Pitchfork: Pavement to Headline Sasquatch! 2010.

Sweet.

AND a NEW LOOK!? AND!? More frequent posts, and this time, I mean it.

How long has it been since you’ve heard a great guitar riff? Too long most likely.

Them Crooked Vultures consists of:

Josh Homme (Queens of the Stone Age) – Guitar/Vocals

John Paul Jones (Led Zeppelin) – Bass

Dave Grohl (Foo Fighters/Nirvana) – Drums/Vocals

The combo sounds pretty deadly. Considering I loved the last QOTSA album, I will mos def be checking this out. Homme and Jack White are two of the best riff writers around these days.

Listen to the entire new Them Crooked Vultures album on their youtube page. The album is self-titled and drops November 17th. Check it out in its entirety below.

http://www.youtube.com/user/themcrookedvultures?blend=1&ob=4#p/u/4/kALt-S8WjNc

Kid Cudi

This is a pretty sick picture of Kid Cudi performing in July of this year. His album drops tomorrow. One of my most anticipated releases of this year since the ridiculously catchy tune, Day N Nite hit my drums last summer.

What the hell more could you want in a day? This is pretty exciting…the song sounds great acoustic. It’s called The Present Tense. Check it:

I’ve started taking some pictures of “street art” around Southern Oregon. I think its pretty coo,

check it out: http://kingoftherodeo.tumblr.com/

“Coolness is having courage, courage to do what’s right. I’ll try to remember always, just to have a good time. “  Comfy in Nautica – Panda Bear

Since my unofficial break from the blogosphere, my solitary fan has asked what review I would ultimately break my silence with. He offered up many suggestions, some subtle, some not so much. All of them were good and worthy of praise, and will eventually probably end up reviewed (until then I’ll pretend I have bigger and better things to do). But the true question here is one of worth. Is Panda Bear’s 2007 record, Person Pitch WORTH breaking my silence?

After I finally decided to use this album as the cornerstone for my return to the internet I had to figure out what to write about it. Person Pitch truly transcends any words I could put next to/near/around/away from it. The album transcends words, good/bad/indifferent. Panda Bear has truly achieved something spectacular with this album. Through many albums with his other (main) project, Animal Collective, Panda Bear has grown as a musician and a sonic pioneer. The path he’s taken has not always been clean, good, or even enjoyable, but it has always been interesting, and his own. With the release of Person Pitch, Panda Bear has achieved the unachievable, he has perfectly and honestly harnessed and recreated not music, personality, sound, or otherwise, but a feeling.

Person Pitch’s vocals, often echoed, reverbed and distant, sink into a sonic bed of (sometimes subtle) melodies, swirling samples and ambient noise. The songs contain an energy that I can’t quite associate with any other album I’ve ever heard. This is not to say it’s the best album I’ve ever heard, do not misread. The resulting album is best listened to in one continuous sitting. This is the way the songs make the best sense. The album is more than the sum of its parts. Each songs plays off the previous and into the next, blending mode, manner and mood.  The lyrics are top notch and reek with an honesty that would have shocked the late Hunter S. Thompson. The 3^rd song on the album (and the strongest), Bros, is an epic song with barbed lyrics that are delivered with such nonchalance that it’s tough to stomach.

The entire lyrics are as follows:

Panda Bear – Bros

hey man what’s your problem
don’t you know that i don’t belong to you
it’s hard and hard enough
to keep it up when everything is so new

i’m not trying to forget you
i just like to be alone
come and give me the space i need
and you may and you may
and you may and you may and you may
find that we’re alright
i’m not trying to forget you
i just like to be my own
come and give me the space i need
and you may and you may
and you may and you may and you may
find that we’re alright

i mean no offense to you
but grow up
can’t you just grow up?
when are you going to
give it your own go?
give it your own go
i know i’m being way too hard
but i know that i’m trying

i know myself
and i know what i want to do
i’m doing my best
and i want to know
is it good for you?
you give me trouble
you give me everything that you’ve got
ill show you that
what’s right for you me
ain’t for you

don’t look out for me

who are you to tell me how
when you’ve problems of your own
i do love you and
i want to hold on to you for always

Person Pitch is a potentially devastating and draining listen, if it hits you in the right spot. Be careful, and when you’re feeling up to it, spin it. The album is a monumental achievement. How good is it? It could the best album of this decade so far that isn’t by a band called Radiohead. I really don’t know. I just don’t know.

Here’s a video of Panda Bear performing Bros live in the UK. Though long this video is quite the gem:

Cymabals Eat Guitars. What to say. A band with a 9 track self-released album. Its out there, find it. Somehow. My friends, this music rules. The influences on this band are so numerous I could only list a few and be off the mark. They combine the dirty melodic hooks of a Pavement with the swag of an MGMT and the lyrical stabbings of Tokyo Police Club. Their soft moments are beautiful. Their rockin moments are rockin. And everything else fits perfectly into place.

