For an average Gen-X guy like me who grew up in the 80’s listening to The Cure, The Thompson Twins, Joy Division and New Order, Bauhaus, Gene Loves Jezebel and other MTV-like Euro New Wave/Post punk acts, Cell Phone Camera, the new album from the Canadian outfit Rep by Pop instantly grabbed my attention and gets regular play on my show The New Spin. Though the album’s punchier first half is stronger than the more U2-like rockin’ second half, Cell Phone Camera is all very fun and upbeat, fusing together everything I loved about the 80’s and then some. For you youg’uns, I’d put them in the Franz Ferdinand, Interpol, Cut Copy, Of Montreal, and The Rapture family.

Timothy Kingston’s voice has an uncanny ability to drift from sounding like Robert Smith to Bono to that lead singer dude of Gene Loves Jezebel in “Spray Paint.” A few songs sound like early U2 backed by the early Cure, and “Bisbifren”, “Comfort Me and Comfort You” and “Cell Phone Camera” have immediate hooks with the latter having a wicked wah-wah/flanging guitar patch I salivate over every time I hear it. I love “Unknown” with its transcendent, uplifting quality.

This band has the potential to blow up huge and “sell out,” though that’s near-impossible to do these days, and as any new spinner might know by now, I don’t like bands that stick to formulas, but nonetheless I wish great success for this band. Though Rep by Pop is clearly inspired by the 80’s sound, thankfully they aren’t trying to copy it so much as use the sounds of the 80s like an artist does with a palette of colors. The challenge for them, for any band really, is to push their familiar sound rather than be swallowed by it. Needless to say, Cell Phone Camera stands out in all the right ways. Here’s a vid:

Read other reviews here.

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Exciting new Canadian electronica act, hellothisisalex has released their new album, the accidentals, using a blend of 8-bit video game music (think Commodore 64 or the Atari 2600) and moog patches, or chipcore, as their inspiration, similar to other bands using this sonic footprint such as Crystal Castles, Tobacco, and Black Moth Super Rainbow. I’d count Plone in there as well, recently made famous by none other than that Reese’s Peanut Buttercup commercial that ran all summer, taking us back to the days when patches on a keyboard were literally patched together by cables, not a button you could just push to change the “patch.”

Entirely instrumental, with smatterings of vocal samples and other creative digitalis, the album ranges from downtempo and chill to upbeat and fun to downright avant-garde. One listen isn’t nearly enough to catch all of the varied nuances this thrilling piece of electronica has to offer. Some tracks may stand out more than others, but the accidentals needs to be listened to with all the senses, like appreciating a fine wine or exotic cheese. You can’t get all the flavors in one bite. It goes deeper, and all the songs work together like an elaborately patched quilt (pun intended.)

A word of warning: it’s not a four-on-the-floor party starter, but I can imagine today’s DJs remixing their tunes for the club.

This video, inspired by their visit here in Newfoundland of all places says it all. Lobster Cove Head is in Gros Morne National Park and served as their inspiration for their new song, which also appears on the new album.

To learn more and to get your hands on the album, check out their website. You can also listen to cuts from the accidentals on my new show on electronic music, Other Frequencies, Tuesdays at 10PM on CHMR-FM, 8:30 Eastern.

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Like folk songs about vegetables, desserts and animal fables? Varied instrumentation like accordions, banjos and fiddles, tubas and trumpets? Neutral Milk Hotel’s Jeff Mangum’s scratchy warble? Then you’ll love Philadelphia’s mewithoutYou’s new album, it’s all crazy! it’s all false! it’s all a dream! it’s alright just released on Tooth and Nail Records. I am crazy for this album, easily one of the best under-the-radar albums of the year so far.

NPR has just posted their list of their listeners’ best music so far, and I’m clearly whistling to another dixie as any listener of The New Spin might attest to. Yes, a lot of the artists on the list are great, there’s no question, but it’s clear that the stars of the indie world are launching further into the limelight of what we call mainstream, and the indie label/sound starts to get obfuscated in a quagmire of pleasing-to-the-ear melody and harmony that speaks so loudly to a common denominator that I have to dig even deeper to root for the “best music you’ve never heard,” which is the mission I have set for myself for The New Spin.

This album is so great, you’ll just have to see this video to get a sense of what it has in store for you. For fans of the “ballads” of Neutral Milk Hotel, Okkervil River, The Mountain Goats, and The Decemberists.

Listen to another track from this album tonight on The New Spin, tonight at 9-11 PM, 7:30 Eastern, 4:30 Pacific. Streams tonight online here.

And now a few unique details about the album…

Aaron Weiss’s lyrics are somewhat inspired by the Sufi mystic, Bawa Muhaiyaddeen

Their tour van often runs on vegetable oil.

The Weiss brothers are currently doing a little tour in August, but it’s not a mewithoutYou tour. Important to know. It’s called The Weiss Family Tour. They’re actually playing at The Cat’s Cradle in Chapel Hill, my stomping grounds at one point when going to UNC-CH.

They made Paste Magazine’s Band of the Week. Just the week?

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make a video for 99 bucks, like this one here, directed by Jack Ferry, using rotoscoping, a camera, and a calculator, keeping the costs down, which is important in today’s economy! the song’s not bad, either. then submit your video to this site. interesting concept, let’s stay tuned to see what happens with this. question: why not just do this yourself and submit it on youtube? why do you need this site?

