Posts Tagged ‘Brooklyn’

SUNFLOWER BEAN – ” From The Basement ” 12″ Vinyl

Posted: September 10, 2016 in MUSIC
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The New York trio have made quite a splash this year with their effervescent mix of 90s indie (grunge rock and something more ethereal) and 60s psychedelia. As songs from their debut album, Human Ceremony, veer off into cosmic jams, they sound like an unlikely mix of celestial 90s indie kids Lush and summer of love-era Jefferson Airplane.

Much of the former comes from lead vocalist/bassist Julia Cumming, whose ferocious performance contrasts with the pastoral sweetness of her singing. Guitarist Nick Kivlen – all curly moptop and patterned shirts could have stepped straight from a 60s .

With drummer Jacob Faber thrashing away behind, this threesome make a spectacle as Cumming prowls around her bandmate, grins at the crowd and often leaps into the throng while playing. “This is such fun,” she yells as their set flits from the beautiful guitar shapes of Human Ceremony . Check out their Limited Edition 12″ of covers now only available at their gig I’m afraid.

From The Basement is a 4 song EP featuring cover versions of songs originally by The Modern Lovers, Neil Young, Spiritualized and T-Rex. Pressed on clear green vinyl, it’s limited to 500 copies worldwide.

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Sunflower Bean are
Jacob Faber
Julia Cumming
Nick Kivlen

PILL – ” Convenience “

Posted: August 28, 2016 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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pill-convenience

On their debut record, Pill’s ability to leap from issue to issue takes lyrical poise and musical understanding. The band’s collective ability to cover a wide range of instruments with comparatively few numbers portrays each member’s musical expertise. Frontwoman Veronica Torres takes on both vocals and bass, while the multi-purposing Jonathan Campolo and Benjamin Gaffe play three and four instruments, respectively. Gaffe’s spastic sax follows the free-jazz doctrine of improvisation, naturally implementing the genre’s experimental ad-lib techniques of Peter Brötzmann and Evan Parker into Pill’s freak punk procedure.

Pill’s formula follows the jagged aggression of self-described “weird punk,” . The NYC quartet’s debut buckles and twists through moments of post-punk fervor, scattered with keen sociopolitical commentary criticizing the emergence of a loathsome wave of marginalization in New York City. Acoustically driven “Speaking Up” is sung from the point-of-view of a particularly tormenting co-worker, whose prods are blatant criticisms of the misogynistic culture of certain workplaces. Torres’ lyrics mock gender-favoring office-space lechery, as she sings in bully-like fashion, “You’re gonna get fired/for speaking up.” Her words are hurriedly speak-sung, recorded with a notable sense of sonic and physical distance in comparison to Convenience’s other tracks, which simultaneously reflects the “distance” Torres creates while assuming the voice of a sexual perpetrator.

Exceptional moments are frequent, as highlight tracks deliver some of the most spirited progressive punk to come out of NYC in recent years. The acidic “100% Cute” sears through two fiery minutes of Torres’ shrills and yelps delivered over a manically descending bass and psychedelically warped effects. Riot grrrl ideals find Pill’s frontwoman at the forefront of feminism, as she proves herself to be Liz Phair’s rightful heir, becoming the latter’s sexualized successor on “Fetish Queen,” while closer “Medicine” ends Convenience on a more musically optimistic approach to Pill’s relatively unnerving and panicky formula. The latter track is the most accessible piece on Convenience, both musically and lyrically. “Medicine” is an excellent end to a wildly eccentric release, sure to have listeners hitting repeat after performing a double take at the album’s conclusion.

Convenience’s distinct eeriness establishes the album’s thematic ideas in a logical order, developing a specific sonic atmosphere across the sequence of the tracklisting. Torres’ frantic and vehement vocals cease during key instrumental numbers scattered throughout the album. Each song of pause not only contributes to the album’s underlying aura, but also become fully enjoyable, standalone tracks. The aforementioned “100% Cute” is followed by the palate-cleansing “Sex With Santa,” which provides a subdued transition through a menacing bass over rhythmically trickling drum lines.

