Category Archives: Best New Music

New Chapel Club – Download Sleep Alone

by

There are times we set our sights on a band here at KCRW and are somewhat shocked when they don’t get the wider attention we think they deserve. A couple years ago a UK band called Chapel Club released an EP followed by an excellent debut full length. We were all over it.  It was sensual, melancholic atmospheric indie rock with some songs topping 8 minutes.

After that, everything seemed to go quiet.

Now, the band is back with a fantastic new single from the forthcoming album “Good Together” that is quite different. It’s lighter and poppier but excellent all the same.

Stream “Sleep Alone” and download it here. 

And Jason Bentley’s favorite, “Scared”

Scared by Chapel Club

Chapel Club hadn’t released any new music since May 2011 and will be playing their first live show with new songs later this week. There was a good reason for the long break: the band needed to figure out what they wanted to be. Here’s a letter from singer Lewis Bowman:

“We formed and were signed so quickly that we never really talked about what kind of band we wanted to be. So while it was amazing that lots of people embraced the music, and while we knew it had its strengths, we also knew we wanted to approach the second record in a different spirit.

This time around we wanted to create something fresh, for us as much as everyone else – something bright and playful and surprising. Looking back, the first record was kind of a comedown record, whether coming down from a drug or a relationship or the hopes of your youth or whatever. And I guess at some point I realized that, while I was singing like it was all over, actually it wasn’t; it was just beginning. (Whatever ‘it’ may be.) So this time the band decided that, whatever the emotional direction of a song or a lyric – even if it was about feeling sad or scared or confused – we’d try to turn those feelings into something more active and productive than a grandiose whinge. That’s what lots of my favourite pop songs do, and “Good Together” is above all else a pop record. It feels strangely thrilling to say that.”

Now I can’t wait to hear the rest!

RR

Original Website: KCRW Music Blog

Oren Lyons: Local Band We Love

by

It’s rare that Jason Bentley will play a single track every day for a week on Morning Becomes Eclectic, but the track “Forever Found” by LA- band Oren Lyons has earned that distinction.

When the song begins, it sounds like a piece of orchestral music until the drums kick in and all of the sudden you’re sent on an ambient, slightly psychedelic trip. The strings add a blissful air of romanticism.

This may sound strange but when I really like a song, I feel like I want to take a swim in it. I would love to dive into this one.

Stream “Forever Found” and download it here. (click “save page as)

The band is pretty new, forming just this past January. Multi-instrumentalist composer Gueorgui Linev teamed up with guitarist/producer Peter Potyondy and singer Kristianne Bautista with the idea to pursue a fusion of “classical minimalism and experimental soul”.

The band has since expanded to a sextet, adding violinist Dannon Rampton, drummer Randy Wagner and bassist Ian Anderson to round out the sound.

What I love is how each individual musician adds to the sound – you can easily pick apart each instrument, including Kristianne’s beautiful voice, and hear how they contribute to the whole.

This kind of intricate orchestration has drawn us to bands like Other Lives. That Oklahoma band went on to open for Radiohead, so I wonder what this year holds for Oren Lyons…

RR

Original Website: KCRW Music Blog

DIANA: Artist You Should Know

by

Riding a wave of superchill gossamer reverb, Toronto’s DIANA (which includes members of Destroyer’s band) has finished recording an album, but in advance of it’s release they’ve released a dreamy single that recalls aspects of Nite Jewel and Toro Y Moi while doing it’s own new romantic thing.

“Born Again” skitters with lo-fi drama while simultaneously delivering a crisp neon 80s vibe that would fit perfectly in a slow motion montage of lovers driving down the 10W at sunset in an imaginary John Hughes/Michael Mann movie.

Until the proper release of the full length, I dare you not to listen to this soundcloud of their first proper single, “Born Again,” on repeat.

Born Again by D I A N A

– Mario Cotto

Original Website: KCRW Music Blog

Micachu and The Shapes: Artist You Should Know

by

In 2008, 21 year old Mica Levi released one of that year’s best records in the form of a skronky, odd pop record called “Jewellery“. Unlike anything else at the time (or anything else since) it was a real stand out and bold statement for a young, relatively unknown artist.

In the time since, she toured with Spoon as their opener on their North American tour, experimented and collaborated with the London Sinfonetta for a live project, and performed at ATP at the behest of Jeff Mangum (of Neutral Milk Hotel.)

I’ve eagerly awaited new music from Micachu and the Shapes for a number of years, but hadn’t really kept tabs on recent developments.

However, as if by some twist of fate and/or some witchy knowledge in my bones, I’d started listening to old Matthew Herbert records again…

Herbert, who produced “Jewellery“ and now Micachu’s brand new record, “Never” helps her really stretch the boundaries of pop music by distorting, smashing and doing everything possible to the arrangements to make them virtually amusical…but at the core Micachu’s music is so delightfully catchy, so charming that even as it starts and stops in fits you want more.

Click here to view the embedded video.

It’s like musical fingerpaint. A fun, glorious mess that plays well while destroying the idea of drawing within the lines. It literally at times sounds like what would happen if you put a really scratched cd of Liz Phair‘s Whip Smart in your car cd player, or what’d you’d hear if you went to see ToonTown’s best post-punk band play to a bunch of drunk cartoon kids.

This is what pop music should be. No rules dude.

Micachu And The Shapes – OK by DummyMag

– Mario Cotto

Original Website: KCRW Music Blog

Shintaro Sakamoto: Artist You Should Know

by

Former frontman of Japanese psych-rock outfit Yura Yura Teikoku, Shintaro Sakamoto has crafted the greatest soft rock album of 1981.

A pristine and exquisitely produced love letter to a bygone era, “How To Live With a Phantom,” is completely beguiling and exactingly mines the more haunting aspects of pop romanticism made popular on the AM dial by 10cc, Godley & Creme, and Todd Rundgren.

Essentially, it’d have easily worked as an alternative soundtrack to The Virgin Suicides.

In a fantastic interview with Bowlegs Music, Sakamoto recently stated that the concept for the album was, “An obscure party band of unclear nationality is playing mood music in a small bar, and the audience, normally shy people who rarely let their hair down, starts to feel more relaxed and, before they know it, starts to dance.”

Shintaro Sakamoto – You Just Decided by Other Music Recording Co

Sakamoto captures that feeling and more. Essentially, approximating the lightness that comes after overcoming the awkwardness of a genuine feeling, tracks like “You Just Decided” and “My Memories Fade” are the sound of smiling at someone and walking across an empty dancefloor and asking them to dance. It is the sound of leaning in for a kiss.

Listening to it for the first time in my living room on Sunday afternoon, I had that elusive experience of absolute surprise and wonder. A kind of instant nostalgia to feel the way I listened to it the first time, even as I was listening to it for the first time. In any given year, I hear a lot of really great, well produced albums and songs…but THAT feeling is rare. And this record is special and genuinely haunting in that way. “How To Live With a Phantom“? Buy this record.

– Mario Cotto

Original Website: KCRW Music Blog