Poliça • Dark Star

Following through on our promise to bring you new acts playing Austin’s coming South by Southwest music festival, today we’re shining the calm, blue spotlight on the chilled out sounds of Minneapolis’ Poliça. Reader, if you’ve been paying attention over the years, you may have noticed bands we like tend to fall into certain categories, often being strung together by certain traits or characteristic sounds. Poliça—with it’s musical stage set firmly in soulful sounds accented by glitchy electronics but ever-interested in being pleasing to the ear—definitely fits into our ‘stuff we like’ file folder. The fact that they have two drummers? Icing on the cake.

The band’s still young, but it draws from some well-established mid-western musical talent, being the brainchild of vocalist Channy Leaneagh and producer Ryan Olson, who first worked together with Minneapolis’ Gayngs. That’s a little less than remarkable given than pretty much every Minneapolis artist you’ve ever heard of was part of Gayngs at one point (Justin Vernon of Bon Iver, Har Mar Superstar…probably Prince). But the music the two now produce—along with drummers Ben Ivascu and Drew Christopherson and bass player Chris Bierdan—is much more remarkable, building song structures that seem to rely on icicle-like keyboards strokes and soft but ever-present click-clacking percussion to allow Leaneaugh’s winding, climbing voice room to play and explore.

See what we mean for yourself—check out this week’s Song, “Dark Star,” from Poliça’s debut, Give You the Ghost, out next Tuesday. Which you might notice is Valentine’s Day. And yes, Reader, these are pretty make-out-worthy tracks. You can also watch Leaneagh + co. perform another stand-out track—”Wandering Star”—for The Current and, if you like their stuff, head on over to RCRD LBL to download their track, “Lay Your Cards Out,” featuring Bon Iver’s Mike Noyce. Pre-order the album at Poliça’s site.

Of Monsters and Men • Little Talks

As announced last week, in anticipation of our first ever trip to South by Southwest in Austin (holla), we’ll be featuring new musical acts set to play the festival every week until we head down this March. This week, we bring you the six-piece indie folk group, Of Monsters and Men, from Iceland. Some have called them “the new Arcade Fire” (no pressure, guys), but, with their group vocals, rootsy instrumentation, and down-to-earth styling, they remind us a bit more of Seattle’s The Head and the Heart. In an awesome way. Maybe with Björk singing. But enough with the comparisons—point being, we like these guys, and we like this week’s Song, “Little Talks,” from their debut EP, Into the Woods. The full-length, My Head is Animal, is due out in the states soon via Universal Music Group. Below, you can also check them out performing the rather rocking song, “Six Weeks,” live for KEXP.

Edit (2.2.12): Of Monsters and Men just released a video for “Little Talks” full of monsters, men, and some very cool, Icelandic style art battle scenes. Check it out below.

Courtney Love • Uncrushworthy
This past Monday, we profiled a new band out of England named Big Deal. Really, if you didn’t listen to them then, you should now—they’re great. But, in writing, we also touched on our musical roots in the early nineties indie pop scene and how that seemed to have shaped not only our current musical tastes, but our lives to a certain extent. We met so many people in those formative years through this framework of independent music that, itself, was obviously built on these inherent, basic beliefs—freedom and self-reliance and community and self-expression and many of the aspects of what we now consider to be a life well-lived; ideas that we ended up building our lives around. So this music that shaped who we became, as it turns out, is obviously something that remains close to our hearts to this day.

We also mentioned Monday that said regular post—The Song—was traditionally more keen on being inspired by the past via new musical finds, less so in being rooted in history or acting as a retrospective itself.

Tonight’s post, however, has no such qualms with nostalgia. Tonight, we give you—Seven Inch Sunday. I know: “A post on the WEEKEND‽ WHA‽” But we’re suckers for alliteration. Don’t expect these to be too regular, Reader—it is the day of rest, after all. But we did happen to recently acquire a new turntable in the office with the ability to record in stereo and then output to MP3s, so we we’d take this opportunity to share a little glimpse of our musical past.

Lois Maffeo is one of those artists whose talent was greatly admired among a small community, but whose work never reached nearly as many ears as it should have, in my humble opinion. Though she had an extensive solo career and many (some might say) more musically mature or complex songs down the road, I was always enamored with her early work with drummer and Yo Yo Studio founder, Pat Maley, under the somewhat tricky moniker, Courtney Love. Back in the day, the name was evidently quite the controversy, with actual Courtney Love reportedly attacking K Records‘ Calvin Johnson for releasing records under her (not real) name and conflicting accounts of Lois and Courtney coming up with the name together vs. Lois stealing Courtney’s diary and finding it there. Regardless, put me down for Team Lois.

