Panda Bear- Tomboy (2011)

http://www.mediafire.com/?91eg2vds6mqxx3d

I'd like to suggest that you know you have made it as a one man band when you are able to have an awful screen printed t shirt as your cover art, and hundreds of thousands of wide-eyed hipsters will buy your cd.

Congratulations, Noah.

Michael Hurley + Ida: Ida Con Snock (2009)

http://www.mediafire.com/?zzzgzzzezw5

Call me a mindreader, because i know what you're thinking: "Based on this weak drawing of birds singing on telephone poles, this cd is gonna suck." I would tend to agree with you, if the words "Ida" and "Snock" didn't also appear in the title.

Snock, aka Michael Hurley, has been making weird folk records since the mid 1960s. His first record came out on Folkways, and his last came out on Devandra Barnhart's label, Gnomonsong. Tell me that's not street cred.

But mostly, this cd is my favorite Hurley record since the amazing "Have Moicy!" collaboration extraordinaire of 1974. I have at least 6 cds by Hurley, and i'll be honest-- they're pretty interchangeable. Each cd basically sounds like a continuation of the one before it. Or more bluntly, they all sound the same. Which isn't necessarily bad...

But, from the first bar in Ida Con Snock, you can hear the difference. Ida brings an incredible warmth and focus to Hurley's songs, grounding them and supporting them with an incredible musicianship that his other cds don't have. You've never heard drone, sweet harmonies, and thoughtful arrangements on a Hurley cd before. 

If you haven't heard Michael Hurley before, you might not be startled in the same way that I was. It might just sound like a nice, understated folk record. And that's okay, too. But keep in mind that this dude is around 68. At this point, Ida Con Snock sounds better than anything that Neil Young or Bob Dylan puts out (contemporaries of Hurley who proudly live up to the title "Washed Up").

For fans of early Low, Emmylou Harris, Crazy Horse, etc

Luke Temple- Snowbeast

http://www.mediafire.com/?k0ls0vv8izwrhkc

You know you have a good friend when they email you to write, "Hey, this cd makes me think of you. I think you'd like it."

Luckily for me, when someone does that, they're often right. Luke Temple was recommended to me by a good friend and I ended up really being drawn by it. I really got hooked on it when i was riding my bike downtown on the way to see Camera Obscura play live. This is an amazing "Hot-summer-night-on-a-bike" cd-- lots of swirls, loops, ambiance, textures, and great vocals. The songs are simple and catchy, and they fade and wash into each other, so that the whole of the album is greater than the parts of it.

Snowbeast (nickname for yeti) made me think about songwriting and recording differently. Luke Temple sings in this great haunting register, and layers his vocals at parts. There is a strange absence of low end stuff-- hardly any bass, etc. But it's really the high, lonesome vocals that do it for me. Plus the gurgling synth textures and "less is more" approach. The tracks are eerie, pretty, and haunting, which is like icing on the cake.

Give it a chance, listen to it a couple of times, and I bet it'll grow on you.

By the way, this image was taken from the Daytrotter Sessions site (which you should look into, if you haven't). Luke Temple with an armful of Yeti.  Wacky.