Yeasayer

With all the good bands hailing from Brooklyn, Yeasayer have been pretty overlooked and underrated since their debut in 2007 with their LP All Hours Cymbals, but I've come back to them a lot more than bands that critics have pushed on me in the time since. They've steadily gained my respect and other followers the old fashioned way: by writing good songs and outperforming the over-hyped bands they've played with (MGMT, namely). Their psychedelic sound takes as much from world music as it does from traditional rock/reggae/R&B/etc, and their album benefits greatly from the dynamic, never stagnating. They have chanting melodies, polyrhythmic drumming and and overall tribal feel, and they can bust out on a wide variety of instruments. Their lyrics are well sung and well written as well:

"It's a fresh spring, so let's sing

And the moon shines bright on the water tonight

So we won't drown in the summer sound

Yeah, yeah, we can all grab at the chance to be handsome farmers

Yeah you can have twenty-one sons and be blood when they marry my daughters"

( From "2080")

So check out All Hours Cymbals, see them live, and cop their new album when it comes out.


MP3- Sunrise

MP3- 2080

MP3- Tightrope

MP3- Wait For The Summer

MP3- Forgiveness

MP3- Wait For The Wintertime

MP3- No Need To Worry

MP3- Simian Mobile Disco w/Yeasayer: The Audacity Of Huge

#87.2 - YEASAYER - 2080
Uploaded by lablogotheque. - Music videos, artist interviews, concerts and more.

The Waning Days Of Summer

Rather than wax wistfully about how great summer was/is-for-a-few-more-days, I'd rather let others speak for me. So, here are some ripping summer songs to to wet yr. whistle before the autumn void of dark skies and dead leaves makes you break out your "Wristcutter Jams '08" mixtape. 

MP3- Deerhunter & Panda Bear: "Walkabout"

MP3- Danger Mouse, Sparklehorse & Julian Casablancas: "Little Girl"

MP3- The Pixies: "The Happening"

MP3- Animal Collective: "Fireworks"

MP3- Major Lazer (Diplo & Switch): Hold The Line

MP3- Nosaj Thing: "1685/Bach"

MP3- Ananda Shankar: "Dancing Drums"

MP3- Galaxie 500: "Fourth Of July"

MP3- M83: "Run Into Flowers" (Jackson's Midnight Fuck Remix)

MP3- Wavves: "Cool Jumper"

MP3- Black Lips: "Bad Kids"

Grizzly Bear- Veckatimest Review

Sorry Animal Collective, but we have a new album of the year. I've been waiting for Veckatimest in a ravenous way, eating up any bit of info, any live version of a new song, constantly checking torrent sites to see if it's leaking, etc, just like I did with Animal Collectives Merriweather Post Pavillion. But when they day came when Veckatimest did leak, I couldn't tear myself away from it for anything. A few days past that, I still can't. It's simply the most mesmerizingly beautiful album I've ever heard.

The album versions of the two songs that have been floating around the internet for about a year now- "Two Weeks" and "While You Wait For Others"- sound amazing in their studio incarnations, yet my surprise is that they're not the best the album has to offer. The gem of the album is "I Live With You" which features Beach House singer Victoria Legrand, singing backup to Daniel Rossen. The song starts off in a swell of stings evoking an old school romance in the golden age of cinema, before Danny and Victoria make the mood ethereal with their angelic voices and the rest of the band explodes into cacophony. Sandwiched between "While You Wait For Others" and album closer "Foreground," Veckatimest has possibly the best three song conclusion ever.

Other stand out tracks took a listen or two to register. "Cheerleader" and "Dory" are both amazing as well. "Cheerleader" has an amazing lead vocal by Ed Droste in which the verse contains the hook, and then Victoria Legrand and the rest of the band comes in to make the song almost levitate in the chorus as the solid bassline and reverbed guitar create a prickly backdrop that soars when called upon. "Dory" is a Danny track that is more a vocal workout in the beginnign until about halfway when Droste comes in and the song becomes something else I have no words for. Just suffice to say it's magestic.

The entire album is good from start to finish, with a perfect opener in "Southern Point" and a great closer in "Foreground." It's almost an objective reality to call it better than 2006's Yellow House, which i love as well, but this is a different animal entirely. It might break out to a little mainstream success, and it might not but more people are definitely going to take notice of this band now.

I got the leaked copy but I am definitely gonna buy the album the day it comes out (May 26th) and you should do the same. They earned it.

MP3- Cheerleader

MP3- Two Weeks (Album Version)

MP3- While You Wait For Others (Album Version)

MP3- Deep Blue Sea (From the Dark Was The Night compilation)

Grizzly Bear

Grizzly Bear are a four man band from Brooklyn, NY that have quietly become one of the best bands on Earth by letting their breathtaking music speak for itself, and terraform the scene around them. Since their breakthrough 2006 album Yellow House, the band has laid low and still produced some of the best music of the last few years. The Friend EP reworked old songs beautifully and hinted at future directions. Daniel Rossen's 2008 side project, Department of Eagles, was deservedly lauded by critics and fans of the group. Yet the world has changed since Yellow House. Fleet Foxes have broken through critically and to the masses with a sound akin to that of Grizzly Bear and pals Animal Collective have finally gotten the audience they deserve with Merriweather Post Pavillion. The time is right for Grizzly Bear's new LP, Veckitimest (named after an uninhabited island in New England) to artistically dominate when it's released on May 26th. It promises to be a more pop affair than the progressive folk-rock of Yellow House and their 2004 debut LP, Horn Of Plenty based on the songs the band has already debuted.

"While You Wait For Others" is just fucking drop dead gorgeous. Delicate sounds make way for triumphant crashes and ethereal harmonizing and the thunderous finish makes you want to just hit repeat over and over. The band unveiled this gem on NPR's Morning Becomes Eclectic, and I've been playing the shit out of it ever since.

MP3- While You Wait For Others

"Two Weeks" was debuted on Letterman and it's every bit the equal of "While You Wait For Others" in quality. Words are harder to come by in explaining it's genius, but I'll just say the band's vocal harmonizing enters the realm of justifying the adjective "heavenly" near the end.

MP3- Two Weeks

If you're new to Grizzly Bear check out Yellow House posthaste! Here's one of the best off that album and, what the hell, ONE OF THE BEST OF THE LAST DECADE- "Knife".

MP3- Knife

Just because I love you, here's the Girl Talk remix of "Knife" that adds "Wamp Wamp" by Clipse as well as other fun shit to create one of my favorite mash-ups of all time.

MP3- Knife (Girl Talk Remix)

Off the Friend EP, comes the band's reworking of Horn Of Plenty's "Alligator" which goes from being a poetic aside to a triumphant blast of sound that bowls me over every time.

MP3- Alligator (Choir Version)