coffeeandirony.org

I was so taken with the song “Holding on to Nothing” when I heard it on the following lovely Asian drama MV that I went off to find more about the band, and having listened to their music I am officially a convert.  If you like Secondhand Serenade, The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus or any of those other rock/emo pop bands who occasionally craft amazing love songs, then you should like Lovers and Liars. A minty-new band from Tennessee, Lovers and Liars is a four-member band consisting of Stacy Hogan, Adam Nagel, Jason Stout, and Stephen Taylor. Formed about two years ago I think, they released their first EP, Before and After the Awakening, in fall 2009, and recently got signed by a major label (deservedly, in my opinion).

Download “Holding on to Nothing” by  signing up for their mailing list.

Their bio testifies: “We broke with rock tradition, trading Les Pauls and Marshall stacks for lead piano, drum machines, and synthesized textures. Switched straightforward rock shouting for a more diverse approach, using a variety of vocal deliveries to convey more complex sonic ideas. At the core, though, we stuck to hooky, personal songwriting, something that all too many of today’s otherwise worthy “experimental” groups seem to forget to do.”

Their Facebook page is beautifully tongue-in-cheek and humorous, and they’re clearly determined to have the personal touch with their small but devoted (and growing) fanbase, since one of them personally messaged me (in an entirely non-creepy way) when I joined their fans on Facebook.

Join their fans on Facebook
Lovers and Liars Myspace

Filed under: Music by Claire - No Comments →

“We wanted to begin a band that sounded gigantic”, We the Living say on their website, but oddly enough, this 3-member indie rock/pop band from Tennessee mostly crafts songs that are beautifully contained and tender, even wistful. Their website is a little too wordy and cerebral (probably an influence of Ayn Rand, from whose book of the same name I assume they got their name) – their first album apparently is split into “heaven” and “earth” sections and their Myspace page lays forth a manifesto about “spread [ing] the idea that everyone needs a personal philosophy”. Since their music is lucid and unpretentious however I won’t hold it against them. Download their newest EP, “Boom Forest”, by signing up for the mailing list. I just did and the EP consists of 5 exquisite songs. Check out “Left and Leaving” and “Re: Stacks” below.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

You can also check out their website and Myspace page

Filed under: Music, Photographs by Claire - No Comments →

Sometime Around Midnight, The Airborne Toxic Event

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

“We decided a long time ago not to take reviews too seriously. For one, they tend to involve a whole lot of projection, generally saying more about the writer than the band. Sort of a musical Rorschach test. And for another, reading them makes you too damned self-conscious, like the world is looking over your shoulder when the truth is you’re not a genius or a moron. You’re just a person in a band.”

-Letter to Pitchfork from The Airborne Toxic Event

Filed under: Music, Quotidian by Claire - No Comments →

Download mp3

Filed under: Music by Claire - No Comments →

These are my top six favorite albums of all time – not the best, nor the most brilliant, but simply my personal favorites. And yes, I know that six is an odd number, but I have more than five and less than ten – what can I say?

1) Who You Are, Cary Brothers

1. Jealousy
2. Ride
3. Who You Are
4. The Glass Parade
5. Honestly
6. The Last One
7. Loneliest Girl In The World
8. If You Were Here
9. Think Awhile
10. All the Rage
11. Precious Lie
12. Untitled
13. Untitled
14. Blue Eyes

“The Last One”

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

2)Spirit, Jewel

01.Deep Water
02.What’s Simple Is True
03.Hands
04.Kiss The Flame
05.Down So Long
06.Innocence Maintained
07.Jupiter
08.Fat Boy
09.Enter From The East
10.Barcelona
11.Life Uncommon
12.Do You
13.Absence Of Fear / This Little Bird
14.Who Will Save Your Soul

“Hands”

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

3)Hopes and Fears, Keane

1. Somewhere Only We Know
2. Bend And Break
3. We Might As Well Be Strangers
4. Everybody’s Changing
5. Your Eyes Open
6. She Has No Time
7. Can’t Stop Now
8. Sunshine
9. This Is The Last Time
10. On A Day Like Today
11. Untitled 1
12. Bedshaped

-”Somewhere Only We Know”|Download

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

4)Once, Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova/Strict Joy, The Swell Season

1 Falling Slowly
2 If You Want Me
3 Broken Hearted Hoover Fixer Sucker Guy
4 When Your Mind’s Made Up
5 Lies
6  Gold
7  The Hill
8  Fallen From The Sky
9 Leave
10 Trying To Pull Myself Away
11 All The Way Down
12  Once
13  Say It To Me Now

-”If You Want Me”|Download

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

-”When Your Mind’s Made Up”|Download

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

01. Low Rising
02. Feeling the Pull
03. In These Arms
04. The Rain
05. Fantasy Man
06. Paper Cup
07. High Horses
08. The Verb
09. I Have Loved You Wrong
10. Love That Conquers
11. Two Tongues
12. Back Broke

“Low Rising”|Download

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

“Two Tongues”| Download

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

5)Since 2007-Vol 1/Remember-Vol 2/Always, Big Bang

I’m going to cheat with Big Bang because, like many Asian artists, they have for the most part released mini-albums instead of full albums, and it wasn’t until quite some time after their initial success that they began releasing real albums. But they so clearly deserve to be on my favorite albums list that I’m going to combine Vol 2-Remember, which has the largest percentage of my favorite tracks, with some of their mini-album songs.

