Bloc Party

BEST SONGS OF THE 2000s // A FAVORITE FROM 5 YEARS AGO

"Banquet"
from the album Silent Alarm
Original release date: March 22, 2005
iTunes



April 5, 2005:
It may fit neatly with the now-sound, but Bloc Party's debut album, Silent Alarm feels more like a modern-day dance-punk standard-bearer than a second-stringer or also-ran. The British band got its first break after singer Kele Okereke blindly sent a demo to Franz Ferdinand's Alex Kapranos; a high-profile opening slot and deafening British buzz followed, coupled with the baggage of constant comparisons. Parallels exist, to be sure, and FF fans should find reason to swivel their hips on Silent Alarm, but if Franz Ferdinand is the nattily dressed, aloof gent at the NME-sponsored party, Bloc Party is the sweaty, dancing kid in a tattered junkshop sport coat sporting a "Britpop is Boring" badge.

A warm-blooded, street-level reaction to more measured, careful, chart-topping pop bombast, Silent Alarm simmers with a poseless passion that fixes the best bits of wiry '70 post-punk to solid songs, not just exercises in rhythm. There's that, too: Bassist Gordon Moakes and drummer Matt Tong can wind it up and let it go with precision, but they also know when to stretch out and let the melody take over. Silent Alarm's unstoppably solid first half creates a near-perfect tension between the band's sharp and smooth sides: "Like Eating Glass" is a torcher, particularly when Okereke's desperate voice devolves into a shout of "We've got crosses on our eyes / We're walking into the walls again." "Helicopter" and "Banquet" follow in kind with frantic, almost panic-stricken energy tempered by attention to hooks.

If it were all manic tension, Silent Alarm would be an engaging listen, but it also manages to convey real warmth. The brief "Blue Light" turns down the volume but still finds a gentle edge that sounds almost Blur-like, "This Modern Love" describes loneliness with a backbeat, and the almost-ballad "Plans" slowly threatens to explode but succeeds by simmering and shimmying instead. Bloc Party's admirable reach only infrequently exceeds its grasp, and even the songs that don't squarely hit their marks (the overly menacing "Price of Gas" and the album-closing "Compliments") find powerful, redemptive moments. Taken as a whole, Silent Alarm feels like a glorious dam burst, a blood rush harnessed and shaped into something that can both move and inspire movement.

~ Josh Modell, The A.V. Club

Laura Veirs

"Sleeper in the Valley"
from the album July Flame
2010
iTunes



Laura Veirs is the furthest thing from a tortured artist. She;'s a clean-living, life-loving Portlander who spends her days meditating and her weekends camping. That's a blessing for her physical and mental health, though not necessarily for her career, considering that the most memorable singer/songwriters traditionally haven’t been the happiest ones.

On her seventh album, July Flame, Veirs continues to find inventive ways to work around this challenge, singing of life's wonderments without succumbing to the adult-contemporary blandness or twee cutesiness of other singers who share her disposition. It helps that she's an economical lyricist who can mine gold from the smallest muses. The album's evocative title track is named for a type of peach, for instance, but the words also conjure images of summer flings and campfires. It's one of the finest songs she's ever written, building to a striking, Sufjan Stevens-esque coda of strings and a choir of friends.

With its earthy tones, orchestral flourishes and girlish glow, July Flame closely resembles (a)spera, the latest album from neighboring Portland singer Mirah — both were recorded with producer Tucker Martine — but Veirs distinguishes herself with melodic twists and a poetic optimism that are all her own. "Life is good," she beams repeatedly on the song that perhaps best sums up her entire discography, "Life is Good Blues."

~ Evan Rytlewski, American Songwriter

Wolf People

"October Fires"
from the album Tidings
2010
iTunes



Wolf People's Tidings sounds an awful lot like a reissue the first time through, a letter-perfect rendition of the freaky interstices between Cream and Hawkwind, with the Incredible String Band's campfire folk songs floating through Jeff Beck's borrowed electric blues and Jethro Tull's panpipes tootling over Syd Barrett's damaged faerie gardens. You might easily mistake it for a missive from the late 1960s, maybe early 1970s. Except it's not; it's completely contemporary, and only subsequent listens let you glimpse the post-modernist scaffolding on which this trompe d'oiel façade has been constructed.

