Alternative Music Blog

With the indie world going Swede-crazy in recent seasons, it was strange that Frida Hyvönen's utterly amazing debut album, Until Death Comes, didn't receive a more rapturous reception upon its American release in 2006. The statuesuque, Stockholm-based songstress carves savagely emotional, sexually-forthright songs out of handful of piano chords and a voice that carries the clarity and eloquence of a young Joni Mitchell, and her debut truly hailed the arrival of a fearsome new talent.

Following on from her gospel-tinged soundtrack Frida Hyvönen Gives You: Music From The Dance Performance Pudel —released last year, in Sweden, on The Concretes' great Licking Fingers label— Hyvönen will soon unveil her second LP proper, Silence is Wild, unto the world.

Coming replete with horse-themed artwork and promotional pics, the set revolves around a song called "Pony," on which Hyvönen lets loose the following vicious verse: "The stable is where you learn to be in charge and not take sh*t/ Dressed to the occasion: leather boots and a stiff black whip."

Recorded by longtime Concretes associate Jari Haapalainen, Hyvönen's whipsmart new gear swaps the musical/lyrical starkness of her debut for a sprawling orchestral grandeur. Secretly Canadian gives you the free taste of Silence is Wild via the legal acquisition of "The Enemy Within," in advance of the album's eagerly-awaited November 4 release.

Brooklyn's Gang Gang Dance have made some of the most beautifully-bizarre, ridiculously-good, totally-off-the-dial music of the past decade. All that's been missing is the classic album to cement that status. 2005's spiraling God's Money was close, but it may be the forthcoming Saint Dymphna that officially cements Gang Gang Dance's reputation.

Born from the same Brooklyn scene that gave the world Animal Collective and Black Dice —not to mention inspired 2008's crossover kings MGMT and Yeasayer— Gang Gang Dance bash out a fantastic mish-mash of distorted, half-crumbling synth sounds, ricocheting percussion, and the whooping and wailing voice of Lizzie Bougatsos. Liberally mixing all manner of different musics into one singular study in rhythm, Gang Gang Dance sound in thrall to superstitious primitivism and scientific revelation at once.

Due for release on October 21 (on New York's cult-ish The Social Registry in North America, and via iconic electro label Warp through Europe and Australasia), Saint Dymphna is loaded with dancefloor potential, promising a beautiful beat-orgy that may turn out to be one of 2008's most transcendent sets.

Saint Dymphna Track List:
1. "Holy Communion"
2. "Blue Nile"
3. "Vacuum"
4. "Princes"
5. "Inners Pace"
6. "Afoot"
7. "House Jam"
8. "Interlude (No Known Home)"
9. "Desert Storm"
10. "Dust"

Photo © [Josh Wildman]

The white-coat clad retrophonic modular-pop boffins of Stereolab have recently unleashed their ninth longplaying experiment, Chemical Chords; another charmed set of synth-splattering bleeps, bloops, blips, and drips. In honor of such, I recently spoke to the Groop's iconic vocalist, Laetitia Sadier, about the state of Stereolab (and, um, the hyper-capitalist model of modern society) circa 2008. You are permitted to partake of said conversation.

In support of Chemical Chords, Stereolab will be taking the high-road around North America for a month of autumnal performances, starting late-September. For neophytes or longtime ’Lab-lovers alike, it'll provide a prime opportunity to check in on one of the indie realm's most perennially on-it outfits.

Photo © [Sabrina Tabuchi]

Deerhunter —the Atlanta, Georgia-based band fronted by the infamous Bradford Cox— have announced the details of their forthcoming third LP, Microcastle. The follow-up to 2007's well-regarded Cryptograms is due to be dispatched unto the world on October 28, on Kranky Records in North America, but on the legendary 4AD label round the rest of the world.

This is fortuitous, for it seems that each release will bear different artwork. On purely aesthetic grounds, we'd have to hail the suitably-tasteful 4AD version (above) as far superior to the clamorous Kranky version (below).

Musically speaking, Microcastle marks a departure from Deerhunter's space-rock roots; the sprawling, wall-of-sound jams exchanged for shorter, sweet, less distorted pop-songs. With Cox funneling some of that drone-loving into his increasingly-permanent side-project Atlas Sound, it seems to have left Deerhunter free to make a more 'straight up' record.

Deerhunter will be roadtesting the new material with a run of dates both before and after the record's release, including a slew of shows supporting Nine Inch Nails.

