LOVE IT ON TUESDAY: GRIZZLY BEAR

I interviewed Danish band Efterklang about a month ago. Between many interesting things, we talked about Grizzly Bear, cause Efterklang’s label, Rumraket, was responsible for the European release of their debut album in 2004. Efterklang must think it’s very weird that the band they signed as unknowns 5 years ago are now a thousand times more famous than they themselves are. It took 5 years - 3 LPs and 1 EP - for Grizzly Bear to fully develop their sound, but now they got it perfectly and, seriously, listening to Two Weeks, the first single of their new LP Veckatimest, is a shivering experience. Efterklang must seriously try to figure out what they did wrong.

The thing is that Efterklang craft excellent songs too, but their sound is not original enough. I don’t mean to say that a song is better if it’s original. I think that when you listen to a certain song, if it’s good, it’s good, and that’s all it needs. But from the strict point of view of popular success, originality comes as a very important thing. Cause if two bands sound the same, the best of the two will sell everything and the other will sell almost nothing. Efterklang are excellent, but Sigur Ros are better, so they’re the ones who sell a lot. Grizzly Bear are also excellent, and why are they fucking big now? Cause, like Sigur Ros, they’re the best at what they do… and with Veckatimest, Grizzly Bear are actually the best in general.

To be honest, there ain’t a single song that’s not at least good on Vecka – I’m getting familiar with it already. I’ll just shoot the utterly perfect ones, cause otherwise it would be too long. There’s the folky and intense opener Southern Point, the immediately catchy Two Weeks, the cool and relax Cheerleader, the Pitchfork-gave-me-a-perfect-note-on-best-new-tracks While You Wait For The Others and the most perfect closer ever Foreground. But even if it's got some higher points, that's the kind of album that you listen from start to end, again and again and again. I used to think Merriweather Post Pavilion was well in advance in the run for best album of the year, but I have now to say that Veckatimest caught it back.

LOVE IT ON TUESDAY: PASSION PIT

Download: Passion Pit - Little Secrets Buy it on

For those who don’t follow the musical actuality, I can tell you Passion Pit is considered by many the most exciting new band of the year. With their EP Chunk Of Change, they brought to the world the music all the hipsters were waiting for, a melodic and exciting indie rock that also sounds like soft electro. One of the best examples of this is their amazing single Sleepyhead, that got hundreds of remixes and that is already considered an indie classic. You won’t be surprised that their debut LP Manners, released today, is one of the most anticipated album of the year.

Unfortunately, what was meant to happen happened: their new album is a bit of a disappointment. What is sad about this is that it’s not a question of work or talent, but more like a question of timing. Let me explain myself with the example of Justice. They got known gradually with We Are Your Friends in 2006 and when they were already in the spotlight, they hit the homerun with D.A.N.C.E. almost exactly year later. People were not only amazed, but surprised too, and when they heard the whole album, it was too much, they jizzed in their pants.

Passion Pit had to make something better than Sleepyhead, and though they nearly succeeded with The Reeling and especially Little Secrets, they fell short. And the album? There are as many good tracks on this 11-tracks LP as on their 6-tracks EP (meaning 6). It's kinda ridiculous cause if I would hear this sound for the first time, I’d probably write something like: ‘Wow this band is very promising, I will check them out in the future’. But that didn't happen and now I'm disappointed. So please do me a favour if you're unfamiliar with the band: listen to Manners first and then to Chunk Of Change. The order will be restored.

LOVE IT ON TUESDAY: MAXÏMO PARK

When the best album of the week is a Maxïmo Park album, you know it’s not a great week for music. Well, last week’s best album was by a band in a similar situation, that used to be every other English band too, but succeeded to change its fate with a great second album. However, unlike The Horrors, Maxïmo Park wasn't that successful with Quicken The Heart. The album is fun to listen and all, but it’s pretty far from sounding like an honest work of art.

It doesn’t suprise me at all, cause I’ve seen Maxïmo Park live two years ago at Osheaga and it was as boring as a metro ride. The singer was funny cause he was stoned, but musically, the performance sucked. It’s probably more a question of commitment in music than a question of talent though, cause these guys made pretty good songs like Graffiti and Apply Some Pressure in the past. I don't know, maybe they should just stop smoking weed.

