Pulp - Different Class (1995)

A superlative album for lovers of authentic Britpop !

Even though the English alternative Britpop band Pulp was around for over fifteen years when this hit album was released (in 1995 in England and 1996 in the United States and beyond), they never made much of a ripple outside of the United Kingdom, their home base. This Mercury prize winning, platinum ranked, fifth studio album Different Class, however, changed it all making them popular all over Europe, the US, Australia and even Japan marking a revival of sorts in the Britpop genre. NME magazine went as far as to rank it as one of the 500 Albums of all time, a distinction it still holds at number 6. 

The success of Different Class is understandable. This album does have a different flavour compared to all their previous releases and also the other brit albums of those years. A significant mention is that Different Class has a more potent lyrical content than any brit album of the 90s, with vocalist Jarvis Cocker's songs about longing, contempt and jealousy bringing to mind a younger Leonard Cohen. 

On the opening track, "Mis-Shapes," Cocker declares war on the filthy-rich upper class ("We'll use the one thing we've got more of -- that's our minds"). Over the course of Different Class, Cocker and Pulp put their minds where their mouths are. On "Common People," Cocker plays a poor man approached by a rich young girl who tells him, "I want to live like common people." The man gives in at first, but then tells the girl that she will never be common because, "when you're laid in bed at night watching roaches climb the wall/ if you called your dad he could stop it all." In the end, the man understands the girl's wish to be a commoner ("You are amazed that they exist and they burn so bright whilst you can only wonder why"). 

On "I Spy," Cocker plays the part of an adulterer ("I've been sleeping with your wife for the past 16 weeks/ smoking your cigarettes/ drinking your brandy/ messing up the bed that you chose together"). The reason for the man's interest in the affair isn't love or sex, but revenge. He even hopes to get caught in the act, just to ruin the husband's life. 

Next, "Disco 2000" tackles the subject of heartfelt longing as well as any song ever has. On this track, Cocker tells the tale of two children born the same day: the boy grows up to be a misfit and the girl becomes Ms. Popular. The misfit describes his longing for the girl and the pain he felt as a teenager watching "others try and get you undressed. Different Class reads like a novel, with the songs written here about so far only bringing you up to the fifth track! You may consider some of the music is average 90s Brit-pop material, but Cocker's lyrics lift every song up to the next level. 

When the music is as on target as the lyrics, such as on "Disco 2000" and "Common People," Pulp strikes a deep nerve. With this album, Jarvis Cocker and Pulp make an album that is truly in a class by itself, especially if you are a lover of authentic British britpop/britrock!

Beck - Midnite Vultures (1999)

A memorable mix of funk rock, R&B with an alt rock twang

In spite of a Grammy award for the Best Alternative Music Album, Bek David Campbell aka Beck's 1998 release Mutations, was little more than a side project, apparently finished in 14 days – an album to keep the fans content while he was busy working on the proper follow-up to the critically adored Odelay (1996). So, on his 1999 seventh album effort, Midnite Vultures, Beck took his musical playfulness and experimentation to a whole new realm. 

Midnite Vultures is a cut-and-paste alt rock blend of 70s funk, 80s hip-hop, 70s R&B and 80s dance music. If Rick James and Kraftwerk had made an album that was produced by the Beastie Boys and engineered by Prince, the result would have sounded a lot like this. For an album that's mostly about sex, Midnite Vultures oozes sexiness all throughout. Just as Beck takes a unique approach to his music, on this album he takes a unique view of sex and what is considered sexy. 

At various times, Beck is both admiring and parodying the likes of Prince, Rick James, and Barry White. Just look at the album's horns-and-bass opener, "Sexx Laws" The chorus finds Beck singing "I want to defy/ The logic of all sex laws/ Let the handcuffs slip off your wrists/ I'll let you be my chaperone/ At the halfway home." On "Nicotine and Gravy," Beck's narrator tells a potential conquest that he'll "leave graffiti where you've never been kissed." The song bounces and oozes along on a drum and bass groove until it gets to the snake-charming synth break in the middle. Never before has the line "Her left eye is lazy" sounded more seductive. "Mixed Bizness" is the best funk number on Midnite Vultures, and finds Beck singing that he'll "make all the lesbians scream." 

