MP3: New Beard – Doom

Ben Wigler, former frontman of Arizona (a band who I’ve raved about quite a bit on here), has returned with New Beard, a Brooklyn-based quartet whose expertise includes awesome music and facial hair. The first single on their debut LP, New Beard City, is a well-crafted, refreshing track called “Doom”. The track begins all strings, handclaps and fetching harmonies before evolving into a full-out guitar jam showing off some of the bands freakier prog-rock tendencies. It’s definitely got me hooked and I can’t wait to hear the full album.

MP3 New Beard – Doom

New Beard City will be out this summer on Shouldertap Records.

Glowing Bird

Ever since hearing Arizona’s debut album Welcome Back Dear Children, I’ve been very fond of the band (“Some Kind of Chill” even made it’s way into the top ten of my songs of 2006 list).  After giving their sophomore album, Glowing Bird, a number of listens I am growing to love them even more. The band continues to make effortlessly beautiful songs that recall classic artists of ‘ole like Neil Young and Van Morrison while remaining refreshing and modern sounding.  It’s a joy to see the band continue to make passionate, lovely music, and I know with this album they’ll continue to gain fans.

The biggest highlight of the album for me so far is “Swimming Hole”, a track gives Ben Wigler a great chance to show off his wonderful falsetto vocals, as well as providing some truly glorious instrumentation including touches of piano and a twinkling harp solo during the bridge.  “Colors” is another great track, that features a some heavy guitar riffing from the band contrasted with the sweet, female vocals that join Ben during the chorus and a playful acoustic guitar that becomes the sole instrument in the song’s climax.  Download both songs below and buy the album when it comes out next week!

MP3 Swimming Hole
MP3 Colors

***

I thought last night’s episode of  “The Office” was easily one of the funniest episodes in the last two years from the show.  Jim explaining Battlestar Galactica in front of Dwight (watch below) was a classic moment and the Michael/Holly relationship is just brilliant.  Hurray for a return to greatness!

un mélange de chansons

Occassionally, I like to take group of songs with a interesting similarity and make a mix about them (previously songs with bagpipe, hidden tracks).   Today’s mix is about songs where the title is a different language than the lyrics (just as you may have noticed that the title of this post is in French, and the post itself is written in English).  I think this technique can say something interesting about the song itself or maybe it just says that the band trying to show off how cultured and artistic they are.  Either way, I picked 8 songs that I love for this un mélange de chansons (translation: mix of songs). Enjoy!

MP3 Of Montreal – Du Og Meg MP3
What it means: The phrase is Norwegian for “You and Me”.  Kevin’s wife Nina is Norwegian and the song is about how the two met and fell in love.

MP3 Shearwater – La Dame et la Licorne
What It Means: French for “The Lady and the Unicorn”.  Its title refers to a medeviel tapastry which shows a taming of a unicorn, that can only be done by a virgin woman. The lyrics itself seem to be from the perspective of a young woman, traveling to visit her lover during a war.

MP3 Arcade Fire – Une Annee Sans Lumiere
What it means: The title is French for “A Year Without Lights” and the lyrics uses allusions to light and sparks to describe the the romance between two lovers which they hide from the girl’s father.  To be fair, I should point out that the song is sung in both English and French.

MP3 Islands – J’aime vous voir quitter
What It Means: The meaning of the title is “I love to see you leave” and it’s about the former Islands band member, J’aime Tambeur.  In a no-doubt purposeful jab at him , the French phrase contains his name and the word “quitter”, further hinting at J’aime’s departure.

MP3 Arizona – Te Amo Tanto What it means: The phrase is Spanish for “I love you very much”.  Adorable, right?.

MP3 Belle and Sebastian – Le Pastie de la Bourgeoisie
What it means: “la Bourgeoisie” is French for the middle class or “the new rich” but le Pastie doesn’t have any French meaning.  The phrase could be a clumsily translated to “the apathy of the middle class” or just some nonsense that the band invented.

MP3 Ted Leo – La Costa Brava
What It Means: Costa Brava is a beach in northern Spain where the subject of the song plans a vacation from the troubles of the world.  In English, La Costa Brava means The Brave (or Wild) Coast.

MP3 Flaming Lips – Pompeii Am Götterdämmerung
What it means: Pompeii is the old roman city that got destroyed by a volcano and was discovered some 1500 years later.  Gotterdammerung is a german word meaning “the beginning of the end”.  The song fits both those ideas together about a couple who decide to end their lives by hurling themselves into a volcano.

Note: Much of this information was gathered from infromation found at at songmeanings.net.

