This week’s Fresh Tracks features some sah-weet new advanced singles from upcoming albums due out this month, plus the freshest singles were liking the most right now. There’s just so much: so, this mix should keep you going for a while. There are just released new singles, lead tracks from anticipated albums, songs that were sent directly to us, and a few that we found on other blogs and websites.
Counting The Days for Wilco’s New LP to Officially Drop
First, though, we wanted to see how many of you were able to catch the exclusive 24 hours-only stream of Wilco‘s new album, The Whole Love, last Saturday? As probably is the case for most other Wilco fans – and that’s millions of music lovers around the world – we missed that golden opportunity to stream the band’s eighth studio album last weekend via the band’s website.
The Whole Love, which is set to drop on Sept. 27th, is our No. 1 the most anticipated album of the month – now we’ll just have to wait two and a half weeks to hear it in its entirety, unless we get lucky and NPR or Spinner get the golden honor of being allowed to stream the album before the 27th. Back in June, we were treated to the first advance single from the album, “I Might” – a bright, uptempo rock song that is mostly absent of the band’s signature country rock sound that have been so prevalent in the band’s recordings since they released their debut album, AM, in 1992.
“I Might” is one of the catchiest rock songs we’ve heard in 2011 – complete with a heavy rhythmic bass, 1960’s psych rock keyboard infusions, an addictive melody accented by a oo-hoo-oo choruses, riveting guitar licks, Jeff Tweedy‘s one-of-kind vocals, a steady drum beat, and even a sprinkling of xelophone notes throughout.
“I Might” – Wilco from The Whole Love
“I Might” is just impossible to ignore; don’t be surprised if you find yourself playing it again and again. Without yet having the luxury of listening to the entire album, we can say that just based on “I Might” itself, Wilco sounds better than they ever have, and that’s saying a whole lot for a band that have been the top of the heap for years.
Let’s sweeten this post even more with the band performing another track from The Whole Love, called “Born Alone.”
“Born Alone” – Wilco from The Whole Love
Hot, New Track from Wavves and Best Coast Drops; Plus, It’s “Weekend”
A couple of months ago, we posted the first single from the collaboration between lo-fi rocker Wavves and one of the top indie pop groups of the past couple of years, Best Coast. The upcoming release of Wavves’ self-released EP Life Sux will include a number of tracks featuring Best Coast’s front-boo Bethany Cosentino on vocals. Also listen to the first track the pair released a couple of weeks ago, “I Wanna Met Dave Grohl” – we think the chances of them actually meeting the Foo Fighters‘ frontman, and former Nirvana drummer, are higher now that it was put into a song. It’s almost like Dave Grohl is obligated at this point.
The collaborative has just made posted another single called “Nodding Off”; unfortunately, it is only available right now via Soundcloud.
Wavves – Nodding Off (ft. Best Coast) by overmuziek
“I Wanna Met Dave Grohl” – Wavves and Best Coast
Class Actress Releases Advance Track from Debut LP
In case you haven’t already heard of the blogger buzz artist Class Actress, here their newest track, suitably named “Weekend.” With a constant computerized drum pop beat and new wave style keyboards oozing about, combined with the sultry and sweet vocals of Class Actress’ Elizabeth Harper. As she sings again and again in the track, “bring on the weekend.”
For good measure, we are also including the July release of the track, “Keep You,” to help provide a contrast for romantic electro-pop music lovers who may be hearing Class Actress for the first time. Earlier this summer, the band dropped its debut EP, Journal Of Ardency, with the keeper tracks “Keep You” and “Careful What You Say.”
“Weekend” – Class Actress from Rapprocher – out TBD
“Keep You” – Class Actress from Journal Of Ardency
Christ Letcher’s New Album Is A Musical Spectroscrope
After we Twitted and shared the terrific advance track from London songwriter and film composer Chris Letcher‘s upcoming album, Spectroscope, last week, it attracted a huge amount of spins. In case you don’t follow us on Twitter or Facebook, we have included the track, “Phone Booth” again, providing for us another excuse to play it again. Letcher is one of the most talented ‘new’ U.K. songwriters in our book; it was his fantastic 2007 debut LP, Deep Freeze, that put Letcher on the radars of so many bloggers and mainstream music critics as well.
