With your post Thanksgiving digestion giving off those sedentary tryptophan vibes, it is time to take a brief moment to reflect upon what we are not thankful for this season. Could have done without that new Rihanna and Drake collaboration that I heard on the radio, forget the Cut Copy hype, or your buddy who can’t stop talking why the XX is the greatest thing on earth, that new Sufjy Stevens album, the omnipresent Kanye cult of personality, your cousin’s new religious declaration at the dinner table coupled with racist rants from that one Tea Party sympathizing uncle of yours that no forward thinking person in the family can stand but had to invite anyway for the sake of chill “togetherness” vibes. Now that we have that out of system, let us mine through some of the pop gems that have made this past week barely tolerable for us, in no particular order.
San Francisco’s Eux Autres have a little Christmas album featured on Myspace instead of the site of a mega “big box” retailer. Having just released their third LP Broken Bow, the brother and sister duo Heather and Nicholas Larimer are taking on what some are deriding as a substantive Best Coast by virtue of not overtly dumbing down their lyrics but rather resting comfortably on rhyming platitudes of “scattered,” “never mattered,” and of course “forever” for good measure on their track, “Go Dancing.”
Also from SF and released this week, check out the dark stylings of Soft Moon’s debut self-titled album from Captured Tracks. Luis Vasquez creates an eerie and airy quality that will bring to mind the history of creepy computer game soundtracks from Quake to Call of Duty. No fooling.
San Diego’s Tape Deck Mountain has made plans to release their upcoming EP Secret Serf January 11 of 2011 on Lefse Records. Expounding upon 2009’s Ghost, frontman Travis Trevisan has created some great wind tunnel guitar and vox as evident in this featured track, “P.I.” The press rumor mill tells me that Trevisan is this economy’s working class hero through his part time working gigs as a repo man and helping out an elderly neighbor with his landscaping. Sure signs of a real American patriot we all can be proud of as we huddled masses press play on our collective ‘Pods.
If you didn’t know Demon’s Claws came from Montreal you would swear they were from some gritty one-horse town somewhere out in the boondocks of Mississippi. Their recent release of The Defrosting of… [censored for legal reasons, ellipses traded in for the alleged cryogenic frozen cadaver of Walt Disney] on In the Red records features Jeff Clarke sounding even more backwoods Americana than on 2007’s amazing Satan’s Pet Pig. Listen to “Mona’s Lunch” for further evidence of this sweaty, scummy, belligerent filth. Next year these dudes are rumored to set out on a North American tour and will be in dire need of couches to crash on and/or set ablaze.
As the David Keenan anointed “hypnagogic pop” world turns, Chaz Bundick has informed us that Toro Y Moi will release a sophomore album entitled Underneath the Pine. This effort is supposed to be his acoustic sophomore record, as Bundick has hinted at with his recent organic style Daytrotter Session of a handful of numbers from his debut 2009 release, Causers of This. I was surprised to hear that Bundick didn’t go the Target route like some of his contemporaries to perhaps make a chilled out track to celebrate the yearly commerce cluster fuck otherwise known as “Black Friday.” Underneath the Pine will be released on Carpark February 22 of next year.
Also on the hypna-whatchamacalit front is this Dubliner named Patrick Kelleher who has made some of the chillest dance tunes this year. Under the moniker of Patrick Kelleher & His Cold Dead Hands, he has made the impressive and limited Contact Sports 7-inch earlier this year and a host of some other fun jams on his ‘Space profile.
And remember when we broke you that new White Fence single “Lillian” last August? Well, now it’s an official single entitled “Lilian (Won’t You Play Drums?) and the official album title has been revealed as White Fence… Is Growing Faith, to be released January 10 on Woodsist Records. Crazier still is that “Lilian” is only the tip of the iceberg on this release that already sounds like it dwarfs the self-titled released earlier this year, featuring fellow track heavy weights “Growing Faith,” “And By Always,” and more. Don’t miss them at SF’s Hemlock January 9. Enjoy and remember that your good ol’ friends here at Goldmine Sacks brought it to you first.
And if you want to hear highlights from Domino’s 6 disc-massive Orange Juice release Coals to Newcastle, look no further than here:
Think of it as an early Chanukah gift before you are pleasantly surprised with the physical box set by that one bff of yours who has killer alt retro taste. But until that beautiful day, enjoy these ‘Juice videos and your holidays in the meantime.
