my girls and boys

well this is just... neat. victoria bergstram's new album as taken by trees, east of eden, is due out in just over a week on rough trade records. it was produced by dan lissvik of studio fame and it's all kinds of gorgeous from what i've heard, something akin to lykke li backed by an acoustic tough alliance.

a flamenco-flavored track called "watch the waves" is already floating around the interwebs, and a lot of buzz is building for a song featuring noah "panda bear" lennox called "anna." this greedy bastard just has to have his name somewhere on every awesome album this year doesn't he?

as if his contribution to that song wasn't enough, bergstram is perhaps setting a record for quickest cover turnaround in history and including a beautifully buoyant cover of animal collective's "my girls" on the record. lennox and avey tare rather carelessly left out the boys in their plea for four walls and adobe slabs so bergstram is making sure they get their due, and i for one am totally with her on this.

hear her out after the jump...




now how long before the inevitable mash-up???

first impressions: the big pink - a brief history of love

* this first impression was made possible by the band themselves, who streamed the album for free on their website a few weeks ago.

i meant to get this up earlier in the week but what are you going to do? the album isn't out yet so this still counts as a first impression. full review after the jump...


the uk press has been building this duo up for months as "the band to watch." you know. them and basically everyone else with a british birth certificate to release a single within the last year. but all cynicism aside, there is good reason to pay attention to these guys. robbie furze has played guitar for alec empire and milo cordell fostered the likes of the klaxons and the teenagers among others as founder of merok records.

each member of the big pink brings their respective experience to the table on their debut, a brief history of love, and for the most part, it pays off splendidly. one can assume that cordell's work with his label is at least partially responsible for the commanding sense of melody and pop savvy that permeates the record, while furze's work with empire seems responsible for the harsh electronic undercurrents on several of the songs, not to mention the explosive intensity of their choruses.

"too young to love," an early teaser single that resurfaces here in slightly more polished form, is arguably the most textbook consolidation of these strengths. over stuttering programmed drums and squalling feedback, the song plays like one long extended chorus, tailor-made for maximum volume at shows. the other buzz track (and still the pink's best achievement to date) "velvet" employs all of the same elements in an almost completely different way. the drum loops are more languid, and the guitar squalor more restrained and used to punctuate the gorgeously swooning vocals. one couldn't be blamed for recalling early verve on initial listens, but i don't remember ashcroft ever sounding this sincere or unassuming.

most of the other songs heed to either one side of the pink spectrum or the other, never quite matching these previous heights but still coming pretty damn close at best and deserving admiration for trying at worst. opener "crystal visions" is what stone roses' second coming could and should have sounded like. "dominos" compresses "velvet's" throb into a radio-ready nugget with a delightully dumb sentiment at its core ("these girls fall like dominoooooes!"). the title track and closing "count backwards from ten" scale back the industrial touches, opting instead for hazy, spaceman 3 territory, and provide most welcome changes of pace, particularly the former with its anonymous, hope sandoval-esque vocal accompaniment (anyone else hear the album and know who she is yet? please tell me).

equal parts brit-pop, m83, and my bloody valentine, it's no surprise that the big pink have found and made a home at 4ad. there's an oddly nostalgic quality to this record that fits their aesthetic and history perfectly while also offering glimpses at what till hopefully be a long and fulfilling career for one of the year's more promising upstarts.

a brief history of love is out on 9/8. here is the video for the aforementioned "dominoes." rad stuff it is.

my guilty pleasure and no one else's?

oh sally. i don't know what happened. most people don't seem to be as in love with you the second time around. it's like now that they know you actually are a real person (albeit with a fake name), you've lost your allure.

well fear not, sally. we still love you here at pop that rocks. my guilty pleasure may not pack quite the same dramatic oomph that disco romance did (this is all relative, people), but it still brings nothing but smiles to my face and has proven the perfect complimentary summer pop album to its predecessor's wintry grandeur.

i had the opportunity to say lots more nice things about it and its strengths for mwdwn magazine this past week. find a link to my review and a free track after the jump...


album review: my guilty pleasure

sally said this album was supposed to "make you fall in love with the person sitting next to you on the bus." i don't take public transportation so i can't vouch for that, but i can say that this album bangs in its own adorably winsome way. it may even have some potential pop singles on it hands: the tensnake-tinged "moonlight dance" and freestyling "save your love" come immediately to mind.

but like romance, one of its highlights is a cover, this time of nicolas makelberge's "dying in africa." his alternately morbid and melancholy lyric is spliced over rainfall synths and a house-styled beat evocative of underworld. never has third world stryfe sounded so beautiful.

listen for yourself, courtesy of paper bag, and then get the album. it's out now.

dying in africa

and sorry about the lack of posts this week. still trying to get all of my ducks in a row for the big relaunch next month. stay tuned...

pop that y-rocks 8.22.09

my most recent online radio show aired this past saturday on y-rock on xpn from 1-3. it featured new music from radiohead, the antlers, pictureplane, the xx, and more. full playlist rundown and random observations after the jump...


radiohead - these are my twisted words
phoenix - girlfriend
st. vincent - laughing with a mouth of blood
the pains of being pure at heart - ramona
lansing-dreiden - metal on a gun
throw me the statue - ancestors
xtc - senses working overtime
grizzly bear - two weeks
deastro - shield whip
japandroids - wet hair
health - die slow
delorean - moonsoon
discovery - orange shirt
the antlers - sylvia
jj - me & dean
pictureplane - goth star
the knife - heartbeats
the big pink - velvet
spoon - got nuffin
white denim - regina holding hands
a sunny day in glasgow - ashes grammar - ashes maths
atlas sound - walkabout (feat. noah lennox)
passion pit - the reeling
washed out - you'll see it
yacht - summer song
the xx - basic space
the streets - fit but you know it
simian mobile disco - audacity of huge (feat. chris keating)
basement jaxx - raindrops

listenership seemed to be up a great deal this week, with a lot of my song selections getting positive feedback.

this may be my last "regular" playlist for a while. with roughly ten shows to do for the rest of the year, i've decided to shift my focus from showcasing the new to reflecting on the old for a bit. each of this year's remaining shows will be dedicated to one year in music this decade, beginning with 2000 and working my way up.

I will be welcoming interaction with readers and listeners during this time, taking requests and recommendations and hopefully shining some light on music you may have missed the first time around. with each shift, i will blog my playlist and progress, posting the occasional mp3 and noting songs and transitions that move me in one way or another as i incorporate them into what will become my definite ipod playlist for the decade, to be unveiled on decemeber 31st, 2009.

so stay tuned. hopefully we'll all learn something over the next few months and have some fun doing it. it all kicks off this saturday, august 29 at 1pm.

cheers.