City and Colour

Have I posted about Dallas Green before?

I should have. 2009's Bring Me Your Love was one of those albums I played in my car, at my desk, in my flat, for my friends, for my cats, tried to learn the chords, put some of the lyrics on the "about me" section on the Facebook. Even if it's emotive, heavy on the sentimentalness did bring down my street cred.
Don't judge, you've done it too wombat.

As the alias City (Dallas) and Colour (Green), the frontman of post-hardcore Alexisonfire plays melodic, largely acoustic folk music that airs this side of vulnerable. His third album Little Hell, released earlier this month, was both recorded and mixed on tape at Catherine North Studios in Hamilton, Ontario. Canadian analog, I dig.

While a solid handful of tracks seem ripe for the One Tree Hill picking, the dusky brothel video shot for the first single, inspired by his wife's frequent night terrors, might say otherwise.



City and Colour // Fragile Bird
City and Colour // Hope For Now

lykke love

Lykke Li // I Follow Rivers

the Daylights

Long distance relationships, for the majority, suck. Granted. Time zones, awkwardly long pauses on the phone, furrowed brows over the alternate lives each other is living, cathartic growling at each other.

Walter C. May, a LA-based commercial director, pondered on how to reach across the flyover zone to his gal Lex, slogging away on her MBA at Duke University. When your in the business of visuals, and your boys with an indie-trio, use your talents and DIY, right? Some shared pencil scratches with The Daylights, $100, an afternoon and some dexterous hands and you do the damn thing.

Rather than pinging her inbox, posting on her wall, or over-nighting a playable DVD - May got all social-media on your ass and tweeted it out last Tuesday. In hopes the vastly small virtual world would deliver it to her, he waited patiently for it to arrive as the constantly-connected saw fit.

3 guesses as to how this story ends.

Thanks to Josh Reese for keeping me connected since I continue to abstain from joining Twitter. And to my own bi-coastal manfriend, I accept love letters by snailmail, carrier pigeon and the Pony Express.



The Daylights // I Hope This Gets To You

Young Marble Giants

Macaron-light vocals (Allison Straton) peeping out from akimbo guitar and steel bass (Moxham brothers) were things of revolution back in '78. The post-punk act from Cardiff, Wales loosely hold hands whilst taking us on a voyeuristically eerie journey.
Helluva single-take crane shot to boot.





Young Marble Giants // Final Day

music vids all up in your eyeball this week

I saw these and thought of you.

brothers from other mothers

Speaking of mcKay, he bears a near-uncanny resemblance to Bryce Dessner {....or is it Aaron? shit} of the The National. Whom I lovelovelooooove. A lot. Both of them. mcKay and The National. And this chair dance. And eating dry cereal, preferably Shredded Spoonfuls. My heart nearly bursts with all this g-d terrible love.



Not like you haven't heard it a billion times this year, but for the sake of it.

The National // Terrible Love

Diamond Rings

John O, you are fun with a capital R A I N B O W U N I C O R N I C I N G.

Glitter napalming you from Toronto, John O grew up this side of jock before ditching the athlete's foot to fully embrace a well-sequined pair of ballet slippers. A boy of many talents, at a young age he managed to pack in piano, football, guitar, basketball, saxophone, and dress-up seshes pulling from the Tickle Trunk all before he was legal. Makes for an understandably difficult search-for-self growing up. "Are my friends goths or goalies? Punks or pointguards?"

You could presume John O leaned hard in one direction, eventually leading to the October release of Special Affections. Sort of. The other direction isn't too terribly far behind him, which makes for an ecstatically-camp wtf outburst over the "Show Me Your Stuff" music video. Might need 9 more views before I decide if my teeth hurt from irritable grinding or cavity-inducing sugar rush.




Regardless, the grating baritone over excitable synth has me dancing all the way to the color copier.

Diamond Rings // You & Me

Tamaryn

A little extry and easily related BECAUSE...
Dominant Legs is featured in the music video premiere from Tamaryn. And she's in there, too. I owed you one from earlier in the week, anyway, so now we're squares in circle chairs. Pardon me while I stab a #2 in to my cornea.



