24 | May | 2015 | Heartbreaking Bravery

May 24, 2015

Heather Woods Broderick – Wyoming (Music Video)

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In the last round of catching up from last week’s loaded slate of new releases, Heather Woods Broderick’s stunning clip for “Wyoming”. It’s the only video in yet another round of great songs. Sunflower Bean released the swirling, psych-damaged “I Hear Voices“, Nervous Trend unveiled their pummeling post-punk highlight “Shattered” (which came a hair’s breadth away from taking the feature spot), Digital Leather’s winning streak of synth-heavy basement pop hit new highs with “Cold Inside“, and Speedy Ortiz offered up a fascinating look at the minutiae of their songwriting process via an acoustic guitar/vocals demo of “Basketball“. Then, there was “Wyoming”.

Shot in a grainy 16mm black-and-white that favors long landscape shots, “Wyoming” finds an early strength in a mode of cinematography that creates a sense of eerie calm. As Broderick’s song slowly builds to its towering climactic moment, the clip’s palette blooms into a soft color. It’s an unexpected, and effective, moment that matches the song’s penchant for the otherworldly. As the camera follows Woods from climbing waterside ridges to the water itself, the clip deepens a sense of inexplicably serene calmness. Emotive storytelling via the film’s mechanics are favored over a clear narrative (in a manner not entirely dissimilar from Shane Carruth’s incredible Upstream Color). It’s a minimal, evocative piece of filmmaking that boasts imagery that’s hard to shake and elevates an already great song. After the flurry of posts about last week’s material, it also feels like the perfect end-cap to a particularly memorable storm. Don’t let this one drift off into the distance.

Watch “Wyoming” below and order Glider from Western Vinyl here.

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May 24, 2015

Diamond Youth – Thought I Had It Right (Music Video)

Pressing on with the onslaught of coverage from some of last week’s most memorable titles, this collection contains a handful of great songs and one great video. Maribou State’s glitchy, heavily atmospheric “Wallflower“, Sea Cycles’ woozy, kaleidoscopic “Diving Bell“, O-Face’s massive, insistent “740 Turbo“, and Seapony’s breezy “Saw the Light” constituted the entries for the single song category. The visually striking black-and-white clip for Diamond Youth’s anthemic “Thought I Had It Right” gets the title spot thanks to some arresting visuals and brilliant editing. Every smash cut’s meticulously cued to a change or specific element (snare hit, etc.) of the song and the end result’s surprisingly engaging. It’s a deceptively clever video that propels an already good song to the realms of greatness. Incorporating weird special effects, old film clips, stock footage, and live edits, “Thought I Had It Right” takes on a life of its own and the end results are spectacular. This is a masterclass in how to create an effective music video; take notes.

Watch “Thought I Had It Right” below and order Nothing Matters from Topshelf here.

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May 24, 2015

Molly – People (Music Video)

Going forward with last week’s coverage, there will be a trio of posts with a music video taking up residence in the headline accompanied by a few auxiliary items. Starting that run off is Molly’s incendiary basement pop number “People” and its montage-heavy video. Before diving further into that clip, though, the attention will be refocused on two great songs and one great record. For the songs, Sea Ghost unveiled the hazy indie pop of “BBQ” while Gnarwhal unleashed the intimidatingly feral “Anal Riffage“. For the full streams, there was Little Wings’ deeply felt and winningly shambolic outsider folk record Explains.

Molly get the featured spot thanks to the complementary rapid-fire pace of both “People” and their new clip for the song. Constructed to create what essentially amounts to an immersive people-watching experience may have been a bit on-the-nose if it wasn’t executed with such stunning panache. Mixing in some minimal artistic renderings to overlay what appears to be stock crowd footage, the Julian Nielsen-directed clip finds its rhythm (and it’s charm) on a commendable commitment to simplicity. As the track surges forward, growing more intense, the animations follow suit. By the time it winds down to a close, footage slowing in reverse, it’s left a considerable mark. With Peach Melba already streaming in its entirety, it’s safe to say that the band’s potential isn’t falsified by a pairing this strong. Molly are most definitely a band worth keeping both eyes on.

