Category Archives: Albums

The Shins’ “Port of Morrow”

Posted on April 9, 2012 by | 1 Comment

Are you going to Morrow today? (Photo courtesy of wikipedia.org)

The Shins definitely ran the risk of finding their style dated and copied since their last album five years ago. Or since their indie hit album Chutes Too Narrow four years before that. Or even since their debut way back in 2001. It has been eleven years since Oh, Inverted World, but rather than adapting to survive, The Shins have built a style for themselves that has so far proved timeless. As they sing on their new album, Port of Morrow, “a creature of habit has no real protection,” but maybe they don’t need any. The new release is not breaking news for the frontier of musical originality, but it still sounds fantastic even in the landscape of music in 2012.

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School of Seven Bells’ Ghostory

Posted on February 29, 2012 by | 1 Comment

Alejandra Deheza, lead singer. What a name! (Photo courtesy of stereogum.com)

School of Seven Bells’ Ghostory will be making it to Treeswingers’ albums of 2012 list even though it’s only February. Their effective combination of compelling lyrics, slow beats, and continuous chords returns after their well received 2010 album, Disconnect from Desire. Their ethereal style inherently gives their albums flow, but Ghostory is extremely well crafted and performs well as a package.

With the exception of single-worthy “Lafaye” and “The Night”, the subtle melodies on the album are never simple enough to capture at first. Instead, lead singer Alejandra Deheza’s layered vocals are necessary to slowly uncover the mood and direction of the songs. In this sense, SVIIB produced very vocal-centric tracks, where the desperate lyrics and vocal harmonies are a gateway to the even more textured supporting music. “Love Play” is a great example of this, though it wouldn’t be surprising if the band considered the eight-minute “When You Sing” to be the album’s stylistic centerpiece.

School of Seven Bells – Lafaye (download)

School of Seven Bells – Love Play (download)

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Flosstradamus’ Total Recall EP

Posted on February 28, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Chicago: home of house, wind and Mad Decent’s hardest working DJ duo, Flosstradamus.  The pair are known to drop dance tunes that destroy venues of all shapes and sizes.  Their latest EP, Total Recall, features the ferocious, unapologetic style of production we have come to expect from these guys.  It’s a curious release that takes you to an exciting yet theoretically uncomfortable place–the world of “traphouse trance.”

It teleports you to a parallel universe where Bun B and Barthezz share an apartment without so much as a passive aggressive standoff over TV remote rights.  It’s a kooky little space where gold grillz can suck on glow-in-the-dark pacifiers and no one looks twice.  The three track effort–seemingly informed by the glorious genre-weaving experiment that was Araabmuzik’s Electronic Dream–is a neat listen.

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Shlohmo’s Vacation EP

Posted on February 20, 2012 by | 1 Comment

This short three song EP from Shlohmo–LA’s maestro of muddied, mellow beats–finds the classically trained, maximally blunted producer trading in the live-session feel and soul-rending howls of his debut album, Bad Vibes, for something with a little more bounce to the ounce.

Vacation is a short but sweet slice of the young beatsmith’s gray matter, three songs under 15 minutes in which you can hear innovation and talent coalesce into a vibrant palette of sound that Shlohmo, born Henry Laufer, would use to paint the damn sky if they’d let him.

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Sharon Van Etten’s Tramp

Posted on February 6, 2012 by | 1 Comment

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So, you remember those albums I was really excited about for January? Well, the dark, introspective part of me overrode the quirky and experimental this past month. I assign the blame to Sharon Van Etten, Brooklyn’s modern folk songstress. Her third album, Tramp, is out via Jagjaguwar, and upon first listen I realized that this was the album I hoped to get this year. ‘Heavy rotation’ does not even begin to explain how many times I envision myself appealing to Van Etten’s croon for understanding and rapport throughout the future months. Sharon, we have never met, but you will be my best friend this coming year. I will sing along with you, in grief and elation, and feel that through your songwriting you have looked into my soul and delivered the blackest as well as the most cherished emotions back to me through songs so pristine, that I know myself better now because of you.

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