Extended spins reveal that Tidings is a collage as much as it is a rock record, its 1960s-redolent guitar anthems pieced together with odd tape experiments and kraut-referencing canned beats. There's a very contemporary, home-recorder's underlayer to its custom-aged surfaces, and once you glimpse it, it's hard to see the record the same way again.

That's maybe because Tidings, like the previous Wolf People EP and singles, was constructed out of bandleader Jack Sharp's home recordings, fleshed out with live instruments but only secondarily. Even the real guitar jams — slanting, blues-droning "Black Water," ebullient Dukes of Stratosphere-ish "October Fires," harmonica squawking "Empty Heart" — are layered with eccentric peripheral sounds. They sound at once like lost outtakes from a forgotten late 1960s Isle of Wight festival and also, though some trick of production, like an introverted studio homage never meant to be performed live at all.

Identifiable songs make up about half the album. The other half is taken up with field recorded interludes, stitched together with abstract instrumental bits, layered with mysterious juxtapositions, as well as a handful of wordless, rhythmically driven instrumental jams. It is in these intervals that you begin to sense a contemporary aesthetic, a mind that uses 1960s psychedelia as a series of images to be pieced together in a mosaic-like pattern. But the material is not just paisley vintage guitar pop, and that's where things get interesting. Little hints of anachronism poke through the surface — a home taper's electro beat under plaintive "Cotton Strands," a noise band freefall in "Interlude: Scraps" — upending the familiarity of the other sounds. You begin by searching out the bits that don't exactly fit and end up seeing how they deepen and enrich the picture. The more you recognize its complications, the better Tidings sounds.

Not that it can't be enjoyed on the surface, too. There's no doubt that Sharp and his mates share a deep, reverent knowledge of 1960s psychedelia — just look at the 11-song mix of obscure 1960s bands on Aquarium Drunkard. Tidings lovingly revisits those sources, and it's worth listening to just for the glorious Yardbirds crunch of "Black Water," the CSNY murmurs of "Storm Cloud." But the most startling thing about this album is the way it gives you déjà vu is for songs you've never heard before, and the way its top coat of familiar elements allows hints of modernity to show through the thin spots.

~ Jennifer Kelly, Dusted

Mr. Gnome

"Slow Side"
from the album Heave Yer Skeleton
2009
iTunes



Mr. Gnome visits Madison on Friday, April 30 at The Frequency. 21+, $6, 10 PM.

Duos have been a mainstay of rock music ever since one can remember. The Black Keys, No Age, the Ting Tings, and of course the White Stripes have thankfully rid the music world of the stale notion that rock is a number game, proving that a pair is just as capable of making the same amount of noise as a standard quartet. Nowhere is this fact truer than in the case of Cleveland duo Mr. Gnome, who in their second full length album Heave Yer Skeleton pull out all the stops, running the gamut of every emotion known to man and thus providing the listener a rich sonic experience.

The closest reference points usually considered while describing a band like Mr. Gnome are female-led Blonde Redhead and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, but a more accurate comparison would be perhaps '90s post-hardcore legends Shudder to Think with their incredible similarity in the grasp of melody and rhythmic assault.

Using the same set of instrumentation as most duos, Nicole Barille (guitar/vocals) and Sam Meister (Drums) throughout this 12-song LP refuse to follow any convention instead opting for genre defying antics. Paradox is significantly woven throughout the album — delicate one second and explosive the next, alternating between cute and aggressive, the album travels wherever their imagination or technical prowess allows. A single listen to the striking "Today Brings a Bomb" or "Pixie Dust" establishes a somewhat undoubted fact; you'd be hard pressed to find a tighter band.

While the harmonious guitar lines of opener "Spain" and "Titor" are no indications of the belligerent sound that crowds the majority of this album, they offer up a sort of calm before the storm for the pummeling revved up guitar on songs "Plastic Shadow" and "Cleveland Polka."

