In the ever vibrant capital of Canadian creativity (sorry Toronto), four guys and one girl, despite being pretty young, create tunes that could have been written 25 years earlier: Silly Kissers is the name of this splendid group, and the songs are perfect little synth pop gems, cheerful at first approach but with subtle twists beyond the surface, and above all with an amazing sense for song structure and melody. The great Arbutus that have already blessed us with Grimes' amazing tape earlier have released Silly Kissers' debut 10 inch Precious Necklace. Listen to two of the beauties below, and don't miss the nice and easy video for Ghost in Your Heart.
Also from Montreal hail Cherry Chapstick, a pretty busy and ambitious trio that recently seem to have jumped on the hip synth bandwagon as well after some explorations into rather traditional shoegazey indie rock (though I don't know in which direction they're actually heading now), but with a rather 90s feel to it, which is, no doubt, just as fine. They have a 7 inch out, and a-side The Line is a brilliantly chilled and sleazy late night jam, while the flip side is a "re-imagination" of Silly Kissers' EP title track Precious Necklace, a pretty unapologetic four-to-the-floor call to dance.
Manners is the one-man project of Greg Beson, hailing from Portland, Maine, and apparently if you're located in the remote borderland of New England, you've more than enough time to imagine some of the creatively most exciting experimental folk there is right now - with its hazy guitar and heavily distorted cymbals, Greg's mellow voice, dreamlike, laid-back harmonizing and a gentle variation of tempi, Night Before will stick in your ear canal for days. Love is everywhere, most present right here.
Our favourite ex-Vivian Girls, ex-Crystal Stilts and ex-Dum Dum Girls drummer Frankie Rose finally has a band that features her own name, together with "the Outs". Well, though we loved her work with all the other wonderful retro outfits and we won't stop loving those bands now, still it sounds very exciting what we've just digested, Little Brown Haired Girl from their self-titled debut LP, out September 21 on our most beloved Slumberland.
Good things will come to you, just be patient. Evan Adams' rad project Top Girls had been on my radar for quite a while now since Transparent first showed some love for his beautiful track Not Enuff in early May, and before I could find some spare time to get back to this exciting kind of lo-fi r&b/ambient bedroom electronica, Adams dopped his rough diamond Faded Feeling into my inbox this very morning, one of the tunes that are included in his debut Attraction EP, out now digitally via Hi-Scores. Faded vocals over a distorted beat and a subtle dreamlike synth line is all I need to be happy right after waking up to another sticky Berlin summer day. And now, coffee.
Listen to Wild Nothing's splendid brand new track Your Rabbit Feet from his upcoming EP Evertide, the first on the just founded imprint Warmest Chord that will focus on the released records' design and packaging, putting out only very limited editions of the physical copies. (via Pitchfork)
Somerville's Gem Club are Christopher Barnes and Kristen Drymala, and they devoted themselves to wonderfully intimate and slow ballads, with a sad voice supported only by a piano, gentle strings and occasionally some subtle noises in the distance - that's all, but that's more than enough to create magic that leaves us baffled and spellbound.
Gem Club will have an EP ready by July 9, it will be available via their bandcamp page.
This is gonna be something really special: NFOP is officially psyched to announce the release of Ghost Animal's debut full length tape Summertime in Heaven (that's most likely gonna be the cover art above), thrown into the realms of us wretched mortals by our already defenselessly adored Summer Time In Hell. The cassette will feature eleven blissed out shoegazey surf pop tunes, all the fuzzy guitar magnificence you're possibly gonna need this summer.
In addition to the earlier featured California Summer pt. 1, In Your Room and Fever Not Dead, the amazingly talented Mr Avishai has kindly made available a couple of other tracks, the beautiful album's title track and its opener Change Your Mind, a brilliant track recorded in a manner Phil Spector would be proud of, probably Ghost Animal's most energetic and impulsive song to date. Moreover, we are blessed with another track, the Amdiscs-released EP only Found God, a slower, classically hazy Jesus and Mary Chain inspired gem with perfectly subtle lyrics. And now, go spark the hype.
