Episode063: MP3/Feed\Archive
Previous: Episode062 - Recover
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♬Liner Notes♬: It's a week of some well-known names with The National, Ocean Blue, Alison Moyet, Akron/Family, Future Bible Heroes, Laura Marling, Radiation City and much more...
Laura Marling
"Where Can I Go/I Was An Eagle/You Know"
'Once I Was An Eagle'
Ribbon, 2013
Note: We kick off this week with Pitchfork noting that the UK songstress' fourth album is "the first of her albums to sound like a vigorously polished, hard-won achievement. It’s expansive and ambitious, and divorced of all the tweedy preening and aw-shucks raggediness the idea of “folk” has accumulated in recent years. It's dark, it’s angry, it’s even sexy, in a sly, subtle way." What started out as one song turned into three! I don't think that's happened on PUTV before...
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MS MR
"Bones"
'Secondhand Rapture'
Columbia, 2013
Note: "The world inside Secondhand Rapture always seems on the verge of breaking. The title fits; either we’re vicariously surging with joy or we’re riding to the afterlife on someone else’s heels. Given the marriage of apocalyptic lyrics with sugared hooks, it’s probably both at once. MS MR perform dark, wild pop that spills over itself, song after song." Ah, they're on Columbia, so THAT's how this song got on 'Game Of Thrones'!
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Ocean Blue
"Sunset/Moonrise"
'Ultramarine'
Korda, 2013
Note: Wow, this Pennsylvania dream pop band has been kicking it since 1986! "It's been more than a decade since Pennsylvania's The Ocean Blue released a full-length album and... It was worth the wait. The 12 songs on "Ultramarine" recall the sincere clarity of the band's self-titled 1989 debut and 1991's "Cerulean" with songs that soar with grace, blend cascading guitars and rich keyboards with lyrics that manage to evoke sentimentality, optimism and an appropriate romantic longing without being cloying or grating." Damn, I remember seeing videos from 'Cerulean' on '120 Minutes' back in the day!
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Radiation City
"Foreign Bodies"
'Animals in the Median'
Tender Loving Empire, 2013
Note: The Portland quintet's new record has "abundance of riches and the perfect soundtrack to spring. Released on local label Tender Loving Empire, Animals in the Median is a highly polished gem, glittering with a bossa nova whimsy that provides the pulse for a dozen sophisticated pocket-orchestra pop songs that never venture past the five-minute mark."
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Lucy Schwartz
"Timekeeper"
'Timekeeper'
Fortunate Fool, 2013
Note: "Budding LA artist Lucy Schwartz has already had her songs featured in numerous films and television shows, including the recently revived Arrested Development. Today's Top Tune is the title track from her forthcoming album, Timekeeper." But that's not all! "The single is the first from Schwartz’s upcoming album Timekeeper, due August 6. And if you’re wondering how her song ended up snagging the high-profile spot in the show’s finale, well, it seems that AD creator Mitch Hurwitz is a big fan. “Lucy’s latest album is her Sgt. Pepper,” says Hurwitz. “Unbelievable. I can’t stop playing it or thinking about it. So brilliant and amazing.” One more fun fact: Schwartz also provided the fake-British voice for AD‘s “Mr. F” and “For British Eyes Only” tunes."
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Jason Isbell
"Stockholm"
'Southeastern'
Southeastern, 2013
Note: "Jason Isbell has always been closely associated with the groups he’s been a part of: Drive-By Truckers and, more recently, The 400 Unit, with whom he’s released two albums. While members of the latter step in to back him up on Southeastern, for the first time since his 2007 solo debut, Sirens Of The Ditch, listeners are able to hear an unfiltered representation of this Alabamian prodigy, and the results are so stellar it’s not hyperbole to say that he could be his generation’s answer to Steve Earle."
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Baptist Generals
"Dog That Bit You"
'Jackleg Devotional to the Heart'
Sub Pop, 2013
Note: AllMusic says, "With just about a decade passing between Denton, Texas outfit the Baptist Generals' 2003 debut No Silver/No Gold and the illustrious follow-up Jackleg Devotional to the Heart, the expectations for some classic hard-fought masterpiece-type album are high... Maintaining a roots rock backbone, Flemmons and company strike some holy middle ground between Crazy Horse and Neutral Milk Hotel on songs like "Oblivion" and "Dog That Bit You," exploring some serious existential ponderance without skimping on the guitar solos."