Cymbals Eat Guitars – Why There Are Mountains

looks like this:

And sounds like this:

Cymbals Eat Guitars – And The Hazy Sea (Track 1 from Why There Are Mountains)

This is the first song off the album. This song showcases the bands perfect use of loud/soft song dynamics. No one has harnessed dynamics like this since The Pixies or Nirvana. The song starts off almost blaring and then lulls only to scream out again in a beautiful and controlled chaos.

The second track on the album differs extremely from the first, but in a good way. This album is a mixture of many things, but it never sounds incongruent, muddled or confused. The different amount of material to be found in these songs will keep you interested for at least one listen, hopefully many many many more.

At times the album grabs the shoegazers of the 80’s, or lo-fi of the 90’s or the horn crazy members of Broken Social Scene. At times the album attempts to capture you sonically like Radiohead, Wilco or the Youth themselves. This album is worth every dime you’ll spend on it and it will all go straight to this great band. I can’t wait to see what becomes of these dudes.

Here is their myspace: www.myspace.com/cymbalseatguitars

Naw dogs, I ain’t talking bout the festival (though Stephen Malkmus will appear there this year). I’m talking about noisy pop music. Think early Pavement, like Slanted and Enchanted sort of stuff, or Guided By Voices, or some Sonic Youth even. The melody is buried, but finding it might just be the best thing that ever happened to you. 

Well sons and daughters, two bands have been creating music that is verrrryyy reminiscent of Pavement’s early work. Whether they listened to Pavement as children is irrelevant because what we have here is some genuine and interesting people creating sounds that others just aren’t. It’s fresh. I will say it–again, it’s just fresh. Will you like it? Who knows, probably not, but that’s not the point. It’s fresh. Every indie band in the world can kick out a jam these days and indie kids (including myself) will just eat it up. It takes balls, punk roots and a cassette recorder/player to accomplish what these two bands have accomplished. 

The first band I’ll break my silence to discuss is No Age.  Their newest album is called Nouns. It looks like this:

No Age is a tough band to explain. They haven’t been around forever, but they have. They know their roots (80’s punk) and they respect while taking it in a completely different direction. No Age is a band that knows what they are and what they want. They do their thing and are perfect at it. There is so much buried beneath the “noise” and it is easily dismissed. But give their newest LP, Nouns, a listen or 5 and just take it in Especially if you’re having a rotten day. This will carry you through. 

Similar to Pavements earliest work, No Age is a band that experiments with noise, distortion, feedback etc. While this is nothing new, especially in indie rock, it actually is completely new. I can’t explain it better so check out the album, or just the song below, if it intrigues you, figure it out and get the LP, or get the LP and then figure it out. 

This is the video for their song The Eraser from their newest LP titled – Nouns

*******

The second band/artist is Wavves. Yes that is WA-V-V-ES. AND for a bit of confusion, his debut album is called…Wavves…yeah..and his newest album, which I will be refering too is titled Wavvves…yeah…WA-V-V-V-ES. Perfect. It looks like this…

Wavves is the brain-child of a 22 year old San Diago, California resident with a lot to lose and so much more to gain. Wavves is a noise pop band that will probably be owning your ear drums, or at least you internet blog space, for years to come. Ingenius, is really the word to describe his work. His music was originally captured on cassette tapes and distributed around. The music is just ridiculous. Pitchfork knows it (http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/12783-wavvves/), ABC news knows it, courtesy of Pitchfork… (http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=6630685) and I sure know it. I haven’t heard anything that was quite this interesting in a long while. I’m going to post a couple videos. The first is a video of the song So Bored, and I’m not sure if its a fan made video or what…but damn, it’s weird. The quality is a little sub par, but its noisy music anyway, don’t expect much. The second video isn’t a real video but rather a youtube box that will play some audio for a little over 2 minutes with a black box in the background. This “video” is for the song Gun In The Sun and somehow is actually also terrible quality. The lyrics in that song are particularly awesome, “I’m just a guy with nothing to do, I’m just a guy with something to say” croons lead singer Nathan Williams over noisy distorted guitar, a simple drum beat and some girl singing….uh….something….?

Wavves – So Bored (from the new LP Wavvves out March 17th) 

Wavves – Gun In The Sun (from the new LP Wavvves out March 17th)

Seriously yo, if you dig this at all, find some high quality versions, and buy this music!

The first song of their up coming album, Tonight: Franz Ferdinand. I dig this song, whachu think?

Both Andrew Bird and Franz Ferdinand have albums dropping this month. I will hopefully be reviewing both in the next couple days. These albums might be career defining albums for each of these artists, check back soon and make you’re own judgment.

Andrew Bird – Noble Beast (01/20/09)

Franz Ferdinand – Tonight: Franz Ferdinand (01/27/09)