Outstanding tracks such as the brilliant "Slow Side" and "Sit Up and Hum" contrast Barille's feminine sweetness with Meister's virtuosity switching between powerhouse drumming and deftly played rim shots with ease, establishing him as one of the most underrated drummers in the scene today. Even with just two people at the helm, they somehow manage to create sounds of orchestral proportions; Barille's attractive vocals coupled with a bulk of driving moody guitar parts drawing the listener in even deeper.

"Searider Falcon," an instrumental which also proves to be the heaviest track on the album, appears to be designed for the sole purpose of putting subpar rock bands out there to shame. Truly through tracks like the playful yet somewhat dark "Vampires" bordering on pop and the all too short "Hills, Valleys and Vallium," which notably wouldn't seem out of place on a dream pop compilation, they have issued a challenge to their peers, to expand their musical lexicon and range of expression, and throw off some of that stifling rock and roll orthodoxy.

The album comes to a close with the funeral procession opening of the title track, Meister complementing Barille's whispery thin vocals with a moving piano riff, a somber end to an incredible record where everything down to the art is stunningly unique and perfectly appropriate, furthermore with absolutely no filler these are tracks are bound to stick in your head for days. Ultimately it is an album that comes along ever so often to reaffirm your faith in rock 'n roll. An album that doesn't sound the least bit contrived, it's exactly as it should be, one of indie rock's best kept secrets.

~ Shikher Chaudhary, Chordvine

Spoon

"Tear Me Down"
from the compilation Wig in a Box: Songs From & Inspired by Hedwig and the Angry Inch
2003
iTunes



John Cameron Mitchell and Stephen Trask's gender-bending, heartbreaking musical soundtrack Hedwig and the Angry Inch has already become something of a cult classic, particularly with indie-rockers, so Wig in a Box: Songs From & Inspired by Hedwig and the Angry Inch, which features artists ranging from Yoko Ono to They Might Be Giants, brings the phenomenon full circle. Hedwig's mix of punk, glam, pop, and sweet ballads leaves plenty of room for interpretation, and fortunately the cast of artists that participate in this project have strong enough musical identities that the album doesn't devolve into a karaoke party for hipsters. Even though Wig in a Box does have its share of pleasant-enough renditions, such as Rufus Wainwright's and Jonathan Richman's versions of "The Origin of Love" that bookend the album, and Imperial Teen's synth-poppy take on "Freaks," the collection has more than enough great performances to make it worthwhile for Hedwig fans, as well as fans of the artists here. Many of the best performances make the most of the fluidity of gender and sexuality that Hedwig and the Angry Inch revolves around: Sleater-Kinney and Fred Schneider's "Angry Inch" uses Corin Tucker's ferocious wail to depict the horror of Hedwig's botched sex change operation, and Scheider's bitchy delivery for bon mots like "I was bleeding from the gash between my legs — it's my first day as a woman and already it's that time of the month?" Frank Black's "Sugar Daddy," which sounds like some twisted relation of Johnny Cash's "Folsom Prison Blues," is one of the album's most vibrant songs, reclaiming some of the Pixies' subversiveness as Black enthuses about "the thrill of control" and snarls, "You buy me that dress and I'll be more woman than you can stand." Black's bandmate Kim Deal scores another of the album's highlights on her Breeders' "Wicked Little Town," which captures the tentative, elliptical beauty of Title TK in a wonderfully warm and intimate performance. Ben Kweller, Ben Folds, and Ben Lee's response version of the song is nearly as good, with Kweller's vulnerable singing playing Tommy Gnosis to Deal's Hedwig. The Polyphonic Spree and Spoon are responsible for two of the album's best, and most different moments, with the Spree's ecstatic version of "Wig in a Box" suiting both the song and their style to a 'T' and Spoon's "Tear Me Down" recalling the tension and fury of the Who and the Rolling Stones in their prime. Yoko Ono and Yo La Tengo's "Hedwig's Lament / Exquisite Corpse" strikes a similar chord, moving from ghostly, nearly alien vocals and music into fierce punk. On the other hand, They Might Be Giants' bittersweet "The Long Grift" makes nearly as much impact with a lot less volume. The collection's new songs, Robyn Hitchcock's tense but sweet "City of Women" and John Cameron Mitchell & Stephen Trask's "Milford Lake," also go in a surprisingly subdued direction. The album's only true stumble is Bob Mould's dance version of "Nailed," which tries to take the song's eroticism in the clubby direction of his latest work. While it's not entirely successful, it is unique. Fortunately, nearly all of Wig in a Box is both unique and successful, and considering that its proceeds go to the Hetrick-Martin Institute, home of the Harvey Milk School, a place of learning and counseling for gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and questioning youth, the album's cause and its music are both worthwhile.

