If you’re in the market for a great show this Saturday night (as you should be), may I humbly recommend checking out Jaguar Love at Emo’s with Polysics tonight.

Jaguar Love, who hail from Portland, just released their debut LP, Take Me To The See, on Matador Recs. The band’s lineup is a combination of remnants of bands past, including Johnny Whitney and Cody Votolato of The Blood Brothers (whose demise came only last fall) and Jay Clark of Pretty Girls Make Graves.

It’s no surprise then that the band retains some of the punk sound that characterized these earlier projects, but I can’t help but notice a pop attitude in some of the new songs. The music is slightly more, shall we say “wholesome,” than most of the Blood Brothers releases. To some extent that’s a good thing, as while the band may loose some of the cult appeal drawn by the searing riffs of Blood Brothers, Jaguar Love is more universal: there’s still the same driving, energetic angst behind Jaguar Love, but there’s also catchy riffs and howling synths, all combined into a strange hard-core-glam-rock that’s highly enjoyable. It’s successful on the album, and my bet is that the live show will only get better.

All that plus Polysics’s Japanese New Wave. Seriously, nothing says Saturday like weird pop music. Tracks from Jaguar Love below, and check out Polysics myspace for tunes (I suggest “Arigatou” and skip to like 1:40). See you tonight.

Jaguar Love - Highways of Gold

If you’ve got your finger on the local pulse, you may have noticed a band called Frantic Clam on Austin Sound this week. And if you went so far as to listen to the demos, you already know most of what I’m about to tell you about relative newcomers Frantic Clam and “Richard Cory”: they’re a band to seriously watch (and listen to, for that matter).

The originality, or probably more appropriately, the honesty in their music is aggressively refreshing. Instead of a band caught up in the pride of their record collection, desperately trying to define their “unique place in music” without straying too far from Papa-Westerberg’s sight, Frantic Clam are a band that’s unique from the get-go, though not in that gimmicky sideshow-instrumentation way that we’ve come to associate with “unique.” No, Frantic Clam immediately sound of familiarity, like you’ve been listening to them for years, but unlike anything you can put your finger on. Influences? Sure: Bowie, The Stones, low-fi Velvet Underground or early Modest Mouse even. But a knock-off they are not.

This song, from their current EP Celebrity, takes its name and theme from the Edwin Arlington Robinson’s famous poem by the same name:

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.

The band formed under the direction of Zack Hadley and Joe Sparks (who has since left the lineup) while in Iraq, compliments of the US Army, an environment which seems to be reflected in some of the darker themes of the music. I won’t presume to infer the meaning of lines like “Bang bang bang Richard Cory’s dead, a thirty-eight revolver emptied in his head” or even “…fought a war you didn’t care about” (in “Amnesty”), but it’s obvious that these lyrics draw more from the hard realities of life than those of the average indie rock band whose, if we’re going to stretch the stereotype to the extreme, trust-fund-bought lyrics (and gear) are probably more related to how the tight squeeze those pants are putting on their testicles.

Though their history is brief, it’s already apparent even from these 5 short songs that Frantic Clam have a strong sense of direction, and the upcoming release of Anatomica (due out on January 15th, 2009 on Exemplary Records) will hopefully build on these solid foundations. If the music community is even partially fair in its judgment of Frantic Clam, we should expect to hear only more good things about this band — and thank God for it, if I get one more press release about how you and your band put a computer mic up to your shoddy washing machine and found the true meaning of “meaningful,” I’m moving to Ulan Bataar and never looking back.

The band are playing Friday at Trophy’s, check em out (poster below). Here’s a tune from Celebrity:

Frantic Clam - Richard Cory

The good people at The Kora Records sent over a new track today from a Swedish band I’d never heard of called Fredrik. My first thoughts went to a couple of shoddy chairs I bought from IKEA that, if I remember correctly, have the same name. If that indeed be the case, I’d like to have a word with the band about the necessity of a solid base in the making of a quality sitting apparatus.

Supposing that either a) Fredrik is in no way connected to my chairs, or b) I’ll forgive their shoddy worksmanship, let’s move on to talking about their new album Na Na Ni.

The band is a collection of six musicians, allowing the complex arrangements to develop appropriately in the songs without sounding forced or muddled. The overall tone is a blissful melancholy that naturally satisfies any equation of the form “Acoustic Guitar + (Harmonies x Croon)”. But just as wine snobs swear they can taste the wood in a bottle of aged wine, you get the feeling that for all the obvious pleasures of the music, there are textures of creativity looming behind the scenes, a reference to the “fermentation process” that must have occurred for such lush arrangements to have been written.

