The Reflections were born when Darian Zahedi and Jon Safley began collaborating together earlier this year, often sending ideas back and forth while on the road with other projects. Along with bassist, Brady Wills they finished up an album's worth of songs and spent the better part of Spring at Brightstreet Recorders with producer/engineer, Kenny Woods (Jenny Lewis, Lykke Li, Vampire Weekend).
A hypnotic blend of classic indie pop with dashes of chillwave melodies, "Summer Days" is the first offering of their debut full-length, Limerence, set to be released in early 2013.
Limbo. It's a funny place to be, but it provided inspiration for the second album from Standard Fare, the Sheffield-based indie-pop power trio who debuted with 2010's The Noyelle Beat, their lovelorn, melodic songs and male/female vocals making them the new darlings of the indie-pop scene. "We're now in our mid twenties - not young and not old, not yet with kids but starting to earn money, starting to see how we fit into the wider world and how we feel about this," says singer/bassist Emma Cooper. "The album's lyrics are a bit more mature than our debut - we didn't want to just write about our romantic failures and frustrations, although they're hard to avoid!"
These 12 tracks, then, concern subject matter as varied as the Holocaust (recent single "Suitcase," written about a survivor and friend of Emma's family who recently passed away), bitterness ("Kicking Puddles"), frustration ("Dead Future"), divided families ("Half Sister") and unfaithfulness ("Early That Night"). With the widening lyrical scope, the album's texture has become more diverse too, with a greater contrast between heavy and light, fast and slow, dancefloor and bedroom. The guitars are beefed up, the melodies are unbeatable and the words are flecked with wicked humour.
Someone should really tell Morrissey that he doesn’t need to be in another band. I mean seriously, he's already been in the Smiths and he has his solo career to worry about so why in the world is he in The Holiday Crowd? What? You mean that isn't Morrissey? Holy heck...well whoever it is has made The Holiday Crowd sound like the best Smithsian tribute band with original tunes on the planet. Seriously.
The Holiday Crowd's album, Over The Bluffs is so possessed by the spirit of the Smiths that somewhere right now Morrissey and Marr are consulting lawyers for being a little too close for comfort. Jangly, dramatic, and frickin' amazing, Over The Bluffs is the best record from 1986 recorded in 2012 that you will hear this year. With sweeping vocals soaring to the heavens, jangly guitars lilting across songs with a bit of depression, and melodies so memorable you'll swear you've heard every one of these songs before this album is a seven song blast of indie pop the way it was meant to be played.
The sheer moodiness of the songs, the potential for collapsing and crying, the dreamy guitars and vocals all add up to one awesome little record. There simply is not one bad song here and the songs are so well written and so well sung and played that it's hard to find fault with anything. It's just not possible. While undoubtedly The Holiday Crowd would like to be recognized for their own merits, it's going to be impossible to ignore the Smiths-like similarities between the two bands. My suggestion is embrace it and run with it. Hell, the band should buy some gladiolas and put them in their back pockets when the play live.
Turnpike Glow started life in Italy but are now UK based, bringing their sunny, quirky Phoenix influenced sound to Britain’s rainy shores.
Sandro Schiena (vocals / guitar / keys) and Giuseppe La Mela (vocals / bass / keys) started the band in Rome, in a scene marginalised by glossy Italian mainstream pop and insider trading. However, with their Pavement / Phoenix inspired sound, they soon found themselves supporting acts like Cooper Temple Clause, The Futureheads and The Constantines.
It wasn't long before Sandro and Giuseppe, the songwriting core of the band, moved to London armed with only their guitars and a bag full of European plug adaptors! One rainy Sunday, they bumped into Anthony J. Hutchinson (drums) and Jeremy Levy (guitar) busking on the tube in giant sombreros. They talked, they laughed and eventually, they joined forces to become… Turnpike Glow!
An official single will be released in early 2012, along with their debut EP but in the meantime...enjoy The Turn, The Pike And The GlowDownload: The Turn, The Pike, The Glow Tweet
Portland, Oregon's avant-garde/indie-folk 11-piece outfit, All the Apparatus are celebrating the release of their sophomore, self-titled full-length (Faultvo Records).
The new, self-titled album from All the Apparatus is like the best pirate radio station you've ever heard, skipping around the musical spectrum, offering original gems to lovers of all genres with each song sounding almost as if a different band is playing. Forged during countless hours of street corner performances, this eleven piece band's raucous energy was captured by producer David Eaton, who formerly worked with the likes of Polyphonic Spree and Dynamite Hack. Eaton followed his ears down the city streets and found All the Apparatus playing their hearts out to Portland's pedestrians and the rest was history.
Part circus sideshow, part bourbon-soaked blues, and part enchanting musical ruckus, All the Apparatus' new album delivers a banquet of intriguing eclectic music.
Icelandic electro-pop group FM Belfast has announced the US release of their sophomore album, Don't Want To Sleep on Morr Music. Out on June 21, the album follows their breakout debut, How To Make Friends, and is a perfect follow up to two years of making friends, taking in experiences, sounds, and adventure
Don't Want To Sleep was written and recorded by FM Belfast (guests include Retro Stefson's Unnsteinn Manúel, Borko's Borko and mighty trumpeter Eiríkur Orri Ólafsson). It retains the bouncy and joyful spirit of How To Make Friends, yet veers off into territories that the band have hitherto left unexplored. There are slow songs and introspective ones; calm, drifting meditations mixed with calls to arms and potential dancefloor workouts. And lots of fun, of course.