~ Heather Phares, allmusic

Field Music

"Measure"
from the album Field Music (Measure)
2010
iTunes



Let's quickly recap. Field Music released their debut album in 2005, a compilation of earlier songs and B-sides in 2006, and then declared a hiatus following the release of their second proper full-length in 2007. Co-frontmen Peter and David Brewis each released an album with their own projects in 2008 and met touring commitments for the support of those projects, then reconvened last year to write and record their newest album, Field Music (Measure). So where exactly was the hiatus?

Now most bands would think three years a perfectly reasonable length of time between albums, but for the really-quite-prolific-when-you-add-it-up Brewises (now lacking piano player Andrew Moore), such a lapse required that they ante with a 20-track double album. For something so sprawling, Field Music (Measure) is impressively cohesive, particularly when considering the styles of the two brothers are more distinctive than ever. Or at least David's guitars mostly have a certain distortion to them, while Peter seems to be the one to integrate baroque string arrangements, such as on the album's sort-of title track.

With the departure of Moore, there is less piano on the album, and more straight guitar/drum/bass tracks. For the most part, (Measure) is still as complex as its predecessor, but the flourishes and tweaks that stood out on Tones of Town sit lower in the mix and will likely be missed if you're listening on your stereo or computer instead of with headphones. But a song like "Effortlessly" is a single-ready slice of pop perfection that doesn't suffer for a listener's ability to identify all of its instruments. And the Brewis brothers have maintained their penchant for quirky if abrupt time signature changes and command of rich vocal harmonies — it's not like Field Music have devolved into a boring guitar pop band. There's a lot going on, it just isn't all happening at once.

What is definitely going on is a glaring late Seventies rock influence. It is most apparent on the funky "Let's Write a Book," but can be heard throughout the riffs of the guitar-heavy songs. The whorl of "Clear Water" could easily be called something nasty like prog if it weren't a trim three minutes long. But it's a simplification to cite that sole element; if things seem a little heavy on the rocking on the first disc, they are balanced nicely by the subdued piano drama of "Curves of the Needle" and "Precious Plans" on the second disc.

(Measure) could have easily been pared down to ten or twelve tracks and would have been a mind-blowing record with a few songs left over for an EP worth seeking out. As it is, it is an uncommonly good double album. At an hour and ten minutes, it isn't the distended, filler-bloated ramble typically associated with such large-scale projects. The exception is the final track, "It's About Time," which is less filler than a song with filler. While beginning life with a sparse but vibrant string arrangement in conflict with a jaunty piano rhythm, it fades into eight minutes of violin taunts, bird calls, and field recordings. Edited down, it would have made for a lovely if brief outro for the album. Instead it infuriates because of what it was, and what it could be. Really, it's a card well-played; at the end of 20 tracks, they actually have you wanting more.

~ Amanda Farah, Drowned in Sound

Anais Mitchell

"Wait for Me" featuring Ben Knox Miller and Justin Vernon
from the album Hadestown
2010
iTunes



The ancient tale of Orpheus searching for his beloved in the underworld has been told many times. The Greek hero with musical superpowers was portrayed by composer Monteverdi in an early-17th-century opera. And in the 1800s, Jacques Offenbach told it differently. His famous opera featured gods and goddesses dancing the cancan for the finale. Now, the desolate journey of Orpheus is presented in a new way: as a folk opera written by singer-songwriter Anais Mitchell in collaboration with Ben Matchstick and Michael Chorney.

