Listen of the week: Lykke Li, White Rabbits, new Passion Pit

I'll probably have a chance to shed more light on these listens later this week, but I wanted to share them now while I'm all pumped up about them.

First, my friend brought over the Lykke Li debut album, Youth Novels, last Friday for a dinner party at my house. I had never heard of this Swedish lady, but my friend promised that I would like her music, and indeed I do. When I asked my friend what Lykke Li sounds like, she told me it's along the same lines of indie electronica like Passion Pit and Peter Bjorn and John, and I was in immediately. The key to the PB&J sound is that Youth Novels was actually produced by Bjorn. I'm blessed to have such a good friend and to live in a world where I can listen to this.

I honestly can't even tell you how many times I've heard about White Rabbits in the past month, but I just tonight heard the band for the first time. The drum intro on "Percussion Gun" is instantly reminiscent of Bow Wow Wow's "Aphrodesiac" and Adam and the Ants' "Kings of the Wild Frontier." Thankfully, the White Rabbits song gets more original as the song progresses, and turns into something I'm going to be giving a closer listen to over the next few days. Check it here:



Lastly for now, the new Passion Pit CD, Manners, came out today. Last night the fellows kicked it SNL digital short style with their CD release party on a boat- yes, they were on a boat! Sweet. I hope to bring you some sort of news about that in the next few days. Til then, I keep listening to Passion Pit on repeat, in between plays of Lykke Li's "Little Bit," and my favorites so far are "Moth's Wings" and "The Reeling." I guess I'm on to something, because "The Reeling" seems to be the new single. Here's the music video released a few weeks ago:

Found Friday

I think I'll start doing something on Fridays, like posting something I found throughout the week. For this week, I found a video on Pitchfork today that is one I've been hearing about all week: the new Matt & Kim music video for "Lessons Learned" off their latest release, Grand, in which the couple runs through Times Square first in complete winter gear, stripping down until they are naked. I mean, butt naked, both of them. Then, the police attempt to arrest them, or maybe just grope them, but they make an escape that looks in no way narrow- Kim just eases out of the officers grip, but then...I won't tell you what happens at the end, don't want to spoil the element of surprise.

Matt & Kim "Lessons Learned"


More Matt & Kim.

Papercuts

Today's discovery: San Francisco-based band Papercuts. Very Beach Boys meets Beach House. Check out this video until I have time to do a proper write up:

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart

Greetings from the land of article writing procrastination. Today I will entertain you with my thoughts on The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, not to be confused with notions of a self-help book. This 4-piece Brooklyn-based band has seemingly blown up overnight thanks to a little thing known as Pitchfork (PFork's review, overall reviews on Metacritic), but then also thanks to the band's generally awesome music.

First of all, let’s just take a minute to contemplate the name of this band. It captures in one breathtakingly long phrase the notion that anyone who is inherently good by nature will probably experience some form of disappointment. Because why? Because the world is generally shitty? Because people who are nice get walked on? Because they get their hearts broken? Because of any other number of reasons? Probably yes, to all of these queries.

But then there’s also the sense that this is a totally pop music band name, with “The Pains” being an easy abbreviation that triggers thoughts of The Beatles or the Killers, or The Smiths.

The Smiths is where the thoughts really start going, because the music is so reminiscent of their 1984 self-titled release. The main difference is definitely in the vocals, with The Pains being more anthem-based sing-a-longs, but the same idea of crooning understatedly is at heart in both albums.

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart tap into the pubescent stage of their lives for main lyric topics, especially in “Young Adult Friction,” with lines like “between the stacks in the library/ not like anyone stopped to see/ we came they went, our bodies spent/ among the dust and the microfiche.” This is all cleverly combined with the idea of library checkouts being somehow tied to checking a human being out from head to toe. I like it.

If you are in the Columbus area, The Pains are playing at the Summit on May 1, and if you're not in Columbus, check out the rest of their tour dates.

Check out the music video for "Everything With You":

Here We Go Magic

So I should definitely be focusing all of my writing energies right now on my article with a looming deadline, but instead I'm choosing to spend my time sharing my latest discovery with you all.

I'm sitting at Cafe Apropos, where they always have Sirius XMU playing. There are worse things to hear in a coffee shop, especially when you discover that the song you're listening to is by a band you've been reading a lot about but haven't heard yet: Here We Go Magic. The song: Tunnelvision



I first heard about this band a few weeks ago because Edward Droste from Grizzly Bear is way into this band, ergo Here We Go Magic is touring with the Grizzlies this spring/summer. This makes me doubly sad that this tour doesn't make a stop in Ohio, but maybe dates will be added for July and August that are closer to the big O.

So here's what I've found out about this band: First of all, the band name is pretty sweet. I don't even care if it's a reference to Harry Potter or if it's about drugs or whatever, it just makes me smile. It seems that there is one guy, Luke Temple, who does everything on the recordings, but he tours with some other dudes and dudettes (Peter Hale, Mike Bloch, AJ Lambert, Kristina Lieberson) so that there is actually something to experience live.

The sound: To me, I hear looping guitar that seems to hold hands with some toned down Animal Collective songs, but with a sound very very similar to Grizzly Bear at the same time. The tone is rather haunting in a way that hooks me in, and makes me happy that the sounds seem to go in circles and always come back to me. To play the devil's advocate, my friend Kyle says it's not for him because it's "really repetitive, but no energy." So there you go.

The latest self-titled Here We Go Magic record was released in March, and you can see how the critics rate it here.