New Release Tuesday
Kings of Convenience – Declaration Of Dependence
KoC have caught some flack from the Free Brigade recently due to some perhaps poorly worded comments on file-sharing. Hopefully, that won’t result in a lack of coverage for their new record – their first since 2004’s gorgeous Riot On An Empty Street. It’s hard to believe we’ve been able to subsist off that record for the last 5 years, but if you pull it out and listen it’s suddenly not that difficult to understand. The boys are capable of making the simplest arrangements seem incredibly complex, and while they may have contributed to the creation of Twee, I still love them.
Kings of Convenience – Toxic Girl
Lissy Trullie – Self-Taught Learner
I’ve been talking about this one quite a lot lately, so I’ll simply add that I think this record may end up surprising us all. She’s got ‘it’, whatever that might be.
El Perro Del Mar – Love Is Not Pop
The first time I heard a song by El Perro Del Mar, it was for a remix contest a few years back. It struck me at the time that her song wasn’t exactly ripe for remixing – odd time signature, unusual voice, very little by way of percussion. Predictably, I ended up disliking most of the mixes, but the song always stayed with me. She’s clearly been exposed to some major production values on her new record, but it ends up a help, not a hindrance. She’s still out in the stratosphere, it’s just a little easier to hear her.
Maps – Turning The Mind (Mute)
I reckon Maps is as close to a new Postal Service album as we’re ever going to get, though I wouldn’t want to write him off as though he’s just aping them. It’s simply that he seems capable of reaching some of the same joyful heights that Gibbard & Tamborello excelled at. But he also straddles into other genres, including what I’ve decided to call freakout electronica a la UNKLE (‘Let Go Of The Fear’), as well as gospel psychedelia that might make J. Spaceman jealous (‘Turning the Mind’).
Tags: el perro del mar, kings of convenience, lissy trullie, maps