Tamaryn // Dawning

Kanye West {and a phoenix}

Ordinarily I don't have much patience for mr. West, but I carved 34+minutes out of my workday to "good-lord" over this work of...posturing? Artistic genius? High wizarding of feathers and a gluestick?



Kanye West f. Pusha T // Runaway

Solarium Guns in Paris Gold

10.26.10 UPDATE: I was metricfied last night - big time. Still don't have full strength of hearing in my right earbones thanks to the EXPLOSIVE guitars. Ms. Haines was a whirl of peroxidized gold lamé, and had the audience practically eating out of her thin, smack-ready hands. A certain person who is unendingly difficult to dazzle and has a hard time with the word "fabulous" beamed it was "best show {he's} seen in a long time. Maybe ever." His tee was also drool-soaked from watching Emily for a hour and a half, but I do take him at his word, and agree with it. Pole vault, don't walk, to catch them back on opening for Muse.


METRIC TONIGHT, taking a little break from their tour with Muse.
The National / RVA / 8p doors

Metric // Gold Guns Girls
Metric // Gold Guns Girls {Acoustic}

Lykke Li is back on tour for a short stint while finishing up her LP, sole Stateside stop is Le Poisson Rouge / NY / December 1. She laments the stage is easier to handle than real life - along with playing with mirrors out in the desert in her skivvies and bed linens.



Lykke Li // Paris Blues

Mountain Man

I'll preface this with two things - 1. no beards here 2. I'm clearly on a vintage folk kick, or whatever this new genre is trying to salvage nearly-forgotten bluegrass, gospel and country. Just gonna fully embrace it this mon.wed.fri. I swear I'll post some really misogynistic, Cristal-tittie-soaking hardcore rap next week to keep things fresh.

Till then, I'll encourage you to put up your pin curls to these harmonies. Mountain Man is Molly Erin Sarle, Alexandra Sauser-Monnig and Amelia Randall Meath - hailing from the hills of Vermont. Made the Harbor is all tarnished silver, barnacle-crusted dock pilings and Granny's peach preserves from last summer's harvest. The sirens, recently signed to bellaunion (edited 6.08.10, holler) are on tour to select cities, good luck withstanding temptation to fall into the sea and follow their calls.

Mountain Man - River from Vincent Galgano on Vimeo.

Mountain Man // Soft Skin

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

MGMT - Kids video

Man this kid is an incredible actor. What's that? He's only 13 months old and is really terrified out of his brain cap? Well shame on you MGMT. Shame on you Hollywood. Shame on you Mark Twain. And shame on you MADD. This kid's gonna be fucked for life. Remember that girl from Poltergeist? Exactly. I hope when that kid dies in his nightmares, you'll be happy. Because you'll be responsible. A+

Grizzly Bear - Two Weeks Video

Took me a minute or two to jump on this bandwagon, but these guys are pretty fantastic. The new album, Veckatimest, is quite masterful, layers and layers deep with quality sounds, including distorted church organs and singing childrens. You'll find a million other reviews on the interwebs from nuts like me pretending to know what the hell they're talking about. So I'm not gonna bother. I will suggest buying this album. And also to not have intercourse with your sister. Because that's what these guys did right before they shot this video and this really happened. Not kidding.

Grizzly Bear // Two Weeks
Grizzly Bear // Ready, Able

Zombie Zombie - Driving this road until death sets you free (again)

Yeah, yeah, Mary Claire posted this before, but I'm posting it again. 'Cause it’s the best thing that’s ever happened in the world of stop motion and music. Not watching it is a hate crime.

Eric Wareheim does Phantom Planet

Eric Wareheim from Tim and Eric is a mad genius. You either love him or loathe him, but you can’t deny his green screen mastery. See more of his directorial magic here.

White Lies - To Lose My Life

SoKo - I’ll Kill Her

Thanks to my dear friend Rexy for turning me onto this adorable French gem. I realize this video is almost 2 years old and already very popular (I can’t be on top of everything), but that doesn’t make it any less awesome. Besides, after watching, I feel it’s my obligation, my duty, to promote the death of this boyfriend stealer SoKo is referring to. She’s obviously a whore.