Concert/Album Review: Tune yards

tune-yards

I first saw tune-yards almost six years ago at Kilby Court opening for Thao & the Get Down Stay Down.  It was just Merrill Garbus by herself with her electric ukulele and a voice recorder to add layers to the music.  I was quite impressed with her voice and original sounding music.  After she completed her set, I went over and bought one of her tapes (her first album 'Bird Brains' was recorded on tape).  Each tape was hand made and unique.  Fast forward a few years from that and she puts out her second album 'who kill' that is considered one of the best of 2011 by many including myself and has a sizeable following nation-wide.  Fast forward another three years and she comes out her newest album 'Nikki Nack' and she has exploded even more.  Although I think I prefer her previous album over her latest offering, she still strikes gold with the playful "Water Fountain", the smooth "Wait for a Minute" and the more synth driven "Hey Life".  The main complaint about the new album is how she has thrown out the ukulele which I loved in place of more synth.  She does keep the drum fills, claps and percussion however which give each song a very lively fun sound.

I was able to see her last night at Urban Lounge and grab some shots.  This was the first time I'd seen her with a full band.  She sounded fantastic.  Every beat, every clap and every note spot on.  She yelled and pounded the drums as her backup singers/dancers bounced around to the rhythm.  Each member of the band dawned makeup of some sort with colorful outfits and background decorations of different sized eyes.

She played mostly new songs from her new album but splashed in some songs from "Who Kill" as well.  The one song I was hoping she would play was "My Country" which was my favorite song on their last album but I was definitely satisfied with the performance.

Here is their new single, "Water Fountain"

Mixtape Friday

Its Memorial Day weekend, so let's remember music from different decades.  I've got a couple songs covered from the 80's till now.  Enjoy.

New Music from Sego

Today, the band Sego, born and bred from Utah, that now reside in sunny southern California have released their first single today called, "Twenty Years Tall".  The band has been posting regularly on social media eluding to the release for a few weeks now.  The song is much different than the computer voiced preview track they released to help build hype for the release or releases.  This song has edge and keeps you off balance during the verse, but then focuses the chaos to a very catchy chorus.  I'd be curious to what everyone's thoughts are on the track.  Feel free to comment.

Here is their new music video below.

Whatever Wednesday

I've been curious as to the origins of a certain Talking Heads live album called Monkey Business.  My brother brought it as an import and it is very hard to find the original now.  I was able to track down that this was actually a bootleg of a concert, although the sound quality is outstanding.  It is by far my favorite album of Talking Heads music.  Here is the album cover that I was able to track down.

  I'm not one for owning live albums.  For a long time, I hated when bands put out live albums because they didn't sound at all like the recordings.  But this is different.  A lot of the songs are similar to the live album "Stop Making Sense" but after listening to both, I felt and still feel that Monkey Business is the better sounding album and has the most energy with the crowd noises involved.  I'd say "Go take a listen at Spotify" or wherever else you can go listen to music for free, but this is no where to be found.  I will have to post some examples comparing the recording to Stop Making Sense and see what everyone else thinks.

In the meantime, here's "Found a Job" from the famous "Stop Making Sense" film.

Melancholy Monday

Well, this past weekend we had the best weather of the year.  It's hard to come back to cubicles and computer screens and spreadsheets after a weekend like that.  Back to the grind...to the repetitiveness of it all.

This song, Memory Pools by Foxes In Fiction is simple.  It never deviates from the rhythm.  But for some reason its very thought provoking and I can get lost in sea of thoughts while listening to it.