Once a year, I realize what day it is and my eyes begin to well up. No musician has ever meant as much to me as Elliott Smith; I don’t imagine any ever will. We lost one of the best songwriters ever eight years ago, but more than that, we lost a son, a brother, a lover, a friend — a person who needed help and didn’t get it. Don’t let the people you care for go down this road.
Here’s Elliott singing “The Biggest Lie,” from his flawless, self-titled sophomore album, with the Softies’ Rose Melberg. You can find a full appreciation for him over at Rawkblog’s dedicated Elliott Smith page, which includes links to concert bootlegs, unreleased material and his complete live covers, among others.
The great unspoken critique of the 2011 music scene is how much anger, hype and ink has been spilled upon such harmless music. Don’t we have anything better to talk about? Nope: the most groused-over artist of the last month has been Lana Del Rey, a likable enough chanteuse whose most notable act has been to allegedly imitate Heidi Montag. Artistically, there’s nearly nothing to separate her from artists like Lia Ices or Little Scream, whose “The Heron and the Fox” tops Del Rey’s “Video Games” by a harmonized hair; where are the GQ interviews and Hipster Runoff muck-rackings for them? Before her, Girls earned a staggering 9.3 from Pitchfork for an album that could’ve been released alongside this year’s raft of Buddy Holly tributes without anyone noticing. Opinions of even the most average act have been pushed to nose-bleed extremes, and not for any musical reasons; the middle has become where the cultural capital of buzz bands and the people who care about them goes to die. It’s equally damning that the year’s other most polarizing act — snot-nosed L.A. rap collective Odd Future — makes records so far removed from the indie twittersphere’s day-to-day listening habits that there’s no way to account for them except to admit that we needed something to argue about because indie rock stopped trying. Where’s this year’s Moon and Antarctica or Kid A or, hell, Illinois or Bitte Orca? Destroyer’s Kaputt comes closest, though it’s less ambitious than it is wonderfully out-of-character.
Real Estate’s Days is not that record. It’s all the more successful for not wanting to be. Read the rest of this entry »
The Clientele/Amor de Dias frontman Alasdair MacLean directed this one himself, a much-needed reminder that dude was evoking sepia tones and faded photographs while your favorite chillwave band was taking high school bong hits. The song, as expected, is quietly lovely.
Just when you think you know L.A.’s Stone Darling, they surprise you. Are the band the blue-eyed funk masters of their “Can You Get To That” cover? Are they the straight-ahead fuzz rockers of “I Stopped Missing You Today”? Or something else entirely? “Baby Come Home” finds them exploring the limits of garage rock, blanketing tom-tom percussion and a distorted major-key guitar riff with twangy harmonies and lyrics straight from the country-rock songbook. It’s a striking combination — if anyone’s ever done Jesus and Mary Chain versions of Dolly Parton songs, I have yet to hear them, but this is a nice start.
Summer Fiction, one of last year’s finest folk-pop discoveries, has released the band’s very best song, “By the Sea,” as a free single. (You’ll remember the track from my Best of 2010 list.) It comes along with “Tell Me Once, Tell Me Twice,” a charming retro-rocker perfect for your next sock-hop.
Bombay Bicycle Club were a 2009 Rawkblog band to watch, though I stopped checking in with them after a misguided sophomore album. The band’s cover of Lana Del Rey’s “Video Games,” one of the year’s best ballads, finds them improving on the aimless folk of LP2 without bursting into the punk edginess of their debut. (Re: Del Rey, if you’re interested in the “controversy,” you may actually watch The Colbert Report for your political opinions. Grow up.)
I think I’ve made it pretty clear that Captured Tracks is my favorite label of the year. With ’80s-inspired releases from Minks, Craft Spells, Beach Fossils, Blouse, etc., they’ve pretty much done no wrong for months now. I asked label head (and Blank Dogs frontman) Mike Sniper if he’d put together a few rare ’80s jams for us and he delivered like 1997 Karl Malone. Hear his picks after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »
The Miracals, if you haven’t heard yet, are the Smiles, one of L.A.’s best-kept indie-pop secrets. After a quickie name-change (lawsuits, amirite), they’re back with a sophomore EP led by and titled after “Give Me a Chance,” an absolute jam that recalls both their formative influences (Vampire Weekend) and distinguished classics (um, the Beatles). Listen close for a Sam Cooke reference.
(Hear more Miracals on Bandcamp; the EP’s due Nov. 7)
The great unspoken critique of the 2011 music scene is how much anger, hype and ink has been spilled upon such harmless music. Don’t we have anything better to talk about? Nope: the most groused-over artist of the last month has been Lana Del Rey, a likable enough chanteuse whose most notable act has been to allegedly imitate Heidi Montag. Artistically, there’s nearly nothing to separate her from artists like Lia Ices or Little Scream, whose “The Heron and the Fox” tops Del Rey’s “Video Games” by a harmonized hair; where are the GQ interviews and Hipster Runoff muck-rackings for them? Before her, Girls earned a staggering 9.3 from Pitchfork for an album that could’ve been released alongside this year’s raft of Buddy Holly tributes without anyone noticing. Opinions of even the most average act have been pushed to nose-bleed extremes, and not for any musical reasons; the middle has become where the cultural capital of buzz bands and the people who care about them goes to die. It’s equally damning that the year’s other most polarizing act — snot-nosed L.A. rap collective Odd Future — makes records so far removed from the indie twittersphere’s day-to-day listening habits that there’s no way to account for them except to admit that we needed something to argue about because indie rock stopped trying. Where’s this year’s Moon and Antarctica or Kid A or, hell, Illinois or Bitte Orca? Destroyer’s Kaputt comes closest, though it’s less ambitious than it is wonderfully out-of-character.
