Tag Archives: indie

More music going through my radar

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Earlier this year I posted about music going through my radar. Today, I have a few more bands to share in here:

The Decemberists: You probably know them. They come from Portland, Oregon and they have become one of the biggest acts in indie rock. I had a chance to see them recently at Hard Rock here in Orlando and was very impressed with the command of the crowd that lead singer/guitarist Colin Meloy exhibited, along with their great performance.

The Besnard Lakes: This is my new favorite band. They come from Montreal and sport a space-pop’ish atmospheric sound that reminds of a blend between My Bloody Valentine, Spiritualized, M83 and Beach Boys harmonies. They are unbelievable!

Beirut: imagine David Byrne singing Sufjan Stevens-type music… now make that sound lo-fi and throw in an Eastern European twist to it. That’s the sound of Beirut in a nutshell, largely the result of European trips by Zach Condon, 21-year old musician who essentially IS Beirut in the studio.

Destroyer: I learned about Destroyer by way of The New Pornographers (both from Vancouver), given that Destroyer’s leader (Dan Bejar) has collaborated often and closely with them. Though they’ve released quite a few albums since 1996, I just recently became acquainted with them through Destroyer’s Rubies

My Brightest Diamond: as stated om their site, “My Brightest Diamond is Shara Worden, granddaughter of an Epiphone-playing traveling evangelist, fathered by a National Accordion Champion, and mothered by a classical organist.” Sounds odd? Not really… she has a voice that will linger long after you’ve stopped hearing her sing. We did, when she opened for The Decemberists, and the only thing we could complain about was how little time she had on the stage.

Menomena: A trio (also) from Portland, Oregon, their music is highly experimental but doesn’t go off the charts. It still stays roughly within indie rock territory. You can listen to their 2007 release, Friend and Foe, here. Here’s a video of one of the tracks from their latest album, called “Wet and Rustling”:

What are they feeding people back in Oregon? Just in this list, there are two bands, and in , I had mentioned The Shins and M. Ward.

The New Pornographers in concert

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New Pornographers 6
Originally uploaded by Shan Fu.

We just came back from one hell of a concert at The Club @ Firestone in Downtown Orlando!

Opening were The Postmarks, from Miami. Their singer, beautiful blue-eyed Tim Yehezkely, had had an accident earlier in Orlando. In spite of her broken leg and cast, she delivered a beautiful performance. I knew nothing about them before tonight. In their own words, “with nods to French pop and Brian Wilson’s orchestral arrangements, The Postmarks believe they can rekindle the love affair people once had for beautiful music and well-crafted songs about the trials and tribulations of life.”

Following them was The New Pornographers, from Vancouver, BC, the band led by musical genius A.C. Newman. Though their sound faced a few inconveniences early on, they came out loud and clear with a show that will be remembered. Since the start of the year, we had seen a few acts, but none like them: with their 3-4 minute long songs they managed to capture the hearts of the audience.

Newman’s fun delivery on stage was backed by a host of talented musicians, where vocalist/pianist Kathryn Calder (in the photo) and vocalist/drummer Kurt Dahle who joined their voices with Newman’s, to produce some of the most beautiful vocal harmonies. Neko Case was not part of the lineup, but the singers up on stage did a fine job that made her absence go unnoticed.

At the end of the night, they played for a little less than one and a half hours, but it was well worth it.

Arcade Fire Live on SNL

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The release of their new album, Neon Bible is only days away (click here to pre-order your copy from Amazon.com).

Yesterday, I shared with you a video from their performance in NY on Feb. 17. Below you can enjoy two videos from their performance on Saturday Night Live, last night.

Update (02/27): Videos were taken down. I would look for new ones, but I don’t feel inclined to, considering that they could also be taken down, unless they’re uploaded by NBC themselves.

Listen to The Arcade Fire Live

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Thanks to this excellent music blog, I found out about a downloadable live track (70 MB of musical goodness) featuring Canadian indie gods, The Arcade Fire during an NPR Webcast recorded in NYC last week.

Be patient with the first few minutes, while the audio quality is not that great. It gets better. Enjoy and, until they come by your town touring, here’s a video from that night:

The Music Going Through My Radar

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Lately, I’ve been having one of those “music overloads” going on, so I felt like sharing a few lines on what’s going through my radar these days:

-M. Ward (from Portland, OR): in spite of having read his name multiple times everywhere last year, I overlooked him. Today, he’s a great reference, reminding me of Sufjan Stevens at times. Listen to his “Post-War” album: great road music! Here’s a video of him performing one of the best tracks off of that album, “Chinese Translation” last year with David Letterman:


(for an alternative instrumental version of the same song, check out this video)

-Gotye: introduced by Levin. Coming out of Australia, their music will remind you of a ton of people, from DJ Shadow and U.N.K.L.E. to The Blue Nile and Starsailor… good stuff!

-The Shins (also from Portland, OR): I started digging them on their previous album, but their latest one, released earlier in 2007 totally blew me away -one of my favorite releases this year.

-The Good, The Bad and The Queen: learned about it through Paste Magazine. This is the latest project by ex-Blur, Damon Albarn (Gorillaz, anybody?)

