Grandparents — Fumes
from Fumes EP (2012)
Sprawling psychedelic sounds… spooky harmonies and clattering drums… from Portland’s Grandparents. Git over to bandcamp for more jams like this.
Hat tip to This Music Doesn’t Suck on this one.
Dent May — Eastover Wives (2010)
I just posted a track from Mississippi’s Dent May the other day…but I’m gonna post another. Cause I saw him last night at Glasslands and he was a real tour-de-force. Sang with the swagger and melodic magic of Elvis Costello—and the group pulled off Pet-Sounds-caliber harmonies. Live. With a bit of disco splashed on top. Pop gold. And everyone knew it—he couldn’t walk through the crowd afterward without someone pulling him aside to say “great set.” Tough act for Julian Lynch to follow.
He says he’s coming out with a full length early next year. Stay tuned for that… in the meantime there’s one last chance to catch him live this tour. He plays Maxwell’s in Hoboken this Sunday, with Real Estate.
Yumi Arai — Juuni-gatsu no ame
from Misslim (1974)
I’ve been nerding out on a ton of Japanese discoveries lately, spurred on by the (I’ll say it again) superb sampler of the islands’ bounty, curated by dublab’s Hashim B.
One of the tracks on that compilation is Yumi Arai’s funky groove ‘Anata Dake No Mono,’ which was spicy enough to encourage me to hunt down the 1974 album it appeared on, Misslim. The album has excellent arrangement by Masataka Matsutoya, Arai’s soon-to-be hubby, and keyboardist for the session group Tin Pan Alley (of which exotica/electronica star Haroumi Hosono was also a member).
This particular number has a great breezy feel, Laurel Canyon sounds for the Tokyo set. The harmonies will make you swoon—at least they have that effect on me. And if you know Puffy AmiYumi they won’t sound unfamiliar—Yumi Arai laid the foundations for J-Pop in the mid 70s with tracks like 1975’s ‘Rouge no Dengon’ (Lipstick Message).
The Persians — Get a Hold of Yourself (1963)
Here’s a single from The Persians, a girl group that, judging by this lone 7”, made one tiny blip on the hit radar and then faded away. The songwriters were Bill Giant, Bernie Baum and Florence Kaye—the same team behind Elvis’ ‘Devil in Disguise,’ also in 1963. If you’re a fan of Phil Spector and The Crystals I think you’re gonna like the way this single channels the Wall of Sound, with clattering percussion and keys.
Here’s The Persians in the ‘Singles Spotlight’ of Billboard’s March 16, 1963 issue.
vinyl rip brought to you by Derek’s Daily 45!
Secret Cities — Always Friends
from Strange Hearts (2011)
Whistling, hand in hand with your sweetheart, wandering the dirt footpath towards the ice cream stand on a lazy summer day. Take a lil bit of that, add a dash of the house guitarist for Carnival’s 5-day Eastern Caribbean cruise and you’d have just about the right formula for ‘Always Friends.’ (Oh yeah, and maybe a horse trainer. Gotta love that whip-cracking percussion.)
Secret Cities are back from their Kansas City basement with an album that’s as easy to listen to as it is bewildering. They’re channeling a lot here, from the rabbithole anthem ‘Brief Encounter,’ with its baroquely psychedelic feel, to the dreamy choral jazz of ‘Love Crime.’
It stays pretty engaging throughout, probably because we’re eavesdropping on a musical conversation that began in 2002, long before the group even began, when bandleaders MJ Parker and Charlie Gokey met at bandcamp and began a pen-pal style of musical collaboration, each building on the other’s 4-track efforts and sending the tape back. Isn’t that cute? Cuteness pays off in these melodies. Isn’t that the ice cream stand just beyond those apple trees?
Nightlands — Glass Vacuum
from Forget the Mantra (2010)
Peter Pan’s window is open… time to fly away… and this is the soundtrack. Nightlands put out one of my favorite releases of 2010, Forget the Mantra. And I’m really excited (and you NYC folks should be too) because they’re bringing this trips festival to Glasslands on Saturday night, w/ Sun Airway. If they can do these harmonies live I’ll be the guy with the big smile plastered all over my face.
And something I missed the first time around, a book which may or may not have anything to do with the band name — William Hope Hodgson’s 1912 horror novel The Night Land, “one of the most potent pieces of macabre imagination ever written,” a novel “describing a time, millions of years in the future, when the Sun has gone dark.”
Now, at the beginning, I did walk outwards into the Night Land, somewhat blindly, and without sure direction; being intent only to put a good space to my back, that I might cure somewhat the ache which did weaken my heart at the first.
But, in awhile, I ceased somewhat from my overswiftness, and did put thought to my going. And I came quickly to reason that I should try a new way through the Land; for it might be that there was an over-watchfulness in that part which had been trod by the Youths.
And I began therewith to set this thought to the practice; and went not direct towards the North; but to the North and West; and so in the end to mean to circle around to the back of the North-West Watcher, and thence to the North of the Plain Of Blue Fire; and afterwards, as might be, have a true and straightway to the North; and by this planning come a long way clear of that House of Silence, which did put more fear upon me than all else that was horrid in the Land.
from The Night Land
Summer Fiction — Kids In Catalina
from Summer Fiction (2010)
This is one beautiful song. The harmonies just pick you up and carry you away… to Catalina! Where, in fact, I used to go as a kid…
Sail over to the Summer Fiction bandcamp for more. Check out a video for their song ‘Chandeliers’ at yvynyl.
via tothemaxxx
Nightlands — Til I Die
from Forget the Mantra (2010)
Robin Pecknold’s still working his little tail off trying to mix the upcoming Fleet Foxes record. In the meantime, Dave Hartley (of The War on Drugs) has created a lush, choral masterpiece with his solo project, Nightlands, which pretty much satisfies all my desires for wintry, harmonic music to prance in the woods by. Sorry Robin.
Know when you stomp really hard on the dirt in the redwoods, and it makes that deep thumping sound, because you’re reverberating so many layers of rotting duff? (It does.) For some reason that’s one of the first things I wanted to do when I was listening to this album. It has weird effects on you.
Nightlands has created a beauty… dream music. And I highly recommend buying it. It’s full of found sounds, uncloistered medieval harmonies and ecstatic fingerpicked melodies. Other things you could do with this album as the soundtrack — drift off to sleep in the desert, gazing at the stars. Or put on a space helmet and just go there.
NYC folks — catch Nightlands at Glasslands in Williamsburg Jan 20th, with Tony Castles.
