Swag

Writing about any band with a hint of Afrobeat that came after Vampire Weekend is like writing about any tablet released after the iPad: the annoyingly misplaced pretense makes your writing seem useless when you know all the readers are going to say “well that’s fine, but it’s no original.” Speaking about the music, this pretense truely isn’t fair, since Vampire Weekend isn’t good. They took a lovely indie pop concept and wrapped it in a sickening cashmere cloak of East Coast Ivy haughtiness. I thought pop was supposed to be fun, not snooty

Enter Givers. The purveyors of Afrobeat indie pop the way it should be made. Lively, danceable, fun, and mostly stripped of the pretension. Givers’ instruments and the girl/boy vocal interplay explode with a tense, groovy energy. Their music is a soundtrack to the summer’s noisier moments; you can easily hear their tunes playing background to a pickup football game or a carnival ride.

What we see in Givers is a band that has done what many wish Vampire Weekend would do. They have ripped away their sweaters and oxfords and careened headfirst into the jovial vibe of summer, bringing us an album ripe with sunny, foot-stomping good indie pop. If you can track down their CD, buy it; you won’t be disappointed

Apparently, walls can sing, and Radical Face is their voice. Ghost, the debut album by the band (which is essentially a monkier for singer-songwriter Ben Cooper) is a melodic and powerfully hushed picture of old memories. According to Cooper, the songs are meant to capture observations from the point of view of an old house. Whispering pianos and acoustic guitars thump alongside muted percussion and nostalgia-inducing samples of clattering trains and childhood laughter. The music is subdued, but strong, much like the walls of a Grand Victorian mansion. As you listen, you are pulled into the world of the walls and the light fixtures, and you are both humbled and enraptured by the stories they will share with you. And as the walls are always there, so too is there a song for just about every lifetime setting rolled into Ghost, be it sad, happy, brooding, or content.

It’s so hard for me to choose just one song off of this album. Glory was the first track I heard from Radical Face, but I think it adequately captures the overall feel of the album. With the off-key, reverb washed piano lines, bouncing rhythm section, and driving acoustic guitar strumming, the song builds up to a grand crescendo that drowns you in a glorious swath of sound. Download the whole album, and buy it if you can find a physical copy. Radical Face has all the talent needed for greatness. They know how to craft simple yet elegant melodies, a tool which they use to create the perfect atmosphere for the lyrical material

Its funny how long it can take me to really appreciate music for what it is

A few years ago, when I first heard the album by Wild Sweet Orange, I found it a bit dull. Not bad, just not enough to hold my attention. Maybe a year later, I began falling in love with Manchester Orchestra. Now, here in my dorm room, I am rehashing the Wild Sweet Orange album and finally hearing the pleasant similarities between them and Manchester Orchestra, similarities that I find very pleasing.

Most of the similarity lies in the vocal delivery; when WSO’s lead singer gets his belt-on, he creates a scary good impersonation of the Manchester Orchestra frontman. The overall soniscape of WSO plays more with a folky quiet, but pays homeage with Manchester Orchestra when they take the guitar amplifiers to eleven. In the lyrics too, Wild Sweet Orange goes with folkier themes about family pets and what not, but both bands do share a Nashville rootsiness to their storytelling that is still easy to see in their difference in deliveries.

Those who are fans of Manchester Orchestra-and I know many of them exist here on Tumblr-should definitely give Wild Sweet Orange a listen, you won’t be disappointed

quartercenturysalute:

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This is the girl of my dreams.

(Source: tallulahlost)

Sugar is the best pop-punk band you’ve never heard of. Their albums are some of my favorites to listen to, and the name of one of their albums is the basis of my blog name. Why make such big deal of something as generic as a pop-punk band? Because you have the wrong definition of pop-punk. This shit isn’t the sugar coated emo pop on steroids that we associate with pop-punk bands like All Time Low and All American Rejects. These are songs with pop lyrics and sensibilities shrouded in a wall of gloriously groovy, noisy punk guitar riffs. Bob Mould’s guitar cranks out fuzzy, chugging power chord and grating open chord riffs underneath his lyrics, whose themes cover the usual relationship ground of classic pop material. What makes Mould’s lyrics stand out is their honest, narrative tone. He doesn’t need to rely on the “ironic”, affected hooks of today’s pop-punk bands; he delivers his stories in a catchy yet intelligent way, a delivery that can be taken both at face value and probed to find the exact meaning behind the words. It’s a shame that the band doesn’t have a bigger body of work, but those seeking more can look to Bob’s solo work (for more-singer-songwriter type material) or to Husker Du (for hard-edged 80’s indie punk).