Arriving just in time to set the scene for summer, Ángel Kaplan's album is everything you need for a warm sunny day, bright, breezy, poppy, sensitive, beautiful!
Ángel Kaplan comes from the north of Spain (Asturias). Well-known among good pop
fans, Angel Kaplan has been showing his talent as a composer and
musician up front cult powerpopppers Bubblegum, as well as playing the
bass for Spanish garage kings Doctor Explosion and the legendary
Pittsburgh band The Cynics.
Picture by Pablo Lorenzana, 2008
In the last few years he has started a brilliant solo career
self-releasing a mini-lp and a 45 for Get Hip Rds, acclaimed on both
sides of the Atlantic.
"Pictures From The Past" really is a summer classic, so warm that if it is raining you will think the sun is shining, the songs are beautifully crafted and delivered with passion and conviction.
From the first few grooves of the opening track, "Like a ragged old puppet" you know you are in for something special. The ten tracks on this album are so good that each and any of them could be released as a single, but don't take my word for it, go and buy it and enjoy a summer of love, falling in love with Angel Kaplan that is!!
Angel Kaplan comes from the "Sunny Day Records" camp (Perfect label for this artist and album) and I shall be featuring a few more of their signings here in the coming days and weeks. http://www.sunnydayrecords.es/
Vessels by Bryan
Estepa – reviewed by Marlene Lipson
I’ve been away from writing for a few months, but there’s
nothing like an affable pen pal, a good album, and a healthy dose of
self-administered guilt to bring one back from wandering. The friendly and fun Wayne Lundquist
Ford (of the blog Ice Cream Man 1967) asked me to listen to a record and give
it my review. The album, Vessels by Bryan Estepa, is also
friendly and fun. With all these
good vibrations, how could I not then hop back to the keyboard and say a few
words?
Bryan Estepa is a singer-songwriter who has been around the
Australian music scene for several years, and has been a part of a few
bands. He’s brought in some of
what and who he knows on his recent solo album, Vessels, and the result is good. The album plays to Estepa’s strengths. Opening with the optimistic “Won’t Let
You Down” sets the listener up for the best, and the sunnier tunes are all the
better ones. I appreciate a record
that sounds both familiar and new, and Vessels
has that quality.
I know about arrangements and styles, but I’m also a lyrics
person, and I have a few quibbles with some of the songs (for example: demerit
for hackneyed use of the rhyming dictionary on “Hard Habit”). Most of the time, however, the familiar
themes of love and loyalty make this album feel like a refuge when other music
seems just too dark, sharp-edged, or jarring. There are times for music that evokes a dark room or an
artistic enjoyment of bitterness or solitude, but there are other times when
it’s good to be told even when we struggle that we’ll be all right, on tunes
such as “Pull Ourselves Together.”
The best of Vessels is on the
tracks that bring that sentiment across.
The songs that don’t do that overtly still get by on the strength of
their craftsmanship.
The production values of this album are solid, and all the
musicians have a certain ease and the sound of experienced players. I think I’d like to go see them all at
a modest-sized club on a summer’s night.
Marlene Lipson is a writer and editor in New York City. Her arts and
entertainment work often carries the handle Downpourblue, and you can
follow her on Twitter @downpourblue or check out her posts on Storify at
www.storify.com/downpourblue (and just starting off with Google+).
A little while ago I was asked if I would like to do a guest podcast for the fantastic blog Mistersuave.com and it is now up for your listening pleasure, and can be downloaded too. The podacst features many of the bands that have been featured on the blog and a few of my other favourite songs that have been featured on the blog here at some time.
Go check it out here and take a listen to Mister Suaves own (far superior) podcasts or Modcasts as they are known on his site!
Since starting my blog last September I have discovered some great bands and made some great new friends, one of those friends is Juan Pablo Mazzola and one of those bands is Juan's band "Baby Scream."
A truly great and prolific songwriter, I have lost count of how many albums Baby Scream have behind them now, but with this demo's and unreleased tracks album it must be getting on for double figures by now?
Strangely, and not surprisingly, the demos don't sound like demos, in fact I have heard released tracks released with less care and attention than shown in amongst these numbers contained on "Lost Balloons" and that stands testament to Juan's approach to music, "Music comes first!"
Download this album free and then search my blog for Baby Scream and find a whole bunch of other albums that Baby Scream have made available for free download, your life will be richer for the experience, but don't stop there, share the love and share the links and enrich a few more lives along the way.
Packaged to look like one of those bizarre promotional items issued by
local chambers of commerce to entice visitors to enjoy the attractions
of the area, the Young Fresh Fellows' Fabulous Sounds of the Pacific
Northwest looks like a silly, tossed-off joke. And in many ways, that's
exactly what it is; the thing is, it's both really funny and startlingly
well done. From the banging opener, "Rock and Roll Pest Control," to
the closing piece of self-mythology, "The Young Fresh Fellows Theme,"
the Seattle foursome comes off like the Replacements with the drunken
angst replaced by a near-terminal case of the giggles. However, even
amongst songs like "Power Mowers Theme" and "Teenage Dogs in Trouble"
are sharp, punky slices of pop-geek desperation like "Think Better of
Me" and the scathing "You Call That Lonely," two early indications that
the smirky juvenilia that characterizes many of the Young Fresh Fellows'
albums are but one side of their collective personality. The sound is
borderline awful (producer Conrad Uno would become much more skilled
with the board even as early as the follow-up, 1985's Topsy Turvy) and
the performances are at times just short of incompetent, but the songs
(mostly courtesy of leader Scott McCaughey) are a promising lot with
regular flashes of incipient greatness. AMG
What a week I am having, gem after gem are dropping into my mailbox and once again a great big grin is gracing my face, I am reaching into my closet for some leather soled shoes and the bathroom for some talc, sure, it is going to be messy but I don't care, listening to the songs of Mr Day, the bringer of todays heavenly foot tapping tunes, are just too great not to dance to!
