Sunday, August 30, 2009

Hi friends!  No introduction today (except RIP DJ AM and Ted Kennedy), it’s all music for us:

The Black And White Years - Nursery Myths

It’s been nearly a year and a half since the Black and White Years’ eponymous debut broke to rave reviews (all noting producer Jerry Harrison - of the Talking Heads, duh) and, earlier this year, to a number of high honors at the Austin Music Awards.  And then there was the hit single Power to Change, which sounded like this:

:The Black And White Years - Power To Change:

Honestly though, I was never foaming-at-the-mouth crazy about Power to Change.  For one, great as Jerry Harrison is and all, the song was clouded with such an intense Talking Heads sensation that I felt a little dizzy by the tenth time I listened to it.  I suppose that’s a great thing, if you love the Talking Heads (and I’ve been told that you’d be crazy not to), but...

Well, let’s simply say that any qualms I had about Power to Change have been thoroughly remedied by a good ten or twenty listens to this track off the band’s new EP, Nursery Myths, due in September.  The track is called To Modern Science (via the irony-infused line "I propose a toast to modern science!/I put my faith in their brighter brains"), and it’s done wonders to make up for an underwhelming summer of music.  I don’t want to say too much about the track itself, since to reduce it to its influences and say a few curt things about "shrill synths" and "lush melodies" would hardly do justice to the feeling I got when I heard it the first time.  So just listen.

:The Black And White Years - To Modern Science:

The band is playing a release show at the ‘Hawk on the 19th. I’m so excited.
 

Darling New Neighbors - Rocket

Rocket, the second LP from Darling New Neighbors, and follow up to their debut Every Day Is Saturday Night, is something of an odd album the first time you hear it.  Neither the vocals (which occasionally slip into spoken word) nor the jangly rhythms that accompany them are particularly inviting on the first run, but keep at it a couple times and you find you appreciate the songs more and more, finding small pleasures that begin to permeate throughout the qualities that were off-putting at first. 

We talk about artists who are very listener-aware, that is, they lull their audience in with neat tricks and, if you’re lucky, leave something more complex lurking just beneath the surface.  With Darling New Neighbors, that isn’t necessarily the case, nor is it that the entire equation is reversed; nothing with this album can be modeled so simply, but a very relatable quality (if only discoverable at some length) emanates from the miss-matched variety of songs here, and in the end I can only conclude the album is all the better for it.  Or at least I feel all the better for listening to it.  As for you, well I can’t say, but here at least for now is a cut off the new album, Indian Mounds.  Rocket is out October 19th.

:Darling New Neighbors - Indian Mounds:


In other news, Thrift Store Cowboys (the excellent and marginally-country band out of Lubbock) have a new split 7” with the band One Wolf out on Mt. Inadale records. Vinyl, as you may know, is incompatible with the internet, but if TSC is your kind of music (and you know who you are) then be sure to pick up a copy before they sell out.

Sorry for all the parenthetical asides this week, see you all in mid-September.

- John Michael Cassetta -



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