Leaky Faucet - Animal Collective, Beach House etc.

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Who: Beach House
Title: Teen Dream
Release Date: January 26th
Label: Sub Pop
Thoughts: At this point I have to assume that all of you have heard the fantastic new record from Beach House. Sure it doesn’t officially see the light of day until January, but the way it has been lighting up the blogs and the torrent sites the past week makes us believe someone has been listening. So you should already know about the gorgeous, simple music on Teen Dream, you should have fallen in love with Victoria Legrand’s powerful and far more confident voice, and you should have listened back to front at least a half dozen times already. The sound is so warm and inviting that it’s hard not to sit back and comfortably take it all in over and over again. Like the warm embrace of a kiss from a lover, this record is all you can think about it, it haunts your days and lights your nights on fire. For a week now we’ve sat in awe letting the record filter over us, listening as the subtle rhythms meshed with the gentle organ play, and that voice just washed right over us. The feeling is instantaneous and non-stop, you want to feel it every waking minute of the day and even the ones you’re not awake for. Personally there’s been a few nights this past week where I wouldn’t go to sleep till this record had finished playing. And then it would be there as well, serving as the soundtrack to whatever dream I was having that night. Teen Dreams is already the best record of 2010, we just have to get there first.
Listen: Beach House - "Norway"
Beach House - "10 Mile Stereo"

Who: Animal Collective
Title: Fall Be Kind
Release Date: December 8th
Label: Domino
Thoughts: It’s a little odd that the leak of Animal Collective’s latest EP is not the big story of the week. It speaks volumes as to how good the new Beach House record is, though it isn’t a slight on Animal Collective in any way. The Fall Be Kind EP is not just a castoff of also recorded music left on the Merriweather cutting room floor. These five tracks could easily have found placement on their best record to date, or probably on any of their last three albums for that matter. These recordings seem to span the breadth of what Animal Collective have evolved into, mixing the odder sounds that were far more present on their earlier work with the more inviting, pop oriented style of their last two albums. The songs here fit the general rise and fall aesthetic of Animal Collective, slowly building and introducing all the working parts of each song. It’s fantastic to listen to, but it does lack some of the immediate impact and charm Merriweather Post Pavilion introduced us to. To be fair I haven’t spent nearly the amount of time with this as I have with their past albums or that I have with the new Beach House, it’s been a busy week so we’ll have to wait and see how this grows with each successive listen.
Listen: Animal Collective - "Graze"
Animal Collective - "What Would I Want? Sky"

Who: Laura Veirs
Title: July Flame
Release Date: January 12th
Label: Raven Marching Band Records
Thoughts: For most of her career to this point, Laura Veirs has been better known for her work on tracks from other people. The subtle beauty of her solo records is often overlooked, and I cannot begin to tell you how tragic this is. Veirs’ songwriting is impeccable, her voice is as lovely as any other singers right now, and she has a delicate way at handling the compositions of her music and turning them into grand masterpieces of folk music. Perhaps it’s the folk music moniker that turns people away from her, but seriously stop it people! On July Flame Veirs is once again at top form. The music here is crafted to slowly weave its way into your ear, gentle strumming, her lovely voice, and the added depth of more instruments slowly unfold until the whole is something you can coo over. This music is terribly delicate, remove one piece and it would fall like a house of cards yet somehow it is a record that slowly unfolds over multiple listens. The power of her voice is obviously the first thing you will notice, but before long the emotional impact of her lyrics will hit you and from there the added instrumentation becomes acutely noticeable. This is a record that could grow infinitely depending on how much time you are willing to give, I’d suggest we stop over looking her and give it the attention her music so rightly deserves.
Listen: Laura Veirs - "I Can See Your Tracks"
Laura Veirs - "July Flame"

Who: Lindstrøm & Christabelle
Title: Real Life Is No Cool
Release Date: January 19th
Label: Smalltown Supersound
Thoughts: Most everything that Lindstrøm touches turns to freshly minted gold. His touch pushing buttons and twisting knobs makes for some of the more compelling electronic music coming out today. And despite all this I am really having trouble getting into and wrapping my head around his latest album, this time in collaboration with a singer going by the name of Christabelle. Most of his production on this record remains as tight as it ever was, with swirling synth lines and the steady beat we’ve come to expect from Lindstrøm, but the singing from Christabelle isn’t fitting with his style all that well. On his most successful release to date, Where You Go I Go Too, Lindstrøm was able to prove his ability to take his normally long winded, mostly instrumental tracks into the world of pop music. Here he has a talented singer at his disposal and they just don’t seem to mesh at any point. The opening track, "Looking For What", may be the most promising track on the record. It opens with strange vocal tricks by Christabelle and slowly forms into the type of electronic dance music we thought we’d hear straight through this, but slowly everything becomes sort of a jumbled puzzle that has left us searching for a bit more. We’re only a couple listens into this record so perhaps there is growing potential here, but for now it sounds like a strange juxtaposition of musical elements.
Listen: Lindstrøm & Christabelle - "Music In My Mind"
Lindstrøm & Christabelle - "Never Say Never"<!-- begin insound affiliate banner link -->