This week is one of those weeks in which there are so many good to amazing new releases that we had to split it into two posts. Yesterday’s post of Best New Releases highlights: Okkervil River, The Antlers, Wild Beasts, Manchester Orchestra, Man Man, The Cars, Sleepy Viking.
Instead of writing anything up about the tracks in this mix, we’ll just let the music speak for itself. There are some really sweet songs here, most especially from Here We Go Magic, The Shivers, Other Lives, The Wilderness of Manitoba, Sloan, Sam Roberts Band, The Sea and Cake, The Sewing Circle, Sleepy Rebels (not to be confused with Sleepy Viking from part one), Ben Sollee, and others. Plus, check out ‘What’s Coming Up on IRC’ at the bottom of this post.
“Hands in the Sky” – Here We Go Magic from The January EP
“Used to Be” – The Shivers from More
“For 12” – Other Lives from Tamer Animals
“Orono Park” – The Wilderness of Manitoba from When You Left The Fire
“Up on the North Shore” – The Sea and Cake from The Moonlight Butterfly
“Follow the Leader” – Sloan from The Double Cross
“Lead Star” – The Sewing Circle from I Saw Stars
” Longitude (with Elizabeth Powell)” – Sam Roberts Band from Collider
“You Can Make the Sunrise” – Sleepy Rebels from Yellow Tree
“The Globe” – Ben Sollee from Inclusions
…And The Beat Goes On
For all intent and purposes, we could have easily made three installments of this week’s Best New Releases just because there are so many new albums and EPs out this week. In this next cluster are singles from a number of new debut albums that we hope to get around to hearing in their entirety, including debuts from Balkans, The Clutters, Le Butcherettes, Delay Trees, and Gang Gang Band, to name a few.
“Edita V” – Balkans from Balkans
“Troubled and Done” – Balkans from Balkans
Tracks via TheirBatedBreath and MusicUnderFire
“Under Suspicion” – The Clutters from Breaking Bones
“Mindkilla” – Gang Gang Dance From Eye Contact
“New York” – Le Butcherettes from Sin Sin Sin
“Cassette 2012” – Delay Trees from Delay Trees
“On the Eighth Day” – El Obo from Oxford Basement Collection
Songs Some People May Enjoy
So, this is a little section we’ve been adding to the Best New Releases lately that is intended to present singles from new releases that are not necessarily keepers for us, but that may be for some people, so we include them anyways. We do not pretend for a minute to match with everybody’s tastes in music, but hopefully we get it right much of the time for most of the people. The new track from Urge Overkill didn’t do much for us; sounds like every hair metal song of the late 80s, but OK.
” Thousand Square” – Mountains from Air Museum
“Communal Blood” – This Will Destroy You from Tunnel Blanket
“Effigy” – Urge Overkill from Rock & Roll Submarine
What’s Coming Up on IRC
We’re really excited for the next series of post mixtapes that you’ll be seeing over the next few weeks. We can almost guarantee that most of you are going to hear some of the best music from talented bands that you’ve never heard of, and we think you’ll be as surprised as we were that many of the artists featured in the 7 Bands You Gotta Hear, One Man Bands and other upcoming post mixtapes, are not more well known or get more ink from the music press and bloggers. Hopefully, we can do a little bit to change that.
We really think these posts that we’ve been working on for weeks and weeks feature some of the best ‘unknown’ indie bands around, and if the chips fall into place at the right time, and under the right circumstances, some of them could break out and be really hot. And the whole thing about the chips is just so true – a lot of the success of artists and bands, as they have said, own a good chunk of their success to simply being in the right place at the right time and having the right people notice.
We’ve been featuring unknown artists on IRC for the past five years, especially via the popular In Dee Mail mixtape series, but we think what we have coming out over the next couple of months is simply unparalleled in regards to quantity and quality of terrific, but mostly obscure, music. What makes it so much more exciting is that for many of these bands, being featured on IRC will be their first “big” exposure online. Plus, what we are going to do is to measure which bands you guys like the most from these series, and do follow-up posts about them.
In addition to that, we’re prepping new posts for Fresh Tracks, Bands to Watch, and soon, the first installment of the Best Songs of 2011 (So Far) series, which will run through the end of the year, and long before any other music sites or blogs usually post best songs of the year mixtapes.
Volume One of the Best New Music Releases for the Week of Sept. 18th featured Grizzly Bear, Band of Horses, Dinosaur Jr., Menomena, Alt. J, and many others. This, Volume Two for the past week’s best new releases, includes singles from The Sea and Cake, Sic Alps, Woods, Josephine Foster, How to Dress Well, Catherine Irwin, JJ Doom. But first, here’s a double-shot from The Whigs‘ latest, Enjoy The Company.
