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10 Songs in High Rotation
The girls have got my heart over the past few weeks & months. And so does turntable.fm (long live turntable.fm)! Seriously, it’s like mainlining new music while hanging with all your best friends.
Braids – Plath Heart
A Sylvia Plath reference and a songwriter who likes to say “fuck” all the time, how can you go wrong? Their debut Native Speaker is one of those perfect moments of pop-craft for which you’ve been searching.
Every song lulls you into their universe, both familiar and distinct. I’m often surprised that this lot of Canadians could have produced such a shimmering debut and on inspection their first Set Pieces EP under the name The Neighborhood Council, I’ve found the same awe-inducing markings of refinement.
Any song is difficult to pin down as a favorite, but “Plath Heart” is one I currently gravitate to for its love of the motorik repetition and warble of keyboards and electronics. The lyrics are cryptic and hover somewhere between sex and birth.
“Surely given to make / beautiful children / and push and push and push / and out slides the / golden baby / with nice dark hair”
via Pitchfork
Plath Heart
Lemonade
Read Braids Travelblog
Download Set Pieces EP
Braids – Glass Deers
If Cocteau Twins had sex with Animal Collective, you’d have something resembling Braids. In fact their album’s title song “Native Speaker” sounds like a girl version of “Loch Raven” as sung by Elizabeth Frazer‘s distant cousins.
They perform “Glass Deers” with the same wild abandon of Ponytail. Their gleeful fits and yelps are so joyous and satisfying behind the sparkly-cascade of the Nord it’s difficult to believe the chorus is “Oh, I’m fucked up, fucked up, fucked up, fucked up.” The disjointed lyrics are with purpose, to amp up the tension and play out the melody.
The Cake Shop video shows their deft hand and concentration to exploring a sound and replicating it live. Braids takes the time to simmer over a lyric and open it up into different shapes and sound-forms. A yell, an echo or reverb, and a layering of voices. The deep-percussion keeps your feet beating against dirt ground and the vocals leave your head in the stars.
One of the commenters says aptly, “I love looking how mesmorized [sic] the crowd is.”
Live from the Cake Shop
Original via oh-my-grimm
Purity Ring – Ungirthed
Never have 2 songs got all the kids up in a froth like the 2 from Purity Ring. And we’re all waiting for them to come to town to play a gig so we can hear more. There’s something unassuming about candy-claps and Chuck Person inspired slow-mo vocals. But against the LFE dubstep beats, Purity Ring fulfills their namesake of being shiny and brand new. Throw “Lofticries” in for good measure and all our hopes that they are not a one-hit wonder seem justified.
What is so subversive is the Christian AIDS remix which dis-assembles and reconstructs “Ungirthed” into something twisted and new. The breathy vocals, the charming synths, the deep cuts into the dubstep are all there. A triumph of a mix that can be attributed to the excellent foundation Purity Ring gave with their original.
I have great hopes for their full-length and one that I hope they can help sanctify.
Ungirthed [Christian AIDS Remix]
Lofticries
Follow Purity Ring on twitter
Ungirthed:
Twin Sister – Bad Street
Four months from my last Top 10 and Twin Sister is still releasing songs that captivate my attention. A slow funk and disco beat find their way on “Bad Street” and Andrea Estella‘s vocals repeat not-so-subconsciously “I want it bad” and so you do. Out of nowhere the “In Heaven” B-side to the 10” is a krautrock drive to school, to prove they know their music powers and don’t just use tricks.
The most fun part of “Bad Street” song’s exit lyrics:
“Bad house, bad street / big hands, big feet / Gotta car, beep beep / bad boy, bad streak / big kids, two kids / gotta job, feeds three”
The video seems a bit random, but I encourage fans to visit their website where they are very open about their process, demos and stems, and general inspirations.
Bad Street via Stereogum
I Want a House
Twin Sister’s website and freebies
The Luyas – Too Beautiful to Work
Thank god for 7” splits and Record Store Day, I was introduced to The Luyas on the B-side to Twin Sister’s “Meet the Frownies”. The two bands are cut from the same cloth, albiet their approaches results in different music. The opening and title track taps along to Stereolab synths and dips in and out of string-laden atmospheres. Vocalist Jessie Stien exhibits clear Laetitia Sadier tendencies.
The band can slow it down and sound like a lost track from an early His Name Is Alive groove, full of whining guitars, retro electronics, and lounge-y drums as found on “Tiny Head.” They are the sort of loam from which to mold great dream pop, the kind you need to sleep to let it in your head and take over.
St. Vincent – Surgeon
Omygod St. Vincent.
Annie Clark‘s unlocks her first single off her upcoming album Strange Mercy begs you to wonder why she starts off with the lyric “I spent the summer on my back”. Her seductive vocals make you think she means one thing but unexpectedly veers off and juxtaposes her position with the chorus “Best finest surgeon / Come cut me open.”
Sex and surgery, twisted and dark. St. Vincent delivers the lines over and over until she’s overcome with tantric guitars straight out of Heart‘s “Magic Man”. Then, they oh and oh until crescendo just like they should.
Surgeon via Gorilla vs. Bear
Strange Mercy album website
Unknown Mortal Orchestra – Ffunny Ffrends
UMO seemed to be unearthed from an era far gone by when funk and AM pop roamed the earth. With crunchy guitars, simple drums beats, hooky-ass lyrics, they can mesmerize you with their zombie ways.
“Please eat my brains, just do it with another play”, certainly that’s the virus talking when you listen to “Ffunny Ffrends” and the rest of their self-titled EP and/or album.
via Bowlegs
Original:
TV Girl – Benny and the Jetts
Whussup, San Diego? I love your bands as of late. Stay beautiful. (Dudes, Dirty Gold, Writer, etc…)
I read a comment when TV Girl released their second EP, “Now I have my summer songs.” Clearly, this fan was right. TV Girl assemble samples and sugary lyrics into a nod to the Elton John song that shares its name (minus a “t”). And why not? They have a love of those power-pop songs from the 70s that stuck in your ear like cotton candy — the more you try to pull ‘em out, the more they stay stuck.
What keeps TV Girl interesting is the off-hand way that the Brad Petering‘s vocals are delivered which try but fail to cover up the heart on his sleeve. The songs are as short as they are sweet, they leave you wanting more just as they sing about wanting more.
Free Downloads at Bandcamp
I Don’t Care via OhMyRockness
If You Want
It
via Pitchfork
Writer – Miss Mermaid
I wouldn’t have guessed, but Writer out-played the Cults at the LA show last week. The Cults’ cutsie dancing and studio replication of songs couldn’t hold up to intensity of the Ralph brothers’ performance. Live, the duo shows some surprising chops, playing drums with tambourines, harmonizing vocals even as they were processed through filters. Drumming and keyboards at once, guitars and keyboards at once. Just the two of them can fill up the room with layers and textures.
Their methods remind me of No Age at their best and earliest and I hope they can translate that energy to tape.
Free Downloads at Bandcamp
Ponytail – Easy Peasy
I discovered Ponytail through my friend, Linds, and Why We Fight #13 article on millennial music. Here’s the word “joyous” again. They are unabashed, they are wild abandon.
Unexplainable, the words to “Easy Peasy” seems to just be “Why.. always running out of time.” That’s if you can uncover them. And so what if you do? And so what if you don’t? Their bubbly guitars and whimsical carnival-ity is the stuff that the phrase “let’s do it again” is made out of… and so you do.
Easy Peasy via Stereogum
