DOWNLOAD: Computer Perfection - Able Archer + How I Won the War / O Your Blue Blood
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Autumn is in the air this week in Chicago. Everything's still green and in bloom, but you can tell by the way the air smells so crisp and clean and girls bring cardigans out with them at night. It's in this weather that Computer Perfection's music gets room to breathe. "Able Archer" features a descending scale throughout that sound like swirling stars. "How I Won The War / O Your Blue Blood" - according to Computer Perfectionist Gene Corduroy, "we've officially deemed it to be a two-part song," - features a connecting drum machine sound half way through, but that's the first time Computer Perfection sounds more digital than pastoral. Featuring 4 members of Pas/Cal, Computer Perfection is able to take lines like "we'll hang our sorrow from the rafters" and make it sound like music to skip to. If Pas/Cal sounds like it's music from another time, Computer Perfection is music that is needed now - soaked in the wonder of the world all the while knowing eventually you're going to end up in front of your laptop again. Download this perfect season change music and get out side while you can.
Sounds Like: Pas/Cal, Shout Out Louds, the Comas, Au, Panda Bear, The Morning After Girls
Download: Computer Perfection - Able Archer
Download: Computer Perfection - How I Won The War / O Your Blue Blood
DOWNLOAD: PONTIAK - Shell Skull & ARBOURETUM - Buffalo Ballet
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Pontiak are slow and heavy and from Baltimore, kind of like some of my favorite characters on The Wire. The trio recently signed to Thrill Jockey, who is re-releasing their album Sun on Sun next month, which they recorded live, in single takes, in a Virginia cabin. "Shell Skull" is equal parts Sabbath, Slint, and Sunn (I'm taking the "S" thing too far). They also recently released a split LP with label-mates and fellow Charm City residents Arbouretum – take a listen to their cover of John Cale's "Buffalo Ballet," which has a palpable Will Oldham feel to it, a logical byproduct of the time that member Dave Heumann spent touring with the Bonnie Prince. Download both for the price of none.
Sounds like: Dead Meadow, Sunn, Bonnie "Prince" Billy
Download: Pontiak - Shell Skull
EXCLUSIVE NEW DOWNLOAD: Las Palabras - La Primera Vez
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When I tagged along to see Rafael from El Guapo/Supersystem's solo project Las Palabras a few months ago, I was expecting something along the lines of his previous bands' output on Dischord and Touch & Go. Instead I found him with an acoustic guitar (and a toy guitar he got when he was five) singing beautifully in Spanish about car rides, relationships and life in general. I've been after him ever since to a) record an album, and b) give me a song to post here. I'm keeping my fingers crossed about the album, but the wait is over for the first single: "La Primera Vez," freshly mixed by the man himself. Download and listen as the guitar, organ and percussion chase each other in circles right up to the near-psychedelic climax, where the layered vocals drift off into space. Every time I hear it I'm scoring the next Almodóvar film in my head.
Sounds Like : Caetano Veloso, El Guincho
Download: Las Palabras - La Primera Vez
DOWNLOAD: Two Sheds - You
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Since some of the greatest songs of all time were written about love, it sounds Grinch-like to say I typically hate all music by couples. But it's true; a fast beating heart can quickly put a wrench in the creative process, leading to criminally cloying ballads about blue eyes and belly buttons. So with such warning label in mind, I first listened to "Two sheds" (i.e. lovers Caitlin Gutenberger and John Gutenberger plus Rusty Miller). But "You" is actually a mellow, laid-back ballad about life and love's imperfections. Caitlin croons how "age redecorates my face" as an acoustic guitar patters in the background. Cupid back off; this ain't Yoko-Lennon and those aren't no rose-colored glasses.
