OK Go

Jeg er faldet over bandet OK Go, og deres fantastiske one-take musikvideoer. Jeg ved ikke rigtigt, om musikken er lige mig, men videoerne tror jeg aldrig bliver kedelige.

Det hele startede med videoen til "This Too Shall Pass":

Herefter kom så videoen til "White Knuckles":

Og til sidst videoen til "Here It Goes Again":

They shoot music - Don't they

Jeg er faldet over denne musik-side, hvor der er nogle glimrende live-optagelser fra specielle lokationer. Det er fyldt med upcoming-bands og singer/songwriter alle indenfor den "alternative" musikgenre. Det er også rart at se at der er lavet flere optagelser med danske bands.

Jeg har lige udvalgt nogle få, men der er heldigvis nok at gå i gang med.

James Yorkston


Willard Grant Conspiracy


Efterklang

Eels - End Times

Min favoritplade fra 2010 er indtil videre Eels's "End Times". Pladen har E indspillet i sin kælder og albummet er hovedsageligt indspillet af ham selv. Selv om Eels har et imponerende bagkatalog, så står denne for mig som hans bedste.

Pladen omhandler et brudt forhold og følelserne, som man sidder tilbage med efterfølgende. Det er selvfølgelig en meget deprimerende plade, men der er også plads til en smule håb, og så er den også fyldt med E's galgenhumor.

Jeg har udvalgt tre stærke numre - især On my feet - som er det sidste nummer på pladen.

Best Albums 2009

Dette er min liste over de bedste albums fra 2009:

10. The Black Heart Procession - Six
The Black Heart Procession har på Six igen lavet en plade, der beskriver livets skyggesider. Musikken er mørk og dyster og pladen virker utrolig sammenhængende.

De stærkeste sange på pladen er When you finish me, Drugs og Forget my heart.

Myspace



9. Dinosaur Jr. - Farm
Dinosaur Jr. har i 2009 udgivet deres 9. studiealbum, og Dinosaur Jr. lyder stadig som de har gjort i de sidste 25 år. Musikken er stadigvæk kendetegnet ved J Mascis helt specielle guitar-lyd og hans skrøbelige vokal.

Der bliver ikke opfundet nogen dybtallerken på Farm, men bandet beviser stadig, hvorfor at bandet har været et af de mest indflydelsesrige band indenfor den alternative rockscene i 80'erne og 90'erne. Farm er vel et af deres bedste albums nogensinde.

De bedste sange er Pieces, Plans og Said the People.

Myspace



8. The Antlers - Hospice
Brooklyn-trioen The Antlers udgav i 2009 deres tredje album Hospice. Albummet handler om 2 personer, der møder hinanden på et hospice.

Musikken er stemningsmættet og passer fremragende til sangenes handling om liv og død samt drømme.

De stærkeste sange er selvom at det er en plade som skal ses som en helhed Sylvia, Atrophy og Wake.

Dette er en plade som sagtens kunne være en endt længere oppe på listen, hvis jeg havde kendt til den tidligere på året.

Myspace



7. Sonic Youth - The Eternal
Støjrockens godfather har i 2009 udgivet deres 16. studiealbum The Eternal. Bandet er langtfra banebrydende med dette album. Til gengæld virker de langt mere målrettet end længe, og man kan sige at de er tilbage ved fordums styrke.

Sangene er skarpe og leveres med gejst, og pladen er knap så eksperimenterende som de forrige. Dette klæder bandet. Sonic Youth beviser på denne plade, at der stadig er lang til pensionsalderen.

De bedste sange er Antenna, What We Know og Walkin Blue.

Myspace



6. Broken Records - Until the Earth Begins to Part

Broken Records debutalbum er et yderst vellykket album. Musikken er en god blanding af folk/rock, og leder tankerne hen på the Waterboys og et af mit egne favoritband Midnight Choir. Der benyttes udover guitar, bas og trommer også violiner, trompeter, klaver, mandolin, ukulele og cello.

Armbevægelserne er store og musikken er pompøs, men jeg synes at det holder hele vejen.

