Artist: Down Time
Album: Hurts Being Alive
Genre: Indie
Hometown: Denver, CO
Track Listing (* – recommended tracks):
Songs with profanity: #1, #5, #7
Recommended if you like: Frankie Cosmos, Snail Mail, Lomelda
Label: Self-released
Reviewed by: Lil Macchiato
Artist: King Krule
Album: Man Alive!
Genre: Alternative, Lofi
Hometown: London, England
Track Listing (* – recommended tracks):
Songs with profanity: #2, #3
Recommended if you like: Cosmo Pyke, Ariel Pink, Blood Orange, Homeshake
Label: Matador Records
Reviewed by: Lil Macchiato
Album Review: Odyssey by The Accidentals
By Erica Wells
The Accidental’s album, Odyssey was one of the heavy rotations featured artists last school year. I really enjoyed the couple of songs I heard in the station and played on my show, “Porch Culture” and explored more of The Accidental’s music afterwards. The Accidentals are an American band formed in Traverse City, Michigan in 2012. As a three-person band, their music is characterized as indie rock and indie folk. While the band’s tune gives off folk vibes, there’s definitely an incorporation of pop and alternative accents, as well. Odyssey is an alternative mix of slower and fast-paced songs that feels like very down-to earth and authentic music. Some of the song highlights on the album are “Odyssey”, “Arizona Stars”, and “Crow’s Feet.” “Odyssey” has a bit faster of a tempo, whereas the other two songs are slower, featuring strong instrumentals in the background. “Crow’s Feet” is the longest song on the album clocking in at around six minutes, and has melodic tune. It would be perfect for a deep scene in a romantic movie (my favorite!). However, I have to say that “Arizona Stars” is the best song on the album, as it starts with some folk vibes that carry through the song, and features some real catchy lyrics. Check out The Accidentals and their album Odyssey – you won’t regret it!
This week, the WDCV music directors added a few featured artists, and we’ve decided to shine a light on one of the newest bands.
The Polychromatics are an indie rock band based in Philadelphia, and their EP is a perfect depiction of the versatility of their talents. They’re refreshingly open to experimenting with their sound. John McKenna, the guitarist of the band and featured vocalist on two songs off the EP, describes each song on the EP as an island, but I disagree. While the songs sound sonically different – in four songs they manage to play everything from folk, to garage jam band, to psychedelic – the lyrics convey a claustrophobia and existential anxiety that feels genuine and relatable to anyone in transition.
According to the guitarist, the band’s influences go hand in hand with their favorite music, such as Pink Floyd, Ty Segall, King Crimson, Gandalf, and The Doors (some of my favorites as well). McKenna specifically said that the song that is most prominent from his youth is The End by the Doors, which led him to pursue music. He says, “When I first heard Robby Krieger’s skill on that song, I made the decision to become a guitarist.” (He also recommends we listen to the psychedelic band Wand.)
If you’re interested in listening to them, they’ll be circulating through our automation, and they’re also on Soundcloud. When I asked how they felt about how the internet affects the music business, a controversial issue, they said, “It’s giving our band the ability to reach an audience quickly [which] we might not have had the chance to do if we took the old school method…I can’t help but see the benefits of instantaneous communication on a free platform for unknown bands like ourselves.”
If you have any questions for the band about their work, or event opportunities, you can contact them at their email, the.polychromatics@gmail.com, on twitter or on facebook.
If you have questions for the author of this article, please email logiurab@dickinson.edu or post on her facebook page.
Recently the Music Directors added Wild Belle’s album Isles to the featured artist lineup. If you haven’t given it a listen yet, you should. The sibling duo of Elliot and Natalie Bergman has mixed up the standard Indie Rock formula with reggae, soul, and slight Jazz influences and in doing so they have created a tantalizingly brighter sound that stands out from the ranks of the Indie Rock genre. If you’re a big fan of the Indie sound, Isles should provide you with something a little new and exciting to sink your teeth into. If you’re not a huge fan, the album is still worth checking out. Its clever genre blending may surprise you and win you over. If you find yourself really taken by the band and want to see them in concert you’re in luck. While most of their tour dates are out in California they do have one stop in Pittsburgh on May 31st
As for me, I highly recommend the album, with It’s Too Late, Twisted, and When It’s Over being particular standouts. Its mix of reggae back beats, soulful female lead, and rock percussion is exquisitely fitting for these first warm days of spring. We don’t get a lot of perfect days like we will this week at Dickinson. Do yourself a favor, bring some speakers out on Morgan Field, lay out a blanket and set this blasting. I can’t think of a better soundtrack.
Link to their website: http://www.wildbelle.com/us/
Image belongs to them, from their website.
I know I haven’t been exactly on top of my ADDs game for a while. A lot of senior thesis work and staring out the window has been occupying my time. Not to mention my attempts to break this caffeine addiction. It’s a little disturbing. Anyway, we have a lot of really great ADDs this week which you will be hearing over the air for a while, especially the ones I’m about to tell you allllll about. Because they are awesome. Didn’t I already say that? Anyway, here are this weeks top ADDs:
Titus Andronicus — Local Business: The long anticipated and accidentally recently leaked new album from punk rock Americana superband Titus Andronicus is here! This album differs from their other two albums because it doesn’t follow a set concept or narrative, but it is just as violent and rawly awesome as their other work. The subjects covered in the album’s themes range from an eating disorder to quitting smoking to lots of other things so nihilistic I can’t even begin to describe them all. Listen and punch a wall simultaneously to get the full effect.
