I am not a huge Beach House fan because of their dreamy, droning tastes on their first two albums. The first song here, Used to Be, is a change-up. Not rock, but melodic and rhythmic, with a satisfying jab of electric guitar. It circles my head a lot during the day.
If you already like Beach House, I highly recommend at least the first track. It has that same woozy/dreamy/creamy/falling-back-into-a-cloud sound that I love about Beach House. Get it, don't hesitate!
On their fourth album Bloom, Alex Scally and Victoria Legrand present a stronger picture of the overcast dream-pop aesthetic they've maintained since their 2006 debut. And, much like an abstract painting, Teen Dream's glossier older sibling offers plenty of mystery. It features some of their most obtuse verses ("You build yourself a myth/ And know just what to give") and some of their darker narratives (In "Wild," the young narrator recalls living with a drunk… more »
Whether you're happily married or told Cupid to shove it a long time ago, we can all agree on one thing: to quote the one-and-only Nazareth, "Love hurts/ Love scars/ Love wounds/ And mars." Or something. That's why we went ahead and compiled a list of 36 Songs To Soothe the Pain, from the bloodletting confessionals of Neko Case, Bright Eyes and Sunny Day Real Estate to the melancholic melodies of Sigur Rós, the Shangri-Las… more »
[eMusic Selects is a program designed by eMusic to give exposure to unsigned or undersigned bands. This month's selections are Strand of Oaks and Family Band] The arresting, winter-bitten folk songs of Family Band feel like dispatches from some older, crueler place and time: a typhoid-wracked 18th-century town, perhaps, or a medieval village gripped by witch trials. In reality, it is the project of two latter-day Brooklyn expats — Kim Krans, a visual artist, and her… more »
No offense to eMusic's previous Selects artists, but I get the sense that the only one of the bunch that could become a genuine pop star is one Randolph Chabot. Under the name Deastro, Chabot writes the sort of pop songs that make you swoon - and then wraps them in a hyper-colored gloss of synthesizer sturm und drang. M83 is a reference point for Keeper's, his eMusic Selects release, but it's not quite accurate:… more »