De bedste sange fra pladen er If The News Makes You Sad, Don't Watch It, A Promise og Wolwes.

Myspace



5. Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion
Animal Collective's har på deres 9. studiealbum formået at skabe en plade, hvor deres anarkistiske tilgang til musikskrivningen går hånd i hånd med de gode sange. Der kan helt sikkert hentet inspiration fra the Beach Boys især på den vokale front. Musikken er dog så rodet og anderledes, at pladen kan stå helt alene.

Pladen er helt sikkert en klassiker og vil nok på de fleste årslister ende på førstepladsen.

De stærkeste sange på pladen er In the Flowers, My Girls og Daily Routine.

Myspace



4. Wilco - Wilco (the album)

Det syvende studiealbum fra bringer ikke meget nyt i forhold til tidligere, men er endnu engang et bevis på, at Jeff Tweedy simpelthen ikke kan lave en dårlig plade.

Musikken ligger sig tæt op af deres forrige plade den melodiøse Sky Blue Sky, men med enkelte afstikkere som vækker minder om mesterværket A Ghost is Born. De bedste sange er One Wing, Bull Black Nova og Country Disappeared.

Man kan kun blive imponeret over, at bandet kan blive ved med at have et så højt niveau på deres plader.

Myspace



3. The XX - XX

Debutpladen fra the XX har høstet en masse fortjente roser. Det er en plade uden de store armbevægelser, men er derimod et bevis på at man kan nå langt med en minimalistisk tilgang til sangskrivningen.

Musikken er dyster og er ellers opbygget omkring de to vokalister Romy Madley Croft og Oliver Slim fremragende sammenspil.

De stærkeste sange er Crystalised, Heart Skipped A Beat og Shelter.

Myspace



2. Antony & the Johnsons - The Crying Light
Det tredje album fra Antony And The Johnsons fortsætter på mange måder i den samme rille som de to tidligere albums. Musikken er dog knap så pompøs og eksperimenterende som tidligere og på visse sange er tonen ligefrem poppet.

De bedste sange er Her Eyes Are Underneath The Ground, Epilepsy Is Dancing og Another World.

Det tårnhøje niveau fra I am a Bird Now kan ikke holdes helt, men The Crying Light er fra start til slut en stor oplevelse, der kun vokser for hver gennemlytning.

Myspace



1. Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
Phoenix var for mig et helt ukendt fransk band inden dette år startede. Albummet er fyldt med gode popsange med små finurlige opbygninger, guitarriffs og synth-lyde. Pladen er nem at komme til men gemmer stadig på en masse overraskelser ved flere gennemlytninger.

De stærkeste sange fra pladen er Lisztomania, Lasso og Countdown.

Facebook



Bedste EP:
The Mountain Goats & John Vanderslice - Moon Colony Bloodbath

Bedste genudgivelse:
Chris Bell - I am the Cosmos

Bedste plade fra 2008, som jeg først rigtig har hørt i 2009:
Peter Broderick - Home

Best Albums 2008

This is a list of the best music albums of 2008. Feel free to comment.


10. The Gutter Twins - Saturnalia
The idea of Dulli and Lanegan collaborating together as the Gutter Twins has been in the works since 2003. But it wasn't until last year that the pair finally turned their full attention to the project. Saturnalia, the Gutter Twins' debut, was released earlier this year by Sub Pop. The album is yet another exploration of the dark side.

The Gutter Twins website
The Gutter Twins at Myspace







9. Thalia Zedek Band - Liars and Prayers
Thalia Zedek's second album for Thrill Jockey finds the ex-Come frontwoman in fine voice and backed by a band who know just how to present her songs. A very political record - the title refers to those who lie and those who pray - LIARS AND PRAYERS finds Zedek's wonderfully coarse voice enveloped by simple but moving arrangements and the best set of songs she has written since her Come days.