There are still some cool tracks on Quicken The Heart, like the opening track Wraithlike, that’s got a nice 7/4 verse and a catchy chorus, and The Kids Are Sick Again that is a pretty catchy song even though it's a bit weak for a first single. But the best song is definitely the closer I Haven’t Seen Her In Ages, that is excellent as a British post-punk pastiche. Unfortunately for Maxïmo Park, there are loads of real British post-punk bands to listen to before them.

Download Maxïmo Park - I Haven't Seen Her In Ages Buy it on

LOVE IT ON TUESDAY: THE HORRORS

I always kinda like The Horrors. A few years ago, a friend of mine showed me their debut single Sheena Is A Parasite, he asked me what I thought about it and I recall saying ‘Do you even call that a song?’ Sheena is pure intensity, it’s in fact nothing else than intensity and I think it's exactly what the band wanted it to be. I finally liked it, but there were at the time so many cool UK bands doing this kind of half-experimental/half-pop music that the Horrors kinda hibernated in my subconscious for a while. I wasn’t even aware until recently of their debut called Strange House released in March 2007.

A month ago, I heard their new single Sea Within a Sea that is such a serene piece of music that I wondered for a minute if it wasn’t wrongly attributed to them. But the song lasted and lasted until the 8:00 mark, and since Sheena was less than two minutes - which is unconventionally short -, it makes sense that their new single would be eight minutes – which is unconventionally long. The difference is that while Sheena was just unconventional, Sea is also genius. I want to apologize to these guys for thinking they were just every other English band. Listening to their new album called Primary Colours, I seriously feel like listening to Joy Division, Stone Roses and Buzzcocks altogether. But I don't feel like listening to a tribute: it's fresh, it's intelligent and it’s got everything I'm looking for in music.

The first track Mirror’s Image starts with more than a minute of quiet synthesizers. After a quick pass by a drummer who sounds like he was tired of waiting, the whole band kicks in and doesn't stop being good until the last track. The second half especially stands out as one of the best second halves I’ve heard in many years. Starting with the Joy Divisionesque Scarlett Field, going on with the long and calm I Only Think Of You, the weird and noisy I Can’t Control Myself and the happy nostalgic title track, it ends with the epic first single, Sea Within A Sea, that itself ends in the most beautiful way. I hope Pitchfork’s gonna rate it good, cause otherwise, I think I’ll e-mail to complain.

Download: The Horrors - Mirror's Image Buy it on 

LOVE IT ON TUESDAY: BOB DYLAN

 

Bob Dylan is old. I don’t know his exact age, but, since his first album, he’s lived more than twice what I’ve lived since I’m born. His career was so long that it would nearly be impossible review it honestly. Let’s just say that he was a genius in the 60s and for the most part of the 70s, that he turned pretty bad in the 80s and the 90s and that, with Love and Theft in 2001 and Modern Times in 2006, critics made things appear like Bob Dylan was a genius again. He sure did better than during the two last decades, but he’s still far from being the musician he once was.

The truth is that Bob Dylan has some of the most talented musicians in the world around him, and this is enough to fool the average music critic. But it’s far from enough to fool the amateur who listens to music with his heart. I’m even tempted to say that Bob Dylan’s new album Together Through Life sucks, arguing that it’s full of well-executed songs with no soul. That’s what I would say if it was the work of a young new band. I would be wrong to say that though, cause we’re talking about Bob Dylan here: like Jesus, we gotta respect him, even if he’s just a has-been.

Of course I’m writing too fast, cause some songs on Together, like the broken-hearted Life Is Hard, the cool I Feel A Change Comin’ On and my own favorite, the bluesy It’s All Good, are actually honest pieces of music made by a real old man. But overall, I mean… The genius of Bob Dylan was to always challenge our expectations, in order to never become a cliché. With Together, not only is he not surprising us anymore, but he’s become the caricature of the old man he is. Come on Bob, take back your acoustic guitar and your harmonica, I know you can do it.

