BEST OF 2011: Photos | Live Videos/Bootlegs | Discoveries/Heavy Rotation | EPs/Singles | Songs | Albums

The brightest spot of 2011′s music for me was that I could’ve happily watched handsomely crafted live videos and downloaded radio sessions and bootleg recordings all year and never reached for an actual record. It’s both a tribute to modern technology and a sign that we have a welcome surplus of quality videographers and engineers. Hopefully they keep it up. Here are six essentials. Read the rest of this entry »

As fans of Sweden’s best dream-pop act know, the Radio Dept. catalog is bafflingly hard to track down on vinyl. No longer: Clinging to a Scheme, Pet Grief and Lesser Matters — classics, all — are available in 180 gram vinyl on the Labrador website. Knowing the label, you’ll want to order sooner than later.

Previously: Live: The Radio Dept. at El Rey Theatre, 2.16.11 | Interview: The Radio Dept.

It’s over on NPR for streaming and (!) downloading. In case you were wondering, their Troubadour show last week was pretty much transcendent. [NPR]

The Radio Dept. – “Never Follow Suit”: mp3

Previously: The Radio Dept. – KEXP Session | All Radio Dept. posts

Photo: The Radio Dept. at Coachella 2011 / by David Greenwald

The Radio Dept. at Coachella 2011 / by David Greenwald

Here are my L.A. concert recommendations, short and sweet, for the week. Only things I actually would like to see. On days with multiple listings, they’re in descending order of priority. Click below to add the ongoing calendar to your Google Calendar, iCal, etc. Read the rest of this entry »

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With expectations kindly lowered by opening act Young Prisms, the Radio Dept. took a Los Angeles stage for the first time in history and proceeded to annihilate their set like Galactus devouring a planet. For a too-brief hour, the Swedish act cruised through catalog favorites (a ferocious “Ewan”!) and more recent tracks (“The New Improved Hypocrisy,” “Heaven’s on Fire”) with a minimum of banter. They say drum machines have no soul, but the group had no problem playing passionately over a laptop’s rhythms, their backing tracks melding flawlessly with the live guitar/bass/synth trio. For a critic seeing his favorite working band for the first time, it was pretty much perfect.

By the end, the audience was so dazed, they could barely muster the strength to cheer the band on for an encore — if not, that was the most bafflingly lazy post-set applause I’ve ever seen. The trio came back for a final song, but even with their Coachella set on the horizon, no set list could’ve been long enough.

Previously: Interview: The Radio Dept. | All Radio Dept. posts

Photo by Shiver_Shi

Sweden’s the Radio Dept. are an enigmatic band — and they like it that way. Despite a fervent Internet fan base and routine Hype Machine chart domination, the rough-edged dream-pop group doesn’t have a website and spent the three years leading up to 2010 album of the year Clinging to a Scheme in the studio keeping quiet, releasing the occasional single as planned album release dates came and went. This year, though, the Radio Dept. are ready to make some noise, releasing a two-disc career overview singles collection, playing Los Angeles for the first time in their 10-year history tonight and bringing their synthesizer assault to the Coachella Music Festival in April. I caught up with the band’s Johan Duncanson and Martin Larsson on Skype to discuss their marathon recording process, why it’s good to stay mysterious and collaborating with countryman Jens Lekman. Read the rest of this entry »

In a Skype interview early this morning, the Radio Dept. let slip that they’re heading into the studio to start the follow-up to 2010 album of the year Clinging to a Scheme. “We’re recording,” Martin Larsson said. “Next week, we start.”

This time, however, they’re hoping to avoid missing — or setting — release date deadlines.

“We don’t want to promise anything because that’s what happened the last time,” Johan Duncanson said. “We said to our label that we’re going to have an album finished by July or something in 2007, then they posted it on their website and it took another three years. So we’ll see.”

The group also addressed a long-ago rumored collaboration with fellow Swede Jens Lekman, which could still be in the works.

“I got a virus on my computer, I [had] just started working on some stuff that he sent me,” Duncanson said. “That was back in 2005. I lost the songs and then we’ve never had another go at it. But we’ve been talking about it on and off as recent as just a couple of weeks ago. So we’ll see what happens.”

In the meantime, the band has a new EP, a two-disc singles set, a February L.A. date — the band’s first SoCal show ever — and Coachella to look forward to. Look for my full interview with the band in the weeks to come.

The Radio Dept.’s recent KEXP session captures the band behind 2010′s best album of the year in stripped-down, semi-acoustic mode — the immaculate cocoon of sound that surrounds the Swedish act on record is pulled away, leaving these songs feeling naked and emotionally charged. Let “Heaven’s on Fire” break your heart a bit.

1. Bus: mp3
2. Heaven’s On Fire: mp3
3. Sleeping In: mp3
4. The New Improved Hypocrisy: mp3

The band plays the El Rey on Feb. 16.

Related: The Radio Dept. | Bootlegs Archive

(Via the Radio Dept.)