Monkey Bones
03-02-2009, 11:30 AM
The Dodos made a very cool little psychedelic folk-pop record on Frenchkiss last year called the Visiter. Silly band name, intentionally misspelled album title, no wonder this one got kind of overshadowed by the emergence of (the also silly named but very popular) Fleet Foxes and Vampire Weekend, and a bunch of others. But the story goes that the misspelled album title and cover artwork are from a kid's drawing given to them, which maybe is just a little more cute than cool :)
http://members.mailaka.net/davey/visiter.gif
Anyway, I'll admit that I didn't give this one much of a chance last year, not sure why, maybe it just starts out kind of low key, maybe just in a strange mood, who knows? But I do know that it is really starting to click now, some very good and eclectic pop music, sometimes very melodic and accessible, other times noisy and adventurous, all the time with a nice sense of song craft, and nothing ever seems to unfold completely so you want to keep coming back. Like so many of the modern bands I like, a very healthy dose of the Kinks, sometimes pushing it toward the sound of that catchy Strokes' debut, but oftentimes more sophisticated. Fun CD, and nice to see that it actually wound up very high on many best of 2008 lists. Engineered by John Askew, who in his sometimes job as the band Tracker, made a very cool little record a few years ago that I still love called Polk. BTW, just saw recently that Askew offers 128K free downloads of all 3 Tracker records through his myspace link. Seems like a good business model for bands these days, give it away in low resolution, and offer the real thing for pay.
http://members.mailaka.net/davey/visiter.gif
Anyway, I'll admit that I didn't give this one much of a chance last year, not sure why, maybe it just starts out kind of low key, maybe just in a strange mood, who knows? But I do know that it is really starting to click now, some very good and eclectic pop music, sometimes very melodic and accessible, other times noisy and adventurous, all the time with a nice sense of song craft, and nothing ever seems to unfold completely so you want to keep coming back. Like so many of the modern bands I like, a very healthy dose of the Kinks, sometimes pushing it toward the sound of that catchy Strokes' debut, but oftentimes more sophisticated. Fun CD, and nice to see that it actually wound up very high on many best of 2008 lists. Engineered by John Askew, who in his sometimes job as the band Tracker, made a very cool little record a few years ago that I still love called Polk. BTW, just saw recently that Askew offers 128K free downloads of all 3 Tracker records through his myspace link. Seems like a good business model for bands these days, give it away in low resolution, and offer the real thing for pay.