Buy It's All Good on 

LOVE IT ON TUESDAY: DEPECHE MODE

As you already know, at Les Oiseaux Exotiques, we’re always trying to offer a more interesting product. Did I say that word? I think I did. So here’s the point: on every Tuesday, there are like hundreds of albums coming out in the US and Canada. To help you sort out which one you should hear, we’ll start a new tradition here on Tuesday, which will consist of writing a full review of what other blogs call the album of the week. You’ll be able to easily find the reviews of the past weeks under the label LOVE IT ON TUESDAY, cause that’s exactly what’s gonna happen: you’ll love it on Tuesday.

Kraftwerk were playing with machines way before them, but Depeche Mode could be said to be the first band to make electro-pop - compared to the electro-prog of Kraftwerk - without making crappy disco. Now you’ll tell me that Just Can’t Get Enough is pretty close to being disco. True, but think about their later stuff, like Personal Jesus, Enjoy The Silence and Black Celebration: it's definitely pop, but it's too bad ass to be disco. And believe me, these electro dudes that fill our Top 25 Most Plays, like Boys Noize, Crystal Castles and even Justice sometimes, all owe a lot to these guys.

To be honest, you won’t be able to find anything comparable to Personal Jesus on Sounds of the Universe, but you’ll be fucking surprised how these guys totally own most of nowadays’ bands even after 29 years of existence. First, they managed to sound like 2009 rather than like 1984 and second, they haven’t lost their touch in making scary dance music. Wrong, the first single, will not only scare the shit out of you, but would also make you dance like hell if played very late in a club. There’s also Fragile Tension, probably the best song of the album with the distinctive guitar sound, In Sympathy, that could be a Crystal Castles song if it wasn’t for the voice, and the closer Corrupt, that sounds like 2099, a minute before the earth explodes.

Of course, this album also gets his share of cheesiness, with Peace, Perfect and Jezebel, but these three songs are cheesy in a good way you know, like in a funny gentle way. And they're just weak compared to rest, that's just catchy without being cheesy. When old bands try to reproduce the past – U2 can tell you about it – the result is usually pretty bad, but Depeche Mode did not seem interested to make a Personal Jesus # 2, and they got something interesting with Sounds of the Universe. There may be no instant classic on it, but we can definitely put it on top of our old band's best album of the year list.

Best New Band Since Mozart!

 

Almost all the good band names have already been taken : Velvet Underground, Joy Division, Sonic Youth… That’s why nowadays some bands have to choose a name that's still available just because nobody wanted it, like Suckers. They're from Brooklyn, they're friends with Yeasayer and they're fucking cool. I got to know them because Pitchfork put one of their songs called It Gets Your Body Movin' in their best new music list. It’s actually one the best - if not the best - song I’ve heard this year so far. It’s not the kind of song I usually like : really slow, really progressive, really indie. But what is disguised behind this experimental mask is a really good pop song. And guess what : if you're in the US, you can now buy it on iTunes, along with all the excellent songs of their first EP. You should buy it. They’re the next big thing.

Download : It Gets Your Body Movin' Buy it on: 

Gentille Musique

Camera Obscura doesn’t want to start a revolution. The only thing they want is making music that will make people happy. Does that suck? Yes. Are they good at it? Yes. Today, they released the first single of their new album that will be out next week. It's still a kind of mix of The Concretes and Belle & Sebastian, like the only old song I could name from them, Lloyd, I'm Ready to Be Heartbroken. I’m pretty sure the members of the new indie pop sensation, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, are big fans of them.

Download: Camera Obscura - French Navy Buy it on: 

'En avril, ne te découvre pas d'un fil'

Yep, it's snowing again in Montreal. I don't mind that much about the snow, but the cold wind is a real pain in the ass. It's still not enough to stop all these albums to be released though. Among those I was interested in, there was the new Metric – overhyped -, the new Crystal Antlers – their EP was better -, the new Black Dice – too experimental – and the new Thieves Like Us – nothing really new here. There was also the new Neil Young, which came close to being my choice for today. But I thought, ‘Something that would have been good 40 years ago isn’t necessarily good now, right?’

