It’s Real // Real Estate
Get Free // Major Lazer
In Ruins // Fol Chen
Oblivion // Grimes
Genesis // Grimes
Ungirthed // Purity Ring
Crawlersout // Purity Ring
Family (Blended Babies Remix) [feat. Vic Mensa] // Chance the Rapper
The North // Stars
Half Asleep // School of Seven Bells
Emily
I know, I know; you’re stressed. You had four papers due this week and eleven midterms and sixty-two chemistry problem sets and then your car caught on fire and you broke your leg after you tripped over your shoelaces (even though you were wearing flip-flops), and life just sucks.
But given the option, which would you prefer: to wallow in pre-finals self pity, or to feel as happy, relaxed, and without-worry as a cat anesthetized with ketamine? I think the answer is pretty obvious.
With finals just around the corner, it can be extremely easy to get yourself caught up in the hype and forget that no matter what, you’re still going to be well and breathing in about two weeks from now. Get those teeth away from the bloody little nubs that used to be your fingernails and just try to remember that everything will be alright!
In order to try to calm some of those poor suffering nerves of yours, here is a playlist of 15 songs meant to soothe the soul with sunshine. These tunes always boost my mood, and hopefully they can give you some relief, as well!
Spread happiness,
Allison
Don’t Worry, Be Happy: 15 Sunshine-filled, Feel-good Songs to Boost Your Pre-Finals Spirits (Opens in Spotify)
1. Givers // Noche Nada
2. Buck O Nine // My Town
3. The Beatles // Twist and Shout
4. The Clash // Revolution Rock
5. Corinne Bailey Rae // Put Your Records On
6. Givers // Up Up Up
7. Jackson 5 // I Want You Back
8. Noah And The Whale // 5 Years Time
9. Mungo Jerry // In The Summertime
10. Matt and Kim // Daylight
11. The Avett Brothers // Kick Drum Heart
12. Sugar Ray // Every Morning
13. Vampire Weekend // A-Punk
14. Talking Heads // This Must Be the Place
15. Zac Brown Band // Toes
Big Machine by Mark Duplass
He calls it a zither, but it is actually a dulcimer. I want a dulcimer.
Pretty great, right? He has too great of a voice to be wasted! He must have other projects. Well, yes, he does. He has a solo project. It is awesome. But what else? Oh, a band? Yes, a band. Volcano, I’m Still Excited!! is the name and awesome music is the game. While the band is not extinct, they are on a break due to Mark hurting his voice on tour. But hey, Craig Montoro, the guitarist, plays for Sufjan Stevens, so that’s something.
My description sucks. Here is one that doesn’t:
Through the use of a keyboard, a guitar, and a double bass drum (but no bass), the three members of Volcano, I’m Still Excited!! deftly compose unconventional, yet catchy pop songs–throw in a dash of Elvis Costello, Jonathon Richman, and a mix of Spoon and you’ll begin to get the idea. Their must-see live performances include songs in rounds, sweatbands, aerobic workouts, and any other impromptu device that further draws the crowd into their performances. And the name? Some say it’s a tribute to Tom Hanks’ Joe Versus the Volcano, others say it’s some sort of bizarre mantra/rallying cry, others say it’s a merely a random stream of consciousness phrase. Either way, Volcano, I’m Still Excited!!’s style is all their own and their rise to existence is as unusual as their non-sequitur name.
Enjoy the soothing sounds of Mark Duplass and the band Volcano, I’m Still Excited!!.
Trunk of my Car by Volcano, I’m Still Excited!!
In Green by Volcano, I’m Still Excited.
After having my phone (Samsung Galaxy S I) for a year and nine months, I have finally taken it upon myself to explore the apps that came pre-loaded on my android. Surprisingly, I actually found something I liked! I’m usually not one for streaming radio stations/playlists, but Slacker Radio has changed that mentality for good. I customized a playlist (titled “Indie/R&B/Hip-Hop”) and found a few gems that I hadn’t heard in a while. Check them out below!
Come Close - Common
The Wilhelm Scream – James Blake
Check On It – Beyonce
Differences – Ginuwine
Feel It All Around – Washed Out
I don’t know if any of you use this app, but if you don’t and you like music, you should definitely get it ASAP. Songza is an app that’s actually exactly like Pandora, except it matches the time and day to different scenarios you might be in at the moment, ie. working out, studying, hanging out with friends, partying, etc. and then it gives you playlists that have music that’s perfect for the moment. You can also search different genres if you’re not feeling any of the options Songza is giving you, so don’t worry. 
