The Radio Dept. :: "The One"

The Radio Dept. make being a chronically under-appreciated pop band look good. In just under two weeks time, the band will release a compilation that documents exactly this history of under-appreciation, Passive Aggressive: Singles 2002-2010. Their sound documents easily as the kind of sunny, wistful pop that makes summer seem both beautiful and terrible. On latest leak, and last track of the double album comp, "The One" moves with languid pace against a back drop of a dub snare and glittering synths, or, exactly the thing to help pay homage to a band that not enough people paid attention to the first time around. Welcome to the unremembered future.

Listen :: The Radio Dept. - "The One"

La Sera :: "Devils Hearts Grow Gold"

There is a nursery rhyme in "Devils Hearts Grow Gold," the latest mp3 released from Katy Goodman's breezy and brilliant solo project, La Sera. It could certainly be the easy rhymes or the sing-song melody, or the pedantic and prescriptive folk advice. Or maybe it is the sub-three minute attention span, short enough to easily remember, and repetitive enough to spend the afternoon chanting while playing foursquare in the driveway. Intentionally shabby, put together with one of those seminal shrugs of excellence, the guitar hook eerily evokes a different take on the Pixies' "Where Is My Mind?" If this is how the world burns, we won't be holding hands with Helena Bonham Carter on the 30th floor - we'll be out back playing simple games and singing this song.

Listen :: La Sera - "Devils Hearts Grow Gold"

Smith Westerns :: "All Die Young"

The Smith Westerns charm with precociousness if nothing else. Even six months ago, the band toured the indie rock festival circuit while cracking jokes about not being old enough to drink. It was big stages but no wristbands for the teenagers from Chicago. But adolescence rounds into something else on their second LP, Dye It Blonde, a fantastic, Bowie-citing pop thesis, due out in little more than a week. Even a cursory listen proves that these hair-in-their-face sheepish kids are ready to be more than pretty good for their age. On "All Die Young," the swimming and summer pop of 1978 does a lazy box step at the last dance of the year. The obvious fatalism is the stuff of montage, a blurry water color of youth mixed with how we want to remember things, rather than how they actually happened. Kind of like the imagination of being a teenager out on tour, living in wayfarers on the set of some low budget Almost Famous.

Smith Westerns - "All Die Young" by forcefieldpr

So Many Wizards :: "Nico"

The bedroom/laptop pop of So Many Wizards' single "Nico" rides a metronomic riff into the middle of a Dramamine haze, swelling and reeling in waves. The centering influence is the insistence of the snare and a looping keyboard riff that moves with the devilish malaise of the most laissez-faire attitudes. Of course, this Los Angeles band has their eyebrow raised fully at the emotional homicide to which they allude, titling their record Love Songs For When You Leave Me. On, "Nico", the lyrics are nearly indecipherable but the message still comes through with total clarity: Break it off and see if you can raise my pulse above this steady, unrelenting beat.

Listen :: So Many Wizards - "Nico"

Kyla La Grange :: "Walk Through Walls"

Kate Bush introduced herself to so many with the simple and esoteric greeting, "Heathcliff? It's me Cathy." With no Bronte references for the UK's Kyla La Grange, the introduction will be a stunning and soaring first single, "Walk Through Walls." Featuring pounding drums of the kind of tribal menace that absolutely made Florence Welch, and a withering vocal in the spirit of Bush and PJ Harvey, La Grange has her own single by the hair with no interest in letting go. For the chorus, she rides her voice to the top of arrangement with a destructive and life-affirming lyric, "Get up, get up, get up/my heart is heavy." In the spirit of La Grange's sonic cousins The Jezabels, this is wide open, go-for-broke pop. Soon enough, Kyla La Grange won't need to introduce herself to anyone; everyone will already know her.

Kyla La Grange - Walk Through Walls by Stayloose

Work Drugs :: "Third Wave"

Perhaps easily written off as chill-wave - and in this respect we can be somewhat relieved that 2010 and discussions of this nature are largely over because, in this case, it would be a mistake - Philadelphia's Work Drugs have a little cold medicine single, "Third Wave." Bouncing along on the back of a surprisingly urgent back beat, the song glows like a Washed Out joint, but at every moment of nodding off, of drifting through the curve and over the jersey barrier between us and oblivion, the snare snaps us back awake and away. This is surely not a mistake.

32ft In Review :: The Top 10 Posts of 2010

2010 was 32ft/second's most productive year writing and, chicken or egg, the music was oustanding to match. There were more than 43,000 of you who spent time with us this year. A special thanks to those few thousand of you who make this little corner of the Internet a daily stop in your reading. In a sea of RSS feeds and things we follow and like and try to keep up with, it is flattering and humbling that you let us into your life. Thank you to all the bands who sent in their music and thanks to all the publicists for setting things up and dealing with too many emails. Thanks too to the 32ft/second family and friends to whom this project continually references and relies on, which is ultimately, the fabric that holds us up. With regard and gratitude, your Top 10 Posts of 2010 based on web traffic:

1. Arcade Fire - The Suburbs LP review

2. Loney, Dear - "Ignorant Boy, Beautiful Girl"

3. Wolf Gang - "Back To Back"

4. First Rate People - "Girls' Night"

5. Two Door Cinema Club - "Costume Party"

6. Washed Out - "You And I" [ft. Carolina Polacheck]

7. The National - "I'm Afraid Of Everyone"

8. Generationals - "Trust"

9. Top 50 of 2009 [10-6]

10. Wolf Gang - "Pieces Of You"


End of Year Stats 2010:

Unique Visitors: 43,484

Total Pageviews: 84,692