Sleigh Bells

I emerge from cobwebs to share with you some awesome.

Treats

Buy
last.fm

They are everything I like in music fucked together. Pop beats, shredding, distortion, girly vocals. Brooklyn hipsters, of course, and all that. The lady teaches 5th grade.

1. Tell 'Em+
2. Kids+
3. Riot Rhythm
4. Infinity Guitars*
5. Run the Heart
6. Rachel
7. Rill Rill (Ring Ring)+
8. Crown on the Ground+
9. Straight A's
10. A/B Machines*
11. Treats

The Knife's Tomorrow, In A Year

hotfile
official site (read it, buy it, sample)

The very best brother-sister Swedish dark electronic music duo reunited for a commission by Hotel Pro Forma (a Danish performance group), is co-composed by Planningtorock and Mt. Sims. The more you read at the above link, the better. It's an incredibly diverse, and evolving, exploration of sound, from atonality and Romantic opera to, near the end, something close to house music and pop anthems.

01. Intro
02. Epochs
03. Geology+
04. Upheaved*
05. Minerals+
06. Ebb Tide Explorer
07. Variation of Birds*
08. Letter to Henslow
09. Schoal Swarm Orchestra
01. Annie’s Box+
02. Tumult
03. Colouring of Pigeons+
04. Seeds*
05. Tomorrow in a Year+
06. The Height of Summer*
07. Annie's Box (alt. vocal)

Yeasayer!

Try Odd Blood(mediafire)
pre-order
They have a blog but I'd rather not show up on their incoming links, despite how early this leaked. last.fm
It's the first great album of 2010. If you're not familiar, they're a electro-folk-pop point between Animal Collective, MGMT, and Passion Pit. There's more joy in this than in All Hour Symbols, from the bildungsroman single Ambling Alp, through the subtle retreat of Madder Red, the contradictory tropical bouncer ONE, to Mondegreen, whose supposed lyrics I can't wait to read. Even the weaker tracks have an emotional kick that disinhibits skipping.

Tracklist:
1. The Children
2. Ambling Alp +
3. Madder Red *
4. I Remember
5. ONE *
6. Love Me Girl
7. Rome +
8. Strange Reunions
9. Mondegreen *
10. Grizelda

Janet's Big 2009 Song Mix

My narrative medium is the mix!
I have divided it into three parts for download frustration (and also because they're about CD length)(and to minimize damage if I have to take anything down). Each has a bit of art. The art dividers are the download links. Songs with links are to videos, when the video improves the song even more. 8tracks mixes (also imbedded below)1, 2, 3. Naturally, you will pick and choose amongst them, so I've tried to cluster by genre and mood, somewhat.


0 TITLE ARTIST ALBUM

1 Bad Romance Lady GaGa The Fame Monster 4:57
2 Fixin To Thrill Dragonette Fixin To Thrill 4:08
3 I Feel Cream Peaches I Feel Cream 4:33
4 Actor Out Of Work St. Vincent Actor 2:15
5 Turn It on Franz Ferdinand Tonight Franz Ferdinand 2:21
6 Games For Days Julian Plenti is... Skyscraper 3:57
7 1901 Phoenix Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix 3:18
8 Sweetheart Micachu Jewellery 0:53
9 Michael Telepathe Dance Mother 4:15
10 All The Kings Men Wild Beasts Two Dancers 4:00
11 Little Secrets Passion Pit Manners 3:59 (their videos are making me like them even better)
12 Zero Yeah Yeah Yeahs It's Blitz! 4:26
13 Glass Bat For Lashes Two Suns 4:33
14 Hell Tegan & Sara Sainthood 3:25 (Amanda Palmer Karaoke Verite)
15 Idiot Heart Sunset Rubdown Dragonslayer 6:09
16 Psychic City YACHT See Mystery Lights 5:09
17 New In Town Little Boots Hands 3:19
18 Summertime Clothes Animal Collective Merriweather Post Pavilion 4:32
19 Daylight Outro Mix Matt & Kim Grand 3:11
20 Moonson Delorean Ayrton Senna EP 3:45

