a simple dream can’t bring relief

{by a}

Times New Viking - DROP OUT

This song is simultaneously the best and worst thing about Times New Viking. It's one of the finest handfuls of song ever written with 3 chords, but it only lasts one minute. The lyrics are barely discernable, but ring utterly true. The whole thing is layered in a mass of scratchy fuzz, which sounds more than anything like that idea of Flann O'Brien's that night was just the accumulation of black air. This song is too great to be as throwaway as it is, but I know I still wouldn't change it.

{Buy}

cavalcade

Bikini Atoll - Desolation Highway

The start is here is homely and simple, like watching someone paint a landscape, a nice way of filling up a great empty weekend. It grows from this into something unexpected, equally like a friendship that blooms out of nothing, and the way you head out on a warm day and find yourself happy to see everyone, almost surprised they're there. You're reminded of how hard it is to ever be far away from people you don't know - even in your bedroom, or your kitchen, strangers are only a shout away. And here they are, and you all head into the sunset together.
When the song stops, three minutes in, it's something strange, as if the sun goes down - but immediately rises again, by popular demand, like God's encore. Everything everywhere continues, tinged in heavenly red, and everyone gets Utopian. I don't really know how people can create this much joy with only three or four chords, but I'm glad they can. (Also - that drum beat is fucking legendary.)

Bikini Atoll are now defunct, but you can buy Moratoria, from which this is taken, here.

circles on the ground

{via + more here}

Julianna Barwick - Dancing with Friends

'Dancing with Friends' might be the perfect title for this song. In its simplicity, in its repeated vocal circles, added bit by bit like drawing chalk circles on the ground, it sounds like the kind of happiness the world promised before you grew up. It sounds like people gathering in spontaneous joy, at some sign from God, some dreamy miracle, bewildered together into happiness. For a little over three minutes, there are no global problems that need solving.

Julianna Barwick - Dancing with Friends (Live on Má Fama)

This live version shows the song put together, voice by voice, stitch by stitch. It's not as warm or comforting, but it's certainly a lot more real, maybe more believable. It's still revelatory.

{Buy}

Rook

Shearwater - Rooks

I've been listening to this album quite a lot lately, and it's so damn good, it's almost too distracting to play and write about at the same time. It's even hard to pick a single song from it to share with you, though 'Leviathan, Bound' and the above track are early favourites. It's serene and beautiful, and has a weirdly open and outdoor sound to it, as though it was some sort of natural phenomenon. Even the crashing electric guitars sound like cascading landslides, natural disasters, acts of God. The beautiful, elongated moments when Jonathan Meiburg's vocals waver and sustain are like those dark hazy evenings when you can feel the light changing and slinking away around you, the gentle moments broken only by piano chords are as serene as the surface of the lake in the album's cover image. The whole record is just put together as beautifully as a landscape.

Slightly unsurprisingly, Meiburg is a trained ornithologist, and if you'd like see him wandering the Falkland Islands looking at rooks, you can do so here. The album will be released on June 3, and it might be one of the best we hear this year. You can read more about it on Matador's site.

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For some reason I forgot to mention this earlier: you can read contributions by myself and Sean to NBGL's new monthly feature, which is a very nice idea indeed. Also, Irish people: maybe this goes without saying, but pick up a copy of the wonderful new State magazine, in which I get to review the Times New Viking album (it's brilliant) and talk about the Manics a little (they're not so brilliant), and lots of fine people write about fine music.

I could never let go

Fight Bite - Swiss Ex-Lover

I think, at the beginning, it's all heavenly light, like a near-death experience, weird shades of white and red, and the distant voices ring out like some hidden choir. Those soft keyboards, mixing with the vocals to make a sound so sad, so honest, sounding like far off city lights look, blurred in the edge of your vision. The whole song is a slowed down crescendo, and it gives a glimpse of the details of life that we never see. It makes me want to put up christmas lights in the summer, and quit sleeping for a while. I have listened to this song so many times, the world seems to slow down when I play it.

Fight Bite come from the same softly lit landscape as Beach House, and can be found here.

he sold his soul for bread

Calico Horse - Father Feed Me

I like this song, because it sounds kinda like a flock of birds falling down a flight of stairs. It's got some beautifully haughty piano structures that just don't care for standard rhythms, and oddly sweet vocals that lead in a chorus that is sensible enough to be good and real without being epic. It sounds a bit like I was hoping the new Wolf Parade album would sound.

Emily Neveu - Idioteque (Radiohead)

I like this because it's such a fine reworking of a modern classic, like a handstitched version of an abstract painting. It sees all the little worries in the original, and makes them slightly more human.

Emily Neveu sings with Calico Horse. Calico Horse are releasing an album soon. {Buy}

dm stith + asthmatic kitty

Yep! TG friend DM Stith has just been named among a rake of new signees to one of the indie world's favourite labels, with whom he will release his new album some time this year. I've been lucky enough to hear some tracks from it, and I'm really looking forward to the whole thing.
Here's one of my favourite songs of his, a fancy new version of which will appear on the record:

DM Stith - Be My Baby

Other new signees include Osso, I Heart Lung, and Sufjan buddies Welcome Wagon. You can download a handy .zip file featuring mp3s from all the newcomers here.

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Elsewhere, why did nobody tell me I would love Shearwater? I've not been listening to Rooks long, but I'm pretty sure I already adore it.

games

A few weeks ago, at an Efterklang gig which was unlike anything I had witnessed in months, Peter Broderick (who plays violin with the band) played an opening set, which concluded with this piece. He built it up steadily, singing softly before letting his loop pedal create a stormcloud out of it, and then, as in the above video, he grabbed it and brought it through the crowd with him, bewildering people into happiness. It's an amazing and moving piece of music, and should be released before the year is out.

{MySpace}

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Unrelatedly: the new Wolf Parade album, At Mount Zoomer has leaked. So far it doesn't sound much like their debut, but I'm certainly enjoying it.
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Two upcoming Irish tours to take note of: Michael Knight and Thao Nguyen, both touring albums which are among the best of the year so far.
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Even more unrelatedly, I got 'memed'.