Window View

I couldn't have dreamed a more appropriate companion for the best song on Beach Fossil's forthcoming full-length than this vintage home video footage. It's got a late 70's Woody Allen-style romantic melancholy quality that makes your stomach and your heart seem a little further away from one another. Get the LP from Captured Tracks on May 25.

Beach Fossils // Window View from Wooden Lens on Vimeo.

Myspace // Last.fm

Beach Fossils

SELF-TITLED FULL LENGTH

Click here for track 8, "Window View," if it's corrupted in the link above.

This is almost too good to be true -- at long last, the full-length debut of a band that I think about name-dropping roughly every three posts to describe another band has arrived. The album I haven't been able to stop anticipating since the first notes of "Daydream" licked my ears like a tide coming in and a foam seems to rise right out of where the sand meets the water and then you squint up and see orange and purple smudges just above the horizon and you remember sorbet Push-Up Pops with the Flintstones on the package and then you remember light refracting and how comforting the science behind sunsets is.

Wait, where was I? Oh yeah. One of the most deservedly buzzed-about bands last year, whose only other release to date is a 7" and whose hazy surf-pop gems have been slowly trickling one-by-one out of rifts between HTML codes since last summer, finally has something more substantial for hungry listeners to prematurely nibble on -- or swallow whole. This thing doesn't even have a release date, official artwork or a tracklisting yet (EDIT: nevermind, I numbered the tracks and posted a new link), but that doesn't matter -- like any other album this good, the music speaks for itself.

Thanks to the angels at Late For School for somehow getting their hands on this.

Myspace // Last.fm
Buy it!

Orchard Thief

Work

So I found out one day last week that Vacation Dad is touring the east coast this summer with Farms, Bad Tanya, and Orchard Thief. I think it's clear from what I'm posting right now that I'm really glad I looked up that last one. This album is darker than you'd expect of something that is the perfect thing to listen to on a summer day that's hot enough for your back to get stuck to your t-shirt but breezy enough to toss your hair into knots. Think of a minimal version of Real Estate, but moodier, like Crystal Stilts; and then take out the lo-fi fuzz, leaving just reverb and delay and open space; then strip the drum kit down to a few floor toms, a snare, and the occasional shaker, to keep the beats tribal. Add in a pinch of early Appleseed Cast and Sharks Keep Moving, and you're getting kinda close, but you still haven't listened yet. And you must.

You'd be missing out if you didn't also get the two songs No Conclusion posted a few days ago. They're gonna be on an upcoming split with Pawlic (performing under the name Glass Buds), and they're both really killer.

Myspace // Last.fm

DAUGHTERS

DAUGHTERS

Myspace // Last.fm
BUY IT!

I'm baffled -- a band whose last effort was my favorite album the year I graduated high school releasing an album four years later that still manages to fracture my skull with a jackhammer? Color me brain-damaged. (On second thought, I am still in college...)

If you loved Hell Songs, you'll love this record. Pummels just as hard and convulses just as violently. A few BPM are lost, but what you may miss in speed is definitely made up for in density. I'm bummed that they've broken up just as this is being released, but Daughters has never been a stable band, in personality or in composition -- they were more the talented and proficient do-whatever-the-fuck-we-want type. So maybe it's fitting for them to end before they lose that edge. Pretty sure Daughters will be remembered as one of those bands that was the best contemporary they had in a genre with few decent contemporaries to be had. Cheers, pricks.

Pill Wonder

Jungle/Surf

Myspace // Last.fm
Buy it!

Perfect tropical lo-fi noise-pop. This 8-song EP is criminally short at only 18 minutes, but accomplishes enough in that time to compel you to listen repeatedly. Reminds me of No Age but more chill, or the Ruby Suns but more playful, or Islands but more noisy and good in general. This is poised to be the soundtrack to anyone's early summer.

Surfer Blood

Astro Coast
Pre-Order
These guys are super fun indie/surf rock from Florida. Saw them play with a bunch of hardcore bands, which was odd, but they were well received. I encourage you guys to get this album when it is re-released in January on Kanine. This is their self-produced cut.