SOUNDS LIKE: Jaymay, Mazzy Star
EXCLUSIVE DOWNLOAD: Gus Black - Today Is Not the Day + Little Prince Town
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Sometimes all it takes is a well placed soundtrack and the dude who was playing to an empty room is all of a sudden playing to a full theater. Seeing Elliot Smith play the Oscars because of Good Will Hunting was unexpected, as was the Aimee Mann rebirth with Magnolia and the jock-ification of Damien Rice with Closer. With Gus Black's album, Today Is Not the Day... there's a certain feeling of finding that next dude right before some ambitious soundtrack supervisor realizes he's sitting on an undiscovered well of every emotion he needs to up the choked-back-tears factor. With references to the election, Vincent Gallo, getting fucked up and fucking up, Gus Black seems ripe for the soundtrack picking. It doesn't hurt that the songs, while quietly understated, are catchy as hell and Gus Black's voice, while warning not to fuck with him, somehow still manages to feel like a warm blanket or a smooth whiskey.
Sounds Like: Damien Rice, Bill Patton, Elliot Smith, Frightened Rabbit
Download: Gus Black - Today Is Not the Day
EXCLUSIVE DOWNLOAD: Everest - Rebels in the Roses + Reloader
It may seem like putting five grown men in a van and sending them on the road is a tall order, but when you're looking at a row of three or four guitars (depending on whether someone's on an organ) and four microphones so that at times you've got twangy, angelic harmonies so dense you can't figure exactly what goes where only that it sounds lovely, it seems a small price to pay to be squished in a van. Anchored by the honestly earthy vocals of Russell Pollard, Everest has created 11 songs of acoustic pop brilliance on Ghost Notes - released by Neil Young's Vapor Records and recorded in Elliott Smith's former room, New Monkey Studio, on classic vintage equipment, recorded and mixed entirely to analog tape. If the recording credentials don't immediately make you realize this band is for real, if you dig into the band members resume file, you'll find tours of duty spent with Sebadoh, the Folk Implosion, Ealimart, Slydell, John Vanderslice, Mike Stinson and the Watson Twins and a video on their MySpace with the band being accompanied by various members of My Morning Jacket.
RCRD LBL is happy to showcase two songs from the Ghost Notes debut. "Rebels in the Roses," opens up Everest's debut quietly introducing the listener to what they can expect from the band. The lyrics are so sweetly heartfelt you immediately feel like you could bring these dudes to a family function and they would probably call your mom "ma'am" and play horseshoes over beers with your grandpa. The tune is a slow build but as each new element is introduced to the song, the understanding that this band has you in the palm of their hand and they'll bring you exactly where you want to be is implicit. Then there's "Reloader." This tune came on during an iPod shuffle session and someone quipped, is this Wings minus Linda? If you're looking for a pop song so catchy you'll be shouting out the chorus the second time it comes around, this is your jam. If you give this album the time it deserves, prepare to have these melodies in your head indefinitely.
Sounds Like: Brendan Benson, My Morning Jacket, Fleet Foxes, Moon High
EXCLUSIVE DOWNLOAD: Tu Fawning - Sound You Warn
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I get seasonally attached to music. Some songs just feel like summer or winter, so it seems a bit counter-intuitive to post Tu Fawning's "Sound You Warn" on a day when it's sunny and in the mid-70s when it makes me think of falling leaves and autumn. Their debut, the Secession EP, is a July release from Polyvinyl and it just seems cruel to keep this song from you. Featuring Corrina Repp and Joe Haege (31Knots) as the core of Tu Fawning, with Toussaint Perrault and Liza Rietz adding strings, horns and vocals, the band has released an EP with 6 songs of loveliness. This is cinematic music at its sweetest, with subtle drums that sound like fat raindrops falling on the roof, subdued handclaps leading into great cymbal pounds and choral backing vocals that shake like wind through the trees, "Sound You Warn," sounds like the prelude to a storm. Check out "Sound You Warn," and remember what it feels like to be inside listening to autumn rain.
