so this is the new year

happy 2011.

i wasn't at a party. i didn't have champagne. i didn't promise anybody anything. it wasn't the best night of the year. i hardly even stayed up until midnight. (well, i did, but i watched the fireworks in my undies in front of my bedroom window, escaping back to the warm covers after a few minutes when i got bored and cold.)

and i don't feel any different.

dundun

listen to this awesome song by dundun, a band i know nothing about other than some of its members make great music under their own or other names as well. here's a myspace page. listen especially if you like shoegazers :)

joy division

i saw a great hour and a half long documentary on joy division from 2007 the other day. it's called "joy division", plain and simple, a hudson production. it's available on svtplay.se (here) til 11 march, so click and watch it before it's too late! the story is told largely with archive footage alongside interviews with band members, people around the band and old friends. it also tells a part of the history of manchester the city and of punk rock in the u.k. at that time.

don't miss it!

over it

great new video and song from dinosaur jr from their new soon to be released album farm. it seems to have leaked, but i haven't heard it yet. though according to madeleine, it's excellent.

seeing this video made me realize i'm not at all freaking out about growing old anymore. isn't that something :)

breeders love

this is one of my favorite songs with the breeders, and also a great video.



also, we had snow today! the world sure looks prettier with snow. and check out pretendingtobejapanese.com i write there too now and then.

phair love

i love liz phair. this video is sooo 90s it's crazy.

me icon

you need to listen to this. so far all i know is that me icon is an electro duo, london based italians, that sergio is singing and that the song is awesome! sergio said so here, and i happen to agree with him. the song is "me gadget".

some more cranes songs

here's some proper videos by cranes. alison shaw has such a beautiful voice, and i love how the sound is so dreamy. cranes is the perfect band to listen to when it's dark and you hide under your covers and you can't sleep.



"beautiful friend" from loved (1994). here's also another great song from that album, "shining road".



"tomorrow's tears" from wings of joy (1991). also from that album is "adoration", yet a beautiful song, found here.



"inescapable" that was a bonus track/ep released during the wings of joy era.



"jewel" from forever (1993), although the video/single version of the song sounds a bit different than it does on the record. according to allmusic it's because robert smith remixed it. not surprising considering the cure brought cranes as their opening act on their '92 world tour.



"everywhere", also from forever.

cranes still releases albums, the last of which is self-titled and came out in october of this year. but i haven't heard it yet. i'm mostly in love with the music they made in the 90s and there's a huge nostalgia button that gets pushed in me whenever i hear their songs. a lot of their greatest songs can be found on their 2-cd ep collection, vols 1-2, so pick it up.

tangled up

i was just listening to old cranes songs and "tangled up" came on and i fell back a few years and rediscovered how beautiful this song is. unfortunately there's no video made, none that i can find anyway, so you'll have to make due with a live performance from october this year. before you push play, light a few candles and turn out the lights. enjoy.

maribel

if you can't tell already, i'm going through my rss-feed and catching up on the posts on indie-mp3, and now i found yet another very interesting band i never heard before. norwegian maribel.

It's a sleazy slab of noisepop - coming on like The Jesus and Mary Chain rucking with The Cramps whilst trying to remind us how great the 1988 version of My Bloody Valentine were.

this is very true. it sounds great! so far it seems they've only released one single, taste the trash, but i hope they're to release more soon, cos i want more! i'll be keeping my eyes on them.

listen to them on myspace (4 songs).

UPDATE:
what the hell. here's the video, too. why not. :)

kent

for some reason, embedding for a lot of the kent videos on youtube is disabled, but i managed to find this video of one of my favorite songs by them, ff. (this is brought on by my realizing that this is why i liked verdena, their sound is a lot like kent's.) this song is from my favorite kent album, vapen & ammunition (2002).



ff was released as a double single with vinternoll2 that you can find here.

a tribute post

here's a video from italian band verdana, that sergio posted on pretending to be japanese in june and that until today i didn't even watch. what a shame! it's an awesome song and i'm posting it here so i'll never forget.