Microcastle Track List
1. "Cover Me (Slowly)"
2. "Agoraphobia"
3. "Never Stops"
4. "Little Kids"
5. "Microcastle"
6. "Calvary Scars"
7. "Green Jacket"
8. "Activa"
9. "Nothing Ever Happened"
10. "Saved By Old Times"
11. "Neither Of Us, Uncertainly"
12. "Twilight At Carbon Lake"

For the prolific artist, the quickness and ease of issuing music in a digital format must feel like a welcome release. Richard Swift is described by his record label, Secretly Canadian, as "a long-in-the-tooth impresario of all not-a-computer." And, sure enough, his continuing retreat into the primitive pop-song sounds of half-a-century ago suggest a recidivist's heart beats deep within his hefty bosom. But digital-dissemination befits the prolific, inventive, genre-juggling songsmith.

In 2008, Swift has already issued an album under his side-project nom-de-disque Instruments of Science and Technology, as well as a playful 'double EP' of proto-rhythm-and-blues called Richard Swift As Onasis. Keeping the onslaught coming, Swift is now releasing a download-only EP entitled Ground Trouble Jaw.

Recorded, in part, at Wilco's studio (or 'loft space,' as it were) in Chicago, it continues Swift's recent exercises in genre recreationism and old-fashioned tape-recording techniques. Of course, these jukebox-friendly, old-soul-centric sounds make Ground Trouble Jaw a slightly anachronistic a digital-only release.

Still, it's hard to argue with the cost: nada! The five-song set is available for virtual thievin' here. And, as an added, totally new-millennial blessing, there's a suite of Swift-made 'short films' that serve as a kind of making-of, ready to be witnessed right here.

Photo © [Paul Heartfield]

This decade, from Parades to AIDS, Wolves have been at the top of the band-name animal totem. Yet, with the recent arrival of White Rabbits, 7 Year Rabbit Cycle, and Frightened Rabbit on the pop-cultural radar, will Le Loup give way to Le Lapin? Are the Rabbits afoot? “Sure, it’s only three, but three’s enough, right?” laughs Scott Hutchison, frontman of Frightened Rabbit. “We’re the start of the revolution.”

Frightened Rabbit have been finding increasing acclaim, of recent, for their particular brand of intense, emotional guitar-rock. Born in tiny Selkirk but now based in Glasgow, the band took their animal-themed handle from Hutchison's mother, who told her young son that social situations brought on a 'frightened rabbit look' in him.

Hutchison is clearly still plagued by social unease, the recently released The Midnight Organ Fight, finding the vocalist playing the embittered, desperate ex-. That confessional nature has attracted like-hearted fans to the band. "Ever since I’ve been in this band, people have come up to me," says Hutchison. "They feel like they connect with me, that they know me, because they’ve listened to my songs. So they’re, in turn, pretty open with their own lives with me. They feel like they can talk to me about stuff, about their problems.”

And Hutchison gives them sage advice? “I’d never offer advice,” he chuckles. “The main irony about that would be that I wrote an album about how I’m unable to deal with relationships. People just want to talk. And, hopefully, those people that do meet me should hopefully realise that I’m not cunty like that all day. I’m just like that in my songs.”

Photo © [Christopher Heaney]

Kevin Barnes' gleeful psych-funk jamboree Of Montreal broke out of the twee-pop underground in a big way with 2006's Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer? The eighth album for the Athens, Georgia-based collective was, certainly, their first to have ever bothered Billboard. Debuting at #72 on the big-boys chart, the ridiculously enjoyable disc showed Of Montreal crossing over to find a whole new audience for Barnes' cross-dressing retro-pop mayhem.

Polyvinyl Records have recently announced details of Of Montreal's much awaited follow-up. LP#9 shall be entitled Skeletal Lamping, and promises to lure even more listeners into Barnes' lurid lair. Barnes has described the record as an attempt "to create something that was, in turns, enraging, joyous, discomforting, playful, lovely, unpleasant, freaky, [and] mesmeric."

Due to be released on October 7, the disc holds the eternal promise of the unknown. And interest is only piqued by Barnes' sentiments on the authoring of his forthcoming work. "I am so bored with art that makes sense and 'works,'" he says. "I wanted to do something that didn't 'work'."

Skeletal Lamping Track List
1. "Nonpareil of Favor"
2. "Wicked Wisdom"
3. "For Our Elegant Caste"
4. "Touched Something's Hollow"
5. "An Eluardian Instance"
6. "Gallery Piece"
7. "Women's Studies Victims"
8. "St.Exquisite's Confessions"
9. "Triphallus, to Punctuate!"
10. "And I've Seen a Bloody Shadow"
11. "Plastis Wafers"
12. "Death Is Not a Parallel Move"
13. "Beware Our Nubile Miscreants"
14. "Mingusings"
15. "Id Engager"

Photo © [Jim Newberry]

Iconic Seattle imprint Sub Pop is closing in on 20 years in the grunge game, two decades having passed since they first foisted Soundgarden and Mudhoney upon the world. In honor of such, this July finds the legendary record label celebrating its near-drinking-age antiquity with a mighty jamboree over two days in Marymoore Park in Redmond, Washington. The impressive bill features current Sub Pop heavyweights like Wolf Parade, Fleet Foxes, No Age, and Iron And Wine.

