It’s very, very good.

The Tallest Man on Earth – Graceland (Paul Simon Cover)

-iceonthetrail

Charming charming charming. Started as a solo project by Luke temple, he got friends to help, so there is more people in the band now.  They play songs that bring you up, chill you out and warm your heart.  Something like drying off around a campfire after swimming in the ocean all night. The self titled album is a potpourri of acoustic jams, fuzzy psychedelic drone, and swirling repetitive rhythms. Something for everyone!

Here We Go Magic – Tunnel Vision

Here We Go Magic – I Just Want to See You Underwater

Here We Go Magic – Fangela

Like finding an old, dirty record of your favourite childhood songs and playing it for your closest friends. You all scream and shout along, banging the walls and stomping your feet. You know the words, you grew up singing them. One of your friends knocks over your kitchen cupboard, spilling a wave of metal and porcelain onto the floor. As the pots and pans clang and rattle to the ground, you know the mess doesn’t matter, you’re having too much fun.

-iceonthetrail

Totally Nebular – Anthony Naples

Totally Nebular – Green Tops

When a band takes a prolonged break in between albums it’s not hard to expect that they have either gotten lazy, or are working on a masterpiece. It’s also hard to not to expect such a masterpiece from a band which revolutionized your musical taste as an adolescent. And for a band prone to evolution like Daughters, the wait for this self titled album was almost painful.  But like a pending dose of morphine Daughters delivers in a way only they can. Anyone familiar with the group can recall their departure from the grindcore scene by completely cutting out the throaty screams of Alexis Marshall to be replaced exclusively with a southern preachers drawl. ‘Hell Songs’ their second album showcased a sound which proved to be a segway to where they now reside. If there is one thing Daughters proved on this album is you can be insanely heavy with out the tell tale sounds of metal. The things left out on this album (wild banshee screams, shredding guitar solos ect)  make it all that much better. The constant pounding of guitars cranked to ten, dissonant as can be, sludgy distorted bass, machine gun drumming as played by a bridge troll, and of course the signature Alexis Marshall vocal accompaniment. One is left with an image of a drunken reverend, strapped to a nuclear bomb, half singing, half shouting warnings of an impending Apocalypse. If I was to rate this album, I’d give it 100 cans of toxic waste of of 100, but since we don’t do that here at Bluegrassish, here is one of our co-founders iceonthetrail to break down this mutated Mona Lisa track by track.

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“To every glassy-eyed teenage runaway; to every pot-smoking trust fund baby in search of ‘the authentic’; to every sweaty, dreadlocked, patchouli-wearing, unemployed bassist with an underfed pit-bull and vicious body odor-we want to say to you: come home.”

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My deepest apologies for the 3 people who read this on a weekly basis! We’ve slackened a bit, but that does not mean we’ve forgotten. I think instead of one off daily posts,  we will bring you more interesting and nice posts a couple times a week. Quality not quantity. So as a special treat, here are three songs that have really grabbed me recently. First off, Bear Hands channels Isaac Brock, followed by a brand new New Pornographers song off their up and coming album and to finish it all off, Pattern Is Movement with an awesome math rock drum track set to sparse and dainty keyboards and powerful vocals.

-lionsteeth

I also apologize for the lack of posts as of late, but hopefully some solid tunes will be the peace offering that you need. Starting us off is one of By the End of Tonight’s more melodic tracks, followed by jj, a Swedish band that showed up on a ton of “Best of 2009″ lists but I failed to even know they existed. Finishing us off is my biggest singer/songwriter crush, Mariee Sioux, who is probably my absolute favourite female vocalist.

-iceonthetrail
enjoy!

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OXES are an instrumental band, coming from Baltimore, Maryland who play loud, frantic, tasty riffs.  Some people call them Post Punk but I think this description falls a bit flat.  Imagine The Melvins decided to take themselves a little less seriously, showed up to your party, got a 26 of whiskey in, hit on your sister, and then jumped on the kitchen table and woo-ed all the ladies by busting out sweet metal riffs, you could describe their sound like that, but thats only one half of the puzzle. OXES are renowned for their silly and usually insane live show, from having their guitarists tower over the audience by standing on large, black boxes to incorporating a one-act play into their live set, OXES are probably a band you wanna check out.

OXES – Boss Kitty
OXES – Kaz Hayashi ‘oi

Wow! As a lover of all things Frog Eyes I was very very very excited to hear about an upcoming album, and now a song is making it’s way around the Internet! I have always thought that Frog Eyes have only improved with every release, and judging by this track, this album will be no different.  It is unmistakably Frog Eyes, and unmistakably amazing.  Even from the very first howl, you know the emotion that we all know and love is more than present, and as with Tears of the Valedictorian the production is fantastic. Oh, and its nice and long. The track is called “A Flower in A Glove” and it will be featured on the upcoming LP “Paul’s Tomb: A Triumph”, it is due out on Frog Eyes’ new label Dead Oceans on April 27th, no mention of a preorder, but we shall keep our fingers crossed. Here is a track list for all the nerds.

1. A Flower in a Glove
2. The Sensitive Girls
3. Odetta’s War
4. Rebel Horns
5. Lear, in the Park
6. Styled by Dr. Roberts
7. Lear in Love
8. Violent Psalms
9. Paul’s Tomb

Frog Eyes – A Flower in a Glove

-iceonthetrail

Nothing like starting your day by plunging your foot into an ankle deep puddle on your mad dash to get out of the rain. Now I have a soaked sock and a squeaky sneaker.  It looks like tomorrow might be an okay day, so lets keep our fingers crossed and listen to some great tunes.

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Bad News! Vancouver is still evenly covered with depressing grey clouds.  It sucks, but in reality I am sure that 85% of Canada would prefer rain with +8°c rather than ACTUAL winter with ACTUAL snow. But weather is relative and we love to complain about weather, and Vancouverites love to complain about not bike riding and gardening in JANUARY.  In any case, the good news is that I have some tracks to warm you up(or dry you out).

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