Recommended Tracks: Upon Viewing Oregon’s Landscape With The Flood Of Detritus, My Eating Disorder, In A Big City, (I Am The) Electric Man
RIYD: Andrew Jackson Jihad, Bomb the Music Industry!, Japandroids
Paul Banks — Banks: This is the front man of Interpol’s solo album, and let’s just say he works even better alone. A more simplified sound, Banks’s voice still adds a lot of the allure that has fans drawn to his band Interpol as well. There’s something a little 1970s about this album as well.
Recommended Tracks: The Base, Over My Shoulder, Young Again
RIYD: Turtle Giants, Interpol, Blonds
Chelsea Wolfe — Unknown Rooms: A Collection of Acoustic Songs: Okay, this girl is like Lykke Li and Cat Power had a baby after listening to a lot of Grimes. Though the album is primarily acoustic, her voice and layering of harmonies make this album a lot richer. There is a lot of raw emotion juxtaposed with clean cut structure. This album is perfect for studying or pretending to be studying but actually just stressing out while staring up at the ceiling. Highly recommended.
Recommended Tracks: Sunstorm, Flatlands, Boyfriend
RIYD: Cat Power, Lykke Li, Tegan and Sara, EMA
I don’t know about you, radioland, but I have been waiting for a new Tegan and Sara single since I was in, like, high school. Like. They’ve probably had new music before then but I haven’t had any new Tegan and Sara in my personal universe in a long time.
Anyway, you should definitely check it out here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=dSGbOmW4AjI
And you can check out their first single “Closer” right here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7MNGPmrlWo
Their new album Heartthrob is set to be released in January 2013.
Titus Andronicus, the nihilistic and awe-inspiring rock machine has released the first single from their new album Local Business. The track is called “In a Big City.”
The album is set to be released October 23rd and the band had this to say about the album:
“While abandoning the linear narrative of their last album The Monitor, the songs on Local Business aim to make explicit the implications of the first two LPs, that the inherent meaninglessness of life in an absurd universe gives the individual power to create their own values and their own morality. Along the way, we witness a devastating automobile wreck, a food fight (that is to say, a battle with an eating disorder), an electrocution, a descent into insanity, and ultimately, a forgiveness of the self for its many faults. Titus Andronicus even finds time to broaden its emotional palette to include moments of pure positivity, brief respites from the usual doom and gloom.”
Titus Andronicus — In A Big City
The track listing for the album is this
1. Ecce Homo
2. Still Life With Hot Deuce And Silver Platter
3. Upon Viewing Oregon’s Landscape With The Flood Of Detritus
4. Food Fight!
5. My Eating Disorder
6. Titus Andronicus VS. The Absurd Universe (3rd Round KO)
7. In A Big City
8. In A Small Body
9. (I Am The) Electric Man
10. Tried To Quit Smoking
We have a lot of new adds this week for WDCV, and a lot from last week as well. While we sort through the piles of CDs currently overflowing from the rickety bookshelves in the exec office, here is a little sample of the bigger names we’ve racked in for adds this week.
All of the music we have gotten is of course, awesomeee, but these three deserve a post all their own.
The xx — Coexist: This album is everything you’d expect from The xx, sensual slow beats and the pleasant harmonies of sultry male and female voices winding in and around each other. Their second studio produced album, Coexist is the product of the band’s endless touring for the past two years and the loss of their fourth member Baria Qureshi. The themes common to the xx’s previous album remain the same with Coexist, loneliness, love and lust dominant the lyrics of the album. Though their music is inspired by pop and dance music, their sound is simple enough to stand on its own whether the band is playing live or you just have Romy Madley Croft’s voice sighing in your ear through inexpensive headphones.
Recommended Tracks: Angels, Chained, Fiction, Sunset, Swept Away
RIYD: Purity Ring, Lykke Li
Animal Collective — Centipede Hz: The tenth studio album from Animal Collective, Centipede Hz is the first in a while to actually include collaborative efforts of all four original members Avey Tare, Panda Bear, Geologist and Deakin. More experimental and less clean cut than Merriweather Post Pavillion, one is reminded of the raw quality of albums like Sung Tongs and Strawberry Jam. Fans of the old Animal Collective will warm to this album, with its trance elements and unique collaged quality.
Recommended Tracks: Moonjock, Today’s Supernatural, Applesauce, New Town Burnout, Amanita
RIYD: Gang Gang Dance, Deerhunter
Cat Power — Sun: Layered musically as well as lyrically, SUN is Cat Power aka Chan Marshall’s first album of solely personal and self written material in six years. Marshall wrote all of the material herself, and the music reflects her independence as an artist as well as her ability to mold and manipulate multiple musical styles. The haunting guitar and throaty vocals classic to Cat Power’s previous style remain as well as the influence of a more upbeat electronic sound that makes her work more competitive with current synth pop.
Recommended Tracks: Cherokee, Sun, 3 6 9, Manhattan
RIYD: Bat For Lashes, Sharon Van Etten, Neko Case, Grimes
That’s all for this week, keep checking in for more featured artist updates!
Meow.
Has anyone gotten into Grimes yet? Have you heard of her at all? Because she is great.
She comes out of the illegal DIY culture in Canada, and she’s been making music for a couple of years, though I’ve only heard of her recently because of her latest album Visions. Anyway, the video for Oblivion just came out and you must all watch it. Ergo, I’m posting it here.
Also, here’ s a picture of her. Yay.
She also has a twitter account @grimeszs
Meep,
Tori
