Nopat & Burning Hearts

Today was a great day for Finnish pop music, because two marvellous albums came out. I already know that the Nopat album is awesome and I’m 100% sure that the Burning Hearts album is also wonderful (I will buy a copy next time I visit the 8raita record store). Unfortunately I was too busy to write a proper news entry today, so I just give you the soundbites this time around. I will write about these within a week or two.

Nopat: Kadun tuolla puolella

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[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/32142602″ iframe=”true” /]
 
Nopat Website

Burning Hearts: Extinctions

[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/32193643″ iframe=”true” /]
 
[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/13845336″ iframe=”true” /]
 

Burning Hearts Website

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Video of the Day #84: Sassparilla

I’ve been listening to the new Sassparilla album The Darndest Thing quite a lot during the last few weeks. This Portland-based group has created a pretty damn good americana album. This might not be the greatest video you’ll ever see, but I really like this song My First Lover and it’s not even my biggest favourite on the album. Beautifully crafted dark atmospheres.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2G5ZbmrxtA]

Sassparilla Website

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Cirrone – Uplands Park Road

Cirrone from Italy was a big hit in the power pop world last year and most of my favourite power pop blogs featured Cirrone’s Uplands Park Road album on their year-end lists. For example the wonderful Powerpopaholic.com rated is as the best album of the year 2011. This beauty of an album has been playing in my headphones for the last week or so and I can fully agree with all of my favourite blogs. This is one hell of a classic power pop album. A bit of 70’s power pop like Badfinger or Blue and a bit of 90’s power pop things and a whole lot of catchy pop songs. Varies from great rockin’ pop songs to beautiful pop ballads and everything works. This album is again a perfect reminder that (power) pop music is still the sweetest form of art as far as I’m concerned. Simple things are often the greatest and I think Uplands Park Road would have hit my top 10 albums of the year list, if I had heard it in time. This has so many amazing pop songs that it’s almost ridiculous. I could just pick any song, but let’s go with the opener Here Is My Song. Listen to the whole album on their bandcamp.

Cirrone at Bandcamp

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Hall of Ghosts – A Random Quiet

Hall of Ghosts – A Random Quiet

This is not officially out until march, but I got a digital promo which I’ve been enjoying lately. Hall of Ghosts is a new project from Additional Moog’s Jim Williams. I can’t say I know too much about Additional Moog except that it was a highly respected UK alt-country band. I remember that I red good things about the debut back in 2007 and that I really liked the songs I listened to back then. Anyway, now I finally can properly introduce my heart to Jim Williams songs and it seems like they get along well together. This is obviously the kind of stuff that I enjoy. Think of The Jayhawks and Grand Drive. Think of beautiful americana / folk rock with pop sensibility and sweet melodies. What a lovely record. This is Giant Water.

Hall Of Ghosts Website

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