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Get Weird
Okay, so I’m going to be completely honest. This post may or may not have been inspired by the fact that the band is called Us Baby Bear Bones. They’d have to go out of their way to be distinctly bad for me to NOT post this. That said, they sound similar to Au Revoir Simone but with a little more teeth. Atmospheric and just the right amount of melancholy for Sunday night listening.
Also, they’re called Us Baby Bear Bones. Did I mention that yet?
Not your average buzz band
The buzz band cycle has changed in the last few years with the widespread use of digital distribution. Now a band can pick up a lot of attention long before releasing an album, and it’s always a toss up whether or not a finished product will live up to the promise. With the release of CHVRCHES’ last single, “Gun” I think we can all agree that this band is the real deal. Let’s hope we can get one or two more of these before their debut LP in September.
These keep leaving me at a loss for words, just listen below:
Music comes to our lives in different ways, whether we seek it out or by happenstance, and whether or not it stays and how we view it is determined by even more immeasurable variables still. Sitting on this flight back from New York City to San Francisco I think about the last few days and how I’ll remember this legendary trip, the complete details of which will only be shared by a select few.
I had come back to the city to DJ a wedding of two friends who were getting married on the Brooklyn waterfront with an absolutely gorgeous view of Manhattan. The wedding party and guests were seated to a selection of Mark Mothersbaugh instrumentals from Wes Anderson movies and the bride walked out to “Penelope’s Theme” by Nathan Jones – adorable and cute in all the ways you can’t get from a Chris Brown song.
After a short but moving ceremony, the newlyweds kissed triumphantly as The Kinks’ “Strangers” came on in celebration and they walked back down the aisle as husband and wife. It was, quite honestly, very touching and perfect for the occasion. But what really hit me was shortly afterwards, as the sun came down behind the massive city skyscrapers and the guests milled about waiting for dinner, I threw on “Sweet Disposition” by Temper Trap and in that moment something clicked in a way I hadn’t felt before about an already pretty epic song.
It’s an anti-thesis to everything that a wedding symbolizes (eternity, forever, commitment), but instead a celebration of just that one sweet moment. That brief period in time where things come together and it’s just… perfect. “Sweet Disposition” is a powerful song without any sort of context but that one moment, on that one dark evening in Brooklyn under the promising lights of Manhattan it entered into the realm of one of the Great Ones.
A dream, a laugh, a kiss, a cry, our rights, our wrongs.. a moment of love
Oh, you….
Well folks, I don’t want to get too long winded on this one. There are few things more exciting than when one of your favorite artists remixes another, scaled infinitely when it turns out absolutely perfect. Chrvches remixing MS MR, to me, falls under that categorization. And if either artist is one you haven’t heard yet, this is surely your vehicle to doing so.
HOT DAMN THIS REMIX IS AMAZING. Just had to get that out of my system.
Purity Ring live at The Independent 2013- San Francisco, CA
You know who Purity Ring is. We don’t have to do that whole song and dance. Their debut album Shrines was one of our favorite albums of 2013 and just a few months ago they released this surprisingly (well, not so surprisingly) INCREDIBLE cover of Soulja Boy’s “Grammy.” Typically when the whole indie-band-covers-rapper thing goes down it’s very tongue in cheek, but in this case we have a laughably ironic track turned into something vulnerable and pretty. The cover has received so much traction that it makes regular appearances at live shows and fits in seamlessly with their repertoire.
