Laying in the Austin Grass: Tiger Waves

I've only been to Austin once, and for less than 48 hours. I had experienced, the day before, a two hour delay in the Dallas/Fort Worth airport, which necessarily transformed my perspective into that of a caged animal.

It's a shame, then, that my 2011 visit left no opportunity to see the Austin in the way that James Marshall of Tiger Waves sees the city. He formed the band in early 2011 with Chicagoan Reid Comstock, who moved down to the second-largest state after months of collaboration. I want to see the Austin of arpeggios over soft snare drums, of soft-spoken lyrics for a late spring afternoon. I'll go back someday - just a day and a half's drive south. For now, I get a glimpse through Tiger Waves "A Smirk and a Smile."

It's Five O'Clock Somewhere 3

The clock just hit five in:

Kiritimati, Republic of Kiritimati

Kailua-Kona, Hawaii

Papeete, French Polynesia

It's time for a cold one, wherever home might be, and a review of Prom Sawyer's favorite submissions since our last It's Five O'Clock Somewhere feature.











~Goodman is 22 year-old East Coaster Michael Evan Goodman's project, and it's tough to reduce his music to just a few sentences. "Dawdling" evokes the pluckiness of freak folk with the propensity for melody that catapulted names like The Morning Benders to success. I dig the song, but moreover, I love the attitude it captures.


Wolf Saga brings some bouncy electro - urban late night hallucinogenic electro - to the feature. I want to play this and drive all night through the fog. And I dig his intention, to make something that "people could just enjoy."


Funk LeBlanc scores another with his latest "Fire In The Sky" off the French independent label DiscoThrills Records. The disco connoisseur brings the early '80s back to life and more than holds his own among the best of the nu-disco producers out there. I'm happily absorbing everything he puts out.


Belgian Fog is Seattle's Robert Dale. He's inspired by the "unsaid things going on in our heads." Thus the complexity of "Wait for Help," both lyrically, rhythmically, and in the instrumentation. He writes, he records, he produces - the self-made artist. I hear a thousand paths converging in this track - from Caribou's psychadelia to Wolf Parade, and a thousand sounds between.

Stockholm's Last Lynx

The Eurasian Lynx is allegedly being reintroduced to Northern Europe. I don't know anything about that.

What I do know is that Last Lynx, a Stockholm quintet off of SoFo Records, seems to be introducing themselves quite well to the Scandinavian music scene, and to the Electric Mississippi as well. Their chief influences? 60's organ music and wolf howling.  I can hear a bit of both in "Luminous Blue," which is part Doors solo, part Western showdown, and on principle part Edward Sharpe. The texture on that organ is just ooh baby!

English Folk on the Mississippi: New from Laura Marling

Organs (the Rhodesier the better) seem to give folk music just a little extra emotional kick. Laura Marling's recent "Where Can I Go," the single promoting her upcoming Once I was an Eagle, has just that trace of keys. But while the instrumentation might follow in the path of classics like Blood on the Tracks, it's Marling's startling voice that sets the single apart from the swathes of folk music in our postmodern era.

When I first heard her, I didn't realize Laura Marling was from Hampshire, nor that she first found her following in London. I might venture to say she sounds like Philadelphian Melody Gardot, maybe a bit of '70s Joan Baez thrown in there, too. I might be missing somebody obvious,  but the point remains - this is transnational folk, and it draws from the best of the best. 

Pool Party: Listen to Splashh

I've spent several of the last few days in Boulder, Colorado, that fair city beneath the Flatirons, such wont of chill. I take it in doses. I listened to a fair amount of Tame Impala, still so fascinated by Australians' seemingly genetic ability to revamp various strains of sound from the last five decades into fresh psychedelia. Like Ezra Pound said, "make it new."

And I was jonesing for another band that can do the same thing. Here came Splashh, deus ex machina, transplants from Australia, New Zealand, and Britain writing lo-fi 90's revival in London. "Sun Kissed Bliss" weaves Apples in Stereo together with something like an ethereal pool party. My metaphors fail me, but check out their Soundcloud for a free download, too. And keep your eyes on Splashh - they have an LP coming out soon on Kanine Records. 

Florida Dream Folk: Day Joy

Twopiece dream folk act Day Joy released their full-length Go To Sleep, Mess last month via Small Plates Records. Orlandians Michael Serrin and Peter Michael Perceval splashed into the pond last March with their debut EP, Animal Noise. They've certainly held to their own standards. "Purple" is vaporous -  conviction guides the singer as the wardrums guide the strings and voice along in the four-minute procession. Like much of Day Joy's music, "Purple" weaves sound recordings into the instrumentation - you'll hear a paddle splashing, children playing, wind blowing.

