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Book The Grizzly Owls
We are both teachers and next week is our last week of work. We are ready for summer break and anxious to get out on the road and play some shows.
If you are interested in booking The Grizzly Owls contact either:
or on Myspace:
www.myspace.com/thegrizzlyowls
DOWNLOAD: Veronica Falls - Bad Feeling
Only Veronica Falls could make a “Bad Feeling” good. This beachy-keen gift comes from one of my favorite records in recent years, an equally dark and bright LP that can be played unobtrusively in the background as you write, paint, work, or like I’m doing today, mope around in a terrible mood stomping my rain boots. At least, that’s what I was doing, before the tune's gentle propulsion of energetic guitars, quick drums and chilled-out duet vocals made me cut the crap and start shaking along.
DOWNLOAD: The Joy Formidable - A Heavy Abacus
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Stadium rock: why do we love it? Is it the leaky, commanding guitars? The latent vulnerability behind even the grungiest of vocals? How just one listen on your earbuds can transport you to that nostalgia of being crushed into the partition by a like-minded crowd, all of you panting and pogoing and shouting, hearing every note while not being able to see a damn thing? We’re going out on a short limb to say yes, that’s why. The Joy Formidable's “A Heavy Abacus” is why. Don’t have the band’s excellent breakout record The Big Roar yet? Better get on that.
DOWNLOAD: Nurses - Fever Dreams
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Nurses always kind of sound like a team of psych-rock beachcombers yelping from the shores of Cocomo, but perhaps never more than in “Fever Dreams,” which is perfectly named because it’s both deliriously warm and shaky in its bongo drums, bleary guitars and gleeful, tripped out vocals. Listen hard enough to this and the rest of Dracula, and the thousand-day-wait ‘til spring will fly on by.
DOWNLOAD: POLICA - Lay Your Cards Out (feat. Mike Noyce of Bon Iver)
(Photo: Colin Kerrigan)
When you listen to POLIÇA, what are you listening to? Liquid R&B? Jazz-driven ambient? Skunky pop or wobbling soft rock? Who can be sure? It’s kind of all that; it’s kind of so much more. And if it reminds you of that other undefinable proprietor of sporadically auto-tuned, textural make-out jams – GAYNGS – then you get a deep cut gold star, because this band is an offshoot of that one, and “Lay Your Cards Out,” off of forthcoming debut Give You The Ghost, is every bit as good as anything on 2010’s Relayted. Get it when it drops on Valentine’s Day, for all your between-the-sheets needs.
DOWNLOAD: Diamond Rings - Mellow Doubt (Teenage Fanclub Cover)
Is it as strange to you as it is to us that such a grave, earthly-beaten voice emanates from the young, alabaster throat of Diamond Rings’ John O’Regan? In his cover of Teenage Fanclub’s “Mellow Doubt,” it is the only element rooted in melancholia: the gravel over which the dancepop waves of piano, Casio ticks and elementary-school synths wash. Pretty. Depressing. But not pretty depressing. Just self-aware enough to show it is equally both. Grab that limited 7-inch on which it lives, and Special Affections, the man's long-awaited debut, over on Astralwerks.
Diamond Rings - Mellow Doubt (Teenage Fanclub Cover)
Get More Diamond Rings Music Here
Get More Teenage Fanclub Music Here
DOWNLOAD: Loney Dear - Calm Down
(Photo: Sara Arnald)
"Calm Down" by Loney Dear (aka Swedish songwriter Emil Svanängen) is a great example of how to take a song with a powerful emotional core and grow it from acoustic guitars and whispery vocals into a lovely, full-on tearjerker with strings and vibraphones. I can't really tell if it's about forever-love or love lost, but, whatever it is, the song comes across as lonesome, strong and honest. Find this and more on Hall Music, which is out now on Polyvinyl.
PREMIERE: Electric Guest - American Daydream
"American Daydream" is a title that brings to mind Tom Petty's realm – you know, something with cornfields, innocent truck hookups or manifest destiny. Electric Guest has their own "American Daydream," though. It carries a near-ominous tone, yet it's still super poppy with sing-song vocals, crisp production and a creeper of a bass line that makes you want to puff-out your chest while walking. The group will release its Danger Mouse-produced debut LP in 2012 via Downtown Records.
