Watch New Girls Video For Girls Highlight “Laura,” Which Is Like a Really Hip, Joyous Version of the Opening to The Brady Bunch…Only With More Tattoos (Maybe; They Rarely Took of Their Shirts on That Show) [NME]
Dancey Portland Band Starfucker (Who, You May Remember, Was Unhappy With Their NSFW Band Name) Changes Name to PYRAMID; Elsewhere (Specifically in North Carolina), There Is Already a Band Called Pyramid [Brooklyn Vegan]
Brooding UK Indie Band Editors Launch Their Own Version of Google Street View, With Specific Locations Playing Songs From Their New Album, In This Light and On This Evening — This Is Probably A Lot Cooler For Someone Even Remotely Familiar With London’s Geography [NME]
Weezer Frontman Rivers Cuomo To Sit Down and Write Songs With Katy Perry Next Week; Possible Results: “I Kissed a God Damn Half-Japanese Girl,” “Only In Ur Dreams,” “Waking Up In The Garage (If You Want To Destroy My Career)” [Pitchfork]
Courtney Love Owes Over $300,000 In Back Taxes, Shuts Down Her Twitter Account – Two Stories Unrelated, As Twitter Is Free Service [Prefix]
New Zealand Innocuously Good Indie Poppers The Ruby Suns Announce New Album; Fight Softly Released March, 2010 [You Ain’t No Picasso]
Stream Bon Iver’s Final Concert; In Other News, Bon Iver’s Hiatus Very Temporary, I Get Bombastic In Attempt to Cause Controversy On Our Website [Radio Milwaukee]
Stream Title Track From Brooklyn’s Acrylics’ Upcoming EP All of the Fire; Produced by Grizzly Bear’s Chris Taylor (And Released on Terrible Records, His Label), EP Released October 28 [Jezebel Music]
Deerhunter’s Bradford Cox To Release Bonus EP With Atlas Sound LP Logos When Ordered From Rough Trade; I Haven’t Looked Into Yet, But Knowing Cox’s Security Practices, EP Probably Leaked Before It Was Even Recorded [Pitchfork]
Guard Arrested For Assaulting a Fan Taking Pictures at House of Blues Chicago; Weirdly, Assault Took Place at Hanson Concert – And What Else Is There To Do When Seeing Hanson, Except Twittering Pictures of Hanson, Still In Disbelief They Have Songs Other Than “Mmmbop” [Idolator]
Baritone California Mope-Folker Mark Everett, AKA Eels, AKA Mr. E, AKA E, To Release Basement Tapes Album; End Times Released January 18 [NME]
compiled by Max Sebela
July 27, 2008
Record Review: This is Our Music
Hidden Gem:
Galaxie 500
This is Our Music
1990 | Rough Trade
Starting with an eerie guitar rift, a siren song that builds in volume and a sort of bittersweet electric needling, Galaxie 500’s final release, This is Our Music, is a musician’s album, a writer’s album and a listener’s album. It’s the type of work that can easily turn itself into background whispers and melodic creaking, like walking on porch planks that magically light the night with sound. Or it becomes the musical equivalent of drunken belligerence in the hull of some landlocked barge, all moans and lax backing vocals. It’s some kind of feat that for such a complex work, it also comes off as a completely lazy, half-awake, half-speaking-with-a-mile-high-cigarette-ash attempt; a true relic from the original alt/indie rock past and charming record of the budding attitude of an era.
And the lyrics make no grandiose claims either: “I wrote a poem on a dog biscuit/but your dog refused to read it/so I got drunk and looked at the empire state building/it was no bigger than a nickel.” How blasé, how utterly 90’s. The casual-talking vocals, a simple rumination or a conversation about the banality of modern life, sum up the entire mood of the record. Alternately heralded as their swan song and their let-down denouement, This is Our Music (appropriated from Ornette Coleman’s 1960’s free jazz album of the same name and later tweaked by the Brian Jonestown Massacre to And This is Our Music) presents a more cohesive, slightly less dream-pop drenched sound than previous Galaxie recordings and the outcome is at once intransitive and memorable.
The cover of Yoko Ono’s “Listen the Snow is Falling”, which beautifully highlights Naomi Yang’s voice, the voice that moved onto such prominence with her future act: Damon and Naomi, is actually the sound of winter, the sound of snow-covered sidewalks being pocked with boot-steps, no, it’s the sound of being in love, of snow angels, of finding the happiness in missing someone.
This is a great album and by album I mean a solid listening experience all the way through (a unique concept today). Now that we’ve got 20/20 hindsight on the myriad splits and genre fusions that began with alt rock and moved into the intellectual (all the members attended Hah-vahd) shoegaze/dream-pop movement, it’s easy to see how influential (see: The Shins or Band of Horses, etc.) and lovely this last go at guitar-centric haze tunes was.
by Erin Smith
