A really good year! The first 40 or so are mega-jams and the latter 38 (Rawkblog loves you, baby) are still jams. I purposefully left out songs by Destroyer because I couldn’t decide, so consider Kaputt represented. You can play the entire page with the handy Ex.fm player in the bottom right corner, stream the playlist on Spotify and Rdio, and download everything after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »
If 2010 was the year of the EP, 2011 was the year of the… not EP. While 7″s and Bandcamp singles haven’t killed the album off just yet, there was no shortage of tasty bite-size release this year. Read the rest of this entry »
In which High Highs continue to remind me of Radiohead (this time, “These Are My Twisted Words”) and continue to be terrific. This is from the group’s SXSW 2011-closing set at the Velveeta Room during the festival’s final moments earlier this year. The group’s debut EP is out now on Small Plates.
Radiohead’s influence has played a definite role in the initial singles of New York’s High Highs, with the homage coming to a head in “Ivy,” the group’s fourth released song and second of 2011. The melody is inches from Radiohead’s “Worrywort,” a warm bath of a song that offered that rarest of Radiohead-y lyrical themes — reassurance — and equally comforting synthesizer tones. “Ivy” exchanges those for acoustic guitars that flicker in and out like a forlorn candle. Combined with the band’s tender, even wounded harmonies, it’s no less than gorgeous. They were, after all, the only band I had to see twice at SXSW. “Ivy” will arrive officially on High Highs’ long-awaited vinyl debut, a self-titled EP due Nov. 22 on the Yvynyl/I Guess I’m Floating-run Small Plates Records. The four-track release will feature the band’s uniformly excellent previous three singles, which you can hear in full on Bandcamp.
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 »
Like High Highs’ “Open Season,” “Horses” focuses on the burgeoning band’s acoustic side, adding the group’s trademark luminous vocals to the rough clatter of acoustic guitar chords. It’s music that’s hard to pinpoint: the gothic undertones of Okkervil River are here, as is the youthful psychedelic drift of Elephant 6, but mostly it sounds like High Highs, a band that’s probably already indie rock’s rookie of the year. They’re playing SXSW all week; maybe we’ll learn if they have more than three songs.
Last year, I posted High Highs’ impressive “Open Season,” a track I said “evokes the Morning Benders ramshackle folk-pop by way of XO-era Elliott Smith.” “Flowers Bloom” shows a different side of the band but deserves the same high praise: exchanging acoustic guitars for static-y drum and synth programming, it’s as gorgeous and forlorn as any of last year’s best-of-’10 dream-pop efforts. What sound the group’s debut album will favor is anyone’s guess, but I can’t wait to hear it. Look for them at SXSW in March.
High Highs – “Flowers Bloom”:mp3 High Highs – “Open Season”:mp3
Like High Highs’ “Open Season,” “Horses” focuses on the burgeoning band’s acoustic side, adding the group’s trademark luminous vocals to the rough clatter of acoustic guitar chords. It’s music that’s hard to pinpoint: the gothic undertones of Okkervil River are here, as is the youthful psychedelic drift of Elephant 6, but mostly it sounds like High Highs, a band that’s probably already indie rock’s rookie of the year. They’re playing SXSW all week; maybe we’ll learn if they have more than three songs.
Last year, I posted High Highs’ impressive 