Thalia Zedek Band at Myspace





8. Cloud Cult - Feel Good Ghosts (Tea-partying Through Tornadoes)
The group, led by Craig Minowa, might best fit in the electronica-folk-indie-chamber-pop-rock genre. That won't really give you an idea of what goes on through the 13 tracks of Cloud Cult's latest album, Feel Good Ghosts (Tea-partying Through Tornadoes). It's a genre-mashing set of songs that is at once weird, wonderful, inspiring, exciting, and strange. Cloud Cult is a remarkable band who have made a album just as full of melodic hooks as mind-blowing experimentation.

Cloud Cult at Myspace




7. Conor Oberst - Conor Oberst
Abandoning the Bright Eyes moniker he's been performing under since his teens, Conor Oberst reverted to his birth name for his 2008 follow-up to 2007's Cassadaga.

Conor Oberst at Myspace










6. Okkervil River - The Stand-Ins
Essentially a sequel to 2007’s The Stage Names, which was briefly considered for release as a two-disc album before being scaled down to a single album, Okkervil River's The Stand Ins uses central images of musicians and life on the stage to again address many of the themes that first surfaced on the band's 2007 album.
Emotional without being weepy, literate without being pretentious, The Stand Ins is another excellent release from a highly creative and evolving band.

Okkervil River at Myspace





5. TV on the Radio - Dear Science
Dear Science is a brilliant balancing act between pop aspiration and music-geek aesthetics. More tuneful than its predecessor, the album is packed with New Wave hooks and funky dance beats — albeit amid bleak lyrical visions, Afrobeat rhythmic arrangements and densely layered, terabyte-era production. Though that sound might not make for megastardom, it's made for one damn fine record.

TV on the Radio at Myspace







4. Samamidon - All is Well
Sam Amidon, more commonly known as Samamidon, very quietly released one of the year’s best folk records way back in February. It’s called All Is Well, and if it sounds at all timeless, well, it’s because it basically is. All 10 songs come from the public domain, songs passed down through generations until the origins are all but forgotten. There is a natural sadness in Amidon’s voice, which suits the quiet and contemplative mood of these 10 songs perfectly.

Samamidon at Myspace






3. Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes
Fleet Foxes describe their music as "baroque pop, music from fantasy movies, Motown, block harmonies ... not much of a rock band", which is one way of describing the indefinable brilliance of one of those records that sounds like it has arrived, fully formed, from another planet. Though there are musical touchstones - English folk, late 60s west-coast music (particularly the Beach Boys and Love) - this is the sound of late-night forests, skipping animals, music made by people as old as the hills they dwell in. Implausibly, they are actually in their 20s and live in Seattle. The dizzyingly uplifting four-part harmonies of songs such as Tiger Mountain Peasant Song are interspersed with profound darkness in the death-stalked Your Protector, or Oliver James, the chilling tale of a child's drowning. It all adds up to a landmark in American music, an instant classic.

Fleet Foxes at Myspace




2. Sigur Rós - Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust
With their fifth full-length album, Med Sud I Eyrum Vid Spilum Endalaust, Sigur Rós have taken the poppy, sunshiny leanings of their previous album a step further into the light. As ever with Sigur Rós, if you're a fan you will lap this up - the unconvinced will, despite the more commercial touches, probably remain unconvinced. Overall though, this is another wondrous album from a band at the height of their considerable powers.

Sigur Rós at Myspace





1. Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago
Nu folk's Bon Iver, aka Justin Vernon, recorded For Emma, Forever Ago in an isolated cabin in Wisconsin, where he existed on a diet of deer he'd slaughtered and water and leftovers delivered by his dad. Accordingly, his debut prompts few comparisons, as if Vernon's three-month stint in self-imposed exile wasn't just an exercise in survivalism but an attempt to underscore the distance dividing Bon Iver from his contemporaries. Certainly, For Emma, though only nine tracks long, is as beautiful, bleak and intimate as anything 2008 is likely to throw up.

Bon Iver at Myspace

Another good album of 2007

Så kom første tilføjelse til 2007-listen allerede ;o)

Dette er simpelthen et fremragende album!

