The Oxhorn Music Mix

Max Hellmann and John Collins’ angular guitars battle it out to lay claim to the irresistible introduction of Controlling the Famous’ stand-out track Two Sides. A propulsive drum and bass carry you along, sweep you down, lock in a fiery rhythm. The song, and the rest of the stellar album Automatic City, deal with how you define and build a stable life when you’re young, alone, poor in a fast city, and then, then the song hits it on the head:

A smile on my face
A car to drive
Someone in shotgun, by my side

And the soul decides to make one congruent line

Explosive guitars jingle and shimmer. And with that thought the song returns to its primeval rhythm, now marked by a new knowledge, peace, comfort and a soaring harmony.

It’s a shame Controlling the Famous have decided to call it quits.

Sounds like the love child of: The Dismemberment Plan and Minus the Bear.

Download Two Sides

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Get Automatic Cityon Amazon.com

Photo by Nevbrown

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Hearkening back to a time when Radiohead played guitars and alternative rock was king, The Trickster stands as the era’s high-water mark. Off of the My Iron Lung EP, The Trickster explodes with huge carnivorous drums and a Godzilla-like bass. The chorus is epidemic, monstrous, huge; the way only Radiohead can play it.

Thom Yorke’s Voice

Yorke’s gossamer falsetto, charging, vulnerable, rings passive-aggressively horrific meaning from the words. Then a rambling bridge, instrumental, drives past. When The Trickster hits, it hits below the belt. Phil’s drums wrench the song along like a rip current tearing you out sea.

Radiohead Infuses The Trickster with Electric Intensity

How amazing, how much intensity Radiohead brings to a song. The Trickster ends with a grand finale worthy of the Fourth of July, damaged guitar work, and a puff of fuzz.

Sounds like the love child of: The Pixies and Bloc Party.

Download The Trickster

Download “The Trickster” on eMusic along with 25 FREE Music Downloads.
Get My Iron Lung EP on Amazon.com

Photo courtesy of Skullohead

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Fronted by Tim Keegan, a long time Robyn Hitchcock collaborator, and produced by Kid Loco, Departure Lounge’s sophomore album, Too Late To Die Young is an ethereal, if un-focussed, meditation on joy. On King Kong Frown, Departure Lounge riff on Nashville blues rock, with a dirty organ, shakers, cowbells and Keegan’s menacing voice, sweet too, but full of dangerous portents.

You told me one day
The wind will change
And if I don’t watch out
My face is gonna stay this way
Well darlin’ I won’t let you down
I was only joking, just messin’ around
With the king Kong frown

Rushing horns, big guitars, up builds the tension. Slick, sly harmonies, now horns squealing, and King Kong Frown writhes out in a giant peal.

Sounds like the love child of: The Rolling Stones and Richard Aschroft.

Download King Kong Frown

Download “Departure Lounge” on eMusic along with 25 FREE Music Downloads.
Get Too Late to Die Youngon Amazon.com
Departure Lounge on Myspace

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Kicking off the fortnightly music blog round up, here’s a list of all the latest developments over the past few weeks.

Free CDs by The Twilight Sad, New Pornographers, Junior Senior

Culture Bully is running a great contest on their site. Each day they are offering mp3s of great bands like: Bon Iver, Dinosaur Jr., Andrew Bird and Grant Lee Phillips. You send them an email letting them know which disc you want, and two winners will be selected randomly.

The Return of the Rentals

The Yellow Stereo has the Rentals newest track, Last Romantic Day. It’s a very nice song, and very nice to have the Rentals back after such silence.

Iron & Wine

Brian at Bows Plus Arrows has an twangy, beautiful new song by Iron & Wine. Great vocals and picking, and some of the best clapping I’ve heard in ages.

Minus The Bear - Planet Ice

Can You See The Sunset from The Southside has a great review of Minus The Bear’s New Album, Planet Ice. Read the Minus The Bear review, download some of the tracks and let them know what you think.