Not only is Pill’s lyrical ability truly commendable, but their musical exploration with dissonance, experimentation, and improvisation through a post-punk lens finds their sound particularly difficult to pin down.

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PWR BTTM – ” Projection “

Posted: July 25, 2016 in MUSIC
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How’s summer been treating you?,  Father/Daughter Records have a lot coming to you this week. Check it out, in here you’ll hear a new PWR BTTM single. Fresh out of the tour van, Brooklyn shredders PWR BTTM bring their brand new single, “Projection” to the world. Whether your skin is made for the weather or not, this track is going to blow your socks off. Check out “Projection” below with an animated illustration from our pal Laurent Hrybyk! Both PWR BTTM and Lisa Prank are rocking around the US together beginning in October. And just when you thought a tour couldn’t get any better, Bellows and Vundabar will be tagging along for some shows, too! Grab your tickets soon, you’re not going to want to miss it. The Spook School joins PWR BTTM throughout Europe in December — their first ever trip overseas!

“Projection is a song about feeling unqualified to be the way you see yourself because of the way other people see you, and how other people’s perception of your identity can warp your sense of self. It’s about being exhausted with the pressure of fitting in and throwing a shiny, glorious middle finger to those who doubt you.” – Ben Hopkins, PWR BTTM

WOODS – ” City Sun Eater In The River Of Light “

Posted: July 24, 2016 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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City Sun Eater in the River of Light is Woods’ Graceland. This is the prolific band’s ninth album, but their first to explore East African rhythms—an odd but intriguing choice for a psych-folk group from Brooklyn. This introduction echoes Paul Simon’s incorporation of South African isicathamiya and mbaqangaon his 1986 masterpiece.

It’s an unexpected turn for the band, whose last record, 2014’s With Light and with Love, was a distillation of their most enduring qualities: meandering, kaleidoscopic riffs, bucolic melodies, and Jeremy Earl’s endearingly nasal voice. Woods’ Jarvis Taveniere tells me over the phone it was a sort of “best-of” album for the band. It wasn’t groundbreaking—in retrospect With Light and with Love was like a tune-up, a chance for them to perfect their mechanics before off-roading on City Sun Eater in the River of Light.

“For a lot of it we just wanted to go back to our earlier days, when we would just jam and have a few mics up,” he says. “We would put vocals on top of it and chop it up.”

Woods opens this newest effort with “Sun City Creeps,” a lush six-minute tableau of unease. It begins with ominous horns that loom overhead throughout the song like dark storm clouds. The band hasn’t abandoned psychedelia, but embroidered it with beats and instrumental elements inspired by Ethiopian jazz. The effect is a sinister grooviness, as Woods navigates complex interchanges between anxiety and solace.

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Tracks like “I See in the Dark” are expansive and jammy but also precise and controlled—frenetic riffs and pulsing bass lines vibrate with nervous energy before being drowned by droning organ. “I just hit record on the tape machine and ran downstairs, picked up my bass, and we kind of found that groove,” Taveniere says.

Woods return to their dusty old wheelhouse on what seems like an accidental standout, “Morning Light.” It’s exquisite, but completely different from the rest of the album. For one song they cut the experimentation for four blissful minutes of Americana-psych, with nostalgia-inducing piano and the honeyed whinny of a pedal steel channeling the spirit of the Band, while Jeremy Earl’s airy vocals follow the melody like a feather dancing in the wind. “Morning Light” unfortunately serves as a reminder that, while their foray into East African-inspired rhythms is an interesting and well-executed diversion, Woods does psych-folk really well.

If there’s a Woods sound, Taveniere says it’s probably Earl’s voice—a trembling falsetto that’s somehow both the most and least distinctive quality of Woods’ music. His voice easily melts into the band’s songs, whether they’re rooted in trippy psychedelia, idyllic Americana, or complex East African beats. This is the link between the new and old on City Sun Eater in the River of Light, the one guarantee that, even if they decide to experiment with zydeco on the next record, Woods will probably always sound like Woods.

