Serendipitous Eating

Dance For Hours - Sholi

San Francisco is becoming an interesting place for me. Not only is the music scene really picking up with up-and-coming bands like Little Teeth and Tempo No Tempo, but the dominant sound is becoming experimental, hard-edged, psych-rock, and that is right up my alley lately. I’ve been to a lot of Marnie Stern as well, especially her newest album. Sometimes you want your music to confront and confuse. Not that Sholi really does that at all, but the complexity and angularity of the music satisfies in unexpected ways.

Pink - Shining TV Screen

Shining TV Screen has been around for a few years now, but the quintet is breaking new ground in 2009 and definitely deserve keeping an eye on. They’ve got a new EP out called Emergency and look to be pretty active in the Philadelphia area in the coming months, like supporting Youth Group at the M Room on April 1st. Shining TV Screen is five guys from St. Joseph’s University, currently sans bassist (and good buddy of mine) Adam Murabito, who is in London for the semester - but their productivity and musical progress is all the more impressive for the fact that they’ve been working around their college careers for their entire existence. It’s a good thing they can be more active (and I’m sure they will be) in the summer months, though, because their psych-indie, sometimes jam-oriented sound is great summer music. The track I’m highlighting today is probably my favorite that they’ve released yet - STVS is at their most arresting when firing on all cylinders, with the guitars playing off each other, the drum and bass in a lockstep reminiscent of the Pixies, and the singer’s Jim James-esque range and inventiveness in full force. Check out their Myspace at the link above, in person at the tour date I mentioned, or you can hit them up on Twitter and give Adam something to do.

Vengeance Is Sleeping - Neko Case

By the time I got to this track on Neko’s newest album, Middle Cyclone, I was sitting up and marvelling at the beauty of the songwriting. Case has a gorgeous, haunting voice, but too often in her previous solo album, she used it as a crutch,  and the songs fell flat. In Middle Cyclone it is simply a beautiful theme that connects the songs together. They have beautiful instrumentation in their own right and an interesting richness. And as far as this song goes,  any regular reader will know I’m a sucker for fingerpicked guitar. If Case and Robin Pecknold did a duet together my head would explode.

Atlantic City (Bruce Springsteen cover) - The Hold Steady

War Child is a network of aid organizations which seeks to help children affected by war in the world through a holistic approach, bringing aid to conflict zones and refugee camps, helping children in war-torn areas to create better generations than the ones who started the wars that they’re being affected by. It’s an inspired concept and a great organization and they need your help. They’ve put together a compilation CD of terrific indie artists doing covers of classic songs by the greats that they admire. I would recommend this CD even if it wasn’t for a good cause, but now you have no excuse. Hot Chip covers Joy Division, TV On The Radio covers David Bowie, Beck covers Bob Dylan. And then there’s the track above, which makes the entire album worth it by itself. I really have to stress: this album fucking rocks.

Click the album below for more info:

Lady On The Water - Blitzen Trapper

I think most people are situational music listeners. Everyone wants to hear certain music at certain times. When the weather is nice and it’s early in the morning, I want to listen to some laid-back, easygoing folk music. It somehow makes me feel like I can reside within the rhthyms of the day, not work against them. Blitzen Trapper is a restless band that never sticks to a certain sound, but they can write a great quiet folk song when they want to, and this is one of my favorites.