'I don't wanna leave the swamp tonight'

Sun Hotel - Coast
[Post-gospel/swamp (indie-)rock]
Recommended if you like: the idea of country-doom era Earth having a teenage son with Fleet Foxes (oh yeah, we doin' this)



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Sleeper hit of the year? I'm going there. Completely out of left-field, Coast arrived in my inbox recently and completely floored me, it came and perfectly filled a little void in my musical life where there was a quiet (hidden) craving for something uplifting and fantastically full of life. (Not to knock any of the brooding downers I've received lately - my heart is still with you cats (or not with you, if that's the more appropriate, brooding downing answer).

Seriously, though, click that big, blue link above and listen to "Palms". Go on, I'll wait. I'll even give you enough time to listen to it twice, because you will listen to it twice. You're welcome for that new mixtape staple. An absolutely perfect blend of melody, harmony, and dynamics; the sweetest, swampiest, most concise faux-post-rock you've ever heard. And that's it, you're hooked.

Sun Hotel have a wonderful energy about them, a youthful sort of abandon, but instead of throwing it all to the wind and hoping something comes out of it, there's an undeniable focus and maturity to the songwriting. There's adolescent desperation and earnestness coupled with sublimely refined vocal harmonies. I don't mean to tout my own analogies here, but really: give Earth a pulse and give Fleet Foxes some grit and you've got a vague idea of what's going on. Calculated clean guitar play can and will, at any minute, shift into tweedy Americana dirges and so to does the warm crooning twist into shouts and chants. This is probably completely brilliant live, so see to it that you catch them if they're in your town. Punk rock energy without punk rock bullheadedness.

Coast is really just an entirely charming record. Down-to-earth lyrically, undeniably infectious musically, and, above all, cohesive despite all its disparate elements. An incredible spark captured on tape - a bright, bright flash of brilliance and life you should already be listening to if you've read this whole entry/have faith in me. Have faith in me.

Songs to sleep next to

I've written about Devin Hildebrand (Dth) before, being quite found of his unique collage work, and was pleasantly surprised to hear that he had more new material so soon. Songs To Sleep Next To moves away from the focus on found sounds and, through that shift, really exemplifies some fantastic songwriting, something all too rare under the umbrella of "ambient".

Opener "Pruny Hands Felt Health" might be my favourite Dth track yet, absolutely lush, organic, intimate but sounding huge beyond its scope. It is a song to sleep next to, not a song to sleep on or with or under; it's music to take you to sleep, not put you there. The whole album is downright lucid, entirely dreamlike and weightless but it never lets go entirely, never succumbs to useless "ambiance" or droning wanderlust or forgettable meandering and is always aware, always in control. The smart collage work isn't entirely lost either, with half-imagined nature sounds uniting the first two tracks and vocal samples popping up later in the album's somewhat more abrasive middle section (featuring a collaboration with noise/drone maestro Chris Rehm, who, likewise, is doing tons of cool things in the genre on the more caustic side of things (Salivary Stones is an absolute must-hear.)

If you're feeling lazy and need some loose comparisons slapped together to condense my opinion into a sound bite, then boo on your lazy readership, but I will reluctantly tell you that if you like Atlas Sound at its absolute most somnambulant or the Sparklehorse/Fennesz collaboration, then you'll find tons to like here. And if that doesn't help you at all, then just listen to it anyway: it's short, it's free, and worth your bandwidth.


Stream/download the whole thing here.

I Hope I Can Feel Something Like That One Day

"Excuse" is an ugly word; it has connotations of lie, like a reason that is a lie, at least partially. But "I've been busy" isn't a lie, per se, it's just such a bad reason that it feels excuse-esque. So there's my reason (however poor) for not keeping up with this, though I'm sure it must feel like an excuse to one Devin Hildebrand who emailed me a few weeks back about his sound-collage project Dth. Excuse me.

A lot of this new EP seems to stem from forlorn distress, from the slightly heartbreaking title I Hope I Can Feel Something Like That One Day to the individual songs ("I Always Feel Like Crying (For Mom) is a knee-jerk " :'( "), but musically it isn't quite so hyper-depressive, nor is it as explicitly annoying/boring as sound collage can be. After the clusterfuck and appropriately titled opener "[!]" the album unscrambles and is surprisingly delicate and deeply personal, culling samples not just from random found-sounds but "From our VHS labelled "X-mas '95 / Jodi". It's all set to understated ambient instrumentation, some synth drones and acoustic guitar mostly, it seems, but nothing to overpower the star(s) of the show here (though that being said, cut-up sample set to a live drum beat at the end of the title track is a definite highlight). The whole album is beautifully balanced, between collage and composition, between the vaguely hopeful and the utter despair, between cacophony and ambiance but, somehow, it always ends up an entirely compelling and a quietly disturbing experience.

The highlight here is probably the closer, "Humans are like Ripples", which is probably the simplest in terms of structure and use of samples, but is strangely hypnotic as a whole crowd of people is asked "how was your day?". It sort of epitomizes the forces at work on the album, as the answers range from humorous to somewhat worrisome (sometimes simultaneously) and the music fluctuates accordingly, apparently with some science behind it:
Notes on a set scale (0-20, including halves of numbers) droned accordingly to numbers spoken in spontaneous dialogue prompted by "how are you feeling today, 1-10?"

Basically, I Hope I Can Feel Something Like That One Day is a wildly curious set of songs, which is meant entirely as a compliment. It's the sort of quiet headphone listening for one of those days. When you're not quite sure you want a pick-me-up or if you'd rather throw on Unknown Pleasures as a hold-me-down, then go ahead and try Dth. It'll kind of do both to you, and you'll like it, promise.



Click here to download/stream the whole thing.