I will not use my credit card points to buy a weather balloon. Here’s what I liked in October:
- ♦ Good amount of folk numbers this month with a strong wave of new acts from the UK/Ireland – Matthew and the Atlas continue to channel the Mumford Nation Americana vibe on ‘To The North’, Lucy Rose breaks the laws of indie-twee adorabillity on ‘Middle of the Bed’, James Vincent McMorrow adroitly navigates the treacherous territory that is the Bruce Hornsby sound on ‘We Don’t Eat’, and Keaton Henson delivers one of the best acoustic tracks of the year with ‘You Don’t Know How Lucky You Are’.
- ♦ I could have easily copied and pasted the entirety of Portugal. The Man’s latest album ‘In The Mountain In The Cloud’ as it’s incredible – just a seasoned band hitting it’s stride and brimming with confidence – no genre tag necessary because it hurts my brain trying to fart one out. Ditto for Youth Lagoon, whose ‘The Year of Hibernation’ is still my favorite album of 2011. Every track on that album is a measure of patience, kind of a woozy melancholy that escalates in tempo 2-3 minutes in. On ‘Daydream’, Perfect Lines skips past that deliberation and dives straight into the hook, conscientiously/intelligently choosing to not tamper with the original material too much.
- ♦ I included the obligatory RAC remix, here with Sunday Girl ‘Love U More’, the usual electronica-girlie-awesomeness. RAC is unstoppably good. White Panda puts together possibly the best mashup I’ve heard in 2011 with Kanye flowing over M83 ‘Midnight City’, a pretty simple formula as that beat is probably the best standalone track of the year.
- ♦ Things end on a slower note with three songs that warrant mention – Wintercoats ‘Working on a Dream’ – a block of ice melting, 4 minutes and 19 seconds of reverberating strings and calm, No Ceremony ‘Hurt Love (Dawn Golden and Rosy Cross Remix)’ – demands to be played at moments when you should be asleep and the streets are shadowed and dead, an ambient funeral possession, and Caroline Smith & The Good Night Sleeps ‘Eagle’s Nest’ – incredibly impressive salvo from one of my new favorite bands – a modest beginning with Smith’s warbling acapella vocal as the sole element that gradually adds in successive layers of instrumentation at each step, like watching a time-lapse of as a wooden frame and cement foundation turn into a home.
I continue to post two music videos into the abyss of the Facebook newsfeeds on Bempology Facebook. Also, in the menu above I’ve added in a subscribe section and drop down menu for all the old month mixes. Technology!