21 M Telefon Tel Aviv Immolate Yourself 3:42
22 Tricky Tricky Röyksopp Junior 5:59
23 The Fear Lily Allen It's Not Me, It's You 3:26
24 Dominos The Big Pink A Brief History Of Love 3:46
25 One Day The Juan MacLean The Future Will Come 4:17
26 Bulletproof La Roux 3:27
27 2012 Gossip Music For Men 3:50
28 Break Up Girls! The Raveonettes In And Out Of Control 4:00
29 The End Vivian Girls Everything Goes Wrong 3:16
30 Hot Song Talk Normal Sugarland 4:06
31 Wet Hair Japandroids Post-Nothing (Promo) 3:12
32 So Bored Wavves Wavvves 3:14
33 The Turn Around The Oh Sees Help 1:03
34 Keep Me In Dark The Fiery Furnaces I'm Going Away 4:04
35 Shelter The xx xx 4:30
36 Stillness Is the Move The Dirty Projectors Bitte Orca 5:14
37 Real Live Flesh Tune-Yards Bird-Brains 3:33

38 People Got a Lotta Nerve Neko Case Middle Cyclone 2:34
39 The Forest Mirah (A)Spera 3:30
40 Avalanches Jordaan Mason And The Horse Museum Divorce Lawyers I Shaved My Head 2:18
41 Hands Like Roots The Builders And The Butchers Salvation Is A Deep Dark Well 2:18
42 See The Leaves The Flaming Lips Embryonic 4:24
43 Easy Thao with the Get Down Stay Down Know Better Learn Faster 3:37
44 Dog Days Are Over Florence And The Machine Lungs 4:16
45 The Wooden Chair Jenny Wilson Hardships! 3:15
46 Gimme Sympathy Metric Fantasies 3:55
47 Sylvia The Antlers Hospice 5:25
48 Triangle Walks Fever Ray Fever Ray 4:23 (really hard to pick a favorite song. This video looks like her live show.)
49 Bloody Palms Phantogram Eyelid Movies 3:32
50 Fake Out Bear In Heaven Beast Rest Forth Mouth 3:14
51 Trace A Line Au Revoir Simone Still Night, Still Light 3:58
52 On Rose Walk, Insomniac Why? Eskimo Snow 2:08
53 It's All Good Bob Dylan Together Through Life 5:28

Janet's Favorite Albums of 2009

Subject to editing and the addition of 10 more albums.

30. The Gossip - Music For Men
29. Phantogram - Eyelid Movies
28. Dragonette - Fixin to Thrill
27. The Raveonettes - In and Out of Control
26. The Oh Sees - Help
25. Jenny Wilson - Hardships!
24. Bear in Heaven - Beast Rest Forth Mouth
23. Thao with the Get Down Stay Down - Know Better Learn Faster
22. The Antlers - Hospice
21. the xx - xx

20. Royksopp - Junior


19. Wild Beasts - Two Dancers


18. tUnE-yArDs - Bird-Brains

a.k.a. Merrill Garber with a ukelele and a laptop.

17. Micachu and the Shapes- Jewellery

Young experimentalists to keep an ear on.

16. Telepathe - Dance Mother
Experimental female electronica duo. Very Brooklyn. Looking forward to their future.

So Fine video
I liked the pink dead rat they had as the cover when it leaked. Ah well.

15. St. Vincent - Actor Out Of Work

Like the other Bush-descendant, a giant leap on the sophomore album. Actor Out Of Work, Marrow.

14. Passion Pit - Manners

All-male dance pop with falsettos and beards. To Kingdom Come! is not the song we thought it was

13. La Roux

Sharp retro-synthpop. If their videos keep improving does that mean their budget's increasing? Of course. In For The Kill, Bulletproof, I'm Not Your Toy.

12. Fiery Furnaces - I'm Going Away

They've taken their own premise in yet another weird direction - less produced, more accessible, and resembling live blues-pop, it's not their strongest, but there's something perfectly deadpan about it. Even in the Rain.

11. Yacht - See Mystery Lights

Listen to these fucking hipsters. Summer Song.


10. Little Boots - Hands

Victoria Heskel is a vulnerably pretty, slightly awkward music nerd who makes energetic catchy spacey electro-dance-pop. She also has a good buzz management system and shares my aesthetic. The album kind of drifts overly cheesy toward the end. New In Town video hobo, gangbanger and whore minstrelry for the times. Other videos try to avoid boots herself dancing. What is a laser harp? It's a harp, made of laser.

