I’m likes me music and have this insatiable appatite for random indie-ish bands, especially semi-obscure ones with a few cute or quirky songs.
Alot of these I can find on Raphsody, but of course there are a few not on there, and I don’t have Raphsody at work. Also, as you might’ve gathered from my earlier post I’m kind of cheap when it comes to shelling out money for every CD, new or obscure, under the sun.
Fortunately a little googling turns up a bunch of songs here and there by some of these artists available for free. Now and then there’ll be one of their more popular songs as a sample, and occasionally a whole bunch of limited availability songs (EPs, concert specials, etc.) on tap somewhere. Most of these are even in MP3 format.
A few of the gems I’ve found recently include:
The Olivia Tremor Control – I mentioned these guys earlier. Sort of a psychadelicy dissonance band. Sadly one of their better songs, Gypsum Oil Field Fire, doesn’t seem to be available. But there are a slew of different versions their songs for download here, and it turns out you can actually find Love Athena here.
Marigold – This is generally just good stuff. I heard Osaka Blues somewhere else and was interested enough to track it back to this site. Grand Entrance and Dia De Los Muertos are also pretty good, but I think the real kicker is listening to Champion of the Spelling Bee and then listening to the version done with the Oakwood Friends School chorus.
All Girl Summer Fun Band – This is one group whose name precisely belies the sort of music they make. Most of it’s just plain fun to listen to. Sounds like the sort of stuff best friends at a summer camp for girls would make …if said girls were really good at singing and playing guitar. Usually sweet but more than a dash of tart.
Unfortunately a few of my favorites of theirs, like It’s There and Drawbridge, aren’t available on the site (though they are on Raphsody). But they do have several songs that grow on you such as: Later Operator, Grass Skirt, and Dreamy You.
Andrew Bird – Most blurbs I find about albums online says something positive about the artist in question. Some reviewer(s?) somewhere gave me the impression that Bird must be a minor prodigy when it comes to layered and symponic sound. This may well be the case, but there’s still only two of his songs I can say I wholeheartedly “dig”. One of these is 11:11 (not available for free as far as I know). The other is A Nervous Tic Motion Of The Head To The Left, a song off his more recent album “The Mysterious Production of Eggs”. Apparently the entire album (mostly streaming) and some other audio stuff can be found at the website here.
Boycrazy – The only song I’ve heard by these guys is Stark Street. But hey it’s free. It’s sort of your typical smooth indy-pop song, but just seems to evoke the comfortable/monotonous work-a-day life really well. Sort of a different take on Rafferty’s Baker Street (if you’ll pardon the pop-up-riddled link).
The Cranes – I remember back at Albright my old room mate Gieve Patel had some CDs by these folks. I always sort of associated The Cranes with gothy things. But alot of gothy stuff uses heavy metal, punk, or techno and suggests a fast, rough, angsty, decadant, complicated world of urban decay and mayhaps a vampire or two. By contrast The Cranes generally bring to mind ghosts fading before the glory of dawn, the Spirit of Christmas Past, dream dancing fae, etc. Something like the Sneaker Pimps, but a little more etherial.
A bunch of their songs can be found at the Starblood site, in particular Adoration,Reverie,Jewel, and Everywhere. The fan forum’s audio section includes a few more tracks such as their old standard Shining Road.
Several more artists I heard on Raphsody or elsewhere and tried to hunt down free MP3s of theirs without success. Of these there were two artists with some sort of media content not in the MP3 format:
Tilly and the Wall – Tilly apparently uses flash to provide a couple sample tracks from their albums. Really the only song of theirs I like, the one that drove me to find the site in the first place, is Sad, Sad Song. The tune of this thing is akin to a vertigo-inducing roller-coaster which drags the lyrics along for the ride. Still the vistas comming over the top are nice as is the rush near the bottom.
The Decemberists – The Decemberists seem to have walked out of a different era altogether. I’m not sure which one though I get the feeling it would be shortly before Armistice Day and that Herman Melville and Charles Dickenz figure prominently there.
Couldn’t find any music on their site unfortunately, especially The Chimbly Sweep which I was looking for. But they do have a pretty decent video for 16 Military Wives. Looks like something Wes Anderson might’ve put together, but didn’t.
Guess that’s it for now.
Cool. I will have to listen to these. I know the Decemberists, and I like what I’ve heard of them. I also vaguely know of Tilly and the Wall and have heard you or somebody mention The Cranes at one point or another.
Music-recommendation-wise the only thing I really have to recommend at the moment is Echo and the Bunnymen. Over the past year, I’ve picked up their first four albums: Crocodiles (1980), Heaven up Here (1981), Porcupine (1983) and Ocean’s Rain (1984). I just bought Heaven up Here this past week.
What’s amazing about the albums is how consistently different they are – yet how much they all sound like the distinct work of the same band. I always thought this was the mark of a good band; i.e. to retain your own sound, but sonically produce very different albums with cohesive/unified feels to them. And the first four Echo and the Bunnymen albums have very cohesive feels. The first album is very punk. The second album breaks completely with punk, and sounds like an experiment in studio potential, and is really dark and droning. The third turns up the beat some and offers a bunch of catchy songs, while the forth is really lush. Listening to the albums I can’t decide which album I like best. At the moment it is the second. But I know that will change.
If you think you’d be a passing fan of them, I’d say pick up their best of: Songs to Learn and Sing. I found it used at the Salvation Army. As a rule I generally hate best of’s. But in this instance, I have to make an exception. Even here, again, the best of sounds like yet another great Echo and the Bunnymen album; except for this one is their album looking for a modern radio “hit” (the singles album).
That could have sounded really dirty.
I was hoping for a title with that kind of “sketchy spam come-on” sound to it. Guess it fell a little short.