International music

Crayon Fields (aus) & The Motifs (aus) at Dynamo, Turku 14.05.2009

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Thursday will be an exciting day in Turku. First, Inter-TPS football derby at Kupittaa and then two great australian pop bands hit the stage at Dynamo. I really loved Crayon Fields’s debut album Animal Bells back in 2006. I gave it 4 1/2 hearts back then and it appeared as #11 on albums of the year 2006 list. So I’m definitely excited about this concert. The fact that their new songs might be even greater does not exactly make my expectations lower. This is wonderful dreamy and sugary pop music. In my Animal Bells review I apparently jumped to the feared namedropping mode and threw in names like The Heavy Blinkers, Ashley Park, High Llamas, The Zombies, The Beach Boys, Harry Nillsson. Was I getting carried away. Maybe, but a bad reviewer like yours truly just couldn’t find a way to describe Geoff O’Connor’s greatness. Years haven’t made me a better reviewer, but Geoff has gotten even better as a songwriter. Here’s a new song:
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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeR87HqOUqM]

Crayon Fields at myspace

The Motifs is also an excellent group if you happen to like sweet indie pop like Pipas, The Softies etc and I definitely do. I’m really looking forward to thursday.

The Motifs at myspace

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International music

Blue

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Tonight’s love affair is Blue. I noticed a bunch of their records at the front page of notlame.com with some extremely monstrously high praises from Bruce Brodeen. As usual, Bruce was right and this is truly wonderful scottish pop music from the seventies. Pure melodic bliss and vocal heaven in the vein of Badfinger. I don’t know how have I managed to miss them before, but thankfully I now did notice them. Unfortunately the debut is already out of stock at Not Lame and the store at NB music doesn’t seem to work either at the moment. Therefore I have to settle for these youtube videos like these below for the time being.
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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AneujjCHjTA]
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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uL1VbigpZQ]

Other than that, I today bought The Munsons album from 8raita and I’m really loving it. They’ve really recorded a killer version of ZZ TOP’s Rough Boy. You’ve got to love that one. But it’s not just that one song, the record is full of fabulous rootsy music. Anyway, I’ll get back to them later. If you are impatient, you’ll find their myspace here. However, a word of warning is in order. After visiting that link, you also might need to visit a record store.

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International music

Cheap Star

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cheapstar

I’ve known this french band Cheap Star for some years, because of their The Posies connections, but only found out today that they’ve released an album a couple of months ago. It’s called Speaking Like an Elephant and half of it was produced by Jon Auer and the other half was produced by Ken Stringfellow. So The Posies connections are still there and it’s certainly not a bad thing, because for me The Posies is the greatest band ever. Still just the fact it was produced by Ken & Jon wouldn’t make one love  them if the songs weren’t as great as they are. Okay, so far I’ve only heard these four songs that are on their myspace, but based on those I really like them and will order the album tonight.

This is definitely my kind of music and brings back the golden age of music. Because for me this dearest era and golden age of music is the 90’s power pop, guitar pop, indie rock etc. The stuff finnish indie freaks heard on Räkärodeo and fell in love with it. There’s a lot of that The Lemonheads, TFC, The Posies thing going on in here. Wonderful melodic guitar pop with  beautiful mellow harmonies. The title track on the other hand sounds almost exactly like the great Guided By Voices.  I’m definitely hooked and convinced enough to order the album.

http://www.myspace.com/cheapstar

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