Tag: American indie

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Tunes

Best tunes of 2013: #25 Cayucas “A summer thing”

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Tomorrow is the last day of August. And although, technically, there’s still three more weeks left of the season, the passing from August into September always feels like summer is coming to an end. This is why the timing is perfect for this song to pop up and for me to share this very post. “A summer thing” by Cayucas was a great summer song back in 2013 but it could also be perfect for every summer since.

“The summer’s starting to drift away but you don’t want to let go.
Now you’re watching the rainfall by yourself from your bedroom window.
And I’ll be checking the mailbox for the postcards you said you’d send,
Telling me that you might stop by in the winter for the weekend.”

Zach Yudlin was originally making music by himself in the early 2010s under the moniker Oregon Bike Trails. By 2012, though, he had enlisted his twin brother Ben to the project, changing its name to Cayucas, and then, they signed to Secret Canadian Records. They’ve release four albums in all, the latter two were self-released but the only one I am really all that familiar with is the debut, 2013’s “Bigfoot”. It’s 9 tracks and just a smidge over 30 minutes of sunshine and surf and nostalgia for California, where of course, the brothers call home.

The real gem of the album is track four. “A summer thing” sounds unabashedly like The Beach Boys. Harmonies and yellow light filtered through a kaleidoscope and a music box playing “Sloop John B” on repeat. A bopping bass line and zipper-like guitars and ticky tacky drums. Even the most jaded of music fans or Beach Boys purists couldn’t hate this song. It’s faithful in its blue-eyed wonder and wistfully drenched in memories. It’s a song you just want to restart before it comes to an end because maybe, just maybe, it might delay that cold weather just a little bit longer.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 2013 list, click here.

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Vinyl

Vinyl love: Death Cab For Cutie “Transatlanticism”

(Vinyl Love is a series of posts that quite simply lists, describes, and displays the pieces in my growing vinyl collection. You can bet that each record was given a spin during the drafting of each corresponding post.)

Artist: Death Cab For Cutie
Album Title: Transatlanticism
Year released: 2003
Year reissued: 2013
Details: Gatefold sleeve, 10th anniversary, 2 x 180 gram, 12-page booklet

The skinny: I finally got around to purchasing a full pass to this year’s Ottawa Bluesfest and I can’t even really explain why I procrastinated so much. The organizer’s typically do a pretty good job of putting together a diverse lineup that tries to please everyone to some extent (and invariably, disappoints many) but this year’s lineup suits my own personal tastes better than it has for many years now. There’s at least one act on each of the festival’s nine days that I really want to see*. And one of the acts I’m most looking forward to is Death Cab for Cutie, who I saw live for the first time more than 15 years ago but haven’t seen since. This performance is part of the tour supporting last year’s “Asphalt meadows” but they are also touring in the fall to celebrate the 20th anniversary of their now iconic 4th album, “Translatlanticism”. I can’t even believe that I purchased the copy of this very same record for my vinyl shelves a decade ago: a 10th anniversary, 180-gram double LP edition, complete with a gatefold sleeve and a lovely 12-page booklet. This was procured back when my collection was still in its infancy and probably just around the time that I finally bought my turntable. “Transatlanticism” was a no-hesitation purchase because it was my introduction to this great band upon its initial release and with all the albums they’ve released since, it’s one I return to time and time again.

Standout track: “The sound of settling”

*But I’ill likely have to miss a night or two in the interest of conserving energy.

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Tunes

Best tunes of 2020: #20 Nation Of Language “On Division St.”

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The story goes this way. Ian Richard Devaney’s band The Static Jacks had recently come apart and he was in a car with his father when his father put on a song he hadn’t listened to in many years: “Electricity” by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (aka OMD). It evoked a great measure of nostalgia in him and he decided to try to write a song in a similar vein. He never meant it to amount to anything but this playing around with synths eventually brought us a new synth pop act out of Brooklyn. Nation of Language became a trio when Devaney added Aidan Noell for more synths and vocal support and former Static Jacks guitarist Michael Sue-Poi on bass.

They released a string of EPs and singles between 2015 and 2020 but I didn’t get to hear the group until they released their aptly named debut, “Introduction, presence”, in 2020. And even then, I didn’t catch up with this fine album when it was first released in the spring. It took a Spotify playlist, ‘made especially for me’ sometime in the fall, to include a song that made my ears prick up, had me reaching for my iPad to discover what song was playing, and then, had me googling a band name that had previously escaped my attention.

That song was “On Division St.” by Nation of Language.

“A song so sweet
From back when I was born”

Originally released as a single back in 2018, it was re-recorded for our collective “introduction” and it was well met, indeed. It is a lovely and sad thing that feels like I’ve known it all my life, grew up listening to it during my ansgty teen years. It is just over three minutes of romance unrequited, a rain soaked black and white photograph, discarded scarf, and a single dried rose. It is a drum machine set to weep and a flickering and fluttering arpeggio of synths. It is a solo form dancing and singing to him or herself in the middle of a long emptied dancefloor, still waiting and hoping for the appearance of a dream.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 2020 list, click here.