Unpiano | Music Blog

//photo by canderson

Michigan’s favorite party punks Tyvek were part of the latest Sub Pop singles series. Their live show is always fun, but their recorded output has been a little hit or miss. This single is a big, solid step up, here’s the smoking a-side. Caught them as a three-piece at Emo’s for one of their SXSW sets, not the best set up for a party band but they were still pretty fun.

Tyvek – Duck Blinds

San Francisco’s Ty Segall has been kicking around California in surfy, garage punk outfits like Party Fowl, Epsilons and the awesome Traditional Fools for some time. Recently he pulled together a couple of impressive singles and a ripper of an album for his one-man band solo project. Dirty, filthy blown out cave-stomp rave ups, boozy-bluesy vocals and a tip of the hat to the Coachwhips.

Ty Segall – Oh Mary
Ty Segall – Where We Go
Ty Segall – Skin
Ty Segall – Booksmarts

//photo by tod seelie

I feel like I have been posting a lot of Matt and Kim lately, but who can help it? Their new album which came out last week has so many great songs on it that I had to restrain myself from leaking the whole thing when I got it a while back. They are coming through San Francisco next week and I’m really excited to hear some of these new songs in person. I talked a bit about how their sound is changing and all during the last post so I’ll skip it this time, but hearing these new songs is akin to someone taking your favorite ice cream sundae and putting jimmies (or “sprinkles” if you’re from the west coast) on it.. if you like toppings I guess.

Ps.. On a totally unrelated note, I found out that Kim’s brother is DJ Venom who used to play records at The Living Room in Providence (among other places). That shit blew my mind.. I guess it only means anything to a handful of people, but still!

Matt and Kim – I wanna
Matt and Kim – Cinders
Matt and Kim – Turn This Boat Around

Bonus:
Matt and Kim – Daylight (video)

Last night around 9pm I decided that I needed to get out of the house for a bit and got on my bike for a ride to the beach. It was really cold outside and really dark but it felt sort of good in an exhilarating sort of way. After biking for a while, the clouds cleared and I used the moon to guide me as I rode through the part of the park with no streetlights. When I reached the beach, I stood watching the waves break for a while and then decided to get a cup of coffee to warm me up. As I sat slowly drinking the coffee and smoking a cigarette, I got a phone call that ended in an invitation to watch a movie in a warm bed. On the way back I pedaled slowly, smiling, knowing for sure that life only gets better and better..

The new Animal Collective album is real good and it sounds like everything I just wrote about. In fact, I listened to this album on repeat the whole time I was biking around in the cold. Whooping or hollering drenched in reverb and delay make everything feel wamer.

Animal Collective – My Girls
Animal Collective – Bluish

Bonus:
Animal Collective – My Girls (video)

EDIT: I got a couple of emails asking me to take down the Animal Collective songs and they were pretty nice about it so disabled the links. If you still want them, feel free to email me and I can send them to you, otherwise I would check out Hype Machine for other blogs to find them on.

//photo by jason fischer

Hey guess who’s on tour right now? Guess who also put out one of the best records of 2008 (that’s an empirical fact not up for discussion btw)? San Francisco’s Thee Ohsees that’s who. From little home-taped solo project of SF enigma John Dwyer (of the Coachwhips, Pink & Brown, Zeigenbock Kopf, Swords And Sandles, etc.) to full blown rock band of the year, The Masters Bedroom Is Worth Spending A Night In is a killer fucking record and “Block Of Ice” shreds (neither of these pure, empirical facts are up for discussion either). Look them up on MySpace for tour dates with the Sic Alps.

Thee Ohsees – Block Of Ice
Thee Ohsees – Ghost In The Trees

Bonus:
Thee Ohsees – Block Of Ice (live @ Cake Shop, NYC)

What can you say about Lindsey Buckingham? No, really.. what can you say? ..Because I have no idea. I think I’m starting to use this blog as a way to exercise all the songs that are stuck in my head. A friend sent this video to me a couple months ago and I still fucking hum it on a weekly basis. What else can I do but put it out into the internet in the hopes of putting it to rest. I hope you don’t mind..

Lindsey Buckingham – Holiday Road
Lindsey Buckingham – Holiday Road (video)

Really excited about the new Matt & Kim record Grand that should be coming out soon. They released a song from the new album last week and it’s been on repeat for the last couple of days. If this song is any precursor, you can expect a well aged second album. Kind of like that girl you know who was fucking crazy when she was 22 but you just ran into her 10 years later. She’s all grown up and mellow now, but sill has that spark in her eye that says she’ll smash bottles and jump fences. Yeah, it’s like that.

Matt & Kim – Good Old Fashion Nightmare

My friend Knucklehead sent me these tracks he has been making a while back and I slept on it because I’m getting old and slow. It goes really well with that Girl Talk post I did a week or so ago and I like it more and more with every listen. Look, the thing is I love house music. I may not talk about it all that much but it’s true none the less. Manic vocals, samples from the 90′s, all that good stuff is contained in these tracks and it made me even happier when he told me how they were made. Fuck a fancy sequencer is all I have to say.

Knucklehead – Can You Dig The Sun
Knucklehead – Jazz Disc (The Happy Organ)
Knucklehead – Fatty Disco

Damn I need to get these posts out quicker before they become old news. If you haven’t heard it by now, the new Girl Talk album is pure fire. Just like always you either hate him or love him, but by this point you should have already made up your mind. It’s still crazy to me that in 2008, Greg Gillis can make mash-ups sound fresh and listenable. Plus I just discovered that it’s the best biking music for those nights when the hills are looking bigger and bigger. True, it does make me think of that movie Bring It On sometimes, and when I’m biking up those big hills I can’t help but draw the comparison to being at an aerobics class. However, if you have ever seen one of his live shows you’d know that sometimes to get to the party you need to get a little cheesy first. Also, all through the last album I wished that I could have a track listing to consult with. Luckily, you can find the complete track listing for the new album on the Wikipedia page. I tired to figure out what tracks to post, but it was pretty hard. I think you should just go to the Feed The Animals page (on the Illegal Art website) and download the whole album for free instead.

Girl Talk – Play Your Part (pt. 1)
Girl Talk – Hands In The Air
Girl Talk – Like This
Girl Talk – What It’s All About
Girl Talk – Set It Off

They just singed to Columbia recently or rather their record, Oracular Spectacular, was just released on Columbia after having a super good indie EP out for a while. MGMT started out as a college band and now seems to be doing pretty good for themselves living in New York and whatnot. Besides all that career stuff though, the record is really, really fun. Like good songs, that cheer you up and maybe even make you want to dance? Then the other half is psych and throwback stuff that makes Rolling Stone compare them to.. The Rolling Stones. Seriously though, I know I mentioned this before, but my vocabulary is the worst right now “really, really fun” and “Like good songs”!?! I’m the worst. If anyone has good words they want to contribute, feel free to chime in. Actually this blog was supposed to just be songs posted up when I first started, but I like trying to be witty and now I’ve got myself in a quite a bind. Oh well.. If MGMT comes to your town, go see them and have some fun.

MGMT – Electric Feel
MGMT – Weekend Wars
MGMT – Kids (<-- Shout out to our little friend Juniper!)
MGMT - Of Moons, Birds & Monsters
MGMT - The Handshake

Bonus:
Electric Feel interactive music video