Though the album comes out this week, the project dates to back to 2006.

"The very first time, we put the show up as a staged production in Vermont," Mitchell says in an interview with NPR Weekend Edition Saturday host Scott Simon.

The play is set in a post-apocalyptic American depression era and stays true to the original plot, but Mitchell says she didn't originally set out to write an Orpheus opera. Her songs just naturally led in that direction.

"A few lines just came out of nowhere, which sort of happens in songwriting," says Mitchell. "I just sort of followed it into the labyrinth, and it seemed to want to tell this story."

Justin Vernon (better known as the lead singer of Bon Iver), Ani DiFranco, and Greg Brown are just a few voices in the musical cast of Hadestown. Brown, who plays Hades, gives a particularly striking performance.

"Every time I listen to his voice come in on that song ["Why We Build the Wall"], I want to laugh for joy. You almost feel his voice in your body before you hear it," Mitchell says. "It's got these weird subterranean tones."

Mitchell's creativity can be traced back to her childhood. Her father was the author of the 1970s psychedelic novel Thumb Tripping, and she inherited a passion for storytelling.

"Words have always been really important to me. And they say if you want to be a poet nowadays, you better learn to play guitar, because there's not much work for you otherwise," she says. "Learning to write songs was a way of being a writer and being able to be heard."

~ NPR Music

Electric Six

BEST SONGS OF THE 2000s

"Danger! High Voltage"
from the album Fire
2003
iTunes



May 20, 2003:
"Fire in the disco! Fire in the... Taco Bell!" So go the first words to "Danger! High Voltage," the bracing single that sent Electric Six to the top of rock-dance tastemakers' playlists. Jack White sings backing vocals on the track, but unlike The White Stripes' parochial purity, Electric Six's glammy, hammy energy sounds engaged with the more timely tides of rock's new wave, from the punk-disco odes of the New York production duo DFA to the mash-up style swirl commanded by 2 Many DJ's. Beginning in a high gear that rarely dips below the red line, Fire bursts out of the gate with "Dance Commander," a power-chord rave-up whose "it would be awesome if we could dance" supposition would qualify as a novelty stab if its delivery weren't so awesome. All of Electric Six's songs tilt toward comedy – "Electric Demons in Love," "Naked Pictures (of Your Mother)," "Gay Bar" – but they're funny without making laughs their main objective. Frontman Dick Valentine lurches between Captain Beefheart growls and campy sleaze worthy of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, but he preens on his own terms with a monstrous presence that slinks over wiggly grooves and measured bombast. Recognizing the importance of a good rhythm section, Electric Six outfits its garage with disco balls and coats the dancefloor with grease spills: "She's White" is a fist-pumping rock ode just shy of Tenacious D and Andrew W.K., while "Improper Dancing" slithers toward early-'80s club music with frantic hi-hats and sneaky synthesizers. To a certain extent, Fire sounds like a joke, but a pointed one that approaches rock less as a conceit than as a directive, something to drag into its cultural surroundings rather than a trope to fall back on.

~ Andy Battaglia, The A.V. Club

Hot Chip

"Take It In"
from the album One Life Stand
2010
iTunes



For a band best known for sputtering, retro-tinged dance songs, a fourth album of dance music should not come as a surprise. But One Life Stand feels remarkably different from its older siblings — like a Hot Chip album that has been raised on a steady diet of Reddi-wip, bubble gum-flavored ice cream, and Xanax.

Please bear in mind that none of this is bad, unless you have an aversion to pop music that has the ability to burrow and dwell in your head like an Amazonian insect. There is a new energy and focus acting as the perfect foil to Hot Chip's lyrics, which have always been remarkably clever, particularly in the emotionally stunted realm of dance music.

