Your Listening Pleasure
Les Savy Fav, Thurston Moore and Tuung featured on this week's
Les Savy Fav – Patty Lee [mp3] - Les Savy Fav starts this track off with a dancey groove, complete with guitarist Seth Jabour's trademark high-pitched, angular guitar riffs. Vocalist Tim Harrington's distinctive, wordy lyrics are also present. Harrington references everything from the fall of Babylon to a lover's death in the midst of what sounds like half-narrative, half poem - all the while reverting back to the line "Patty Lee/ turn the lights on please/there's something I don't understand" during the chorus. All in all, "Patty Lee" is a nice return-to-form for the band that captures the magic of their best songs.
Let's Be Friends is out now on Frenchkiss Records.
Thurston – The Shape Is In A Trance [mp3] - Between the 30+ year career in performing music and starting his own record label, Ecstatic Peace!, it's a wonder that it's taken Sonic Youth frontman Thurston Moore so long to release a solo album. "The Shape Is In A Trance", however, proves the guitarist still has songwriting chops beyond waves of noise and oddly-tuned guitars. The opening lines "I'm not the one they called/ but I showed up anyway/ set off the critical alarm/ tweaked to obey" seem to suggest a stab at Thurston's own fame and clout, while the song continues in a similar self-referential vein. "Shape" resembles something that could have appeared on a recent Sonic Youth album, except with a folksier touch – just replace distorted guitars with an acoustic guitar and violin and it's more or less the same. And sometimes, that's a good thing.
Trees Outside The Academy is out now on Ecstatic Peace! Records.
Tuung – Bricks [mp3] - London-based, experimental folk group Tuung writes mellow tunes accented with subtle electronic beats and sound effects. The lyrics conjure up all kinds of images with words like "the bicycles inside your skull/send you away and off you go." With perfectly harmonized vocals, acoustic guitar and other layers ranging from xylophone to slide guitar to the sound of records crackling, Tuung crafts a melancholy pop song in only the way a British group can.
Good Arrows comes out on September 25th on Thrill Jockey Records.
Posted by Jason Prechtel on Sep 18, 2007 @ 12:00 am