Better Courtney Love (pictured above) existed only from 1989 to 1991, but in that time they released 3 seven inches, appeared on about one million compilations, and set the groundwork for a scene that was just emerging in Olympia and across the country. Their 1990 debut, also pictured above, was Uncrushworthy, a simple, lovely 45 featuring four indie pop staples—”Uncrushworthy,” “Sunny Day,” “Motorcycle Boy,” and “The 2nd Most Beautiful Girl in the World.” We’ve got the first and last ones for you here (my favorites), but we strongly encourage you to check out Lois’ extensive musical career if you’re unfamiliar. And, better still, she’ll be playing one of the Brooklyn Chickfactor we mentioned on Monday. It’s sold out, but maybe you can sneak in. Or just be nearby, absorbing the massive indie-radiation emanating from the Bell House that night.

Courtney Love • The 2nd Most Beautiful Girl in the World

Big Deal • Chair

Reader, in the early nineties, back when many of us were just getting our post-Dave-Kendall-120 Minutes footing on the musical landscape and ‘alternative’ gave way to ‘indie,’ the cute little genre of indie pop—with it’s tiny guitar hooks, intimate, unassuming vocals, and sometimes good, sometimes a-million-miles-from-good rhythm sections—quietly rocked across America. Artists like Lois, Small Factory, The Softies, Tsunami, and a hundred others, along with labels like K Records, Simple Machines, and Teen Beat kept us made our lives a little lighter and made us enthused to be a part of tiny, self-reliant world of music.

A couple weeks ago, it was announced that chickfactor—the nineties indie pop zine and now Web zine—would be celebrating its 20-year anniversary with “five blissful nights of sparkling indie pop on the Northeast Corridor of the USA (three in NY; two in DC) including the first shows in years by Black Tambourine, Small Factory, Pipas, The Aislers Set, A Girl Called Eddy, The Softies, The Lois Plus, The Legendary Jim Ruiz Group and Fan Modine and rare performances from such pop luminaries as Stevie Jackson (Belle + Sebastian), Frankie Rose, Lilys, Lorelei, Dot Dash, Versus, Bridget St John and Honey Bunch.” 

Needless to say, those of us who consider ourselves nineties indie pop nerds wet our oversized second-hand corduroys. Two of the Brooklyn shows sold out pretty quickly, but as of writing, the third seems to have some tickets left, and, again, as of writing, I think the DC-area tickets have yet to go on sale. We’ll be excited to see some familiar faces and hear a little bit of the music that we grew into adulthood with at those shows this April. 

With The Song (formerly Music Monday—what…? It’s bird-themed!), we’ve always had in-mind that we’d very much be forward-looking, attempting to keep pace with the sometimes-hectic pace of the musical creative culture of the day. So, rather than post an old Retsin song and dwell on the past—which, we admit, is fun—we’re instead writing today about a band the reminds us about all the good things from this early age of indie pop and twee.

England’s Big Deal spin simple, intimate stories with their songs that harken back—for me—to Ida’s debut, when it was just Dan Littleton, Elizabeth Mitchell, a couple guitars, and a whole lotta earnest emotion. It’s bright and fuzzy and beautiful and touches on all the sweet little elements that lit the indie fire in our hearts in the first place, back when we’d read lyrics on the bedroom floor and whiled the days away learning new guitar chords and making falafel from a box mix.

The duo—comprised of Londoner, Alice Costelloe and native Californian, Kacey Underwood—released their debut on Mute in Europe late last year and it’s due to hit state-side tomorrow. In the meantime, check out, “Chair,” a catchy bedroom pop gem, and their summertime dream of a video for Distant Neighbor. The band will also be hitting up this year’s SXSW festival, as will The Chain Gang of 1974 + The Big Pink, who we profiled over the past few weeks, as will every other band we profile with The Song until we jet on down to Austin to see in person all one million of the bands playing SXSW this year. Here’s hoping they have vegan BBQ! 

And for anyone who doesn’t like the band name, Big Deal, they evidently were first going to be called Hard Cheese. So there’s that. Also, yes, I kind of have that dude’s haircut.