“Phone Booth” – Chris Letcher from Spectroscope – Sept. 20th
Megafaun Prep for Release of Self-Titled Album out September 20th
Another anticipated album coming out this month is Megafaun‘s self-titled album slated to officially drop on September 20th. Not much has come out in advance of the album, which is understandable in one respect – any music that has some connection with Bon Iver (aka, Justin Vernon and band), is going to get a lot of attention and interest just based on the popularity of the Bon Iver brand itself.
Megafaun‘s new record reportedly has much of Phil Cook’s banjo work in it, but that shouldn’t be too much of a problem as the other elements – like guitars, keys and a variety of other instruments – will likely compensate for any annoyance the banjo might pose for Megafaun fans. For those of you who may not know, Megafun’s members are former band members of Bon Iver.
“State/Meant” – Megafaun from Megafaun – Sept. 20th
IRC BTW Hospitality Sign to Merge; Drop New Track
A band that will soon be featured in an upcoming Bands to Watch feature, and which will likely also make our Breakout Bands of 2011 list is Brooklyn indie pop quartet, Hospitality (harder to find information quickly in Google with such a name, but oh well, it’s the music that matters). Yesterday it was announced that the band signed to Merge Records to record their self-titled debut LP set for release in early 2012. The album is being produced by Shane Stoneback, who has produced Vampire Weekend and Sleigh Bells, among others. So, we are thrilled to present the brand new advance track, “Friends of Friends.” More on Hospitality in the next couple of weeks.
“Friends of Friends” – Hospitality from Hospitality
Princeton’s New Track, “Clamoring For Your Heart”; Mwahaha Drops Debut LP
Next, one of our favorite breakout bands of 2008-2009, Santa Monica indie pop band, Princeton, jump back into the Fresh Tracks bucket with a new song that the band sent to us earlier this week. “Clamoring For Your Heart” is Princeton’s second seven-inch single of 2011, but there is still no word of whether a new album is even in the works, let alone set to be released.
The band’s last album, and of the best of the years altogether, was 2008’s Cocoon of Love. There is no doubt that the wonderfully jangly and uptempo “Clamoring For Your Heart” puts Princeton back in the arena after their hiatus. In another way, the track sounds like Magnetic Fields if they took happy pills.
But before spinning more advance tracks from anticipated September album releases, let’s listen to a few newly minted singles from albums scheduled for release between now and December (more from these months soon). The track “Rainbow Diamond” from the self-titled, debut album by Mwahaha, has been on replay since it hit our mailbox earlier this week, even though it doesn’t drop until right before Christmas.
Nevertheless, it’s an impressive debut single from a band that almost no one has heard of before. “Rainbow Diamond” is a sprawling, psychedelic rock opera that has put Mwahaha on our Radar Love list – and who will be profiled in a new Radar Love mix once we are able to get our hands on more of the band’s songs. As long we are talking about debuts, we are also digging the interestingly titled indie rocker, “Chicken 80,” from Social Climbers, who will release their self-titled, debut album later this month.
“Rainbow Diamond” – Mwahaha from Mwahaha – out Dec. 6th
“Chicken 80” – Social Climbers from Social Climbers – Sept. 20th
For those of you who are fans of the band The Rest, you probably already know about the bands’ upcoming new LP, set for official release in February 2012. The good thing is you can download two advance tracks from The Rest’s Bandcamp page, or just listen to them right here. The Bandcamp page also has details about ordering some of the special vinyl editions the band is creating for this release.
The album, Seesaw, which took more than a year to record, almost never made it out of the recording studio – more accurately, all of the songs for the album, the band tells us, were erased from a computer hard-drive after a “glitch.” So the band turned to a well regarded data recovery firm, and five months later, the specialists were able to recover every song.
