May 2013

Is Tropical - Dancing Anymore

Ding:   NSFW. NSFW.  These French bastards have a new album coming out and the video for "Dancing Anymore" is pretty wild.  In a way I can't explain, it's very us.



Vampire Weekend - Ya Hey

Adrien Brody: I have a confession to make ... I'm impressed with the new Vampire Weekend album.



Junip - Your Life Your Call

Meat, MD: Jose Gonzalez has such a creepy, great voice.



HAERTS - Wings

FreyDon: Add this to the growing list of new kinda Fleetwood Macs... good song though.



Bonus:  12 Years of DFA

Joe: If you like LCD etc, this is worth watching.

Everything is a remix

Caught Trampled by Turtles last night at Bowery.  Solid show, great energy, highly recommend.  At some point while the crowd was rocking out (to 5 guys playing acoustic string instruments), I realized they sounded more like a punk band than a bluegrass band, at least in some songs.  Lucky for me, a fan previously shot a video of one of their shows and uploaded to it youtube, so now we can all see what I mean:



Short songs, fast aggressive guitar (and fiddle) work, simple melodies -- yeah, it's some kind of punk rock. And the meld with new grass got me thinking about other acts that successfully combined dissimilar styles to create something new and tight.

E.g., the Police.  They wanted to be a punk band, but added enough pop melody and reggae to create a new sound and sell 50 million records.



Or more recently, a (comparatively) lesser known band named Junip is mixing acoustic folk with downtempo, to redefine the chill-the-fuck-out genre.



Obviously not everyone, just a few of my favorites.  Kirby Ferguson dominates the whole concept with the Everything is a Remix project, I encourage you to check it out.