New York Music Blog

Yes In My Backyard is a semiweekly column showcasing MP3s from new and emerging local talent.

Silent League photo by Noah Kalina

​Brooklyn chamber-pop band the Silent League deal in enormous hooks and enormous sounds--think indie maximalists Flaming Lips or Arcade Fire, wrapped in the blurry focus of the '70s soft-rock they hold dear. A sporadically resurfacing orchestral burst from one-time Mercury Rev keyboardist Justin Russo and Stars Like Fleas founder Shannon Fields, the Silent League has been championed up and down by the British press (their last album, 2007's Of Stars And Other Somebodies, was U.K.-only). Now, the band is set to make its biggest splash yet with its ambitious third record, ...But You've Always Been The Caretaker, due February 2010 on Something In Construction Records. Caretaker features Russo, Fields, the six other members of Silent League, and at least 18 more musicians cycling through an ELO-sized opus full of glockenspiels, carefully utilized AutoTune, field recordings, Julia Kent's omnipresent cello, horns, and massive choir washes. First taste "Here's A Star" is a four-minute slow-build--like the Police's "King Of Pain," but with a Sufjan kiss--all leading up to a gorgeous, blown-out Bowie coda. A true masterwork for people who like their indie darlings larger than life.

Yes In My Backyard is a semiweekly column showcasing MP3s from new and emerging local talent.

Oneohtrix Point Never photo by Nate Dorr

​Brooklyn uneasy dreamer Daniel Lopatin, a/k/a Oneohtrix Point Never, is an electronics mutilator of the most sensitive variety. His analog slurry has the dark, foreboding exterior of the New York's noise scene, but its darkest-space analog keyboard pulse actually puts Lopatin's music much closer to Hawkwind's cosmic prog, Manuel Gottsching's minimal grid systems, or Tangerine Dream's art-drone. The two-disc anthology Rifts, released today on No Fun Records, combines the three full-length records OPN released between 2007 and 2009. Rather than employing the charred, hyper-distorted pedal chain noise of his peers, Lopatin uses a tender, gentle touch. You can hear every key he presses on his keyboards; the result is a gentle mush-hum of accidental chillwave, Reznor-styled churn, a whole lot of Italo-prog, and even some loving drones reminiscent of Lopatin's other project, Infinity Window. "Zones Without People," the title track to a piece of vinyl released on Brooklyn's Arbor Records and properly anthologized on Rifts, is a four-minute autobahn ride that combines the creepy menace of a John Carpenter soundtrack with a vague approximation of an Ibiza-ready synth-house banger--well, minus the beat, of course.

Yes In My Backyard is a semiweekly column showcasing MP3s from new and emerging local talent.

Brooklyn pop savants Bishop Allen have been staying busy since the release of their second Dead Oceans album, Grrr..., in March--a natural move for a band who once self-released an EP every month for a year. Their second video, "True Or False," is like a peppier version of Kevin Kerslake's video for Nirvana's "In Bloom," though Bishop Allen is interested in the innocent and fun of '60s variety shows rather than their insidiousness. Matching the video's giddy energy is the song itself, built off of the rhythm from Shirley Ellis's "The Clapping Song" and imbued with new-fangled ramshackle urban-folkie pop. With little more than an incredibly sparse set at their disposal, director Randy Bell and choreographer Andrea Delmonico make the focal point of the video an insane routine by a crew of dancing girls in fringe-y dresses. The video--shot on a small budget, and employing a cast of friends (and friends of friends)--is another great example of Brooklyn artists doing a lot with little.

Yes In My Backyard is a semiweekly column showcasing MP3s from new and emerging local talent.

​Washington Heights freak-poppers Hollands are a cheery mix of folk, punk, and free-noise. Both frontman John-Paul Norpoth and violinist Jannina Barefield have laid down some sessions on various Akron/Family records (and certainly share their vibrant spirit and dizzy textures), but Hollands' sound is more mellow--think Yoshimi-era Flaming Lips, with folk that's torn between '90s "anti-" and '00s "freak-." Their second self-released EP this year, Mother, leads with the joyous burst "Air Conditioned Heart." The track is made from a little bit of Grizzy Bear's "While You Wait For The Others," and a whole lot of breezy melodies and whimsical cuteness. In the song's lyrics, Norpoth treats Kansas as a great, mythical escape from the bustle of New York--and certainly somewhere better than where he was at for much of the Mother sessions: spending a summer stuck in his childhood town of Stony Brook, New York.

Jerry Fuchs was that totally fucking amazing monster drummer you saw play in at least one show in the last 10 years--it could have been with Maserati, Turing Machine, !!!, or the Juan MacLean, as he completely decimated his hapless kit and mesmerized everyone no matter what band he was in. He died early Sunday morning after falling down an elevator shaft at a Williamsburg loft party. He was 34. Jerry was a friend, an inspiration, and one hell of a drummer. I say this with no exaggeration: New York will never sound the same.

Yes In My Backyard is a semiweekly column showcasing MP3s from new and emerging local talent.

Sleigh Bells photo by Rob Loud.

