Song of the Day: "The Sea Is A Good Place To Think Of The Future" -- Los Campesinos!

How do you know when a song is truly great, when it's more than just catchy enough to stay with you or more than just pretty okay or pretty solid but really and truly great? I discovered Los Campesinos! last summer, when I took a road trip to Lollapalooza with two friends. On Saturday of the festival, I think, we somehow ended up sitting on the grass by the sound stage, no doubt waiting to get good spots for another band, as Los Campesinos! played their show. It was very solid, the kind of thing that you overhear and draws you from sitting kinda far back to standing, jumping and yelling as close to the stage as you can get. Energetic is a little bit of an understatement; it's like if the Arcade Fire drank a Red Bull and vodka right before the show and decided to give this whole excitable indie pop thing a try. Whatever it was, it was good enough for me to check out when I left Chicago, and I was not disappointed with what I heard.

Flash forward to late September of last year. I was reading Pitchfork off and on and happened to notice a rare familiar name in their "best new music" section: Los Campesinos! and their newest single "The Sea Is A Good Place To Think Of The Future", released to promote their upcoming album "Romance is Boring". Pitchfork raved about the track (relatively, at least; they gave it an 8.0 which qualifies as a "rave" for them. The track review can be found here) and I hurriedly downloaded it from LC!'s website.

The result staggered me. Gone were the hyperactive indie poppers and their cute little keyboard-glockenspiel hooks. In their place was a mature, somber and intelligent band, singing about, as Pitchfork very nicely put it, "a too thin girl who'll kick your ass at Mortal Kombat", death, grey and somehow retaining a sense of their pseudo-trademark naiive hope. It is, frankly, a phenomenal song, one of my top 5 ever. I love it to the point that I wonder in amazement at the circumstances that led me to see LC! at Lollapalooza, when I just as easily could have missed them entirely in favor of another stage, another band, another festival altogether.

That's how you know a song is truly great, at least on a personal level: you contemplate the impact it would have had on your life had you never heard it, you thank god that you found the band in the first place and you wonder if other people's lives are empty and unfulfilling because they haven't heard the song. I know, I'm going a bit overboard but it's all true to a degree and regardless of whether you think this particular song is as completely fantastic as I obviously do, I refuse to believe that there can be people out there who do not like this song, or would not if they heard it. Listen to it. Now.

Also take a look at the rest of their stuff. "Romance is Boring", the album "The Sea is" comes from, is very solid, although it took me some time to get into. Look at "There Are Listed Buildings", "In Medias Res" and "We've Got Your Back (Documented Minor Emotional Breakdown #2)". From their earlier albums, try "Miserabilia", "You! Me! Dancing!" and "We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed."

and all you can hear is the sound of your own heart

Song of the Day: "Daisy" -- Fang Island

Be warned, the music video for this song is one of the creepiest and scariest music videos I have ever seen. I quote: "Finally: concrete proof that mimes of all colors and plastic presidential masks are scary in every situation, including as the backing track to one of the happiest sounding songs this year. Thank you, Fang Island, for clarifying." - Daily Swarm"

You might be better off just listening to the song without watching the video, as it takes away from how incredibly happy and fantastic the song is.

Pitchfork's review of Fang Island's self-titled album (found here) is one of the few reviews I read and agreed with nearly every word. They really capture the spirit of the album and hit on a lot of the important parts of the album and sum it up nicely. Not bad reading. Well done, Pitchfork. This time...

It's a very odd album. Not "of Montreal" odd but odd in the sense that it generally lacks verses or choruses. It's almost too short; the songs flow together so well that it almost ends suddenly, leaving you wondering if your ipod just stopped working or if the album really and truly is over already. Fang Island describes their sound as "everyone high-fiving everyone" and this really isn't far from the truth. Other tracks to look at are "Sideswiper" and instrumental "Careful Crosses", which doesn't even seem like an instrumental; on this track, Fang Island has mastered the Explosions in the Sky trick of making vocals seem not just unnecessary but also redundant simply because the instruments completely remove the need for anyone to say anything. The instruments have already done all the talking.

