There were a lot of jams this month! Here are the ones you should pay for with money and what I wrote about them.
Twin Sister – In Heaven | REVIEW
Laura Marling – A Creature I Don’t Know | CONCERT REVIEW)
St. Vincent – Strange Mercy (REVIEW | I still have mixed feelings here, but the first half is the best side of the year)
Wilco – The Whole Love (Drowned in Sound feature)
Jens Lekman – An Argument With Myself EP (ALL POSTS)
Also notable: Ariel Pink’s new single, Sleeping Bags’ debut LP, Geoffrey O’Connor’s solo debut. Didn’t get to the Stepkids, Apparat, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah or the Rapture (that came out, right?). Let’s not talk about Girls.
The weakness of Twin Sister’s Color Your Life, the 2010 EP that announced the Long Island group as a leader of last year’s female-fronted dream-pop pillow-explosion, was simple: too many of its songs were as nonsensically directionless as a half-remembered journey into slumberland. The compact pop of In Heaven, the band’s debut album, seems to have taken my advice. Only a handful of the new tracks break the four-minute mark; at 4:43, the Talking Heads funk of “Bad Street” is practically an Homerian epic. The messy production that characterized the group’s self-released EPs is gone as well, swabbed away by Domino Records dollars and Twin Sister’s own newfound goals.
There’s not a wasted moment in In Heaven, which balances textbook pop songwriting with the surrealist feel of ’90s space-pop; Broadcast and Stereolab are obvious touchstones for the band’s sonic choices, though more recent, lesser-known acts (forgotten ’00s groups Noise for Pretend and AK-MOMO) make themselves felt, too. “Daniel,” a quiet drizzle of drum machines and molasses-slow New Age synths announces the album’s unfrilled palette; “Stop” expands with the crackle of vinyl-soundtrack strings and a live drummer’s genuine groove. “I keep telling myself to stop,” Eric Cardona and Andrea Estella sing, but why would she want to? The album spends the rest of its run-time considering leaving the bedroom for the dance floor and gets stuck wonderfully in the middle. As the recurring “ha-ha!” of Gene Ciampi” shows, it’s not afraid to be silly; it wouldn’t surprise me if “Saturday Sunday” was a secret homage to Rebecca Black’s “Friday.” Throughout, Estella pokes and prods and twists and knots up cherries: “Saturday Sunday” is “Sat-uh-day Suhhhn-day,” “Feeling, with you” is “fee-lan, weeth yuu.” (With the similar performances of the upcoming North Highlands album in mind, maybe this is a previously undiscovered New York accent.)
As Steely Dan once did, she plays just what she feels. It’s a huge step forward for a band who previously showed only flashes of greatness, and for synthesizer true believers, In Heaven is an album that’s all the way there. For what it’s worth: this would probably be a good record to make love to if you were a paisley-clad British secret agent.
You can certainly file Sundress in the embarrassingly large “2k11 bands with summer-related noun-based names” folder, but don’t put them too far back: “Derelict,” with its rush of electric guitars and an actual attempts at coherent pop structure and dynamics, will keep you pressing play. The track draws a lot on Grizzly Bear’s haunting distance, almost to a fault, at least until the huge, wonderful Britpop chorus. Then all’s well, though the song’s probably still too bleak for end-of-season barbeques — summer name or not.
Attendees at our Waynestock unofficial SXSW party earlier this year got an advance preview of ARMS’ exuberant Summer Skills, but here’s the first studio taste: “Fleeced,” a tense rocker that comes in and out of focus like your favorite Vimeo clip. The album’s due Nov. 9; if it’s not the best indie-rock album of the month, I’ll eat my laptop.
The band also covered the Sun Kil Moon classic “Carry Me Ohio” for the Voice Project, adding a drifting keyboard to the harrowing melody. Watch it below. Read the rest of this entry »
Monday: Big Moves wrap up their residency at the Bootleg. I caught them last week; expect them to go out with a bang. Ben Folds plays a last-minute show at Bardot.
Tuesday: Country legend Emmylou Harris plays the Greek Theatre. Bring a hankie. More after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »
Download an Olivia Tremor Control bootleg: NPR recorded the reunited psych-pop heroes at New York club Le Poisson Rogue this week. The mix is messy and the band’s not getting any younger, but it sounds better than their FYF set. [NPR]
Wilco played a one-hour set for Letterman: You can watch it online. I also interviewed the band for Drowned in Sound. [NY Magazine]
Guided by Voices recording reunion album: The classic lineup, which were as great as you’d want them to be at FYF, will release Let’s Go Eat the Factory on New Year’s Day. [Stereogum]
R.E.M. break up: The group’s very good Collapse Into Now will be its last. I have a few more thoughts on Tumblr. [RawkTumblr]
Ravens & Chimes cover Echo and the Bunnymen for Cokemachineglow: It sounds like this. The New York band’s long-awaited sophomore album, Holiday Life, is coming out at some point this winter. [Cokemachineglow]
There were a lot of jams this month! Here are the ones you should pay for with money and what I wrote about them.
The weakness of 
You can certainly file Sundress in the embarrassingly large “2k11 bands with summer-related noun-based names” folder, but don’t put them too far back: “Derelict,” with its rush of electric guitars and an actual attempts at coherent pop structure and dynamics, will keep you pressing play. The track draws a lot on Grizzly Bear’s haunting distance, almost to a fault, at least until the huge, wonderful Britpop chorus. Then all’s well, though the song’s probably still too bleak for end-of-season barbeques — summer name or not. 