But anyways, I was browsing through the scenarios the app gave me one day and I decided to listen to the playlist Mainstream Indie, and I loved it so much and it gave me a whole new array of artists to listen to. I personally suggest ALL of the songs, however I decided to share a few of my favorites. The playlist features Vampire Weekend, Passion Pit, Arcade Fire, Lykke Li, and many other similar artists. The songs I chose to share with you all today are Airplanes, Lisztomania, Rill Rill, Disparate Youth, and because I really love this song, I’m adding it last minute, Lonely Boy.
Airplanes // Local Natives
Lisztomania // Phoenix
Rill Rill // Sleigh Bells
Disparate Youth // Santigold
Lonely Boy // The Black Keys
I don’t really know how to describe any of these songs, although they’re great for basically whatever you’re doing, whether you’re taking a nap (like I always am), hanging out with friends, or studying, and if you like Vampire Weekend, Lykke Li, Regina Spektor, MGMT, The Ting Tings, Bon Iver, Miike Snow, Grizzly Bear, etc. then I definitely recommend these five artists and the rest of the Mainstream Indie playlist on Songza–and even if you don’t, the app has such a huge variety of music, it’s great for anyone!
Enjoy!
Emily
Chances are that you’ve heard at least one song by WALK THE MOON before. Their single “Anna Sun” has already peaked at #10 on Billboard’s Alternative songs chart, and the band has been featured on MTV’s Unplugged, VH1’s You Oughta Know and countless other charts, television shows and music magazines. With disco-flavored dance beats, catchy melodies and a serious penchant for face paint, it’s hard not to find this foursome instantly loveable.
WALK THE MOON formed in Cincinnati, OH in 2008, and in November 2010 the band independently released their debut EP i want! i want!. The EP included their first single, “Anna Sun,” which has helped to gain them some serious momentum on the indie scene. Of the single, lead singer Nicholas Petricca says, “It’s about college, about maintaining that little bit of being a kid. Don’t be afraid to play.” And play they do.
Their self-titled full-length album, released this past June by RCA Records, opens with the track “Quesadilla.” In the very first seconds of the song you get bright synths, playful percussion, an enthusiastic scream, and several lively rounds of “Hey!” in the background. Their cheerful, melodic, upbeat sound doesn’t waver throughout the rest of the album; tracks such as “Tightrope” incorporate a nice clean bass and their signature dance-beats underneath sunny guitar licks, and Petricca’s pleasant voice has a way of turning every track into a sing-along.
WALK THE MOON is an album just teeming with energy and good vibes, and this lively force doesn’t go anywhere during the band’s live shows. From reading reviews of WALK THE MOON’s live shows or watching performances on YouTube, one can get a sense of the positive feedback loop created by their music. The band’s playful, fun-loving energy is something that the crowd feeds off of as they bounce around the venue, and the band in turn gets their momentum from the energy of the crowd.
Between the colorful face paint (WALK THE MOON likes to bring to share with the crowd) and the smiles on both the band and the audience, you can tell that WALK THE MOON just likes to have fun. And this is something that resonates beautifully with the band’s mission: “We want our music to be the most fun thing you’ve ever listened to in your entire life,” said bassist Kevin Ray in an interview with SXSW, “We want it to not just affect you emotionally, but also physically in that it makes you want to dance.”
You can purchase there new album, WALK THE MOON, by clicking here. They just recently released a full list of Fall 2012 US tour dates, which you may view by clicking here.
But the point of this post isn’t meant to single out GROUPLOVE for their strange upbringing, but explain to you, the reader, that you have definitely heard their music at least once. For example…
Oh.
That’s the song, right there.
Ryan Rabin, drummer and producer for GROUPLOVE, was interviewed on the subject of songwriting.
Every song is different. There’s no set method of how we do it, and we try to change it every time because we never want one song to be too similar sounding to another. Hopefully you hear that on the EP, and you hear a difference between the songs, not necessarily in genre but in overall vibe.
I can give you an example. “Naked Kids“ was something that Hannah and Christian had just been messing around with, almost in a jokey vibe. It’s a very tongue-in-cheek song. And then from messing around with those fun lyrics, they brought it to the rest of us. When we were making the EP we were like, this is a really fun song, it’s super summer-y, let’s try to make it into a full song. So we took their original idea and as a group took it from there and developed it in the studio. A song like “Colours,” Christian wrote the base of that song quite a while ago and just had it in his back pocket. We heard that and we just said “Let’s build on that.” A lot of times it will be a song from someone’s past that gets brought to the band and evolves from there, and other times it will be just something we’re jamming on as a band in practice, just messing around with chords or a drum beat. Overall every song is a group effort, but where it comes from varies.
