Introductions all around

Image: Irene Cecile

Knock Knock - The Accidental

Ali Smith wrote a novel called The Accidental about a stranger who insinuates herself into the lives of a fraught family. It came out a couple years ago and you might have heard of it; you might even have read it. I tried, but only got halfway through. The Accidental, the band, may have also (read the book, not succumbed to short attention-spanitis) and this sorta-supergroup may have taken their name from it. And if you've ever played the piano (me! But abandoned before I got very good. See a pattern?), you know that accidentals are the black keys on the board (an accidental is also a musical notation related to pitch). So maybe (ok, probably), that's what the band's referring to. Either way, it's a great name--solid, confident, totemic-sounding, but at the same time a little uneasy, a tad vulnerable.

"Knock Knock" is the first track on The Accidental's delightful first album, and it's the perfect meet n' greet, an introduction to their offhand harmonies, homemade percussion, barefoot la-di-da. It's also an introduction to one another. They start kind of tentative, like strangers meeting on a country road, slowly entering into polite conversation, then engaging more intensely, dropping the small talk for talk about what's real.

From There Were Wolves (Amazon, to be released in June in the US), Myspace

Static

Image: Martina Mullaney

Pompeii - Indian Jewelry

Indian Jewelry didn't used to be this nice or good. They used to be noisy, vaguely threatening, willfully iconoclastic, difficult and interesting but very ... did I say noisy? Ok, they still sound like they're singing from the bottom of a well (or in the case of "Pompeii," choking on volcanic ash?), still spouting static, knitting dense nets of mild-to-moderate cacophony. And they continue to love a good coma-inducing drone. But for all intents and purposes, this here is a folky pop song, with clear, emphatic chord progressions draped in jingle-jangle and mope. Don't ask me what the guy's singing.

One of the best surprises of the year so far, you really should buy "Free Gold!" when it hits the street May 20 (preorder from Amazon).

Time to choose a side

Image: Erin Tyner

Oh, Heaven Isn't Real - David Karsten Daniels

Why should Jesus get all the good music? It's not like it's for the devil or anything -- the song's just one great big secular humanist sigh of exasperation, as if Daniels has had it up to here with heaven this and hell that and will no longer hold his tongue. From the backyard of the Bible Belt, bluegrass swing, handclaps, holler and all, this one goes out to the atheists and undecideds.

From Fear of Flying (eMusic, Amazon), Myspace


Jesus Had a Sweet Girlfriend - Justice of the Unicorns

I suppose even to suggest Jesus had a girlfriend is blasphemy. But Justice of the Unicorns (dudes, you're gonna have to live with that--possibly for years!) means no harm I'm sure. They're just trying to humanize the deity and all that. How could shy, marble-mouthed singing and angelic girl back-ups be evil?

From Angels with Uzis (eMusic, Amazon), Myspace

Elsewhere:
I've been kinda out of the loop so this is a bit old, but Moistworks' collective post on that great indefinable, indie, is well worth reading (as are the comments).

On edge

Eleanor Jane Parsons

We Carry On - Portishead

Carry on as in muddle through, grimly persevere, make do, endure-- it's all so characteristically English, though not uniquely so. These days, we Americans are muddling through til the next election, many of us holding our breath and crossing our fingers that the Dems don't fuck it up again. We carry on, despite economic news more dire by the day and the contradictory message that it's our patriotic duty to spend what we don't have. We grimly persevere waiting for the other shoe to drop. We make do, we endure. Portishead's got that limbo just right, its opaque face and hair-trigger nerves, its moody swings from boredom to emergency. I'd say Third is my fave 2008 album so far, but I keep getting stuck replaying replaying replaying just a couple songs.

Buy Third (Amazon), Myspace.

She's Gone - Langhorne Slim

It's like the closest country gets to Cab Calloway, hiccuped, hyperactive, jumpin jived, and so speedy it's rural meth lab to the typical highway roadhouse. Then there are the lyrics and music that wave at one another from opposite sides of the room.

Buy Langhorne Slim (Amazon), Myspace.

Falling Down - The Lodger

Careful as you pick up this amber-crisp lace cookie of a song--you might break it. Lucksmiths-lite (which is pretty darn lite) and The Smiths without the sexual subtext, "Falling Down" is also fresh as line-dried linen and welcome as the red and yellow tulips I see from my kitchen window (finally!).