Song of the Day: "Stuck Between Stations" -- The Hold Steady

You ever tell someone to look at a band you love and they ask what songs to check out and you don't know what to tell them other than "all of them" because every song on the album is just as good as the one before it? The Hold Steady's "Boys and Girls in America" is one of those albums. I went with "Stuck Between Stations" here, but really, any one of "Chips Ahoy!", "Hot Soft Light", "First Night", "You Can Make Him Like You", "Citrus" or "Massive Nights" would have been more than suitable introductions. Consider this an endorsement of all of those tracks.

The best way to describe The Hold Steady is a more indie Bruce Springsteen, minus Clarence Clemons, with almost as much lyrical skill and 300% more songs about drugs. If that sounds appealing at all, and trust me, it's a lot better than that description sounds, definitely check them out.

dependent, undisciplined, and sleeping late

Song of the Day: "I'll Believe in Anything" -- Wolf Parade

Sometimes you stumble on bands in the weirdest ways. Wolf Parade is a Montreal based indie rock band that I found while wikipedia surfing, until I happened upon a page titled "list of indie rock bands", scrolled down to the Ws, clicked randomly on "Wolf Parade", saw that Pitchfork gave their debut album "Apologies to the Queen Mary" a 9.2/10, which is an obscenely high score for a band not named "Radiohead", so I decided they were worth checking out. It's a pretty swell album; this song in particular has grown on me a lot. The vocals are split between two of the band members, alternating on tracks and sometimes shouting the lyrics together, which makes the album's consistency and cohesiveness all the more impressive. There's a lot to get into on this album; I'm not going to start, but I give my word that you won't be wasting your time with these guys.

"I'll Believe in Anything" is the standout track of the album; the opening video game snyth riffs are brilliant, the thundering drums that come crashing in propel the song into the stratosphere instantly and the slowly building guitar licks just seem exactly "right".

Other worthwhile tracks include "Grounds for Divorce", "Dear Sons and Daughters of Hungry Ghosts", and "This Heart's on Fire". It's entirely possible I'm way behind the times; this album came out in 2005 and their follow up, "Mount Zoomer", has already been released and decreed "good but not as good" as "Apologies". So if you already know everything there is to know about Wolf Parade, excuse me. If you don't, start learning right now.

and nobody gives a damn either way

Song of the Day: "Two" -- The Antlers

I just realized I did Biffy Clyro a great disservice by not including their music video in my last post for easier access. This will be a feature of this "Song of the Day" nonsense from now on, and it will be corrected at the end of this post.

The Antlers are one of those bands you only hear about if you take Pitchfork at their word, which is a risky proposition to say the least, but it turned out okay here. The Antlers are playing in Austin's SXSW coming up here soon, so if you have the opportunity you should definitely go give them a listen.

"Two" is off of their album Hospice, which is well worth picking up (other standouts include "Kettering" and "Bear", which may be the prettiest song ever written about abortion). It's today's song of the day because it is currently raining here in Arizona, believe it or not, and it happens to be a fabulous rainy day song. The lyrics are pretty heartbreaking if you listen to them, as well as mature and insightful. Really a great song.

Here's some Biffy for you, if The Antlers got you down:



sleeping out of tune with our dreams disjointed

Song of the Day: "Many of Horror" - Biffy Clyro

Yesterday I saw Manchester Orchestra, Biffy Clyro and The Features at Phoenix's Marquee Theatre. It was a fantastic show all around; all three bands (there was a fourth but I missed them; shit happens when you start pregaming after the doors open) put on a terrific show, the kind of shows that make you revisit the albums you own and pick up the ones you don't of all the bands involved.

All three band are definitely worth checking out if you haven't already. Check out:

Biffy Clyro: "The Captain", "Bubbles", "Many of Horror" off of their album Only Revolutions
The Features: "Lions", "The Temporary Blues", and "The Drawing Board", off of their album Some Kind of Salvation
Manchester Orchestra: "I've Got Friends", "Pride", "The Only One" off of their album Mean Everything to Nothing

As this is my first post, I should probably explain myself. Expect a good deal of musical rambling, a party story or two, maybe an album or concert review, and a "song of the day" every couple days. I stand by every recommendation I make, so consider strongly checking out the songs and bands you see here. Thanks for looking in.

No, even lions can't tear us apart