Like GROUPLOVE? Check out their website or go see them live at the Royale on November 3rd. Listen to their music and say it isn’t interesting. Or don’t. I can’t really make you do anything. Have a happy week and I will be back next week with someone brand new.
That might have been the saddest thing I read when I first got into Dear and the Headlights. The music is so great, the lyrics are crafted beautifully, the songs harmonize and resonate like an orchestra… and they were a band. They broke up in July of 2011 because what their music had become wasn’t what they started with. They were friends who decided to make a band, got it big, and went sour from within (even though their product was oh-so-sweet.) Oh, well. I could go on about what a tragedy it is, but that isn’t the point of this post. This band is another one of those You Gotta Know musicians in my repertoire.
Saintly Rows (Oh Oh)
Paranoia posed in saintly rows outside my windows
Cacophonous caws, bacterial ponds flap
Pavement moans
Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh
Caustic alarmed cavernous psalms
They swing from your lips then tie your tongue up like you asked them to
Out come the gaunt ghosts of your thoughts
They’re shrieking in prose and breathing rhymelessness archaic gloom
Cover your mouth, sound trickles down and drips from your chin
Drooling vibrations in an empty room
There just pull your eyelids down they’re begging for your sleep
Find yourself in white stairwell a trembling voice now speaks
Whirring back and forth from firework to figure eight
Now your trembling hands don’t seem so hard to make behave
Paranoia posed in saintly rows outside my windows
Single filed piled while flashing smiles network imposed
Dumbstruck and shoved oxygen snuffed then beg for embrace
Passion like cancer has a wandering eye
Caskets for hands bury your plans right next to your songs
When t-shirt vending is how you spend your time
Out come the gaunt ghosts of your thoughts
They’re shrieking in prose and breathing rhymelessness archaic gloom
Cover your mouth, sound trickles down and drips from your chin
Drooling vibrations in an empty room
There, just pull your eyelids down they’re begging for some sleep
Find yourself in white stairwell a trembling voice now speaks
Whirring back and forth from firework to figure eight
Now your trembling hands don’t seem so hard to make behave
Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh
Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh
Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh
Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh
Caustic alarmed cavernous psalms they swing from your lips
Then tie your tongue up like you asked them to
Out come the gaunt ghosts of your thoughts
They’re shrieking in prose and breathing rhymlessness archaic gloom
OH OH OH OH OH OH OH OH OH OH
OH OH OH OH OH OH OH OH OH OH
Sweet Talk
Oh No!
I Just Do
I hate to run without saying anything more about Dear and the Headlights, but unfortunately they do not tour, they have barely any stock left in their merch store online, and they only have a couple videos online. This is sadly the story of an amazing band cut short, but hopefully you can enjoy their music now as they would have wanted.
Next week, I’ll be reviewing Grouplove, the indie band that isn’t that indie since you know their music from the radio but they still don’t sell out concerts.
Credits to the title go to my punny boyfriend, who is just as crazy about this band as I am.
I’ve got to say that I am disappointed in myself for being a week late with this post. Yes, I wrote about Kimbra, my audio fixation for the past couple of months, but my allegiance is always to Pearl and the Beard, an indie band stemming from Brooklyn. Jeremy Stiles and Jocelyn Mackenzie met at an open mic night and joined forces to make Pearl and the Beard (hence pearl being Jocelyn and Jeremy being the beard, since his beard is luscious and powerful), but they always wanted to add on new people. Enter stage left, Emily Hope Price, wonderful songstress and, oh I don’t know, Carnegie-Mellon trained cellist performer who composes for movies (see Unicorn City.) Here is their greater-than-average description taking from their greater-than-average website (where you can get merch! Yay merch!):Pearl and the Beard is three voices, one cello, one guitar, one glockenspiel, one melodica, several drums, one accordion, ninety-six teeth, and one soul.
Former strangers Jocelyn Mackenzie, Emily Hope Price, and Jeremy Styles were united in the great city of New York. Each had migrated there from a far corner of the nation with naught but food in their pockets and money in their bellies. Each had the same true love. Since then, the three have nested, and their unique brand of brightly melodic songcraft continues to blossom of its own accord…
Pearl and the Beard loves you the way you’ve always been… and it’s quickly becoming clear that wherever they go, the feeling is mutual.
Their music is lyrically and emotionally dense. Everything is a masterpiece with a classical feel and the feeling that everyone is putting their heart and soul into every note. Here is an unreleased song and an example of the lyrics:
“Devil’s Head Down” Lyrics
Keep my head down
Burn underneath the sun
Caked in coarse ground
Skin leather baking brown
You better roll with it.
Bury the guilt, underneath the sun.
Keep my head down
Shovel beyond the throes
Devil’s whistlin’ now
We be the only,
Only what even knows.
