Tag: Indie rock

Categories
Vinyl

Vinyl love (revisited): Arcade Fire “The suburbs”

(I started my Vinyl Love posts pretty much right after the launch of this blog to share photos of my growing vinyl collection. Over time, the photos have improved and the explanations have grown. And looking back at a handful of the original posts in this series, I found myself wanting to re-do some of them so that the posts are more worthy of those great albums. So that’s what I’m going to start doing… not on the regular, mind you, because there’s plenty of other pieces in my collection still awaiting their due.)

Artist: Arcade Fire
Album Title: The suburbs
Year released: 2010
Details: black vinyl, double LP, gatefold sleeve

The skinny: The original Vinyl Love post for this Grammy-winning third album by Montreal’s now infamous indie rock collective was posted to this blog on May 19, 2017*, almost three and a half years ago. I wrote then that frontman Win Butler called it “neither a love letter to, nor an indictment of, the suburbs – it’s a letter from the suburbs.” Two songs from the concept album then appeared on my Best tunes of 2010 list in the months that followed: first, the title track was slotted in at number twelve and the standout song below came a very close second to the number one for that year. For me, “The suburbs” is one of the best, if not the very best album of 2010** so it was a no brainer for me to pick up this original pressing early on in my collecting days. Ten years following its release, it still sounds as fresh as ever.

Standout track: “Sprawl II (Mountains beyond mountains)”

* Don’t go looking for it. As I post these “Revisited” pieces, I intend to rid the internet of the original evidence as soon as I can. This is, of course, the point of these posts.

** I guess we’ll see if I ever get around to counting down my favourite albums for 2010.

Categories
Playlists

Playlist: New tunes from 2020, part three

Well, well, well. Here we are, three quarters of the way through the year and with the end of each quarter brings a new instalment in my playlist project.

You may recall that I was a bit late and a bit slow organizing parts one and two in this series, but they were both great mixes so if you haven’t already done so, go ahead and check them out as well. By comparison, though, I was a lot more on the ball with part three. Perhaps I’m finally getting used to this new reality. Or perhaps I’m sensing an end to this year and I’m subconsciously preparing myself to close things out. Indeed, I had already pretty much wrapped this one up before the end of September and ended up having to make room for the track from Fleet Foxes’ surprise album when it was announced last week. Because, well… how could I not?

This third playlist (like the others before it) is very much a retelling of the season by the music from which it came. These particular tunes soundtracked a lost summer. A season of people relaxing things up a little bit (perhaps too much in some cases) but still keeping aware of the risks this pandemic posed. People were trying to get out into the fresh air, to stretch their legs, to meet up with other people (at a safe distance) on patios and such. To catch up, tell stories, to reach out and try to grab on to some normalcy. There wasn’t a lot of options for travel and the weekend trips that my wife and I were used to taking each summer to get away didn’t seem worth the risk. Still, we took the odd day trip, got out on our bikes, and out into the outdoors on hikes. Yeah. It was a weird summer but these twenty five tunes brought the sun and cheer anyway. Damn it all. Thank goodness for music.

On that note, let’s have a look at some of the highlights of this season’s playlist:

      • Dream wife flirts with a bunch of different sounds on their sophomore record and all of it a bit raw but it’s this ear worm single, “Hasta la vista” of which I just can’t get enough
      • I almost took a pass on checking out the first new album in almost thirty years by British new wave rockers Psychedelic Furs and I’m so glad I didn’t, because I would’ve missed out on instant classics like “Wrong train”
      • I honestly never thought I’d have Shania Twain appear in my music collection but thanks to Canadian alternative country outlaw, Orville Peck, she does and I’ve found myself humming “Legends never die” on many an occasion since first hearing it
      • “My own soul’s warning”, the first new track by The Killers that has hooked me since their sophomore album was released back in 2006
      • New tune by Secret Machines, “Everything starts”, marks a welcome return by neo-prog rockers and it feels here like they haven’t missed a beat
      • And speaking of welcome returns, one of my favourite bands ever, Doves are back with new music and “Carousels” is just gorgeous – period, full stop

