It's been a while, since we're in the slow, "no one releases anything in the summer" part of the year, but there are finally some really good tracks from forthcoming fall albums trickling into the indie rock blogosphere. God, I hate that word. But I do love this music. Enjoy.
New Mountain Goats -- from The Life of the World To Come, which has to be John Darnielle's what -- 800th -- album? I'm not real sure, but I know they're all real good. The latest will be released on October 6th on 4AD, and believe it or not, they are scoring the Bible. Yeah. Mr. "No Children" and "The Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton" has an album about the Bible. Somehow I don't think it will be on any Christian radio station in the future. Tracklist:
SONG LIST
01 1 Samuel 15:23
02 Psalms 40:2
03 Genesis 3:23
04 Philippians 3:20-21
05 Hebrews 11:40
06 Genesis 30:3
07 Romans 10:9
08 1 John 4:16
09 Matthew 25:21
10 Deuteronomy 2:10
11 Isaiah 45:23
12 Ezekiel 7 and the Permanent Efficacy of Grace
Speaking of God, that favorite deity of Christians is big in indie rock this week, as he's also featured in the new CD-single from Monsters of Folk, from their forthcoming self-titled album. Monsters of Folk are Jim James from My Morning Jacket, Conor Oberst from Bright Eyes, and Matt Ward from M. Ward (and She & Him). Oh, and Mike Mogis, too, who can play the instruments the others can't, I guess. The three songs on the single, titled Dear God (Sincerely M.O.F.) are now available on iTunes and include Jim James's "Dear God", "The Sandman, The Brakeman, and Me" which is an M. Ward track, and "Say Please," which was already leaked to the Internet and is mostly a really good My Morning Jacket-type song. The new album is due on September 22 on Shangri-La.
The next track, from Atlas Sound (aka Deerhunter's Bradford Cox), with assistance from Panda Bear (aka Animal Collective's Noah Lennox) was in the top 5 of the XMU Internet Top 15 of the week (#4 I think?) which shows either how quickly a combination of Panda Bear and Atlas Sound will light up the blogosphere (there I go again), or perhaps how out of touch with new music I've been, since I just heard it for the first time a few days ago. Anyway, it's really, really good, and it's on the forthcoming Atlas Sound record Logos, which is their second proper full-length (Bradford posts a shit-ton of music under the name Atlas Sound on his website, but they rarely make it to an album).
Here's the tracklist:
01 "The Light That Failed"
02 "An Orchid"
03 "Walkabout" (w/ Noah Lennox)
04 "Criminals"
05 "Attic Lights"
06 "Shelia"
07 "Quick Canal" (w/ Laetitia Sadier)
08 "My Halo"
09 "Kid Klimax"
10 "Washington School"
11 "Logos"
Logos is out 10/20 via Kranky. A full U.S. tour will be announced soon.
Modest Mouse has had an interesting career arc, to say the least. They currently sit at #3 on my all-time list of favorite bands, and since the two bands ahead of it haven't recorded anything new in at least a decade, they sit squarely at the top of my favorite active bands. Yet their output since 2004, while very good, has been a shadow of their work from 1996 to 2001, which produced the three full-length masterpieces This is a Long Drive for Someone With Nothing to Think About, The Lonesome Crowded West, and The Moon and Antarctica. In addition, the Mouse put out a ton of additional music in the form of 7" and single sets that all eventually made their way onto some really great EP albums in their own respect, even if they were not "proper" full-lengths (Building Something Out of Nothing, The Interstate 8 EP, The Fruit That Ate Itself, Everywhere and His Nasty Parlour EP, Night on the Sun, and even their collection of early tracks, Sad Sappy Sucker). But ever since 2004's crossover smash "Float On", the band has changed its sound somewhat significantly and is no longer reaching the peaks of that early work. Their last two albums, both on a major label, were huge selling successes (at least for an indie rock band) and had a number of great songs, but overall, were clearly their worst two albums of their career. So while they are my favorite active band, I can't say I'll get as excited about a new release from now on as I would for Sunset Rubdown or Arcade Fire or Okkervil River, or any band at its current peak.
