Palebear Archives

December, 2005

Giant Drag
Hearts and Unicorns

It was instant-like with Giant Drag for me. I’ve got a softy spot for bands with just a guy and a girl in the lineup. What always surprises me is the amount and power of the noise that is possible with a imple drums and guitar lineup. Oh sure, there’s overdubs. But still there’s a pretty powerful presence on their album “Hearts and Unicorns”.

The band is sort of like a reverse Quasi lineup; there’s Micah on drums and Annie on guitar and vocals. But they’re definitely more dreamy and less playful and self effacing than Quasi. Other duos that they resemble are Viva Voce, who are similar in hellraisin’ style but definitely more electronic, and Elk City who share a similar atmospheric vibe but tend toward more folkier moments.

There’s going to be some comparisons to shoegazers like My Bloody Valentine of course, what with the powerfully distorted guitars that swim throughout most of the songs. The song “Cordial Invitation” totally has those guitar bends and fogbank cloud of noise hovering underneath the music. But they mostly avoid MBV’s mid-treble emphasis and crackling broken distortion which is probably a good thing as far as radio play goes. The distortion is often more like, er, grungey. There, I said it… whew.

Continue reading “Giant Drag – Hearts and Unicorns” …

by Tyranosaur | 1 Comment

José González
Heartbeats

All right, here is a division of Sony that actually gets it. By “it” I mean how to market products through a visually stunning commercial that also features memorable (and good) indie music. This is the commercial for the Sony Bravia with music by José González.

All too often, companies completely drop the ball on offering up the actual video or music to their commercials. I never understand this. I mean, why in hell would you not want people to play your commericals OVER AND OVER on their computers because they think it’s cool? Why in hell would you not make it clear somewhere what band is playing the song in the commercial (and for those “made for commercial” songs, make preparations in case you see a lot of people liking that music). Screw the rights concerns and such, you’re a big sprawling company; figure it out by throwing money at it or something.

Anyhow, I’ve been wanting to write about the Bravia Commercial for awhile. Not only can you play and download the commercial in different sizes, but they even made an entire website (bravia-advert.com) devoted ONLY to the commercial that includes Behind the Scenes information, music downloads and pictures.

Why would you want all that info? Well, it is a visually stunning commercial. You have to see it for yourself but it basically involves a gazillion (250,000 actually) multi-colored Superballs simultaneously bouncing down a San Francisco Street. They let all of them go at once. The effect is unreal… I couldn’t believe this was not computer generated but it’s definitely real.

So, to complete their commercial they set it to a really awesome track by indie folk troubadour José González (note the spelling, it’s Gonzalez with a “Z”, not Gonzales). The track is called “Heartbeats” and is off his first album Veneer. Quite a few folks have compared him to Nick Drake and the resemblance is uncanny at times. People are going to say Iron and Wine as a reference point too. But I think his mostly fingerpicked acoustic guitar music can stand on it’s own for it’s sheer beauty and timelessness. And it certainly didn’t hurt to have it in this commercial.

OK, the only slight hitch in all this is: I’ve never seen this commercial on TV. I believe it’s only been shown in Europe. One of these days we’ll get some good commercials over in the U.S….

by Palebear | 3 Comments

The Donnas
Fall Behind Me

I’d been hearing this one alt-rock girl song as background music for a commercial for the Nissan Xterra lately. I knew I’d actually heard this song elsewhere on radio but I just couldn’t place who it was, but I remembered who it was the other day. The song used in the commercial is called “Fall Behind Me” by the Bay-area punkette band turned MTV fave The Donnas.

This is off of their latest album Gold Medal and is a pretty catchy tune. The all-girl band has been kicking around for quite some time already, nearly a decade of playing pop-punk in smaller clubs before hitting it much bigger a few years ago. People have looked at them and their name and said, “Ok, so it’s the female version of The Ramones“. That’s not entirely true; I think The Donnas are much more poppy despite their punkier roots. They don’t seem anywhere near as loud or angsty as say, Sleater-Kinney.

A strange footnote: it’s weird but the visual that triggered the memory of who the Xterra Commercial song was by was seeing The Donnas on those VH-1 “I Love The 80′s” specials…

by Palebear | Comments Off

The Films
EP

Hey The Film guys…what is with the red dots all over your faces? I know you can’t be camera shy…

Anyhow, picked up this little EP of 3 songs by the band The Films (not to be confused with The Film Stills, of course). Their influences are listed like: Elvis Costello, Zombies, Pixies and Elliott Smith. I hear a tinge of the first, a tinier tinge of the second, none of the third and zilch of ES in their music whcih is mostly louder indie rock music with a fairly good beat. Well, I’d assume that maybe a reviewer heard the waltz-time and chord changes of the first song “That Kind of Day” and automatically assumed that maybe there was a connection to Elliott Smith’s Waltz No. 2 or something. A pretty nice song still.

As far as vocals go, The Films remind me more of The Decemberists or The Strokes on the other two tracks “Black Shoes” and “Come On”. The midrange filtered treatment on the guitars in particular reminds me of The Strokes. “Come On” is actually a pretty cool track: simple, unadorned indie rock with a melody or two to boot. I don’t think they’re breaking any new waves with the music, but you gotta like their energy.

by Palebear | 2 Comments

The Seldon Plan
Making Circles

I found out about this totally amazing indie poprock band called The Seldon Plan the other day. Well, I wish I could say I’m the first to discover them but they’ve been reviewed in any number of online and print magazines already. Still, what a great find. The Baltimore, MD quartet plays energetic and powerful pop that has an immediate catchiness but includes enough melodic quirks to make their music really shine.

It’s interesting that they are called The SeldoN Plan instead of The SeldoM Plan. My brain keeps want to say Seldom, hehe.

When I first put their album Making Circles on, I thought immediately of Nada Surf, and then looked at their one sheet and saw that band was in the “Sounds Like” list already. Well, I would certainly say that if you liked Nada Surf you should give Seldon Plan a shot. As I listened to the album I found a number of resemblances to the great Texas band Subset with a bit of Teenage Fanclub-iness thrown in for good measure. I would say that The Posies might be another music reference point.

Standout tracks include the power-pop overtures of the opener “A Rhyming Dictionary” and the DeathCab-like title track “Making Circles”. They are also capable of slower tracks filled with no less tension like “Top Left Corner” and “Holding Patterns Are Slow”. With such awesome hooks, musical tightness and great melodies I wouldn’t be surprised if they became the next buzz band on the O.C….

The Seldon Plan website is at: www.theseldonplan.com

by Tyranosaur | 4 Comments