The Big Pink • Stay Gold

British electro duo, The Big Pink, first hit the scene back in 2007 with some high-demand seven inches and singles, followed by a proper full-length on the venerable label, 4AD. While critically well-recieved, the 2009 release, A Brief History of Love, didn’t produce a lot that I could personally latch on to. Plenty of good songs and a nice overall sound, but nothing that blew me away or made me fee like I had to hear more.

But if the first single from their sophomore effort, Future This (out in the states tomorrow), is any indication of the album as a whole, sign me up for being blown away. The single, this week’s Song from said album, “Stay Gold,” seems like a great way to start off and thus counteract a seemingly low-motivation week. In fact, it seems like a great way to start off a dance party. Man. I hope this week’s a dance party.

Check it out and, if you like it, sign up for their newsletter for a free download of the song’s AraabMUZIK Remix. And take a look at their recent 4AD live session below.

The Log.OS • Cancerous

It’s been a little while since we, the Interweb, has had a strange, mysterious band to get all abuzz over. Sure, there was Blank Dogs, back in 2007, but that was four years ago and they’ve since proved to be just another super-prolific Brooklyn band influenced by early new wave. And then there was smoothly mysterious debut, last year, of The Weeknd—AKA,  Canada’s Abel Tesfaye. But after copious (well-deserved) accolades, appearances on Drake’s release, and even some love from the final season of Entourage, Mr. Tesfaye isn’t exactly the music world’s Deep Throat (PS—click that link and visit The Weeknd’s site to download all of Tesfaye’s release free, including the one he just put out Dec. 21—tré impressionnant).

So we’re back to square one in 2012, I guess. No weird, unaccounted for creative endeavors here it seems. I guess we’ll…BUT WAIT! What’s that? There’s a brand new ‘band’ that no one can find any solid ‘pictures’ of and their ‘site’ is just a weird jumble of images that gives away their album of trippy soul for free‽ AND they spell their name all fucked-up like‽‽ Okay. Now we’re talking.

We seriously know little to nothing about The Log.OS other than it seems to be a project from producer/musician/beat-deconstructor/jewelry-designer(?), Ken Barrientos who pulls in some breathy, ethereal vocals from Nikko Gray (note—fine example of a simple, pretty site) and Iman Omari (note—auto-play audio…always a bad idea). And that the resulting music paints a pretty chilled-out, glitched-out soundscape of beautifully done new soul. Give his/their song, “Cancerous,” a listen to see what we mean. And if you like it (note—you will), visit his/their site to download the whole thing. For free. Beware though—said site with free download is rife with crazy pop-up ads that, while benign, are still annoying.

The Chain Gang of 1974 • Undercover
Happy new year, Reader! We hope you, like us, are super-psyched for this year of excitingly inevitable armageddon. I mean, think about it, all those things that usually stress you out—Am I making enough money? Should I leave New York, work at a car dealership, and buy a house, so I’m successful like all those high school friends from Facebook? Did I feed the cat today?—TOTALLY don’t matter.

Okay, that last one matters. We’d get an earful when we got home if Mr. McVittes missed a meal. But point being, MANY things we usually worry about day-to-day will certainly not worry us this year because, according to Nostradamus, countless calendar-making Mayans, and our friend Justin’s kinda nutso hippy aunts, it won’t matter much if we pass gas during pilates class come year-end. Assuming we get to year-end. And no, we’ve never passed gas during pilates class. What do you think we are, MONSTERS‽

All that in mind, why not start the year of with some feel-good electro dance tunes? We first heard LA by way of Denver by way of Hawaii by way of San Jose band, The Chain Gang of 1974 (AKA, songwriter Kamtin Mohager) over the summer of cataclysm-less 2011 and quickly filed them/him away in the Notable Not Phenomenal file in our ears’ filing cabinet. Really good stuff, but it didn’t stand out much for us. This week’s Song of the Week, though, “Undercover,” has essentially been on constant repeat in our office/home/rental cars over the past couple months. There’s definitely some significant 80’s influence there with the vocals and synths, but it’s inventive and substantial enough to make it far from redundant. Not sure if it’ll play us out to the end of days, but it’s holdin’ up pretty well so far! Check it out. And give more of his latest album, Wayward Fire, a listen over at the band’s site, where you can also join up on their mailing list fro another free single.