Jeremy Earl – vocals, guitars, bass, drums, percussion, sk-5
Jarvis Taveniere – bass
Aaron Neveu – drums, bass, wurlitzer
John Andrews – piano, organs, rhodes
Alec Spiegelman – sax, flute
Cole Karmen-Green – trumpet
Jon Catfish DeLorme – Pedal Steel

YEASAYER – ” Amen & Goodbye “

Posted: July 21, 2016 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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Yeasayer_Amen_Packshot_300DPI

It’s hard to underplay the previous influence Yeasayer had on late 2000s indie psych-pop. All Hour Cymbals”(2007) and “Odd Blood” (2010) both helped pave the way for the proliferation of ’80s-indebted indie acts that cropped up everywhere in the last five or six years. So on later albums, including their most recent, Amen & Goodbye”, Yeasayer have been vying with a cohort that is, in some ways, of their own design. The competition hasn’t stopped them from releasing inventive, ambling electronic compositions that are spiked by Chris Keating’s distinctively yearning vocals. “Amen & Goodbye” is proof that doubling down on what you’ve already locked in isn’t necessarily a bad idea.

CHAIRLIFT – ” Moth “

Posted: July 21, 2016 in MUSIC
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Moth Chairlift

Moth was one of the first albums in 2016 to indicate that this year was going to shower us with a wealth of absolutely magnificent music. if you haven’t listened to it yet, then you really really should. Recorded in the converted Pfizer building in the heart of Brooklyn, “Moth” is an album thats dedicatedand devoted to the city in which it was recorded , but never stops pushing outward into the global consciousness of the internet era. And as much as it is a love letter to New York, it is also a love letter to love itself. Caroline Polachek, who was recently married, and her constant collaborator Patrick Wimberly have outdone themselves with a vibrant collection of sweeping elegant pure pop songs that will endure even when the foundations of Manhattan crumble. If it hasn’t clicked for you yet, just keep flying toward the flame. It will entice you very soon.

MUTUAL BENEFIT – ” Skip A Sinking Stone ” Best Albums Of 2016

Posted: July 21, 2016 in MUSIC
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Mutual Benefit — Skip A Sinking Stone

Mutual Benefit’s Skip A Sinking Stone is an album in two parts. Side A is a travel diary of sorts, a series of meditations about life on the road, while Side B finds Mutual Benefit’s Jordan Lee living a more-or-less settled life in Brooklyn. In many ways, this is a coming-of-age story, a series of spindly folk songs that enmesh the pastoral freedom of a vagabondish lifestyle with the harsh realities of urban living. Skip A Sinking Stone picks up where 2013’s excellent debut album Love’s Crushing Diamond left off — seeking stability in the uncertain, finding faith in the little things in life that keep you grounded.

Given the horrific events of the last few months–or, hell, all of human history, but particularly now because we have video footage of many of the recent atrocities–plenty of people are feeling a bit alienated from their environments right now. I wouldn’t call Skip A Sinking Stone a cure for that, but it’s the soundtrack I turn to when I must remind myself that gentleness exists somewhere in the world. It exists, at least, in Lee’s landscape poetry and wide-eyed devotion. It also exists, at least, in Mutual Benefit’s shimmering and revolving folk orchestra. That won’t fix the world, but listening might bolster your heart enough that you can face the brokenness again, and continue working to end it. Music as medicine, just a tender philosophy to ascribe to.

WOODS – ” Sun City Creeps “

Posted: July 21, 2016 in MUSIC
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Woods Best Brooklyn Album

At this point, it is hard to imagine that any Woods record isn’t flawless. They have refined the folk-rock psychedelia that defines them to such a degree that it seems pointless to point out individual elements that make the band great. But here are a few: their songs are bright but never sunny, they pull of musical interludes that are just as interesting as verse and chorus structures, and above all, Jeremy Earl’s cellophane tenor. My favorite Woods songs are the ones that feel like they could soundtrack one of The Dude’s trips in The Big Lebowski and it will only take you a couple spins through City Sun Eater in the River of Light to realize–that’s all of them.

