Category Archives: Albums

Polica’s Give You the Ghost

Anyone else subliminally reminded of Postal Service? (Photo courtesy of tellallyourfriendspr.com)

What’s the deal with double drumsets? The arrangement always instantly adds depth and variety to music. It always takes a few measures to figure out why the snare hits sound fuller, why there seem to be far more frequent symbol hits than other songs, or why such intricate bass drum grace notes can be played – but two drumsets is nearly exclusively the culprit. We at Treeswingers have seen Radiohead, Brand New, MuteMath, and others add a second drummer at live shows, but this new band has gone ahead and embedded it in their style.

Calling Minneapolis home, Polica is set to release their first album, Give You the Ghost on Valentine’s Day. How cute. The video below shows Polica performing the stand-out track from the album, “Wandering Star”. Watching the unique instrumentation for a four-piece band provides a nice context for later listens of the song, which you can grab below. Don’t miss Polica’s autotuning and double drumming when the album comes out next month.


Polica – Wandering Star (download)

The Big Pink’s Future This

I am not sure whether it’s politically correct to call an album “anthemic” in the indie world. Perhaps it’s too close a description of arena rock, an antithesis to the exclusivity that the excluders like to define as “indie.” So when I say that The Big Pinks’ Future This is anthemic, I want to make it clear that I mean it in the least offensive sense of the word.

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Top Albums of 2011

Another year. Another list. With 2011 in our rear views, each one of us here at Treeswingers is taking a look back at the year in music. Not quite as star-studded as last year, 2011 still had its gems, from the return of Bon Iver to the arrival of Real Estate. There was the R&B revival courtesy of The Weeknd as well as the meteoric mark of M83. There was also Kreayshawn. Just kidding.

Below are each of our lists for the top albums of 2011. There’s no particular order or reason. Feel free to adore, berate, mock or love our lists in the comments section. Or leave your own top 10 of the year. On to 2012.
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Nujabe’s Spiritual State

In 2005 classic, Wedding Crashers, Will Ferrell as the charming Chazz Reinhold, utters a classic line to protegé John Beckwith (played by Owen Wilson). “Grief is nature’s most powerful aphrodisiac,” he says to a wide-eyed Wilson, before shuffling out a newly widowed stunner and screaming at his mother for meatloaf, fuck!”

While its role in the real life funeral crashing success rate is unclear, death can be a record label’s Cialis. What better way to revive a career ended too soon than by exploiting a delicate time of remembrance, packaging “intimate, never-before-heard” (correction: unfinished) demos and slapping it together with some tear-jerking album art? Sure, it can be successful (Tupac, who currently resides somewhere in Cuba, can attest to that). More often than not, it’s disappointing. And usually, the record company’s scheming album for revenue recovery is shit (one shudders at remembering the King of Pop, for the postmortem Michael, or John Lennon for Milk And Honey).

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Trophy Wife’s Bruxism EP

Before the release of the five-track EP, Bruxism, UK band Trophy Wife had been basking in the glow of their phenomenal debut single, “Microlite”. Released a year ago, the track is full of delightful melodies and a perfect balance between vocals and instruments. Although a couple other tracks have been released since, it took a larger release to understand what Trophy Wife was capable of.

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