Another excellent track from Vancouver’s sublimely great orchestral pop band The Ruffled Feathers (previously). There’s something about the harmony between their use of piano and the female’s ethereal voice. And oh boy, when that trumpet kicks in, yowzahs. The hardest thing in music is writing a well structured pop song that is also interesting and [...]
Excuse me, but does being profiled by the New York Times mean that Odd Future, and especially Tyler, The Creator mean they are no longer underground? I need Carles to help me figure this one out. In real life Tyler Okonma is 20 years old, 6 feet 2 inches tall, lanky and sinewy and irrepressibly [...]
Here’s Portland’s Typhoon this past weekend performing “The Honest Truth” off their new EP, A New Kind of House, at Salem’s Cherry City Music Festival. It’s not the best quality, sound-wise, but man does this video give me the chills. Typhoon is really the next great orchestral/chamber pop band — practicing an indie revivalism more fitting [...]
The first single off of Typhoon’s new album (it’s only a five song EP, clocking in around 25 minutes), A New Kind of House, is a reworking of their song “Mouth of the Cave” from their previous album Hunger and Thirst. It’s been jiggered to sound more like the soaring orchestral pop you expect from [...]
There is something of a disconnect about the thought of Portland punk rock band The Thermals swinging by George Lopez’s late night show for a performance of “I Don’t Believe You” from their 2010 album Personal Life. No, seriously. I get why Hutch and Kathy would agree to play, because exposure and all that is [...]
Fleet Foxes have a new record coming out, the follow-up to their highly successful debut, May 3rd. The album and first single is titled “Helplessness Blues.” The song is very downbeat lyrically — the type of emotional experience lots of my generation go through when they realize, “holy shit, you mean I’m not special? I’m [...]
On the heels of learning that G. Love’s new album would be produced by The Avett Brothers we’re given a first listen to lead single “Fixin’ to Die.” And well, it’s certainly different from what we’ve heard from him in the past. It’s reminiscent of his folky album closers, which tend to be his best [...]
It’s the first official single from Dre’s long-anticipated (hip-hop’s Chinese Democracy, if you will) Detox. The song isn’t bad, if underwhelming for the expectation. Which probably just helps prove the correllary — the longer you delay an album, the more people will just think it’s underwhelming (it took you this long to release this?). It’s [...]
“We had this expectation that the simpler songs would mean the sessions would be like a vacation,” he says. “But it was real work. And it rained a lot on top of it. No heat, no indoor plumbing, so if you had to go pee, you had put on your Wellies and go to a [...]
The first single off The Apollo Kids, set for December 14th. It’s nice to have Ghost back, not that I didn’t enjoy his last R&B-focused effort Ghostdini: Wizard of Poetry in Emerald City, but it was lacking. Here he’s dropping his signature flow adorned with a Motown chorus sample and driving horn section. Well done. [via [...]
