Greymachine

Disconnected by Greymachine: I love running across this stuff. Slow,
heavy, repetitive, droning rhythm section. Lots of noise hovering above
it. Sound like a combination of guitar, voices and unrecognizable
samples. Noise! Noise! Noise! A link to download the album can be
found here:
http://noiz.wordpress.com/2009/08/05/greymachine-disconnected-2009/

Too Soon for Flowers by The Dry Spells: Another one of those mellow,
folky albums. Two female lead singers creating beautiful, earthy-dark
lyrics. The music is quite mesmerizing. What was the name of that
female cello band that was really big in Denver? That's who these guys
remind me of, but with a more traditional band.

Bronzeage by DD/MM/YYYY - If you ask anyone of my friends, you'll know
that this is not my favorite date format. I'm more of a YYYYMMDD
person. As the temporal element of CD increases, the music gets more
unconventional and bears it's noisy/experimental roots. Reminds me of a
Les Georges Lenigrad and Kate Mosh baby.

Welcome to the Walk Alone by The Rumble Strips : This is a full band
with horns, piano, orchestral strings, and the standard three. Songs
remain interesting because there are a lot of changes. The singer is
good and it's upbeat.

Champions by Blakfish - This caps off a really good week of finding
music. Some might call this the shape punk rock was supposed to come.
Lot's of time signature changes, but they're tight and they don't go so
far as to loose the melodies. The songs are really well written.

Some Recent Suff

I haven't had the time to do this every Tuesday, so here are some from
within the last three weeks.

Riceboy Sleeps by Riceboy Sleeps: My initial thought, was that these
guys were a poor man's Sigur Rós -- meaning they're totally broke (just
kidding Bill). But alas, this is just a side project for Jonsi and his
gay lover. The music is very mellow as one would expect from reading the
previous sentence. Layers of violins, piano, and various field
recordings. Something one could go to sleep to and have very pleasant
dreams -- unless your one of those freaks who can use this music as a
catalist (again, directed at you Bill).

Album CoverGather, Form and Fly by Megafaun : Pleasant harmonies, banjo
backed by an acoustic guitar; throw in some violin, bass drum and a
triangle and you have yourself some Megafaun. Somewhat bluegrassy --
something that could have come out of Denver's country scene. The songs
are really well written with lots of olden-day harmonies. Very enjoyable
listen. They also have beards: http://www.megafaun.com . I had
originally thought they were Megafun, which is pretty stupid and why I
would listen to a band whose name I thought was that, is beyond me. They
also apparently played at the Hi-Dive a few days ago.

Unravelling England by The Singing Lions : Banjo, acoustic guitar and a
guy with a British Accent who sings in a whispering punk rock voice.

No One's First, and You're Next - Modest Mouse : The Wale Song was
released a bit ago on a single.

Julian Plenti Is… Skyscraper by Julian Plenti - I recognized this almost
immediately as the singer from Interpol. The melodies are a lot like
Interpol, but the guitar and bass tones are quite different. Skyscraper
itself consists acoustic/piano/violin. This aint no Turn on the Bright
Lights, but it may be as good as anything else Interpol has done.

Masterful Mystery Tour by Beatallica - No, I'm not making this up. It's
not really Weird Al. Kind of more like silly version like what The
Perfect Circle did with Love Song and that One Ozzie song I can't think
of ; combining some song with a metallica song.

TOBACCO, spelled in all caps

I'm two weeks behind on this, I have a lot of catching up to do.

Civilized by Stellastarr* <http://www.stellastarr.com/> - Nothing really
special, but I enjoyed listening to them. Pretty much your standard
poppy, indie type. Listenable, but not really original enough for me.

El Radio by Chris Garneau <http://www.chrisgarneau.com/> - Slow and
folky with lots of instruments like acoustic guitar, piano, horns. Kind
of like a poor man's William Oldham. His web store has a great design
http://www.chrisgarneau.com/chrisstore.html

TOBACCO - The Allegheny White Fish Tapes. - Low-fi recording, uses of
effects on Vocals. Album ranges from acoustic songs to noisy electronic
songs.

Horehound - The Dead Weather - PJ Harvey was only a 50 foot queenie,
Allison Mossheart proclaims herself 60 feet tall. Bjork is only like
5'2". You can be the judge about height vs feminine singer debate,
however if you wanted my opinion, I'd go the short route. This is Jack
White's new project and I only wish he would have

Oskar Started it all

Last week I suggested that Oskar's album "Air Conditioning" was worth a
listen. This week I decided to buy it and I'm quite pleased with my
decision. It it a nice, melodic, ambient album full of soft
synthesizers, guitar, violins and a lovely female voice. What I didn't
realize is that LP2 is actually their new release. By comparison, LP2
is not as good, although I thought it started getting cool at the end.

O'Death : Underwater Nightmare - I don't normally listen to EPs, but I
felt obligated to listen to Underwater Nightmare. It is nothing that I
expected. I'd describe it as heavy bluegrass, mainly because there is
banjo and fiddle. There is also some pirate chanting, in harmony even
-- which is pretty fucking cool. In recap: bluegrass pirate punk.

Bjork: Voltaic: The Remixes - Bjork's remix albums have always been hit
or miss, usually the ladder. However, I enjoyed this one as it is less
repetitive and less terse that some of her previous remixes. In the end
though, it is just a remix album.