An indie music blog featuring forgotten songs, out-of-print classics, leaps in music and indie cover versions alongside new tracks and newer bands making new music. Sometimes it's new indie alternative music that sounds a bit like old indie alternative music. Indie music. Indie alternative mp3s. Indie mp3 downloads. Post Rock downloads. Shoegaze mp3s. Free mp3 downloads of rare tracks. Factory. 4AD. Too Pure. Creation. Temporary Residence. Post-Rock. Jazz. Electronica. Unclassifiable. etc.
Shuffling punk-funking tune from The Rapture's third, gone-off-the-boil album. Not quite of the level of 'Olio' or 'House Of Jealous Lovers' (must post that too) but it's tight and gets into an insular dancefloor groove.
Wiggly sax in the chorus reminds of something but can't quite think what. Ace Of Base maybe?
Candie Payne seems to have disappeared since her ultra-cool post-Foxbase Alpha debut album in 2007. Maybe she's paying some kind of penance for working with Mark Ronson.
Listen closely to this delightfully finger-picked folky tune and, amid the sweeping cello, pootling tones and gorgeous ambience, you can hear the sound of someone tapping away at a keyboard.
Peculiar. A comment on the replacement of weaving with more desk-based workforms? Who knows.
Real fans of Cat Power probably hate this album as it smooths her idiosyncracies into a 'Dusty In Memphis' sweep of country-soul.
The title track and album opener, is a piano led essay in wistfulness and gentle regret. It sparkles with Cat Power's insouciant charm, meandering along behind sparse drums and an almost drunken violin.
About Sol Seppy I know nothing. Is it a band? Is it a she? What does Sol Seppy mean? Is it a type of industrial drain cleaner? Is it a name? Where are they/is she now?
What I do know is that 'Human' was a track on both a mini-album (Pssscheeow) and a full album (The Bells Of 1 2) in 2006. It's a spartan, fragile, piano-led piece of frosty beauty that echoes Susanna and the Magic Orchestra's sang froid balladry.
There's just a hint of yearning bubbling under the calm surface as it builds from piano and voice to a gentle crescendo of atmospherics and refracted piano and vocals.
The enigmatic Sufjan Stevens delivers a hushed, wondrous carol.
I've grown to love Sufjan Stevens over the last few years as it's taken that long for his songs to worm their way into my head. He has a very particular way about his songwriting.
This track is from a box of his low-key Christmas EPs released over a number of years and contains some real treats for the Indie Christmas household. It deserves to sit alongside the Low 'Christmas' EP as a modern classic.
Nice, matinee star cover of one of the Mary Chain's finest moments.
Obviously, it couldn't be as good as the original - 'Some Candy Talking' is a staggering hybrid of diamonds and dirt - but Richard Hawley pays tribute to the songwriting majesty of the Reid brothers.
Hawley smooths out some of the characterful creases in the Jesus & Mary Chain's sound but adds a sympathetic tone, some nice strings, an understated guitar solo and it's clear he loves the song.
It's a fitting reminder of how good they were - just as their six albums are remastered, repackaged and loaded with extras. I'll probably satisfy myself with 'Psychocandy' and 'Darklands' but am interested to hear 'Munki' too.
Some Foals juvenilia. 'Modern Art Is For Pricks' is from their debut 'Try This On Your Electric Piano' 7".
The band's sound developed significantly in the jump from this 7" on Try Harder to the muscular, math-y genius of their next release, the live 12" on Transgressive in 2007.
The sound is less dancefloor/bottom-end heavy and there's a different vocalist who is rocking a more expressive, less twitchy/funky style - a bit more Hope Of The States than Liquid Liquid.
You can still hear the genesis of the later sound, especially in the guitars which a pretty much display the interplay of 'Balloons', 'Cassius' et al.
Listen to his records and you'd think Richard Swift was/is a downtrodden, self-deprecating singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist from Oregon.
After a promising, critically lauded debut on Secretly Canadian, he defected to a major for his second album and it was choc-full of songs that told of his - self-professed - unsuitability for fame and/or success and his lack thereof.
His sound is a subdued but eloquent style of piano-led pop with echoes of Randy Newman and a neighbour of the sadly ignored Plush/Liam Hayes.
Swift's take on this single from Prince's career-high album 'Around The World The World In A Day' (see also Susanna's take on 'Condition Of The Heart') definitely sounds like Randy Newman or maybe Gilbert O'Sullivan somehow doing their 70s take on the purple master's psychedelic pop via the medium of time-travel.
