Loney Dear :: "Loney Blues"

Loney Dear mastermind Emil Svanagen seems to get a lot of mileage out of his project's name almost sounding like the word "lonely". This was particularly problematic in 2006 when the band's first LP broke into the hearts and minds of listeners with an ear for well-crafted bedroom pop, occasionally mistaking his name in confluence with his sound as "Lonely Dear". On latest promotional single, "Loney Blues", Svanagen leaves us with a self-referential signifier that does little more or less than its central lyric, "It gets to your head, it gets to your heart." In short, Loney Dear is back where he is most comfortable: making lonely, orchestral creations, this favoring slow-drive pop. The miracle isn't that he recovers from these lowest of lows, but rather that he never recovers from them. The ability to get and stay sad makes his work not of catharsis but of a more elemental depression. This darkness is not the moment before the clouds clear and the rain stops. This, in some sense, is the most terrible of fictions, the real opiate of modern life. It is, perhaps, just darkness, and darkness is enough.

Listen :: Loney Dear - "Loney Blues"

Kishi Bashi :: "It All Began With A Burst"

For a second the glittering electronics offer a vivid flashback to Animal Collective's "My Girls". It's a dream, Kishi Bashi stuttering a bit to turn over the engine on the bizarre, colliding pop arrangement of stunning single, "It All Began With A Burst". But what begins with fits and starts - at first, synth loops and hand claps, vocal yelps and melody all tuning against each other like a Bushwick orchestra (editorial note: Kishi Bashi are not from Bushwick) - finds a down-beat, pulling all these disparate elements into synchronization, something approaching linear, ordered time. Of course, like any good slice of magic realism it is only engages formal structures as a method of bending and exploding them, holding together just long enough for the viewer to notice when things falls apart. The title lyric - noticeably also the chorus, such as there is one - serves as the marching orders, an arrangement percolating and yelping as it tears its own periphery and the listener can't help clap in time.

Listen :: Kishi Bashi - "It All Began With A Burst"

Harriet :: "I Slept With All Your Mothers"

It's important to build part of your first single around a falsehood, an adolescent insult. Harriet and slamming first single, "I Slept With All Your Mothers" is neither as graphic nor as illicit as the title and central lyric let on. The song pitches either a tragic brand of anti-heroism ("I'm sorry I let the gas run out") or the weirdest love song in history ("I slept with all your mothers/ I slept in bed with you") or both. Presupposing the notion of universal maternal sexualization is lyrical, and it certainly is, the listener assumes a sort of complicity, a voyeurism, on these shared asides between broken lovers. Even the hollow barbs about financial considerations, "I love money", "I want your money, you know I do," ring as empty and bitterly sarcastic as the title lyric, something thrown backwards with retributive flair, these the last lashes of a terrible collision. But, "I Slept With All Your Mothers" has a secret even more precious than these obvious embellishments. The final 30 seconds let the pianos pound, the guitars rip and the strings surge, all of us screaming now, "I gave myself to you." This part feels good and true and everything else.

Harriet "I Slept With All Your Mothers" by HarrietMusic

Capybara :: "Neighbor Crimes"

A suburban ethos proves appropriate for Capybara's "Neighbor Crimes", a certain intimacy mixed with a critical distance. Sounding like a UB40 demo taken out to the garage and then shot up in the sky, ripping guitars erupt over a lullaby, upstroke melody. The song focuses on three big guitar chords, alternately setting them against a glittering arrangement of reverbated pop and pulling them out on their own, something dragged outside to explode alone in the backyard. Of course, the most memorable lyric isn't particularly domestic, the austere and pastoral, "Thinking, going, Mexico", both grammatically incorrect and also the perfect foil for those same guitars. Featuring some of the best pop hooks of 2012, "Neighbor Crimes" rings as idyllic, troubled and completely elevating, a family garage where the electric guitars sound like lions, the pianos ride the off-beat, and the next destination is undeniably elsewhere.

Listen :: Capybara - "Neighbor Crimes"
Listen :: Capybara - "Late Night Bikes"

Oberhofer :: "HEART"

There are a few Bradley Oberhofers on the cusp of the release of his debut full length album. There was the college student and label intern, so absurdly precocious that his demo songs demanded attention. The cuts were organized cacophony, colliding time signatures and arrangement shifts all thrown against Oberhofer's trademark, tweaking caterwaul. He had just moved from Tacoma, Washington and most of his song lyrics involved either staying ("Haus") or going ("I Could Go"). Then there was the Oberhofer I saw at Bowery Ballroom, shrieking with such intensity that the upstairs bar shook and the British girls to my left wrinkled their noses and said, "What the fuck is that?" This was not a compliment. The frenzy - frenetic and urgent - didn't always deliver. Then there is the Oberhofer of lead single, "HEART", the promotional track from his upcoming Glassnote debut. It is more plaintive, the mercy of a furious style worn smooth with time and a terrible relationship. The lyrics handle the latter in negative space, the architecture of the arrangement mirroring this impulse, rising and dwarfing the lonely narrator. The vocals, piano, and strings collapse into each other and Oberhofer finds himself all these people at once. A murderous young talent, unstoppable in so many ways, anxious and tweaking in so many others, sailing to the top of his ability, collecting all of his selves in one triumphant, terrible, moment.

HEART - Oberhofer by Glassnotemusic

Jagwar Ma :: "Come Save Me"

Calls for help have never sounded so good or so insincere. Australia's Jagwar Ma recently released "Come Save Me", an effervescent and crushing treatise on unrequited love, yet managing to never sound totally bent or broken. If the heartbreak remains on-going, "Come Save Me" sounds more like an invitation than a document of surrender. The sound is thrown back in that way that made Cults so instantly appealing, and the hooks work like velcro on lines like, "Oh, it's not what you wanted" and the title lyric. The arrangement rises and swirls, but never manages to sound solipsistic, one of those lost love stories where the protagonist isn't insufferable. It makes Jagwar Ma an artist to watch in the coming months, packing more melody than can suitably fit in most pop songs with no masochist after-taste.

Come Save Me by Jagwar Ma

Cillie Barnes :: "Indian Hill" and "Hey Hi"

Paying only cursory attention to the Los Angeles music scene has its benefits. The murky resplendence (see what happened there) of Cillie Barnes came to our attention due to her being sandwiched between LESANDS and PAPA, two bands we like a lot who don't care much for lower-case letters, on a bill at the Satellite in Silverlake next Saturday. Barnes is a face that faux-vintage photographs were made to take. Her two promotional songs should suitably make A&Rs sit up in their seats and check their Internet connections. "Indian Hill" is a 4/4 slow-rock track with a clear ode to The Pretenders, letting Barnes' tweaking, raspy vocals come through the wires. "Hey Hi" is cut from a different swath, more built for the soundtrack of a romantic comedy with some dark edges. The lazy piano progression and Barnes' vocals are almost sweet enough to rot teeth, or at least stick to the roof of your mouth, and maybe this doesn't work if she isn't so pretty, but something saves "Hey Hi" from the commercial pop dust bin. It could be "Indian Hill", so listen in order, and then someone sign this girl to make the record in the style of Holly Miranda, something brittle and beautiful for the rainy days in October.

Indian Hill by cilliebarnes

Hey Hi by cilliebarnes