Arizona – Live @ Club Eupohora

I’ve been feeling very swamped with school, work, watching Lost/The Office/Human Giant, and this blog lately (finals are coming up y’know) so I was more than happy when Ben, a student from NYU, offered to hook me up with photos, show reviews and hopefully more. He has fantastic music taste and takes some crazy awesome pictures, so I’m sure you’ll agree that his posts are going to be a great addition to the site. I’m not sure how regularly Ben will throw in his input at this point, but hopefully we’ll see a lot more of him. Here’s his review of a recent Arizona show in Brooklyn along with some photos that he took. You may remember that I fell in deep affection with Arizona in the summer of last year and even included “Some Kind of Chill” ( MP3) as one of my top ten favorite songs of 2006.

Ben: Performing for the last time before heading on a 30-day, 25-show tour covering most of the USA, New York City-based rock band Arizona played amongst friends, family, fans and cacti—yes, there were some inflatable paraphernalia around the stage at Brooklyn’s Club Europa, an obvious but playful homage to the band’s name. The 25-show tour included a stop in Austin, Texas for the 2007 SXSW festival, a clear sign that this band is on the up-and-up.

Opening with the eclectic “Te Amo Tanto”, the first track on their album, Welcome Back Dear Children, Arizona continued to weave and wind through other album tracks, as well as unreleased originals, covers, and even the first song they wrote as a band. The venue was not very big, large enough for a crowd of around 200 (a quota that Arizona easily met). There was an overwhelming sense of anticipation in the crowd, not necessarily for the next song to begin, but just for the band in general. The audience could sense this band was going places, and from what I saw, and what the photos look like, the band is enjoying their climb up the hill to recognition. “We are shedding the final stages of being a band in its infancy” writes lead vocalist, Ben Wigler. And with accolades stacking up (such as being on the cover of this month’s Deli Magazine) Arizona is growing up very quickly.

In terms of 2007 and beyond, look for their new EP titled “Fameseeker and the Mono”, which is being self-released in the near future while the band is in talks with various labels and production companies. This summer, they will be writing and recording their next full-length record and hope to release it by January 2008. Also watch out for music videos for tracks from both their former and new albums. “We are most excited to get some time locked away in the coming months to really work on our chops and reinvent our live show” writes lead Ben Wigler. From what it looks like, Arizona will emerge a band ready to take on the indie scene, blow-up cacti and all.

MP3 Thimble (New song, courtesy of igif)

-Ben Norman
http://www.benjaminnorman.com
bdn210@nyu.edu

Top 30 Songs of 2006

This is my first attempt at an end of the year songs list. As a measure I’ve selected songs that I think I’ll still be playing and replaying after the year, but as a rule I didn’t choose more than one song per artist. It’s kindof crazy to try to rank songs at a certain point, but after some toiling I came up with a definitive 30, that I’m happy with. A selection of them are available for download and they are labeled as such. Make sure to click read more… for my top ten. Thanks for visiting!

30. Camera Obscura – Lloyd I’m Ready To Be Heartbroken
29. Snowden – Anti-Anti MP3
28. Regina Spector – Fidelity
27. Eric Bachmann – Carrboro Woman MP3
26. Destroyer – European Oils
25. Danielson – Ship the Magestic Suffix MP3
24. Ben Kweller – Penny on the Train Track
23. Devotchka – Til The End of Time
22. Islands – Swans (Life After Death)
21. Phoenix – Consolation Prizes MP3

20. Page France – Antarctica (My Beloved Home) MP3
19. CSS – Let’s Make Love and Listen to Death From Above MP3
18. Birdmonster – Spaceman
17. Mates of State – Beautiful Dreamer
16. Shearwater – Seventy-four, Seventy-five MP3
15. Headlights – Put Us Back Together MP3
14. Hot Chip – Boy From School
13. The Pipettes – Pull Shapes
12. Midlake – Roscoe MP3
11. Anathallo – Hanaskajijii (Four: A Great Wind, More Ash) MP3

Arizona, here we come.

Arizona should get more credit. Musically, they’re the state that gave us Jimmy Eat World, Linda Ronstadt, Alice Cooper, The Format, Fleetwood Mac, and Linkin Park (ok, its not all good). But now you can bump them up another notch, because they’re the namesake for the great upcoming band, Arizona. The band is from New York, but you can’t just go around calling a band New York though, can you?

Arizona is much more fitting of their sound, which you’ll understand when you hear tracks like “Some Kind of Chill”. The falsetoed voice and the folk/country undertones reminds me of After The Gold Rush-era Neil Young, but add that to some wonderful harmonization and a guitar solo that will make you question whether this is really their first album. All together one of the best songs I’ve heard this year, and if you live in the NY area you can hear it live (dates at their myspace)

Here’s the fore-mentioned song plus two more via their myspace page (left-click to download)
MP3 Some Kind of Chill
MP3 Splintering
MP3 Surviving the Savior

Read Connor’s much more eloquent review of the band.