a new artist a day - power pirate

our next new artist is actually a three-piece band out of washington d.c. who call themselves power pirate. formed in 2007, they consist of emily pakulski (guitar/vocals), annika monari (drums) and michael garate (keyboards), and they're a diy group in every sense of the term, designing their own website (very nice), taking their own publicity photos and recording their music in homemade booths made out of mattresses (resourceful!).


speaking of their music, it's a perky yet pummeling mash-up of the heavy guitar melodrama of muse and the squiggly synths of bis. these may sound like strange bedfellows at first but the resulting cocktail is quite fun. it certainly doesn't hurt that the group has a commanding vocalist is pakulski, whose soaring sneer isn't too far removed that of the sounds' maja ivarsson.

their music may not be for everyone, but it has certainly resulted in much involutary head-bobbing at my desk at work. imagine what it could trigger when exploding out of speakers at a club. according to local d.c. press, they positively shred live.

not bad for a group whose members aren't even old enough to drink yet.

check out a couple embedded tunes below. my pick is the techno-tinged "infecting us."

stars:

3 - Stars by powerpirate

infecting us:

5 - Infecting Us by powerpirate

free deastro!

i know i'm trying to stay away from heavily reported stuff, but i can't help it when an artist's shit is this great.

moondagger, the recent debut album from deastro (aka 22 year old randolph chabot) is definitely one of the sleeper hits of the summer for me. the album is bursting with ambition and melody and its intersecting, interlocking electronics and rhythms remind me of early m83. and don't even get me started on the conceptual, rpg-recalling lyrics.

as if this album wasn't incentive enough already to love him, chabot has crafted a brand new, 9 song ep that he's offering for free via his band blog.


the awesomely titled orange swimmer red summer ep offers a sloppier, sunnier take on its album predecessor. it still shimmers and shines like chabot's earlier work, but also has a more organic feel and with it a touch more urgency. in this blogger's opinion, it's just as essential as its older sibling, and will definitely share the glory on my end of year list come december.

don't believe me? grab it at the link below and listen for yourself right now. seriously. "red summer" alone should be enough to sell you.

orange swimmer red summer

scoring life with antlers

another new thing i'm trying on here is a recurring column that from here on in, unless someone comes up with something better, will be called "scoring life." for each entry, i will take a newish album at random, listen to it during one of my myriad day to day tasks - some exciting, many mundane - and report back on what i think.

this serves two purposes: one to review music from a unique perspective as i find it interesting how listening to certain songs or artists can color what one is doing at the time and vice versa. two to offer brief, random glimpses into my ever so illusive personal life. aren't i subversive?

we begin here with a look into the new album by the antlers, hospice...


first, some background. i acquired this album just last week. i had casually previewed a couple of tracks ("bears" even found its way onto a recent party playlist at my apartment) but had yet to give the whole the full attention that it required and deserved.

today at work, i was entering the third day of what can safely be called a lull. yes, i have a "real job" beyond this blog and it has its fair share of slow spells, typically at the start of each month. anyway, towards the end of the day, i was selected to undertake the uber-exciting task of scanning imagery and emailing it to myself to sort into folders for future design use. that's right. my work had finally slowed to doing a receptionist's job. this isn't to say i dislike what i do. far from it, actually. but that didn't make the task at hand any less mind-numbing or repetitive. knowing i'd be standing in front of a copier for the remainder of the afternoon, i thought it would be the perfect time to find something to listen to in-depth. guess which album was at the top of my queue?

and so i listened. the first thing i noticed was how the droning ambience of the opening songs, combined with how many of the individual tracks seemed to bleed directly into one another, perfectly matched both the lethargic pace at which the time and task were moving and the way my mind would slip into cruise control as i moved from scanning one image to the next, often losing track of where i was entirely.

this may sound like a bad thing, but things took on a very zen-like quality for me, and when the noise picked up and horns burst to life in songs like the subtly anthemic "sylvia," i even cracked a smile and started to enjoy myself, swaying out of rhythm in front of the copier like an oblivious guy trying to entice an indifferent girl at the prom. by the time the aforementioned (and fantastic) "bears" came tumbling into my ears with it's twinkling verses and rollicking chorus, i could have swayed and scanned for an eternity, even as the lyrics echoed the uneasy feeling that said eternity was a very real possibility:

"and all the while, i'll know we're fucked and not getting unfucked soon."

but eternity never came, or rather it did. whichever. as i neared the end of my pile of crudely colored illustrations, the album followed in kind with sobering comedowns, the hauntingly patient "shiva" and the downbeat, eight-minute epic "wake," the latter of which almost had me convinced i was back floating in space with spiritualized.

the lyric and melody of "bears" resurfaced, this time in acoustic form delivered in a formidable falsetto by head antler peter silberman, for hospice's appropriately titled "epilogue," just as i reached the final folder in the plastic crate. fucked no more.

i hate to say it, but pitchfork is right. with hospice, one can in fact lose the "sense of boundary" between one's self and the world around him or her. there's a simultaneous sense of solitude and togetherness, emptiness and bounty in these songs. would i have gotten this from the album under any other circumstances? possibly. hell, hopefully. but i doubt i would have felt such a personal connection to it.

from the antlers themselves, happy listening!

bears

a new artist a day - nathan q

i promised one new artist a day and i'm sticking to it. my goal with this feature is to provide exposure to artists who don't necessarily get it elsewhere as well as will myself and others to try out new things. should be fun hopefully.

