Ever wondered how Passion Pit’s
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