New Favourites From Old Favourites

Ladies and gentlemen we may have a long post on our hands here.

Tonight's theme is listing a few new bits and bobs from artists/bands I've come to appreciate during the course of my existance.

Let's start of with those beardy men who just love singing over each other. Fleet Foxes are making a welcome return with album #2 Helplessness Blues and are even pencilled in to play in my very own city Turku over the summer. If the title track's anything to go by then their return is more Simon and Garfunkel-ey than most people (me) would've expected. Helplessness Blues is out in May.



Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues by subpop



Kurt Vile's also back with his fourth album Smoke Ring For My Halo out next week. Its first single Jesus Fever(mp3) gives us reason to believe that the album may be up there contending for best album of the year. Well maybe it's a tad too early, but fingers crossed, eh?





Vivian Girls seem to be churning out albums faster than most people churn out babies. Definitely faster than I churn out babies. With their new album Share the Joy they're looking to perfect the art of girl-group harmonious garage pop.




On a similarly girly note, Dee Dee or Dum Dum Girls have got a new EP out titled He Gets Me High (Title track mp3). 4 songs echoing a love for 80's shoegaze mixed with the kind of beach aesthetics we heard on I Will Be. Could having a member of The Raveonettes produce your EP affect the sound? Well yeah obviously. It also features a great version of The Smiths' There Is A Light That Never Goes Out.

Clean Equations

Over the summer I had the pleasure of getting to see Vivian Girls and A Place to Bury Strangers live. In Finland. Wow! Both gigs were spot on. Vivian girls were at Flow festival in Helsinki and just sounded so good. Not to mention the fact that on-stage the guitarist and bass player looked proper fit! APtBS played at Klubi in Turku. Quite a small venue and quite empty which was a shame because it's rare we get anyone decent playing in our little city. A lot of people left during the gig and later I heard from someone there that they found it way too loud and frustrating how they kept building up the songs to end up amounting to nothing. For a band that's been given the title "Loudest band in New York" I don't find it too surprising that the music might even be a bit loud.

Anyway the reason why I brought this up is because I like these two bands, imagine my delight when I found a compilation LP with both of these bands on it + loads of bands i'd never heard of before from the brooklyn music scene and thereabouts.
http://www.statecapitalrecords.com/fieldrecordings.html

Apparently only 500 copies of this were printed so I consider myself privileged to have it. And after listening to it, one band firmly stuck to my mind:
Clean Equations. I had to listen to their myspace and turns out they've only got just over 1000 listens. They've got 6 songs on their profile.
The song thats on State Capital Records Field Recording called French Noise Piece features some tidy drumming and and a wicked wicked chorus.
The pretty piano-driven songs like Ohio Turnpike and Alison leave me wanting more. Turns out they've just released an EP. Coolio. Check them out.
http://www.myspace.com/cleanequations