Cloud Cult's website
Cloud Cult's myspace


Cloud Cult - The Meaning of 8

lostatsea.net: With its opening barrage of digital organicism, Cloud Cult's follow up to 2005's acclaimed and unfortunately named Advice from the Happy Hippopotamus sets about exemplifying the creative bloom of sound collage. While not necessarily directly in deed, primary songwriter Craig Minowa exhibits in spirit the high points of pop music's excesses; lines can be drawn from The Meaning of 8 to the old (Pixies, the heyday of the Elephant 6 collective) and the new (Arcade Fire, Dan Snaith's Manitoba/Caribou). Awkward vocals, oddball dynamics, weeping strings, dirty electronic flourishes, off-piste melodies - although it is all loosely, sometimes perilously darned together, everything is here to a certain degree and ultimately it all holds water.

Lyrically, Minowa is in peak form here, which warrants mentioning due to the fact that his vocal delivery is generally high in the mix, often delivered in a cadence that adds its own percussive punch at the right time. The Meaning of 8's topical projections touch on compassion, voyeurism, faith, escapism, naturalist ideas and of course the personal trials of the singer himself, who lost his young son several years ago. While the songs are sermons of a sort, Minowa never really gets preachy; his delivery is often over-the-top but never feels pretentious.

Much like the business end of things (the environmental impact of their tours are offset by the purchase of green energy credits, the production of their CDs is undertaken with recycled materials and clean energy), Cloud Cult's music teeters on the knife-edge between indulgence and restraint. Balance is everything. The band's songs are wrought with dissonance and turmoil, but the melodies are palpable enough to provide parity, at times conjuring visions of Frankensteinian ensembles like Kammerflimmer Kollektief fronted by Mates of State.

From the early going The Meaning of 8's distorted bass lines bound with ebullience beneath a clattering kitchen sink din of toy piano, dilapidated drum kit, electric and acoustic guitars, laptop glitches, glockenspiel, and bowed strings. The ingredients might not be off the shelf, but the pudding is far from proofless, as The Meaning of 8's beats are effusive, prompting if not toe tapping then at the least head nodding, and on occasion ("Please Remain Calm" is a good example from the album's early going) go so far as to incite dance floor grooves.

"Brain Gateway" is an off-key dirge, its blown-out bass (reminiscent of Neutral Milk Hotel's On Avery Island) paired as counterpoint with Minowa's plaintive vocals, the subdued melodies of keys and toy piano treating the track to a bright balance. "Purpose" hums along, fuzzy synth lines anchoring a mélange of airy percussion and distant, filtered piano. Later, the raucous instrumental "Shape of 8" pairs hollow digital drums with a swell of squelching effects and glittery tambourine for a minute and a half before drifting off into the carnivalesque parade of "The Girl Underground."

Even when there seems to be a tug toward restraint, such as in "The Deaf Girl's Song," simple acoustic guitar strums, with accompaniment from soft percussion and sweeping strings, eventually birth a fullness of their own that, while a far cry from the album's more congested numbers, is rich in its own right. The track is followed by "Hope," which likewise begins softly enough before devolving into a teeming swirl of sounds, the band's innumerable elements and tones fighting amongst themselves while drowning in their own wake. The track eventually calms down and fades out to the dead silence of "Song of the Deaf Girl" at album's end, and just like that the 19 tracks are primed for another cycle.

Although The Meaning of 8 is wrought with beautiful moments - quasi symphonic passages, touching vocal melodies, invigorating (but never abrupt) dynamic shifts - the album's imperfections are what perhaps best exemplifies Cloud Cult's textural agenda. Their music, like life, isn't about surgical precision or hygienic sheen; sticking your head into the middle of a Cloud Cult track, like sticking your head into any given moment in the stream of life, can be disorienting and chaotic, if not downright scary. But viewed from a panoramic vantage point The Meaning of 8 is about impulse, saturation, dirt under the nails, wounds that scab over and become beautiful scars. As remote or bristling as things might feel one second, in the end everything works out, for better or worse, blemishes and all.

Chemicals Collide:


Pretty Voice:


Chain Reaction:

Ryan Adams on Letterman

Excellent performance by Ryan Adams & The Cardinals!

I taught myself how to grow old!