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VBR / 99.8mb
Year: 2009
Label: DFA
seemysterylights.com
Wiki
Similar artists: Animal Collective, The Blow
Previously: I Believe In You. Your Magic Is Real (2007)
Jun 19, 2009
YACHT - See Mystery Lights
Jun 17, 2009
Culture Reject - Culture Reject
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192kbps / 52.1mb
Year: 2008
Label: White Whale
myspace.com/culturereject
Similar artists: Timothy Monger, Grizzly Bear, Bon Iver, Sufjan Stevens
AMG: 3.5
"Clocking in at just over half an hour, Culture Reject is an awfully brief introduction to O'Connell, but it's a memorable one -- if only because he can successfully pull off sounding both like a street-smart folk singer and sweet-smart indie popper in the span of a single track."
Jun 15, 2009
The Wave Pictures (discography)
More Streets, Less TV
The Airplanes At Brescia (2004)
The Hawaiian Open Mic Night (2005)
Catching Light: The Songs Of André Herman Düne (2006)
Sophie (2006)
Instant Coffee Baby (2008)
If You Leave It Alone (2009)
I recommend Instant Coffee Baby if you're just starting off.
Label: Moshi Moshi
thewavepictures.com
Wiki
Similar artists: The Mountain Goats, The Smiths
AMG: "The Wave Pictures start with the tongue-in-cheek confessionalism of the Smiths and solo Morrissey on the one hand and the scrappy D.I.Y. aesthetic of the C-86 school on the other, and take it from there. The Wave Pictures originally formed in 1998 in their hometown, the tiny rural village of Wymeswold in northern Leicestershire, in Great Britain's East Midlands. The teenage trio consists of lead singer and guitarist David Tattersall, bassist Franic Rozycki, and drummer Jonny Helm."
Discovery - LP
Download (mediafire)
VBR / 43mb
Year: 2009
myspace.com/discoverdiscovery
Similar artists: Vampire Weekend, Ra Ra Riot
Jun 13, 2009
Foreign Born - Person to Person
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VBR / 63.3mb
Year: Secretly Canadian
Label: 2009
myspace.com/foreignborn
Wiki
Similar artists: Arcade Fire, Darker My Love, Deerhunter, Rogue Wave, The Walkmen
AMG: 3
"Person to Person is a pleasant enough listen rather than a gripping one, somewhere between enjoyable inspiration and careful exercise, a flavoring in the general indie rock milieu of the early 21st century that, for the moment, can have no greater impact. Another album might be able to provide their breakthrough, but for now, Foreign Born are in a holding pattern, and looking good while doing so."
Previously:
Jun 11, 2009
Alasdair Roberts - Spoils
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VBR / 50.2mb
Year: 2009
Label: Drag City
alasdairroberts.com
Wiki
Similar artists: James Yorkston, Joanna Newsom, Will Oldham, Jason Anderson, James Raynard
metacritic: 83
"A Scottish singer-songwriter with a number of spare and lovely folk albums, Alasdair Roberts goes for the mad prophetic gusto on the strange and visionary Spoils. "
Jun 9, 2009
Neko Case - Middle Cyclone
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320kbps / 169mb
Year: 2009
Label: Anti-
nekocase.com
Wiki
Similar artists: The New Pornographers, Freakwater, Mark Olson, The Silver Jews
AMG: 4
"Neko Case looks formidable on the cover of Middle Cyclone, brandishing a sword in one hand while crouching low on a muscle car's hood. It's mostly camp, of course -- the sort of superwoman image Quentin Tarantino might have used for Death Proof's ad campaign -- but it also draws contrast with the songwriter's previous albums, two of which featured moody shots of Case sprawled on the floor, ostensibly knocked out. Middle Cyclone isn't the polar opposite of Blacklisted's downcast Americana; there are still moments of heartbreak on this release, and Case channels the sad cowgirl blues with all the rustic nuance of Patsy Cline. Multiple years in the New Pornographers' employ have considerably brightened her outlook, however, and Middle Cyclone balances its melancholia with some of the most pop-oriented choruses of Case's career."