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album cover of Short Momentum

hot out of the long-ago hardened molten lava of the seattle music scene, perhaps signifying a pheonix out of the ashes rebirth, the Origami Ghosts have a new album that i’ve been playing on The New Spin since we received it in November, and i still haven’t heard much about it. It’s called Short Momentum, but we’ll see whether it’s short or not. This will be for fans of Modest Mouse and Built to Spill et. al, but also for fans who like cellos in their music as you can see from their latest video, which shows them doing their thing at their lo-fi-iest, which, if you might have read from my post on indie music, is what indie music was all about as it gained a long, gradual momentum in the 80’s as featured in Michael Azzerad’s great book, Our Band Could Be Your Life, one of the lyrics in a Minutemen song.

Speaking of lyrics, the lyrics on Short Momentum are nice surreal musings, such as here in “Story” where John Scesniak ponders, “Where do thoughts go when you forget them?” I don’t know, but George Bowling in Orwell’s Coming Up for Air would respond, “The past is a curious thing. It’s with you all the time.” (I found this quote in Andy Miller’s book about The Kinks, if you were wondering.)  

Here’s that video. Yes, Seattle is still live and kicking, clearly, and Sub Pop for some reason didn’t pick this outfit up. Maybe there’s a “story” behind that.

Origami Ghosts at Plea for Peace Stockton

Other favorite tracks of mine are “Endless Corridors,” “Rearranging Furniture,” and “Conditional.” They are a band to watch out for in 2009 for sure.

Related Posts on Indie Music:

Intermission…A short history of indie Music

Why I don’t Play Coldplay on The New Spin

Old-school Garage punk

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I posted this on thenewspin.ca last week.

Featured Artist of the Week: Samamidon

for fans of folk music, Samamidon is from Vermont and his voice reminds me of Nick Drake, but man is this dude skinny…like me! I just can’t believe that voice comes out of that little body, but what a voice!

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Here is Tobacco’s new video of Side 8 from his new album Fucked Up Friends, which gets constant play on The New Spin. Tobacco is also the dude who’s mainly responsible for Black Moth Super Rainbow, which to me is a very fuzzy Air with more grit. They have fun with the vocoders at any rate. Both albums need to be checked out, and thanks goes out to Sarah Blackmore who hosts The Show on CHMR for helping me discover this video which is fookin’ hilarious! I’m not sure what the ninja/golf scene has to do with the swimming exercises, but the nonsequitisation is of course it’s charm.

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sprial beach

Spiral Beach is a thrash/pop/dance-punk/rock outfit out of Toronto and they have a sick new EP called Bonus. Their EP has been getting lots of rotation on The New Spin, especially the track “Made of Stone,” which begins with one of the most wicked guitar riffs ever to trigger a track. They share the same “high kicks” energy as another New Spin-featured band, The Stolen Minks.

Apparently they do shows that include all sorts of carnivalesque jungle-gym escapades complete with bright balloons, kaleidoscopic vid screens, and all-ages playgrounds with ropes and tire swings.  Sounds some wicked. You can listen to their last album, Ball, on their website.

Here’s the video for “Made of Stone.”

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cover of Alphabutt

My review of this wonderful, crazy-ass, scatologically delightful children’s album can be read online in this week’s edition of Current Magazine, pg. 15

You may or may not be familiar with Kimya Dawson, but you’ve probably seen the movie Juno and if so, then you’ve heard her songs, which are peppered so liberally throughout that gem of a film. Her songs have her quirky voice, those cutesy, twee/C-86 lyrics and that “shambling” DIY sound, a trademark of many artists on K records. She was also a key member in the anti-folk scene that grew out of New York in the mid 80’s, specifically her work with The Moldy Peaches, which is also featured on the Juno Soundtrack.

Though some critics were surprised, to me it seems fitting that her next project would become a children’s album; after all, her parents operate a home daycare and she became a mother of her “Little Panda Bear.” Read my full review here, pg. 15.

And her myspace page is wonderful. 

Here’s a video of “We’re All Animals.”

in sound,

dashiell brown

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I play this song all the time on The New Spin, so check out this video. Herman Dune are brothers of Jewish descent from Stockholm and were propelled into the limelight by John Peel. His latest album, Next Year in Zion, is fantastically orginal and has the homegrown anti-folk sound that sprung from New York in the early 80’s. When Lach got kicked out of Folk City, he started a place for folkies that were “too punk,” the Sidewalk Cafe in the East Village–this began a rebellion against the commercialization of the mainstream folk-scene that dominted in Greenwhich Village. Read more about it here in NY Times. I actually played there ten years ago, and Lach was still the MC there for open-mic night. It turns out that Lach’s new album The Calm Before is nominated for a Grammy in the “Best Contemporary Folk/Americana” category. In celebration of this, he has the entire album streaming here. It’s not my favorite, but certainly worth a listen–there are some gems on it.

Herman Dune is currently on tour with Arcade Fire and The Kooks. The John Natchez Bourbon Horn Players give a wonderfully full sound on the album, who also lend a hand to Arcade Fire and Beirut.  For fans of Johnny Cash, Calexico, and anywhere in between, this is my Track O’ the Week for sure.

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