-The Winter Blanket: introduced by way of an alternative music compilation called Preserve, Volume One, offered by iTunes. Listen to their Golden Sun – EP.

-Max Richter (Songs From Before): introduced by Sean Ross back in 2005, with his previous release, The Blue Notebooks. Learned about his 2006 release through the friends over at Hammock.

-Sarah Blasko (What The Sea Wants, The Sea Will Have): introduced by Mat G. Great material. Also from Australia, she reminds me a bit of BJork but she is not as experimental… which is a good thing. ;)

The Dears, The Annuals In Concert

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Thursday night, Andreina and I had the unusual opportunity to go out on a musical date. We went to see a concert with The Annuals opening for The Dears, one of my favorite bands. They played at The Social, in Downtown Orlando.

I had only heard a song here and there by Raleigh, NC-based The Annuals, but I’d been told that they were an amazing live act to witness. It was very much so. Their indie sound sits somewhere near The Arcade Fire, Broken Social Scene and Sufjan Stevens, making it… well, superb and impossible to forget!

Check out the photos during the concert and afterwards: Andreina even got a picture with the keyboard player. They were super-nice and down-to-earth folks, and kind enough to all sign the copy I bought of their debut release Be He Me, an album that just joined my Best of 2006 list.

Here’s a video of one of the most special moments during their performance: the lead singer turned around to join the two drummers (yes, two) in a very unusual percussive trio that rocked the house:

Following the thirty minutes of musical power delivered by The Annuals, we kicked back and got ready for the performance by Montreal-based The Dears. Before the opening act started to play, I had the opportunity to get a picture taken with Murray Lightburn, the musical genius and frontman for The Dears:

Their performance was a confirmation in concert of what I knew to be true from the two studio albums I’d heard from them: Gang Of Losers (2006) and No Cities Left (2003).

The beginning of the concert was like I imagined it: it consisted of the first three tracks from Gang of Losers, which is to say it was the perfect way to kick out the concert: I have heard few songs that could be so ideal to begin a musical set in style. This video is from their performance of “Ticket To Immortality”, track 2 from the album:

After they hit it, it was non-stop brilliance until close to 1 a.m. The entire band delivered, but it is hard to forget Lightburn’s performance, either standing up, guitar in hand, eyes closed, almost in trance, or down on his knees jamming with his pedals and effects.

Also worth noting was the work done by the unstoppable lead guitarist Patrick Krief (thoroughly interviewed in this blog post) and George Donoso III, who made the drums sound like thunders from heaven one song after another. Natalia Yanchak, Lightburn’s significant other and mother of their child, also had an amazing performance on keyboard and doing vocals.

Complementing the lineup were Martin Pelland on bass and Valérie Jodoin-Keaton on keyboards and backing vocals. They all played until we were a gang of losers, happy to have spent the night together, jumping with our fists up in the air like there was no tomorrow… it was a great time. Like I told them all, I hope they come back.

More Photos
The Dears.
The Annuals.

More Videos
The Dears: You and I Are a Gang of Losers (53 seconds)
The Dears – 22: The Death Of All The Romance (32 seconds)

A Shoreline Dream

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I was scanning the CD of free music that came with the most recent issue of Paste Magazine over the weekend, and one track stuck with me. It was “Saturday Morning” by A Shoreline Dream.

They are a band hailing out of Denver, CO that released their album earlier this year with a sound VERY close to that of shoegazing legend Slowdive. Highly recommendable work that I am happy to found out about before the year ended. Makes them a part of my Best Music of 2006, along with Hammock, Lisa Gerrard (can’t believe I missed her on my “Best of” list) and company.

Enjoy samples of four of their songs in their MySpace page.

The Dears – Gang of Losers

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Best of 2006: Picks up where No Cities Left stopped

I was exposed to The Dears late in early 2006, almost two full yers after the release of their biggest and best work to date, No Cities Left. That album was close to an epic that would prove to be tough to follow… and it was. But their 2006 follow-up, Gang of Losers does the trick: it picks up the band’s sound right where No Cities Left stopped and it continues to tell stories in a way that only Murray Lightburn can deliver, with the sound of his unique voice leading the songs into their climaxes and his ingenious guitar running straight through the heart of each of the melodies.

While the theme of ostracization prevails throughout most of the album, it does not drag and turn into a redundant and painful tale of complaint and negativity. Lightburn and his crew are able to turn things around with a catchy tune here and there, ending up with a positive outlook as the album comes to a close with the epic “Find Our Way To Freedom”. The result is a musical work that retains a certain timeless feel to it (musically), while it still is quite timely in its messaging, turning it without a doubt into one of the best albums to have been released in 2006.

Fredo Viola – The Sad Song

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Wanted to share with you a beautiful musical discovery I made. It is a song titled “The Sad Song”, by Woodstock-based artist Fredo Viola. He has a My Space page and was recently signed by an indie label.

This is the video of “The Sad Song”. Besides being an incredible track, the video has a pretty cool thing about it: it was entirely shot with a point-and-shoot portable camera and pieced together in After Affects.

There’s no stopping what creative people will be able to do as more and more technology brings the barriers to entry down. Each day it becomes clearer that we are living in a Flat World…