Neon Indian – Pills, Chills and Genre Ache (2010)
Astute music fans have probably heard of the genre chillwave – a blend of 80s synths, psychedelic pop and liberal amounts of distortion – put upon acts like Memory Tapes, Toro Y Moi and Nite Jewel. The band most closely associated with that word is Neon Indian whose main man Alan Palomo, who also has a solo project VEGA, had a chat to Chris Berkley recently in London about the c-word, the beginnings of Psychic Chasms, the Yacht remix, his collaborations with Australian dance merchants Miami Horror, how he loves to make music that messes with people’s heads and the forthcoming Australian tour for the Texan group.
Who The Hell Are… Zoo Animal?
Picture the scene... in a dark Minneapolis jazz club, three anonymous musicians take the stage. The usual rituals of tuning and testing, smiling and carrying on, and then the lead singer steps up to the microphone. It only takes a few songs to appreciate the underestimated prowess of the band; the churning bass, the precision in the drumming, and a fiesty singer whose melancholy adroitness shines through her toned-down Joplin-esque voice and ferocious, half-prostrated guitar solos. This is Holly Newsom and Zoo Animal, a band marked by a soulful yet minimal electrofolk sound and introspective, sometimes spiritual lyrics.
Webcuts Top 11 Of 2011
It hasn’t been an amazing year for music, but surely an entertaining one. Lots of new acts jockeying for position amongst the wily veterans, and plenty of debate even as early as June over love ‘em-or hate ‘em titles such as King of Limbs and James Blake’s eponymous debut and where they belong in the year’s final canonization of greats. Honestly, I can’t remember a year in recent memory when I’ve found so many hyped records I’ve disliked or been entirely disinterested in. Cults? Pass. Tyler, The Creator? Garbage. The saviors from musical banality have consistently been experienced groups who know what they’re doing and get praised for their music and not being arrested in LA and starting riots.
Plants and Animals – La La Land
For a band who call their music "post-classic rock", Canada's Plants and Rags have at least one thing going for them.
Lykke Li – Wounded Rhymes
A break-up album like no other, Sweden's pop princess Lykke Li hits an emotional core that has Webcuts in awe.
Contiuum Books 33 1/3 – Television, Rolling Stones, Dinosaur Jr
Behind every great album is more often than not, an even greater story waiting to be told. The pursuit for higher understanding of artists and their most influential pieces of work and how the two came to pass has long been the ultimate goal of the ardent music fan who thrives on having every recorded nuance and historical detail mapped out like a combined atlas and encyclopedia of the human body. One of the more indispensible series of music books published that actually does, more or less, what is expected above, has been Continuum's 33 1/3. With the recent addition of The Rolling Stones Some Girls, Dinosaur Jr's You're Living All Over Me and Television's Marquee Moon to their honour roll, 33 1/3 show no sign of scraping the bargain bin anytime soon.