Sounds like: Bodies of Water, Au, Beach House, Andrew Bird
DOWNLOAD: Willoughby - Frankenstein + Story + Frankenstein Video
Willoughby - Frankenstein from Sargent Records on Vimeo
There's something that's just nice about Willoughby. In the way that Sondre Lerche, Brendan Benson and the Botticellis can feel like a sweet massage on the part of your brain that interprets sound, Willoughby's debut album, I Know What You're Up To (out September 9) feels sort of like you're bouncing on a big, fluffy bed. Willoughby is Gus Seyffert and friends making pretty things in the studio, and it's not a big stretch, considering Seyffert has travelled the world playing with the effortlessly lovely Sia, Inara George and The Bird and the Bee, amongst others. What resonates beyond the sweetly angelic vocals and the quiet swaying of the tunes is the intricate stories that Seyffert weaves. "Story" relates a "Richard Corey"-esque tale of a man alone in the world while "Frankenstein" gets more confessional about love with some truly cozy male-female vocal play. This is music made of daisies and pink frosting, and there's not a goddamned thing wrong with that.
Sounds Like: Sondre Lerche, Brendan Benson, the Botticellis, Paul Simon, Sia
EXCLUSIVE DOWNLOAD: Moon High - We Believe + Where You Go
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My dear friend Daniel Arnold, who has written some lovely words for this here site, has an odd love affair with California. He's never lived there, but every time he visits he manages to come back with tales so sun dappled and full of reverie you would swear he was born on Big Sur and offered up as Lion King to the wildflower gods. I like to think that Daniel's soundtrack sounds something like Moon High when he's out there in the great wide open. Moon High is from Dayton, Ohio, but the music is infused with sunlight, the crunch of sand beneath your feet and the faint scent of lilac in the breeze blowing through your hair so you'd just about swear they were from the Golden State.
Moon High is the perfect soundtrack to your summer. If you're lying on a blanket in a field, on the beach as the sun sets, driving along country roads looking at corn fields or flying high over the clouds these fellas know how to make you feel the sunshine on your face. Moon High is 8 tracks of pure beauty and if you get your hands on it, it's very likely it won't leave your car stereo/ipod/turntable as long as you feel like taking off your shoes and running through sprinklers.
Sounds like: Vetiver, Papercuts, Panda Bear, Phosphorescent, My Best Fiend
Download: Moon High - We Believe
DOWNLOAD: Bill Patton - Dirty Woman + The Devil Went Down to Georgetown + She Loves You
Bill Patton refers to himself as a SBSS, a sad-bastard singer-songwriter. While normally that might throw flags like "whiny" and "introspective," think more of the Simon Joyner and Daniel Johnston end of the SBSS spectrum. On Gets It On, Patton balances the beautiful and hilarious, the delicate and the sinister with such dexterity it's hard to believe this is just his first album.
Trying to pick songs to offer from Gets It On is tricky cause they're all so goddamned special. "Dirty Woman" seems like a classic SBSS tune, until he throws in the line, "I like a waitress, I'm a sucker/But you can't tell me you wouldn't fuck her." Now that's the kind of bastard I want to have a Jameson with. "The Devil Went Down to Georgetown," takes the classic spooky gothic country tale, laces it with banjo plucking, grand slide guitar gestures and harmonies so dense you'd need a torch to find your way out. And then there are the ever-surprising covers that Patton takes and makes his own on Gets It On. There's no joyous "Yeah Yeah Yeah!" in this version of "She Loves You." In fact, Patton takes one of the most well known Beatles songs and obscures it behind a curtain of pain so delicate it almost breaks your heart when he sings, "She said you hurt her so/She almost lost her mind." This is a man who knows what he's doing and it takes more than one listen to get to the depths of this Sad Bastard's records.
Sounds Like: Simon Joyner, Daniel Johnston, Edward Bostich, Cass McCombs, Band of Horses
Download: Bill Patton - Dirty Woman
Download: Bill Patton - The Devil Went Down to Georgetown
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