Heave Media

Your Listening Pleasure

New music from Kaki King, Tall Firs and Foals.

Kaki King - Life Being What It Is - Kaki King has made waves in the music press over the past couple years for her impressive solo acoustic guitar chops, but with "Life Being What It Is," she proves she has what it takes to craft full-fledged songs out of multiple, layered parts. The tune starts out with King's seamless, melodic guitar playing, revealing her familiar-sounding, but refreshingly unique finger picking style. She complements this with her delicate, almost adolescent sounding voice - pulling the tune together along with angelic background vocals and additional layers of electric guitar, slide guitar and keyboard. Overall, King achieves a rare feat - a complex, densely layered song both intimate and immediately accessible.

Dreaming Of Revenge is out on Velour Recordings.

Tall Firs - Hairdo - This Williamsburg three-piece has a sound that's hard to precisely pin down. "Hairdo" starts out with upbeat drumming and a melodic guitar part that wouldn't sound out of place on a Chin Up Chin Up or American Football record. But then vocalist Dave Mies comes in out of left field with a voice that resembles both Pavement's Stephen Malkmus and Dinosaur Jr.'s J. Mascis. However, despite these varied elements, the Tall Firs make all these parts work together into a sound both melancholy and engaging.

Too Old To Die Young is out now on Ecstatic Peace.

Foals - Hummer - In some ways, a band like Foals was probably inevitable. Drawing from fellow Brits Bloc Party and The Klaxons, as well as US groups like Les Savy Fav and Minus the Bear, The Foals' dancey post-punk sound is nothing new. But while you could easily dismiss this Oxford-based five-piece as a mish-mash of everything hip in indie rock, you'd also be missing out tunes like "Hummer," which combine up-tempo disco beats, syncopated bass lines, math rock-style guitar parts and desperate, unabashedly British-accented vocals. The result might not be the most original thing you'll hear all week, but the David Sitek (of TV On The Radio)-produced song is catchy nonetheless.

Antidotes will be out on April 8th on Sub Pop.

STREAM: Kaki King - Life Being What It Is

STREAM: Tall Firs - Hairdo

STREAM: Foals - Hummer

Posted by Jason Prechtel on Mar 28, 2008 @ 12:00 am