Now Downloading: New Releases 04.10.07

It's another great week for new music, with new releases from Bright Eyes (see previous post,) Blonde Redhead, Laura Veirs, The Rosebuds and the exciting new group from Nick Cave and his Bad Seed bretheren called Grinderman.

Playlist: New Releases 04.10.07

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Album: Grinderman - Grinderman

"Foul-mouthed, noisy, hairy, and damn well old enough to know better," or so says the press release. Nick Cave recently came to the realization that he might be in a rut. For years now, Cave's method of songwriting had always been writing the songs in his office, then presenting them to his band (The Bad Seeds.) This time around, he took a different approach, so different that it required a new band name: Grinderman. This time out Cave actually straps on a guitar and he and most the Bad Seeds (Martyn Casey, Warren Ellis and Jim Sclavunos) worked these songs as a group. Cave improvised lyrics and played guitar while the rest of the band built the songs around his primitive guitar work. For fans of Cave's old group The Birthday Party, this is a welcome return to noisy rock for Cave. Songs like the blazing opener "Get It On," and the triumphant "Depth Charge Ethel" put Cave in the sonic company of pre-punkers The Stooges and NY's legendary Suicide. It's the opening lines to "No Pussy Blues," though, that takes the cake (and shoves it deliciously down your throat:)

My face is finished, my body's gone.
And I can't help but think standin' up here
in all this applause and gazin' down
at all the young and the beautiful.
With their questioning eyes.
That I must above all things love myself.

What a great release!

Free AOL album stream

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Album: Blonde Redhead - 23

Blonde Redhead started out as Sonic Youth-inspired No Wavers, but have since slowly developed and smoothed out the edges over their twelve years and now seven albums. 23 isn't a massive departure from 2004's Misery Is a Butterfly but it is perhaps more refined and subtle in it's attack on our senses. The layers of guitar, vocals and atmospherics are blended so that you barely notice there's a art-pop structure underneath all this, which is fine. The meditation you fall into is a perfectly good method of travel from tracks 1-10. Unlocking what lies underneath can (and will) come later.

Free AOL album stream

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Album: Laura Veirs - Saltbreakers

Laura Veirs spent a good chunk of time opening for Sufjan Stevens just prior to recording Saltbreakers, and it certainly shows... one listen to the beautiful "To The Country" and it's hard not to imagine Sufjan pulling the strings. The album centers on the theme of water and the ocean, as the subject seems to creep up in some manner or other in every song. Thus, it feels more liquid-y then 2005's great Year of Meteors, which burned a little more brightly with songs that were instantly humming in your head. You could call it a warmer version of 2004's Carbon Glacier, but that would be taking the title as metaphor a little too far. Another track to listen to is the serene "Ocean Night Song," which moves into your conscious like the tide, full of gentle ebb and flow while still getting it's cues from source out of this world (the moon.)

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Album: The Rosebuds - Night of the Furies

The Rosebuds' Night of the Furies sees the band almost making a return to the carefree pop of their debut (The Rosebuds Make Out, which is quite welcome after 2005's Birds Make Good Neighbors nearly sucked the life out of a lot of what made The Rosebuds initally a joy to listen to. Furies takes the lyrical and thematic growth achieved on Birds and puts it to the sounds of the New Romantic genre of the 1980s. It's a bold left turn in sound and the Rosebuds pull it off magically. Just listen to "Cemetary Lawn" and feel yourself transported back to a shimmery 1982, minus the hair and the gold flambe (ala ABC.) With the infectious song "Get Up Get Out," there's even the leftover strands of disco that you could still hear in the post-punk of the early 80's.

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More going (or already in) the Sansa
Bright Eyes - Cassadaga (see previous post) Free AOL album stream
Cloud Cult - The Meaning of 8
Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie for Theaters Colon Soundtrack
Book of Knots - Traineater
Scott Miller & the Commonwealth - Reconstruction
Caspian - The Four Trees

tags: music, album review, grinderman, blonde 23, laura veirs, cocorosie, the rosebuds, indie rock, album review, new releases, rhapsody