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Tag: Avalanche City

Bits and Bobs: Acoustic April

Bits and Bobs: Acoustic April

1. “Winter is for Kierkegaard” – Tyler Lyle. There are few things that get me more than a earnest tenor singing way too many words over a folky arrangement. Lyle plays somewhere between Josh Ritter, The Tallest Man on Earth, and Gregory Alan Isakov.

2. “Resolution” – Young Legs. The world always needs more quirky, delightful indie-pop on a strummed banjo.

3. “The Fall” – Reina del Cid. Warm, fingerpicked acoustic guitar; brushed snare; stand-up bass; contented alto vocals–it sounds like all the bits and bobs of a country song, but del Cid turns it into a charming folky ballad.

4. “Forever for Sure” – Laura & Greg. The gentle, easy-going guitar and male/female vocals create an intimate vibe, while a mournful instrument in the distance creates a sense of spaciousness. The strings glue them together–the whole thing comes off beautifully. I’ve likened them to the Weepies before, but this one also has a Mates of State vibe.

5. “Touch the Ground” – The Chordaes. Dour Brit-pop verses, sky-high falsetto in the sunshiny, hooky chorus–the band’s covering all their bases on the pop spectrum. That chorus is one to hum.

6. “Inside Out” – Avalanche City. My favorite Kiwis return not with an Antlers-esque, downtempo, white-boy-soul song. It’s not exactly the chipper acoustic pop of previous, but it’s still infectiously catchy.

7. “Bad Timing” – The Phatapillars. If Jack Johnson’s muse was outdoor camping and music festivals instead of surfing, he could have ended up like this. For fans of Dispatch and old-school Guster.

8. “Tapes” – The Weather Station. Sometimes trying to describe beauty diminishes it. Let this song just drift you away.

9. “ Forest of Dreams” – Crystal Bright and the Silver Hands. The Decemberists have largely gone standard with their arrangements, but there are still people holding it down for klezmer arrangements of gypsy-influenced melodies mashed up with the occasional operatic vocal performance. It’s like a madcap Beirut or a female-fronted Gogol Bordello.

10. “Heavy Star Movin’ – The Silver Lake Chorus. Written by the Flaming Lips for the choir (which operates in a very Polyphonic Spree-like manner), it’s appropriately cosmic and trippy. Strings accompany, but nothing else–the vocals are the focus here.

11. “Emma Jean” – WolfCryer. Here’s Matt Baumann doing what he’s great at: playing the storytelling troubadour with an acoustic guitar and a world-weary baritone.

SXSW write-ups!

Here are links to every single one of my SXSW posts, in alphabetical order. I’ll post my best-of lists tomorrow.


Avalanche City

The Barr Brothers
The Black and White Years
Black Canyon
Brianna Gaither
BrotherBear
Canailles
Chrome Pony
Cloud Nothings
Crooks
Daniels(((s)))
David Ramirez
Deerpeople
Denver Duncan
Desi and Cody
Dva
The Ettes
Feathered Rabbit
Ezra Furman
fun.
G-Eazy
Glen Hansard
Gliss
Gold Beach
Holy Fiction
Imagine Dragons
Jabee
Jesse Aycock
Josh Sallee
Little Scream
Megafauna
The Men
Modern Rock Diaries
Mont Lyons
Mother Falcon (@ The Parish) (@Bethell Hall)
O Fidelis
Oh Look Out
The Panda Resistance
Pomegranates
The Pretty Black Chains
Scales of Motion
Sea of Bees
Shitty/Awesome
Talking to Turtles
Those Nights
Thus:Owls
Titus Andronicus
The Tontons
TOPS
Vox and the Hound
We Were Promised Jetpacks
Whiskey Shivers
Wild Belle
Wink Burcham
Zulu Winter

LCD Soundsystem lives on. So do other bands.

As an an unabashedly overenthusiastic LCD Soundsystem fan, it should not surprise anyone that I took today to write a videos/MP3 post purely because the trailer for SHUT UP AND PLAY THE HITS came out. The film chronicles the last days (and James Murphy’s day after) of LCD Soundsystem. The trailer made me dance around in my office.

IC fave Kickstarter had a humongous third year, and you can see all their stats and stuff from it here. Cool information design for an even cooler site. They are literally changing the way the world does art.

Super Visas, James Hicken’s ambient folk project, has a new video for “The Hum That Keeps Us Cool.” It’s incredibly disorienting and fascinating:

I pronounced Avalanche City’s debut album Our New Life Above The Groundnigh on perfect” in early 2011 and named it #2 on our Top Ten of 2010 list. The rest of the world is catching on: The New Zealand band will be playing SXSW this year, and they got a song from their album posted as a download on RCRD LBL two days ago. Exciting!

