Thursday, February 9, 2012

Archive for the tag "Army Navy"

This was going to be a Music Monday. But it kept getting bigger and finally turned into a full-fledged album-length mix full of LA-based bands. Consider this a love letter to LA and the fantastic music scene I’ve found here. It’s literally possible to go to a show nearly every day of the week and find bands you like. Even going much less often than that (two or three times a month), I’ve discovered many bands that keep me coming back for their shows, opening bands that I seek out everywhere they play, and seen what a great and supporting music culture exists here (if you look at the band line-ups below, you’ll find several people who are in multiple bands – nearly everyone is involved in multiple projects, creating really interesting cross-pollination). I’ve arranged them roughly from lesser known to better known (sort of an opening band – second opening band – headliner sort of thing), but that’s not completely accurate. Just a general rule of thumb.

LA Mix Cover

1) Hello from Reno – It Comes and Goes
2) The Sweet Hurt – Bright Ideas
3) The Belle Brigade – 4%
4) Eulogies – Eyes on the Prize
5) Local Natives – Airplanes
6) Obi Best – Swedish Boy
7) The One AM Radio – Old Men
8) Army Navy – Dark As Days
9) Earlimart – Face Down in the Right Town
10) Juliette Commagere – Overcome
11) Lavender Diamond – Open Your Heart
12) Munchausen by Proxy – Uh-Huh
13) Great Northern – Mountain
14) The Bird and the Bee – Love Letter to Japan
15) The Submarines – Xavia
16) The Airborne Toxic Event – Does This Mean You’re Moving On
17) Jenny Lewis – The Highs and Lows of Being Number One
18) Silversun Pickups – Substitution
19) Rilo Kiley – Somebody Else’s Clothes

You can stream the songs individually or as a playlist (starting the first one will play them all in order), or right-click-save any song to download it. Or you can grab the whole mix, including my hastily-thrown-together cover art based on a Silver Lake mural, with this zip file (a little under 100mb). If you like the bands, please support them.

You’re going to want to click through the jump – full mix details are under there, with info and photos for every band. And it took me all week to do. So please. Click through. :) Most photos are not mine. Promo-type photos obviously aren’t. Crappy iPhone-looking concert photos probably are.

Click here to read on!

I’ve been finding so much new music lately and not posting ANY Music Mondays. What’s that about? Probably because when I have too many choices I get overwhelmed and choose none of them – which is a positive trait when shopping and saves me a lot of money, but less positive when blogging. So let’s try to work on the music backlog, shall we?

Army Navy

I am officially an indie music fan now, because I went to see Army Navy open for another band. I’ve been to concerts before where I was a fan of an opening band as well as the headliner, but this is the first time I’ve been specifically to see the opener. However, I owe credit for that to my friend Lis, who called and convinced me to go, pointing out that Army Navy was on the Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist soundtrack and thus exactly our type of hipster sound. And she was not wrong. I’d only heard their album once before going to concert, and it didn’t matter at all – I might be biased, but they were way better than the headliner (The Shys, who were good, but too…polished, if that makes any sense). Anyway, they rock harder live than on the record, which is a bit more poppy. Both ways are good.

(The LAist has a photo gallery from the show here.)

Army Navy – Dark as Days
Army Navy – Jail is Fine

Army Navy (2008)
Amazon MP3
Amazon CD

Silversun Pickups

The Silversun Pickups are one of the more successful L.A.-Silverlake indie rock bands, and I must apologize to them for not liking them AT ALL when I saw them open for Snow Patrol last March. I did not know them then, and my tastes have apparently changed. Because now I love them, and I hope they finish working on their next record soon and start playing some shows which I can go to. And keep releasing songs on Rock Band. :)

Silversun Pickups – Lazy Eye
Silversun Pickups – Well Thought Out Twinkles

Carnavas (2006)
Amazon CD
Amazon MP3
Pikul (2005)
Amazon CD
Amazon MP3

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