I am a massive fan of Northern Soul but to bang on about all the old stuff that "us" fans already know about on my blog is like teaching granny to suck eggs!
Whilst Mr Day aren't strictly Northern Soul, that is certainly a major influence in their sound as you will discover a little further into this article. Another influence, to these ears would be Paul Weller and this is how I think Paul Weller would sound if he followed his passion for soul as opposed to his Humble Pie stylings, maybe?
During the writing of this second album, the band evolved naturally towards a more ambitious sound which clearly set them at the intersection of Rock and Soul from the 60s to now. With the arrival of second guitarist Julien Masson, fervent founder of Buttshakers, as precious on stage as in studio, the band decided to use 100% analog production and recording techniques: magnetic tapes, live takes and cracklings contribute to producing a rich and organic sound. Like The Roots, who, when working with Cody Chestnut become unclassifiable both in terms of gender and time, Mr Day is very far from being a revival band. On the contrary, Dry Up In The Sun appears resolutely timeless, that is to say in his vintage, yet modern approach. The beats perfectly coexist alongside the guitars, as in the great era of Primal Scream in the 90s. The alchemy seems perfect and natural on each of the 10 tracks that make up this inspired and mastered sophomore work.
Mr Day now define themselves as a real Pop band. Never stuck into copying and firmly rooted in music genre, this second album is built primarily on a song format and comes from a band continuously looking for a sound that uses and mixes their many influences into something unique and original. Dense, without any frills and contagiously smart, Dry Up In The Sun alternates without any misstep between a magnetic soul ballad like "Follow You," an exhilarating pop anthem like "Forgotten Realms" or a bright cover of "Queen of the Minstrels" by Cornell Campbell, for which the group recorded in a chapel in order to find some natural reverb and singular energy. In the end, it's all the fun and excitement the band felt while recording that we can feel and taste in return by listening to this album, both on record or on stage
One of the songs that I have had on repeat from the album is "Caveman" an absolute stomper of a song and possibly the best piece of Soul I have heard that isn't from the sixties, I have played this to several people, who all agree it is a foot tapper of the highest order!
I have to say, well, gush out really, this is the best blue eyed soul I have heard for a long time, I am absolutely loving this album to pieces, if you want to brighten up a rainy day, dance and grin like a Cheshire cat from ear to ear, buy this album for yourself and then buy a copy for everyone else that you love!
Mr Day are:
vocals /guitar : ERIC , drums / back vocals: REMY "ONE SHOT" , keys :
RAPHAEL , bass / back vocals PATCHWORKS, mojo guitars / back vocals :
JULIEN
Follow, befriend, like and love Mr Day here: FACEBOOK
Back in the 80's I became somewhat disillusioned by what the "music machines" were churning out, supposedly for my listening pleasure, so I took a trip back in time to see what I had overlooked from the bygone era of the sixties and I discovered loads of American garage bands playing in a style of the sixties British Invasion, but punkier and, well, more kick arse, for want of a better expression. There were literally thousands of songs to be discovered and bearing in mind this was before the home internet I spent a small fortune on these, unheard bands, who recorded in cheap studios, garages, bedrooms, some even sounded like they had recorded in a trash can, but they caught a real essence of what rock 'n' roll was meant to be, loud, tuneful, melodic, fast and most importantly fun! Every now and then a band pops up that once again checks all these boxes, not often sadly, but "Paradise" do (they recorded in a proper studio too!), so sit up and listen, this is music!
Paradise found!
Their eyes burnt by the glowing landscapes of the electronic revolution.
Their teeth sharpened to the sounds of a youthful uprising. Hating the
Beatles before they loved them. Blood brothers to their instruments,
idols of procreation and pro-creation. Aged by the sun. Singing the
sounds of a now nameless generation. Raised in the cornfields of the Bible Belt, the industrial wasteland of Cleveland,
Ohio, the rolling hills of the Lake Michigan coast and the burnt desert
of the Golden State. The four members now emerge from the dark hollows
of Portland, Oregon. It is the sound of flux. The response to a
United Federation of States run by the few. A response to growing up
tormented by idols and enemies. Their sound is a refuge from data,
meetings and humans. In a world of mindless pop culture, we offer you an
escape from the masses. Mass media is no longer the cure. What we offer
you is our cure. A sound we call Paradise.
This 8 track album is powered along by growling vocals, fantastic farfisa, a strong rhythm section and well crafted songs, sometimes it reminds me of The Seeds and sometimes of more modern bands like The Hives but most importantly it reassures me that there are still bands out there making, great music, fantastic music, brilliant music....kick arse rock 'n' roll!