Radical Face is the solo project of Ben Cooper, musician, illustrator, and artist based in Jacksonville Beach, Florida. On November 16, 2010, Radical Face will release the EP Touch The Sky via Morr Music.
In 2007, Radical Face released Ghost, an album that presented the simple idea: what if houses had memories? Some of the songs on Ghost were from people still living their lives, some were from the point of view of those dead and gone, watching over the living or haunting them. Be sure to check out the "Making of Ghost" documentary that aired across the US on Current.TV. Ben is also a member of the Jacksonville duo Electric President. Made up of Ben and band mate Alex Kane, Electric President has two albums and one EP, also released under Morr Music.
Both bands are fantastic and all the records are great. Seriously, and I'm not just saying that because they're from here.
Following Touch The Sky, Radical Face plans to release three full-length records over the year. The first of "The Family Tree" trilogy is called Roots, followed by Branches, and the final LP, Relatives. "The Family Tree" trilogy features characters set in an era in the late 1800s. Such concepts and stories come naturally to Ben, who before turning to music was an author. He switched to music because he knew he “could never write something as perfect as 'East of Eden”, not to mention his hard drive crashed containing two finished books. Ben finds inspiration from his family, his many siblings, and upbringing.
Touch The Sky features his new song, "Doorways" as well as an acoustic version of the previously released track "Glory" and the reprise and inclusion of "Welcome Home", which ignited most recent interest as the soundtrack of the year long I Am Nikon campaign. Ben also has had music featured in the films "The Vicious Kind" and "Humboldt County", as well as the trailer for the 2010 Reel Rock Film Tour. Ben writes all the music and plays all the instruments in a small shed behind his home in Jacksonville Beach. His new video "Doorways" just premiered on Under The Radar and was made for under $200 by Ben, several of his young nieces and nephews, and childhood friend Mark Hubbard.
Like the golden sea that names Our Broken Garden’s new album, their music is wide and deep, beautiful and mysterious, its thermal currents inviting you to dive in but with the potential to drag you under…
Hailing from Denmark, Our Broken Garden is the sound of sometime Efterklang keyboardist Anna Bronsted’s bewitching voice and songs with Søren Bigum’s guitar/keyboards and Moogie Johnson’s bass, plus assorted musical friends. Following the Lost Sailor debut EP, their debut album When The Blackening Shows arrived in 2008. Anna’s connection to water began here, with various nautical references in her lyrics, and a deeply atmospheric, drifting ebb and flow to the sound, with a serene, torchy Anna resembling a modern day siren at its heart.
With Anna co-producing for the first time, Golden Sea was recorded at OBG’s shared house in the Danish countryside, with different drummers (Poul Terkildsen, from When Your Blackening Shows, plus Søren Poulsen, Fridolin Nordsø and Yossi Karutchi), Robert Karlsson and Morten Svenstrup (from Under Byen) on strings and Palle Hjorth on the local church organ.
Golden Sea is a substantial step forward for the band. There’s more drama and rhythm this time around - check ‘Garden Grow’ and ‘The Feral’ for clear proof - as if the golden sea was more restless and darker than its colour suggests. Anna puts the change down to wanting to recreate the romantic and grandiose feel of classical music. You can immediately hear that on the opening ‘The Departure’, with its undulating piano undertow and hymnal beauty. The violins that distinguish ‘The Feral’ could be Haydn, but the vocal style and melody is pure modern-day Scandinavia. Talking of which, Anna adds that she also saw [film director] Lars Von Triers’ Antichrist at the beginning of writing Golden Sea, “and I was very moved and influenced by it. It's so graceful and overwhelmingly dreadful at the same time.”
Sparkydog and Friends, a Florida based band created by a quintet of talented multi-instrumentalists that have gone from indie rockers to wonky poppers. For their latest record, People of the World effort this vivacious group, led by two principle songwriters teamed up with legendary UK producer Mick Glossop (Frank Zappa, Van Morrison, PiL) to bring their glowing, futuristic pop music to full-fledged realization on their latest EP.
Formed amidst a swirl of experimental acoustics and pawnshop guitars inside a fourtrack-ed garage, the members of Sparkydog embraced their music journey early on. After a functioning live format was ranked, the band started gigging and soon found themselves exchanging emails with producer Glossop and thinking of the future, which can be heard here, on the group's latest EP.
Sounding like a cross between being half asleep and floating in space, Sparkydog most definitely bring to mind wonky dream pop. While it all sounds as if it's going to collapse into a million pieces, the band hold it together and come up with something that's remarkably catchy, slightly psychedelic, and really quite adorable.
Located in Florida and/or the UK, POP! Stereo has been subjecting readers to our warped taste in music for almost three years.
Our mission is simple, to share with our readers/listeners the music that we love ourselves and the music that needs to be heard by the masses. We're here because we believe in good music.
MP3s on the POP! Stereo are available for a limited time only and are intended for evaluation purposes only. If you like what you hear, or read about support the artists by actually purchasing their albums, going to shows, and buying their merchandise.
If you own copyright to one of the songs posted and would like it removed, email us at djpaulpop@yahoo.com.
