SLEPT-ON BANDS
Finally checked out some bands that some of my friends like but never bothered to check out personally.
Lemuria - Pants
Lemuria is a three-piece from Buffalo, NY with a female vocalist that's hard to pigeonhole. Basically came across this track on somebody's mixtape I downloaded. Rhythmically and lyrically interesting track. You'll have to do with this live version or the acoustic version below though.
Jawbreaker - Want
Jawbreaker is a cult band in the punk (rock) scene. "Want" is a song from their debut album and features a pretty nifty intro bassline, a catchy chorus and pretty indecipherable lyrics. Check below!
Jawbreaker - Bad scene, everyone's fault
Apparently, following (more punk rock-oriented) track from the final and more polished "Dear You"-album made the soundtrack of some sports videogame, endangering the cult-status of the band.
Jawbreaker - Do you still hate me?
Track from the "24 hour revenge therapy"-album, often considered as their finest piece of work. You can never lose with a title like that. "Are you happy? Do you hear me? Can I call you? Do you still hate me?". Such a good tempo change towards the middle part of the song, and supercool guitar solo to close things off.
SLEPT-ON BANDS: ACOUSTIC COVERS
While searching for the youtube links for the above tracks, I stumbled upon the acoustic version by this female performer. She does such a good job turning the "Want"-track into a Dashboard Confessional-esque version. The rendition of "Pants" is pretty good too, and the other 2 tracks aren't perfect but a good song choice nevertheless. She has versions up of a lot of other Jawbreaker and Lemuria tracks, and then some Descendents and other punkrock bands too. As an extra plus, the lyrics are usually much easier to make out in her versions too.
Jawbreaker - Want (acoustic cover)
Lemuria - Pants (acoustic cover)
Saves The Day - The Choke (acoustic cover)
New Found Glory - The story so far (acoustic cover)
POPULAR STUFF
Moving on the more mainstream stuff.
Yeasayer - Madder red
Yeasayer played the Werchter and the Pukkelpop festivals, and are playing another club show in the fall, so it's un understatement to say these New Yorkers are extensively touring Europe. This song is really catchy, and the video featuring Kristin Bell from Heroes/Veronica Mars-fame is actually quite touching.
Crookers ft. Yelle - Cooler Couleur
Hip Italo producer-duo featuring the queen of the now defunct Tectonic genre in a supercatchy track.
The Ting Tings - Hands
Brand new track from The Tings Tings, continuing their "Keep it simple, stupid"-strategy for making pop music, and it again proves to be highly effective. Watch some leg and see-through action from Katie in this video fast before it disappears from youtube again (although this link is from their official VEVO page, but you never know). Haven't researched which part of England Katie's from, but I love how she pronounces 'working' as 'wo-i-king'.
Hurts - Wonderful life
Their stylish videos prove that someone at their record company really believes in this London duo, bringing back the emotional synthpop from the eighties. They played a decent set at Pukkelpop, and seem to be gaining some popularity. This slow track succeeds in never really getting boring or overly corny.
RANDOM
Summer Camp - Ghost train
We already had Dum Dum Girls and Best Coast in the previous posts, but retro-influenced bands just keep coming. The retro videos are cool, but the production (especially on the "Round the moon"-track) is pretty extreme, you love it or you hate it, although I'm still a little undecided regarding this band.
Summercamp - Drawer
Summer camp reminds me of this forgotten band from the nineties that got played on Headbanger's Ball a couple of times back in the day, proving again that bands like Helmet, Hum and others fell victim to media that just didn't know how to place the whole landscape in between rock and heavy music in the nineties. Pretty cool track, too bad the original video isn't on youtube.
Spitalfield - I loved the way she said LA
This is still one of my favourite tracks from those glorious punkrock/emo days, I always figured they came up with the title themselves, big surprise when I got to page 79 of my sister's English copy of "On the Road" by Jack Kerouac; the title of this track is featured somewhere on page 79.
Warpaint is a moderate new hype, another one the west coast. They play long, meandering, slightly fuzzy tracks, not unlike Sonic Youth at time, and have a lot of females in their ranks, which you will see in the next videos. They play the AB 30th of October, I might be there if it doesn't sell out.
Warpaint - Elephants
Warpaint - Beetle
RETRO
The Raveonettes - I wanna be adored (The Stone Roses cover)
With all the new bands that have the girl band influences, people forget that The Raveonettes are the originators and have been doing this style for almost ten years now. Impossible to top the original version, they do a good job at this britpop classic by The Stone Roses, sticking very close to the original, using female vocals and some synths.
The Coral - Thousand years
Everybody forgot about The Coral after "Dreaming of you", but they're still making albums. The new single sounds so retro, you probably wouldn't distinguish this from tracks that are actually from the sixties.
The Like - Wishing he was dead
Here we are again, another modern girl group. Will this one do better than The Pipettes? They get slightly more credibility for at least playing some instruments themselves.
The Beach Boys - Help me, Rhonda
Never heard this track until a couple of weeks back. Good stuff.
Closing off with the truest cartoon that was ever drawn.