Preorder Life is Sweet (Amazon), and def go to the band's Myspace to hear the super neato Slips remix of "The Good Old Days."

Only skin

Image: Nina Hartmann

Skin Lieutenant - My Teenage Stride

From Lesser Demons (eMusic), Myspace


Image: Liu Zheng

LCD - Mathematicians

Myspace


Image: Brian Finke

Lights & Music (Superdiscount remix) - Cut Copy

From Lights & Music EP (Amazon, eMusic), Myspace


Image: Mary Coble

Lions After Slumber - Scritti Politti

From Early (Amazon, eMusic), Myspace


Image: Suzy Poling

Navigate, Navigate (Loving Hand remix) - These New Puritans

Myspace


Image: Ringl & Pit

Los Ninos Del Parque - Liaisons Dangereuses

From Disco Not Disco 1974-1986 (Amazon, eMusic), Myspace


Image: Levi van Veluw

Converging in the Quiet - Crystal Stilts

From Crystal Stilts (eMusic), Myspace


Image: Hellen van Meene

Kast - Silje Nes

From Yellow (eMusic), Myspace


Zip file of April mix

Smallest in the crowd

Image: Cathy Cullis

I Don't Feel Young - Wye Oak

A lot of indie pop bands, to their credit, recast the misery of being young and awkward and self-conscious as a magic of infinite possibility, constant discovery and profound connections. But what of that unaddressed misery--the lack of control, the sense that you speak too fast and laugh too loud and can't trust anyone enough to unburden the lead backpack of secrets from your shoulders? Wye Oak speaks of the purgatorial space between not feeling young but not being old enough to do anything about it. In words, but also in sound, engulfing singer Jenn Wasner's unhappiness in a snowstorm of buzzing cymbals and loud liquid guitar chords.

From If Children (eMusic, Amazon), Myspace

Great things:

Cathy Cullis' poetic textile and mixed media collages (see above).

Jezebel's mad, literary letterpress cards.

All hail second albums

Image: wondercabinet

I Feel Better - Frightened Rabbit

I didn't really see it before, comparisons to fellow Scots, The Twilight Sad. But now that Frightened Rabbit has traded their small-scale art songs for broad mural-scope anthems with dramatic instrumental builds, the points of convergence are coming into focus. The band's lyrical pessimism and Scott Hutchison's mournful voice works both in scrappy and -- on the new album The Midnight Organ Fight -- ambitious modes. So whether you'll like the new album better or worse than Sings the Greys is probably going to be an aesthetic, not a critical, choice. I'm a little leery about a few Coldplay-falsetto moments, but there are plenty of awesome, ultra-catchy tracks here like "Modern Leper" (I posted a live version last year), "Good Arms vs. Bad Arms," "Floating in the Forth" and "I Feel Better." The last works in sort of a"You're So Vain" vein. Hutchison promises "This is the last song I ever sing about you," but the way he chants "I feel better and better" like he's shredding the sofa with his teeth, suggests otherwise.

Previous posts on Frightened Rabbit here, here, here, here and here. Buy The Midnight Organ Fight (Amazon), Myspace.

Spinning out of control

Image: Peter Sutherland

Everyday I Saw You in Egypt - Boo and Boo Too

Boo and Boo Too is a thrift store of sound, for sure. I don't even need to get my hands dirty digging through historical bins because the Lawrence, KS band is kissing cousins to Chicago's still alive-and-wailing (usually good, sometimes quite excellent) The Narrator. But what The Narrator hasn't managed to pull off (i.e. The Big Time [in the indie sense, natch]), I betcha these guys will. Yeah, yeah: punk-pop squawk uneasily buttressed by f(r)actious guitar noise, chaos contained by a thin membrane of control and a tiny salute to no wave. But also that elusive, near-impossible to articulate quality -- charisma. You heard it right here: for the 64th time this week.

From Iron Paw EP (Amazon), Myspace

Pieces - Miwagemini

When it gallops, this song, it's not like a flesh & fur horse. But like a pole pierced carousel creature spinning on a spit. It doesn't so much slip its reins as lose its terra firma, and run in place as cartoon characters do, feet forever soft-pedaling the air.