I’ll rather talk about the new Doves. These guys from Manchester released their fourth album today. It's entitled Kingdom of Rust, after the name of the first single. We know this band for their very good singles There Goes The Fear from 2002 and especially Black and White Town from their last album, Some Cities, released in 2005. If you like bands like Oasis and The Verve, you will love this. If you don’t like these bands that much, like myself, you won’t love it, but you will probably still appreciate it. So I guess it’s good. Here's the album's lead track.

Download: Doves – Jetstream Buy it on: 

Modern Masters Give a Lesson to Old Ones

I was eager to hear this. The remix doesn't do justice - uh! - to the original. It makes it good.

Download : U2 - Get On Your Boots (Justice Remix)

PBJ Are Back and This Time, They're Not Whistling

Every time I hear 'Young Folks', my first thought is, 'That whistling really sounds like the flute riff in Kung Fu Fighting'. My second thought is, 'I want to marry that girl (Victoria Bergsman)'. My third though is, 'Gosh, I wish I had written that song'. Cause that song and the whole album are so good that I'm a bit surprised these guys come from Stockholm and not Gothenburg, the musical capital of Sweden.

Now, there's something I want to make clear: this band isn't a one-hit-wonder. I haven't heard their self-titled debut album or the instrumental ‘Seaside Rock’, but I've heard 'Falling Out' and it's also excellent. There's a song on it called 'It Beats Me Everytime' that takes a really big place in my musical subconscious and when you'll hear it, you'll know these guys really have talent.

That's why I was really exciting that Peter Bjorn and John released a new album today. Unfortunately, while Pitchfork was totally wrong yesterday, I have to agree with them this time: ‘Living Thing’ is not as good as it should be. They changed their style a lot and it seems that putting the focus on rhythm instead of melody doesn’t seem to fit them very well. At least, when you'll hear ‘Lay It Down’, which is one of my best new songs at the moment, you'll see that they totally put an X on the fact of being the cute whistlers from Sweden. We can only hope that 'Living Thing' is only a transitional album towards a better one in their new style.

Mediafire: Peter Bjorn and John - Lay It Down (320 kbps)

Cet album est excellent. T'as pigé, Harvey?

I don’t know about you, but when a big name releases a new album, I always feel a bit scared to be disappointed. Sometimes I am disappointed, like it was the case with the last U2 or Rolling Stones, sometimes I am relieved because it’s not that bad, like it was the case with the last Bob Dylan or Paul McCartney, but I am rarely amazed. Exceptions include 'In Rainbows' by Radiohead, 'Third' by Portishead and the album PJ Harvey released today.

Pitchfork reviewed it severely, but they’re way off base. As for me, ‘A Woman A Man Walks By’ officially joins the run to the best album of the year with ‘Merriweather Post Pavillion’, ‘It’s Blitz’ and ‘Fever Ray’. The album is written in collaboration with a guy named John Parish. He’s kind of a nobody, but his contribution on this one is very important, in that he wrote the music while she wrote the lyrics. However, it’s probably a lot easier to make good music when you have someone like PJ Harvey as a performer, right?

The song you can download today is not for sensitive ears. It’s a real rocker that comes directly from the ashes of the 90s. For the most part, she's repeating the affirmation ‘I Will Not’. It’s not like she doesn’t want to do something or think something or feel something, it’s just a pure refusal of nothing… or maybe of everything. At the end, the volume of the instruments gets down dramatically, and a beautiful piano gets played over it. That's music how I like it.

Mediafire : PJ Harvey – Pig Will Not (192 kbps)

How to get girls when you're ugly

What is the cool thing to do when you have to play in a crappy venue in Montreal in front of 15 people who are just disappointed that Voxtrot had canceled their presence at the last minute? Simple, you tell bilingual musical jokes like, ‘You know what the guitarist from The Smiths (Johnny Marr) says when he’s bored of something? He says : ‘J’en ai marre’’ That's funny, isn't? The 14 people who were also there probably know about which band I'm talking cause the show was memorable. For the rest of you, I will satisfy your curiosity, I'm talking about The 1990s.