i have no idea what they're singing (about the moon perhaps?) but who cares, it sounds great :) here's luna.



thanks for the reminder!

a wish and jesus

thanks to madeleine i have found a new music crush. gregory and the hawk. this is the song a wish. listen to this and tell me it isn't good!



however something bugs me with this particular song. it sounds a lot like something that i've heard before, and potentially like, but i can't remember what! please tell me if you think of it.

on another note i had an idea about composing a mixed tape of songs about jesus. it's not as holy as it might sound, considering that the song that made me think of it is a perfect circle's judith. it doesn't really favor the guy, so to speak. i guess the idea is how jesus comes up in lyrics by bands and artists i like and listen to. sounds pretentious? so far i'm thinking that song, neutral milk hotel's the king of carrot flowers pt. 2, iron and wine's jesus the mexican boy, jesus and mary chain's stardust remedy and rosie thomas' much farther to go. what do you think?

here's judith. god, i love this song. love the album, love the singer, love the lyrics. love the video! it looks great, and i love how you can never really see their faces. yay for rock n rollers who're not obsessed with their own looks.

listening to margot

indiana-based margot and the nuclear so and so's album not animal is quite a cute affair. i found it on radiobutt (here, to download) where it's compared with neutral milk hotel, the decemberists, arcade fire and broken social scene, and i don't know. the 3 latter i don't listen too much to so i'm sure that's in order, but i wouldn't say they're too much alike neutral milk hotel. neutral milk hotel are way more noicy than these guys. margot is softer and sweeter. i even hear a bit of coldplay here and there in them. the album doesn't make me go WOW, but it's good.

something that made me go WOW, though, was neutral milk hotel's 1998 masterpiece in the aeroplane over the sea. it's definitely on my top ten favorite albums list (a list i haven't compiled in its entirety yet)! it's great in so many layers, it just has to be listened to repeatedly to fully be understood.

here's one of my favorite songs from it, called holland, 1945. the video is someone else's - there doesn't seem to be any videos made by the band - though it's strong and does get the message across.





EDIT: here's someone who's put his love for in the aeroplane over the sea in words more eloquently than me.

more mary timony

here's a nice mary timony song from her 2002 the golden dove album. i especially love the synchronized dancing part :)

helium

how come no one, until now, bothered telling me about the band helium?

judging from what little i've found to listen to it has most of what i love about 90s music; the shoegazing aspect, feedback noice, lovely vocals. (oh, and it says on wikipedia that juliana hatfield's brother jason was in an early line-up of the band, before they changed their name to helium. cool, right?)

they released two albums and a few eps on matador before they split up in 1998, but singer mary timony continued to make music solo and in other constellations. this is one road i'm going to explore.

have a listen:

helium - xxx (1994)



helium - superball (1995)



helium - pat's trick (1995)



helium - honeycomb (1995)



helium - leon's space song (1997)

acid test

here's yet another reason to why i love 4AD so much. (as if throwing muses, belly, pixies, the amps, red house painters, birthday party, lush, lisa germano, breeders, kristin hersh, mountain goats, that dog and tanya donnelly weren't enough!) emma pollock - of the delgados for the ones who remember. the song is acid test, and i just ordered her album, she's awesome!




man, i love the 90s.

feel the pain

more dinosaur jr for you; here's a favorite video. enjoy.

angels

this video makes me cry.



(it's sigur rós "svefn-g-englar")

why i loved the 90s pt 2

i love this video - dirty boots by sonic youth - cos it has everything. awesome music, teenage love, 90s (anti-)fashion, live concert, boys with long hair. it just goes to show that wearing way too big a band t-shirts and having sloppy hair - that's so obvious in my teenage photos - was right on the money! it may not seem all that pretty through today's eyes, but it was then.

as it were, my parents didn't want to pay for extra tv channels back then so i only ever watched mtv at my friend's, but i did record a few 120 minutes and guide to alternative music (with toby!) and i watched them over and over at home. this video was on one of them so i must have seen it a hundred times. i fell in love with it from the beginning and as it usually is with sonic youth; there is no falling out of love with them.

enjoy.