Frankie Rose
“Know Me” (mp3)
from “Interstellar”
(Slumberland Records)

More On This Album

We were all knocked out by the Frankie Rose and the Outs 2010 album, the effortlessness of its gorgeous girl-pop mantras, the intimate immensity of its Spectoresque walls of reverb, the beauty of a song sung sweetly over the most graceful two chord vamps. But are you ready for the new Frankie Rose? – her transformation into a wholly other kind of pop, the reverie and revelation of Interstellar, an album that floats free of its maker’s history – time spent with Vivian Girls, Dum Dum Girls, Crystal Stilts, and creator of one of the most breathlessly compelling girl-pop albums of the past few years – and offers the listener something strangely other, as alien as it is familiar, as compelling as it is enchanting.

Talking with Frankie about the record, it’s clear she was itching for a new start. The first big indication – production by Le Chev, remixer supreme (for Lemonade, Narcisse, Passion Pit, and Frankie’s own “Candy”), an ensemble member of Fischerspooner, etc. “We recorded the record in a private studio dubbed The Thermometer Factory in Park Slope. I wanted this record to be totally different and in so doing I knew I had to work with someone who would lend fresh ideas and know how to make sounds that I wouldn’t know how to make. I wanted to make a particular record and I knew Le Chev would be the one who could help me do it.”

Keep reading for more on Interstellar, and a brand new video!

So, out with the reverb of the Frankie Rose and the Outs, and in with something altogether more glam, glittering, shivering. On Interstellar Frankie takes the lessons learned with her debut album – like reverb as the holy route to pop-grandeur, scaling a wall of teenage tears – fully digests, and transfers those skills into the brave new world mapped out by ten new songs. In its place is the confident swagger of a singer and auteur fully aware of how to build the simplest of pop moves into aching, fullblown melodramas, how to grab hold of an emotion and ride its darker waves. “I always have a big picture in mind,” Frankie reflects. “I knew I wanted a HUGE sounding record. Big highs, big lows, and clean. There is no fuzz on this record. I knew I wanted to make a streamlined, spacious record with big choruses that sometimes referenced 80s pop.” But that referencing never swamps the melodies: this record isn’t a retro trip. If anything, it liberates sounds familiar from that decade and gives them new context, breathes life into clay golems of sound that too often become basic, pre-set triggers.

On Interstellar, Frankie Rose goes epic, goes widescreen. “Had We Had It” spins the sweetest sugar from chords that ascend into the firmament, a heavenly, palatial blur. “Gospel / Grace” rumbles with passion, a New Order-esque one-finger guitar figure leading the listener into the choral depths mapped by the chorus. “Apples For The Sun” is breathtaking, with Frankie singing out across a lone piano, before a glorious web of voice and organ pirouettes into the air, an arbor of pleasure connecting the verse with its instrumental shadow, a coda that slowly slips from your view, before making the briefest, most tantalizing of returns. A lot of Interstellar seems to be about disappearing into, or finding and reveling in, this kind of imaginary zone, something Rose confirms: “The whole record is about dreaming of some ‘other’ place.”

And as you drift into the heartbreaking “The Fall,” which floats out to sea on a lunar-aquatic cello riff that’s pure Arthur Russell, you’re ready to conquer those other places, too, to let Frankie Rose guide you out of the album’s spell and land you back in the sensual world, slightly altered, adrift and in awe. How does it feel to feel? With Interstellar, your emotions come out so alive, your only escape is to dive right back in.

Frankie Rose – “Gospel/Grace”

Bright Moments
“Travelers” (mp3)
from “Natives”
(LUAKA BOP)

More On This Album

Kelly Pratt is Bright Moments.  He’s the guy up at night by himself, stitching songs together in his New York City apartment all winter. Natives may be your first official introduction to the music of Bright Moments but if you have spent any time at all with some of the most beloved indie albums of the last decade, you’ll quickly realize that you know him well. Pratt is the multi-instrumentalist whose trumpet sparks across so many of Beirut’s songs and whose harmonizing vocals is a central component to the band’s robust live performances. He has also shouldered everything from flugelhorn to flute to bring Arcade Fire’s Neon Bible to life, and was part of the horn section that LCD Soundsystem used during its sunset days.