BIG THIEF – ” Masterpiece “

Posted: July 21, 2016 in MUSIC
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Big Thief - Masterpiece

Big Thief is muscular and frail. Its songs revolve around singer and guitarist Adrianne Lenker and her musical partner, guitarist Buck Meek. They’re storytellers as much as song makers and their distorted guitar-based music is a powerful underpinning to vivid and stark imagery:

“I’ll be your morning bright goodnight shadow machine.
I’ll be your record player baby if you know what I mean.
I’ll be your real tough cookie with the whiskey breath.
I’ll be a killer and a thriller and the cause of our death”
Masterpiece is one of the strongest debut albums of 2016. It’s an album on being human, finding compassion, being a lover or just a friend.

“Cry like a bird, fly like a baby
Mama got drunk and daddy went crazy.
If your speech slurs, if you feel shaky
meet me out back, I’ll be there waiting.”
Masterpiece shakes off the trite relationship cliches that are trappings of so much rock music. It’s a special world they’ve created and it lives in my head on repeat.

Sometimes the most revealing lyrics for a song can come from deep within one’s subconscious. For Adrianne Lenker of Brooklyn-based band Big Thief, that statement would likely ring true more times than not. Lenker feels that much of the lyrical content on Big Thief’s debut album Masterpiece—which came out in late May on Saddle Creek Records—spilled out from her subconscious. It’s like a volcano that had built up so much pressure that it erupted.

For example, on the album’s title track she sings, “Old stars / Filling up my throat / You gave ‘em to me when I was born / Now they’re coming out.” She says she was at songwriting festival, and that “there was a lot of stuff happening with friends and family and teachers.”

“I got my guitar and walked up to the top of hill and wrote the song and just sang it. I didn’t have anything with me to record it or write it down,” Lenker says. “All the verses came out at once. I guess it was just in the air.”

She’s joined by members Buck Meek, James Krivchenia and Max Oleartchik. The seeds for the band were planted several years ago when Lenker moved from Minnesota to New York and met Meek at a New York marketplace.

Lenker didn’t know anyone in the area, and he had been living in the city for awhile, so he offered to be her tour guide. That led to them playing songs together and going on tour They become as dynamic as tenacious as the old Dragnet episode that their band was named after. The band recorded Masterpiece over a 12-day period at a friend’s family’s old lake house with producer Andrew Sarlo. They worked in the makeshift studio they had built and used their own gear to record.r as a duo in a 1987 Conversion van. It became evident right away that Meek was someone that she wanted to work with.

Big Thief :: The Best of What's Next

SUNFLOWER BEAN – ” Human Ceremony ” Best Albums Of 2016

Posted: July 2, 2016 in CLASSIC ALBUMS, MUSIC
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Listening to the debut album from Brooklyn trio Sunflower Bean is a bit like flipping through some smart stoner’s impeccably refined record collection. All the correct drone-rock references are present: the Velvet Underground at their beachiest, the Autobahn liftoff of vintage Seventies Kraut-rock, the Eighties drug-punk of Spaceman 3, recent garage-grind aesthetes like Ty Segall, and the entire college-jangle canon from early R.E.M. to the Smiths to Real Estate and beyond. Sunflower Bean take these influences and shape them like Silly Putty into sweet, ingenious psych-pop songs that are more economical and compact than you’d expect from a band whose hottest tune is called “Wall Watcher.” There’s New York dripping out of every pore of this record, its hip, it’s arty and oozes catchy melodies from start to finish.

Formed in Brooklyn in 2013, Sunflower Bean, the hardest working band in New York state, released last year an acclaimed EP, Show Me Your Seven Secrets.
This debut album, Human Ceremony, co-produced by the band and Matthew Molnar, delivers on that initial promise.
A heady mix of psychedelic harmonies, 80s tinged jangle pop, and straight ahead power pop, it features a host of great tunes, high quality instrumentation, and delicious vocals.

What marks them out as future stars, other than their striking physical appearance (singer and bassist Julia Cumming, 19, has modeled for Yves Saint Laurent, while 20 year old Nick Kivlen bears more than a passing resemblance to the young Bob Dylan), is the power and confidence in their delivery of the material.
The lyrics are winsome, and varied in their subject matter

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