​Sleigh Bells are having the best week ever. The Brooklyn noise-hop duo were the toast of CMJ, despite (or maybe because of?) doing their thing guerilla style: playing at four in the afternoon at Santos or one the morning in Bushwick; doing five-song sets; and having no official CMJ-festival-endorsed showcase to speak of. If you're keeping score: Pitchfork sang their praises, Stereogum too, My Old Kentucky Blog and Brooklyn Vegan and Fluxblog and Pop Tarts Suck Toasted and a bazillion other blogs with even sillier names chimed in simultaneously. And the hivemind may have been right this time, as Sleigh Bells are a kind of irresistible smash-up of peaked-out distorto-beats, whiny Big Black chug, ecstatic shouts, and the occasional Funkadelic sample. Too hyperkinetic to be chillwave allies, too grating to be Fader flavors of the month, Sleigh Bells walk their own squonky, skuzzy, rapgazer line. Their best track to date, "A/B Machines" is a simple mantra ("Got my A machines on the table, got my B machines in the drawer"). Frontwoman Alexis Kraus coos with both chilliness and dance-friendly joy, splitting the difference between Santigold and Karen O; guitarist Derek Miller wails and whines like he's trying to make funk with an electric drill.

Yes In My Backyard is a semiweekly column showcasing MP3s from new and emerging local talent.

​Brooklyn's Ribbons have the stripped-down fever-shivers and uneasy fidget of classic post-punk--think Joy Division, Orange Juice, Durutti Column, etc. But these two Cali transplants can also play the shit out of their instruments. Vocalist/guitarist Jenny Logan wages a tenuous war between textural, reverby strumwaves and ferocious fretting; drummer Sam Roudman supplies skeletal grooves that occasional burst into frenetic fireworks; Logan's shivery vibrato skates on top. New track "Total Loss" balances a tender, woozy piece of Kate Bushian melancholy with Roudman's percolating drums, creating a tension that is at once dreamy and confrontational. Check out "Total Loss" and a handful of other new Ribbons tracks at their recent Dayrotter session.

Yes In My Backyard is a semiweekly column showcasing MP3s from new and emerging local talent.

Tim Fite, photo by Cybele Malinowski.

​Brooklyn folk-punk crypto-rap oddball Tim Fite is unleashing the third installment of his free Halloween EP trilogy, Watch Your Mouth, on October 31. And just like with his last two Halloween EPs (2007's It's Only Ketchup and 2008's Ding-Dong DITCH!!!), this treat comes with an added trick: It's only going to be available for 24 hours on timfite.com. He won't even let us hear the damn thing until the night of haunting is upon us--but has thankfully provided us with one little piece of candy corn stuck to the bottom of last year's bag in the form of a rare, non-Halloween download version of last year's country-funk gem "Raw."

Fite will be performing "Raw"--and all the songs from his Halloween Trilogy--as part of his special Halloween night performance at Brooklyn's Union Hall. He also promises "pumpkins to carve, pinatas to smash, apples to bob for--possibly in beer), a costume exchange booth for switching costumes with a friend, and a myriad of other spooky treats." Getting information out of the hopelessly quirky singer can be like trying to have a conversation with a fun house mirror, but he does tell Sound Of The City these somewhat reliable facts about the upcoming EP: "It is loosely based on the journal entries of the notorious candy poisoner Sheila 'Cellophane' Lindermier. If ever there was a musical representation of shameless depravity, this EP is it."

Yes In My Backyard is a semiweekly column showcasing MP3s from new and emerging local talent.

Now that Brooklyn loft-rock is leaning towards toward beach-y, garage-y, tape-damaged nostalgiasmush, we should thank the stars that Talk Normal have arrived to keep it ugly. The best thing to lurch out of BK noise-punk in years, Talk Normal take the Swans-iest tendencies of Liars and stretch them out for maximum syncopation, hypnosis, and unease. Guitarist Sarah Register pokes and slashes, pushing the These Are Powers dictum of "ghost punk" to even more haunting and slimy regions. Drummer Andrya Ambro plays skittery, tricky rhythms that pit-and-pat with mix of aggression and grace. Their debut LP, Sugarland, is out today on Rare Book Room Records; it's like if Sightings tried to make a dubstep record, all bowel-loosening tones, 20 shades of grey, and voices poking out at you from the fog. "In A Strangeland" is one of the record's catchiest songs, all PiL Flowers Of Romance pound mixed with good old fashioned New York noise--no surprise Talk Normal opened for Teenage Jesus and the Jerks earlier this month (they're also set to open for Sonic Youth in November). The track's stark video, directed by Pastor Alvarado and Genn Leong and premiering right here, is a performance piece that candidly shows the muscle behind the grit.

Yes In My Backyard is a semiweekly column showcasing MP3s from new and emerging local talent.

​"Funk" has long been a four-letter word in Brooklyn's noise-punk loft scene. To survive, hyper-aware BK dance bands either adopted stiff no wave personas, used aggro-synth terrorism, squelched out deconstructed stumblebump, or just signed to DFA, where disco gets a pass. But funk? Shit, better think about bringing that veggie-oil van back down to Bonnaroo, hippie. The brand-spanking new CSC Funk Band--the brainchild of former Usaisamonster mega-riffer Colin Langenus and Talibam! keyboard splatter-artist Matt Mottel--is unapologetically funk (it says so right in the name), and the band is set to bring booty-moving, head-nodding grooves to the Todd P universe. Boasting a nine(!)-piece lineup, the CSC features members from a variety of bands obscure and otherwise (drummer Jimmy Thomson once did duty as GWAR's Hans Orifice) and a sound that's tight, lively, and sharp. Langenus likes to draw the connection between funk and minimalist composition (i.e., repetition, repetition, repetition). But don't be surprised if dudes just devolve into a regular ol' awesome party band within a few weeks. "Bad Banana Bread" is definitely (and defiantly) more James Brown then James Murphy, and more acid-fried Funkadelic than either, given Langenus's ripping leads and Dave Kadden's completely bonkers, Ethiopiques-tinged oboe solo.