Alright dude from Edmonton going by Tropic Harbour, you win, your dream-pop shit is cool.

So there’s like this chick and she makes music as Ruby Pins and it’s like dark and all, but cool. (via Ad Hoc)

Chicago-based Mines make gauzy stuff for the kids. (via Ad Hoc)

So, I wanted to keep up with making mixes every month but it just became impossible with the army and all. Sorry However, here I’ve compiled a bunch of my picks from the Israeli Melodies features and made them into one badass classic Israeli rock mix. Enjoy

1. כוורת – נתתי לך חיי

2. עוזי פוקס – אין לך מה לדאוג

3. המכפשות – עד העונג הבא

4. תמוז – סוף עונת התפוזים

5. בלוז לחופש הגדול – יוסי, ילד שלי מוצלח

6. להקת פיקוד מרכז – גבעת התחמושת

7. שלמה ארצי – תתארו לכם

8. נועם ברק – הכי יפה בחיר

Download

I was riding in a car yesterday with some peeps and this song came on the radio. I was all like, “Oh man, this song rocks! Old school Israeli rock was so awesome – what happened?” Current Israeli rock sucks – and there’s not much of it to speak of Anyways, the song is by a dude name Uzi Fox and the translation is like “You Don’t Have Anything To Worry About”. Of course, like everything in Israel it’s about being in the army – the dude is telling the girl not to worry about the stuff he’s doing in the army…but she should send him underwear and undershirts/tanktops

No, this site has not gone under! I’ve just been in the army a lot the last couple weeks and when I got off two week ago I was uber sick and couldn’t even bring myself to write anything on this blog. But I’ve returned and today and tomorrow I’ll try and get some posts up and get this thing back to life. To start, I want to talk about the new The National album, Trouble Will Find Me.

To start, it’s clear that The National are still riding their wave of inspiration and excellence – Trouble Will Find Me joins their last three albums as another taught, intelligent, and impressive collection of songs. However, there are some changes to be found, though none all that boat-rocking.

Firstly, the sound is much more wall-of-sound-y; there’s more of a swampy reverb thing going on with everything blending together a bit more. It works, but in a weird way it makes the songs sound more radio-friendly. Not that The National have sold out or anything, but the sound feels just a tad smoother in a way that’s not necessarily good or bad, but will likely divide listeners.

The lyrics, however, are definitely a bit of step down from frontman Matt Berninger‘s previous highs on High Violet and Boxer. It’s not that they’re not good, it’s simply that whereas Beninger used to bust out the most incredible, haunting imagery left, right and centre as if purging his head of it, on Trouble Will Find Me most of the lyrics detail feelings and action, and when he does use imagery, it’s rarely as potent as before. “Mistaken For Strangers” probably contains more incredible imagery alone than the entirety of Trouble Will Find Me. That being said, there’s still a couple great lines throughout the album, like on “Pink Rabbits” when he sings “I was a white girl in a crowd of white girls”, or “Don’t Swallow The Cap” when he sings, “And if you want to see me cry/Play Let It Be/Or Nevermind.”

Vocally Beninger pushes himself. While the signature baritone isn’t in short supply, he often softens his voice up, even getting a bit angelic/Thom York sounding on “Heavenfaced” and “Hard To Find”.

Annnd I don’t know how to end this: it’s a solid album. Though some songs like “Fireproof” and “Heavenfaced” annoy me a bit, the power behind stuff like “Demons”, “Don’t Swallow The Cap” and “Pink Rabbits” makes up for them. And The National also just feel like the right band for right now in a weird way. Or maybe they feel like the right band for where I am in my life at this time – moving through maturity with caution and paranoia. The National are good at soundtracking that kind of thing.

Couple Wegies playing poppy post-punk impressed me enough for this post. They call themselves It Girl.

This is an amazing song from a movie called Late Summer Blues (בלוז לחופש הגדול). It translates to something like, “Yosi, my quality child”. In the movie, a young soldier named Yosi gets recruited into the paratroopers unit in the IDF and is killed in a training exercise. His friends sing this song for him at an end-of-school assembly.

The musical garden of Toronto continues to bloom with the beautiful Marriage.

People love to badmouth Pitchfork but they’re like so good at everything they do it like pisses me off. I found this track by Julia Brown on the Forkcast the other day and fell in lo-fi love with the Maryland mumblecore types. And now you can too (via Pitchfork)