But you better roll with it,
Bury the guilt
Underneath the sun.
This moment ain’t got nothin’ on me and it don’t even prove my sum.
Loose lips cut tight, won’t sink it right, my prize underneath a ton.
Percussion of my fists and pounding chest renders heartbeats to an all time low.
And the man I see ain’t the man I be, or at least not the one I know.
You better roll with it,
Bury the guilt underneath the sun.
Keep my head down
Oh, underneath the sun.
You better roll with it
Bury the guilt, underneath the sun.
Here’s a little taste of their music and the descriptions given by the band themselves!
“Douglas Douglass” (Jocelyn)
This song is about a tree named Douglas Douglass who is hot for a bunch of other trees. The only thing is, he can’t get to the other trees due to his whole being rooted to the ground thing, so he’s a bit pent up. Since he’s a tree he also can’t really tell which of them are boys and which are girls and which are gay and which are straight, so there’s a bit of cross-referencing gender-wise and orientation-wise. But that doesn’t matter, because they’re trees.
“The Lament of Coronado Brown” (Emily)
The lyrics to this song were largely written by Jeremy, though I feel I can lay claim to the first line sung, “They don’t know that I love you.” (I came up with it while floating in a lake. Jeremy was on the shore, and I shouted, “They don’t know that I love you. That has to be in there somewhere.” Perhaps it was my high school self wrestling with my water wings…) The rest is a mystery in my mind now, though we all had a hand in finishing this song’s bits and pieces. This that took a long time to compose. All the pieces had to fit perfectly together in order for each of us to feel completely comfortable with its release into the world. We each feel the meaning of this song very differently. For Jeremy it means this, “A person has just traversed across land and sea in order to find his/her lover’s bones, dig them up, and place them somewhere properly. However, upon near-completion of this task, said lover is discovered by nearby neighbors, the police are called, and this (to an outside observer) seemingly disrespectful act is ended quickly in gunfire.” For me it’s more this: Being too frightened to be able to tell someone you’re in love with them. It will be different for everyone, however, and this ambiguity is what we like about our work. It will never be the same for each person, which is why music is so powerful: it molds itself to the listener, fashioning itself into a need to complete a whole.
“Sweetness” (Jeremy)
I feel like we don’t have too many straight forward “I freakin’ love you” songs, so we wrote one. I’m a bartender and I think about drankin’ pretty regularly. I work weird hours, and always on the weekend which is usually when people are off. I thought of this idea where I’m getting home just as a love of mine is waking up for work. That’s what the third verse is about where it says “We see the exact same sunrise, on different sides of the morn.” Being in love definitely clouds your judgement, much like a drink does.
So, when you are looking for something relaxing to listen to or want to get a leg up on the music scene, take the time to listen to Pearl and the Beard, my personal favorite band and, in my personal opinion, should be everyone else’s favorite band, too!
(And hey, check it out, they are coming to Boston pretty soon! They are on tour with Ani Defranco, who is also just as snazzy.)
I randomly stumbled upon this video on a music blog last week and quickly found myself entranced by the faux-hood dancing skills of Berlin-based D E N A. “Cash, Diamond Rings, Swimming Pools” may initially sound shallower than Kreayshawn’s infamous “Gucci Gucci,” but D E N A’s presence in the video exudes an awkward charm that Kreayshawn could never pull off. Her outrageous fashion choices, questionable talk-rapping, and attempts at swagger even evoke a young M.I.A. The song may or may not become my summer anthem, but I do throughly expect it to soundtrack many a mindless night in Allston this month.
It’s been over three years since Passion Pit’s last full-length album, so naturally it’s a pretty big deal that their second, Gossamer, is set to be released in just about two weeks. The band just leaked the R&B-styled “Constant Conversations,” and it’s certainly done its job in getting me mega-hype for the album. Throw this slow jam on if you’re looking to get some major play at a party this summer. Chances are it’ll get anyone in the mood for some late night lovin’.
Perhaps you’re in the mood to feel things this summer and have emotional debates inside your head to the sound of tear-inducing dream pop? In that case, Youth Lagoon is the band for you! Functioning as the stage name for musician Trevor Powers, Youth Lagoon put out its debut last fall and I’m only now discovering it. “Montana” is hardly a new track, but it’s quickly becoming a regular staple in my “I Have Feelingz” playlist. I suggest playing this on repeat through your car’s sound system while laying on the hood with a friend, talking about life and watching the stars glisten. Do this so I can live vicariously through you. The Boston night sky is occasionally a sight to behold, but it is largely starless and for that I am sad.
Keep on keeping on, y’all.
-Josh