Independent Clauses' Top 10 of 2010

Because I’m perpetually behind on CDs, I only get done with a previous year’s music in February.

10. Fort Orange — After the Fall. Basically, this is what I want all punk albums to sound like: furious, aggressive, short diatribes that make use of melody, rhythm and rage.

9. We’ve Built Up to NOTHING — 500 Miles to Memphis. Takes country-punk and pushes its boundaries out in all directions.

8. This Cage Has No Bottom — The Ascetic Junkies. Folk and indie-pop get mashed up in the most delightful way.

7. Ithica — Ithica. This genreless amazement is the second-most emotionally powerful album of the year and the best concept album.

6. Faithful Fools — The Damn Choir. Best lovelorn acoustic tunes of the year; it’s hard to beat a broken heart, an acoustic guitar and a cello.

5. Best of the Bees — Mansions. A jawdropping set of cast-off tunes that set up Mansions as the next Bright Eyes in terms of prolific nature and brilliant tunes.

4. Lost and Found — The Fools. Stark, beautiful acoustic tunes from two girls.

3. New Home — La Strada. Takes folk and bends it all around through world music and indie rock, producing jubilant, complex tracks that never bore.

2. Our New Life Above the Ground — Avalanche City. These are the acoustic-laden pop songs I wish I could write. Stomping, clapping, mandolin, melodies, harmonies, toms, just everything good is in these songs.

1. Sever Your Roots — The Felix Culpa. Hands down the best album of the year; nothing else even came close to approaching its masterful take on post-hardcore. The brilliant lyrics pushed it over the top.

Avalanche City's gleeful, emotive pop songs create happiness in a nigh-on-perfect album

Sometimes when I meet someone, I get this feeling that I’m going to know them for a really long time. It’s rare, but it’s also rarely wrong. I experience this feeling with music as well; it’s incredibly unusual, but it does happen. I had one of those moments of intense clarity upon first listen to Avalanche City‘s Our New Life Above the Ground. From the first few seconds of the first song, I was hooked.

And by hooked, I mean I couldn’t go to sleep that night until I had posted it to my girlfriend’s Facebook wall. I literally couldn’t rest until I had told someone about the magnificence of this album. Let the gushing begin.

The album is a debut, first of all. It falls neatly between Guster’s latest and Mumford and Sons’ only, in that it’s chock full of classic pop songwriting arranged beautifully as well as stuffed full of swooning romanticism that teeters on the edge of saccharine but never goes over. These songs have the epic bent from M&S removed, as well as the seriousness that Guster can fall into pulled out. These twelve humble songs were conceived and performed with barely-contained glee that boils over in all sorts of ways.

Whether it’s stomping and clapping, group singalongs, perky guitar strum (oh so much of that going on), cheery mandolin, tom-heavy drumbeats (you know the type) or any other number of upbeat maneuvers, Avalanche City makes sure that you know he’s having a blast. But it’s not a sugar rush; on the contrary, it’s the type of revelatory happiness that accompanies a soul a peace, bursting at the seams with its fullness.

And the soul is something discussed often here. AC sticks to generally universal language; terms like soul, freedom, love, sadness, adventure, dream, you and me appear frequently. “So long captivity, for me,” he declares at the end of “Ends in the Ocean,” and the whole rest of the album (save for “Love Don’t Leave”) proves that, indeed, that’s what he did.

“Oh Life” is a wide-eyed wonder of a track, marveling at everything in just over a minute. “You and I” is the most charming love song I’ve heard this year, claiming, “If you found your toothpaste empty, I would squeeze out just a little more/if you had the sweetest victory, I’d high-five you till our hands were sore.” He goes on, and each line is better than the last. There’s also copious amounts of clapping and tom rolls, which are totally wonderful. “Love Love Love,” which is not a cover of the Mountain Goats tune, is the anthem that kicks the whole shebang off, and it’s a heck of a way to do it.

Each and every song here is memorable; each and every one is worth noting. As a full album, it’s nigh on perfect. There are fast songs, slow songs, midtempo songs, anthems, musings, pop songs, and everything else. There’s even instrumental solos, if you’re into that. I mean, this has it all. And, best of all, you will leave wanting to go hug someone (preferably a significant other) with a huge smile on your face.

Avalanche City’s Our New Life Above the Ground is an album that transcends genre boundaries and appeals directly to souls that love living (or want to). The songs are affectionately written, perfectly arranged and brilliantly performed. This was released in ’10, and it’s the last album of 2010 that I’m reviewing. It’s best to end on a high note, after all.