Flying Nun Records got its start it the early ’80s, making its name with such legendary acts as The Bats, The Clean, Tall Dwarfs, and The Dead C – all of them from New Zealand. So it’s fairly noteworthy that the label has signed its first act not to hail from New Zealand – Vancouver’s The Courtneys.
The Courtneys’ second album, appropriately named The Courtneys II, will be out February 17 of next year, but in the meantime, have a listen to the fuzzy, punky, poppy sound of lead single “Silver Velvet.”
“Golden Green,” a haunting, vibraphone driven song off of Danish singer/songwriter Agnes Obel‘s latest album Citizen Of Glass, comes across as quite lovely sounding in its own way despite the somewhat dark subject matter.
According to Obel, the song is inspired by Yuri Olesha’s 1927 novel Envy and is about “how the mind can develop stories and change reality whilst under the influence of envy,” The theme of envy comes through in lyrics such as “To spoil my soul” and “I am climbing a sky of golden green,” while the sparse arrangement sets the perfect tone.
Citizen Of Glass is out now on Play It Again Sam. Check out the video for “Golden Green” (directed by Mew’s Jonas Bjerre) below:
“Tonight you get to be the Pop Kids,” announced Neil Tennant before Pet Shop Boys launched into the song of the same name off of their latest album Super, and while it’s probably been a while since the vast majority of Pet Shop Boys fans could be reasonably referred to as “kids,” the lyrics about days of partying and obsessing over pop music surely must have had everybody feeling a bit more youthful.
Accompanied by a trio of additional musicians on vocals, percussion, keyboards and occasionally violin, the core duo of Tennant and Chris Lowe ran through a selection of hits alongside a number of new songs. The focus on newer numbers coupled with their performances of new, slightly rejigged versions of old songs suggests that the band are not really big on living in the past. At one point, Tennant even seemed to be playing with the crowd’s expectations when he teased a bit of “Opportunities” before instead playing “Go West.” While they did skip over a few songs I would have liked to have heard, they did manage to play a nice selection of songs from throughout their career, with “Left To My Own Devices” and “Home And Dry” standing out as a couple of the highlights
Live, Pet Shop Boys are all about the spectacle, which on the current tour includes a few costume changes and a fantastic laser light show, thus showing their dedication to putting on the best show possible for all of the “pop kids” out there.
Saturday night at the Empty Bottle started out with local foursome Pool Holograph. The group led off the night with jangling guitars and a thumping bass line – a sound reminiscent of 90’s alt-punk, but with a crisper and cleaner sound. The group played a collection of tracks from their 2015 album Mortals and their older self titled EP. By far the highlight of the set was the audience participation – the lead singer handed off a tambourine to an especially ardent fan in the front who put it to good use while he showed off his stellar moves without a hint of self consciousness.
I decided to crowd source a description for the second band, Sports (we’re going to take an aside right now to say, yes. That is a fantastic name. Although if I had to make one change to it, I would change that last s to a z. Sportz!) because I’m lazy and I love to ear hustle (so I guess less crowd sourcing and more evesdropping). The combined adjective combination I arrived with in the end was “sexy-time-r&b-jazzy-electro” which is realistically way better than any description I could’ve written myself. The foursome came onstage rocking shiny metallic silver jackets, and the lead singer was shirtless (which was totally appropriate for their sound). The group swayed their long mops of hair while the crowd swayed their hips to the rhythmic tracks. There was something weirdly mesmerizing about the whole thing – I’m definitely coming out for these guys’ next trip to Chicago.
Finally BRONCHO came onstage. I heard a lot of conversations about this throughout the night – and we learned definitively when lead singer Ryan Lindsey came onstage and introduced them – it’s pronounced “Bron-Cho” and not “Bronco”. The crowd got super into the group’s hazy, distorted indie rock (which sounds more like punk rock when it’s played live), and got especially hyped when the band launched into catchy single “Try Me out Sometime.” Overall the night was just a great combination of unexpected sound combinations in a fantastic venue.
