Sounds You Should Try & Buy 27 August 2014
From this moment on we decry that ‘Things You Can Buy’ will now be called ‘Sounds You Should Try & Buy’…
That was something. This week in Sounds You Should Try & Buy we’ll have a look at a duo taking folk and smearing the lines, a Weezer gone solo then gone gone and now not gone and then we’ll explain that we need more ears….
So let us begin to dig in to what we’re listening to this week and thoughts from around the web….
(For more infos click on the album title)
Shovels & Rope – ‘Swimmin’ Time‘ (Dualtone)
You like your folk, aqua romanticism (if you will), rock, sexy, pop sensibilities, crunchy, country and wop bop a loo bop all in one spot, say like, in a home-crafted album? Then Shovels and Rope’s new album Swimmin’ Time is the collection you’ve been waiting for! Cary Ann Hearst and hubby-partner in ‘it ain’t a crime’ if you do it like this’, Michael Trent have gone all in! What some say may seem like a loss in sonic direction from their O’ Be Joyful must have, we say bring on the multi-personalities in sounds and let Shovels and Rope show all they can be! Yes, we like this one.
From Shovels and Rope’s Facebook page, “It’s with a heart full of gratitude that we thank all y’all for helping us to fling this new record, Swimmin’ Time, into the universe. It’s meant to inspire joy, thoughtful reflection and hope, even in its own darkest moments. To a certain degree, it’s looking at the world from the hull of a shrimp boat, or through the thick glass porthole on a doomed submarine. It’s a call to respect the power of our primary natural element- water. It’s also just little ole music written and recorded at home. Hope y’all like it .”
The Rentals – ‘Lost In Alphaville‘ (Polyvinyl)
We’ll try to make this as simple and pleasing as possible. Matt Sharp is back after 15 year absence of savy alt power pop rock makin’ and has now returned to true, if not robust-ier, form with Lost In Alphaville. Then again, Sharp has had some time to work it out. Is it a comeback or just tying up 90’s loose ends…Who cares! It is DYN-O-MITE! Sharp has recruited a nice cast of mates for the task of craft Patrick Carney, Ryen Slegr, Lucius (to name four) and mix-master Dave Sardy from LCD Soundsystem / Jay Z / Hives / Helmet / Jet fame…
Welcome back handsome.
Matt Sharp talked with Aaron Pfenning for Noisy and had this to say, “The album itself to me is basically a sequel to the last Rentals record. The last record was all written about a place and a time and very specific to a period of my life spending a lot of time in Barcelona. This album is…I went back to that place, many years later, ten years after the fact, and went back to the place where all the songs on the second Rentals record were written about. Basically these songs are just being there and dealing with the fact of coming back to a city where you spent your youth at and going “God who was I at that point in my life” and “Who am I now” and the time since then to now. That’s why these particular songs were important to me, they pick up the story from that point.”