This is another one of those tracks that's been around for awhile but HEY I didn't have time to blog about it before. I heard this other YACHT track today on XMU (natch) and it reminded me that I love this track waaaay more.

I know this band is weird, like, really weird. But this song is honestly a love song to me. A love song to everyone and everything that makes you feel loved and complete and whole and...well, loved.

I mean, let's go over this:

I used to live

in a heartbeat city

I swear I'd fall in love every minute on the street

You might be walking around the corner

and our eyes might meet

"Where you been darlin, darlin?

We've been holding this moment for you;

I told you your dreams would come true."

Furthermore, the song gives me this lovely, giddy, nostalgic feeling similar to the one brought about by the first Toy Story film. I like to imagine that the things I love, all around me, lead their own secret lives and somehow manage to fit me into them so neatly and subtly that I don't even notice.

I might be washing up the dishes

and the kitchen might SAY

Hang around baby, baby

Hang around baby, baby

We'll be baking a cake for you.

So here's to you and all of the voodoo cities surrounding you.

Song of the Day: "This Orient" ~Foals

So there's this band, Foals, and they're awesome. I first fell in love with a track of theirs, "Spanish Sahara" off their latest album, Total Life Forever. Then I heard this song which, aside from the repetition, isn't anything like "Spanish Sahara." I didn't even realize it was the same band at first.

I love how the song begins; I love the voices at different pitches. They don't sound human exactly, almost like the blips of an incredibly musical radar. It actually took me a couple of listens to fully appreciate the track; I was so emotionally invested in the sweeping despondence of "Spanish Sahara" that I wasn't fully prepared for something so light and optimistic. I wanted to feel heavier.

Instead, I've had this refrain stuck in my head all day (when I'm not humming "The Suburbs" that is):

It's your heart; it's your heart

that gives me this western feeling

oh and do you know

you give me; you give me this western feeling

Truth be told, I have no idea what "this western feeling" is but considering the track is entitled "This Orient," I have to think it's a song about change, positive change. And probably coming into yourself through someone else: moving from east to west and settling with the sun.

Here, of course, is "Spanish Sahara."

I can't believe it's been 3 years since the cathedral recordings of Neon Bible. But it has and since we've been good fans and have waited ever-so-patiently for Arcade Fire's next great opus, we've been treated to three leaked tracks from the band's upcoming August release: The Suburbs.

The fact that the title track of this album greeted me on my drive to work two days ago has stuck with me as a symbol of hope and goodness, regardless of the almost oppressive melancholy of the song itself.

This is easily my favorite track so far, although we've apparently got 16 to choose from so I suppose I shouldn't get too far ahead of myself with a month left to go. At any rate, Butler's wail is in fine form here and the band is doing something a little bluesy--a looser rhythm or structure that I'm definitely feeling.

The lyrics are the introspective, downbeat Arcade Fire we've come to know and love. If I were to draw any pretentious comparisons here, I'd say the track reminds me a bit of "Cold Wind"--full of regret and nostalgia and a sweet sense of wanting to share something, anything, before it's too late:

So can you understand?
Why I want a daughter while I'm still young
I wanna hold her hand
And show her some beauty
Before this damage is done

And I love that he sings, in a desperate, pleading voice, that if it's too much to ask, he'll settle for a son.

In an increasingly frightening period of time where it seems as though things, the beautiful things, are moving past us too quickly--or that we're leaving them behind without proper goodbyes--"The Suburbs" is a body ache, an earnest longing:

Kids wanna be so hard
But in my dreams we're still screamin' and runnin' through the yard
And all of the walls that they built in the seventies finally fall
And all of the houses they build in the seventies finally fall
Meant nothin' at all
Meant nothin' at all

It's a brilliant song and a song that lodges itself in your sinews long after it's over, pressing you to tap your foot in an unconscious but familiar rhythm. If "The Suburbs" other 15 tracks are anywhere as deeply felt as this, we're one month away from one of the best albums of the year.

This is a live recording of another track from the new album, "Ready to Start." Although I have less loyalty to this song, the band already sounds tight playing these tracks live. Plus, it's really cool to think that they're playing in someone's fucking living room.

Song of the Day: "Wolfboy" ~Blair

I literally heard this song just yesterday on my way home from work. (Holla JOSIAHon Sirius/XMU).

Apparently, this girl, sans any moniker beyond her first name, sent a demo to Aquarium Drunkard and is now seeing rotation on digital radio at least. Within her self-description, she likened herself to a shit ton of really great artists that I personally don't think she really sounds like; blogs seem to support the premise that she sounds like early/awesome Liz Phair.

I can get behind that.

And that picture.

And this one:

Anyway, there's not a lot to this song but it's just...good. It's different. Her voice is distinctive; the chorus is that kind of repetitive yearning that I'm such a sucker for, consistently.

Plus, I'm all for anyone redeeming the werewolf population in a post-Twilight world.

So...you go Blair.

Song of the Day: Memoryhouse--"Lately (Deuxieme)"

"Lately (deuxieme)"

I was originally going to write this post about Bat for Lashes but I decided to put that post on hold and talk about this band called Memoryhouse and this really lovely track of theirs, "Lately (Deuxieme)."

