With the World Cup finally at a close and Spain with a victory in-hand, I find it only fitting to draw your attention to one of my new favorite bands: Barcelona. Ok, maybe the mere fact that the name of the band coincides with a city in Spain isn’t enough to relate it to the World Cup, but I’m the one writing the post and I do what I want.
Barcelona is actually from Seattle, WA and has nothing to do with Spain. But don’t fret, this band is just as 1st rate as the Spanish World Cup team. Again, not related but trust me they are worth it. I first came across these guys after hearing the song “Come Back When You Can” in a video I was watching online. In the end, I was more concerned about the song than I was the video (sorry guy that made the video), and it brought me right to their debut big label release: Absolutes.
My personal favorites lean heavily towards their slower songs: “Get Up”, “Please Don’t Go” and “First Floor People.” These guys definitely have a knack for creating simple, emotionally-driven songs that you can’t help but listen to over and over again. Like “Baby Beluga” for a 3-year-old. Kids just can’t get enough Raffi. It’s like a well-known fact.
Unfortunately, I didn’t see a lot of tour dates out there for these guys, so if you fall in love with them (which you will) you’ll just have to wait a little while to see the real thing. It’s ok though because it’ll just build up the anticipation while you listen to Absolutes over and over again. I’ve listened to it almost 40 times in three days (actually about 3 times, but that’s pretty close to 40) and the anticipation is killing me (softly of course.)
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So you’ll start to notice (if you haven’t already) that most of my Throwback Thursday artists are from the 90’s. I can’t help it. In fact, I have a whole list of artists just waiting to be remembered from the 90’s that belong in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. At least in my personal Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The “Tank Memorial Rock and Roll Hall of Fame”. Not sure why it’s a memorial. I guess it just sounds better.
So who better to go into my personal Memorial Rock and Roll Hall of Fame than Fuel. These guys produced a slew of hits (mostly in 1998) with the release of their first album Sunburn. Most notably, their singles “Shimmer”, “Sunburn” and “Jesus or a Gun”. And how could one forget their first single of the new millennium, “Hemorrhage (In My Hands)” which appeared at #30 on the Billboard Top 100 chart.
Since then, the band has gone through multiple personnel changes and has shown little to no activity for an official re-uniting. In fact, the odds of them getting back together are about as good as the odds that led me to lose $300 at the casino last weekend. But if you’re looking for a Fuel-like show with Fuel-like qualities, a reformed band is still touring around playing Fuel-like songs. If you’re a purist, you can still re-live the golden Fuel days via compact disc. Toss on your ripped jeans and flannel shirt for the best overall experience.
Buy Sunburn:
I don’t know much about Finland, but I know I like Indica. Their new album, “A Way Away,” compiled of old songs translated to English for the first time, is rife with the pixie rock all-girl group’s biggest hits over the last decade.
However, unlike other language crossover albums where new tracks are hastily scrawled into a foreign tongue just to sell records, this is the case of a legitimately successful European band being given the opportunity to market their art to the biggest consumer base in the world.
The first single on the record, “In Passing,” has an ethereal video where the five extremely attractive musicians rock out in the clouds of the night in what seems like a non-stop dream sequence. In this track, the instrumentation is simple, but other songs on the album are increasingly complex, with gorgeous piano riffs and often symphonic backgrounds that keep the album interesting from track one through the last note.
“Islands of Light,” “Scissor Paper Rock,” and “As If” all sound like they could get regular airtime on American rock stations right now, while tracks like “Children of Frost” and “Lilja’s Lament” are both haunting and dark in ways that are positive but not necessarily commercially viable.
The girls are probably going to get some flak for trying on a new language, some from Americans who think they sound unnatural and some from Finland who might think they’re betraying their roots. But criticism from any angle is unfounded. These girls really do know how to rock, and they know how to write music. Those are pretty much the only two things my iPod really needs, and I don’t need to know anything about Finland to know that.
Check out the video for “In Passing”:
And grab the album, “A Day Away,” out everywhere today!
I’ve been pouring through these Indie Music Playlists looking for talented bands that we could feature on site, and I’ve started to notice something pretty disconcerting about the genre: most of it is really, really bad.
Indie artists have, for the most part, started indie bands because they don’t want to fit into the tidy formulas of regular pop and rock, and while there’s a certain level of credibility to such a mission statement, the end result often ends up overly-experimental and—let’s face it—kinda weird.
But once in a while there’s an indie band that not only manages a hot song, but several hot songs and even complete hot albums. They experiment, and they strive to do something different, yet they also don’t sound like trash-can banging modern performance art. Rogue Wave is one of the indie bands that does it right.
In fact, they do it so right that I hardly even consider them indie. The first two tracks on their new album, “Permalight,” are both energetic, interesting, and most importantly, identifiably musical. “Solitary Gun” sounds like something Zach Braff would pick out for his next screenplay, and “Good Morning” has a stronger drumbeat and techno edge that absolutely makes it radio-worthy.
The entire record is painted with songs as colorful as the gorgeous album cover, and while it definitely makes strong efforts to do the whole indie thing, it’s not at all offensive to those of us who aren’t exactly gung-ho about some of the goofier stuff in the genre. We’ll give Rogue Wave a full endorsement for fans of rock, alternative, pop, and electronica. It’s not kinda weird. Just good.
Check out “Good Morning” here:
Buy “Permalight” here:
There’s nothing better for my money than when Michael Bolton sings “When A Man Loves A Woman.” I pretty much celebrate the guys’ entire collection. And Taddy Porter…well Taddy Porter is NOTHING like Michael Bolton. I don’t even know why I made the comparison. In fact he’s the exact opposite. Imagine a super badass blues/rock guy that (I imagine) smokes cigarettes and puts the butts out on his arm. That is Taddy Porter. Although all of that badass stuff isn’t actually confirmed.
His voice is very similar to that of the southern stylings of Marc Broussard and the music definitely holds the same southern flavor. Add slide guitars, wicked guitar riffs and catchy choruses and you have a recipe for a great album. Add in the fact that when you Google “Taddy Porter”, a majority of the search results are for a Porter beer from Samuel Smith. How badass is that?
The album really is a mix of blues and rock with the opening track “Whatever Haunts You” sounding closer to that of Audioslave, whereas songs like “Railroad Queen” are heavy on the slide guitar/blues sound and light on the weak sauce. Check out his self-titled album for a heavy dose of solid rock. And if you want something completely not that, check out Michael Bolton.
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