Tip jar

If you like CaB and wish to support it, you can use PayPal or KoFi. Thank you, and I hope you continue to enjoy the site - Neil.

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Support CaB

Recent

Welcome to Cook'd and Bomb'd. Please login or sign up.

March 29, 2024, 02:19:30 PM

Login with username, password and session length

An Alternative History of "Pop" Music: Part 3, 2004 -

Started by jamiefairlie, October 25, 2021, 04:39:14 AM

Previous topic - Next topic
Josh Rouse - Salton Sea


Nebraskan singer-songwriter Josh Rouse has featured on this thread before, I'm sure. This track is from the Love and the Modern Age, which marked a stylistic change to a sound influenced by 80s synth-pop and bands like Prefab Sprout and the Blue Nile.

Anna Calvi - Don't Beat the Girl Out of My Boy


A London-based singer-songwriter of Italian descent with a powerful, almost operatic voice. This is track is from her third, and most recent, album Hunter.

Ballad of Ballard Berkley

Lia Pamina & Dario Persi - So Far Tonight




As part of my ongoing campaign to nominate everything Elefant Records have ever released, I present to you this charming surge of faux Merseybeat. Lia Pamina is a Yeh Yeh influenced singer/songwriter from Spain. Dario Parsi is the frontman for Italian power poppers Radio Days. This is the lead track from a collaborative EP they released in 2018.

jamiefairlie

We Are Muffy - Civil Service

https://youtu.be/PI_X44njCmI



duo consists of Angeline Morrison of the Mighty Sceptres and Nick Duffy, the man responsible for twanging all the esoteric instruments on all those Lilac Time albums

From "The Charcoal Pool"

"It's a beautiful, slow burner of an album which would make you feel homesick for Merrie-olde England, even if you were born in Azerbaijan. Hopefully, it's so out of step with whatever is in the pop charts at the moment; it'll become a real alternative smash and be bought in armfuls by contrarians and refuseniks"

The Saxophones - Picture


A second appearance (I think) for husband/wife duo The Saxophones, with a mellow, woodwind-tinged outing from the album Songs of the Saxophones.

Olden Yolk - Vital Sign


We've already had a selection from Lovely Eggs for 2018, so here's one from the self-titled debut album by Olden Yolk, a psych/folk rock duo formed by Boston/New York musicians Shane Butler and Caity Schaffer, the latter of whom takes lead vocals on this track.

jamiefairlie

48 Hour Alert!

2019 will open for business on Saturday night

The Berries - Junkyard Dog


The Berries is effectively a solo project for Matt Berry - a Seattle-based musician who shares a name with some guy you might have seen on TV (and earlier entries on this thread). His/their 2018 debut album Start All Over Again falls somewhere towards the more rootsy end of US indie.


Parquet Courts - Total Football


I'll admit that, overall, this band have never quite done it for me, but I find it difficult to resist this spiky tune and its football/politics metaphor. From the album Wide Awake!

Ballad of Ballard Berkley

Eli "Paperboy" Reed & Big Daddy Kane - 99 Cent Dreams


Dig that summer breeze.

Eli "Paperboy" Reed is an American singer/songwriter in thrall to classic soul and R&B. In 2018 he hooked up with the hugely influential hip-hop legend Big Daddy Kane.

Beak> - Brean Down


Beak> are an 'experimental electronic rock band' collaborative project between Geoff Barrow of Portishead and musicians Billy Fuller and Will Young (not that one) and this was the lead t4ack released to promote their third album Beak 3.

Tanuchikan - Lazy Love


From Sundays, the sole album to date by Tanuchikan, aka Hannah van Loon, a Californian musician and former member of the band Trails and Ways. The album was co-written and produced by Chaz Bear of Toro y Moi, and tends towards the louder, grungier end of shoegaze (if there is such a thing).

Neighbor Lady - Oh Honey


Formed in Athens, Georgia by vocalist and songwriter Emily Braden, this track is from their seven-track debut (mini) album of Southern-tinged indie pop, Maybe Later.


jamiefairlie

Allah-Las - Polar Onion

https://youtu.be/R9r3sJcxWtQ



Psychedelic rock band from Los Angeles, formed in 2008.

From "LAHS"

"their jingle-jangle shimmer makes you feel so good. Former employees of the Los Angeles record shop Amoeba Music, the Allah-Las are a record collector's band, owing a clear debt to such cult classics as Gene Clark's No Other and Love's Forever Changes"

Ballad of Ballard Berkley

Mattiel - Keep the Change




QuoteMattiel are an Atlanta-based band fronted by Mattiel Brown. They have been championed by Jack White, who took them out on arena shows around the US. Rolling Stone compared Brown's "gorgeously yearning, full-voiced alto range" to Nico, while NPR wrote: "There's something delightfully unique about Mattiel's music. A pinch of garage rock, a touch of psychedelia, some galloping honky-tonk and at the lead, Mattiel Brown's powerful and assertive vocals."

Better Oblivion Community Center - Dylan Thomas


Better Oblivion Community Center is/was a collaboration between Conor Oberst and Phoebe Bridgers, and this track is taken from their sole album to date (self-titled), from 2019.