We’ve got a cut from Na Na Ni here called “Black Fur,” which I bet you’ll enjoy. If you like what you hear check out the full album; it’s out October 28, 2008 on The Kora Records.

Fredrik - Black Fur

The band also has a video out for one another one of the new songs, you can find it below.

The band is on tour in a couple of cities. Dates are listed below.

11.5.08 - DC - DC9
11.6.08 - Baltimore - Metro Gallery
11.7.08 - New York - Cake Shop
11.9.08 - Pittsburgh - Brillobox
11.12.08 - Boston - TT the Bear’s
11.13.08 - Portland, ME - Space 538
11.15.08 - New York - Piano’s

Okay first of all, has anyone seen this? Pitchfork’s “Guide To Music”? Really? If you’re like me, trying to get a grasp on over a century of great music that came before your lifetime (yeah I’m a Sousa fan) can be, at times, daunting. But that doesn’t mean you need to ruin the experience of finding out yourself!

Or more importantly, it doesn’t mean you need a book’s worth of distraction from the hordes of great music being produced at this very instant. Today, for example, we’ve got a new track from long-time writer and producer Scott Garred, aka Super XX Man. The new album is called Volume XII: There’ll Be Diamonds, and it draws primarily from experiences at a State Hospital. While the subject of the mentally ill is in itself is somewhat haunting, and Garred captures the solemn, inconsolable guilt of the whole experience.

The music is reassuringly upbeat, often times searing with guitar feedback, or as in “Medication,” calculated in its movements, like a Kill the Moonlight-era Spoon song with the “cool” turned way down. But don’t let it be a distraction from the lyrics underneath: “I’ve taken too many medications, I don’t know, I don’t know…” Take a listen for yourself:

Super XX Man - Medication

The new album is out October 28, 2008 on Tender Loving Empire.

I was listening to some wailing trumpet solos when I got the press release about Jay Crocker’s new album Below The Ocean Over, so when I heard this track off it, the horn parts fit suspiciously well with the playlist I’d been listening to and enjoying on my own.

Crocker you might know as a member of another Calgary band I posted about a while ago called Ghostkeeper, but – and this might just because the album is still fresh – I’ve been enjoying Below The Ocean Over more than Ghostkeeper’s material. The album racks up a variety of styles, including some songs that are a little too unfocused (I think the technical term is ‘experimental’) for my tastes, but in certain songs Crocker seems to have tapped into that universally sought recipe for mixing “pop sensibility” with, you know, all that other cool stuff about music. What does that mean? I don’t know, but it sounds like this:

Jay Crocker – Below The Ocean Over Pt. 23

Any one else hear a little Randy Newman in there? Anyway, the album is out October 14th on Artunit. Check it out.

Chicago/NY duo French Horn Rebellion recently did a remix of a band we featured a little while ago, This Is Ivy League (we included the track below). But the band, which features the Brothers Perlick-Molinari, David you you might know as the producer of first MGMT EP, also have a brand new full-length out now, which they’re supporting with a tour this fall.

I don’t know a whole lot about the band, and I was quite honestly a little disappointed when their music didn’t include any (identifiable) french horns, but their music is certainly fun, and made me dance a little bit in my desk chair, which is enough for me. Check out the track “Up All Night” from the new album (which sounds like a seizure-laced acid trip) and their remix of “London Bridges” (which sounds like the end credits to a Sega Genesis game) after the jump.

They won’t be playing in Austin, but they will be through Dallas if anyone up North is interested, at The Door on August 30th. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go play more John Madden Football ‘92.

Tunes:

French Horn Rebellion - “Up All Night”

This Is Ivy League - “London Bridges (French Horn Rebellion Remix)”

Websites:

[official]
[myspace]

Shows:

FRENCH HORN REBLLION Tour Dates
08/08 @ Akron Musica in Akron, Ohio
08/09 @ American Eagle Outfitters Festival in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
08/10 @ The Barbary in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
08/13 @ Asbury Lanes in Asbury Park, New Jersey
08/15 @ The Red Dragon in Evanston, Illinois
08/16 @ Mad Planet in Milwaukee
08/20 @ Electro Lounge (Robotic Wednesdays) in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
08/21 @ The Vertical Violet in Wichita, Kansas
08/22 @ Black Box Revue in Springfield, Missouri
08/23 @ The Sound Pony in Tulsa, Oklahoma
08/24 @ Chandler Park in Tulsa, Oklahoma
08/26 @ The Bright House in Lubbock, Texas
08/28 @ Le Disko El Paso, Texas
08/30 @ The Door in Dallas, Texas
09/02 @ George’s Majestic Lounge (Electro Tuesday) in Fayetteville, Arkansas
09/04 @ Bar Twenty3 (VBS Thursdays) in Nashville, Tennessee
09/07 @ Neil’s Music Room in Memphis, Tennessee
09/13 @ Duncan’s in Frostburg, Maryland
09/19 @ Lit Lounge in New York, New York
10/09 @ Middlebury College in Middlebury, Vermont