One Life Stand is still, inescapably, a Hot Chip album. The band's music has always been fueled by the difference between lead singer Alexis Taylor's melancholy voice and the slow build, bounce, and layering of electronics over it. But with One Life Stand the band ups the ante by taking on New Order at its own game. Effervescent melodies rise to new heights around Taylor's deadpanning.

When the band stops to catch its breath outside the disco, stunning beauty emerges in the richly textured, shadowy songs "Alley Cats" and "Keep Quiet." The band has traded the precocious electro-shoegaze of "And I Was a Boy From School" for the throbbing, existential dance of "Thieves in the Night" and in the process has found a strong and anthemic new direction.

~ Christopher Muther, Boston Globe

The Temper Trap

"Sweet Disposition"
from the album Conditions
2009
iTunes



The Temper Trap attracted their first batch of international fans with "Sweet Disposition," a pop anthem framed by the influence of Jeff Buckley's falsetto and U2's guitar delay. A similar sound fuels the rest of Conditions, which takes additional cues from the sweeping, atmospheric strains of Bends-era Radiohead and Coldplay. The music itself is partially responsible for such comparisons, but the most obvious link between the Temper Trap and the bands they so avidly adore is singer Dougy Mandagi, an impassioned tenor who hoots, coos, croons, and courts melodrama with all the open-armed enthusiasm of a theater student. He's a fantastic singer and fairly capable songwriter — two essential qualities for a frontman who takes cues from the giants of stadium pop/rock — but he's also a middling lyricist, concerned with topics that are far smaller than the cathedrals and sweeping landscapes his music evokes. For all its fist-pumping beauty, "Sweet Disposition" seems to be about little more than a late-night makeout session ("Stay there, 'cause I'm coming over"), and "Rest" features few words other than "Oooh, baby," which loses its luster after several repetitions. Conditions runs out of juice during its second half, where the anthems of the A-side give way to minor-key ballads and middling rock. Album highlights like "Sweet Disposition," "Love Lost," and "Fader" are tell-tale signs of a band worthy of scaling the Joshua Tree, however, even if the Temper Trap have a lot of growing up to do beforehand.

~ Andrew Leahey, allmusic

Them Crooked Vultures

"New Fang"
from the album Them Crooked Vultures
2009
iTunes



What should be expected of Them Crooked Vultures? Put Josh Homme, Dave Grohl, and John Paul Jones in the same band, and it's hard not to do some basic rock 'n' roll algebra. Adding Queens of the Stone Age's catchy crunchiness to Nirvana's relentlessly driving rhythms and Led Zeppelin's flowing basslines and rich orchestral textures certainly sounds, well, super. But Them Crooked Vultures is not the sum of its members' most famous bands. Thinking that it could be means overlooking an obvious fact about super-groups: Rock stars don't form bands with other rock stars in order to top what they've already done. They do it because hanging out with famous rock stars is a hell of a lot of fun. Freed from the weight of untenable expectations, Them Crooked Vultures is a hell of a lot of fun, too.

Them Crooked Vultures doesn't equal the considerable awesomeness of its ancestors; it sounds like a second-tier Queens of the Stone Age record, not as good as Rated R or Songs for the Deaf, but superior to everything since. (Particularly the exquisite "Scumbag Blues," which employs Homme's spine-tingling Jack Bruce falsetto better than any song since "I Never Came.") Given the fluidity of QotSA's lineup — and Grohl's celebrated tenure in the band for Songs — the album could have fit comfortably under Homme's usual banner, especially the creeping "Bandoliers" and the chugging stripper anthem "New Fang." But Them Crooked Vultures really feels most like an extension of the Desert Sessions series, in which Homme invites friends to collaborate on marathon jams that may or may not turn into fully realized songs. The biggest pleasure of Them Crooked Vultures is hearing three supremely gifted players fall together quickly and easily on songs built on simple riffs that sound like they were made up on a lark five minutes earlier.