There’s a special art to making an album in the spare seconds that the rest of a regular life can’t quite reach. Recorded track-by-track-by-track with Pratt on most of the instruments in his apartment studio during the New York City winter of 2010, this slow-motion musicianship became Natives (Luaka Bop). Although Natives is his first as Bright Moments, it’s the spiritual sequel to his earlier band Team B, whose 2008 album was recorded right into the microphone on a MacBook in hotel rooms and hurried backstage demo sessions while Pratt was on tour with Arcade Fire and LCD Soundsystem. (Members of Beirut, Antibalas and LCD Soundsystem all helped, with LCD drummer Pat Mahoney being the only guy who actually joined Pratt in a real-deal studio.) For Bright Moments, however, Pratt wanted to make sure to take his time.

Hit the skip for more Bright Moments and sneak peak at the new album: Natives

Natives was recorded with no set schedule beyond, and drew slowly together, with the songs all developing at the same time like puppies from a single litter. Beirut’s rhythm section (Nick Petree and Paul Collins) and accordionist (Perrin Cloutier), as well as the drummer from Pratt’s former Afrobeat band Akoya, awaited direction. On some tracks, Pratt would use his trumpet as a percussion instrument; on another, he’d snip a shaker in half and sample the sound of sand pouring out to make a beat. The lyrics took longest–inspired by and sometimes drawn directly from an old book of Scandinavian poetry discovered on tour, or the little-known story of the girl who was the first person ever to be cured of rabies. (That’d be track two, “Milwaukee Protocol,” named after the specific method of cure.)

You may not exactly be able to identify the sampled sound of live bats on “Milwaukee Protocol,” or the bathtub splashing-turned-percussion on “Traveling Light.” It’s these details– heard and even unheard — woven into this densely arranged album that allows Natives to reveal itself over time, listen after listen. Natives is soaked in this detail. It’s a pop record by a guy who’s decided he can do anything he wants. There’s no fear on Natives—just enduring, and sometimes heartbreaking, pop songs that unfold forever, with who knows whom hiding within.

Pratt’s put this pyramid together, spending a year in the home studio he calls his “instrument graveyard” where a dozen brass instruments compete plaintively for attention with synthesizers, guitars and more. With gigabytes of field recordings and found sounds sourced from all over the planet. And reinforcements, from the ranks of the musicians he’s recorded with in the past— this time from Team B, Beirut, Yellow Ostrich and Spoon’s Jim Eno behind the mixing board.

Thick with thieves and ghosts the same, Bright Moment’s Natives is a long-player created to be lost in.

Bright Moments – “Natives Trailer”

In this week’s music video roundup Radiation City expresses some destructive desires in “Find it of Use” while HTRK finds influence in simulation with “Poison” and DTMD teams up with Godly MC and Kev Brown to show love for the gritty life in “Raw (feat. Godly MC, Kev Brown)”

Radiation City – “Find it of Use”

HTRK – “Poison”

DTMD – “Raw (feat. Godly MC, Kev Brown)”

Artist: The Saw Doctors
Album: The Further Adventures Of…
Label: Shamtown Records
Genre: Rock : Folk
UPC: 847108085504
Territory: World
Release Date:8.29.10

Irish rock band, The Saw Doctors have just announced a six week tour of the U.S. and Canada that starts off in Florida and finishes up in Los Angeles, CA. The Saw Doctors will play four shows in Florida at the start of the Spring North American Tour, with Ponte Vedra Beach on Wed Feb 22, Fort Lauderdale on Thursday Feb 23, Orlando on Friday Feb 24, and St. Petersburg on Saturday Feb 25.

The 29 Spring concerts will constitute The Saw Doctors biggest ever North American Tour with first time visits to Wilmington NC on Monday Feb 27 and Des Moines IA on Sunday March 25.

The Saw Doctors will play Pittsburg PA on March 5, Providence RI on March 6, Worcester MA on March 8, Boston MA on March 9 , New York Irving Plaza on March 10, and Philadelphia TLA on March 13.

