Tag: Indie Pop

Categories
Tunes

Best tunes of 2012: #18 Stars “Hold on when you get love and let go when you give it”

<< #19    |    #17 >>

Well, hello February!

You might’ve noticed that I spent most of January in the ‘90s – my happy place musically and nostalgia-wise – but if you’re sick of that, I’m here to rescue you with a smattering of 2012. And you couldn’t ask for something better to lift you out of a funk (if the 90s were a funk) than this awesome, high energy number by Montreal-based indie-poppers: Stars.

“There’s been a lot of talk of love
But that don’t amount to nothing
You can evoke the stars above
But that doesn’t make it something”

If I am remembering correctly, Stars’ 2012 album, “The north”, was the seventh (or eighth) LP I bought after starting to collect vinyl again. In fact, it was one of the handful I purchased before I even had a turntable to play them on. This didn’t bother me at the time because pretty much every record I was purchasing around this time included a download card for a digital version of the album. So even though I couldn’t yet play the record, I still had a way of listening to the music I had purchased. And I listened to this album quite a lot after purchasing it. In fact, I remember listening to this album continuously for the whole train ride back from Toronto on my iPod shortly after its release (though I couldn’t tell you now, why I was in Toronto and why my wife wasn’t travelling with me that time) and perhaps this is when I fell in love with this very tune.

“It’s a pretty melody
It might help you through the night time
But it doesn’t make it easy
To leave the party at the right time”

“Hold on when you get love and let go when you give it” was the second single to be released off “The north” and it could very well be at the top of the list of my favourite songs whose title includes more than 10 words.* It became huge for the band, a dance club eruption. And though there are only hints of it in the lyrics, the song became a LGBTQ anthem, in part because of the video (which you can watch below). One of the principal songwriters of Stars, Torquil Campbell has said of the video: “I wanted to make a video that celebrated the following things: 1. being yourself, 2. being someone else, 3. being fucking fabulous, 4. showing up, putting on your heels and staying alive. Drag queens know a couple of things the rest of us choose not to know: you are who you imagine yourself to be, and you can be a star even if — especially if — nobody ever knows who you really are.”

The song, itself, is pure pop brilliance, spreading love wherever it is played, pop in the vein of eighties nostalgia but with 21st century digital production. It is an insistent dance floor beat, reverberating memories, strobe light heart beats, and dance floor crushes. The melodies inspire flashback shots of love and ecstasy and at each chorus, Amy Millan fills our hearts with joy and hope. Love comes in rushes and waves, sneaky kisses and cautious caresses. It’s indeed magical.

“The world wont listen to this song
And the radio wont play it
But if you like it sing along
Sing ’cause you don’t know how to say it”

*Honestly, I don’t currently have such a list but it might be something worth looking at. Surely, though, this song title is the longest amongst my most favourite of songs.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 2012 list, click here.

Categories
Playlists

Playlist: New tunes from 2020, part four

Good morning, good morning. I hope you’ve all had a wonderful holiday weekend and if you celebrate them, a merry Christmas and a fruitful Boxing day… well, as merry and as fruitful as possible, given the circumstances.

We’ve finally nearly reached the end of this crazy year 2020 (give yourselves a congratulatory pat on the back). We’re now just two days removed from New Year’s eve and the unveiling of my favourite album of the year, and here I am unleashing the fourth part of my ‘New tunes of 2020’ playlist series. This is the first time in the past three years of doing these playlist series that I’ve actually managed a fourth part, even though it has always been planned in the past. And this is only partially because of life getting in the way of my blogging and playlist creation fun. In reality, one of the biggest roadblocks to managing a fourth part for the fourth quarter has, in the past, been the lack of quality new releases. I’ve always found that the new music release calendar trails off a bit after November, brand new music giving way to reissues and best of compilations, just in time for Christmas giving.

