Video: Mates of State – Maracas

One of my most anticipated albums of the year is Mountaintops by the altogether wonderful indie pop band, Mates of State. The husband-and-wife duo gave us our first taste of their new release this week with the video of their first single, “Maracas”. It appears the band has acquired 1980’s VHS technology and are putting it to good use in this delightfully retro performance clip. The track itself is something of a departure from the refined piano-based arrangements of their last album and a bit more of a return to their quirky, organ-based early days, which I’m tremendously excited about. Plus, who doesn’t love maracas?

Mountaintops is due for release on September 13th via Barsuk Records.

MP3: Fishing – OOOO

Allow me to let you in on my new obsession (unless you follow me on twitter, which if then, you’re probably already well aware): turntable.fm.  I spent much of my weekend acquainting myself with the the highly addictive social DJing website and in the process met some cool people and heard lots of awesome new tunes.  One of my favorites is “OOOO” by Aussie beat-makers Fishing (thanks to Flashlight Tag for the introduction). The track is pure bliss, from the chopped-up vocals to tropical keyboards and ebullient beats all blending together to make a cheerful, laid-back summer jam.

MP3 Fishing – OOOO

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If you’d like to get in on the turntable.fm fun, we’ll be opening up a musicforants room and DJing on Sunday nights. I’ll send out invites on twitter when the room opens so follow us for more info.

Listen: Beyoncé – Schoolin' Life (Produced by The-Dream)

From the funky Revolution-era Prince synth stabs and the skittering drum machine in the opening seconds of this new Beyoncé track, you can tell instantly that this is something The-Dream had his hands on. The illustrious producer / artist just released his latest opus, the magnificent “Body Work / F*** My Brains Out” earlier this month and now with “Schoolin’ Life”, which he both wrote and produced, he has another massive pop triumph under his belt. The aforementioned bombastic synths / drum combo recalls his own Prince-indebted track “Yamaha”, which seeing how much we liked that one is definitely a good thing.

Beyoncé doesn’t have to do much to make the knockout melody and inspired lyrics of the track shine, but her feisty vocal performance definitely gives lines like “I’m great at writing physical love letters / I’m a freak all day, all night” the necessary sass and dynamism. The track is stowed away on the Target-only deluxe edition of 4, although on the track’s strength I’m hoping it gets bumped up to single-status. Listen below.

*Note: Looks like the track has been removed from Soundcloud. You can still stream it at Hype Machine.

Beyoncé’s new album 4 will be out next week everywhere.

Video: Jamie Woon – Lady Luck

“Lady Luck” by UK neo-soul man Jamie Woon had a video come out earlier this year that was pretty decent, but nowhere near the amount of excellence oozing out of this new take. This version matches a simple-yet-tantalizing scene of a young lady walking on a deserted street with some awesome fx that look something like a Windows 95-era computer game overheating, the visual distortions perfectly syncing to the track’s pulsating electro beat. Director Vincent Haycock shows great restraint in slowly introducing the effect which keeps it interesting from start to finish. Watch the video above and download the exemplary track below.

MP3 Lady Luck

Get Jamie Woon’s debut album Mirrorwriting at Polydor Records.

Summer (Or What It Sounds Like) Vol. 2

As they say, better late than clever. Or was it never? No, I don’t think that has ever been the case. You can blame Summer for its leisure arrival to great Northwest or the fact that a greater understanding of time management quite frankly just eludes me–this really only happens as it gets warmer, I swear. Whatever the case may be, Music For Ants’ second Summer mix is here and is yours for the taking. Should these songs fail to grow on you… learn to seek the sun (and read better, of course).

MP3 Givers – Up Up Up
MP3 The Naked and Famous – Young Blood
MP3 Friendly Fires – Pull Me Back to Earth
MP3 Young Galaxy – We Have Everything
MP3 Asobi Seksu – Perfectly Crystal
MP3 Company of Thieves – Tallulah
MP3 The Devil Whale – Barracudas
MP3 Cage the Elephant – Shake Me Down
MP3 tUnE-yArDs – Bizness
MP3 Cults – Bumper
MP3 Generationals – When They Fight, They Fight
MP3 Unknown Mortal Orchestra – How Can U Luv Me
MP3 Alex Winston – Sister Wife
MP3 Foster the People – I Would Do Anything For You
MP3 The One AM Radio – A City without Seasons
MP3 Hooray for Earth – Realize It’s Not the Sun
MP3 TV on the Radio – Keep Your Heart
MP3 Braids – Same Mum
MP3 Beirut – East Harlem
MP3 Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. – Skeletons
MP3 Motopony – King of Diamonds
MP3 White Denim – Street Joy
MP3 Little Scream – Red Hunting Jacket
MP3 Secret Cities – Ice Cream Scene
MP3 Rosebuds – Go Ahead

Download this mix in its entirety here: Various Artists – Summer (Or What It Sounds Like) Vol. 2-mfa.rar (180.11 MB)

Spotify Playlist: Summer (Or What It Sounds Like) Vol. 2

I Want That You Are Always Happy

After having listened to Australian indie folk band, The Middle East‘s EP, Recordings Of The Middle East over and over again for quite some time now, I was more than excited to hear that would be releasing their first full-length album. I immediately jumped at the chance to write a review of their newly released 14-track album, but upon listening to I Want That You Are Always Happy, it took longer than I had expected to fully wrap my mind around it, as each track exudes a very different feeling and vibe than the one proceeding it.

The second track on the album, “My Grandma Was Pearl Hall” has a very spooky, ominous tone with its dramatic piano and deep vocals, greatly dissenting from the delicate nature of Recording Of The Middle East. I enjoyed hearing The Middle East experiment with a vastly different tone, and was curious to see where the rest of the album would take me. The drama continued midway through the album with “Sydney To Newcastle” which opened with what sounded like a creaking swingset and radio feed in the background, juxtaposed with soft yet intense piano, giving the song a 1940’s feeling. Again, this wasn’t what I had expected to hear going into the album, but I enjoyed in nonetheless.

