New song from Asobi Seksu's forthcoming fourth LP

mp3: Asobi Seksu - Trails

James Hanna and Yuki Chikudate of NYC duo Asobi Seksu have given the world the first taste of their forthcoming fourth LP, Fluorescence. Judging by 'Trails', the band has left the honey glazed dream pop sound of 2009's Hush behind, and returned to a rougher shoegaze sound again. On this song, they're so My Bloody Valentine, and I'm loving it!

Live at By:Larm - Serena-Maneesh

• mp3: Serena-Maneesh - Reprobate
  
• video: Serena-Maneesh - Reprobate (live on Norwegian television)
  

Serena-Maneesh frontman/vocalist/songwriter Emil Nikolaisen has several times personally declared to be one of Norway's biggest My Bloody Valentine fans. He shares Kevin Shield's big love for beautiful, haunting melodies hidden in layer upon layer of intense noise, and the Norwegian band's acclaimed 2005 self-titled debut album was clearly influenced by MBV's 1991 masterpiece Loveless.

Far from being just another one of the endless amount of MBV clones out there, however, Serena-Maneesh stands on its own, with Nikolaisen's impressive songwriting and guitar play impressing everyone from Pitchfork to Oasis, the Dandy Warhols and Nine Inch Nails. Not a small feat for a band from Oslo, Norway! Serena-Maneesh acted as openers for the three aforementioned three bands in 2005-2007 tours of theirs, following their debut album's huge success. It's been somewhat quiet around the band since then, but they are now set to finally release their sophomore album next month.

The band's By:Larm show was an opportunity for the band to showcase to anticipating journalists, fans and music industry representatives exactly what they have been working on for the past five years. Despite this however, and the relatively short time allocated to their show (with an 1.15 AM start ...), Nikolaisen walked on stage exclaiming "I know this is a party for the music industry, but looks like we've got some music fans here too! Good." and proceeded to play several old fan favorites to please the crowd. And judging by this night's performance, Nikolaisen and his bandmates are shoegazers only by genre - the charismatic and energetic frontman never once stared down at his chucks, but instead played with intense passion and rocked the audience like a true rockstar.



The new material that eventually was played sounded promising. Less experimental, less introverted and less Loveless, and more accessible, straightforward pop songs. Coated with just the appropriate amount of noise and guitar solos, these new tracks worked well. You can listen to one of them, called Reprobate, right here – or watch a video of the band performing it live on a Norwegian TV show.

SM2 – Abyss in B Minor is out on March 23 in the U.S., and the day before in Europe. In less than two weeks, the band leaves the cold winter snow of Oslo, Norway for a one-month tour all across North America - check out the tour dates and catch Nikolaisen and friends just as they bless the world with their first record in five years!

(photos courtesy of Eskil V)

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.

Desolation Wilderness

I've been trying to get my hands on White Light Strobing since hearing one of the singles in a SXSW promo video a few months back. Desolation Wilderness has a knack for writing laid-back, ethereal songs that owe a bit to My Bloody Valentine, as well as more the recent songwriters Kurt Vile and Devendra Banhart. This album is very consistent. I found all the tracks worth listening to, and there are multiple gems, some of which I'm posting here. The only complaint I have is that the vocals are a little bit downplayed and maybe a tad too saturated with reverb to really understand, but I couldn't really picture myself enjoying DW's sound nearly as much if they were different. Enjoy heartily, folks.

From White Light Strobing (2008)

Come Over In Your Silver Car

And All The Boys Looked

Paris to New York

WTF Happened To Them? Cocteau Twins

Cocteaus Twins were a highly prolific Scottish outfit active throughout the 80's and early 90's. Extremely influential to both the Post-Punk and Shoegaze bands that followed them, Cocteau Twins had a sound that was like no other, as well as a consistently evolving and maturing style. Walls of effects-saturated guitars propelled by Elizabeth Fraser's impressive and almost nonsensical vocals (buried in the mix, of course) are pretty much the M.O. here.

After a few releases in the 90's, Cocteau Twins broke up, due to creative differences. No dead members, drug problems, just plain ol' fading away.

"Cico Buff" is a track from their fifth LP, Blue Bell Knoll, released in 1988. I consider this their best release, as later albums are more radio-friendly pop than the more dreamy, ethereal 80's releases. The video is of a live performance of "Pearly-Dewdrops' Drops" from 1984.

Cico Buff

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.

Spiritualized

Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space

This song is about a decade old and can be found on space rock group Spiritualized's album of the same name. The band's line-up has changed from album to album with the only constant being Jason Pierce from Spacemen 3, who is the main composer for Spiritualized. He's also obsessed with most things space related: his alias is J. Spaceman and he wanted Spiritualized to play at the debut of the CERN supercollider. The album was named NME's album of the year back in '97. This song is a great depiction of Spiritualized's musical approach: When I listen to it, I feel like I'm drunk and listening to a noise rock attempt at shoegazing. Pretty chill song overall.