1. Intro(Vol 1)

2.Haru Haru (Vol 2)

3. Geojitmal/Lies (Always)

4. Haru Haru(Acoustic, Vol 2)

5. Together with You feat. Park Bom

6. My Heaven(Big Bang)

7. A Fool’s Only Tears

8. Remember (Vol 2)

9. Always (Always)

10. Remember(Vol 2)

11. My Girl(Vol 1)

“Haru Haru(Day by Day)”| Download

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

“Together with You” feat. Park Bom|Download

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

6)One Fell Swoop, The Spill Canvas

01. Lust A Prima Vista
02. Staplegunned
03. Polygraph, Right Now!
04. Dutch Courage
05. Natalie Marie and 1cc
06. Teleport A&B
07. Break a Leg
08. This Is For Keeps
09. Himerus and Eros
10. Valiant
11. Secret Oath
12. Bound to Happen
13. Self-Conclusion

“Staplegunned”: Download

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

-”Teleport A&B”|Download

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Filed under: Music by Claire - No Comments →

Listen to a free full sneak of Cary Brother’s new album Under Control here! (note: you have to register first – I know, annoying, but worth it)

Filed under: Music by Claire - No Comments →

Art Brut is an English and German indie rock band which I discovered via a side project of one of their members, Eddie Argos, who formed a band with Dyan Valdés from The Blood Arm called Everybody Was In The French Resistance…NOW. He and Valdes just put out an album called Fixin’ the Charts (Volume 1), which is apparently a collection of responses to particular pop songs, and from the moment I heard “G.I.R.L.F.R.I.E.N (You Know I’ve Got A)”, a single from it, I was hooked with a capital H.”“G.I.R.L.F.R.I.E.N (You Know I’ve Got A)” is a response to, you guessed it, Avril Lavigne’s “Girlfriend”.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Download

Here is their insanely cool album cover-

I haven’t listened to the rest of the album as yet, but you can check out the Stereogum Fixin’ the Charts premiere article and a (negative) review from LineofBestFit (like I said, I haven’t listened to the album yet, but I’m interested to see if I agree with his criticisms), and you can also can buy it from Amazon or Itunes.  The Amazon description goes as such:  “2010 debut from the British outfit featuring Eddie Argos from Art Brut and Dyan Valdes from The Blood Arm. Everybody Was In The French Resistance…Now are correcting the mistakes of Pop songs past. So far, they have defended the belittled blue-collar worker from Kanye West’s ‘Gold Digger,’ told Gerry And The Pacemakers that, in fact, it is okay to walk alone, dumped the manipulative Martha Reeves on behalf of poor Jimmy Mack and have taken the misguided instructions of a 17th century ballad to its logical conclusion. They are ‘fixing the charts’!”

This led me in turn to check out Art Brut itself, and while I think overall I prefer Everybody Was In The French Resistance…NOW(and yes, every one of those words should be capitalized, and yes, that last “now” should be in caps, before you ask), Art Brut itself is also quite interesting. Their debut album, Bang Bang Rock & Roll, was released on 30 May 2005, with its follow up, It’s a Bit Complicated, released on 25 June 2007.  Their name comes from a kind of outsider art, “art brut”, defined by French painter Jean Dubuffet’s as art by prisoners, loners, the mentally ill, and other marginalized people, and made without thought to imitation or presentation.

I hate their music videos but it can’t be helped so here goes-

Art Brut on Myspace

Official Website

Review: (most of which can also be applied to Everybody Was In The French Resistance…NOW) The good first – they’re funky and funny, aggressively cheeky and offbeat, a bit in-your-face and always tongue-in-cheek. What they have essentially done is taken an original concept(I’ve never quite heard their brand of screamo-tinged angst, conversational-rock-not-quite-rap-rhythms, and sarcastic societal commentary before) and having found what they with some reason consider to be a good thing, run with it quite consistently.  The bad – I would categorize the band overall as a an excellent mix-seasoner(ie one or two Art Brut tracks per playlist) rather than a consistently pleasing artistic effort, because once the novelty wears off their songs all sound pretty much the same. There’s only so much clever-but-angry almost-screamo I can take at one time, and while I am very much a lyrics-focused person, when I’m forced to fall back on lyrics alone to differentiate between songs which all have essentially the same rhythm and beat, I begin to think that perhaps the songs are too intensely lyrics-driven. Despite my appreciation of their musical playfulness and innovation, it feels as if Art Brut got lazy once they’d invented their own particular musical style, applied it haphazardly and without restraint to all their songs, and then settled down to write clever lyrics (hint: the “without thought to presentation” aspect of art brut only works if you’re making music for purely self-indulgent purposes). The result is that more often than not the lyrics get lost in the dominant choruses. Also, Art Brut faces the danger of any band with anger as a part of its repertoire – that the line between angry and whiny is very, very, very thin. It has been the undoing of many a more brilliant group than this one. If they can learn to tone down and focus their admittedly exciting brand of energetic sarcasm, they could become something great (or at least good).

Having said all that, Art Brut is delightfully offbeat group and I will certainly keep an eagle eye on them in future (they remind me, inexplicably, of Flight of the Conchords, a group whose brand of cheery-instead-of-angry societal mockery and constantly-morphing playfulness Art Brut could do well to take a page from).

Filed under: Music by Claire - 2 Comments →

Song from The O.C. soundtrack – Nada Surf‘s “If You Leave”.  Nada Surf is an American alt-rock band formed in 1992. They released their fifth album “Lucky” in 2008.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Download(right-click)

Filed under: Music by Claire - No Comments →