What better way to start off a nice Spring week then with some melancholy indie-pop? Opaluc’s “Snake With Wings” swirls around itself, downcast guitar being slowly joined by a hazy electronic sheen, obscured vocals and jarring electronic skitters popping up once in awhile. It’s a pretty piece of twee ennui, nothing more nothing less. If you want something a little more upbeat before you go to work, give Opaluc’s “Man With A Movie Camera” a whirl too.
Near the top of my secret “Hopes for 2010” list sits the wish that the type of innocent indie-pop anyone can make in there living room. It’s not that farfecthed – “chillwave” is a similar on-the-fly genre where nostalgia escapism takes the place of starry-eyed innocence. In my hypothetical world, a band like The Weddings would be at the forefront of this twee movement. All the hallmarks are there – easy guitar strumming, lovey-dovey lyrics and far-from-professional singing. Not to mention a recording quality on the same level of The Moldy Peaches. The group has a new EP out blessed with the oh-so-appropriate name Broken Hearts. Just in time to get all melancholy in the Spring!
Let me give you the short story about how I stumbled across this one – I decided “hey, why don’t I revisit old posts and see how some of the bands I’ve written about before are doing?” I land on a page including this post where I devoted a whole paragraph to indie-pop outfit Balloon Skirt. A little research later, I discover Balloon Skirt just released there first album this past week. Cue the X-Files’ theme for this strange timing.
The first song released from this new album, “ミルクティーと星の夜,” is an upbeat blast of sunny twee to welcome Spring. It’s all bright guitar playing and happy vocals, Balloon Skirt making those Three-Berry Ice Cream comparisons ring truer than ever. A dose of total feel-good. Listen to the track over here.
Ya know what this here blog has been missing recently? Twee music. Happy, sappy twee music to make the coming Spring that much more sweet. Enter indie-poptastic duo Serani Poji. They make hoppy music begging to be used as the soundtrack to woodland creatures selling insurance. The group plans on releasing a new album at the very start of March (timing!) and have slowly been putting samples of songs from the poorly titled Merry Go-Round Jailhouse onto their MySpace. The latest snippet comes from the especially chipper “Laughing Frog,” a piano heavy number that just seems damn perfect for an April nature walk that ends in a picnic. The song itself ends up being surprisingly kicky, with it’s drum programming and ever-forward chug. But the vocals of “Laughing Frog” add the appropriate drops of wanderlust to the song.
While we’re on the subject of Merry Go-Round Jailhouse, also give a listen to “Dear Heroes,” which boasts some of the most clever use of video game noises and Autotune in the same track sample. Opening with what sounds like the “start” screen of Kirby in Dreamland, Serani Poji quickly transition into an 8-bit bop reminiscent of Strawberry Machine’s less manic compositions.
People in or near the city of Osaka, attention! This upcoming weekend has so many good concerts going broke for them seems totally reasonable. At the top of the heap: Saturday’s Joanna Newsom show featuring impressive Japanese opener Dry River String, and Sunday’s knock out of The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart. That Sunday event just got a little better, because PoBPaH opener Turntable Films have upped their cred by releasing a killer single.
The group’s material before “2steps” wasn’t weak, but it wasn’t the sort of stuff that blew you away either. Just pleasant folk rock with a twee underbelly, nothing surprising. But Turntable Film’s latest finds the group falling in line for indie-pop marching orders – “2steps” thumps a little harder than anything else in the band’s catalog. Not to take anything away from the Spanish guitar sounding instrumentals, but it’s that beat pounding away that makes this so addictive. It all comes together on the sea-breeze chorus which can be best described as sounding somewhat Swedish. The song comes off of the group’s forthcoming mini-album Parables of Fe-Fum (listen to a sampler of the album here), which has jumped up a few slots in the “get excited” category. “2steps” stands out as one of 2010’s early songs to beat.
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