Palebear Archives

September, 2005

Audible
Sunday Bell

I guess the first thing that struck me when hearing “Sunday Bell” from the band Audible was how much lead singer Mike Kennedy sounds like Blake Sennet (Rilo Kiley, The Elected). Now, I don’t put that much store in any powers of musical deduction, but after i got over the Sennet similarity I was thinking, man this sure sounds like good old school Matt Pond PA.

And sure enough, reading the bio for Audible we see that both Mike and bandmate Jim Kehoe were indeed in Matt Pond’s original lineup. Along with Mike’s girlfriend Kris Muller on bass and Mazarin’s Sean Byrne on drums, Audible continues that deliciously layered but wisely compact Philadelphia indie poprock sound blazed by MPPA, Bill Ricchini, and Mazarin.

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by Bryan | Comments Off

Citizens Here And Abroad
Appearances

After hearing several tracks from Citizens Here And Abroad off of internet radio, I decided to write them up here. The group’s debut album is called Ghosts Of Tables And Chairs and the track I heard off the radio was Appearances.

The group mixes dream rock urgency with more playful indie rock along the lines of Rilo Kiley. I get good doses of Kim Deal coming through the speakers as well. I especially liked the guitar lines which are mostly clean repeated notes and the stepup in energy of the chorus which swims with delicious distortion.

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by Tyranosaur | Comments Off

Stephen Malkmus
Phantasies

A few weeks ago I was absolutely flabbergasted while typing something on the computer to hear the opening words of a Stephen Malkmus song on the TV that was on in the background. “Wake up early in Karakatu, Alaska / We put our masks on to welcome the dawn” isn’t the sort of lyrics that the average commercial will contain so I looked up immediately to watch it.

It was a commercial for a 13 hour sale at Sears that was playing on ESPN2 of all places. I can’t believe that they would choose the second song “Phantasies” out of all of them from his older self-titled album. Way to go Sears. Since then, I’ve seen the commercial about 4 or 5 times on other stations like CBS and Food Network.

Continue reading “Stephen Malkmus - Sears Commercial” …

by Bryan | 1 Comment

The Concretes

You might have noticed that over the past few years, Target has hired some snazzy marketeers to help them update and modernize their image. It seems to have worked in some respect, not the least of which is the music. I’ve been trying for the longest time to figure out who did the music to one of their commercials. The music in question, made my “indie pop” alert go off right away… a strange combination of 60s reverbed girl band (Ronettes?), the Aislers Set, and Hope Sandoval.

The song on the commercial is “Say Something New” by a band from Sweden called The Concretes. Though they’re on a pretty big label (Astralwerks), I haven’t heard of them before. For some reason, I was thinking Concrete BLONDE for awhile which definitely isn’t the same thing!

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by Palebear | 7 Comments

The Invisible Cities
Watertown

I keep hearing awesome songs from The Invisible Cities on SomaFM; this must be the 10th time or something a song of theirs has come on, not that I’m complaining. They often play this slow and majestic type of indie pop tinged with shoegaze and beautiful vocals. The instrumentation on the slower songs remind me of the empty skyshimmer of Idaho and old Red House Painters, while the faster indie pop sounds a bit like That Dog, Pixies or the criminally overlooked Star Ghost Dog. What’s nice about The Invisible Cities is they are able to transcend that single genre tag on their album pretty easily (though I might have tagged them as shoegaze from a few selected tracks if I hadn’t went and listened to some of the others).

The track I hear the most is “Synaptic Gap” from their debut full-length album Watertown an amazing dreamy piece that features Sadie’s vocals drawn out like sheets flapping in the breeze.

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by Palebear | Comments Off

The Speedies
Let Me Take Your Photo

One of the companies that have really stepped up to the plate with cool music in their commercials is Hewlett Packard. Even without the addition of interesting music, their commercials would still be really cool… featuring Michel Gondry-like shots of photos or video being moved around and becoming one with parts of the actual commercial shot. It is pretty hypnotizing to watch.

I still am trying to figure out this one commercial of theirs that has music that sort of sounds like the Apples In Stereo (no it’s not the Kinks track). But I finally DID figure out a newer commercial that features a woman repeatedly being dressed up in various clothes and handed a photo which becomes the backdrop for the next shot. The song in question is a pretty fast sounding punk song with these snare drum rolls that really move it along.

Continue reading “The Speedies - HP Commercial” …

by Tyranosaur | 1 Comment