Category: Reviews

Happy New Year! — A 2010 “Retropackle.”

Hey, everyone!  Happy New Year!  I hope that you have a good one, and that you’re surrounded by good food, friends, and music.  It’s been a long year over here (the epic dissertation struggle continues), and I haven’t always been the most attentive (you’re top of the list of New Year’s Resolutions!)… but I wanted to thank everyone for all their love and support.  I’ve been positively blown away by the amount of excellent music that has been sent my way, and the… well, legitimacy, I seem to have stumbled into.

So, in 2011, I’ll be stepping up to keep things rolling around here.  And I hope that you’ll be there, too!  And since it’s customary, follow me for some things I’ve loved this year, as well as some things I’m looking forward to in the New Year!

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Music for a Rainy Day: The Wilderness of Manitoba

One of the hazards, as well as the great joys, of running a site like this is that you quickly accumulate more things that you “just have to mention!” than you can possibly mention.  And so it is that many truly excellent bands and musicians end up resting beneath the vast expanses of “new” that fall everywhere like snow.  And thus it is that this section – “Music for a Rainy Day” – is born.

Unlike the “Things I Should’ve Mentioned,” the “Mailbag,” the “Now Playing,” or the “New Music/Out Now,” this section is a home for all that wonderful stuff whose only crime is that it came along when I was busy making other plans… conversely, all of this accumulated music now makes for many excellent surprises on rainy days!  As is the case with a band that I’ve been literally intending to talk about all year (thanks, again, Slowcoustic for the excellent recommendation!): The Wilderness of Manitoba.

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Out Now: Seapony – Dreaming 7″

From Seattle, Seapony is surf pop for the sentimental.  Their first release – Dreaming – a 7″ on Double Denim records is a record full of breathy vocals and jangly guitars.  The sort of sounds that, combined, are perhaps more of the late Summer evenings than they are of sweltering afternoons at the height of season.  Simply put, it’s a Summer record that makes you reach for a long-sleeved shirt…

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Recommended: First Aid Kit

All Songs Considered’s recent review of this year’s CMJ (College Music Journal) came with a lot of awesome surprises – perhaps the best of which is First Aid Kit.  First Aid Kit is two Swedish sisters – Klara and Johanna Söderberg – who make lovely, dreamy, and – most of all – exuberant music.  From their cover of Fleet Foxes’ “Tiger Mountain Peasant Song” to their original tracks, First Aid Kit’s music has the unusual quality of being both natural and ethereal. The songs range easily from moments of introspection, to raucous, confessional declarations of the soul. In a year that brought us the return of Ace of Base, I think First Aid Kit might be just the hero we were holding out for…

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Recommended: Black Prairie

Admittedly, I’m a little late to the party on Black Prairie.  But boy, what a party!  The band, which is comprised of 3/5 of the Decemberists, as well as two other folk musicians from Portland, OR, works with an amazing combination of musical styles (string band, folk, bluegrass, etc.) to produce something that just gushes out atmosphere.  What becomes clear, right away, is that the band’s songs (which are heavily weighted towards the instrumental) are born out of a love of genre, authenticity, and antiquity.  Watching them perform on KCRW’s Morning Becomes Eclectic (which you can see below), you see a seriousness and a joyfulness that makes for some excellent music.

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