Satisfying New Additions to My Insatiable Musical Appetite - August

• Stereolab – Chemical Chords
• She & Him – Volume One
• Bloc Party – Intimacy
• Goldfrapp – Seventh Tree
• Wye Oak – If Children

Welcome to the inaugural appearance of what I hope’ll be a new monthly blog feature: an essay-type post dedicated to the new and noteworthy music additions to my ever-expanding sonic palette.

Being a rabid Stereolab fan – I even drove to Minneapolis a couple years back just to catch them live – means I had to pick up Chemical Chords on the day it was released. The album probably won’t bring about any new Stereolab converts, but its content will easily satiate fans of this progressive French group. It’s fun, catchy, and has that Stereolab anachronistic vibe that evokes a strange feeling of familiarity while simultaneously sounding years ahead of contemporary pop music. However, a few post backs I mistakenly said this was my pick-of-the-month (insert guitar pick here), but at the risk of losing whatever self-appointed credibility I have, I need to renege that.

Cuz you see, I was on holidays for the last week of the month, and all my gloriously unstructured free time enabled me to seek out music I missed, forgotten about, or simply didn’t have time for.

This is how I heard Bloc Party’s Intimacy, and it turned out to be a kick-ass rocker of an album. Reportedly about lead singer Kele’s indelible, life-altering breakup (aren’t they all?), this disc doesn't exactly pave new conceptual ground, but at least the music itself is more diverse and, well, aggressive than past outings.

Both She & Him and Wye Oak qualify under the category of “Musicians Defying My Initial Prejudices.” Wye Oak look astonishingly young in their press photos, yet have a precocious, shoe-gazing sound reminiscent of indie-rock vets Yo La Tengo. She & Him – Him being accomplished singer/songwriter M. Ward & She being noted actress Zooey Deschanel – pay homage to innocuous 60s AM radio pop with their bare-bones, palatable first release. Deschanel’s voice is wonderful and powerful like Neko Case’s and while it lacks Case’s range it is still pleasing to the ear. Chalk one up for actor/actresses-turned-musicians who are actually talented side.

Which bring me to the final, most welcomed edition to my musical diet: Goldfrapp’s Seventh Tree. Goldfrapp is a band I’m embarrassingly unfamiliar with which actually turned out to be a good thing, since I held zero preconceptions and expectations heading into my first ever listen. And I gotta tell you: a sublime musical experience took place. Somehow, this album was exactly what I had been craving all month without me even knowing it!!

I was immediately seduced by Alison Goldfrapp’s sultry, smoky vocals and Will Gregory’s spellcaster construction of the minimalist, ethereal soundscapes that are both fresh and accessible. Each listen of this record unearthed hidden depths I previously missed, and I became ensconced in Seventh Tree, playing it over and over again.

There’s even one of those rare songs on Seventh Tree “A & E” - a track that filled me with such intense joy that this happiness bubbled over into incredulous laughter and disbelief as I asked myself “How could something possibly be this good?” I never did figure out the answer to that elusive question, and I suspect that even if I had, it’d be ineffable anyways.

I’ve posted the video for “A & E” below. The sound quality isn’t as crisp as it needs to be, but the song is still enjoyable in this format. Please heed this warning though: the sylvan creatures dancing around Alison are kinda fun-scary and will probably make at least a cameo in your dreams.

I hope you like it as much as I do.




Current rotation: A Mix of the Above Five Albums