December 2010
12 posts
5 tags
The Fresh & Onlys - Play It Strange →
The Fresh & Onlys are a garage rock band hailing from San Francisco and put a classic Californian spin on this lo-fi genre by writing peppy and memorably melodic tunes with simple chord structures, echo-y background vocals and good ol’ fashioned good times. This is their third full lengther and is quite a discovery for me - particularly the track Waterfall - which keeps getting spun....
5 tags
Twin Shadow - Forget →
This album has a genuine thoughtfulness, expressiveness and artistic sensibility such that the absence of those elements from many recent bands is suddenly more noticeable. Twin Shadow’s liquid voice and electronic momentum create a muffled, rich dream state, sharply highlighted with string samples or other synth sounds. Each song is its own strong individual sound and put together, the...
3 tags
Captain Beefheart - Safe As Milk →
Sunday Sermons
To mark the passing of the great Don Van Vliet, aka Captain Beefheart, this weekend sees the return of Sunday Sermons. One of the true vanguards of rock music through the years, Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band ripped apart blues, rock and psychadelia to create bewildering, befuddling and beguiling music ready to blow your brains out. From the surreal to the very real, his...
5 tags
Ryan Adams - III/IV →
His first album since 2008’s Cardinology collection, making 2009 the only year since he started that Ryan Adams failed to release a record. III/IV is discarded tracks from the sessions that eventually honed their way down to the excellent Easy Tiger back in 2007. Of course, Ryan Adams is not afraid of putting out material that isn’t 100% polished so expect some rough edges on this one...
6 tags
Seams - Tourist →
Tourist is an EP devised, excavated and cultivated by Seams, aka Jami Welch, during a summer spent in Berlin. Wandering around with a field recorder, he captured the sounds on the street and spent the sweltering nights turning them into this collection of hypnotic and evocative tracks. Imagine the city refracted through a thousand kaleidoscopes and filtered through Berlin’s electronic...
6 tags
Girls - Broken Dreams Club →
An EP of brand new material from this San Francisco band comes at welcome time, bridging the gap between their well-received 2009 debut ‘Album’ and the sophomore release sometime next year. Expanding upon their original lo-fi beachy sound by bringing in some steel guitar and horns, Broken Dreams Club is also stunning in its songwriting. Heartbreaker and opening track Oh So Protective...
5 tags
Lower Dens - Twin Hands Movement →
Twin Hand Movement has some interesting seemingly classical influences infiltrating electric guitar but remains too much like background lo-fi noise. Why does every new band suddenly feel the need to reach for the distortion lo-fi machine whatever that is that makes it sound far away and from a different era? You’re good, don’t ruin it trying to sound like everyone else.
5 tags
The Emeralds - Does It Look Like I'm Here? →
It’s blippy, it’s bloppy, it’s so cool you can’t even handle it. But yes, you can; you can and you will. Three cheers to this instrumental electro-ambient masterpiece hailing from the Cleve’. It’s like airplanes dancing. It’s like a robot’s sex dream. Just don’t get the band confused with these guys. Disclosure: Had trouble rating this...
4 tags
Twin Sister - Vampires With Dreaming Kids / Color... →
I have been waiting for months to post Color Your Life and now it appears as a double with 2008’s Vampires With Dreaming Kids - both the band’s EPs to date. Hailing from Brooklyn, Twin Sister create a laid-back romanticised nostalgia without falling into the trap of being too twee. That has a lot to do with the bewitching voice of Andrea Estella and the Beach House-style sounds -...
6 tags
Kisses - The Heart Of The Nightlife →
This record, the first from the LA-based duo, was only released quite recently but it already feels like it’s six months behind where it should be. Everything, from the sugar-coated, synthpop melodies to the cover art has a summery vibe much like the rest of this year’s blog crop - Washed Out or Delorean for example. It’s a little too well-produced to be chillwave though and...
4 tags
Steve Mason - Boys Outside →
This is the first record out under his own name, but you’ll recognize Mason’s smooth, calm voice from The Beta Band, Black Affair or King Biscuit Time. This album is more like The Beta Band than his other works, though it’s always a pleasure to hear his latest incarnation, and the growth between each new project. There’s a beautiful, swaying tension to Boys Outside -...
1 tag
November Playlist
It was Deluxe Edition month in November with double expanded editions of two of hotspotmusic’s favourite records OF ALL TIME in Bitte Orca by Dirty Projectors and Pinkerton by Weezer (who also put out another, less good, record at the same time). Other great records came from Darren Hayman, Grinderman and The Sights. With only one month left until the end of the year, hotspotmusic is ...