Yes In My Backyard

Download: K-Holes' Self-Loathing, Super-Distorted "Rats"

By Christopher Weingarten Fri., Apr. 13 2012 at 9:00 AM
Categories: Christopher R. Weingarten, K-Holes, MP3, Yes In My Backyard

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As we reported about this time last year, K-Holes are "a sleazy, late-night group grope... all stumbling tom-toms, orgiastic screams and porn-stache saxophone wail"—and this sleazy dry-hump only ripens with age. Moving from garage staple HoZac up to Sub Pop-affiliated poptimists Hardly Art for their second album, Dismania (out May 1), the band has stepped up their slime-grind into something much tighter and meaner, rendering all those sloppy Butthole Surfers comparisons irrelevant (though the Scientists comparisons stand stronger and smarter). First single "Rats" is a churgle of pukeworthy distortion, "I've been a jerk" self-loathing, party-band swamp-sax, caveman drums, finger-pointing and finger-poking and sticking their finger in your peanut butter.


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Yes In My Backyard

Download: Secret Music's Sinister, Sexualized "T.O.Y.S."

By Christopher Weingarten Thu., Apr. 12 2012 at 10:00 AM
Categories: Christopher R. Weingarten, MP3, Secret Music, Yes In My Backyard

Brooklyn duo Secret Music is like a sleeker Japanther or Death Set, all distorto-churn and party-crashing lo-fi pulse (some actually sang through phone recievers) but with hooks that pay credence to contemporary indie rock's ragged glory. Their self-titled debut (out last month via Black Bell Records) is 10 tracks of blown-out bubblegum with a sexually charged undertone. "T.O.Y.S." has a bit of the fluttery, wubbly feel of bands like Future Islands and Dinowalrus, but used for far more sinister, chuggy means.

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Yes In My Backyard

Download "Little Monster," Skeleton Key's First New Music In Seven Years

By Christopher Weingarten Fri., Apr. 6 2012 at 10:00 AM
Categories: Christopher R. Weingarten, MP3, Skeleton Key, Yes In My Backyard

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Dave Shelley
New York's clang-on-an-anything all-stars Skeleton Key have finally returned with their first new music in seven years. They spent the '90s as unlikely major-label signees and released the sawblade-bashing industrial quirk-pop masterpiece Obtanium in 2004. Their new independent hustle surrounding third album Gravity is the Enemy involves a Kickstarter project that practically doubled its goal, a deal with German label Arctic Rodeo, and an ongoing live show that's just as manic and dangerous and junk-smashing as ever. First taste "Little Monster" has the dissonant grind of vintage Jawbreaker matched with their trademark sheet-metal bashery that boings and cracks and putts along like a cartoon factory.

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Premiere

Download: The Secret History's Wistful New Wave Ballad "Sergio"

By Maura Johnston Tue., Apr. 3 2012 at 8:00 AM
Categories: MP3, Premiere, The Secret History

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The Secret History is a New York "post-pop" group operating squarely in the realm of teenage-romance breakup scenes and secrets told under the cover of night. Led by primary songwriter Michael Grace Jr, formerly of the indiepop cult heroes My Favorite, the band is fronted by Lisa Ronson, who hooked up with the group through a Village Voice classified ad for a "tragic female voice." Grace's expertly crafted songs modernize classic New Wave tropes in a way that makes them a natural fit for the laptop-speaker era; Ronson's plainspoken tone brings to mind the voice of the Magnetic Fields' Claudia Gonson, while adding even more of an emotional punch. Listen to the pleading "Sergio," from The Secret History's forthcoming second album Americans Singing In The Dark, below.

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Yes In My Backyard

Download: Bright Moments' Yacht Rock Gone Gypsy Punk Anthem "Tourists"

By Christopher Weingarten Thu., Mar. 29 2012 at 8:00 AM
Categories: Bright Moments, Christopher R. Weingarten, MP3, Yes In My Backyard

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True to its name, Bright Moments is a big sunshiny explosion of optimism: joyous found sounds, Afro-Brazilian rhythms, Beach Boys harmonies, anime keyboards and big explosions of billowing brass. It's the demented brainchild of New Yorker Kelly Pratt, a multi-instrumentalist who's played horns for Beirut, Arcade Fire, David Byrne and LCD Soundsystem; he cobbled all the highest peaks of those bands into the danceable, po-mo mash-up Natives (Luaka Bop). "Tourists" is a little Talking-Heads-gone-gypsy-punk; a little yacht rock warmth; and a little Game Boy cheerbomb.

