InRadio 5.2: Elephants On Parade, July/August 2007

To hear these and other great artists, order now.

Of Montreal
Polyvinyl Records
Previously featured Of Montreal have come back with two fabulous new releases on home stay Polyvinyl Records. Pop Matters states: Indie pop maverick and Of Montreal leader Kevin Barnes probably doesn't intentionally suffer for his art, but, when he grapples with life's obstacles to happiness, his art is really good. Resilience in the face of depression and rejection were the themes behind his band's excellent 2007 full-length Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? The 21 minutes of leftovers from the recordings for that CD comprise the five tracks found on this new EP, Icons, Abstract Thee.

Richard Swift
Secretly Canadian
Richard Swift's sophomore release Dressed Up For The Letdown is a lovely release from InRadio favorite Secretly Canadian. Playing a vast majority of the instruments on Dressed Up himself, by virtue Swift has created something that is characteristically his. And considering his rough-around-the-edges exterior, one could rightly assume that Swift desires the listener to accept him as an ordinary honest man with some honest songs -- unmasked blemishes and all. Yet when one engages with Swift on this narrow-road-less-traveled, one immediately ignores the subtle imperfections shadowed by the all-consuming white light of well-crafted pop songs in an analog heaven. In effect he's saying, 'Just listen to my songs... the riffraff in the background is inconsequential.'

Podington Bear
Self-Released
Little is known about the illusive Podington Bear, it doesn't much matter though as long as the bear continues releasing a song every other day via you guessed it, the podington bear podcast. Which would make the title track of InRadio 5.2, 'Elephants on Parade' quite out of date, so hurry over to www.podingtonbear.com and see what the bear has been up to. 'Elephants on Parade' is short and sweet; the beats blend nicely and leave an overall good feeling.

Datarock
Nettwerk Music Group
Many moons ago, atop one of seven mountains surrounding a picturesque Norwegian countryside, two scruffy-faced individuals-Fredrik Saroea and the man known simply as Ket-lll-made a pact to alter the face of contemporary music as we know it by single-handedly transforming themselves into what they called the peak of pop evolution. Have they attained their goal? The ridiculously catchy 'Fa-Fa-Fa' says that they are on their way. DIY punk rockers by nature, but heavily influenced by the distinctive style and stage presence of groups like Talking Heads and Devo, the boys decided to ditch the thrash guitars in favor of the simple yet versatile Casio Mt-64 keyboard and a Roland Groovebox. Toss in matching red track suits and two pairs of vintage Porsche wraparound sunglasses and you've got a little something called Datarock. Datarock Datarock, their first full-length CD was released in June by Nettwerk Music Group and it is chock-full of feel good tunes like 'Fa-Fa-Fa'.

Beat The Devil
Self-Released
I was introduced to Beat The Devil in Austin this year. By complete happenstance, as most things are during sxsw, I wound up catching the last two songs of their set, which included Shilpa Ray, the lead vocalist, banging on a huge snow shovel with a stick belting out 'black betty' while band-mate Mishka banged on his own huge marching band drum. I knew then that I had to get the EP and see what this threesome was all about, and I couldn't be happier that I did. Beat The Devil reside in Brooklyn and make cavernous noises with eerily intelligent lyrics. Shilpa Ray's voice, full of feeling, is accompanied by fantastic musical arrangements.

Sandpeople
Self-Released
Northwest hip-hop crew, Sandpeople, have been making music for roughly three years now and have built themselves into an 11 piece outfit. Concerned first with making quality music that is relevant to real everyday life, Sandpeople are sure to make connections with listeners. This point is exemplified in 'The City Sleeps', which intelligently and poignantly speaks of the ways in which we as a culture easily turn a blind eye to poverty and oppression in our own country. Watch out for their official debut this September.

Balkan Beat Box
JDub Records
The members of Balkan Beat Box do not believe in flags, nationalities, or borders. Between the funked up beats, compelling rhymes, and dubby echoes on their new album Nu Med on JDub Records, there is a whirlwind of traditions smacking up against the shores of New York. 'We believe in listening to localities... to local music,' says BBB co-founder and saxophonist Ori Kaplan. Nu Med is a musical vision of what the New Mediterranean would sound like if borders were removed. Musical connections are made by BBB that politics often keep separate. Jewish, Balkan, Arabic, Syrian, European, Moroccan, and American are united by hip hop beats and dancehall toasts. But this musical nomadism continually returns to the Gypsy sound. 'Gypsy is the definition of a soul, not a color or place. It's a take on life.' States co-founder Tamir Muskat.

Elk City
Friendly Fire Recordings
Elk City's Renee LoBue and Ray Ketchem have teamed with influential ex-Luna guitarist Sean Eden and ex-Lovelies bassist Barbara Endes on New Believers, the band's finest work to date. This new Elk City calls upon a wide palette of influences: Brill Building pop, 1960's psychedelic bands such as Love, classic Motown, 1970's proto-punk heroes John Cale and Television, and 1980's alternative rock such as The Smiths and The Pixies. Never fearful of experimentation, these musicians are pushing new boundaries with their works, weaving Ketchem's ace production and LoBue's striking voice with the lyrical guitar of Eden atop Endes' solid foundation.

