Holiday song from Beach House

mp3: Beach House - I Do Not Care for the Winter Sun

Beach House have had a very successful year. Their third LP, Teen Dream, has and reaped much more critical acclaim, and reached out to much larger masses of people, than their first two albums cold ever dream of. It's featured in many end of year lists as one of 2010's essential records, and I ranked it as my fourth favorite album of the year. Now the band is giving back to its fans, and just announced via Twitter:

We wrote a holiday song for you, thanks for the great year!

The pleasure has been all mine, Beach House. Download the song (it's really good!) via the link above, or via Beach House's official website.

New video: Mew - Beach

Mew's official music video for the track 'Beach', off their 2009 album No More Stories Are Told Today I'm Sorry They Washed Away No More Stories The World Is Grey I'm Tired Let's Wash Away, is finally out!

mp3: Mew - Beach(alternate download link)



The members of Danish dream pop / alternative rock band Mew first met each other in the early nineties, when the four founding members worked together on a 7th grade art project. Their project consisted of an art film combining self-composed music with self-recorded video, and was a strong hint of what to come - lead singer Jonas Bjerre still loves to combine video and music in interesting and artistic ways, something Mew fans all over the world know to appreciate.

In all their live shows, bizarre and fascinating backdrop videos always run behind the band for the entirety of the show. These are actually all made by Bjerre personally, who in the meantime between directing his 7th grade art video and breaking through internationally with Mew in 2003 actually for a period also worked professionally with post-production and special effects. For an example of Bjerre's work, check out the absolutely stunning backdrop video for 'Comforting Sounds' (if you're impatient, 4:20 is when the magic begins).

Although Bjerre doesn't produce the official music videos for the band himself, the world is always in for a treat when a new Mew music video is released nonetheless. Due to the band's love for interesting and experimental imagery, they always work with really interesting young up-and-coming directors. 'Beach' was directed by 29 year old Danish director Lasse Martinussen, who also did their last video (Repeaterbeater), and it's truly bizarre and unique - in that special Mew way.

While Beach arguably is the most straigthforward, sweet and bright song on the album, almost naive-sounding compared to other tracks such as the dark New Terrain or the complex and labyrinthian Introducing Palace Players (my absolute favorite track of 2009!), the video is far from naive and sweet. The cheerful song, compared with dark, perplexing and unnerving images, makes for a fantastic music video that makes me once again reconfirm my deep love for these Danish pop geniuses. Enjoy!

My favorite albums of the first half of 2009 (#7 - #6)

I'm posting this two months too late, but oh well. My personal top ten favorite albums released in the first half of 2009! (January 1st to June 30th) Here's my 7th and 6th favorite albums, see my last post in this blog for number 10 through 8.

7. Sonic Youth - The Eternal
Sonic Youth - Massage The History
Sonic Youth are back yet again, and this return to a smaller label sees them make nudges to the punkish, fast-paced and noisy 80s underground period of their career, in tracks such as "Anti-Orgasm", while still including the sort of slowly building, atmospheric acoustic guitar enhanced tracks that can only be found late in their career, like the album closer "Massage The History". The latter most of all reminds me of the excellent Sonic Nurse's (2004) "I Love You Golden Blue" - which is a very good thing in my book. On a whole, the album continues the constant evolution of Sonic Youth where 2006's Rather Ripped left off, but also shows influence of the band's 2008 tour, which was a nostalgic homage tour to their 1988 masterpiece Daydream Nation. A good mix that makes for a very solid album!

6. Asobi Seksu - Hush
Asobi Seksu - Transparance
The New Yorker shoegaze/dream pop band Asobi Seksu used to be a quintet of four American men and one Japanese woman (and vocalist), but has since been reduced to a duo of just one Japanese and one American for this third LP. Somehow, though, the multi-layered wall of guitars that characterize shoegaze-inspired "dream pop" bands is not gone at all, even with only one man playing all instruments. This perhaps just makes it clear that Asobi Seksu's albums have always been product of heavy studio work, and not a collection of songs that can easily be picked up and played by the band live. While I personally think that this third album has a very weak opening, my initial disappointment was soon completely turned around by a series of very strong tracks, such as the beautiful "Transparence", and the surprisingly upbeat and radio-friendly "Me & Mary".

Like before, the charm of the band lies in their unusual and good melodies, the combination of Japanese and English lyrics sung by the charismatic Yuki Chikudate, and the easily accessible take on the shoegaze genre. The first and self-titled album (2003) saw Chikudate playing with the Japanese female stereotype of cutesy innocence and immaturity, singing with a fragile and girlish voice while at the same time combining it with the band's non-innocent lyrics and band name (Asobi Seksu can roughly be translated as "casual sex", or "sex just for fun"). The follow-up Citrus (2006), on the other hand, saw her trying a more confident and mature style of singing, and in Hush, she truly has moved to the polar opposite of her roots, showing a strutting confidence. She still keeps her voice high, though, and at times somewhat fragile, thankfully. After all, as genre inventors My Bloody Valentine showed the world twenty years ago, what really makes the roaring wall of sound in the shoegaze genre work, is the supplementing high and fragile vocals that work as a contrast to its bombasticness.

A Triumph for Man (1997)

Being a new writer on this blog, I thought I could start out by writing about one of my all-time favorite albums.

Mew - Coffee Break

Mew - Panda

Mew - Web

Above, you can find my three favorite tracks from Danish indie rock / dream pop band Mew's 1997 debut album, A Triumph for Man. Today, Mew are arguably the most famous for the pompous and bombastic prog-rock influenced soundscape of their fourth studio album, And the Glass Handed Kites (which was also their definite international breakthrough). It is hard to imagine that this "indie stadium band" (jokingly dubbed so by guitarist Bo), who after their latest release opened for REM on their Europe tour, and Bloc Party on their US tour, started out with the mellow-sounding and introverted A Triumph For Man - a record release that saw no more than a mere 2000 CDs produced.

In this early album, the influences that shaped Mew to the band they are today, are much more easily recognizable. It is quite evident that the four Danes grew up listening to the likes of My Bloody Valentine and Swirlies. The distorted walls of guitars and the high-pitched vocals of these shoegaze bands were combined with smart pop songwriting to create the easily accessible, but still deep little masterpiece A Triumph for Man. The strutting confidence of the guitars combined with shy, eccentric frontman Jonas Bjerre's soft and modest voice and melancholic lyrics make for a true beauty of an album, by many Danish music journalists considered one of the 90s best records.

The influence from Swirlies is at times painfully obvious, but the similarity was by all means blessed from Swirlies themselves. Damon Tujian, guitarist and vocalist of the Boston shoegazer band, personally crossed the atlantic and endured many long and cold Danish winter weeks to co-produce this debut album of the four 20-year old boys. I personally prefer this classic to Mew's newest effort, and warmly recommend this best example of what Scandiavian rock music has to offer.