International music, Reviews

Review: Greg Pope – Blue Ocean Sky

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Greg Pope: Blue Ocean Sky (Octoberville Records, 2010)

Greg Pope is a highly respected tunesmith in the power pop community and all of his past releases have gotten great reviews in several pop-orientated websites and blogs. I had managed to miss his records until he made his new album Blue Ocean Sky available for free download for a short period of time. Now I’m thinking of buying his earlier material and can only feel ashamed that it took so long for me to give him a chance to win my heart over, because it proved to be a rather easy task for Greg Pope.

Blue Ocean Sky contains high quality pop music. A dose of 70’s rockin’ power pop (Badfinger!), a hint of 80s jangly pop music and a whole lot of almost radio-friendly modern power pop. Greg has the ability to write gentle killer melodies and the whole thing sounds warm and wonderful. There’s at least 5-6 really fantastic pop songs like You Don’t Really Mean A Word, I Tried To Like You and I Don’t Want The Same Things on the album and the rest of it is also thoroughly enjoyable.

Listen to I Tried To Like You:
[audio:http://onechord.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/05-i-tried-to-like-you.mp3]

Greg Pope Website

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International music, Reviews

Review: Agony Aunts – Greater Miranda

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Agony Aunts: Greater Miranda (Mystery Lawn, 2010)

I found Agony Aunts from David Bash’s gigantic end of the year list and it was certainly a mighty good find. Agony Aunts is a new pop group from Bay Area, but this isn’t the first time these people are making awesome pop music. Members of the band have previously played in such fine pop outfits as The Corner Laughers, Preoccupied Pipers, The Orange Peels etc.

Agony Aunts debut Greater Miranda is a delightful pop album. Psych pop meets California pop in perfect manner. Beautifully arranged, 60’s influenced pop songs and a whole lot of great singing. I totally adore the male-female harmonies. I just love that male voice. KC Bowman sure can sing, but I suppose it’s easy if you have a voice that is lovelier than the baby panda sneezes video on youtube. I bet lines like “We’re shaken and shocked / Finding your broken and bleeding and bloated remains / I’m waiting to talk, waiting for Amity Police to be cordoning the scene” have never sounded more beautiful. Night Circling Sharks, Reap The Plains Down and Linus’s Fist Of Death is a perfect song trio in the middle of the album. The Linus in the song title probably doesn’t have anything to do with Linus Of Hollywood, but this album actually reminds me of those early Linus Of Hollywood albums here and there. The same California pop influences I suppose. Greater Miranda is a great pop album.

Listen to Night Circling Sharks
[audio:http://onechord.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/agony-aunts-greater-miranda-04-night-circling-sharks.mp3]

Greater Miranda at Bandcamp
Agony Aunts at Facebook

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International music, Video of the Day

Video of the Day #34: Glossary & Kelly Kneiser

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A couple for the weekend, because I’m probably too busy to do any updates before next week (Flavour of the Month, Football quiz, Super Bowl etc).

I’ve been meaning to post this first one a couple of times, but I think I have forgotten to do so. Perhaps now it’s the perfect time to add this wonderful rock song to the video of the day section, because it’s starting to look like I only listen to beautiful folk songs here at the onechord.net headquarters. Save Your Money For The Weekend is an outtake from Glossary’s latest album Feral Fire that came out last summer I think. Tennessee-based Glossary is a band that is criminally unknown band in this household. I’ve enjoyed everything I’ve heard so far and I love pretty much all the bands they are associated with (like Lucero and Drive-By Truckers), but I still haven’t really paid enough attention to them. Maybe I should not save the money for the weekend and instead save it for Glossary’s back catalogue. The song and video are both utterly wonderful.

Glossary – Save Your Money for the Weekend from Stewart Copeland on Vimeo.

Kelly Kneiser is a member of Glossary and you can download her solo EP for free from the Glossary website. Happiness Looks Good On You is the opening track and after listening to it, you probably want to go and download her EP.

Kelly Kneiser “Happiness Looks Good On You” from Joey Kneiser on Vimeo.

Glossary Website

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International music, Video of the Day

Video of the Day #33: Binoculers

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After blogging about the new Finnish live music video blog Off The Record, I got an email that had a link to Musikmob that is a similar kind of blog from Leipzig, Germany. I really enjoyed many of their videos, but I’m not going to post all of them. It’s better to go and watch them where the action is. This beautiful Binoculers video can serve as a lovely introduction, because it’s a) the first Musikmob video b) one of my own favourites. Binoculers is Nadja Rüdebusch from Hamburg and that’s pretty much everything I know about her. I just started to listen to her album at bandcamp and based on the first couple of songs it seems to be a great minimalistic folk album.

Musikmob #01: Binoculers – “Easy In The Morning Sun” from Musikmob on Vimeo.

Binoculers at bandcamp
Musikmob Website

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