Lightning Dust
Jagjaguwar Records
Amber Webber and Joshua Wells have been playing together for many years as part of Black Mountain. With an abundance of creative energy to spare, the two decided to start a separate project together, that they named Lightning Dust. Committing themselves to a more simplistic approach with Lightning Dust, Webber and Wells also decided to escape the comforts of their familiar instruments and writing styles. On their self-titled debut, minimal and spacious arrangements and a moody, theatrical vocal-style aptly expose the demons, creating songs that creep into your bones with a haunting chill.

Dan Deacon
Carpark Records
Dan Deacon has garnered a reputation in the underground as an intense performer and classic showman. The table top full of pedals, a sine wave generator, vocoder and casio blasting through the PA, joined by a makeshift light board with various bulbs and green skull strobe light, make his all out dance-til-you-drop performance a complete experience. But it isn't all fancy feet and bouncy beats. Deacon is a classically trained composer with a Masters degree in electro-acoustic composition. He has released 7 albums from 2003 to 2006, but those self-produced recordings do not contain the vocal-based experimental pop that he has fine-tuned in live performance. His latest full length, Spiderman of the Rings is the first album bridging the gap between party performer and genuine composer. A mixture of his live show dance anthems, intricate instrumentals and humorous monologues, Spiderman of the Rings establishes Dan Deacon as a new type of entertainer in the contemporary underground.

Hallelujah The Hills
Misra Records
Hallelujah the Hills was born in 2005 out of the ashes of the cult Boston band The Stairs. On the night of their final performance Ryan Walsh (Vox, Guitar) and Eric Meyer (Drums) announced that they would start a new band, naming it after a somewhat bizarre 1960's comedy Walsh had seen in a college film class. The band's line-up of bass, drums, cello, Moog, trumpet, melodica, sampler and plenty of guitars grants them the space to expand and contract as their melodies and arrangements see fit. Think of them as the sonic equivalent to Willy Wonka's ferry ride, seemingly random yet utterly precise, first drifting along a chocolate river with a gentle lulling sound then hurtling you into the unknown with a thundering danger until you arrive somewhere entirely new, a fantastic destination full of wonder.

Jenny Owen Youngs
Nettwerk Music Group
When Batten the Hatches arrived on my desk I had prematurely categorized what I would find inside. Upon first listen I was happy to be disproved. Jenny Owen Youngs isn't just another guitar playing singer-songwriter; her voice and her lyrics go much further than many who fall in that genre. On Hatches, there's no shortage of cussing or drinking - and no apologies made for either. Why so unladylike? 'Love is a mess,' Jenny shrugs, 'and I've made plenty of messes. It levels everyone to the same sloppy playing ground. Certain emotional states cannot be effectively recreated for a listener without the employment of a good, solid 'fuck!' - or twenty. If I can't come across as genuine, no one's going to bother coming back for a second listen.'

Bloody Black Eyes
Rautnon Industries
Bloody Black Eyes is the musical collaboration between Indigo MC and Spikaboxxx. 'What Do?' is taken from Spikaboxxx's eclectic debut release Into The City. One review states, 'Fast to slow, intimate to tough as hell, Spikaboxxx's Into the City features a bit of rock, some synthesizers, a few brass instruments and bitchin' vocal harmonies. The variation might throw you off for a bit, but take a second - she'll bring you back around. Spika says her variety comes from growing up in a city with such eclectic musical tastes; Spika herself used to play in a punk band. For her, Into the City is her life in musical form, years of poetry turned into lyrics.' Indigo is gearing up to release her long awaited debut CD, Expansive Enclosures in August. Check her out at: Hip Hop Is The Way.

Shapes And Sizes
Asthmatic Kitty Records
Split Lips, Winning Hips, A Shiner kicks off with a solid rock march ambitious enough to soundtrack the first 10 miles of any road trip. Initially the Canadian four-piece adopted the familiar singer-songwriter paradigm, but decided to break those parameters by having everyone write and sing. The gamble paid off; S&S concocted the self-titled debut album of bi-polar, stop-and-start songs that pulled listeners onto an emotional ride, and raised ears, hairs and goose bumps at Asthmatic Kitty Records. Lyrically, Split Lips is at once celebratory and derogatory; among other things, a peculiar but calculated meditation on naive nationalism and potent protest ('Victory in War, oh what a bore'). 'High Life' focuses on benign habits turned scabrous, and 'Alone/Alive' casts an existential strobe on freedom and dependence minus the pretension that usually comes along for that ride.

Frog Eyes
Absolutely Kosher
Frog Eyes' latest release, Tears of the Valedictorian is a lovely and thematically full pop-album. Pitchfork's Carl Wilson states, 'Mercer's preoccupation here seems to be masculinity, as it often has been in rock, the music of boys coming of age. But unlike Mick Jagger or Bruce Springsteen (whose trace, as so often these days, shows up here in some surprising runs of piano fills and exhortations), Mercer is stalking the heath of manhood's ruination. He turns over artifacts of Romanticism like an anthropologist on a dig, sketching out the landscape and puzzling over how these dick-swinging ancients survived. His yowls are the cry of somebody waking up from history with a hangover-- 'he was what the Poor call the Maimed,' he sings-- as its dreams disperse over the horizon of legibility.