On St. Patrick’s Day, 17 March, 2012, The Saw Doctors will play the Music Box at the Borgata in Atlantic City, New Jersey. On March 18 The Saw Doctors will play Ridgefield CT before heading Mid-West for shows in Detroit on March 22, Cleveland on March 23, and Chicago on March 24. For a full rundown of dates check out The Saw Doctor’s website here, or their Facebook here.

Hit the jump for more on The Saw Doctors, and a video of their latest single…

Formed in 1986 in Tuam, County Galway, The Saw Doctors have achieved nineteen top-thirty singles in Ireland, including three number ones. Their first number one, “I Useta Lover,” topped the Irish charts for nine consecutive weeks in 1990 and held the record for the country’s all-time biggest-selling single. Renowned for their barnstorming live performances, the band has a loyal following, especially in Ireland, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

On 15 February 2008, they received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Meteor Ireland Music Awards.

After a 17 year breaks between number 1′s The band returned to the top of the Charts in October 2008 with a cover of the Sugababes “About You Now” proving that after more than 20 years they are still one of Ireland’s most popular rock acts.

‘There is a special place in rock ‘n’ roll mythology reserved for that rare phenomenon, the people’s band. The Grateful Dead, The Faces, Status Quo and Bruce Springsteen during his years as leader of the E Street Band are examples which define the breed: performers who have established a special relationship with their audience irrespective of marketing budgets and media approval, and for whom the dictates of fashion are broadly meaningless. The Saw Doctors are the latest in this strangely noble line” – The Times

Artist: Blondes
Album: Blondes
Label: RVNG Intl.
Genre: Electronic : House
UPC: 844185090599
Territory: World
Release Date: 2.7.12

Blondes, the duo of Sam Haar and Zach Steinman, release their self-titled debut album for RVNG Intl. Haar and Steinman met at Oberlin College in 2003, where they studied electroacoustic composition and studio art respectively, and became collaborators in a smattering of short-lived experimental outfits. After graduation and stints apart in Oakland and NYC, Haar and Steinman regrouped in Berlin where Blondes was born, eventually settling on Brooklyn for home base.

Blondes quickly evolved from a home studio project to a live experience built around a tactile assemblage of synthesizers, sequencers, and drum machines. The basement and warehouse venues that curiously welcomed Blondes’ syrupy, space-case dance music provided a reactive environment for the duo to develop their sound and work ethic. But as they started playing at nightclubs renowned for their sound systems and ecstatic dance floors, Haar and Steinman realized a potential for their music to resonate at a higher fidelity and deeper frequency, both sonically and spiritually. Blondes’ heart aligned with house music in its most liquid form.

Hit the skip for more on Blondes and a video…

Initiated in 2011 to document Blondes’ evolution, the album is comprised of pairs of tracks that explore the concept of duality through a personal lens intensely focused on moving the body. Lover / Hater is centered upon a Meredith Monk sample, a primal scream signaling Blondes’ rebirth. Business / Pleasure confronts the struggle of sustaining individuality in a sinister commercial world and stylistically references Blondes’ time spent in the UK. And Wine / Water swings on pendulum between excess and restraint while exhibiting the duo’s most melodic and mature work thus far. Gold and Amber are almost entirely improvised and recorded in single takes. Gold and Amber are inspired by complexity and purity, which manifests in the manic energy and bliss of the parallel tracks.

Blondes journey of musical discovery is reflected in eleven remixes by friends, peers, and heroes including JD Twitch of Optimo, Dungeon Acid, SFV Acid, John Roberts, Andy Stott, Teengirl Fantasy, Bicep, Traxx, Laurel Halo, Rene Hell, and Robert Miles.

Blondes – “Haters”

In this week’s music video roundup Kooley High gets up to no good in “Drop A Dime (If They Get On)” while Kyle Park walk the back roads as he is “Leavin’ Stephenville” and Red Fang rocks out in “Hank Is Dead”.

Kooley High – “Drop A Dime (If They Get On)”

Kyle Park – ” Leavin’ Stephenville”

Red Fang – “Hank is Dead”