(THIS POST ORIGINALLY APPEARS ON THE TWIN CITIES BLOG NEWEST INDUSTRY)
Mikal Cronin, Carmen Villain, The Child Of Lov, Jonny Fritz, & VANDAAM...
Well hello again, MP3 junkies! Welcome to Songs Of The Week #40!
For those of you who aren't totally sure what you're looking at right now, here's the deal. TCDroogsma is an MP3 junkie. He's also opinionated and has an incredible amount of free time on his hands. As such, we've put him to work reviewing the tracks given away each week via The Current's Song Of The Day podcast.
TCDroogsma downloads the tracks and, after spending some time with them, writes up a review and gives the songs a score of 1-5.
As always, we strongly suggest that you follow this link and subscribe to the podcast yourself. It's free and it's fun for the whole family!
To that end, once you've given the tracks a spin, we encourage you to vote for your favorite song in the poll on the right-hand side of the page. The winning artist receives the validation of winning an anonymous internet poll, arguably the highest achievement any artist can aspire to.
So, Droogsy... thoughts?
01. Mikal Cronin - Weight (from the album MCII)
TCDroogsma:
For the first 45 seconds of "Weight" I wasn't totally on board. "I've been starting over for a long time" is probably the most relateable line I've heard in a song this year, but given the stereotypical indie-pop guitar strumming behind it, I feared that this song was just a well-crafted pity party waiting to happen.
But then that guitar comes in. Oh, that guitar... suddenly, the song has legs. Is anything on Earth as life-affirming as a fuzzed out guitar? Cronin spends the rest of the track wrestling with dilemma's of pushing 30, but those are questions that can be answered later. In the twilight of his youth, the power of a loud guitar and a microphone still trumps all.
Final Score: 3.5/5
02. Carmen Villain - Lifeissin (from the album Sleeper)
TCDroogsma:
"Lifeissin" is an intriguing song, but you won't realize it until the second time you listen to it. Why? Because Carmen Hillestad's laments on her misdeeds sound like a morning-after discussion until the last second of the track when, with the line, "Do you believe that I'm going to hell?" the song abruptly drops off the face of the Earth. In that last instant the song shifts dramatically from "next day hangover" conversation to "deathbed lament," retroactively adding weight "Lifeissin."
Listening to the song a second time (with that "deathbed" as a backdrop) turns the song from average to pretty good. Hillestad's vocals have the airy weightlessness of somebody speaking with nothing left to lose, matching the guitar strumming that does just enough to create a mood, but nowhere near enough to upstage the vocalist. She delivers the line, "Open that guilt cage, I just want to think free..." with just enough of a hiccup in her voice to leave the listener believing that, for a last brief moment, peace has been found, and that the concern of heaven or hell is merely a secondary concern.
Final Score: 3/5
03. The Child Of Love - Heal (from the album The Child Of Lov)
TCDroogsma:
After a quick google search to find out what exactly The Child Of Lov is all about, I find myself more confused than ever. According to Wikipedia, he's an anonymous 25 year old musician from Amsterdam who has so far refused to release any personal information. Intriguingly, he's slated to collaborate with DOOM & Damon Albarn (two of my all-time favorites) on his upcoming album.
Does any of that information make me like "Heal" any more? Not really. Over some bouncy drums and a nicely fuzzed out bass line, The Child Of Lov does little more than a James Brown impersonation. The lyrics traffic in cliche like, "Baby, you know I'm for real..." and a chorus of "Got to, got to heal your soul," implying that, when not listening to American R & B, The Child Of Lov has been finding meaning in Richard Ashcroft's solo albums. There's nothing wrong with leaning on energy and charisma if you're playing live, but on record, "Heal" in very forgettable.
Final Score: 1.5/5
04. Jonny Fritz - Goodbye Summer (from the album Dad Country)
TCDroogsma:
"Goodbye Summer" starts out with Jonny Fritz coming off like a kid about to go back to college, trying to put together the pieces of one last party with his high-school friends (though he plays the role of that friend you hate, asking his ride if they can stop at CVS to pick up contact solution). From there he heads back to wherever he's suppose to be in fall (again, it sounds like college to me).
The song takes a peculiar turn from there, telling the story of Fritz meeting up with a married woman in a hotel room. This story of a "lover with a wedding ring" has nothing to do with the first verse of the song, though the song does eventually circle back to another party for its third verse. Basically, there's not really any narrative to the song at all, rather just a bunch of couplets that fit the country-pop jam constructed as a backdrop. To be honest, neither of those things appeal to me. A pretty standard country rave-up could have legs if there was a story to be told, but really, "Goodbye Summer" sounds an awful lot like a genre exercise and not much more.
Final Score: 1.5/5
05. VANDAAM - Electron Oceans (from the EP VANDAAM)
TCDroogsma:
I've been making jokes about how Minnesota is the Land Of 10,000 Synth-Pop bands since the day I started writing this Songs Of The Week column. On my initial listen, I was fully prepared to put VANDAAM into that same category. However, after spending a week with the song, it's clear that these guys are just slightly left of center compared to the other synth bands around town. If Solid Gold & Portishead had a child and that child grew up to be a codeine-addled stripper, you'd have "Electron Oceans."
With the refrain of, "They wanna know how I drop it so deep, they wanna know how I stay on my feet..." "Electron Oceans" would be an absolute staple of hipster strip clubs if, y'know, such a thing existed. Just wobbly & atmospheric enough to maintain its sensuality without tumbling off the edge, VANDAAM's subtle sexuality is beautifully, unmistakably midwestern.
Final Score: 4/5
Well there you have it, everybody! Another week's worth of songs downloaded, reviewed, and filed away!
As always, please bear in mind that neither TCDroogsma nor Newest Industry is in any way affiliated with the artists above, The Current, or MPR. We're just music fans with laptops and a little too much time on our hands.
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