Look for the album on 12'' vinyl from Small Plates, linked above. Paste Magazine also offers a full stream here.

 

Rainy Day: Tropics and Wildlife Control

When I drove to Iowa City this morning, the rain hit the windshield so hard we had to drive fifty-five in a seventy. That same rain melted the snow in what will soon be cornfields on my left, and on my right.

On my left is Tropics most recent track, "Home & Consonance." It hit the airwaves about two weeks ago. The slurred vocal line in the opening had me wondering where Chris Ward would take this one. Distant places. Thumping toms, chimes, and some fluid swells on what sounds like a Microkorg.

On my right, brothers Sumul and Neil Shaw, who together form Wildlife Control. Yesterday they released a new single, "Ages Places," which I strongly believe encapsulates the hopefulness of the first rainy day of March.

Electric Ecosystem: Painted Palms

Today Prom Sawyer has yet another Polyvinyl Records outfit. Painted Palms is the brainchild of cousins Reese Donahue and and Christopher Prudhomme, Louisiana natives transplanted to the Bay Area. Their synthy, flowing-water sound initially found a home on Secretly Canadian - the label, ever-humble, offers fantastic biographies of their alumni and continues to rep their squad.

Donahue and Prudhomme made noise back in 2011 with their EP Canopy. I've tossed in it's flagship track "All of Us" for ease of access below. "Click," off their upcoming Carousel ,reminds me so of the best of Starfucker (Painted Palms even remixed "Julius"). There's a lushness here, though, that distinguishes the two. I might perhaps suggest Bayou : Olympic Rainforest as the appropriate analogy. 

Be sure to check out the new album next week and the lengthy tour that will accompany its release. 

Heard It On A Sunday: The Seshen and Black Light Dinner Party

Prom Sawyer hopes to spend the day in a coffee shop, reading something I haven't read, spending money I don't have on bougie drinks. Perhaps that will be my afternoon.

If it is, I'll want to walk down the cracked, snow-lined sidewalks of Grinnell, IA with these two tracks flowing through my headphones. To me, these represent the forefront of electro, blending soul and rock structures in a new instrumentation and combining all sorts of media.

The Seshen, a seven-piece outfit from San Francisco, started out "completely different, sonically," than what you can hear in "Turn" below. Their commitment to diverse artistry has lead them across many a soundscape - they are certainly in a good place right now. Their "beat-driven sound with an emotional core" comes out in full force, with R&B vocals just perching on top of electro stripped of its insulation. Plain and simple, this is very, very cool. Make sure to check out their inaugural album here.

The animation for the video of "We Are Golden" took three years, by hand (reminds of Daft Punk's classic "Digital Love")- that alone should speak to the versatility and work ethic of the New York outfit. That main phrase - very catchy - soars and soars again throughout. Black Light Dinner Party won't let anybody down. Keep you eye on them and your ears to the single and last year's EP.

Spring Comes Early

I hear the violoncello, ('tis the young man's heart's complaint,)

I hear the key'd cornet, it glides quickly in through my ears

It shakes mad-sweet pangs through my belly and breast

I hear the chorus, it is a grand opera

Ah this indeed is music - this suits me. 

-"Song of Myself," Walt Whitman 

(public domain by now, I think)

Prom Sawyer's ready for spring - I can feel the crunch of snow softening beneath my feet. There are afternoons ahead of us on the Electric Mississippi for us to behave like the people we see on album covers, perhaps painting ourselves, flying kites in fields, loving the supersaturated pastoral around us. It really does exist, I'm pretty sure.

Here are the songs that, I think, will help me get to those places. F y f e's recent release "St Tropez" sounds like it might not be the happiest at first, but I guarantee it'll thaw out any winter heart. The tone on that keyboard and the Beirut-esque horn line that comes in during the chorus sound best, to my ears, during the warmer seasons.

"Darling, you know I won't keep you waiting..."



And then there's "Pretty Boy" by Vancouver's Young Galaxy, reworked by Peaking Lights. This is magical - the apt comparison I've heard several bloggers mention is stars and fireworks and glowing little pieces in the night sky. Doesn't this just make you want to run around outside? Two weeks, my friends, and I suspect we'll have the weather for it. 