9. Vivian Girls - Everything Goes Wrong

I like almost every song. Maybe I'm naive and just like songs about boys by girls and nice simple chords. Maybe I wouldn't like it if it didn't roar with distortion. Maybe I'll be deaf enough to like Times New Viking soon.
Moped Girls I had not seen before. When I'm Gone.

8. The Dirty Projectors - Bitte Orca

Yeah, but who didn't list them this year? Stillness is the Move: llama wanker, wanker llama

7. Sunset Rubdown - Dragonslayer

This band is better than Spencer Krug's other band[s]. Proggy. Ambitious. Fantastical. Fun. And this is the album that makes it better. They don't make videos, but the do play Nightingale/December Song live (with an obscene number of drummers).

6. Bat for Lashes - Two Suns

Huge conceptual and technical leap forward from her debut. She is a worthy Pakistani-British successor to Kate Bush. Daniel, Pearl's Dream (Lynchy!), Sleep Alone.

5. Neko Case - Middle Cyclone

The impression I get of this is that it's one great and one okay EP with a lot of filler, scrambled together. It could lose the covers and the crickets. Then I realized that's still half an hour of better music than anything else ever.
People Got A Lotta Nerve video based on Julie Morstad's drawings. If I listen to this too much I cry. Onward.

4. Fever Ray s/t

(probably the 3rd best album cover, isn't this an odd pattern?)
Truly a grower, and a profoundly lonely album, by Karin Dreijer-Andersson, a.k.a. the female sibling of The Knife. Her increasing influence on that band's sound is evident in the similarity between Fever Ray and Silent Shout. Her and her cohorts are as weird as they want to be, coldly maintaining their performance of electronic shamanism in natural virtuality. When I Grow Up, Seven.

3. Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion
Natch. Also, second best cover. Shut up, I like crawly op-art.


2. Yeah Yeah Yeahs - It's Blitz!
Also wins "best album cover". Decade-defining art-rock trio does electropop. So some of them might be dicks.

Video for "heads will roll" featuring two of 2009's other memes, a werewolf Michael Jackson.

1. Metric - Fantasies

If you're gonna self-release an album, it's good if it's your best, and there's still plenty of budget, and a whole series of Buenos Aires street art by Hollwood Cambodia for each song. Here's the video for"Gimme Sympathy" in which members of the band switch within, seemingly, the same shot.
Emily Haines is also in this excellent video for "Games For Days" with Julian Plenti / Paul Banks of Interpol.

Mica Mica. Chu Chu.

try Jewellery

Art School: The Band.



From last.fm:

Micachu is the 21 year old songwriter / producer, Mica Levi. She studies composition at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama in London . As well as writing more traditional pieces, she writes electronic pop songs, sometimes delivered acoustically. She has worked with a band of equally talented musicians (“The Cluster”) made up of Miss Bienek, Taza, Yvette, Baker Trouble, Mayhem, Kit Downes, GhostPoet and Kwes., but has recently unveiled her amazing new band (“the Shapes”), made up of Raisa Khan and Marc Pell.

Pop stars younger than me set off so much envy. Still, she's all androgynous and adorable and British and a damn good musician, perkily cynical as only the young can be.
video for "Golden Phone"

Track list:
1. Vulture+
2. Lips
3. Sweetheart *
4. Eat Your Heart +
5. Curly Teeth
6. Golden Phone +
7. Ship
8. Floor +
9. Just In Case *
10. Calculator *
11. Wrong
12. Turn Me Well +
13. Guts (w/ hidden track, so really just lots of silence, sorry I didn't split it)

Draculatron

Hypnogaga

Sounds like: Gay Nine Inch Nails. From Upstate NY. Well, more poppy.
If that sounds good to you, go for it. It's definitely a leap forward from his first, "The Uncanny Valley", which itself is good. Personally, I dig it.

1. Airlock
2. Palm Trees
3. Zero Romance+
4. The Swan+
5. Gamma Ray +
6. Hypnogaga 03:55
7. The Fall 04:43
8. If You Should Ever Sleep 04:11
9. Mountain 03:15 *