Omnipresent hipster indie band + LOLcats = oh dear.
Actually Crazy For You is pleasant enough, if hugely derivative, melodic indie. And there is at least one microLOL in the video.
Don’t these people realise that if you’re going to combine funny cats and guitar bands, you’re going to be measured against THIS CLASSIC???
Those crazy kids.
Wow, the whistling guys livened up a bit! NB that is one for the Indie Kids to get angry at, if any are reading. I realise they’re not just the whistling guys.
Anyway, the whistling guys have a new song and it’s pretty lively and sometimes sounds a bit like Vampire Weekend (hmm) and sometimes a bit like early Ash (better). Warning: contains at least two beards, several guitars and little else.
Female fronted electro-pop. Yawn. Right? But this is more like it! Seriously brilliant stuff. I know I’m behind the curve (Oh Land was a hit at SXSW 2009, I’m told), but this is totally worth a listen. Nanna Øland Fabricius (see what she did there?) is a Danish former ballerina, now based in New York, with model good looks and a penchant for inventing her own instruments. Her sound is far more organic and less slavishly 80s than a lot of others in this genre. I guess there’s more in common with Lykke Li than anyone else, but with less of a dark side.
ANYWAY, a few days ago this wonderful remix surfaced, from fellow NYC resident Twin Shadow. Adds a bit more fizz to an already pretty exciting track
Oh Land – White Nights (Twin Shadow remix) by therecordcrate
This is also good:
Oh Land – Sun of a Gun by infinityyeah
And this is gorgeous:
Oh Land, ‘The Wolf And I’ by nmemagazine
And there’s also a video behind the cut – it’s fan-made and only features a preview of the original White Nights, but I thought it was worth sharing regardless.
Now the other week, I posted the video for the undeniably catchy “Colours” by Grouplove. At the same time, I grumbled a bit about there being too many guitars and shouting. And, well, look at them up there, with their ironic giant t-shirt thing. Tsk. Anyway, thankfully, some helpful chap called Captain Cuts came along and fixed things and made “Colours” 100% more awesome. Not sure if he’s also told them to ditch the big t-shirt, but I’d like to think so. I thank you Captain!
There still seem to be quite a few retro-electropop ladies bubbling under at the moment. You can’t help thinking that the moment for this kind of thing may have passed. But there’s still the odd interesting thing out there. New Zealander Zowie follows up her pretty decent Broken Machine with a more straightforward Goldfrapp-esque number. It doesn’t quite pack the same punch of a tune as its predecessor, but it has at least got attitude.
It’s Sunday afternoon, so have some gothy yet unbelievably pretty tunes from Paper Crows. 19 year old (!) Emma Panas’ ice-pure vocals have already been compared to everyone from Bjork to Kate Bush, and while they’ll have to do a little more to prove they really belong in such illustrious company, on the evidence so far it all looks rather promising.
This is beautiful stuff, of that there’s no doubt. Sounds a little bit Portishead, but with a modern touch. It’s really not too hard to see this appealing to the same mainstream audience that took to the XX.
Current single Fingertips, previous (and more dubstep-y) single Stand Alight, and a cover of Kate Bush’s Cloudbusting all below:
Paper Crows – Fingertips by Sainted PR
Slightly surprised that Gothenburg’s electro-popsters Little Dragon are still plugging their (excellent) 2009 album Machine Dreams. Probably something to do with exposure they got from their presence on Plastic Beach last year. Anyway, following on from the sublime Blinking Pigs and the fun and funky Runabout, another standout track gets a video. The video itself is fittingly quirky, all weird puppetry and animation.
Another nice little slice of chart-bound popstep. Skream’s chunky vworps interact successfully with Example’s usual everyman routine. There’s probably already a backlash somewhere or other against dubstep sounds on pop records, but who cares. I spent several years listening to “interesting” and “innovative” dubstep, yawning, and waiting for someone to combine its sounds with an actual tune. So the more the merrier, if you ask me.
So there’s now a video for this, one of the better things that came out of the back end of 2010. A cover version of a pretty daft hair metal song, originally covered by a robot on Crystal Castles’ second eponymous album, before being made whole by the addition of Mr. Robert Smith.
The video, sadly, is terrible. Wishy-washy arty bollocks that makes my hungover eyes hurt more. Where’s my Alice Glass/Robert Smith ‘Dancing in the Street’ style love-in? Rubbish.
Naming a feature after a day is asking for trouble.
Anyway… the concept (oh what a concept) is as follows: here’s what else I’ve been listening to this week. Limited to five songs. Not otherwise limited to anything. This week they all happen to be tracks released in the last few weeks (or months), but there are NO RULES. Exciting hey?
Click below for the goodies…
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