"Neko Case is a force of nature. Her voice can knock you over-- it's one of the strongest in any genre. She has immense control and surprising physical and stylistic range, able to jump from cowgirl honkytonk to pop muse to Americana banshee with ease and grace. [..] Middle Cyclone is another strong entry in her strange catalog, a culmination of some of the lyrical and musical concerns she's been exploring since Blacklisted."
Jun 8, 2009
Slow Club - Yeah So
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VBR / 55mb
Year: 2009
Label: Moshi Moshi
myspace.com/slowclub
Wiki
I've been digging this album a lot lately. My favorite tracks are "Giving Up On Love," "It Doesn't Have to Be Beautiful," and "Come On Youth."
Similar artists: The Unicorns, Tilly and the Wall, All Girl Summer Fun Band
Previously: Let's Fall Back In Love EP [2008]
Jun 7, 2009
Casiotone for the Painfully Alone - V.S Children
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256kbps / 70.1mb
Year: 2009
Label: Tomlab
cftpa.org
Wiki
Similar artists: Magnetic Fields, The Postal Service, Smog, The Moldy Peaches, The Mountain Goats
AMG: 4
"Musically Casiotone here fully approaches the elegant showy avant indie-pop from the U.K. in the early ,90s, rich keyboards and dramatic, downbeat chords aplenty. [..] Admittedly the song title "Harsh the Herald Angels Sing" pushes things on the overly clever front but the duet "Man o'War," with its downer tale of a Christmas morning, and the clever Bowie reference at the end of "Killers" are among the many reasons Vs. Children is, yet again, another stellar Casiotone album."
"To breed or not to breed? That is the question Owen Ashworth appears to be asking with his fifth full-length outing as Casiotone for the Painfully Alone, the wryly titled Vs. Children. But this is a Casiotone record, which means Ashworth won't provide direct access to his thoughts, relying instead on proxies, personae, and other distancing mechanisms. That is, until the record's third act, when a new Casiotone seems to emerge. Before that, however, Ashworth takes us on a joyride with a succession of mostly doomed outlaws and derelicts, with a couple of side excursions into familiar disaffected-slacker-ballad territory. It all adds up to easily the most mature and thematically ambitious Casiotone release to date, a further testament to the talents of a man more in tune with the lives of his generation than many of the folks actually living them."
Jun 5, 2009
Pink Mountaintops - Outside Love
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VBR / 66.5mb
Year: 2009
Label: Jagjaguwar
myspace.com/pinkmountaintops
Wiki
Similar artists: Dan Auerbach, Lightning Dust, Golden Bear, The Warlocks
AMG: 4
"What makes Outside Love most compelling is that grim sort of optimism, delivered through a well-crafted sound that is as sedated as it is passionate, and simple as it is profound."
Jun 4, 2009
The Mars Volta- Octahedron
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188kbps / 70.16mb
Year: 2009
Label: Mercury
thebedlam.net
Wiki
"Octahedron is the stunning new album from The Mars Volta. An album heady with the emotion and high-drama that has always been the bands trademark, their newfound simplicity and focus has delivered some of the most immediate and powerful songs in their discography. The album opens with the tender ache of Since Weve Been Wrong, Cedrics keening vocal establishing a mood thats deeply blue, powerfully melancholic, a suckerpunch that hits every bit as hard as Octahedrons unashamed rockers (the gleaming futuristic funk of Teflon, the tense chase-music of Cotopaxi). Pulling back from the full-tilt experimentation of previous releases, the album invests its energies in Omars gift for songcraft, for swooning guitar runs of high tension and emotive power (Luciforms epic riffage), and for the nagging hooks and melodies that wreath the churning rhythms of Desperate Graves."
