Lush and Slowdive put out new albums that were very much in the same vein as their older works, but the new Ride is a bit different, and I’m not sure how I feel about it yet.
New Palehound is indeed pretty good.
Chain of Flowers have a new 7" out and I dig it, like A Projection more of that post-punk sound I love, with a tinge of Shoegaze.
Also, I don’t think anyone ever posted about the Jay Som album, so I’m rectifying that.
The reviews seem to be ranging from positive to deliriously positive, but I don’t hear it. This album sounds like a crossover of 90s-era Duran Duran and 2000s-era Echo and the Bunnymen: pretty much totally punchless.
“Lateral Alice” is damn catchy, though. And it’s nice to get an oblique William Basinski reference on a pop album.
New record from Anathema, The Optimist, dropped about a week ago. It’s a thematic followup to 2001’s A Fine Day to Exit and absolutely gorgeous, but of course, that was obvious, because hey, Anathema.
I particularly enjoy “Springfield” at the moment:
New Pete Fij and Terry Bickers single is really good stuff, album to follow next month.
Jeff Burke is a Texan who plays in a great band called the Marked Men. Yusuke Okada lives in Japan and plays in a group called Suspicious Beasts that I’m unfamliar with.
They have a side project together, a band called Lost Balloons. And goddamn do I love this record.
After about 4 spins, the Lost Balloons record has me completely under its spell. It hits just every part of my brain almost exactly right.
Thanks trigg, that’s a great tune!
What’s cool is the way the styles of Jeff Burke and Yusuke Okada blend in Lost Balloons. I’ve been listening to the Marked Men–who are cool, but their songs tend to run together a bit much–and all of Burke’s songs there are really frenetic and strummy and fast. I gather Okada’s songs with his band are a little slower and mid-tempo and kind of spacey dreamy.
So there are some Lost Balloons tunes like this one that have tons of Burke’s frenetic energy…
But even there, the song lets itself take a breather on the chorus and bridge. Which is nice.
And this song is full-on Okada, I think:
Both cool. But man, when they key off one another and blend themselves, you get beyond cool to pure magic:
Yeah, good find! And it looks like this thread is dramatically increasing their play counts on Spotify. In before 1,000,000!
Oh, Lost Balloons has the guy from Radioactivity. I like Radioactivity.
Yeah, Burke is apparently in a ton of bands…so yeah. If you’ve got more Jeff Burke as good as that Radioactivity track, I’m buying! Thanks!
Picked up the lost balloons album and it’s chock full of goodness. Thanks again!
Total accident of a find for me. I thought Daggerzine’s blog site had gone dark, but it’s still up. Went to go read a Game Theory reissues review, and saw the Lost Balloons review they had up and listened to it because I liked the album cover.
And yeah, I just love the whole record. Love the flow from start to finish. “Noose” is a great closer.
I’d go a slightly different direction from everyone else on this, and recommend Casino Classics, their remix compilation. No band has ever had better remixes than Saint Etienne. Tiger Bay is probably my favorite of their albums, but Casino Classics is towering genius.
Melody Prochet and Melody’s Echo Chamber have cancelled all summer tour gigs. Something happened at a gig last week, although it’s tough to parse out exactly what. Originally it was said that Melody had an accident, and the tour was canceled as a result. But a statement from her family today says she had a cerebral aneurysm and cracked a couple of vertibrae, which sounds really serious.
Although, it sounds like she’ll recover. I hope she doesn’t have to go through what Chick Graning of Scarce went through, where he had to relearn how to play guitar completely after recovering.
I’m probably going to have to see this at least three times.
Have you guys heard about this hot new indie artist?
Fingers crossed for her. I hope it works out.
I was reading a cool article (link below) about the Puerto Rican music scene and came across a group I think would be up several of your alleys. Dreamy, trippy lo-fi poprock ahoy!
So Cornelius has a new album out (w00t!) called Mellow Waves.
On the past couple of albums, I really worked everything out on a grid, in terms of laying out the sounds. But this time, I was more interested in something moving over that grid, a continuous form that sort of waved over it. Some kind of winding line, a continuous line of sound that was on top of that grid.
Whatever you say, Corny! I’m in.
Only two songs on Spotify so far but both are pretty good. Have you heard the full album yet, @charmtrap?
