album of the week: TUNNG - GOOD ARROWS

Tunng return with a new record, the first one published in Thrill Jockey, known to be one of the most important labels of the 90s and pioneer of post-rock experiments. We can not hear many changes from the previous record but we can not ask for many new things as it has only passed a year between both publications. Folk and electronics, or folktronica or whatever or just folk and pop in a band where they use electronic elements to fulfill the general atmosphere of it all. Beautiful songs in a beautiful package. Not yet a video for the new single so watch last year's video for Jenny Again

SOME VIDEOS

Here we have a long selection of the last great singles and videos of the season:

The Distance is the single for the long awaited new DNTEL album.


Video for new Feist single, 1234, is another dance along musical inspired colorful happy film



Architecture in Helsinki's new video for Heart it Races is a lo-fi Z film, inspired in Africa, or that's what I think so.


Beirut's beautiful video for new single Elephant Gun


French newest cool band The Teenagers with their hit Homecoming


James Yorkston latest single Woozy with Cider


The Go Team's first single Grip like a Vice from coming new album


Fanfarlo's Firescape


CSS video for next single Alcohol


Bat For Lashes' mysterious great video for latest single What's a Girl to Do

More album updates

It's taking time to update the blog after my out-of-line period, but I'll try.
Other albums I have to mention are:


ANIMAL COLLECTIVE - STRAWBERRY JAM
After the so critically acclaimed FEELS and the PEOPLE Ep, we already have here the so anticipated new record, the first one for Domino. And I say so anticipated because, as it is now so habitual, you could find some songs on the Internet from the beginning of June, and the album is supposed to be released in September. Members from Animal Collective asked the journalists who leaked the songs that, once the damaged was done, please leaked all the album for the people to be able to hear it altogether and they also prosecuted these journalists so the promotional copies were watermarked.
So because of that, we are already able to hear the full new album and they've done a logical progression from their previous works. Less atmospheric than their previous record and more based on samplers and keyboards than anything they've done before, it's their most commercial record to date as well, which it has not to be a bad thing, and maybe not as brilliant as Feels or Panda Bear's this year record, but still in the first class league.
I saw them live last week, and I have to say they were great. They didn't use any guitar, just drums, samplers and keyboards, but you could here many acoustic sounds coming from their machines. As they become more commercial record by record, they still don't make any concession when they play live, avoiding any song from their last record, presenting the new one but without playing what should be the obvious hits, and playing a lot of new songs that maybe are going to have release in a future.
Here you have the video for Fireworks:

LONEY, DEAR - LONEY, NOIR


This is the debut of this Swedish band for Sub Pop but it's their second album, if I'm right. Quiet melodic and euphoric pop as it seems can only be made in Sweden nowadays. The voice of his singer gets high levels that we could only imagine Newsom or Bush could get, and he's a man. Here you have two videos:
Saturday waits

I am John

Out of the line

After one month of many logistic problems, with the computer and the Internet connection, I'm back to misinform. Many records of the week without a post, some videos and concerts and a few more things. During this last month I've been listening a lot to the next records:
THE BOWERBIRDS - HYMNS FOR A DARK HORSE


Coming from North Carolina, this debut album from these indie-folk kids has some of the most talented hymns of the year, such as In our Talons. Guitar, drums, violin and accordion along with voices and chorus from the three members.

IRON AND WINE - THE SHEPPERDS DOG

The new record of Iron and Wine is the natural next step in his carer. Better sound and more instrumentation than the previous two records, more in the line of The Woman King EP. Some will miss the naked intimacy of the first records, also represented here in some tracks, but I don't think that the full-band arrangements destroy any of the charismatic features that has always been characteristic of his songs.

MATTHEW DEAR - ASA BREED

The new record of this electro-pop freak is somewhere between more commercial and less commercial than his previous records. The strange slowdown voices are more present than ever before, the sounds from drum machines, and the convination of electronic and organic instruments is sometimes frightening and dark but it's also his record with most standard and classical pop songs, more slow motion than dance oriented and with clear postpunk influences (and who doesn't nowadays).

THEE STRANDED HORSE.


Frenchman Yann Tambour, known previously for his work in the abstract electronic project Encre, has just made one of the most interesting folk records of the year. his reason to start this project was the discovery of Kora, an African instrument somewhere in between an arp and a big pumpkin, and most of the songs of the record are played with this instrument. The originality of the project is the convination of this instrument, acoustic guitar, his personal voice (that reminds Devendra Banhart's without the overly dramatic component) and the silences, as important in the record as any other instrument. Some people already call him the masculine answer to Joanna Newsom, but its own personality makes it the best folk record of the year so far.