Essentially a solo project for Cursive's Tim Kasher, albeit with plenty of instrumental help from a variety of friends, the debut album from the Good Life is the culmination of 12 years of songwriting outside his full-time gig. Those 12 years must have been filled with some great bygone LPs and a fair helping of woe, because instead of the '90s indie pop of Cursive, Kasher explores stark and angular ground on Novena on a Nocturn that recalls no one more so than the Brit-pop icons of the 1980s. The dour and miserable sentiment of the Smiths and the Cure ("The Competition" would have fit perfectly on Disintegration) bleeds into the detached and alien sound of synth-pop combos like Human League and Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark, with the lush, melodramatic theatricality of new romantics Soft Cell and Ultravox draping over each song like a wet blanket. These are pure coffeehouse and cabaret tunes with a sustained atmosphere of haunting, world-weary ache. In addition to their '80s forebears, the songs explore the timeless songcraft and painfully honest life-lessons of artists such as Jacques Brel, Kurt Weill, and Scott Walker. The music is minimalistic but also cleverly layered with intriguing sounds, particularly eerie keyboards and bits of electronics. It is sweeping, intense music with volumes of emotional resonance and a tragic undercurrent. Kasher's songs are inconsolable prayers of lament and resignation, intimate and almost painfully introspective without exactly being overtly insular. And yet there is an overwhelming sense that you are eavesdropping on a two-way conversation with Job-like epic proportions. As the title suggests, the album has nearly religious connotations, and its nine 'novenas' delve into all the shadows and blue hues of nighttime. Dark and icy imagery spots nearly every tune, and even when a subject like the sun is referenced, as on the final "Golden Exit," there is something cold and insidious and wintry about its appearance, as if nothing can thaw Kasher's anguish, nothing can break through the bleakness of his worldview. Novena on a Nocturn, after all, is not about the light; despite the cleverly ironic band name, its purpose is to exorcise all those personal demons that seem to travel in the darkness -- listeners' own individual darknesses.

For f4df:


Lemme know if you've heard this before and I can upload something else.

you mean like a "sword fight"?

Hey Leon, here ya go. I ended up going with something from 2011 that I really dig on.

SBTRKT - SBTRKT - 2011



http://is.gd/BfgpF2

I'll have time to review your recommend to me next week!

well, listen to it, and i'll think harder...

meanwhile, have you heard this?

Miracle Fortress Was I the Wave?

anyone game to cross streams?

Still not sure what you're wanting to do Stu. Just review some albums posted here?

If so, I can send you a link to the album I recommended Patrick. Review away........if you haven't heard it.

OK, Stone...I know we both have a shit ton of crossover in our collections. Figured I'd stay away from trying to dig out some punk gem. I'd probably just end up uploading something you've already got if I did that. Figured I'd upload something I think you'll probably dig, that I really dig, and that you're less likely to have lying around. Inspired a bit by that Wayne Raney upload in the sense that it's another one for King Records, although this one also features tracks from its sister Federal label. Without futher ado...how about some down and dirty rockin' bluesy instrumental stuff from 1948-1964, all released on the King and Federal labels:


Honky Tonk! The King & Federal R&B Instrumentals

Hope ya like it.

(1) Johnny "Guitar" Watson – “Space Guitar”
This track is what you would expect from the name: a spacy surf rock instrumental. And this track really rocks. I was impressed with it, and then I looked up when it was released: 1954. Just amazing this was done that early. Great, great song.

Sorry I've dropped the ball on this, Toddo. Combination of July 4th weekend and then a few busy weeks at work have been taking up a lot of my musictime.

There's two kinds of beach music: the warm Tropicana pop that's built for psyching up the volleyball team, and the introspective dream-pop that's designed for the paler, sadder, chillier ranks of the bikini-clad. Along with Beach House and Grizzly Bear (who recorded their last record at a beach house), this Olympia, Washington trio makes the latter kind of music — all soft waves of reverb, guitar riffs that bleed like watercolors and muffled vocals that echo like they're being projected across the dunes. On their second album, frontman Nicolaas Vart even sings about the ocean (check out “Venice Beach”), but his real soft spot is for the liminal spaces the ocean represents: somewhere between land and water (“Boardwalk Theme”), between day and night (“San Francisco 3AM”), between asleep and awake (“Moon Dreams”). And listening in feels hypnotic: as his voice washes over you in a liquid Ambien haze, extending each syllable sooo looong and sooo sweeeetly, you can feel your head get heavier. Sure, Desolation Wilderness can do upbeat — check the great hula-hooping shimmy of “No Tomorrow” — but they're best in the slow-twinkling glory of ballads that slink along to a classic rhythm: swell and fall, swell and fall, and repeat — just like the tide.