I was more successful putting together this fourth playlist this year because I accepted these limitations and decided to make this a b-sides compilation of sorts. The first half of these tracks are new tunes that came out in October and the first half of November and the rest are tracks that didn’t make the cut, for one reason or another, for the first three playlists of this year but were still great enough to share. You may want to check out the other three mixes first (here, here, and here) but I think you’ll find this one just as excellent.

So let’s have a look at some of the highlights of this ‘b-side’ playlist:

      • “Hold my hand”, a raucous psych-rock mess by Death Valley Girls, aka a song pulled from the pages of a book called “Why haven’t I heard of this band before?”
      • A heavy-duty, jangly bundle of energy called “Love comes in waves” off the debut solo album by Ride’s Andy Bell
      • “Stay out”, a banjo barn stomper off “Keeper”, the latest album by Canadian alternative country trio Elliott Brood
      • Isobel Campbell’s soft touch cover of Tom Petty’s “Runnin’ down a dream”
      • A super fun, eighties throwback called “On division st.” by Brooklyn indie pop act, Nation of Language
      • “Vibrant colours”, the dreamy single off the debut album by new Canadian artist, Zoon, cheekily coined moccasin-gaze

For those who don’t use Spotify or if the embedded playlist below doesn’t work for you, here is the entire playlist as I’ve created it:

1. “Hold my hand” Death Valley Girls (from the album Under the spell of joy)

2. “Trade it” Slow Pulp (from the album Moveys)

3. “Waving at the window” Travis (from the album 10 songs)

4. “For sure” Future Islands (from the album As long as you are)

5. “Impossible weight” Deep Sea Diver with Sharon Van Etten (from the album Impossible weight)

6. “Worth it” beabadoobee (from the album Fake it flowers)

7. “Distant axis” Matt Berninger (from the album Serpentine prison)

8. “Say less” Nothing (from the album The great dismal)

9. “Love comes in waves” Andy Bell (from the album The view from halfway down)

10. “Stay out” Elliott Brood (from the album Keeper)

11. “Weight of the world” 5 Billion In Diamonds (from the album Divine accidents)

12. “Barcelona” Twin Atlantic (from the album Power)

13. “Runnin’ down a dream” Isobel Campbell (from the album There is no other…)

14. “Southwark” Yumi Zouma (from the album Truth or consequence)

15. “Electric roses” Basia Bulat (from the album Are you in love?)

16. “I got the hots for Charlie Watts” The Exbats (from the album Kicks, hits and fits)

17. “What I’ve done to help” Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit (from the album Reunions)

18. “Can’t get out” Woods (from the album Strange to explain)

19. “Shake your diamonds” The Rentals (from the album Q36)

20. “Chaos and confusion” Venus Furs (from the album Venus Furs)

21. “Party with the kids who wanna party with you” Bad Moves (from the album Untenable)

22. “The way things are” Porcelain Raft (from the album Come rain)

23. “On Division st.” Nation Of Language (from the album Introduction, presence)

24. “Bad girls forever” Pins (from the album Hot slick)

25. “Vibrant colours” Zoon (from the album Bleached wavves)

And as I’ve said before, I’ll say again: Wherever you are in the world, I hope you are safe and continue to be well. Until next time, enjoy the tunes.

If you’re interested in checking out any of the other playlists I’ve created and shared on these pages, you can peruse them here.

Categories
Albums

Best albums of 2020: #2 I Break Horses “Warnings”

Back in June 2019, I wrote about I Break Horses when one of their tracks, “Winter beats”, from their debut album, “Horses”, appeared at the number eleven spot on my Best tunes of 2011 list. I wrote then that I didn’t know much about the Swedish duo of Maria Lindén and Fredrik Balck, except that I loved their shoegaze-inspired dreamscapes and that it had been a number of years since we had heard much more about them, their second and only other album having been released five years prior.

