Heartbreaking Bravery

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Tag: Spring King

December 23, 2015

Two Inch Astronaut – Good Behavior (Stream)

Two Inch Astronaut I

[EDITOR’S NOTE: With the site now entering emergency year-end catch-up mode thanks to the cruel, mocking nature of time, tonight’s trio of posts will simply be short reviews of the song(s) in the headline(s) and an accompanying list of tracks that deserve to be heard.]

Two Inch Astronaut have been squarely in this site’s crosshairs since 2014’s inspired Foulbrood, which wound up ranking as one of that year’s finest albums. In February, the band will be following that up with Personal Life, a record that the band’s been road-testing to impressive amounts of applause over the past few months. Apart from the live preview, the band’s now graciously offering up the record’s barbed lead-off single “Good Behavior” as a tantalizing preview of what they’ve got up their sleeve. Once again, there’s a formidable marriage of post-punk, basement pop, and outside hardcore influences to create something that, incredibly, is as accessible as it is complex. Leftield chord voicings collide with an impassioned vocal performance to demonstrate that this band’s only getting better as they go. Hairpin turns, heady arrangements, and a new studio member (Grass Is Green‘s Andy Chervenak) establish this song (and likely this record) as a legitimate behemoth.

Listen to “Good Behavior” below and pre-order Personal Life here. Underneath the embed, explore a list of great songs to have appeared over the course of the last several months.

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ARIGATO MASSAÏ (ft. Fannie Linneros) – We Love
Quilt – Eliot St.
Flowers – Ego Loss
Bandit – Flake
MONEY – I’ll be the Night
Pusha T (ft. The-Dream) – M.F.T.R.
Holy Esque – Silences
PWRHAUS – How I Feel About You
Timber Bones – Travelling Song
Sonya Kitchell – Mexico
Running – Reclaimed Would
Public Memory – Lunar
Eddi Front – Goldie
Atlantic Thrills – Vices
Prawn – Seas
Spring King – Who Are You
TV Baby – Half A Chance
Cassie Ramone – Run Run Rudolph
Eleanor Friedberger – He Didn’t Mention His Mother
Cymbals Eat Guitars – Aerobed
Mammatus – Ornia

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December 13, 2015

METZ – Spit You Out (Music Video)

METZ XXVII

While this site hasn’t been running posts at the everyday pace it used to, there’s always work that’s being done behind the scenes. A project for the site has been enormously time-consuming as have other pressing commitments. However, as always, everything’s been accounted for as it comes into play. The next four posts will focus on some of the finest music videos to have come out  over the past few months, each highlighted by an individual clip. The upcoming slew of full and single stream posts will follow this format. Kicking everything off is the video for METZ‘s excellent “Spit You Out“.

A seemingly never-ending stream of frantic words have been spoken, shouted, and (suitably) unintelligibly screamed about METZ’s live show so a live edit clip somewhere along the way seemed inevitable. Enter: “Spit You Out”. Appropriately, the song’s visual accompaniment feels as searing as the song itself, utilizing a stark black and white palette, frenzied editing, and a strobe-like presentation to maximum effect. All the while, both the band and the audience go about losing their respective minds. It’s a no-holds-barred attack that leaves a strong impression. By scaling back, the band ups the urgency and remind us that stakes never really mattered in the first place.

Watch “Spit You Out” below, pick up a copy of METZ II here, and explore a list of some of the best music videos of the past few months underneath the embed.

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Desaparecidos – Golden Parachutes
Sauna Youth – The Bridge
The Beverleys – Hoodwink
Soul Low – Always Watchin’ Out
Noun – Loveblood
Wavves – My Head Hurts
Loose Tooth – Skinny Chewy
Idle Bloom – Mind Reader
Haybaby – Doored
Laura Stevenson – Torch Song
The Blue Jean Committee – Catalina Breeze
Bianca Casady & the C.i.A – RoadKill
Spring King – Who Are You?
Potty Mouth – Creeper Weed
Petal Head – Spooky Something
Will Butler – What I Want
Swings – Tiles
Pouty – Sad
Majical Cloudz – Game Show
Madeira – Lay Me Down
Lil Bub – Gravity
Polyon – Blue
Public Access TV – In Love And Alone
Wimps – Dump
Cass McCombs – I Cannot Lie
This Will Destroy You – Mother Opiate
Chris Farren – Chris Farren’s Disney’s Frozen
Leif Erikson – Looking for Signs
Muncie Girls – Gas Mask 4
Waxahatchee – La Loose
Pixx – Deplore
Walter Martin – Amsterdam

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October 16, 2014

Audacity – Counting the Days (Stream)

Audacity

We’ve hit the week’s midway point and it’s continued to impress on unreasonably strong levels. Music videos made the biggest impact this time around, with several threatening to steal today’s feature spot. Among them: Nude Beach‘s Children’s Museum of the Arts-assisted “For You” was a perfect example of a great band being great people, Sea Ghost crafted up a suitably gentle clip for “Cave Song“, Pissed Jeans proved they can be as ferocious in a visual medium as they are on record with their clip for the resuscitated “Boring Girls” [WARNING: Strobes], Teenager got tongue-in-cheek with “Hot Rods At The Loser Convention“, while both shotty and Spring King demonstrated their winsome penchant for lo-fi weirdness with their respective videos. On the single side spectrum, it was a huge day for post-punk ragers with excellent turn-ins from Crushed Beaks (“Rising Sign“), LA Font (“Bright Red Flame“), and Parkay Quarts- a duo version of Parquet Courts- who arrived on the strength of “Uncast Shadow Of A Southern Myth“, a song that’s already received coverage on this site in its earliest form as a Teenage Cool Kids song.

Another song that’s received coverage on this site is Audacity’s “Counting the Days”, thanks to their Jam in the Van performance. Incidentally, Audacity were the very first band to ever be featured on Heartbreaking Bravery, as their “Hole in the Sky” video came out the day this place began operating. All of that being the case, it’s always been easy to feel a strong connection to the band- especially since they’re currently riding a creative high peak as evidenced by last year’s outstanding Butter Knife and the just-released studio version of “Counting the Days”. Blending basement punk and basement pop into something that feels as galvanizing as it does cathartic has been one of the band’s specialties since their inception and “Counting the Days” proves they’ve just about mastered it. Fiery melodies collide with fierce instrumentals to create a knockout punch of a song and cement Audacity’s reputation as one of the best bands on their respective circuits.

Listen to “Counting the Days” below and pre-order the 7″ it headlines here.

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