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With summer drawing to a close, it’s time to kick out some smooth reggae jams and enjoy the last weeks of warmth and sun. No one creates a lazy reggae skank the way Desmond Dekker can.

On Reggae Recipe, Desmond Dekker and the Haitians stir up the perfect summer concoction. It starts as a little introduction to reggae. Desmond calls out the musicians one by one. Organ, drums, piano, guitar, and, of course, bass. And there you have it: a well-built summer groove.

As the solid shuffle breezes along, Dekker spits some nonsense about reggae, and the boys sing in honey-toned harmonies:

Reggae Recipe, la la la

Let the inflections of the Caribbean take you right to the seaside. Enjoy the rest of summer.

Sounds like the love child of: Toots and the Maytals and Jimmy Cliff.

Download Reggae Recipe

Download “Desmond Dekker” on eMusic along with 25 FREE Music Downloads.
Get Israelites: Best of Desmond Dekker on Amazon.com
Photo by Nmarie

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Fashioned by poet David Berman, the Silver Jews epitomize a startling lyrical break from normality. Their seminal album, American Water, featuring Stephen Malkmus of Pavement, proffers the next generation of folk songs for a nation in motion.

With undulating chords and sinuous movements, Smith & Jones Forever, bobs like a fishing lure on a sunset pier. Telling the tale of two vagabonds in motion, in cars, rails and flight, Berman meditates on the simple vivacity of their adventures and the vibrancy of their land.

Build a stage for Autumn’s bitch.
They walk the alleys in duct tape shoes.
They see the things they need through the windows of a hatchback
The alleys are the footnotes of the avenues.

The alleys are the footnotes of the avenues: that pretty well sums up things in America. If you’re not living the bright life on the big streets, you must be doing something wrong, ’cause that’s not where anything memorable is at.

Of course, this sentiment is totally overwhelmed by the radiant refrain: “Smith & Jones, together forever and ever,” offering at least one reason to look twice at the life the floats just out of sight.

Sounds like the love child of: Jack Kerouac and The Jayhawks.

Download Smith & Jones Forever

Download “Smith & Jones Forever” on eMusic along with 25 FREE Music Downloads.
American WaterPhoto by Freekorps

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On Judy, Judy off of the album Wilderness, Archer Prewitt (guitarist for The Sea & Cake) moves with measured intensity, manipulating emotions and melodies.

“One of these years, I’ll get it right,
When the clouds disappear from my mind…
I like the way she was shy,
Walking around with the sun in her eyes…
It’s the weather, you know”

The bridges twist and spin, leading up to the tumultuous climax, organ dancing to the fore and circling back down to part on a note of hope, Judy, Judy squeaks out a few more breathes: “And well have ourselves another day…” Perhaps.

Sounds like the love child of: John Lennon and Mark Mulcahy

Get Wilderness on Amazon.com
Download “Judy, Judy” on eMusic along with 25 FREE Music Downloads.
photo by Photophonic

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An atmosphere of air and strings tender-tremble above a faltering foundation. Symphonic, like an old friend, drunk and catching up, searching for the words to tell you something you already know. Like a microcosm of Mercury Rev’s revelatory album Deserters Songs,  tension builds up from deep inside Holes in slow, slow swells; flutes, tambourines, organs, pianos, theramins, the plaintive moan of a bass; tender voiced cymbals are washing over you.

“Time, all the long red lines, that take control,
of all the smoke-like streams that flow into your dreams…
How does that old song go?”

As you stumble deeper into Holes, and deeper still into Deserters Songs, maybe you think “How did I wade into this enveloping, ebbing sea of song?” Then you relax, and let the horns carry you away into the depths of sound and light.

Sounds like the love child of: The Flaming Lips and The Black Heart Procession

Get Holes on Amazon.com
Download Holes as part of eMusic’s 25 FREE Music Downloads for your iPod® or any MP3 player!

Photo by Ella Mullins

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