Then, earlier this year, there were rumblings on the internet that Maria Lindén was planning to release a new album under the I Break Horses name. There was even an advance single making the rounds. I didn’t immediately jump into the waters to take the temperature but when I saw that “Warnings” was on Spotify in May, I gave it a spin on my iPod while doing some chores around the house. I don’t think I was even halfway through the dramatic 9-minute opener, “Turn”, before I was surfing my way to the Bella Union website to order a copy of the album on vinyl. It wasn’t long after I received it and gave it a few goes on the turntable platter that I was already calling it an early favourite for best album of 2020. Well, as you can tell, it was beaten by one album, but only just.

On “Warnings”, Lindén has created a cinematic world all her own. She took her time with it, lived through it, and experienced a lot of heartache and setbacks to bring it to fruition. The album is almost a living and breathing thing, a far cry from her debut, which of course I still love, but its touchstones and influences were far more obvious. “Warnings” has both the makings of a celebratory party soundtrack and a night home with a good set of ear phones and a bottle of good red. And if you’re not careful, it will take you with it on a whole range of crushing emotions.

Indeed, “Warnings” is a whole, a world, a universe that should be taken together and I highly recommend doing so. But in the interest of time, I’ve agonized to select three picks for you to sample. Enjoy.

“Death engine“: The very first single released in advance of the album gave us fair warning of what we were in for, had we any wish to heed such a thing. It clocks in at well over seven and a half minutes and is a beast of a thing. An explosion of synths, layered in a patchwork over top each other, the most prominent one being a stomping and foreboding organism, reminiscent of something from a John Hughes teen angst film. It all marches unstoppably to an obvious and unavoidable end. The imagery is inherent and beautiful, Lindén’s voice a ringing knell that is still somehow uplifting and hopeful. She wrote the words to the song as a reflection on a “close friend’s suicide attempt” and the fact she read that suicide is the second leading cause of death in Generation Z. “You’ve run out of light and I’m out of sight. I’ve run out of time. We’re running out.”

“I’ll be the death of you”: “Honey I don’t mind running blind. You keep pushing on to get inside my mind. Don’t care what you find.” The second single to be released off the album is also one of the shorter tracks on the album. It starts off sounding a bit like I Break Horses of old, in particular, the aforementioned personal favourite, “Winter beats”: all textured and washed out synths that flash and pan like strobe lights. The dance floor madness continues but metamorphoses into a blooming flower, bursting with colour and fragrance. Lindén herself describes it as occupying a hazy middle ground between Screamdelica and early OMD. A “somewhat darker and more nihilistic approach to when passion takes a more eccentric turn”. For me, it is another four and half minutes of bliss, a foreboding of tragedy but getting caught up in the moment, the emotion, and not caring about the consequences. Love can be dangerous and bad for your health. But who would say no to that?

“Turn”: My final pick is track number one on the album, the one that had me sold on the album before I even got to the end of it. It’s a nine minute epic, and yeah, it’s a monster. It takes its time with you, teasing it out of you. Slow and plodding and methodical, the beat hits like your heart, skipping and pitter-pattering all over the place. The synths climb up and down your spine and back all the way up to the heavens. And Lindén is there with those haunting vocals of hers. “Turn. I can’t turn love around and I’m losing my mind. Turn or let me follow you down.” A love that cannot be saved. A destructive love that should not be saved. A letting go, a pushing away, allowing the anchor to drop to the bottom of the ocean while the sunlight reflects and refracts in the gallons of water overhead. There is such beauty and honesty in the pain imbued in this track, the tears and the ache. More red wine and candles please. Just close your eyes and enjoy.

Before I forget, a pre-emptive ‘merry Christmas’ to those that plan to celebrate the holiday tomorrow. Don’t forget to check back next Thursday, New Year’s eve, for album #1.

In the meantime, here are the previous albums in this list:

10. The Strokes “The new abnormal”
9. Venus Furs “Venus Furs”
8. Bright Eyes “Down in the weeds, where the world once was”
7. The Beths “Jump rope gazers”
6. The Rentals “Q36”
5. Secret Machines “Awake in the brain chamber”
4. No Joy “Motherhood”
3. Phoebe Bridgers “Punisher”

You can also check out my Best Albums page here if you’re interested in my other favourite albums lists.