to kick things off, i present a producer/dj from germany by the name of nathan q.



a self-described "making the world a better place kind of guy," nathan currently studies the human intellect (funny, i thought such a thing to be a myth) and also makes some pretty slick dance beats, baring shades of dubstep, trance, drum & bass, and house.

the effect is fairly bangin' if you will, and i'd mostly certainly hit the floor if this came on at a club. you know, if i ever actually went to a club.

have a listen to a couple sample tracks here and then check out the dude's pretty awesomely designed website. i'm partial to "big house" myself. he's also got a few mixes made for your pleasure.

happy listening!

big house:

Nathan Q - Big House by NathanQ

sodom featuring mcfly:

Nathan Q - feat. Mcfly - Sodom by NathanQ

woodhands got nothing to worry about

i have to admit. i'm a little bit surprised that there haven't been a lot of high profile remixes of this peter bjorn & john song. sure living thing won't exactly be topping my list at the end of the year, but 'nothing to worry about' qualifies as a hit for them right? come to think of it, were there that many remixes for 'young folks?'

anyway, current paper bag records golden boys woodhands have given it the old college try. they extend the track a bit and pad it out with some menacing synth squiggles and a chilling vocodered voice that seems to stalk the D.A.N.C.E children's choir from the original. there's some interesting marching band percussion towards the end of it as well. i think i like this. i think you may too. have a listen courtesy of paper bag after the jump.



nothing to worry about (woodhands remix)

woodhands are wrapping up a mini us tour this week and then play the monolith festival next month.

see:

08/12 - indianapolis, in @ radio radio
08/14 - brooklyn, ny @ Littlefield
08/15 - new York, ny @ tribeca grand (gbh party)
09/12 - morrison, co @ monolith festival @ red rocks

yet another new beginning...

and here we are again. back were it all began. and ended. twice.

i struggle even now to rationalize why this blog has been not only frustratingly sporadic, but nomadic, bouncing to and from numerous host services with barely a post a week on average to keep it current. could be that this summer, like so many before it, has all but swallowed me whole? maybe. could it be that i simply have nothing interesting to say? i certainly hope not.

above all other possible excuses, i choose to believe that pop that rocks has suffered from a lack of focus, resulting in my lack of interest. for a brief time (okay, a month or three), i've been finding myself dissatisfied with where i've been taking things. i've spent a good deal of the last couple of weeks trying to think of how (if?) i want to continue with things on here. until now, i spent so much time catering to what i thought the average reader wanted to see or hear that i neglected what i wanted to say. why i originally began this little adventure in the first place...


music.

i began this blog because of my love for music and how it permeates and brightens my daily life. i began this blog because i wanted to share that love with other like-minded individuals who constantly waste way too much time at work researching and downloading new bands and emptying their bank accounts on records and concerts. it is for that love and that purpose that i am determined to continue with this blog, to make it better and more inviting than others if not exactly the most popular. with that in mind, here are some key decisions i've made with the parallel if not exactly new direction i plan to take pop that rocks.

1. obviously, i've returned to my original home of blogger to continue with this adventure. we've had our differences in the past but i always felt that wordpress and i were never a good fit. its somewhat more rigid publishing parameters often made me feel as if i was leasing a space rather than owning it.
   
   
2. rather than constantly focusing on news in the music world that you're no doubt already finding elsewhere at least an hour or two before i do, i've elected to start focusing again on what i feel i do best - reviews. you will see more in-depth opinions of the albums and songs that i come to love and despise, and hopefully those opinions will lead you to discover and try new things, which leads to my next point...
   
   
3. new music. i feel like my focus has slanted too far towards established artists, or at least artists that people are already hearing. i still plan to talk about many of those artists here, but i feel i owe it to myself and my future readership to broaden my horizons. i plan on holding myself to a minimum one post a day dedicated to a new artist. my soundcloud drop box is still active and functional, as is the pop that rocks email address. if you're an artist looking for some kind of exposure, send your stuff my way. if you're just a fan of something or someone new that you've happened upon, spill. i'm a little backlogged in my mailbox at the moment, but i am making progress and i promise that your stuff will get listened to and written about in some form or another.
   
   
4. i still like to do the occasional feature post, something a little extra and unique to this blog. my first impression reviews will still be in play, and i have a few other ideas rolling around in my head for other recurring columns that i think people might enjoy reading. if you have any ideas yourself for what would make a cool column on here, don't hesitate to bring it my way. in fact, this leads into my final and maybe most important decision...
   
   
5. i'm taking pop that rocks public, baby! well, not exactly, but i am inviting other friends and music fans on board to contribute basically whatever they want, be it reviews, mp3s, or any other awesome idea. above all else, enjoying music should be a social activity, and i hope this decision will emphasize that point.

and there you have it. will this new incarnation of a fledgling music blog last any longer than the versions that came before it? who knows. all i can do is dive back in, try hard and hope for the best. i have a good feeling about things this time though and hopefully that feeling will become contagious to all who read this. i know that's not that many people, but that can always change, right?

sorry to make this so long. i'm still going through mail and brainstorming with friends on what and how to post here. but my goal is for the quantity of posts to gradually move back up through the rest of this month and then launch in earnest in september. hope you can hold out until then. if you've held out to the end of this post, it shouldn't be too hard :)