~ Steven Hyden, The A.V. Club

The Subjects

"Functioning People"
from the EP New Soft Shoe
2009
iTunes



The origins of The Subjects goes like this: Guitarist Joe Smith and singer/bassist Dave Sheinkopf were teachers at a Manhattan school with clichéd rock star dreams. Enter their students, drummer Matt Iwanusa and guitarist Jimmy Carbonetti. Take a few rehearsals and you have a rising band with a poppy, minimalist sound. Makes you wish you paid attention in school, doesn't it?

The band first hit the scene with 2007's With the Ease Grace Precision and Cleverness of Human Beings. Now they're back with the a new EP entitled New Soft Shoe that reflects the growth spurt of a band who has seen some things. Whether it's touring with White Rabbits and Tapes n' Tapes or jamming through SXSW, the band's sound has morphed into a four headed beast who pulls from a collective pool of interests and works to create a sound that emphasizes four unique yet wholly similar voices.

While the new EP has songs that stylistically draw from a group like Animal Collective, the band worked to make a more varied sound. Whether it's the goliath of old church organs, the rhythm of honky-tonk strings and piano or even Iwanusa's mom on the sax, the album brings together the structuring of some classical work (Sheinkopf was classically trained in harmony) with eccentric pop work that is light and fresh with just enough thud and kick to it.

~ Chris Coplan, Consequence of Sound

Better Than Ezra

A FAVORITE FROM 15 YEARS AGO

"Good"
from the album Deluxe
Original release date: February 28, 1995
iTunes

The Tallest Man on Earth

"King of Spain"
from the album The Wild Hunt
2010
iTunes



The lone musician with a guitar, a voice, and a song is one of the oldest and the most common line-ups in popular music, and whenever such a musician gets up on stage, he naturally builds off the work of those who have done the same thing long before him. So the Tallest Man on Earth (a.k.a. Kristian Matsson, who is not actually the height record holder) has born countless comparisons to other, older likeminded folkies, yet he's done an admirable job projecting his own personality into his music.

"King of Spain" (off his upcoming Dead Oceans debut The Wild Hunt) does nothing to dispel such comparisons; in fact, Matsson actively invites them. Working squarely within the folk-revival revival, this is another rough-hewn, rambling rumination, with a heraldic melody that's becoming a Tallest Man trademark and a gruff vocal halfway between Dock Boggs and a badger in heat. The only gaffe is the "boots of Spanish leather" remark that alludes all too obviously to the one artist I'm trying hard not to name. But "King of Spain" isn't intended as a folk usurpation. Instead, as an ode to the transformative powers of love, the song hits the right notes of celebration and excitement: "If you could reinvent my name, if you could redirect my days, I wanna be the king of Spain."

~ Stephen M. Deusner, Pitchfork

Twin Sister

"Nectarine"
from the EP Vampires with Dreaming Kids
2009
iTunes



There are some bands that sound like they are influenced more by things or ideas than by other music. Twin Sister, a five-piece band based in Brooklyn, makes music that sounds like a cloudy day at the beach, oversized cardigans, and woolen mittens. Their songs embody the best qualities of these things — they are as warm and welcoming as a familiar sweater and as dreamy and lighthearted as a day at the beach under imperfect conditions.

Vampires with Dreaming Kids is Twin Sister's short but strong debut. All four tracks are down-tempo, but the EP never feels dull or sluggish. The opener, "Dry Hump," features Andrea Estella's coos and hummed harmonies over a lazy strum pattern and bass line and twinkling, dreamy keyboards. "Ginger" sounds straight out of an '80s movie prom scene, with hazy synths and clangy guitars that reach a fever pitch under Estella's echo-y incantation of "I love you." Hers and Eric Cardona's voices blend beautifully on the third track, "Nectarine," which sounds akin to if Jon Brion had produced a Nick Drake record with a lovely fingerpicked pattern and lo-fi allure. The cherry on top is "I Want a House," with its slow groove and charmingly sweet lyrics. The entire EP can be downloaded for free at Twin Sister's website.

Twin Sister's second EP, Color Your Life, is set to be released this month. If their first offering is any indication, it should prove to be as exciting and splendid as the first bloom of spring.

~ Claire Tiller, Jonk Music