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.

I  will preface this by saying that I took notes while I was listening to the album, and then did my best to turn them into complete thoughts and sentences.  I think I was only partially successful so they may read a bit strange.  Also, this is very much a headphones album, so if you got em’, use em’!

1. The Virgin

I missed that guitar squeal, but this time its spit-shined and brand new.  Good opener, give the fans a classic song before moving on to the wild stuff.  Like a name-tag or something, just in case you forgot what album you just put on for some reason.  So many layers of noise! There was some fantastic production done on this album.  One of the big things I noticed right off the bat is the blast beats are still there, but in general the drumming is a bit slower, giving the riffs a bit more room to breathe.

2. The First Supper

This is a great choice for a single for this album, really shows you what their new stuff is all about without giving away a lot of the really exciting surprises.  I listened to this song about 40 times before the album came out, it is a good one.

3. The Hit

Wow, never heard a Daughters riff like that before, still very very heavy, but it has an almost electronic crunch to it. Marshall sounds extra drunk in this one. The lead guitar is fantastic, they took that tremolo screeching guitar and made it so epic and soaring, this is a reoccurring sound on this album and it’s great. The little quirks, bleeps and bloops are really cool too, it would be interesting to see what they do live.  This song really shows how much Daughters have diversified, in general it is not as dissonant as their earlier stuff, and I completely understand why people are saying it is their least favourite track on the album.  I swear I hear keyboards in the mix.

4.  The Theatre Goer

For the first five seconds I got nervous that it sounded like System of a Down, but they quickly got heavy and made me feel better again. It’s nice to hear some of the older-style riffs getting thrown in the mix. The guitar “solo” is one my highlights on this album. I hear a bit of a Lightning Bolt in the last bit of the song, which is pretty cool.  This is probably one of my favourite tracks on the album.

5. Our Queens (One Is Many, Many Are One)

Daughters – Our Queens(One Is Many, Many Are One)
Can’t really describe this one as well as I want to.  It seems to be the most straight-forward driving song on this album.  Around 1:40 Rob said it sounds like Death From Above, and hes right.  This is semi-danceable, and that’s weird. Also that’s the most amazing guitar sound ever. I think this will be my new Friday-after-work power jam.

6. The Dead Singer

So far this seems like the most classic, Hell Songs-era Daughters track, sparse instrumentation, pounding drums, Marshall wailing like a drunk preacher barely able to keep himself standing, giving his last sermon before the townspeople never see him again. After a minute and a half long trip down memory lane, they jump right back to the massively-epic riffage.  Someone on a message board said this is what it would sound like if Modest Mouse did a bunch of meth and started writing terrifying music, I like that description.

7. Sweet Georgia Bloom

Daughters – Sweet Georgia Bloom
This song is like if you took whiskey-soaked southern rock and threw it in a blender with some nails and razor-blades, then jumped in yourself. I’m bad at descriptions.
This is another track proving how far Daughters have come since their 30 second grindcore songs a la Canada Songs, its awesome to hear the diversity. The gang vocals are neat too.

8. The Unattractive, Portable Head

More classic Hell Songs-era riffs.  The breakdown at 2:20 really fucked with my head, it doesn’t sound like the Daughters i am used to.  The outro to the track/album is unbelievable, so immense and terrifying, really goes out with a bang.

Conclusion:

You have to give Daughters massive respect for saying “Fuck it” to traditional metalcore vocals and going for the southern preacher drawl.  It worked so well on Hell Songs, and works even better with this release.  The noise and chaos of this album is very calculated and organized, which works extremely well for them. Another change I really liked is the vocals seem a bit deeper in the mix, which I think added to that more organized feel.  Daughters stepped it up just as much as they did with Hell Songs, offering a fresh take on extreme and experimental music. EVERYONE should check this album out. There really is something for everyone.

As a band who keeps improving with every release, lets hope this isn’t the last we hear from them.

“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.”

lionsteeth

Flight – Flowers

Jay Retard – Blood Visions

The Ramones – Cretin Hop

iceonthetrail

Youves – Big Arexic
Stupid Party – 1234
Holy Molar – That Old Rugged Cross Dresser

slobby

Bad Brains – Riot Squad

The Buzzcocks – Whatever Happened To?

A Certain Ratio – faceless (graveyard & ballroom)

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!

Bear Hands – What A Drag

New Pornographers – Your Hands (Together)

Pattern Is Movement – Light of the World
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By the End of Tonight – Drop it Like it’s Hot

jj – From Africa to Málaga

Mariee Sioux – Wizard Flurry Home

-lionsteeth

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.

Devendra Banhart – At the Hop
Loney, Noir – I Am John
Man Man – Little Boxes(Weeds Theme)

- Iceonthetrail

Panda Bear – Ponytail

Azeda Booth – Big Fists(Secret Mommy Mix)