Dent May - That's Why I Came to California


A cover version by LA musician Dent May of a 1982 track by smooth R&B/soul singer Leon Ware, both the original and this cover version give off a strong vibe of the genre that's come to be known as yacht rock, so be warned!

jamiefairlie

Angel Olsen - All Mirrors

https://youtu.be/Jjt698Zv5jQ




From "All Mirrors"

"The breathtaking songs of Angel Olsen's fifth album are fleshed out by a 12-piece string section and deliver grand gestures about romance, authenticity, and being simply at the mercy of how we feel. Angel Olsen is a natural at writing mantras for jaded souls"

jamiefairlie

Bedouine - When You're Gone

https://youtu.be/XPxu-lNhU_g



Azniv Korkejian, Los Angeles based folk musician, born in Aleppo, Syria


From "Bird Songs of a Killjoy"

"Overall, Bird Songs Of A Killjoy is the sound of someone recording exactly what they want to. Nothing here feels out of place, or sounds like a pastiche of another era. Bedouine has found herself a winning formula"

jamiefairlie

Beirut - I Giardini

https://youtu.be/V8CIUr5Felw




From "Gallipoli "

"In all Galipolli is the sound of one of our most talented musicians rediscovering his love for what he was born to do. It's Zach Condon's career highlight so far and shows that he's at his best when he enjoys making music and cares less about what critics and fans might think of it."

Lungpuddle

Madisen Ward and the Mama Bear - Saturday Morning Cartoons

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJrmqcX5Src

Mother and son duo from Independence, Missouri. Heard them thanks to Paul Heaton recommending youtube videos, if I remember correctly. Their first album was fantastic but that was in 2015, I should've posted something from it then (highly recommend Silent Movies and Down in Mississippi). This is from their second album, which is more stripped back and intimate. Also fantastic. They also have a podcast which is usually a twenty- to thirty-minute chat between the pair and is the most charming podcast I've ever heard.

This particular song is comparatively frivolous compared to others in their catalogue, and maybe if you're not already on board it'll pass through you completely, but you'll be missing out if you don't follow.

Ballad of Ballard Berkley

Elva - Athens




Elva are a Norway-based indie-pop group fronted by married couple Elizabeth and Ola Morris Innset. Elizabeth is no stranger to this thread, as she used to front 'Allo Darlin'. Ola is formerly of Making Marks.

This is taken from their debut album, Winter Sun.

Lungpuddle

Quote from: Ballad of Ballard Berkley on July 04, 2022, 05:27:00 PMElva - Athens
Elizabeth is no stranger to this thread, as she used to front 'Allo Darlin'. Ola is formerly of Making Marks.

Met her at the Allo Darlin' merch stall at a London gig, she is utterly lovely. Great song, I've got the Dreaming with Our Feet single too. I really hope Elva release more in the future. To me their music is a lovely harbour in the storm.

jamiefairlie

Bibio - Watch the Flies

https://youtu.be/WKViApU1m0g




Stephen James Wilkinson, producer from UK.

From "Ribbons "

"There is a classicism to the songs that give Ribbons a mature, lived in feel but also dislocates it from any specific era, giving it a unique and distinctive feel."

jamiefairlie

Black Belt Eagle Scout - Run It to Ya

https://youtu.be/mj7OSqOrQW4




Katherine Paul

From "At the Party With My Brown Friends"

"It's one of those rare, almost perfect follow-up, albums from a promising artist unafraid of taking her music to even more thrilling places without sacrificing what made it so compelling to begin with"

jamiefairlie

Boy Harsher - Lost

https://youtu.be/RvpVbsbhxOo



minimal synth duo that produces dance beats infused with ethereal vocals. The music created is somewhere between electro dance, synth-pop and confessional storytelling

From "Careful "

"It's easy to imagine these tracks playing well to the goth clubs of the world, but it's chiseled and streamlined in a way that suggests it might also slip into the cracks of a techno set. That in-betweenness is what makes Boy Harsher's work, and that of their peers, so interesting."

Andrew Bird - Manifest


Andrew Bird has featured on this thread before but this track is from his album My Finest Work Yet, so it stands to reason that it must be included here. An environmental anthem of sorts, albeit that its message is delivered in typically oblique style by Bird, the track and its parent album were recorded with the full band playing live in the studio, giving it an 'organic' sound.

Westerman - Kathy's Song


A Simon and Garfunkel cover, but done in a minimalist electronic style very different from the original. Westerman is the surname-only moniker of Will Westerman, a lo-fi pop singer-songwriter from London, and this track appeared on 4 Down, the fourth volume of cover versions that the artist covering the song  'wishes they'd written themselves', released by indie label DEEK Recordings.

Brundle-Fly

The Empty Boat - The Fantasy Orchestra feat.Kate Stables.  Released on coloursandsounds in 2019.





Beguiling cover of a song written by the veteran Brazilian guitarist, composer and Tropicália maestro, Caetano Veloso. Slightly evokes the plaintive woodwind sounds of Vernon "The Clangers" Elliot, oddly.

The Fantasy Orchestra is a community project led by Jesse D Vernon, based in Paris and also in Bristol.  It started as the house band for a series of events in Bristol called The Greatness Of The Magnificence which he'd been organising since the early noughties. The Orchestra (motto: 'more is more') brings together 40+ musicians, professional and amateur, to create a kaleidoscopic symphonic brigade. Kate Stables is This Is The Kit.