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. “A reason to celebrate” bdrmm (from the album Bedroom)

2. “Hasta la vista” Dream Wife (from the album So when you gonna…)

3. “I’m not getting excited” The Beths (from the album Jump rope gazers)

4. “That’s how rumors get started” Margo Price (from the album That’s how rumors get started)

5. “Run it” My Morning Jacket (from the album The waterfall II)

6. “Must I evolve?” Jarv Is (from the album Beyond the pale)

7. “Haha” Dehd (from the album Flower of devotion)

8. “Wrong train” The Psychedelic Furs (from the album Made of rain)

9. “If I told” Courtney Marie Andrews (from the album Old flowers)

10. “Sunflower” Dizzy (from the album The sun and her scorch)

11. “Televised mind” Fontaines D.C. (from the album A hero’s death)

12. “Legends never die” Orville Peck with Shania Twain (from the EP Show pony)

13. “Hard on everyone” Kathleen Edwards (from the album Total freedom)

14. “Our new day” Levellers (from the album Peace)

15. “Mariana Trench” Bright Eyes (from the album Down in the weeds, where the world once was)

16. “My own soul’s warning” The Killers (from the album Imploding the mirage)

17. “Birthmark” No Joy (from the album Motherhood)

18. “Everything starts” Secret Machines (from the album Awake in the brain chamber)

19. “Dig in” I Like Trains (from the album Kompromat)

20. “This is not the indie rock I signed up for” Girl Friday (from the album Androgynous Mary)

21. “(We are all mirrors)” Angel Olsen (from the album Whole new mess)

22. “That emotion” Hannah Georgas (from the album All that emotion)

23. “Carousels” Doves (from the album The universal want)

24. “Solipsism” Fenne Lily (from the album Breach)

25. “Can I believe you” Fleet Foxes (from the album Shore)

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
Tunes

Best tunes of 2012: #21 The Maccabees “Ayla”

<< #22    |    #20 >>

As you might have guessed by now, I’m of that rare breed of music maniac that can and does listen to music while doing pretty much any other activity, whether it be reading, cooking, doing chores around the house, or whatever. It used to be that I couldn’t even fall asleep without music playing, though my wife broke me of that habit. And my office day job (back when I did actually go in to an office) was one at which I was often able to put on my headphones and listen to music, as long as it didn’t bother those in the next cubicle. Back then and even now, when I am really busy and I need to hunker down and concentrate, I’ll plug my earphones into my iPod and throw on some tunes to drown out other distractions. I’m certain it improves my productivity.

It was during one of these work/rocking out sessions that I fell hard for The Maccabees. I had written about their third and as we now know, penultimate album, “Given to the wild”, on my old blog as part of this series I did that highlighted my three favourite albums released each month. They were a new-to-me band and got me excited at the time but then, as often happened in those days with all the new music I consumed, I moved on to the next dozen things and promptly forgot about them. Still, the album remained on my iPod for months and on that day at work, this very song, “Ayla”, came on and I lost my place in the briefing note I was working on.

The Maccabees were a five-piece from London, England that existed for a grand total of thirteen years and four albums. They toured with the likes of Bloc Party and Florence and the Machine, other acts from around the same time and place that also mined the post-punk sounds of the seventies and eighties to create fresh tunes to great effect. “Given to the wild” did very well for the group. It was panned by Pitchfork but was praised by the NME and garnered them a Mercury Prize nomination.

Listening to “Ayla”, you might make comparisons to those recent bands I mentioned above but you can really trace The Maccabees back to iconic acts like Talking Heads or David Bowie’s Berlin-era. It is a-thrum with wandering piano arpeggios and cranky guitar riffs filtered through refracted light. Like many of the songs on “Given to the wild”, it is so big sounding that it begs to be performed at Royal Albert Hall with a full orchestra and choir, à la Spiritualized. The video below follows a man on a bicycle racing towards some unknown goal while the sky does some funky things. Not the most brilliant piece of storytelling but the music is quite delicious.

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