Wye Oak - If Children

Merge Records just announced the upcoming release of Wye Oak's debut release, If Children, on April 8th. If the teaser track, "Warning," is any indication the album will balance lush melodies with noisy guitars. In other words, exactly my cup of tea.

In the band's own words:

When our band plays live, Jenn plays guitar and sings and Andy plays the drums and keyboard and sings. When we record, Andy and Jenn sing and play all the instruments, although each of us play some things better than others.

Many people have said that our album sounds lush, layered and full, and that we do a pretty good job of capturing that sound on stage, although there are just two of us. We'd like to think that if a song is good enough, it'll stand on its own regardless of how much noise you pile on top. On the other hand, we do like noise.

Download:

Wye Oak - Warning

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For more info visit Wye Oak's Myspace page.

2007 Faves - Yeasayer: All Hour Cymbals

This is the first installment of a series of posts detailing our favorite albums of 2007. Each installment will be tagged appropriately so that eventually, when we're finished compiling and posting our picks, you can see them all by clicking on the tag.

All Hour Cymbals, Yeasayer's first album, feels oddly like the kind of album a small community might assemble. The album has an almost tribal quality, but of a distinctly more civilized nature. And following the comparison a little further, each song shares and builds upon that feeling of generations old culture you might find in such a civilization.

With a few exceptions, most notably 2080, these are not immediately catchy songs. Many of the songs are more like collections of short movements, none of which command much more than a fond remark in passing. I find myself wondering why I am compelled to keep coming back to this album. But inevitably, I am compelled. I start from the beginning and before I know it, I find myself at the end with a distant satisfaction of having listened to a great album. And somewhere between where it began and it ended, I have a vague recollection of having joined in the chanting and shouting, as each movement passed through me. I said "through", not "by".

And while the memorable lines are not numerous, the one that stands out the most for me, and the one that answer my question of why I keep coming back to this album:

"Everybody's coming, down with the same thing!"

Download: Yeasayer - Germs

Download: Yeasayer - Wait For The Summer

Buy it from emusic.com or amazon.com