In addition to being a decade, they are a band from Glasgow, and their debut album was amazing. I don't know why they are still unknown here in America cause their songs are really catchy. I probably listened to ‘See You At The Lights’, ‘You Made Me Like It’ and ‘You’re Supposed To Be My Friend' more than a hundred times each. They are often compared to fellow Glaswegians Franz Ferdinand, the principal reason being that the ancient band of the singer Jack McKeown, The Yummy Fur, counted for a period Alex Kapranos and Paul Thomson, respectably singer and drummer of Franz Ferdinand.

And following Franz Ferdinand, who released their third album earlier this year, the 1990s released today the follow-up to Cookies, entitled ‘Kicks’. Second albums are always difficult, but this one, like the title say, kicks... lots of asses. Their sound is still as retro as before and that's for the best in my opinion. They even hired Bernard Butler, ex-guitarist of the really good Britpop band Suede, as producer to make sure they really sound like they were from the 1990s. But, what makes them superior to similar bands who are fond of remaking the musical history? Simple again, they don’t take themselves seriously, and that’s what makes songs like 'The Box' so enjoyable.

Mediafire: The 1990s - The Box (213 kbps) 

'Smoke Mushrooms' in Norwegian

The new Röyksopp is out today. That’s a pretty important release, but... wait a minute, ‘What the hell is Röyksopp?’ Well, they’re from Bergen in Norway who has seen the Bergen Wave around 2000. They have released in the past two critically and commercially approved albums: ‘Melody A.M.’in 2001 and ‘The Understanding’ in 2005. Their best known singles include ‘Eple’, ‘Remind Me’, ‘Only For This Moment’, ‘What Else Is There’ (featuring Karin Dreijer of The Knife) and the first single from ‘Junior’, ‘Happy Up Here’, which is the major blog sensation since the beggining of the year.

All this looks very good, but if you would ask the critic in me what I think about them, I would answer this: ‘Their style is somewhere between Euro-pop and IDM, and if they appeal to both connoisseurs and large public, good for them. They found a pretty good way to achieve this by disguising their electronic experiments in pop music, but what a real pop amateur like me wonders while listening to their first two albums is: where are the songs?’

I guess they evolved, cause there are actual songs on 'Junior' and pretty good ones too. To name a few: ‘The Girl and The Robot’ (featuring Robyn), 'Vision One’ (featuring Anneli Dreckner) and ‘You Don’t Have a Clue’ (featuring Anneli Dreckner again). This album is mostly good, sometimes great, and it’s probably their best effort so far. Waiting for the follow-up of ‘Junior’, ‘Senior’– I’m not joking -, that’s gonna be released later this year, take a listen to the rythmic use of bass guitar and the child-like voice of Lykke Li on the Air pastiche ‘Miss It So Much’.

Mediafire: Röyksopp - Miss It So Much (192 kbps)

The Chick From The Knife Releases Album

Let’s be serious : Sweden is heaven on earth. I once asked a Swedish girl if it was true and she laughed at me. But I know, and we know, and she knows: Sweden IS heaven. They study for free in Upsala, they get rich in Stockholm and they make beautiful music in Gothenburg. Look at this list of artists or bands that come from there : Air France, The Embassy, The Honeydrips, Jens Lekman, The Knife, Love Is All, Sally Shapiro, Studio, The Tough Alliance. That’s quite empressing for a town named Gothenburg. Please check them out cause they're all excellent and their music seems to come directly from where they’re from : heaven...

... except The Knife. I don't know where their music comes from, but it's probably a really strange place. We all know them for their breakthrough single ‘Heartbeats’, but they also made two excellent albums: 'Deep Cuts' in 2003 and 'Silent Shout' in 2006, which are filled by excellent dark electro pop songs, like ‘Pass This On’ - don't start jerking off guys , it's a drag queen - ‘You Take My Breath Away’ and ‘Marble House’. When you listen to their music and see them with their bird masks, you imagine cold and weird descendants of Vikings, but they actually look like two very cool brother and sister. Sadly for us, they took a three year break in 2007, in order pursue their own solo projects: DJ Coolof for Olof and Fever Ray for Karin.

And here's the point of this post: Fever Ray released the physical version - it was available digitally since January - of her self-titled album yesterday. There are already two videos: one for the first single 'If I Had a Heart' and one for 'When I Grow Up'. The album is overall very dark and very ambient, but it's great from track 1 to track 10. I've uploaded for you the song that was playing all day on my iTunes and, as a bonus, a happy makeover of 'When I Grow Up' by fellow Gothenburger Dan Lissvik from Studio that you can listen to cheer up afterwards.