Cute b-side action from Super Furry Animals' singer in his solo guise.
'Colossal Smile' is the flip to the aces 'Candylion' single. It's a simple, acoustic guitar and vocal, ramble with amusing lyrics. Shaker and whistling make for a nice instrumental break and make way for the immortal line "you changed my mind about Guns 'N' Roses".
A rather spiky cover of the Frankie Knuckles House classic from an early Friendly Fires release (the 'Photobooth' 10-inch).
A nicely metallic-edged bass is the dominant force in the record, abetted by some serrated guitar attack and breathless vocals. The drums drive the track on against the sequencer line that carries the keynote melody from the original but is then submerged in waves of vocal and guitar.
I can imagine this sending people over the edge live. Definitely in thrall to the early LCD Soundsystem stuff, with the dynamics suggesting the energy and rush of singles like 'Paris'.
Very nice slice of gently gothic, New Order-y pop (circa 'True Faith'/'1963') from the versatile and mysterious Piano Magic.
'Incurable' is built around an assertive, low-tech drum machine with a resolutely synthetic sound. It's accompanied by sonorous bass and eerie, intoned female vocals and it's an alt-pop gem. The track builds to a crescendo with distorted guitars, augmented by some very New Order-y metallic xylophone. Nice.
Prince's original is great, an epic of psychedelic balladry from 'Around The World In A Day' coming during his Imperial phase when he tossed out amazing songs on his way to the stack-heeled shoe store.
Scandinavian minimalist Susanna has delivered a wide range of amazing cover versions in a beautifully under-stated style - 'Love Will Tear Us Apart', 'Jolene', 'Crazy, Crazy Nights' (yes, the Kiss song), 'Jailbreak' and 'Lay All Your Love On Me' to name but a few that are up there with Arab Strap's version of 'Why Can't This Be Love' and Midlake's take on Black Sabbath in the incongruous covers stakes
Her take on 'Condition Of The Heart' is cracked, slow and quiet and just lays the song bare over a simple piano backing.
Ten minutes of elegant, evolving, epic post-rock for Sweden's Sickoakes on the excellent Type label.
'Taking The Stairs Instead Of The Elevator' wraps itself around a heavily-delayed riff that seems to climb endlessly like one of those Escher stairways. The bass weaving itself around the guitar and the restrained drums.
The sound is layered carefully, building slowly and organically. However, when a queasy layer of sax comes in around the six-minute mark, it sends a chill of excitement down your spine as an unexpected new element comes into play. From here, the energy builds and there's some piano added into the soundscape.
The sax then starts to blow freely, hitting a Stooges 'Fun House' kind of vibe but only subtly as it's quite low in the mix. We then head into a breakdown where the elements are pared down to delayed guitar taps and some dialogue tape, winding to a fade rather than the explosive hit that might be expected from the genre. Restrained.
Today's treat is a Belle and Sebastian session track from Mark Radcliffe's show in 2006. 'Funny Little Frog' is an infectious piece of whimsy from their (second) career peak album 'The Life Pursuit'.
Full on funky bassline, surf-y guitar, brass attack and a lovely, lovely instrumental break, all enhanced by the slightly breathless live performance. What's not to like.
Arctic Monkeys surreptitiously came back with the posting of new track 'Brick By Brick' on their website last week.
It still bears the rock hallmarks of having worked with Queens Of The Stone Age's Josh Homme on the last album. The new album ('Suck It And See' - out in June) was produced entirely with James Ford in LA but if 'Brick By Brick' is representative, it's not a return to the spiky pop of the first two albums.
'Brick By Brick' is a little more direct and catchy/hooky than most of 'Humbug' but it's still distinctly rocks. And it comes with a vinyl fetishist video (links below).
The slight taint of disappointment sent me scurrying back to the 2006 live album that came with the 'Live At The Apollo' DVD. 'Still Take You Home' is a fresh and cheeky as any of their songs but it's rendered more muscular in this live incarnation.
Guillemots burst into being a few years ago and promised great things as a pop band of exquisite sensibilities - harmonious, infection but with an interesting grab-bag of influences from jazz to the avant-garde.
'Trains To Brazil' is a swooning, insistent, hard-bopping swing with a stream-of-conscience lyric, swirling to a thunderous close with so much going on in the mix.
After the first album and the preceding EP of singles I have say I think they lost their way a bit but listening back to the jazz-inflected groove of 'Go Away' makes me look forward to hearing the new stuff that is soon-come.
