video: cold cave - villains of the moon

Some interesting facts about Cold Cave that you may not know (or maybe you do genius, jeez):
- Singer/songwriter Wesley Eisold was the vocalist for hardcore bands XO Skeletons and Some Girls (and on an unrelated but somewhat interesting sidenote, he has only one hand)
- The band used to feature Caralee McElroy of Xiu Xiu
- The band currently features Dominic Fernow of Prurient/Ash Pool and Jennifer Clavin of Mika Miko
- All of these facts should add up to an awesome band and yet somehow this, from their latest album, sucks really hard.

Their new album, "Cherish the Light Years", is full of songs with brainless hooks and high-school emotions like this one.  At best, this comes off as an insincere "sell-out" ploy; at worst, it just makes them seem like terrible songwriters (you are free to reverse the "best" and "worst" in this scenario, but I'd rather think they are trying to "make it" rather than to believe they are just this awful of a band).  I'll let this video review serve in lieu of an album review, because this is pretty representative of what the album is like and I don't have any interest in listening to it in its entirety again.  I'm hopeful that they take their sound in a different direction, because there's way too much talent in this band to make music this fake and simplistic.

This, by the way, is what they sounded like on their last album, which to me sounds perfectly mainstream without sounding completely dumbed down:

how to dress well - love remains (2010)

RIYL: Grizzly Bear, Dirty Projectors

Forget how awful this band's name is.... I almost passed this up because the name was so dumb, but I'm glad I didn't because I think this is one of the better pop albums I've heard this year.  Love Remains, How To Dress Well's debut album, is anchored by soft falsetto vocal aerobics akin to bands like fellow NYCers Grizzly Bear/The Dirty Projectors/Antony Hegarty, but hides the vocals behind layers of reverb and distortion, surrounded by lo-fi washes of keyboard and sparse percussion.  In a more glossy presentation, I would probably be put off by the modern r'n'b influenced pop-style singing, but the simplicity of the sound makes it feel much more immediate and personal than it otherwise might.  Most of the album is quietly atmospheric ballads, but there are the occasional uptempo rockers ("Walking This Dumb (Live)") or trip-hop forays ("Endless Rain").  The sequencing of the album is somewhat ramshackle, reflecting that this is a group still finding its sound, but I personally find the messiness appealing.  Hopefully, How To Dress Well's future output will keep that quality intact.

gary war - new raytheonport (2008)

speaking of straight rip-offs, if this guy is different from Ariel Pink in any way, I'm not hearing it. I mean, he's less weird. but everything else is there, the lo-fi throwback pop etc. but that's ok with me. NYC can have their own Ariel Pink if they want. and I enjoy the album just fine. I wonder what critics think of this? I haven't checked around the web yet.

Gary War - Good Clues
Gary War - Please Don't Die