[mp3]http://www.tgrec.com/media/2928.mp3[/mp3]
Emp. Man’s Blues
From The For Carnation
You are getting very, very sleepy. You’re in a comfortable place. You can see fluffy white clouds floating through a sea of azure blue. You’re laying on your back in a field of soft grass. There’s a storm on the horizon. It looks dangerous, but it’s far away. How does the storm make you feel?
…
Good. Good. Now, take a deep breath. As you exhale, I want you to imagine you are breathing away your worries. You won’t be able to breathe them all away, only a portion.
…
Good. Good. Now, tell me about one of the worries that was left behind.
…
Interesting…
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[mp3]http://musicforsteve.com/music/JUNIOR_BOYS_InTheMorning.mp3[/mp3]
So This is Goodbye
Realeased 22 August 2006
Must Own
It’s hard to dislike this album. Nie unto impossible, I’d say. Everyone at work refers to this album as the “bleepity blopity music” and that’s actually a pretty accurate description. The music consists almost exclusively of engineered beats and vocals. Normally a recipe for disaster, Junior Boys have managed somehow to create a near perfect album. More than being expertly produced, they have created an album that is easy to listen to. There is no need to skip a single track.
So This is Goodbye is also something of an enigma. All at once the album sounds retro, modern, and way ahead of its time. There is nothig inherently new offered by this album, the genius is in the presentation. If I were feeling more adventurous, I would use words like “sensual,” “organic,” and “tranquil.”
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The Crane Wife
Released 3 October 2006
Must Own
It’s difficult to write music that people will like. It’s harder still to write bold music with broad appeal. But it’s nearly impossible to create an album that will be considered a “classic.” Relatively few artists have managed to climb this Mt. Everest of musical accomplishments and we all recognize the names of those who have: the Beatles, the Beach Boys, Nirvana, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Dr. Dre, Michael Jackson, OutKast, U2, Radiohead… There is a special place in music history reserved for these albums and always room in our CD collection.
Well, make room for one more.
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[mp3]http://www.musicforsteve.com/music/TV_ON_THE_RADIO_wolf-like-me.mp3[/mp3]
Wolf Like Me
From Return to Cookie Mountain
TV On The Radio makes music that is its own genre. Any number of hyphenated genres almost work. Soul-Punk. Indie-Funk. Alt-Fusion. Urban-New-Wave. Not only do these attempted definitions miss the mark by miles, they simply can’t do justice to the music itself. Nobody makes music like this. What’s more, nobody has ever tried. TVOTR have mastered the art of whatever it is they are trying to do. Welcome to the age of [nameless genre].
TV On the Radio makes music that is initially hard to listen to, possibly difficult to understand, and instantly easy to love. Mark my words when I tell you that this album will appear in almost every Top Ten list as the year comes to a close.
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[mp3]http://spintonic.net/audio/spintoband/brownboxes.mp3[/mp3]
Brown Boxes
From Nice and Nicely Done
Any band willing to use a chorus of kazoos as the center peice of a song meant for radio play deserves to be famous.
Currently, the Wikipedia entry for this band reads in its entirety:
The Spinto Band is a rock band from Wilmington, Delaware.
Period. That’s amazingly sparce for a band that has been recording and touring since 1997, but trust me when I tell you it will not stay sparce for long. The Spinto Band couldn’t have picked a better year to release Brown Boxes and their latest single Oh Mandy (video below the fold). With clear similarities to bands like Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, the Shins, and the Decemberists, both the indie scene and the music industry at large are not only ready for the Spinto Band, they’re downright begging for it.
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[mp3]http://www.musicforsteve.com/music/muhammadwalks.mp3[/mp3]
Muhammad Walks
Remix of Jesus Walks originally by Kanye West
You,
every bee, bird and tree,
he, her, and me…
We virtually
on the same boat
with the same goats
on the same sea.
Trying to stay afloat
and put the devil in a yolk
with a couple of God’s quotes.
I hope.
Abraham talked,
Muhammad talked,
and Moses split the sea.
(Jesus walks with me)
I ain’t tryin to profit of the prophet so this one here’s for free.
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[mp3]http://www.musicforsteve.com/music/silversun_pickups_lazy_eye.mp3[/mp3]
Lazy Eye
From Carnavas
Most of the reviews of Silversun Pickups will compare them to the Smashing Pumpkins, which is fair. Personally, I’m reminded more of My Bloody Valentine. But there’s another comparision that I find much, much more intriguing. Especially with Carnavas, it’s the subtle similarity to Lift to Experience that grabs my attention. It’s not so much that they sound like Lift to Experience, so much as they feel like Lift to Experience. Hovering somewhere between hope and sadness, with just a touch of anger. Simultaniously hard and soft. A constant slow build that takes several minutes to deliver and when it finally releases its energy, you are left wanting more. A lot more.
The critic’s insistence on comparing Silversun Pickups to Smashing Pumpkins means that this may be one of the most under-rated albums of the year.
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[mp3]http://www.thehellerfamily.org/video/Muse-Invincible.mp3[/mp3]
Invincible
From Black Holes and Revelations
I’ll be honest, I have no idea why I got this album. I only heard one track on the radio, and I thought it was pretty cool, but not cool enough (at the time) to invest the time and effort into an entire album. But I got it. And I’ve made a remarkable discovery. Muse are what Radiohead could have been had they not gone lame after OK Computer. I can already hear the cries now, “Heretic! Traitor! Radiohead are as good as they’ve ever been!!!” Nope. You’re all either liars or really fooling yourselves. Radiohead took a steep downward spiral not long after discovering modular synths. And it was a steep spiral. I will grant you that both Kid A and Amnesiac had some really cool sounds, but those albums were nothing compared to their earlier genius. I thought that I was forever going to be yearning for the “old days”. And then I heard this song.
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[mp3]http://www.southernlord.com/press/sunnblackone/images/SUNN_It_Took_The%20Night.mp3[/mp3]
It Took The Night To Believe
From Black One
This album isn’t so much dark as it is totally devoid of any light of any kind whatsoever. You can officially mark the end of metal getting harder, louder, and faster. Black One sets the new gold standard in metal. Or should that be black standard? And, come to think of it, I’m not even sure this qualifies as “metal” at all. sunn 0))) (pronounced “sun“) manages instead to make music that simply feels like darkness itself. This is, without question, the most frightening album I have ever heard.
Black One is what dying in space sounds like.
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[mp3]http://www.tapesntapes.com/Cowbell.mp3[/mp3]
Cowbell
From The Loon
Tapes n’ Tapes is remarkable for being thoroughly unremarkable. Now if you’re a Tapes fans, before you get in a tizzy, let me explain myself.
There has been a serious influx of extremely complex music as of late. From the Decemberists to TV on the Radio, the trend is towards bigger, longer, or insanely produced songs. Even the Killers, who are already mega-famous, chose to create an epic, Springsteen-esque, arena-rock album for their sophomore effort. These days, the bigger, the better. Even more subtle bands like the Animal Collective or Sigur Rós (can I get away with calling Sigur Rós “subtle”…?) are hitting it big on big (in their cases, long and complex). I literally can’t imagine how these bands practice without an arena or a recording studio.
That is simply not the case for Tapes n’ Tapes. I can picture them perfectly fine plugging in their old and well-used guitars into older and just-plain-used amps, sitting around the garage, and writing an entire album. That’s beautiful.
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Music for Steve