Despite the album’s intense songs, The Middle East still made time for fun, upbeat tracks as well. “Jesus Came To My Birthday Party” is easily one of my favorite songs on the album, with its catchy guitar hooks and vocals, brought to life by sole female singer Bree Tranter, giving the track a refreshing element necessary to make a fully rounded-out album. The track “Months” reintroduces the soft, airiness of Recordings of The Middle East, giving off a Fleet Foxes meets Sufjan Stevens feel. After listening to such completely different songs, pinpointing the heart of the album became impossible, as each track maintains a truly unique sense of individuality that allows them to stand on their own without leaning on other songs for support.

Another one of my favorite tracks, “Hunger Song” also happens to break away from the solemnity of the album, with its beautiful harmonies and outstanding violin and banjo channeling the bands earlier indie-folk tendencies, leading me to believe that this is where the band is still most comfortable. However I applaud The Middle East for trying something new, as I Want That You Are Always Happy easily one of my favorite albums of the year so far.

MP3 The Middle East – Hunger Song
MP3 The Middle East – Jesus Came To My Birthday Party

MP3: Banjo or Freakout – Idiot Rain

The sticker right on the front of Banjo or Freakout’s debut album has a press quote calling him “London’s answer to Bradford Cox”. It seems no one can get through a review of the album without mentioning either Panda Bear or Atlas Sound, a fact the label decided to embrace and emblazon right on the cover. While understandable to a point, such comparisons heap undue expectations on the record and ultimately belittle Alessio Natalizia’s accomplishment.

It only takes one listen to “Idiot Rain” to understand this point. The song is a buoyant, gauzy highlight of the album, deceptive in its insouciance. It seems to lull you into complacency at first by sounding as unassuming as possible. But then the chorus appears 40 seconds in and washes away any notions you may have had about the album in waves of glimmering guitars. It seems meek, but that’s only until you find yourself singing the song throughout the day without realizing its hold on you. The song ends like so many on the album do, with a slight coda that lets you fully absorb the song and reflect on what you just heard. It’s touches like this that make the album wholly its own creature, free from all associations. In the end, “Idiot Rain” proves Banjo or Freakout is worth delving into. Despite what you may have heard.

MP3 Banjo of Freakout – Idiot Rain

Buy Banjo or Freakout from Rare Book Room/Memphis Industries

Video: Matthewdavid – International

Matthewdavid – International (feat. Dogbite) from BRAINFEEDER on Vimeo.

Matthewdavid’s excellent new record, Outmind, isn’t so much an album as it is a transmission from an alternate reality. It sounds simultaneously futuristic and retro, playing like the soundtrack to a vintage public television broadcast on alien biology. (In the dimension Outmind hails from, we made contact decades ago.) With that in mind, it’s fun to think of the video for “International” not as a promotional clip, but as a broadcast that has seeped over into our plane of existence. Playing like a scrambled pay-per-view channel, the clip is both totally mesmerizing and completely inscrutable. But as incomprehensible as it is, just remember it’s not intended for us.

For more left field dispatches, grab Outmind from Brainfeeder.

MP3: All Tiny Creatures – Glass Bubbles

All Tiny Creatures’ new album, Harbors, is a bit of an enigma. Each song is both similar and wildly different than the ones that surround it, making it a slippery record to dissect. This is due to both the pedigree of people involved in the project (Collections of Colonies of Bees/Volcano Choir) and the different guest vocalists that give each song a distinct feel. But as wily a creature as it is, it’s nigh impossible not to get swept way in its hypnotic spell. Nowhere is this more evident than on “Glass Bubbles”.

Indicative of it’s name, “Glass Bubbles” is built on a swirling bed of chiming tones that ripple and eddy throughout the song like a stone thrown into a pond. The drums and drone push everything along while Ryan Olcott’s intangible vocals lay over everything like a spectral fog. The song hits its delicate climax with Olcott singing, “And we’ll catch the next wave.” It’s hard not to want to join him on the rest of the journey.

MP3 All Tiny Creatures – Glass Bubbles

You can buy Harbors from Hometapes. You can also download the Glass Bubbles mixtape, which expands on the song, over here.

Dinosaur Feathers

I may be a bit late to the party on Dinosaur Feathers, the band made rounds on the blogs last year, but ever since downloading their brand new single this weekend I’ve been hooked on the shockingly fresh indie pop band from Brooklyn. The band grabs from a number of different styles so I think it’s pretty safe to say that if you dig any type of melody-based music from the past 50 years or so you can get into this. For me, their tunes evoke stuff like Bishop Allen, Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin, early of Montreal (or really any Elephant 6 band) that cram in as many infectious hooks and multi-layered melodies as possible. They’re diverse enough stylistically though that when you think you’ve got them pinned down they’ll be doing something completely different, bridging pop music old and new.

The aforementioned new single is called “Please, Please George”, a tongue-in-cheek plead to “Game of Thrones” author George R. R. Martin to finish his new novel. After kicking things off with a twisty synth riff and sunshine pop percussion the band hits you with a diabolically catchy chorus that’s likely to become ingrained in your mind on a permanent basis. A few multi-level harmonies and a crunchy guitar solo later and you’re ready to hit repeat. Also check out “Family Waves”, one of the biggest highlights from their debut album, Fantasy Memorial and one that shows off their Vampire Weekend-esque afro/tropical pop chops while being catchier then anything you’d find on Contra. Download the tracks below and get Fantasy Memorial at Insound.

MP3 Please, Please George
MP3 Family Waves