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

Tinie Tempah

Found out about Patrick Chukwuemeka Okogwu, aka Tinie Tempah, whilst on the stairmaster 6'ish a.m. yesterday. Reading some deets about this 22-year-old Plumstead, South London native kept me from resting my forehead on the command panel and taking a quick snoozer. He probably saved my life, as had I done such a thing I would've inevitably leaned on the crank-up button and hot-stepped to catastrophe.
Likely a more entertaining visual in my mind than on paper.

Coming out of the U.K. Grime scene, Tempah is already pretty hot-sh*t over the Pond and on the Brit charts. He's making the pop-duo rounds, {Kelly Clarkson, eh? Please don't.}, and paired up with our girl Ellie Goulding on this posted March 7 release. AND, according to wikipedia, his single "Written in the Stars" was used for a WrestleMania XXVII countdown promo during the WWE PPV Royal Rumble on 30 January, who later confirmed that it will be the official theme for Wrestlemania XXVII. Big time, baby!

Here's hoping after these forays and getting a little older, little wiser - perhaps after his 25th birthday? He sticks to more tracks like "Gimme More Money." Until then we can waste billable hours on his social media savvy game, blog, ad infinitum.

Tinie Tempah // Pass Out

Tinie Tempah f. Ellie Goulding // Wonderman

Rafter

Found this firey-flamey haired reggaetonite on my shuffle play, and started to do a little shuffle me'self. Rafter Roberts hails from a nontraditional upbringing in Sebastopol, CA - I mean, obviously. His name is Rafter. And for the record I think it's total crap that I come from equally hippie-dippie parents and ended up with KATHRYN. Why couldn't I be Luna Sailcloth or something?

Roberts did all kinds of musical things to lead to his 6th and most recent release, Animal Feelings, and win the tip of the hat as "Best Alternative Album" at the San Diego Music Awards. A few items of note; playing instruments in-utero. Partnering to start the successful commercial music house, Singing Serpent, with whom I have worked in my illustrious advertising career (weird!). And getting signed to Asthmatic Kitty Records. He has a far wittier blog than mine, which I will not share with you so you can cross-compare and stop reading ES. And I'm hedging my bets that his shows are as fun as a steamer chest of lemurs.

{disclaimer: this may or may not be our man, but those bun-bun ears are pretty slick}

Rafter // Paper

Lydia Ooghe {& the Lux Vacancy}

I don't flirt nearly enough with the local scene, with the exception of my dedicated groupie-attentions to Autocue. No longer! I'm completely diverting my eyes from the PacNW and Brooklyn scene, and lay gaze solely upon RVA.

That is total horseshit malarkey, but I do intend to love on my citymates more.

This coming Sunday, Nov. 14, let's meet up for some grenache at Ipanema and check out Lydia Ooghe. Her songs are stuff of sugar and batting, helium-balloon pop on acoustic guitar and occasional pedal steel. And she looks a-freaking-dorable. By my professional estimation, she's impressing the River City with her talents and gracefully sunny stage presence. We shall see, Lydia.

See you Sunday evening cheetahbabies.



Lydia Ooghe and Lux Vacancy // Baby Yay

Dominant Legs

A quickety-split trick to leave you with this Friday. SF native Ryan William Lynch leads with the right with his ramble-jangle reedy sound. Funky jazz with some carribean 80's flat-top, pop razor lines on the side over the ears. Slick it back with some melancholy LA Looks gel and head out the door. I could think of a handful of artists to relate him to, but the sound is oddly more of his own. How often does that happen? How often does a guy look far better with a flower over his ear than I do? Crap.

Dominant Legs // Just Silly Ones

To add fuel to my defeated flames, an old friend from ago turned me on to this bobo blog. It has stanky hepster written all over it. Maybe if I stop wearing babypowder fresh deodorant I can funk it up like them one day.

Twin Shadow

yellow balloons are fancy

Slow // Twin Shadow

KIsses

Jesse Kivel (vocals) met Zinzi Edmundson (keyboards) on a chance visit to a friends' college when Cupid ratcheted back that arrow and let fly. The LA loves now play under the name Kisses, without an ounce of shame over it's sugary sweetness. Rather, they revel in honey-coated lyrics and bumblebee buzzing Balearic pop beats.

Schedule your next nostalgic makeout sesh November 16th for their unblushing debut, The Heart of Nightlife.

Kisses // People Can Do the Most Amazing of Things

Happy Wedding Em&Jay!