The View from the Riverbank: New Albums Spring 2013

Phoenix released a track from their long-awaited new LP Bankrupt! coming the week April 22. "Entertainment" stays true to the poppy of Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, complete with nostalgic lyrics and the lengthy pre-choruses that make the dancefloor all jump together on cue. I must say, the talk of a more experimental album that floated around the internet when the Verseilles band only posted months of the French Republican Calendar had me a little anxious - selfishly so, perhaps, because Prom Sawyer's been a sucker for the dancy Phoenix since Monolith Festival in 2009 (shun not random fans' concert videos shot on handheld cameras - they, too, form part of the human record).


I figure a new release so long in the making provides a great opportunity to showcase some other Spring releases. There are two in particular that I'm itching to hear as much as Phoenix. The most recent album from the New Orleans duo Generationals possibly grew on me more than any album ever. They're back with Spinoza, perhaps a musal invocation in its own right, and like Phoenix's new track, it hardly strays from their popular sound. Look for their latest release on April 2.

"Doesn't matter, doesn't matter, doesn't matter..."



Also coming in hot, we have the recently-renamed Portland outfit Strfkr (Starfucker) releasing this very week. I very much enjoyed the move toward sentimentality and more layered synth lines that we heard in Reptilians (2011). You can tell on "Sazed" that they're keeping that up, and more, on Miracle Mile. The bassline in "Malmo" makes Prom Sawyer giddy.

Now, the Pitchfork review rather slammed Miracle Mile as a cookie-cutter semi-concept album, perhaps condemned to the dorm-party circuit. Perhaps Prom Sawyer doesn't disagree. But I do travel the dorm-party circuit widely, and happily drink up any new album that can emulate my late-naughties taste.

Generationals and Starfucker share the label Polyvinyl Records - perhaps the most accessible website, for one of the most beloved labels in indie music.

Dråpe: Endlessly Devoted to the Hippie Sublime

Prom Sawyer, as a little tyke, lived in Oslo, Norway. I wish I'd stayed longer now that the thousand-year old city has become the home base for the Norwegian dream pop ensemble Dråpe. "Blue Skies" sounds like the song everybody was waiting for someone to write - everywhere you secretly want them to do a chorus, they hit it. Every line you can sense approaching, they issue it with more control, and more genuine a sense of longing.All of this, they do with that elusive Scandinavian sound that has come to influence the course of music so strongly of late. 

 This song, to me, sounds like it should accompany the paintings on Celestial Seasonings tea boxes. Prom Sawyer will be keeping an eye on this dreamy troop. In the meantime, check out their recent EP from Oslo's indie label Riot Factory. 

"Was hoping I could stay indoors..."

Stickfigure Records and Qurious

Stickfigure Records from Atlanta offers a "Song of the Day" feature on their Twitter - it's fresh hunting ground for gems from the Athens and Atlanta music scene. A track released last year by their signee electro duo Qurious has recaptured my attention with a new video. Check out "Rubies" below, and give a listen to the whole album Void Vanishing for some well-polished electro.  

Formed of sample producer Mike Netland and the naturalist soprano Catherine Quesenberry, Qurious has the jump on the dreamy, textured electro that has become so sought after the success of acts like Beach House and Real Estate. My hope is strong that this will grow into an ear-worm as the weather warms.

Get Your Dream Pop Fix

Spring's coming early this year. Add this to your hibernation stash of dream pop jams to break out the first day it's warm enough to grill in the park.

I wasn't planning on posting this remix of "Catch Me," but it's been stuck in my head for the last two days. I've been listening to it whenever I flip the screen up. I anticipate a similar reaction for you.

And be sure to check out Lockets Camera Shy, released last July, before the snow's all melted.

Lo-Fi Snow Day - Unknown Mortal Orchestra

Temperatures for the week along the northern Mississippi:

St. Paul, MN: 3°, feels like -17°
La Crosse, WI: 9°, feels like -9°
Davenport, IA: 9°, feels like -12°

So that's that. Now dig this. Unknown Mortal Orchestra, the brainchild of Ruban Nielson, has a new LP out on Jagjaguwar.  II is lo-fi at its best - distant, muted guitar, crisp, muted snares, a punchy muted bass, and scratchy, muted vocals that hit all the notes. And just listen to the chord structures - especially on "So Good at Being in Trouble," which sounds so very much like something remixed off of the Black Keys' Brothers. Check out the little soul vocal throw that Nielson opens with - very catchy. I don't need to say anything about how this album blends Sgt. Pepper with Of Montreal - if Kevin Barnes bumped to more hip-hop beats. I guess analogy is the best way I can tell you that this album has it all. 

"So good at being in trouble, so bad at being in love."

So good at making and mixing a rock LP. 