My initial thoughts on hearing “Los Dos Bros” concerned the close and unfortunate similarity between their name and “Los Dude-Bros”, which is a) hilarious, and b) my least favorite sub-demographic of white people. As such, I was thoroughly perplexed when I found out their new album Songs For Feeling Strong wasn’t a ode to Forty’s, , and . In fact, it’s one of those albums that a) kind of sounds like classic rock but has enough violins, horns and good lyrics to shy away from the oldies-tribute genre, and b) is really good.

The Los Dos Bros formed in March of this year out of the remnants of HATAPCO (aka Holiday and the Adventure Pop Collective) following the abandonment of their drummer while on tour with Louis XIV. Now only half a year later, the duo have two releases out: a full length titled Greek Gods in the West and the shorter Songs For Feeling Strong (from which I pulled “Start All Over Again”).

“Start All Over Again” is a good sampling of the album as a whole. Bearing the inviting warmth of the analog 24-track to which it was recorded, “Start All Over Again” is equal parts pop music, with sweet melodies and strong vocals, and something entirely different, with pseudo-psychedelic guitar tones and torrential buildups. There’s nothing better than a band prepared to keep their listeners entertained while still venturing to cover new ground. Los Dos Bros do just that (and record it all to tape too).

Check out “Start All Over Again” after the jump, as well as another cut from the album, “Time Changes Everything” (originally a Tommy Duncan song), which sounds like it may as well be a lost track from Cake’s Comfort Eagle.

Tunes:

Los Dos Bros - “Start All Over Again”

Los Dos Bros - “Time Changes Everything”

Info:
Songs For Feeling Strong is out now. You can get it, and other Los Dos Bros albums here.

Websites:
[official]
[myspace]
[facebook]

Bark Hide and Horn sound like the bottom of a bottle of whiskey slowly running out while the night’s not quite done. Solemn trumpet solos and the occasional bell part punctuate the sparse arrangement of drums and guitars, the reserved croon of lead singer Andy Furgeson proudly standing in the forefront. Recovering from the feeling of despair that haunts a first listen (despite the marginally joyful melodies that carry the song), I was able to look further into the story of the band’s debut full length titled National Road, which is as interesting as the song itself, if not more so.

Drawing their songwriting inspiration from Furgeson’s obsession with Melville Bell Grosvenor, editor of National Geographic Magazine from 1957-67, the lyrics of “Treasure of the Everglades”, off National Road, confront their seemingly odd subject with solemnity, leading off with the line “I think the rainy days are over, the season is getting late / if you slime(?) your body over, would you let me be your mate?”, followed shortly after by a chorus of “Do you ever feel like you’re dying darlin’, do you ever feel like you’re dyin’?”. True to its “literary” influences, the entire song is a strange, but all together perfect personally emotional imagining of a subject more apt to be covered by scientific observation than music: snail mating.

Leaving aside the fantastic music the lyrics are set to, the story in the song is both comical, endearing, melodramatic and at times everything in between. “I love the way you wear your shell,” sings Furgeson, commenting on his potential snail-lover’s dashing physical appearance and inviting a chuckle from casual listeners and Snailogists alike. But as I eluded to earlier, the sense of despair in the musical arrangements is equally present in the lyrics; “If we were the last of our kind darlin’,” the speaker eventually asks, “would you let me into your shell?”. A metaphor for life? Perhaps. Another cheesy love song? Equally probable, but either way, Bark Hide and Horn handle it with skill, churning out a small masterpiece.

Have a listen to “Treasure of the Everglades” off the new LP National Road after the jump, and then (if you live in the Portland area) check out their CD release show on August 16th (more info here).

Tunes:

Bark Hide and Horn - “Treasure of The Everglades”

Listen to/Download more songs from National Road here.

Websites:
[myspace]
[official]

I’m crazy for rock music with dance beats. Every band at one point or another has employed the Kick-Hat-Snare-Hat trick, most notably Franz Ferdinand on every song they’ve ever made (give or take a few). The beauty of it is, I never tire of the rhythm; every time I hear it my foot starts tapping, and my hands instinctively grab two pencils to drum along with. Of course it helps when the rest of the music is good, you can’t found a band on a sweet dance beat alone - believe me, I’ve tried.