Sharon Van Etten • Serpents

As we plunge full-throttle into the blurring race of the holiday season—with it’s maddening last-minute sales and backwards-math shipping exercises and the scent of the inevitable biting cold to come on the fringes of the air around us—we’re reminded that, before we know it, we’re going to be free-falling straight over the edge of this year and straight into next. And this is not any new year, mind you, this is the year Ragnarök that’s knocking on our door—when the gods will rock the heavens with their divine battle and likely take the rest of us with them. Or so the Mayans/Norwegians/crazies claim. So what better way to play out the rest of the year than with some epic-sounding tunes. We’ve got three for you today—because, you know, we’re calling it quits for the year soon here—the first of which is from Brooklyn’s own Sharon Van Etten. Van Etten’s come highly recommended to us in the past—first by our friend, John, and then, in interview, by resident awesome guy, Matt Pond—and last year’s EP (appropriately entitled, Epic) fell far from disappointing. This new track, “Serpents,” from her coming February debut with Jagjaguwar, promises even more growth for the already talented artist. Too bad we’ll only have, like, ten months at best to enjoy it….

Katie Herzig • Make A Noise
Next up, Nashville-based artists, Katie Herzig, who, while very “main-stream” sounding, writes and performs pop-crush-worthy songs that you’ll very likely be hearing in many a movie and/or commercial. In addition to this sweeping, string-filled little number, you can preview her whole 2011 album, The Waking Sleep, over at her site, where you can also download an additional free track, the fit-for-a-Clueless-remake “Free My Mind.”

LP “Into The Wild (Mix)” by LP Rock
Last up, we’ve got a track from the elusively named LA artist, LP (try Googling that). We’ll admit it—we first heard this track on a Citi Bank commercial. And yes, we’re still very upset about that letter we got from them telling us that they’d start changing us a crazy fee per account that didn’t have at least $6000 in it (we have three personal accounts). But we’re putting that aside for right now, because we totally dig this song. Again, rather mainstream as compared to our usual tastes, but undeniably epic and engaging. Plus that’s a pretty kick-ass whistling melody.

So, bring it soon-to-be-embattled  deities. We’ve got a soundtrack worthy of worst.

Miracles of Modern Science • Luminol

A few years ago, Katie and I made the treacherous, cross-Brooklyn trip to Williamsburg to seek out a cramped, dank, basement-like space called Death by Audio, where PBR was sold out of a closet and bands crowded at the front of a narrow room held up by a rickety stage, amplified by a PA system that seemed to have been made on a dare. By raccoons. The band we came to see was the much-buzzed about London-based Micachu + the Shapes. Before they took to ramshackle stage, though, we were presented with a strange quintet of lanky young men dressed head-to-toe in silver space suits standing behind a small colony of classical stringed instruments. Worried at what sound would follow such a strange staging, their songs not only pleasantly surprised us, they downright floored us.

Said strange purveyors of sound were a fledgling version of Miracles of Modern Science, a band now based in Brooklyn that takes melodic rock and pushes it through a filter of classical strings and driving drums to produce uniquely appealing pop. We’ve kept track of MoMS since seeing them live for the first time and have been anticipating with bated breath their debut full-length—Dog Year—out tomorrow. Last week, we got a chance to talk with band founders Evan Younger (double bass + lead vocals—foreground, middle above) and Josh Hirshfeld (mandolin + vocals, background, second form the left) about the new album, sweaty silver space suits, and why they put down their guitars and picked up mandolins and violins and cellos and and and….

Listen to our conversation below, download this week’s Song of the Week—their single, “Luminol”—above, and, finally, stream the entirety of Dog Year over at the band’s bandcamp site, where you can also order album. Oh, and if you’re in NYC, don’t forget to stop by the album release party at Piano’s tomorrow night.

kindness of ravens Interview with Miracles of Modern Science

Elite Gymnastics • o m a m o r i

First off, yes, that is kind of a nast picture. Mmmmm—dude-stubble pressed against glass. But this week’s Song of the Week is anti-nast (totally calling that as a new genre). Besides making a habit of passing out on scanner beds, Minneapolis duo, Elite Gymnastics also makes a habit of creating some lovely, beat-driven, blissed out snowy beach music (aka—”anti-nast”). We first heard them over at ohmyrockness a while back and can’t stop going back fro more. Check out the Song of the Week, “o m a m o r i,” and their track “l i t t l e t h i n g s” (think something’s up with their computer’s keyboard) below. You can also grab their debut, japanese-looking full-length, Ruin, on green vinyl over at Big Cartel or the digital version on the iTunes.

l i t t l e t h i n g s by elite gymnastics