Best of Myspace Music
Wow…is it Sunday already? Only one more day and most of us will have to go back to work. I like the Friday nights best because everything is before you. Sigh. Well, at least there’s good music.
1. April & i is from Brighton and oh my gosh they are such orchestral pop goodness they remind me of one of my favorite Canadian bands, The Heavy Blinkers (who actually have a new song posted) which is a big compliment. They say they only have 200 copies of their album pressed to sell at shows but I really hope they’ll let me buy one. Such full rich fun makes me feel like being in love all over again.
Hi France. Hope you’re well. I still love your music. Hitchcock Go Home’s influences are fantastic: Neil Young, Nick Drake, A Silver Mount Zion, Godspeed You! Black Emperor but I’m going to say what their song “Blank” reminds me of most as far as the passion and emotional sense is a composer by the name of Andrew Dickson, who has scored some Mike Leigh films such as the brilliant Naked. There are some really intricate guitar and banjo chords playing to accompany one of the most beautiful voices I’ve ever heard just this lovely swooning. The other song they have up, “Coward” is much more of a rocker and I don’t care for it as much in the mood I’m in now, though I think if I had listened to it first, I might have liked it better. It’s just now I’m longing for more songs like “Blank.” Still, fantastic!
3. Arizona sent me a friend request about three weeks ago and every time I had gone to their myspace page, I hadn’t been able to get their songs to play but this morning it seems to be working fine. The band is called Arizona so, of course, they are from Brooklyn (makes total sense, doesn’t it?) They are influenced by the civil war and video game music and they have a ton of friends (over 5,000, which might actually be the equivalent of two blocks of Brooklyn or a small town in Arizona) considering they have just one full length album Welcome Back Dear Children and an ep The Sun and the Room What I find most interesting about this band is the variety in the vocals between songs like “Surviving the Savior” and “Some Kind of Chill” and songs like “Jubilee.” On the former, the vocals have a nice tenor quality that almost hints at a weakness towards glam if it weren’t so steeped in indie rock sensibility. On the latter, the lyrics are so breathy that it makes me think it’s a completely different lead singer taking the mike, which is definitely possible. I’m definitely going to look for this album at a couple of places around here first because I like to support my independent record stores but if I can’t find it, it’s available at Insound with a discount coupon available on their myspace page.
4. The Lion Song is a Chicago band made up of (I think) the same Stephen Favazza that is one of my favorite Chicago bands of all, Tenki. The songs of The Lion Song are quite a bit more low key with some nice drifting instrumentation and vocals. I like how they say they sound like cicadas in the background. In actuality, I think that is more how they may you feel while listening.
5. Moors
Moors, from Oxford don’t really sound like their cited influences, Johnny Cashn and Pavement, for example. The closest one I can see is maybe Radiohead. This is sort of an electronic wonderland that seems most like a staticy radio barely coming in with some great drums up front and nice French lyrics humming in the background. It’s very sensual in a postmodern sort of way. It doesn’t sound exactly like “your mother making pancakes” but then again…well, I haven’t met your mother.