Watch “People” below and pre-order Peach Melba directly from the band here.

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May 24, 2015

Blue Smiley – OK (Album Stream)

Single streams and music videos, while making up the bulk of this site’s recent coverage, weren’t the only categories to boast some genuinely remarkable titles over the past week or so. Full streams still accounted for a handful of genuine treasures, which included the following: Summer Camp’s heavily damaged and electro-tinged rave-up Bad Love, Ratboys’ endearingly ragged basement pop triumph AOID, Hollow Sunshine’s punishing shoegaze-heavy post-punk knockout Bring Gold, and So Stressed‘s unflinchingly modern post-hardcore masterpiece The Unlawful Trade of Roman-Greco Art. A much less publicized record, Blue Smiley’s OK, received a shot in the leg by way of the announcement of a physical release.

The band had previously released OK (not to be confused with Eskimeaux’s brilliant O.K.) as a name-your-price download on their bandcamp but it’s finally seeing an official release through Third Floor Tapes. The record itself is a short burst of fuzz-damaged eclecticism that swings between noise-punk and basement pop with a practiced finesse. It’s a deeply impressive work that showcases the band’s innate ability to craft intensely dynamic songs with surprisingly contained run-times. A perfect example of this is “Flower”, which transitions from a heavy shoegaze bent to off-kilter outsider pop on a dime. None of the 10 tracks here waste a single second and the end result is an exhilarating ride that veers off in a handful of unexpected directions, rarely bothering to come back to their starting points. Not only is it one of 2015’s most fascinating releases- it’s also worthy of purchasing when it gets the releases it so richly deserves.

Listen to OK below and keep an eye on Third Floor Tapes for the record’s release on June 1.

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May 24, 2015

Institute – Cheerlessness (Stream)

A lot of great material was ushered forth over the past week and the lion’s share of the great items to find promotion or premiere were songs. Destroyer swung for the fences and connected emphatically with the massive “Dream Lover“, Bad Bad Hats balanced sweet with spiky in “Shame“, Porcelain Raft conjured up another alluringly atmospheric dreamscape with “Half Awake“, and Adult Mom hit a career peak with the reactionary, synth-laden “Survival“. Institute take the feature spot for this batch of songs thanks to a sprawling behemoth of a track entitled “Cheerlessness”.

Institute have been kicking away in Austin, TX for quite some time now and, thanks to their determined scrappiness, recently signed a deal with the vaunted Sacred Bones. They recently announced their first effort for the label, Catharsis, and provided a track along with the announcement. That song, “Cheerlessness”, is a relentless four-minute post-punk monster. Embracing all of the elements that make the genre so fascinating (tension, dynamic shifts, a bleak cynicism, sly subtlety, etc.) to create something that still manages to come across with a new, fully-formed identity is impressive. More impressive is the levels of conviction in display in “Cheerlessness”, from the instrumentation to the vocal delivery. Every punch the band throws hits its mark with enough brute force to leave a reverberating warning: we’re all in for one hell of a reckoning once Catharsis arrives.

Listen to “Cheerlessness” below and pre-order Catharsis from Sacred Bones here.

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May 24, 2015

MOURN – Gertrudis, Get Through This! (Stream)

MOURN hit this site with the force of a runaway train and created a crater in the wake of Captured Track’s unveiling of the live clip of “Otitis” that accompanied their signing announcement. Now, the band’s following up their acclaimed self-titled release with a spiky single, Gertrudis, headlined by the almost-title track “Gertrudis, Get Through This!”. As has been the case with the preceding posts, this wasn’t the only release that merited a reasonable amount of attention to have appeared throughout the past week. Chuck Ragan released an incredibly effective artistic lyric video for “Vagabond“, his collaboration with Lucero’s Ben Nichols, Jon Snodgrass, and Chad Price while World Cafe released the full recording of their recent Hop Along session (which made an appearance in the last Watch This). Tomorrow’s Tulips hit a career high with their meticulously constructed video for “When” and Rice Milk’s hypnotic burst of minimalist basement pop, “Take My Weight“.