Mediafire: Fever Ray - Dry and Dusty (320 kbps) [removed after request]

Mediafire: Fever Ray - When I Grow Up (D. Lissvik remix) [192 kbps] [removed after request]

Holy Fuck, I'm Happy Up Here When You Do That Stuff

What a nice thing to take a song that was good before and make it good again! Some may say it's stealing, but hey, think practical, you wouldn't listen to the old song anyway. And that's true for anything in life. Cause people were doing stuff before and most of the times, their work could easily be modified to fit our times and be very useful again. Even if it's in our blood, we shouldn't try to do everything by ourselves.

Anyway, Röyksopp were wiser than most of us and they thought that one part of a Parliament song from 1976 called 'Do That Stuff' - pay attention at the 0:36 and 2:44 marks - could be an interesting idea to develop into a song. They released it today as the first single of their new album that is going to be out in exactly a week. It's called 'Happy Up Here', and even if it's less poetic than 'Eple' from Melody A.M., it's still a very good song. 

Although released today, the song had already leaked two months ago and a few remixes have appeared since then, including a very good re-interpretation by Holy Fuck. They transformed the song completely and made another musical gem out of it, without the feel-good aspect. That's the version you will be able to download today on your favorite music blog.

Mediafire: Röyksopp - Happy Up Here (Holy Fuck Re-Interpretation) [192 kbps]

'Let's get married and have a band'

Arcade Fire made people say that Montreal was the new Seattle. But even with all the good music these guys produced, the team of Les Oiseaux Exotiques - meaning me - would argue the best song this town has produce recently is by Wolf Parade and is called 'I'll Believe in Anything' - merci Jess. In top of that, this band's first album was a really good, almost perfect pop album.

But they have changed: Spencer Krug is turning more and more progressive while Dan Broeckner is turning more and more post-punk. As shown by their second album, that's hardly compatible. If I were them, I would just kill Wolf Parade before it gets more difficult. I guess they still have to earn their living with Wolf Parade so they can get as creative as they want with their respective side projects: Sunset Rubdown and Handsome Furs. But they should think about it, if they're interested in becoming Stone Roses-like legends.

Anyway, as for now, the side projects are doing really well, as proved again by the release on Tuesday of the second Handsome Furs album. I had some trouble choosing which song from it to upload. I first thought of a very nice track called '(White City)', but it's a bit short at 1:29, so I then thought of 'Thy Will Be Done', which really could have been produced by Martin Hannett, but then again, I don't know, so I finally set my choice on the track of the album that sounds the more like a Wolf Parade song, i.e. the closer 'Radio Kaliningrad'. Listen to that guitar riff, that's fucking beautiful.

Mediafire: Handsome Furs - Radio Kaliningrad (192 kbps) 

That's D.I.Y.

On Christmas Day, while you were at your grandparents' house, I was in Nicaragua and I had one of the weirdest experience of my life. Some friends had told me about a punk show that was going to happen in the most infamous bar of Leon, so I found a couple of people who were also interested, took the cab to a dangerous part of town, and arrived to a strange place called 'El Tunnel' with the dirtiest toilet in the world, much worst than the one in Trainspotting. 

There were four locals bands, and, even if they were more emos than punks, they totally rocked the place. I don't remember a lot of things, because I was already drunk when I got there, and got even drunker because the beer there is so cheap, but when I saw this video of the Black Lips live in Tijuana, it brought me back some souvenirs of the crazy ambience that was there.

Talking about the Black Lips, these guys released an album late in February and the single 'Short Fuse' was released on Monday. It's a very good song, not as immediate as the very cool 'Veni Vidi Vici' or the very crazy 'O Katrina' from their breakthrough album 'Good Bad Not Evil', but once you get accustomed to their weird style that they call 'Flower Punk', it's very enjoyable. After having India set on fire in January, they are now touring USA until the beginning of May and I hope they're gonna come to Montreal just in time for my birthday.

Mediafire: The Black Lips - Short Fuse (192 kbps)