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Yes In My Backyard

Download: Doe Paoro's Untethered, Spectral "Born Whole"

By Christopher Weingarten Tue., Mar. 13 2012 at 8:00 AM
Categories: Christopher R. Weingarten, Doe Paoro, MP3, Yes In My Backyard

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Brooklyn singer-songwriter Doe Paoro is a wild mixture of contemporary sounds and ancient techniques. Her single "Born Whole," taken from her debut Slow to Love (out last month), has the spectral fervor of Zola Jesus's haunted house swirl, Adele's retromaniacal bombast and ghostly traces of James Blake's post-dubstep—but Paoro's take on modern art-pop comes from an untethered vocal style she credits to her study of lhamo, the centuries-old Tibetan opera tradition. "Born Whole" starts as nimble, muted neo-soul but finds its magical energy through post-chorus flights of vocal fancy—think Winehouse-gone-Diamanda and you're close. Its unsettling video was shot with four close friends in her Syracuse hometown. Collaborator Miranda Siegel conceived its theme, as Paoro describes it, "of a fruitless quest and getting trapped in cycles of attachment and detachment," all influenced by their shared practice of vipassana meditation, the Buddhist tradition that seeks to understand the truths of reality.

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Yes In My Backyard

Download: Kyle Rapps' BDP-Flipping "Bully"

By Christopher Weingarten Fri., Mar. 9 2012 at 10:30 AM
Categories: Christopher R. Weingarten, Kyle Rapps, MP3, Yes In My Backyard

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PHOTO ROB
Harlem rapper Kyle Rapps is gifted with the type of plainspoken, motormouth, socially progressive underground hip-hop that's not exactly fashionable in the age of fashion-label Tumblr rap, but is more than welcome when done with his head-knocking brio. Rapps is clearly a student of hip-hop—so deep, his mixtape EP Re-edutainment is spiritually (and sample-ally) linked to Boogie Down Productions' third-best album. "Bully" flips a few BDP samples into rollicking "How to Roll a Blunt"-style narrative, seamlessly bringing the conscious '90s style to the "It Gets Better" 2010s.

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Yes In My Backyard

Download: Wet Witch's Pummeling "New Ways"

By Christopher Weingarten Wed., Feb. 29 2012 at 8:30 AM
Categories: Christopher R. Weingarten, MP3, Wet Witch, Yes In My Backyard

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via Facebook
Radioactive industrial-punk mutants Wet Witch slither from the Burn Books label, the same sludgehurlers who got us Pregnant this time last year. Part Jersey Shore wash-up, part Brooklyn crust-over, Wet Witch's four-song, one-sided 12" (out now, limited to 500) comes complete with the band's name melted into the middle like an acid burn. The eight and a half minutes of music that surround it are all factory steam, pulsating pistons, CB radio chatter, country-rock played a broken radio and the screaming/gargling of events that will get you reported to OSHA. Opener "New Ways" features Suicide's broken textures, Big Black's steely drive and Fear's hardcore brawn all in the span of a premature ejaculation. Fans of Pop. 1280, Yvette, and Sleigh Bells take note.

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Yes In My Backyard

Download: Christopher Paul Stelling's Pastoral "Solar Flares"

By Christopher Weingarten Thu., Feb. 23 2012 at 11:30 AM
Categories: Christopher Paul Stelling, Christopher R. Weingarten, MP3, Yes In My Backyard

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Christopher Paul Stelling is a gifted Brookyn songwriter walking an austere, somber, gloriously pastoral line between William Elliott Whitmore-style indie-blues and the ever-emerging new breed of fleet-fingered Faheyesque fingerpicking. Every song on his debut album Songs of Praise and Scorn (just out via Mecca Lecca) cooks with both down-home comfort and avant-garde brio, Stelling building earthy folk troubadour stories over a fluster of wild arpeggios. "Solar Flares" finds him following his fingers and then floating away from them in every verse. His lyrics about "tired hands on broken plows" may not sound like the products of a subway-riding Brooklynite. But he has a stance on making idyllic music in a noisy city that's particularly illuminating.

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Yes In My Backyard

Download: Farewell Republic's Churning Mini-Epic "Wake"

By Christopher Weingarten Wed., Feb. 15 2012 at 12:00 PM
Categories: Christopher R. Weingarten, Farewell Republic, MP3, Yes In My Backyard

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Winnie Jeng
When alt-epic crew Farewell Republic recorded their beaming, hazegazy debut, Burn The Boats, none of the members had reached the age of 23, but it sounds like they lived through the 1990s multiple times: Swirly Corgan guitars with none of the arena cheese, shoegaze pedal chains forming shiny alliances with stoner-metal pedal chains, Shudder To Think's disjunctive melodies sliding into a little math-rock drift. Hell, these young bucks might be New York's best hope for alt-rock space spirituals since Secret Machines, dreaming big and mixing their records to sound even bigger. The album's best track is "Wake," a two-and-a-half-minute churn of Jesu guitars cascading into foggier indie shores.

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