Ellie Goulding

When I was a fresh young thang, I danced. I'm not talking your fingersnap with the toetap and the head bob. And I'm not talking seven years at the barre, mashing my peds into trollfeet. I mean I ardently believed wild and tribal blood sang through my veins demanding that I get down wit my bad self and do somethin. In cars, in yards, in bars, by myself, with a girl, with a boy, it didn't matter. I would just give myself over and dance the fuck out.

Now it takes a bit more before I tilt over the edge. At a stately 26, I'm not as emphatic about rhythm-inspired profuse perspiration. I can easily keep myself from hurtin nobody when frequenting shows like Fleet Foxes and Bowerbirds. But sometimes....sometimes....

Before Ellie Goulding's studio debut, Lights, she had won both the BBC Sound of 2010 poll and 2010 BRIT Award. So no pressure, right? The UK singer/songwriter partnered with Fin Dow-Smith, aka Starsmith, who produced and cowrote a few tracks. The result is a lace up of 1980's electroacoustic pop vogue and a dash of conservative folk to keep it anglo-friendly. I'm nodding my head but raising an eyebrow. Deviating from the popular chanteuse mold made for a lukewarm album reception, but I'd bet money another release or two and she'll be standing on terra firma.
Or she just needs to move to Iceland or Sweden and be more readily accepted for all the ABBA she could be.

Two remixes of the *E*uphoric Starry Eyed that have me applying WD-40 to my creaky joints and snapping on sweat bands. If you listen to the second track with headphones on, your brain's gonna throb. Just looking out.

Ellie Goulding // Starry Eyed (Monsieur Adu Remix)

Ellie Goulding // Starry Eyed (Jakwob Remix)

Lissie

My usual goal, bolstering both "at least I barely know about ONE thing" hopes for myself and a shareworthy iTunes lib, is scoping artists on the eensiest cusp of being massively accessible. Getting ahead of the game. Like when one knows that everybody will want Lebron James at the Masters so you slate him for your fantasy football league; that sort of ESP.

Well. Lissie isn't it. The moment I started listening to Catching a Tiger, released in August, it was obvious I was two-weeks too late. Plus once you're on the Grey's Anatomy soundtrack, you're a veritable soda-pop comet. I can say that with no malice because it's quoted in her write-up, so ger'off me. Key difference being - she's impossible to dismiss. Her pipes cover a range of genres, spaghetti western gospel folk pop? Spend 39 seconds searching her online and you'll find some pretty sick live performances and insane covers (after the Cotton commercial, nice one). Like this of Kid Cudi's "Pursuit of Happiness." Not every cornsilk-haired Illinois native-come-LA lady can swill tequila and sing "roll it up, take a hit" somewhat convincingly. I like a little acid on my sugar-pops in the morning.



Lissie // Record Collector

The Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger

Put on your new pants and move out to France.

Sean Lennon and Charlotte Kemp Muhl want to make sure your ear catches totally boss lyrical efforts on Acoustic Sessions, October release. These two are so pretty with a band name so stealth it makes me mildly ill.

Usually an electronic amorous pair, the nine track album features just what's needed - guitar, piano, vibraphone - to exacerbate their trippy hippie pop pysch folk feeling. That is the most ridiculous genre listing ever. We're making up a word for it right now. We're calling it MACRAME SYNTH. Fruit snack on that.

The Ghost of Saber Tooth Tigers // Jardin du Luxembourg

Club 8

No one expects slinky samba and bombastic bossanova buttshaking beats from a pair of frosty Swedish blondes. Well, guess what? Those aren't highlights, people. And white kids can occasionally dance, providing the moon is in the waxing gibbus phase and it's the fifth Thursday of months that end in "ary."

Dream-pop duo Karolina Komstedt and Johan Angergård of Club 8 took a trip to South America for love, for inspiration, for cassava. Full of heat and humidity, they returned to Sweden to produce an album in homage to their tropical muse. Albeit surreally - while they sweat it out in the studio their countrymen walked around in their earmuffs and mink stoles during the dead of winter. The result of feverish brazilian beats with vocals that dip&soar on the warm updrafts of West-Afro guitars have you ready for summer, sugarsnake!

Now dance whitey, DANCE

Club 8 // Shape Up

Throw Me The Statue

Front man and pioneer of this formerly one-man pop extravaganza, Scott Reitherman, orchestrates some throwback, but lovely melodies with this new album, Creaturesque, delivering to record stores and lingerie shops on August 4. That, my friend, was a mouth full. But I checked the grammar with Merriam Webster Slaughter and he gave it an F+ so we're all good.