This is the first I've ever heard of the band and I'm really in love with the song, mostly because it features the reverb loop used prominently by Jon Brion throughout the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind soundtrack:

I'm not entirely sure music bloggers have picked up on the sampling but I'm also not entirely sure everyone else in the world is as sonically obsessed with Jon Brion as I am.

Exhibit A) Upon seeing the film Punchdrunk Love for the first time, I recognized Jon Brion as the composer based on the score's clever usage of a miniature piano. My film professor was boggled.

Exhibit B) The name of this blog.

Anyway, Memoryhouse. To me, "Lately" is like 3 minutes of wonder, blissed-out wonder. I think it has something to do with the bass drum undercurrent rippling beneath the Eternal Sunshine loop. It's like a summer stormcloud that occasionally becomes a muted dance synth. Muted wonder, maybe. Possibly because Eternal Sunshine is so indelibly associated with this track, it makes me think of two kids on a beach, holding hands and looking up while the tide comes in.

The track is introduced by a turntable needle clicking into position on a record and we listen to the looped reverb. Which, of course, takes me to the end credits of Eternal Sunshine when the two characters are forever captured in a film reel of a snowball fight. The clip snags and repeats itself, over and over, possibly into eternity, begging the question of whether or not the lovers are meant to repeat their same mistakes again and again, eternally to the point of timelessness.

The lyrics, from what I can tell, are as follows:

Lately, I'm not sleeping

I'm not breathing

without machine

Lately, my heart's been breaking

my heart's been breaking

through the seam.

Shut me off

Shut me off

Shut me off

Shut me off

I'm not sure a refrain has been so piercing since Wait, they don't love you like I love you. The song itself is so dreamy and lo-fi and unobtrusive that it's...jarring to listen to the sorrow in the verses, the poignant sensation of being so vulnerable--unable to breath without aid--in the wake of heartbreak.

Download Memoryhouse's new EP, "The Years" here.

This is a Memoryhouse cover of my favorite Grizzly Bear track, "Foreground." How great is this group??

Song of the Day: any track by the xx

The trouble with choosing a song of the day is narrowing down the choices to just one. And, sometimes, that's just impossible. For instance, with London-based duo the xx, how do I pick one song as better than the rest when I'm equally obsessed with the three tracks I have on my iPod? So I guess today is more of a "Band of the Day" and I hope everyone can get behind that. Not that it matters because I make the rules and can therefore thrash them.

So. the xx. Let's not get started on how their April show at the Varsity is sold out and tickets on stubhub are being offered at ridiculous, Decemberists-level prices. I'm over it. I'm not but I"m trying to be.

I'm making the trek to SXSW to see them (probs). If I think that way, I really can be over it.

The xx sort of exploded onto the scene last year and, while I recognize my tardiness to their indie-world domination party, I'd like to offer up the excuse that I WAS IN AFRICA. So, now that every other music-obsessive has had their turn to gush about the xx, it's my turn to slobber all over their slow-simmering, sexy beats.

"Heart Skipped a Beat" is a person favorite of mine because I'm a sucker for the lyrics and the juxtaposition between R&B drum machine and indie guitars. Seriously:

Please don't say we're done

when I'm not finished

I could give so much more

I like to point out to people that relationships are inherently unequal; someone always loves the slightest bit more, the tiniest bit better. And what happens to that person when it's all over? Where does that unfinished love go? Apparently into this verse, repeated 7 times:

Sometimes, I still need you.

And it's the way they sing it to each other, her voice so emotive and gorgeous--his, so flat and complementary: the perfect parry between lovers.

Heart skipped a beat

and when I caught it you were out of reach

but I'm sure, I'm sure

you've heard it before

The xx never spoke truer words than those. And, to better serve that point, the duo repeats those verses 4 times. What a sentiment, right? Falling for someone, experiencing the slightest of delays as your body adjusts to the sensation, missing said person by inches, days, what have you. Damn it's good. This song is actually too good.

Then you've got "Crystallized", which starts out with such an ace riff. It's like, I alternately want to play air guitar and seduce someone.

What is that???? I"ll tell you what it is: Sex. Let's be honest, her voice is like an orgasm in this song, seriously. The only thing sexier is Karen O. And the lyrics? Don't get me started.

You applyin' pressure

to help me crystalise

and you've got the faith

that I could bring paradise

I'll forgive and forget

before I'm paralysed

Do I have to keep up the pace

to keep you satisfied?

Um. I don't think it takes a huge stretch of the imagination to guess who's applying pressure and where and what's happening between these two. But, you know, if you're not convinced:

I've been down on my knees

and you just keep on getting closer

Then you've got the pas de deux at the end, with the vocals overlapping while the duo sings complementary lyrics. This is good stuff; in fact, this is great stuff. When I tell you I'm in love with the xx, I really really mean it.

Just for kicks, I'm throwing in their bomb remix of Florence + the Machine's "You've Got the Love"--I think it's great when remixes are even better than the originals. There's pretty much nothing this band can't do. Google them and amuse yourself with the various ways in which music bloggers fall over themselves to praise their fucking brilliant sound.