Gabriel & the Hounds :: "The World Unfolds"

Without delving too deeply into the magically real, Gabriel & the Hounds drive down the back of some serious deja-vu on single "The World Unfolds". The chorus is so familiar you would swear you had heard it before, like a stranger who happens to look a lot like someone you dated as a teenager. The central lyric recalls some of the best 1990s college rock, like an old Lemonheads A-side that replaced the acoustic rhythm guitars with electric ones, added some strings and a chorus good enough to lead with. The title lyric fronts with an eminently two-decades-old invocation, an extended and perfectly shabby, "Hey". You would swear you had this conversation before, some younger version of yourself but this same series of questions, "When am I gonna feel like a super one? When am I gonna start having fun? ... And when am I gonna be with you?" The old, familiar struggles recast as nostalgic ones, allowing the listener to embrace how much they have changed or, perhaps, how little. So, "when will the world unfold for me?" Re-read the title; something remembered, it already has.

Listen :: Gabriel & the Hounds - "The World Unfolds"

Father John Misty :: "Hollywood Forever Cemetery Sings"

Father John Misty's "Hollywood Forever Cemetery Sings" has the tempo of a funeral march. The drums pound relentlessly, the crash of a cymbal on every beat. Lyrics like, "someone's gotta help me dig" and "we should let the dead guy sleep" add an extra air of morbidity that mixes well with the song's other motif, the Lord's name taken firmly in vain before a comma. Singer Josh Tillman rides all over the word, "Jesus", a bit of tonal modulation that is as satisfying as it is instantly memorable. The religious imagery here is only useful for admonishment, "Jesus Christ, girl", not salvation; the burial part is purely secular, the grave a physical accomplishment of heavy lifting.

Listen :: Father John Misty - "Hollywood Forever Cemetery Sings"

Lux :: "Coroner's Office"

Seattle's Lux set thick guitars against a bouncy little melody on "Coroner's Office" from their coming LP, We Are Not The Same. The influences aren't hard to spot, a mixture of Pavement's shabby guitar pop, the playfulness of a They Might Be Giants refrain, and the cloud-clearing halcyon of a Magnetic Fields chorus. The band offers little in the way of explanation, a sparse website and a title lyric that implies about as much fatalism as it does a play on the old corporate ladder step up to a "corner office". Like burying your guitars under a mile of fuzz, they all imply a little bit of death.

Listen :: Lux - "Coroner's Office"

NO :: "In Another Life"

The next big band to come out of Los Angeles could easily be NO. Cutting somewhere between the grandiosity of group vocals and the baritone gravel of a lead singer that eerily evokes Berninger's National, the band crafts the same kind of burnished melodies end up as well-worn, memorized hooks. "In Another Life", one of six excellent songs on the band's debut EP, builds its house out of a crystalline guitar and one of those authoritarian bass lines that has three notes and each one hits you in the chest. The second movement opens wide with chanting vocals and horns - a flashback to the last 30 seconds of "Fake Empire" - and a finishing kick that turns the title lyric into a statement of purpose and profound failure. The aesthetics revive the energy of the National in 2005 with some of the critical refinements and depth that both the original and its imitators (here think: Pela come We Are Augustines) added in the intervening years. NO plays SXSW this week and returns to LA for a free Monday show at the Echo. They are simply the most promising independent rock band this writer has heard in at least a calendar year, poised to do some absolute damage in the coming one.

Jmo :: "Don't Let It Get Away"

Something intentionally borrowed and lifted, but unalterably satisfying, Jmo's latest single, "Don't Let It Get Away" attributes to Phoenix, Richman, and the Strokes. The stuttering rhythms of the drums and guitars mix with a fuzzy, distant vocal that certainly recalls Casablancas circa 2000. As a final act, Jmo, the recording avatar of Brooklynite Jeremy Coleman of Murder Mystery fame, "Don't Let It Get Away" runs to high fret board conclusion, the title lyric cast in repeat as, of course, the song shuffles playfully to its conclusion. While Coleman urges recapture, he is in the process of retreat. Perhaps, this is an appropriate coda for a song with such an excellent list of footnotes, a desire to seize and hold juxtaposed with creation of new, green real estate. Either way, "Don't Let It Get Away" is as fun a rock song to emerge from a denizen of New York since Darwin Deez suggested similar source material on "Radar Detector". In the spirit of possession, Jmo has "Don't Let It Get Away" and its Cars-influenced b-side, "The Strangest Places People's Minds Go" for free download below.

Ghost of Chance :: "I Feel Fine"

With a dose of Murmur-era R.E.M., Ghost of Chance release a single aimed straight at the heart of college radio from 20 years ago. "I Feel Fine" represents a bit of scratchy and jangly pop from the four-piece until the disparate parts break away, the arrangement shuffles into lock step and the chorus recalls the exact moment that Michael Stipe wrote "Catapult". It feels inexorable, this progress toward a refrain. The drums seem to grant themselves greater agency, running away under Jayson Munro's tweaking and insistent vocal. This is where someone says something about "being rooted in the past" while someone else says, "but grounded in contemporary indie rock mores". We won't say either, but like most good American bands, R.E.M. included, derivative or not, Ghost of Chance manage to eliminate any useful descriptions of time.

Listen :: Ghost of Chance - "I Feel Fine"

Swim Good :: "Totally A Mess Wild"

There is something charming about the grammatical incorrectness of Swim Good's single, "Totally A Mess Wild". Like it all spilled at once, an overflow of words divorced from construction, the title only forecasts the bright melody that barely fits in the context of the arrangement. In the first half, Jon Lawless and Anna Horvath of First Rate People fame, take one of the first hooks up a crystal staircase into series of immensely satisfying falsetto breaks. Horvath is again a revelation, providing the upper tier of the duet, a slice of crystalline purity soaring over the moving parts below her. This says nothing of the many other members of Swim Good who craft a brilliant cut of polyglot, genre-bended pop. The first hook is the repeating lyric, "nameless, nameless" and the second, the second half, is the eponymous title lyric, predictably bursting out the top of the room. The closest analog is some early Loney Dear work, this being just as delicate and more fun, but suffice it to say, no one else is making pop that sounds like this, a spilling overflow of so many melodies forged into one.