Elizabeth and the Catapult

A little sexy push and pull for your dark-pop affinity. Don't you worry about it.

Elizabeth and The Catapult // Go Away My Lover

Future Islands

"B'More: Never Been Scurd - reasons to believe you won't get shot"

John Waters - a mustache such as his doesn't survive in a true 'hood
Baltimore Aquarium - the city would never spend money on those massive tanks if it thought drive-by's were a real threat
Merriweather Post Pavillion - that thing would be a crack den in two days if it was a valid possibility
Janet Diggs - my pupsy whitebread mother managed to grow-up on Sherwood Ave. without skills in knifefighting.
Samuel Herring, William Cashion, Gerritt Welmers - would not be complete fools and move up from Greenville, NC unless they thought they'd make it to 2011 without undergoing a gang initiation, and be able to make sicknasty No Wave music in this underrated city.

Truth is, the scene always has to start somewhere. Places like Brooklyn and Portland weren't always that cool, ok? I wasn't alive back then, but I've heard that was the deal from some trusted sources. Animal Collective, Beach House and Dan Deacon call it home; the latter of which pleaded a good case with the boys of Future Islands, who knew him from days at ECU playing in the performance art band Art Lord & the Self-Portraits.

FI's May release In Evening Air might be one of my favorite albums of this balmy season. Chariot-driven rhythms, dreamscape sounds and focus on musical textures over melodies. And it's a breakup album - I don't care how hysterically in love you are, because we all find luxurious despondence in expressions of ragged heartbreak. Frontman Herring's lyrics of a relationship's decomposition will have any one of us staring into an emptied bottle.
And any time you look like a former linebacker with the stage theatrics of Jarvis Cocker, you're pretty damn solid in my book. I simultaneously want to be fireman-carried by him and participate in a modern dance troupe with him. Weird?

Future Islands // Tin Man
Future Islands f. Katrina Ford // In the Fall

JBM

There isn't much to gather on JBM. He's from Montreal. His given name is Jesse Marchant. He's touring with Sondre Lerche, playing his '09 release, not even in July. But honestly, who wants to read a loveletter to a lanky gent when alabaster skeleton folk is tripping up your spine?

Hope you like. Not like I do or anything.

JBM // Cleo's Song

JBM // Friends for Fireworks

Lykke Li - continued

Recently reminded how much I adore this lil gal.

A fair-haired fairy from Stockholm - who happened to winter in Nepal and pad about Lisbon and Morroco before recording her first album in Brooklyn - Li Lykke Timotej Zachrisson has gained notoriety since her 2008 release.

Rumor is "Little Bit" was inspired from a three-year previous relationship. Just enough to break your heart, change your life.
And instill the confidence to tell the world just what position you'll keep your legs until your lover returns. Bold, Ly. Bold.

Classified as sugarplum sweet neon lilac soul, her recent cover of Roberta Flack's "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow" reminds that table sugar has a similar hue to bleached bones.

Lykke Li // Tonight
Lykke Li // Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow

Grizzled Again

We’re barely into the third week of the semester and already there’s a substitute? Bullocks! Unheard of!

Well sorry kiddos, you’re just going to have to accept it and carryon with the mundane of day to day. Truth is – your music sage is on hiatus. A walkabout, roaming the wilderness and tracing his songlines while having out of body’s in new dimensions.

Or something like that.
I’ll pick up some slack until he returns to his earthbound vessel for good.

Behold – the liberation of Grizzly Bear’s newest video. Another wonder of stop motion animation directed by Sean Pecknold aka Grandchildren aka Robin Pecknold’s of Fleet Foxes fame brother. Not for those feint of heart (the humor just gets lamer in Mckay’s absence) the masked fencer has an out of body experience of his own to the lyrics of one of the best breakup songs ever written.

Grizzly Bear // While You Wait For The Others