Evening Fog Special: L'Orange's Dark City

North Carolina boasts more than Chaz Bundick in the arena of electronic and sample production, as Prom Sawyer has recently been humbled and astonished to discover. The state joined the Union on November 21, 1789. On Februrary 11, 2011, jazz hip-hop producer L'Orange released his first EP, The Manipulation.
The producer prides himself on his eclectic sampling and eagerness to evaporate the boundaries between forms of aural expression in a swirl of long-filter cigarette smoke. What's he working with? You hear the octavized vocal soul samples and record crack so loved by the likes of Dilla and Madlib, the pinchy snare on the third beat that lets you know this is hip-hop - but the sampling is just so much more diverse. L'Orange digs into the Golden Age of Hollywood and commercial jingles from decades past. He makes the sound one. "Goodbye, "from L'Orange's first EP, has just such an emergent property of sound.


This is the modern film noir soundtrack. Somebody grab Marlene Dietrich.



And here's the track that has seen so much well-earned publicity in recent months, from L'Orange's latest release, The Mad Writer.


And album art by British pop artist Craig Shields. L'Orange calls himself the "Henry Miller of hip-hop." Prom Sawyer will not argue with that.

Echoes of the Happy Hands Club

Sweden's Happy Hands Club, as seen on the left where MGMT meets the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, has a way of blending surfrock phrases with the 1 & 3 dancebeat that's made Sweden famous in electropop in the last decade. There's a definite echo of Peter, Bjorn and John in the compressed vocals and narrative line of "Garden of Eden," released in early 2012. Check out the faint nod of the head to Washed Out's "New Theory" in the chorus, too. Happy Hands Club has a knack for learning from the best, but that's not to say that their creativity is bridled. No, the masked figures you see above have found their way to the trails of the Electric Mississippi by bridging the surf and the pop, and then electrifying it. Prom Sawyer's throwing in one of the Parking Lot remixes, too, the latest and greatest from the Swedish septet.

Poliça's (and Tropics') Nostalgic Electro R&B

Tropics, aka England's Chris Ward, dropped a beautiful remix of Poliça's "Wandering Star" earlier this week. 

Released this February on the Give You The Ghost LP, Poliça's 
fluttering vocals epitomize to the mystical melancholy that has 
enveloped electro R&B recently.  Listen to that beautiful - and very 
slight - effect that's thrown on the vocals, and the subtle lower 
harmonies. 


The Tropics remix capitalizes on that same theme of mysticism, 
dropping the beat to halftime and thinning out everything but an eerie piano over echoing synth lines. The electric Mississippi flows slowly in mourning. 

Evening Fog Special: Broke and Repeat Pattern

Broke and Repeat Pattern share a label, the French electronic signature Cascade. A year ago, they delighted blog perusers with a few collaborations, two of which are listed below.

Now they're back, spitting fire over Repeat Pattern's polyrhythms that to rival Doom and Madlib. The Badminton Club EP will release soon - for now, we'll have to settle for the sampler that Cascade released earlier this week. But get a taste of that production quality - the jazzy upright bass licks, the reversed vibes, the synthy late-night tempos. This is the maddest underground.

It's getting late in the year on the electric Mississippi. So put on your headphones, and settle down to work with a mug of this REALNESS.

Night Moves and the New Soul-Country (Rock-Folk-Electro?)

Prom Sawyer joined the writers of Bochi Crew on Thursday night to see Night Moves in Des Moines. The Minneapolis trio is on a whirlwind Midwestern tour, playing trucker bars and hipster hangouts nightly for a week and a half. We joined the small crowd that managed to intercept them at the Vaudeville Mews for a forty-minute set.

I don't know for sure if Night Moves took their name in homage to Bob Seger's 1976 hit. Their sound is distinct, but I can't quite pin a label on it. At once melodic and grungy, Night Moves borrows their structure from country, rock, even folk. The soaring falsetto vocals reminisce of MGMT's best work, while the semi-hollow strumming and slide guitar place the band firmly among the growing crowd of recent young acts to commandeer country - think of a Midwestern Futurebirds or Alabama Shakes.

Yet there is an unmistakeable soul at work here - something deeper and less formulaic than Night Moves' clever reapplication of influences would suggest. This, to me, is the earnest, honest - and self-aware - sound of post-recession America, nostalgic for a place it has not yet left. Just listen to the wailing on those descending chords in Night Moves, over the down-on-the-farm harmonica:

"When are you coming home? 'Cause I'll be around, for the weekend through..."

I do not read too much into the band when I write that they evoke to me F. Scott Fitzgerald's concluding line to This Side of Paradise: "'I know myself,' he cried, 'but that is all.'" Check out their new release "Colored Emotions."