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Future Bible Heroes
"Living, Loving, Partygoing"
'Partygoing'
Merge, 2013
Note: Popmatters notes the similarities between The Magnetic Fields and "related group Future Bible Heroes — the trio of Stephin Merritt, Claudia Gonson and Chris Ewen — has always relied on synthesizers, though it’s been Ewen playing them. Yet their third album, Partygoing, is their first since 2002, which makes it doubtful the group has been fresh on the minds of today’s young record-buyers. That’s probably why Merge is releasing Partygoing simultaneously with a boxset of all three albums and their related EPs. Of the three albums, Partygoing might be the one that sounds most like early Magnetic Fields"
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The National
"This Is The Last Time"
'Trouble Will Find Me'
4AD, 2013
Note: The Cincinnati band's sixth full-length debuted at number three in the US and the UK, which is interesting because I always thought these guys were British! Pretty Much Amazing says, "Trouble Will Find Me may draw on some of the creativity of their early work, but it is firmly rooted in the sound that the band has so assuredly developed over the last two albums. The members have said that this album is more complex and aggressive, suggesting a noticeable departure from High Violet."
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Akron/Family
"Sand Talk"
'Sub Verses'
Dead Oceans, 2013
Note: Song source KEXP says, "Formed out of the fertile Williamsburg, NY, scene of the early 2000s, the experimental rock outfit Akron/Family has built a career on being creatively unpredictable and uncompromisingly shifting their sound in different settings... Opening with a squall of feedback-drenched guitars that falls somewhere between shoegaze and post-punk, “Sand Talk” is a fierce, confident next step for the group. Halfway through the song, the band shifts into a psychedelic, Animal Collective-esque swirl of hazy keyboards before jumping back into the raucous tumble of the song’s beginning." I remember spinning their early records on Swans' frontman's label Young God back at WSHC.
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Sun Gods To Gamma Rays
"Burn Me Through" single
self-released, 2013
Note: Song source The Current says, "Sun Gods To Gamma Ray’s style is much more ethereal than their original incarnation. There’s a lot of space imagery – Kocka drops some key words in their biography: “soundscape,” “twinkling” and “cosmos” to name a few. But they’re also quick to note a philosophical influence which accounts for the minimalist instrumentation and nostalgic, washed out lyrics. “Burn Me Through” is the first taste of their forthcoming debut record due out early fall."
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Alison Moyet
"Horizon Flame"
'The Minutes'
Cooking Vinyl, 2013
Note: We end this week, not with our usual Pacific Northwest closer (it was a repeat), but like we began - with a British songstress! If Laura Marling is the up-and-comer, then Alison Moyet is the legend. Her eighth studio album is out now. The National says, "The English singer Alison Moyet started out as one half of the influential synth-pop duo Yazoo. Hits such as Only You paved the way for a solo career, which began with her multimillion selling 1984 debut, Alf. Moyet’s latest record, the minutes, packs sophisticated electronic pop, produced by Guy Sigsworth (Björk, Robyn, Madonna)."
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@PumpUpThaVolume Music News:
Listen to “Morning Sickness”, new single from Omar Rodríguez-López’s @BosnianRainbows
Watch Arcade Fire's Win Butler join The Rolling Stones for a performance of “The Last Time” in Montreal
@SurferBlood trade musicianship for gloss on their sophomore album, Pythons
Boards of Canada's Tomorrow's Harvest is "the best piece of science fiction in years."
Save your pennies: My Bloody Valentine, Phoenix, Queens of the Stone Age, Sigur Ros, and Hudson Mohawke plan tours
Watch Black Sabbath reign over NYC in the bloodied, riotous video for "God is Dead?"
So, not only is the new @BOCtransmission #BoardsOfCanada album - called #TomorrowsHarvest - out today
But the new @SurferBlood album - called #Pythons - is out today, too!
The National cancel Istanbul show due to political unrest
Myspace relaunches with radio, mobile app, and millions-strong song library
“@_Mudhoney: Steve plays on the new @NekoCase record, out Sept. 3.” He committed much magic.
Mumford & Sons bass player Ted Dwane leaves hospital after brain surgery
Kim Deal quits the Pixies
(Thanks again to @KEXP, @KCRW, @TheCurrent, Twilight Circus Dub Sound System and you!)