That’s where bands like San Francisco’s The New Up come in. With the classic dance beat (plus tambourine) to drive the song and psychedelic alt-rock soul to carry the rest, The New Up easily make for a band worth your ear for at least the time it takes to play through their new EP Broken Machine (about 25 minutes).

As much as I emphasize the dance beat, the rest of the EP has more variety, although the entire thing is oddly reminiscent of the good-ol-days of alt-rock, especially bands like The Pixies and The Smashing Pumpkins. Despite the darker leanings of the distorted guitars, like alt-rock heroes of past, The New Up never fail to create catchy pop melodies that are just begging to be sung along with (think “Waves of Mutilation”). Of course, further reflection yields the surprising difference from the obvious alt-rock comparisons, mostly due to the band’s casual psychedelic tendencies. I’ll let you do the further reflection on your own though.

Have a listen to “Top Of The Stairs”, the song that has the dance beat that got me all excited earlier in this post, right after the jump.

Tunes:

The New Up - “Top of the Stairs”

Info:

Broken Machine is out August 12, 2008.

Websites:
[myspace]
[official]

Enjoying electronic music has always been an uphill battle for me. For better or for worse, I can’t appreciate on a very deep level anything that sounds like it was pieced with a pirated copy of Reason and a few choice samples. Now that’s a rash over generalization, but sometimes even when I hear the acts that are the reputed pinnacle of electronic music, all I feel is a cold inorganic computer-generated nothingness.

Then of course, there are acts that take electronic music and inject it with a human element. Bands like The Octopus Project and Black Moth Super Rainbow (who we posted about the other day) have been captivating me in such a way for years, and the other day I came across an album that’s been having the same effect: the debut solo album by Jeffery Konrad (under the name Konrad) titled Loose Cannons.

You might know Jeffery Konrad from his previous work as Robot USA, Eggspout, or Nigel Jeffrey, and quite frankly the new material culls elements from all his previous work, mixing and matching them into a compelling blend of infinite musical styles. The album (and this song especially) is backed by 8-bit synth sounds, atmospheric “soundscapes” and even more traditional piano lines. Then of course there’s Konrad’s witty lyrics, which are reminiscent of DFA bands like Hot Chip or LCD Soundsystem.

For as much of a role computers had in the making of this album, each second clearly shows the mark of a human hand. I’d highly recommend it to any fan of electronic music, or any of the infinite other genres that Konrad skillfully draws from.

The new album is available August 19th, but you can get one of the tracks, “Osh Kosh”, after the jump.

Tunes:

Konrad - “Osh Kosh”

Info:

Loose Cannons is out August 19, 2008.

Websites:
[myspace]
[official]

Alright no, Shannon Stephens isn’t exactly “new” music. In fact, the self-titled album that this song comes from was released by Stephens herself about 7 years ago. But when Asthmatic Kitty put out their “Works in Progress” EP a few months ago, a song by Shannon Stephens was on it. Looking further into it, I found rumors that she’s back writing music after the long break. In fact, she played a show last week in Seattle, her first in over 7 years.

As I said, she’s apparently recording new material, which is good news for all of us. Her music is exactly as you’d expect from someone being so well connected in the world of folk; she played in a college band whose roster included, among others, Sufjan Stevens and Jamie Kempkers, and her music can be heard being covered by Will Oldham (aka Bonnie “Prince” Billy) on his new album. Basically, her music is for anyone who’s a fan of banjos, Bob Dylan, harmonicas, and females.

Unfortunately there’s no official word on the new album yet, except that it is due out on Asthmatic Kitty sometime in the future. That doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy the old stuff though: Asthmatic Kitty is re-releasing her the original 2000 album Shannon Stephens for a limited time. You can get it here.

Grab a copy of “I’ll Be Glad,” from the old album, after the jump, and then check out the “Works in Progress” EP, which includes another song by Stephens.

Tunes:
Shannon Stephens - “I’ll Be Glad” (from Shannon Stephens)

If you haven’t been following all the hype about the Walkmen’s new album You & Me, here’s the recap: it’s really good.

You & Me drops officially on August 19th, but for the next three weeks, you can get the album for only $5 right here. That’s not even the good part. As part of Amie Street’s “Download to Make a Difference” program, all proceeds go directly to the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.

To recap: $5 gets you 14 new Walkmen songs AND fights cancer. What’s not to like?

You can also pre-order the limited edition red 180 gram vinyl pressing exclusively from Insound right here (which I highly recommend, vinyl is the best way to enjoy The Walkmen). Use the code 10youandme to get 10% off your purchase (thanks Insound).

