Bibio is another band you would have been listening to 3 years ago if your life wasn’t a painful exercise in choosing the path of least resistance to conform in the blandest of ways to the normatives opposed from above. While you were busy weaving a tapestry of banality and dysfunctional ignorance, Bibio was smashing their brand of electronic-infused progrock to the teetering masses. Like most bands composed of bearded white people, Bibio explores the kind of topics available only to the navel-gazing bourgeois of consumer-centric Western societies where the simplest daily minutia creates heartache, becoming the rhyme and reason for their artistic vision. Somehow, they also manage to not feel embarrassed about what they look like. Either way, spend some time hating yourself while you spend time enjoying Bibio:
Neutral Milk Hotel is another sweet band that makes a lot of songs the white right people like. They came out in the mid-90′s but you probably never heard of them until you read this sweet blog cause you’re pretty unhip and were too busy thinking Jack White was still relevant. Anyway, it’s a bunch of white dudes who make music that’s all about being emotional while having a beard. Here are some killer tracks that you can listen to while you drift further away from reality so if someone asks you why you’re acting particularly aloof, you can say “I’ve been re-examining the messages of Neutral’s first EP”:
Also if you like to be creeped out by Anne Frank tributes, this is the YouTube video for you:
This is what they look like (judge accordingly):
In conclusion, Neutral Milk Hotel is a land of contradictions and maize.
Phoenix is a French alternative rock band started during their childhood by Thomas Mars, Deck D’Arcy, Christian Mazzalai and Laurent Brancowitz in the suburb of Versailles. They sound sort of like a grown up MGMT, but they haven’t caught on as much. So you should probably get into them before douchebags that wear backwards hats and drink jagerbombs get into them. Then when the wrong people start liking them, you can claim previous ownership while distancing yourself from the trifling masses.
The best video for them isn’t even by them — it’s a fan video mashup mixing Lisztomania (from the Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix album) with clips from famous 80′s movies:
Cat Power is the stage name of American singer/songwriter Charlyn “Chan” Marshall. She is known for her minimalist style, sparse guitar and piano playing, and breathy vocals.
In late 1996, following a three-month tour co-headlining with the band Guv’ner in support of the release of What Would the Community Think, Marshall disappeared from the music scene, initially working as a baby sitter in Portland, Oregon and then moving to a farmhouse in Prosperity, South Carolina with then boyfriend Bill Callahan. The plan was to permanently retire from public performance but during a sleepless night resulting from a nightmare, Marshall wrote several new songs. These songs would make up the bulk of Moon Pix. The record was recorded at Sing Sing Studios in Melbourne in eleven days with backing musicians Mick Turner and Jim White of the Dirty Three.
The album was well-received by critics, and gained her recognition in the indie rock scene. However, during subsequent tours Marshall states that she had grown tired of her own material. This resulted in a series of shows during 1999 where Marshall provided musical accompaniment to the silent movie The Passion of Joan of Arc. The shows combined original material and many covers, many of which would later see release on The Covers Record, a collection of cover songs recorded at various sessions in 1998 and 1999. A selection of covers that didn’t make it on to the album were recorded at Peel Acres, home of the British DJ John Peel. The session was broadcast on his BBC Radio 1 show and featured Marshall’s own interpretations of Bob Dylan’s “Hard Times in New York Town” and Oasis’s “Wonderwall”, amongst others.
In 2003 she resumed releasing original material with You Are Free, which featured guest musicians such as Eddie Vedder, Dave Grohl, and the Dirty Three’s Warren Ellis. A music video directed by Brett Vapnek, was released for the song “He War”.
2004 saw the release of a DVD Speaking for Trees, which featured a single, nearly 2-hour static shot of Marshall performing in a woodland, and was accompanied by an audio CD containing the 18-minute song “Willie Deadwilder”, featuring M. Ward on guitar. Also this year Marshall lent her vocals to the track “I’ve Been Thinking” from the Handsome Boy Modeling School album, White People. Marshall toured through 2005, including an Australian tour supporting Nick Cave and an appearance at the Patti Smith-curated Meltdown festival. The shows largely consisted of material that would appear on her next album. In 2005 Marshall was featured on the song “Great Waves” from Dirty Three’s album Cinder.
The Greatest, was released in January, 2006. This was not a greatest hits record but rather the Matador Records-arranged collaboration with Al Green’s guitarist Teenie Hodges and other musicians. Following its release, Marshall cancelled previously arranged live shows in North America and Europe. She was struggling with a relationship with a young Miami investment banker. Ultimately, Marshall used the hiatus to recover from what she described as a “psychotic break” that had left her feeling suicidal and was brought on by mental exhaustion and alcohol abuse. As part of her recovery she was admitted to the psychiatric ward at Miami’s Mount Sinai Medical Center but left after a week, stating “being in there wasn’t me.” She later likened the experience to “a pit of hell.” Marshall gave a first person account of her breakdown in an interview for the November 2006 issue of Spin.
Hot Chip is a Grammy-nominated British electropop band. They have released three studio albums—Coming on Strong, The Warning, and Made in the Dark. The Warning was named Album of the Year by Mixmag and voted the fourth best album of 2006 by NME. They released their third studio album, Made in the Dark, in February 2008.
Edit: Best lyrics ever from this song (The Wrestlers):
Don’t fight dirty, don’t hit me with the chair Don’t fight dirty, don’t bite me in the face
Hot Chip formed in 2000, though members Alexis Taylor and Joe Goddard had previously worked together and had been at the same sixth form college at Elliott School in Putney, London. In an interview, Goddard jokingly compared early Hot Chip releases to sixth-form poetry with acoustic guitars, although an interest in dance music rhythms and electronic experimentation is present in even the early recordings and releases such as the ‘Mexico EP’. The current line up was completed when occasional collaborators Owen Clarke, Felix Martin and later Al Doyle joined the band full time in 2003.
Annie Clark is an American multi-instrumentalist singer-songwriter who performs under the moniker St. Vincent. She was a member of The Polyphonic Spree and Sufjan Stevens’ touring band.
Clark released her debut album, Marry Me, July 10, 2007 on Beggars Banquet Records. Named after a line from the cult-hit television show Arrested Development, the LP features appearances from drummer Brian Teasley (Man or Astro-man?, The Polyphonic Spree), Mike Garson (David Bowie’s longtime pianist), and horn player Louis Schwadron (The Polyphonic Spree).
In 2008 Clark was nominated for three PLUG Independent Music Awards: New Artist of the Year, Female Artist of the Year, and Music Video of the Year, and on 6 March 2008, she won the Female Artist of the Year award.
Her second album for Beggars Banquet, entitled Actor, was released on May 5 worldwide. It was written entirely by Clark, and produced by Clark and John Congleton of The Paper Chase.
Passion Pit is an American electronic band from Cambridge, Massachusetts. Formed in 2007, the group consists of Michael Angelakos (lead vocals/keyboards), Ian Hultquist (keyboards), Ayad Al Adhamy (synth/samples), Jeff Apruzzese (bass) and Nate Donmoyer (drums). They may be from Cambridge but every little boy in Billysburg, NY dreams that they will live off of Lorimer on the L line and play their birthday party.
The band’s first full-length studio album, Manners, was released on May 18, 2009 in the UK and May 19, 2009 in the United States and Canada. I think you will like it.
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