Every once in a while, a new act comes around that lands like a nuclear bomb. No matter where you go, you can’t escape them—not that you’d want to.
MGMT was this act. And their debut full-length, Oracular Spectacular was one of those rare records that was as poppy as it was bizarre, as dancy as it was experimental. Tracks from this album appeared on Top 40 radio, TV commercials, and even the most cynical hipster’s year-end list.
It was a groundswell, and rightly so.
Looking back over mewithoutYou’s seven-album discography, it’s all crazy! stands out like a sore thumb.
That’s not severe enough: it stands out like a giant thumb that was swollen to five times its size, painted bright neon, severed, and worn like a hat.
It’s been the subject of debate and controversy among the mewithoutYou fanbase, some disowning it entirely, others calling it their creative peak. But there’s one thing that everyone agrees on: it’s a bit out of place.
But while it makes almost zero sense now, when it’s all crazy! was released, it made all the sense in the world.
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If Destination: Beautiful had convinced detractors that Mae was overly sentimental and pretentious, then The Everglow certainly wasn’t going to change their minds. I mean, it’s a concept album with an accompanying picture book that opens and closes with a narrator explaining itself, for crying out loud.
But for those of us who had bought-in to their first disc, the follow up was a masterful epic that was a definitive work in every sense.
My sophomore year of high school, I found a great indie/emo band called Sky’s the Limit on Interpunk.com (oh, Interpunk…their website has never been updated, btw). I bought their only release, which was only released on a burned CD-R, and I was spellbound by the intricate guitar work, catchy rhythms, and soaring melodies.
So when I discovered Mae on an old Tooth & Nail compilation, I was attracted to them for many of the same reasons. I bought this album, and was amazed to find a Sky’s the Limit song on it. It was only then that I realized that Dave Elkins was the lead singer and principal songwriter for both of them.
Throughout their career, Beach House has consistently written textbook-perfect dream pop. Teen Dream is a bonafide masterpiece. It topped nearly every 2010 year-end list, and with good reason. Bloom was similarly brilliant.
When Depression Cherry dropped in 2015, it hit all of the same notes. But I started wondering if the world needed another Beach House record. Two months later, they released Thank Your Lucky Stars, and the question got louder.
Now that they’ve released their seventh LP, the music world is left pondering this quandary once again.
In college, I frequently visited a French music site called La Blogotheque. The site had a segment called Takeaway Shows, which were videos of independent artists performing stripped down arrangements of their songs.
This project led me to discover a number of my favorite artists, such as Bon Iver, Fleet Foxes, Lykke Li, and Swedish chamber pop maestro Loney Dear.
In 1994, a Seattle hardcore* band called Sunny Day Real Estate released Diary. It was a veritable tour de force of emotional range, led by the otherworldly falsetto of Jeremy Enigk. It lit the underground music scene on fire—it’s even credited by some as the first proper emo album.
Then, as quickly as they had gained prominence, the group broke up. They released one strange, mathy, untitled follow-up, then the group went their separate ways.
A year later, Jeremy released his first solo record. I’m not sure what Sunny Day fans were expecting, but it was not Return of the Frog Queen. Continue reading
Among the masses of hipsterdom, the pantheon of Americana has long been dismissed as “dad rock.” Uncool, out-of-touch, and pedestrian. It’s to be expected: indie rock has always been rooted in a sort of iconoclasm. It’s imbued with a rejection of establishment practices and the conventions of commercial music.
Then, like a bolt of lightning across the night sky, a two-headed beast reached out of Philadelphia and grabbed Dad Rock by the shoulders and pulled it toward itself.
The beast’s heads were Kurt Vile and Adam Granduciel.
Lemme tell you about my friend Jack.
We first met when I moved back to my hometown from Chicago. There wasn’t much of a music scene to speak of, but a few of us saw the potential for a thriving arts community. There were plenty of artists around, but there was very little support for them.
One of those groups was the short-lived Merchant Ships, a post-hardcore act helmed by Jack that somehow managed to gain a huge following on MySpace. The group had already dissolved by the time I met him.
He was still in high school.
I first got into music back in the dial-up days. We didn’t have Spotify or Pandora; the closest thing we had to music streaming was our rich friend’s dad’s satellite radio. If we wanted to hear a specific song, we had to wait an hour or more to download it – yes, just one song. And there was nothing worse than spending hours waiting for a song to download, only for it to suck. Before adding anything to my Limewire queue, I needed assurance that it was gonna be worth it.
I spent hours a day poring over music sites, record label rosters, and liner notes, hoping to find bands that would be worth the download time.