Under Appreciated Debut Indie Albums, Vol. I

One of the great things about collecting lots of indie music over the years is that you can create all kinds of lists. Our collection contains thousands of songs in dozens and dozens of different kinds of playlists. Everything from great songs about colors, names and places to genre-specific mixes of pop, rock and jazz.

Today’s theme kicks off another playlist series. This one features songs from some of the best, but largely overlooked and under appreciated, debut indie albums of all time.

Songs featured in this playlist installment include killer tracks from 1980’s post punk group 14 Iced Bears, LA’s indie pop outfit Western States Motel, South Dakota singer/songwriter Nick Thomas as The Spill Canvas, the mysterious solo act Moco Nell and the remarkable debut from Robert Smith sound-alike Matt Pond PA.

“Green Grass” by Matt Pond PA from Measure

“The Night Will Go As Follows” by The Spill Canvas from Sunsets and Car Crashes

“Powerlines” by Western States Motel from Western States Motel

“In Your Foreign Land” by Moco Nell from Culture Reject

“Like A Dolphin” by 14 Iced Bears from In The Beginning

Mia Rose is Reaching Out Beyond Her Phenomenal YouTube and MySpace Popularity

MIA ROSE EXCLUSIVE

IRC was first indie music website to call attention to Mia Rose (Jan. 9, 2007), and also the first to predict her success.
Since then, her music career has taken off, and media from Rolling Stone to Pulse have featured her. You’re welcome Mia!! ;)
Here’s the original story.

Don’t miss these other sites:

Indie Rock Concerts – Do you have concert video or want to write a review for IRC? Let us know! Check back or sign up for the feed – much more to come in the next few months.

Indie Rock Songs – new website dedicated to bringing you the best in indie rock and pop songs, free MP3s, charts, lyrics, MySpace music videos, YouTube music videos and more! Want to contribute? IRC promotes and encourages the best of today’s independent artists to hon their skill so that the world can hear the music they create.

Monkey Types The Bible – Crazy, weird, odd, amazing news, people, videos, photographs and more!

===================================================================

Album of the Week: The Western States Motel
The debut CD from Los Angeles based The Western States Motel is getting more play and visitors to its MySpace page, especially after one of their songs was played on the just-cancelled TV show The OC.

Singer and songwriter Carl Jordan, who is pretty much the band himself, is now in the running to become of the best new indie singer/songwriters of late 2000’s.

Almost every song on the CD is impeccably composed, the lyrics are profound and the overall mood of the album is happy.

It is one of those ‘new’ CDs you end up playing over and over again, that you turn up the volume on when your driving (be careful how you do that; I ended up going off a 30-foot cliff at 70 mph and I’m still here!).

Jordan’s music is full of inspiration, beautifully composed, easily a modern-day pop gem reminiscent of The Magnetic Fields, Elliot Smith and The Shins.

While nearly every track on the album is worthy in its own right, the catchy, feel-good “Rows of Homes” is a wonderfully composed with memorable acoustic rhythms and vocals harmonies backed by melodic keyboard notes that soar to heights of near delirium.

Don’t be surprised if it ends up on a soundtrack to a movie or soundtrack, or television commercial, sometime soon.

Other notables include “Powerlines“, which automatically sounded like Matt Pond PA, which is not a bad thing at all. This is a magnificent song – Jordan’s soothing voice and crisp acoustic keys are occasionally coupled with mini electric guitar solos and background hand-clapping.

The “oooh-oh-oooh” verses in the song sound exactly like the verses from The Shins fantastic song “New Slang” (featured on the Garden State soundtrack). I’m not accusing TWSM of lifting it from them, however, the similarity is striking coincidental.

The Western States Motel started out scoring soundtracks for “unmade short films…backyard nature documentaries and various VHS” shorts.

But Jordan’s musical talent first got attention when he composed the score for Folsom, Cash and The Comeback, a documentary about Johnny Cash’s famous 1968 live performance at the Folsom State Prison in California. The score is featured on Cash’s special DVD edition of Walk The Line.

Anyone planning on taking a long road trip anytime soon may want to bring these songs along with them. We’ll have a feature podcast coming out in the spring that are sounds geared for driving and taking long road trips.