From This is How I Found You (eMusic, Amazon), Myspace

Around:
A lot of us bitch about the collective fallacy known as Vampire Weekend fandom (howdy!), but Mr. Heart on a Stick does something productive (and great) with his hate.

Bloodthirsty rainbows

Image: John Murphy

Bloodthirsty Angels & The Terrible Trumpets - John Ralston

"Bloodthirsty Angels & the Terrible Trumpets" borrows the language of Revelations to delineate a fraught relationship. And with its lonely echoed spaciousness, the song sounds like it was recorded in a wooden church -- some 17th century New England meetinghouse in the dead of winter or a rough structure in the hot, arid western desert. But like most pop songs (and whatever I've led you to believe in the previous two sentences, this is a very traditional pop song), it's primarily about the Church of Me and the way misery makes you the most self-centered person in the world.

From White Spiders (Vagrant Records, eMusic), Myspace

What Swallows a Rainbow - Hysterics

Hysterics come at psychedelia sideways, through obliquely day-glo pop hooks and temperate guitar solos: the 60s as remembered from the 80s and 90s -- as neatly harmonized power pop blaring from a car radio in the high school parking lot. My hackles naturally rise whenever "rainbow" appears in a song title, but at worst these guys are smoking a lot of pot, which may be why the chorus keeps asking, "Tell me whaaaat holds me back."

From Hysterics (Amazon, eMusic), Myspace

Keep the hits coming

Image: Mandy Lamb

Aly, Walk with Me - The Raveonettes

If it even crossed my mind in the past, I think I thought The Raveonettes were Dutch. I guess I visualized them flogging their seedy Spectorish wares on the edge of some dank low-country canal a few meters from a red-light zone window display. Close enough: They're Danes living in New York. But you can locate the cathexis of their music in Los Angeles -- specifically, the LA of James Ellroy and Chinatown and its fictional, but viscerally oh-so-real fatal flaws, pitiless ambition, atavistic slaughter. Not that national identity matters much when every artist sings in English, is easily accessible via their social-networking site page and illegally downloadable off Romanian servers.

I can't help but think that The Rs' rootlessness is important, though, as if it lets them execute their art-damaged garage kink menacing and authentic. Sort of how the heroes of John Ford's westerns got away with violence (in the administration of justice) only because they were physically and emotionally disconnected from the familial and civic. Ok, this may not be the best analogy, because I don't get the sense The Raveonettes have any inclination toward moral markering. It's this anomie, in fact, that keeps a phrase like "walk with me" so open-ended. Are we just talking restlessness? Streetwalking? A haunting? Spiritual reassurance? Also, the way this song carves pop out of fizz and reverb is marvelous.

Buy Lust Lust Lust Lust Lust Lust Lu (Amazon, eMusic), Myspace

£4 - These New Puritans

I keep hearing how indebted These New Puritans are to hip-hop. The primacy of beats to this band of the mo I'll buy. But lyrically... there's not a whole lot of storytelling, cultural representation or linguistic calisthenics going down on Beat Pyramid. "£4" pretty much consists of "four of your pounds" and its variation, "we've got four of your pounds." The only provocative, pause-and-ponder moment comes in the last few lines, "You get zero percent ... if you can fucking try to stay silent" (I think). Are TNP editorializing on the entertainment industry's decades-long exploitation of consumers and artists?

What's really fascinating, though, is how TNP uses symbols -- the number four, the pounds sterling currency -- not symbolically, but aesthetically, as sounds. "Four" and "pounds" are jackhammered into a blur of almost-abstraction so that they're sonic patterns as much as the cha cha chas. Defamiliarization could go a couple ways here. The obvious one is the deconstructive path -- the song highlighting inherent instability of meaning (another track, "Numerology," repeatedly asks "What's your favorite number/what does it mean?"). But I think these boys and girl have a slightly different agenda. Consider what Jasper Johns did with his number paintings and drawings: highlighted process with texture and erasure, prodded the nature of representation by divorcing symbols from context. But more important, rendered the ordinary new and mysterious, made art out of the prosaic. The cool thing is, unlike a Johns' canvas you can dance to this.

Buy Beat Pyramid (Amazon), Myspace