While each of those four selections deserve to be heard (and seen), it’s MOURN that earn the title feature this time around on the sheer magnitude of “Gertrudis, Get Through This!”. From the opening cadence that gets fired off like a countdown to the anthemic chorus, this exudes powerhouse. Sharp and intuitive, the track serves as a blistering reminder of the band’s unique strengths, providing an extra exclamation point to their spectacular self-titled effort. Fiery and unyielding, “Gertrudis, Get Through This!” bodes well for the band’s future and seems to indicate their resistance to any outside pressure. Call it a declaration or call it a manifest, just make sure to also call it what it truly is: a great song.

Listen to “Getrudis, Get Through This!” below and pick up Gertrudis from iTunes here.

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May 24, 2015

La Lenguas – Love You All the Time (Stream)

Going forward with the onslaught of posts designed to cover some of last week’s most notable music releases, this batch includes full streams and single songs alike, providing an illustrative scope of 2015’s continued kindness in the process. Family Bike’s Everything You Own Is Anagrammed proved to be as hellishly ferocious as expected while Old Table’s Save the Environment continued to expand on that band’s early promise by virtue of being a masterful collection of outsider pop songs. Ultimate Painting’s “Break the Chain” offered an unexpectedly tantalizing glimpse at the band’s upcoming Green Lanes and theweaselmartenfisher continued a masterful run of eclectic covers with a deeply heartfelt rendition of Cat Power’s “Nude As The News“. La Lenguas offers up this collection’s pièce de résistance with “Love You All the Time”.

The first single to be released from the band’s upcoming Tears In My Milkshake, the song’s a sharply crafted blast of doo wop-inflected basement pop that’s reminiscent of latter era of site favorites Sleeping in the Aviary stripped of some of their fuzz. Propulsive and direct, the song’s sound structure and throwaway metaphors suggest that La Lenguas have tapped into a vein of music that’s been, somewhat frustratingly, undermined (at least at this level) over the past few years. There’s a giddy, frenetic energy that courses through the blood of “Love You All the Time”, rendering the tune endlessly playable. Bass runs, sharp melodies, and medium-fi production combine to form a retro aesthetic that suits the band perfectly and helps shape a song that feels like it’ll be part of one of 2015’s most enjoyable collections. Come join the party.

Listen to “Love You All the Time” and pick up the band’s debut EP, Tears In My Milkshake, from Burger.

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May 24, 2015

Weed – Thousand Pounds (Music Video)

Although the last post’s collection of music videos represented some of the finest clips to have emerged in the past week, it didn’t quite cover everything. The past seven days have been a solid outing for the format, producing some memorable clips. While there are still a few yet to come, this post tackles the majority of the remainder of what’s gone uncovered from that week-long time frame so far. Included in those videos is STS x RJD2’s live edit of the brassy, soulful “Doin’ It Right”, Ducktails’ intriguingly pensive “Headbanging in the Mirror“, Pet Sun’s mildly disturbing, effects-laden “Never Quit“, and Candy Darling’s quasi-nightmarish “Going Straight“. Weed’s “Thousand Pounds” gets this post’s headline for finding a visual aesthetic so perfectly suited to the band’s shoegaze-tinged take on basement punk. Utilizing grainy black-and-white visuals and some compellingly simplistic visual effects, the band’s found a unique platform to showcase their driving sensibilities. Lightly damaged, strangely mesmerizing, and heavily nostalgic, “Thousand Pounds” is a great example of a band embracing their identity.

Watch “Thousand Pounds” below and pick up a copy of Running Back, the record “Thousand Pounds” appears on, from Lefse here.

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