You can download the (excellent) new track “In The New Year” (off You & Me) after the jump.

Tunes:
The Walkmen - “In The New Year”

Toronto group FemBots are set to release their fourth album, Calling Out, this September. Now, when I first cued up the album (or rather, unzipped it and imported it into my iTunes), I stopped the song about 10 seconds into it thinking something else on my computer was making noise, or surely the garbage truck was taking the trash, but no, all those odd noises were coming from the track itself.

At first a little skeptical of a song with this much weird background noise, I found out a little more about it when I looked further into the making of the album. The original concept for Calling Out was to, as the band puts it, make the entire album by “using an assortment of junkstruments, musical instruments created from garbage by artist Iner Souster.” Unfortunately, it didn’t quite work. Says the press release: “Eight months into the project it became clear that the junkstruments simply were too unpredictable and too difficult to work with to sustain an entire album. Rather than scraping the project entirely, the FemBots used the junkstrument instrumentals they had recorded as rhythm tracks, the rock and roll chassis that the rest of the songs are built on.”

What results is this strange layered composition which, if you give it time, turns into a very good song. Although it’s built from the ground up on junk, at its height are catchy hooks and solid songwriting, which are all blended back into the junkyard foundation. Be sure to listen to the whole track (especially if you want in on the trumpets at the end) after the jump.

Tunes:

FemBots - “Good Days”

Info:

Callng Out is out September 16, 2008.

Websites:
[myspace]
[official]

Some years ago, I heard a track by Damien Jurado called “Paperwings,” off his 2002 Sub-Pop album I Break Chairs (which I included below). I was stunned with how closely it resembled Uncle Tupelo, but when I went to check him out further, I was apparently disappointed solely by the fact that he wasn’t just a moniker to the secret reunion of Jay Farrar and Jeff Tweedy that I’ve been longing for since Jay Farrar quit being awesome (circa 1993). What I found instead was the slower paced songs of the album On My Way To Absence. Thoroughly disappointed by my own unreal expectations, I closed the book on Damien Jurado until just a little while ago.

I barely recognized the name when I saw the press release about his new album, Caught In The Trees, but the single “Gillian Was A Horse,” which you can download below, is stunning. With a touch of alt.country in his voice and female vocals supporting, Jurado crafts a song that’s a departure from his previous work, at least in feeling. “I’m a lie detector, he’s no bullshit talker…” sings Jurado in the chorus, moving along with a jangling piano and simple guitar parts. The song has the immediately recognizable, but hard to describe, feeling of singularity, as though it were pulled in its complete form out of the ether, inseparable from it’s simple parts which fit together in a sublime perfection.

If the rest of the album is like “Gillian Was A Horse” then I think we’re all in for a real treat come September 9th when Caught In The Trees is released by the good people at Secretly Canadian. Until then, check out “Gillian Was A Horse” after the jump, along with the song that started it all for me, “Paperwings.”

Tunes:

Damien Jurado - “Gillian Was A Horse”

Damien Jurado - “Paperwings”

Info:

Caught In The Trees is out September 9, 2008 on Secretly Canadian.

Websites:
[myspace]
[official]

Subscribe:

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Austin’s The Boxing Lesson are playing tonight at 101X’s “The Next Big Thing” at Emo’s (see the poster below), and if you’re up for a little space-y rock music, this show might be the one for you.

The Boxing Lesson’s new album Wild Streaks & Windy Days has been earning the band a lot of Pink Floyd comparisons, some of which are justified by the indulgent use of synthesizers and reverb, but for all the space-rock cliches this band lives up to, they seem to be having fun for every second of it. The band themselves describe the album as “It’s definitely psychedelic, but not in the traditional sense. Part organic. Part electronic. Part outer fucking space.” Did you hear that? Outer Fucking Space.

The album was produced by Grammy-Nominated Producer Tim Gerron (Lick Lick, Seth Walker, etc.), and it sounds phenomenal. The band take the huge ’space’ that Gerron creates for them and fill it up to the brim with howling Moogs, wailing guitars, soaring synths, and all those other “gerund-instrument” cliches you can come up with. Of course, the band couldn’t be having that kind of fun if the whole album wasn’t backed up by solid songwriting.

Have a listen to track one off the album “Dark Side of the Moog,” and then head out to the show tonight at Emo’s.

Tunes:

The Boxing Lesson - “Dark Side of the Moog”

Info:

Wild Streaks & Windy Days is out now. You can get it here.

Websites:
[myspace]

Subscribe:

Don’t forget, if you’re into these daily mp3’s, subscribe!