There are now four gents in the band making the whole one-man thing a lot less cool, but I suppose if you want to play live these days, you need other "people" to help you out. What to the evs. Their label, Secretly Canadian, has some nice hooker loving, crack bands putting out some decent scratch this summer. I kid, it's a fine label. Can I get some orange juice around here? Please.

Throw Me The Statue // Ancestors

Jarvis Cocker

Jarvis Cocker. Pulp. Singer. Too much history to go into dating back to WWIV. Just know this man is nuts and awesome at the same time. His new album Further Complications picks up where Pulp left off, but he'd like you to believe it's art. Just check out his site and see what the eff I'm talking about.

Jarvis Cocker // Angela

B Fleischmann

From Vienna, B Fleischmann started out as a drummer, touring with bands all over Austria. In 1998 he turned into a laptop nerd, but he still uses real drums and other acoustic instruments, too.

This song is from his newest album, Angst is Not a Weltanschauung!, on Morr Music. The album includes a rework of Daniel Johnston's "King Kong" and vocals by Sweet William Van Ghost and Marilies Jagsch (in this track).



B Fleischmann // 24.12.

If you like this, B has more downloads on his site, plus links to some of his own favorite music.

Circlesquare

Do people mention INXS ever when they're talking about Dance Rock?

This guy, Jeremy Shaw, is from Vancouver but lives in Berlin. Whenever music people talk about moving to Berlin I think of Stephen Daedalus in Paris with puce gloves carrying a flower. Ha.

Anyway this is fucking sick. What I'm listening to is Circlesquare's new release from !K7, Songs About Dancing and Drugs. Apparently his previous album, Pre-Earthquake Anthem, was like "a molasses drip laced with codeine" so I'll have to check that out, too.


The children of scientists are more predisposed to have Asperger's.

All Live But the Ending

Architecture in Helsinki

Aus pop orchestra superhappy-times band's got a new single with some cool remixes, That Beep.

They're pretty good with packaging themselves, so I'll refer you onward: http://thatbeep.com/. (There you can listen and get your download on>)

No pun intended... Fun intended.


Boney M, Brown Girl in the Ring.

I admit I have been looking for an excuse to post Boney M since I started contributing to this blog, but I do think they have influenced Architecture in Helsinki.

Fol Chen

Another decent Asthmatic Kitty band. I can't get myself to read the feature NPR did on them, and they seem to like to fill their own websites with feverish beat-pop stories, poser Pynchon or something. So I don't really have much info on them except that they're from LA.


Flyer for an upcoming show in Echo Park.

You and Your Sister in Jericho

Faunts

Wooo, Canadians! These guys are from Edmonton, and the group includes 3 brothers, the Batkes boys.

They wrote their new album, Feel.Love.Thinking.Of, while touring across the States. It's technically some kind of indie rock, whatever that means, but I have chosen one of the album's more Jan Hammer tracks to share with you.



"I Think I'll Start A Fire." Their record label, Friendly Fire is hosting several free downloads.

Erol Alkan

I know Erol Alkan primarily for his DJing-- His 2005 Essential Mix for Radio 1 gave me so much; bittorrent it. Alkan started the London clubnight Trash, which went on for 10 years, and he won Mixmag's DJ of the Year for 2006. He's also got massive Superstar DJ association: the Soulwax documentary features him, and when I saw him spin it was at the Fixed party at WMC last year, with Simian Mobile Disco.

He's involved in other projects besides remixing, though. Check this. He produced the Late of the Pier album Fantasy Black Channel, just released in the States last week, as well as the Long Blondes' album Couples and the Mystery Jets' Twenty One. He's even got his own music-with-guitars-in-it project, a psych outfit called Beyond the Wizard's Sleeve.



Fan Death - Veronica's Veil (Erol Alkan's Extended Rework)


Late of the Pier - Space in the Woods


Beyond the Wizards Sleeve - Violent Lampshade

Matt and Kim

Hard to argue with this. Supercatchy Matt & Kim played at Slaughterama last year, and they're coming to the Canal Club April 3rd.

Their first album was sloppy in a joyful way, but on this second one-- Grand, from Faderlabel-- it seems like they've really gotten control of their crayons. They're from Brooklyn.



Good Ol' Fashion Nightmare