Which brings us to this week. Modest Mouse have released three separate 7" singles this summer - extras from their last couple albums, I believe, and have now collected them into a single 8-song EP titled No One's First and You're Next, which is exactly in the tradition of Interstate 8 and Everywhere and His Nasty Parlour. And surprisingly, the album is quite good. Two of the first three tracks, which have been widely played on the blogs for months ("Satellite Skin" and "Autumn Beds") seem like throwaways from We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank, and offer little hope that Modest Mouse may return to their glory-days of the late '90s. And the last two tracks, "King Rat" and "I've Got it All(Most)" date back to the 2004 album Good News for People Who Love Bad News, and so I've heard them a million times already. The latter song is good, the former not as much. But in the midst of that, there are four brand new tracks (at least to my ears) and three of them are quite good. One of them, fourth track "The Whale Song" is excellent. Definitely the best Modest Mouse track since "Spitting Venom" from 2007 and perhaps their best since 2001. It's a classic Mouse song, instrumental for a very long stretch before segueing into a multi-layered sing-songy verse that builds and ebbs at the same time, in a way only Isaac Brock and his mates can do. The guitar is a little too sped up to rank with the true Mouse classics, but it's close, and it's got the rest of the elements as well. "Guilty Cocker Spaniels" and "History Sticks To Your Feet" are also really good songs on the EP.
The Dodos will release their follow-up to the critically acclaimed 2008 gem Visiter on September 15, titled Time to Die.
The latest from the great Icelandic post-rockers Mum is due August 24th on Morr Music. The title is Sing Along to Songs You Don't Know and, being true to the title, it features a lot more singing than a typical Mum album, but still has the hazy atmospherics they've become known for. The album was recorded in countless different places in four different
countries, although most of it was done in múm’s native Iceland. Gunnar
Örn Tynes moved to a cabin in the countryside where much of the album
sprang to life, but as always múm have a hard time staying put and
recorded in both Estonia and Finland.
Tracklist:
01 - If I Were A Fish
02 - Sing Along
03 - Prophecies & Reversed Memories
04 - A River Don't Stop To Breathe
05 - The Smell Of Today Is Sweet Like Breastmilk In The Wind
06 - Show Me
07 - HullaballabalГу
08 - Blow Your Nose
09 - Kay-Ray-Ku-Ku-Ko-Kex
10 - Last Shapes Of Never
11 - Illuminated
12 - Ladies Of The New Century
A Sunny Day in Glasgow are releasing their forthcoming album Ashes Grammar on September 15th. This is their second full-length and according to the playlist- it's a double album!.
1 Magna For Annie, Josh & Robin
2 Secrets At The Prom
3 Slaughter Killing Carnage (The Meaning Of Words)
4 Failure
5 Curse Words
6 Close Chorus
7 Shy
8 Lights
9 Passionate Introverts (Dinosaurs)
10 West Philly Vocoder
11 Evil, With Evil, Against Evil
12 The White Witch
13 Nitetime Rainbows
14 Canalfish
15 Loudly
16 Blood White
17 Ashes Grammar
18 Ashes Maths
19 Miss My Friends
20 Starting At A Disadvantage
21 Life’s Great
22 Headphone Space
The Octopus Project have recently released the Golden Beds EP, a collection of five songs and seven (7!) videos, both of which feature the great track that was released as a single last year, "Wet Gold." Another song, "Wood Trumpet", is also brilliant. I highly recommend picking this EP up.
Here's the tracklist:
1. Wet Gold
2. Moon Boil
3. Rorol
4. Wood Trumpet
5. Half A Nice Day
Videos:
1. Wet Gold
2. I Saw the Bright Shinies
3. An Evening with Rthrtha
4. Truck
5. Music Is Happiness
6. Exit Counselor
7. Truck (Live at ACL 2008)
Caspian have released their third album, Tertia, on a website called Gimme Sound, for free. In theory, Caspian will get paid a share of the profits from ad revenue on the site, and some of the revenue will also go to support charitable causes. As someone who's learned that banner ads on your website is not any way to make any money, ever, I have my doubts. But if this gets more exposure to post-rockers Caspian, it can't be a bad thing.
And finally, the latest from everyone's favorite name-shifting folk rocker Jason Molina, this time under his Magnolia Electric Co. namesake is Josephine, which was released on July 21st. There are a number of great tracks on the record, some of which require multiple listens to appreciate the layers of its beauty. The opening track is one of the good ones.
I really love The Whale Song.
It does sound like classic Modest Mouse.
Let's hope the next album (whenever that is)contains that sound.
Posted by: Wayne | August 04, 2009 at 07:32 PM
Yeah, let's hope so.
Posted by: Bill | August 04, 2009 at 10:07 PM