These are two really fine tracks, “Always On My Mind” and “The Last Day,” demonstrate a band that has the gift of writing and recording music that is so wonderfully fuse styles from shoegaze and soul to tropical and indie pop.
“Always On My Mind” – The Rest from Seesaw – Feb. 2012
“The Last Day” – The Rest from Seesaw – Feb. 2012
These are all singles from upcoming albums that, in most cases, we haven’t heard yet, so the focus is on the singles – with everyone being so busy nearly 24/7, singles are a great way to be introduced to a band. In October, dream-pop breakout band Braids will release a split 7″ with the band Purity Ring via Fat Possum Records. Here are both tracks.
“Peach Wedding” – Braids from split 7″ with Purity Ring – Oct. 10th
“Belispeak” – Purity Ring from split 7″ with Braids – Oct. 10th
It used to be that a great single would mean that people would go out and buy the record or CD, which the record companies loved. But with the cherry-picking age of the singular MP3s, people now increasingly opt to pay $.99 cents or less for only the tracks they want to own; thus, the album, as a concept, is all but dead.
Another thing the record industry doesn’t like are long songs – bands are consistently pressured to avoid writing and recording songs that run over three to four minutes. A five-minute song is pretty much the longest duration that many radio stations are willing to play – and that has been the case for decades of pop music.
Royksopp’s 13-Minute Single Out Now Ahead of New LP
But it’s not quite the same for electronic and dance music – two genres (that often overlap) where longer songs are the norm. However, even by that definition, 13 minutes is considered a long haul, but for fans of the popular Norwegian dance duo Royksopp, it’s unlikely they’ll fault the duo for a song that is five times as long as the typical radio hit. That said, this brand new track from the duo, “Shores of Easy,” doesn’t really get the junk funking until about eight minutes in, but then again they are not primarily a dance duo anyways.
Either way, for hardcore fans of Rokysopp, the release of “Shores of Easy” is just a tease for the new album, which was indicated by a note on their website that read: “new material is brewing.” Since they threw that buzzword in there – “brewing” – we must admit this track sounds more fitting for the after hours party on Halloween.
“Shores of Easy” – Rokysopp from TBA
Although we had already covered Gold Beach‘s new album in this week’s Best New Releases MP3 mixtape, we did not know at the time that another track from the album, oddly titled, “Gold Beach,” was available for posting. So, we had to include it in this post because it’s a crazily addictive track. Photo by Laura Zalenga
“Gold Beach” – Gold Beach from Habibti
Along similar lines, we also almost missed the newest release, Constellations, from the band, Grand Atlantic. We’ve had the band on our radar screens for a couple of years now, so it is a nice surprise to have found out after the fact that their new album already on September 2nd. The track below, “Carved from Stone,” is the first single from Constellations.
“Carved from Stone” – Grand Atlantic from Constellations
Fresh Tracks from Warm Ghost, Dum Dum Girls, Pajama Club, The Caseworker, Blessed Feathers
Other choice picks off albums out this month include singles from bands we already have in our collection, like Warm Ghost, Nurses, Dum Dum Girls and Wiretree, as well as new-to-us bands like Pajama Club, The Caseworker, Blessed Feathers, and others.
“GTWS” – Warm Ghost from from Narrows – Sept. 27th
“Trying To Reach You” – Nurses from Dracula – Sept. 20th
“Bedroom Eyes” – Dum Dum Girls from Only in Dreams – Sept. 27th
“Arson, You Let Me Down” – IfIHadAHiFi from Nada Surf + 3 EP – Sept. 20th
“These Are Conditions” – Pajama Club from Pajama Club – Sept. 13th
“National Runner” – The Caseworker from Letters from the Coast – Sept. 22nd
“By Song Through the Americas” – Blessed Feathers from From the Mouths of the Middle Class – Sept. 20th
“Marfa Moonlight” – Miles Zuniga from These Ghosts Have Bones – Sept. 27th
“Without A Cause” – Southerly from Youth – Sept. 20th
“Races” – Vanish Valley from Get Good – Sept. 27th