But no grand anniversary would be complete without reformations. And, sure enough, SP20 will find performances from: Sub Pop's first-ever non-Seattle signing The Fluid; Kurt Cobain-beloved Scottish indie-poppers The Vaselines; grunge's "hindsight supergroup" Green River; forgotten exuberant indie-rockers Seaweed; Canadian art-rock hands Eric's Trip; Sub Pop house producer Brian Deck's old outfit Red Red Meat; and Los Angelino retro-hippy country-psych crooners Beachwood Sparks.

Message boards were alive, recently, with the salacious gossip that a 'reformed' Nirvana would take to the SP20 stage with Pat Smear on guitar and Courtney Love on vocals. Such ridiculous rumor-mongering was even 'confirmed' when someone posing as Sub Pop co-founder Jonathan Poneman posted claiming it was all true.

Given said 'Poneman post' also said supports would be The Gits, Dickless, the Afghan Whigs, and Steven Jesse Bernstein —all of whom either feature or are dead people— the joke was obviously in. Still, whilst attendees may not get to see Courtney wailing "Negative Creep," Flight Of The Conchords should be almost as funny.

Full details here. My picks of Sub Pop's first 20 years here.

It’s the most romantic musical backstory of 2008: Justin Vernon in a cabin in the middle of nowhere, singing his lonesome heart out. In the wake up breaking up with his band, DeYarmond Edison, and breaking up with his girlfriend, Justin Vernon, the 27-year-old American who’s found fame as Bon Iver, hightails it back home to Wisconsin.

Setting up shop in a log deer-hunting cabin, built by his father in the Northwestern Wisconsin woods, Vernon set to work: chopping wood by day, playing the blues at night. “It wasn’t this magical time, making a record in a winter wonderland,” warns Vernon, “I went there because I felt like I had nowhere else to go, and because I needed to try and make sense of my life.”

The resulting record, For Emma, Forever Ago —released under a name playing on the French for ‘good winter’ (bon hiver)— is a set of sad, sad songs, born from the bosom of winter. For Emma, Forever Ago is “enshrined with tractor-tires and mud,” Vernon says. “It’s enshrined with a saw mill and stacked logs. It’s enshrined with my father's hands that built the cabin. It’s enshrined by the pines and snowy hills and trails. It’s enshrined by weather, by winter.”

When Vernon left the cabin, he “still felt like shit”, but, with hindsight, and an album to boot, Vernon later realised “how much it did” for him and his self-esteem. After his initial self-released run of For Emma, Forever Ago became blog-beloved in late 2007, this year has found the official, pressed-up albums —issued by Jagjaguwar in North America, 4AD in the rest of the world— flying off shelves.

In the wake of such, Vernon's spent nary a day in snowbound isolation. With an unending litany of tour dates looming, the breakout year for Bon Iver shows no sign of slowing down.

Photo © [Sarah Cass]

Fans of My Morning Jacket's reverb-drenched southern-psychedelic-soul are eagerly awaiting the imminent release of Evil Urges. Two-Tone Tommy feels the same way. The bassist (whose mom knows him as Tom Blankenship) can't wait for his band's long-time-coming fifth album to be officially issued.

"I just can't wait for it to be out," Blankenship told me, in a recent interview. "But, now that (the album) is actually coming out, all these anxieties are coming back to me, like: 'My God, what are people going to think?' You work on it for so long —it was eight, nine months in total— that you hope and pray that people actually enjoy what you've done."

So far, it seems as if pundits are split on My Morning Jacket's latest longplayer. The product, Two-Tone says, of "a different band," it finds Jim James and his rollicking Kentuckian crew trading in their Band-like jams and Louvin Brothers harmonies for an army of analogue synthesizers and some hysterical Prince-like funk.

Dealing in musical genre swapping —with James' voice going through chameleonic changes the whole while— the album's box-of-chocolates variety certainly runs the risk of alienating listeners. But, given Evil Urges isn't yet officially released (that comes on June 10), let's say the jury's still well and truly out.

Evil Urges Track List
1. "Evil Urges"
2. "Touch Me I'm Going to Scream (Part 1)"
3. "Highly Suspicious"
4. "I'm Amazed"
5. "Thank You Too"
6. "Sec Walkin'"
7. "Two Halves"
8. "Librarian"
9. "Look at You"
10. "Aluminum Park"
11. "Remnants"
12. "Smokin' from Shootin'"
13. "Touch Me I'm Going to Scream (Part 2)"
14. "Good Intentions"