All Entries Tagged With: "Yeasayer"
Yeasayer, w/ Sleigh Bells, @ The Troc, 5/5/10
Now that you have some background, let me try to explain Sleigh Bells sound to you. It’s not the easiest thing in the world to do. Okay… so start with all of your conceptions of pop music. Alright. Now throw them out the window. Shatter the window. Now you’re one step closer to understanding Sleigh Bells. Go over to their Myspace and listen to “Infinity Guitars” or “Crown on the Ground” to see what I mean because I couldn’t find an mp3 to stream.
What you’re hearing is a production style in the same ballpark as the lo-fi movement that has been going on for a couple years now in indie music. M.I.A. exhibits this tendency but essentially what it comprises of is pushing down the overall mix of the vocals to the point where they seem to be drowning in the rest of the song. Instead of emphasizing the vocals the production works to emphasize the guitar, synths, and drums – something that is usually the first no-no you learn as a producer. Yet, despite sounding wrong and unorthodox, there is some undeniable beauty to this sound. And, no one does it better than Sleigh Bells.
Lollapalooza 2010!
Other must see acts include blog favorite Grizzly Bear, who are four incredible multi-instrumentalists that are sure put on one of the finest exhibits of musical talent of the festival. Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros, who’s album Up From Below is currently number 9 on the Billboard Heatseeker’s Chart, also promise a fantastic show with their ridiculous antics which first caught my eye here on Letterman. B.o.B. whose song “Nothin’ On You” is currently number two on Billboard will be there this year, as will indie act MGMT to support their new album Congratulations (Drexelist review coming soon!). Other lesser known notables include The XX, Wild Beasts, Hockey, The Soft Pack, Dirty Projectors, Yeasayer, Hot Chip, The Morning Benders, Dragonette and Miniature Tigers. You can hear some of these acts best songs below via LaLa.
Danger Danger! Dinosaur Feathers Go on Display This Friday!
After expressing my fan-boy appreciation for the band, I asked something that I couldn’t really get an answer for by the band’s Myspace or Facebook. In case you don’t follow indie rock as religiously as I do, in the last couple of years or so, there has been an amazing scene growing in Brooklyn. There’s really no better place to be right now if you’re a musician. Also, there are a lot of incredibly interesting musical trends going on in Brooklyn-based music right now – which include tendencies for African rhythms, noodly guitars, and Beach Boy-like harmonies. However, Dinosaur Feathers seems to put all of these elements together into a summery rock context that hasn’t really been done before.
Music Headlines – February 5th, 2010
Aside from being full of me acting like this snow storm is the apocalypse (I insisted on going to North and spending $20 to “make it through the weekend”), today was full of some really cool music news. On my old blog, which can be found at www.nclrmusic.blogspot.com, when I had days where there was just a lot of this really cool music news, I used to post it in bullet-point form for my readers to get through quickly. I think that’s the easiest way to share these things. So here it is, you’re music headlines for 2/5/10:
