Dirty Projectors played an intimate apartment show in Brooklyn in 2007, showcasing their reworking of Black Flag’s Rise Above.  Above is a video from that night.

Sunset Rubdown give us a taste from their new album, Dragonslayer,with a free track on LaLa called “Idiot Heart.”  You can find that and the mp3 at Pitchfork.

I Guess I’m Floating has collected all the Grizzly Bear content on Youtube.  Get your fill here.

My Bloody Valentine will play the El Rey Theater tonight as a warm up for their Coachella show this weekend.  Photos and review to follow.

Things felt a little shaky there for The Thermals in early 2008.  They had toured on The Body, The Blood, The Machine for over a year and a half, they no longer had a drummer and were looking for a new label home.  Yet, in reality all that paled in comparison to their toughest hurdle.  Trying to write music that surpassed their landmark Bush-era concept record was going to be near impossible. TBTBTM combined everything great about The Thermals, political music and punk rock.  By 2008 the political and social tides had begun to shift, and it looked likely a Senator named Barack Obama might be our next president.  How would Hutch and Kathy translate this new landscape into an album?

Out of this situation, somewhere in a Portland studio, Now We Can See was birthed.  From the lyrics of the album’s title track, (”Now that our vision is strong, we don’t need to admit we were wrong”) it’s clear Hutch still has a sharp tongue when it comes to public and political behavior.  The album’s narrative comes from the POV of a newly deceased man and his journey through his new “life.”  It references the TBTBTM era, and talks about how we’ve reacted to these changes.  Hutch still doesn’t have much good to say about the national consciousness, but where TBTBTM was explicitly apocalyptic, Now We Can See cuts a more subtle argument.

One of the newest sounding songs, “At the Bottom of the Sea,” runs a two note bar chord that hints at the guitar line in “The End.”  It’s pretty subtle but for some reason I just keep seeing Apocalypse Now playing during this song.  “Now We Can See” is the standout single and combines the energy, quick delivery and interesting commentary that made me a Thermals fan in the beginning.

Grab the free track below and buy Now We Can See on Amazon.

[mp3] The Thermals - Now We Can See

It’s been quite the year for Michael Angelakos, mastermind behind Boston based Passion Pit.  First, his belated Valentine’s Day present turns into an indie hit, then he signs a record deal with French Kiss, and now how he’s got a full band and a debut LP called Manners coming out.

The musical growth between Chunk of Change EP and Manners is pretty hard to gauge given all that’s happened.  I was curious to see what would happen to the purity of Angelakos’ original mission, and whether the addition of a band would stifle him or take Passion Pit to a higher musical level.  With “The Reeling” and a Fader.tv studio visit as my first peeks at the album, I’m pretty confident Passion Pit have channeled the same energy and child like approach to melody (Michael even talks about being inspired by children’s choirs during their studio profile - which includes a guest spot by a… children’s choir) as he did on the EP.

Stream the song below or on the band’s Myspace.  Look for the album on May 19th.

Most of Wavves sounds like a sludge fuzz blast from a blown out speaker.  Its a rough first listen but the initial unpleasantness of Wavves’ no-fi pop sound is completely appropriate in defining the harsh beauty of dorm-room depression and the lonely-stoner laments that run rampant on this surf goth’s (already) second LP in the last year.  Some of the album’s sprayed distortion and bummed-loner lyrics become manageable pop anthems (”So Bored”, “No Hope Kids”) for those who identify with the malaise birthed at the exit for the funeral of the American dream.  This is the sound of the gritting bruxia of this up and coming generation’s ‘we-don’t-give-a-flying-trapezoid’ outlook on life.  If Wavves’ general attitude is actually this boring I wonder what will happen when their swell finally comes in.

[mp3] Wavves - So Bored