I don't know who chose today as the release date for
Matt Pond PA's new album,
Last Light, but the music couldn't be more perfectly suited to the waning days of summer. From the painfully timely title track to the gentle acceptingness of the final song, "It's Not So Bad at All," the music perfectly captures that mix of depression and optimism that has plagued my summer-fall transition since my first year of school.
Not surprisingly, I picked this record as one of my
September must haves.
When I first picked up Canadian singer-songwriter
Feist's breakthrough album, 2004's
Let it Die, I thought it was perfectly pleasant background music. Her '70s-infused, lounge-y songs seemed perfect for a dinner party, or for playing faintly while I flipped through a magazine. Only the catchy "Mushaboom" really made me sit up and take notice, wedging itself in my head for days on end.
There is a whole breed of baby-voiced women —
Joanna Newsom, Satomi Matsuzaki of Deerhoof, and, to a lesser extent,
Bjork — whose singing style suggests that of a tiny girl stranded on an amusement park ride. When the creepy/cutesy effect works, it's stunning, and when it doesn't, it can just be grating. That can definitely be said of CocoRosie, comprised of sisters Sierra and Bianca Casady, whose third album,
The Adventures of Ghosthorse and Stillborn, hit stores this week.
In keeping with the nursery-rhyme-sounding title, CocoRosie's childlike trip-hop mixes tinkling music-box melodies with silly animal sounds, operatic singing, and other quirky aural effects.
If you're a regular BuzzSugar reader, you know how much I've been looking forward to the new
Bright Eyes album — that is, very much, for months. Each
new track that
trickled out only heightened my anticipation. If the whole album was as well-crafted as the fiddle-laden "Four Winds," I thought, then
Cassdaga would do nothing but rule.
You might argue that no album can live up to those expectations, but in its best moments, Cassadaga is brilliant.
In the din of hype surrounding the new albums by
Arcade Fire,
Modest Mouse, and the forthcoming
Wilco and
Bright Eyes, you might miss the quiet genius of
Andrew Bird's new release,
Armchair Apocrypha. But after spending a few weeks with the album, which hits stores today, I'm already willing to say it's likely to end up on my year-end best list.
The hippest thing ever to happen to the pizzicato violin, Andrew Bird is just as adept at crafting string-laden pop songs as he is writing rhymes so sing-song, it takes you a moment to hear the words. In his definition of pop music — and the extremely catchy folk-inspired tunes are undoubtedly pop — plink-plunks of strings and winds combine with twisty, turning electric guitars for melodies that carry you right to the edge of chaos, but not quite.