Similar artists: At the Drive-In, The Dillinger Escape Plan, Hot Water Music
Dinosaur Jr. - Farm
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VBR / 55.3mb
Year: 2009
Label: Jagjaguar
dinosaurjr.com
Wiki
Similar artists: Pixies, Nirvana, Husker Du, Superchunk
Jun 3, 2009
Manic Street Preachers - Journal For Plague Lovers
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192kbps / 65.8mb
Year: 2009
Label: Spny BMG
manicstreetpreachers.com
Wiki
Similar artists: These Animal Men, Suede, Oasis, Nirvana, The Verve
AMG: 4.5
"Richey James Edwards disappeared in February 1995, just months after the release of the Manic Street Preachers' lacerating third album, The Holy Bible. He was officially presumed dead in November 2008 and just months later the Manics released Journal for Plague Lovers, an album that's an explicit sequel to The Holy Bible right down to its Jenny Saville cover art. [..] Now that they've completed the songs he left behind, it's not that the Manics can finally put Richey to rest now, but rather that they've found peace, that they're finally ready to acknowledge and embrace the blackest portion of their past, and that the grieving has finally stopped and they're moving forward. Indeed, Journal for Plague Lovers winds up being The Holy Bible in reverse: every moment of despair is a reason to keep on living instead of an excuse to pack it all in."
Jun 1, 2009
Sonic Youth discography
Albums
Sonic Youth Recordings (SYR) series
EPs
Compilations
or
password: radiobutt.blogspot.com
May 30, 2009
Iron & Wine - Around the Well
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VBR / 149mb
Year: 2009
Label: SubPop
ironandwine.com
Wiki
Similar artists: Smog, Bill Callahan, The Mountain Goats, Elliott Smith
AMG: 3.5
Around the Well serves as a helpful reminder that a discarded Iron & Wine song is still better than many fine-tuned cuts from similar bands."
"To this point in his career, Sam Beam has made progressively fuller, more musically complex, and, in this writer's opinion, better albums each time out. 2007's The Shepherd's Dog was a complete realization of the full-band sound he'd been building up to in his live shows, his collaboration with Calexico, and to a lesser degree on his recordings; as such, it felt like a milestone. So it seems like a good time to pause and look back at the old county road that runs parallel to the highway of Beam's albums and compile some rarities for the fans. "For the fans" doesn't necessarily mean hardcore types-- if you've liked any of Iron & Wine's albums so far, you'll almost certainly like this, but it's also probably not the first thing to buy."
Previously:
Foreign Born - On the Wing Now
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VBR / 70.2
Year: 2007
Label: Dim Mak
myspace.com/foreignborn
Wiki
Similar artists: Arcade Fire, Darker My Love, Deerhunter, Rogue Wave, The Walkmen
Pitchfork: 7.2
"Nearly any band with a penchant for the dramatic and/or life-affirming can be heard somewhere on this album, from the Arcade Fire-influenced wall of "oh's" on opener "Union Hall" to "The Nights Tall" crossing jangly guitars and brainy basslines à la R.E.M. Foreign Born is much more than a pastiche of your nearest and dearest bands, however. Lead singer Matt Popieluch possesses a unique emotive voice that transmogrifies even the most nondescript turns of phrases into climactic profundities."
May 29, 2009
The Field - Yesterday & Today
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320kbps / 139mb
Year: 2009
Label: Kompakt / Anti-
myspace.com/thefieldsthlm
Similar artists: M.F.A., Lindstrøm & Prins Thomas, Triola, Fairmont
AMG: 4+
"In case any doubt remained about Axel Willner's desire to be accessible beyond the realm of electronic dance music, his second album as the Field, Yesterday and Today, was licensed by Kompakt for U.S. release on Anti -- the eclectic, Epitaph-distributed label that was, at the time, pushing releases by Neko Case, Ramblin' Jack Elliot, and Booker T. [..] If open to it, the album can be even more enveloping than the debut. The added warmth and a little extra depth go a long way."
"Yesterday and Today calculatingly comprises three songs that extend the known rush of Sublime-- the barely there hissing drums; the short, soft vocal samples swept into grandly corny pastel clouds; the poignant you-call-those-melodies, abstracted from the emotionally-manipulative fakebook of post-rave cheese-- and three very different potential future directions for the Field discography. It sounds like a hesitant record, made by a man stuck between the rock of new non-DJ expectations and the hard place of an artist's desire to grow without being compromised by an audience whose needs he can only guess at. It's also quite good, despite the possible failure of nerve on its creator's part."
Previously:
May 28, 2009
AllMusic Loves 2000
"...At the year’s end, you were no doubt celebrating the triumph of having Your Hard Drive named Spin magazine’s Album of the Year, even if you did not own one filled with a thousand awesome and incorrectly-tagged MP3s encoded at 128 kbps." X
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