"Get Real Paid," a warped little '80s techno number, features the line "Thursday night, I think I'm pregnant again" followed by the line "Touch my ass if you're qualified." Needless to say, we're not dealing with your basic "Oooh baby I want you so bad" lyrics here. The rolling, twangy "Peaches and Cream" is one of the wilder sexcapades on Midnite Vultures, as Beck sings "You look good in that sweater/ And that aluminum crutch/ I'm gonna let you down easy/ I've got the delicate touch." Other lyrics include "We're on the good ship menage a trois" and "You make a garbage man scream." 

Beck's most blatant parody of the sex music genre is the hilarious "Debra,". It's the wickedly funny story of a guy who picks up a girl at JC Penney and takes her for a ride in his Hyundai, all sung in the most sincere Prince-like falsetto. Simply brilliant. 

For most artists, albums like Mellow Gold (1994) and Odelay would be considered as creative highpoints. But for Beck, after listening to this 'album of the year' Grammy nominated album, it appears that those albums were just the beginning, he exceeds even your highest expectations.

Sufjan Stevens - Enjoy Your Rabbit (2001)

Eclectic Electronic Noise Pop and more!

The American indie folk singer-songwriter Sufjan Stevens’ electronic laden musical style is just about the last thing that listeners would have expected from a former member of a locally popular but largely obscure indie folk quartet Marzuki and  then touring organist, toy pianist and banjo player with wacky indie gospel pop psychedelia group The Danielson Famile. I know, you have to be hardcore indie folk addict or a music historian to know this!

On his second album, Enjoy Your Rabbit, Stevens presents nearly 80 minutes of what he calls “a collection of programmatic songs for the animals of the Chinese zodiac.” What does that mean, exactly? Well, Stevens uses a variety of electronic and acoustic instruments (and though it is hard to believe, no external samples) for a sound that falls somewhere between a cheesy 80s cop-show theme song on crack, creepy circus music, and Mouse on Mars playing the soundtrack to Braveheart. 

Each song is unique as he extracts fragments of Pop, Rock, and even Celtic music, throws it all together in an electronic mix with synths and glitches, then takes it all apart and puts it back together again. With melodic sections interspersed throughout portions of fragmented, deconstructed musical chaos, listening to the first part of Enjoy Your Rabbit feels like getting a garbled transmission of someone flipping radio stations in outer space. 

One of the album’s highlights is the title track, which sounds like an electronic musician’s take on Math Rock, then ends with an off key James Bond theme reference. “Year of the Monkey” is also fun, with a fuzzy beat and a wah-wah riff combined with warped music-box sounds that collapses into itself and ends in an onslaught of fuzz. 

On the rest of the album, Stevens tones down the glitch and focuses more on multi-layered, orchestral numbers. These give him away as someone who has written music for films – they would serve as a creepy but perfect backdrop to a freaky technological thriller. If anyone ever decides to remake Tron again, they should ditch Daft Punk and call Stevens for the score. 

Note - Enjoy Your Rabbit was Stevens’ second album, and the third release from his independent New Mexico label Asthmatic Kitty. In 2009, the entire album was completely reworked and rearranged by the Osso String Quartet and re-released as Run Rabbit Run. If you like this album, you must check it out too! 

Barenaked Ladies - Maroon (2000)

The Canadian Rockers Best Album! 

When the Toronto alternative indie rock band  Barenaked Ladies splendid U.S. breakthrough album, Stunt, released in 1998 to criticial acclaim, it sold over 3 million copies and spawned the verbose hit One Week, which threatened to strip Barenaked Ladies of substance and staying power.

Rather than trade on the frisky charms of that fluke novelty, the Canadian rockers gamble on sophistication, serious life issues and a shameless wallow in classic ska-rap-indie pop in the marvelous Maroon. While Barenaked Ladies' fifth studio album, produced by Don Was, contains ample schoolyard mischief, it also grapples with mature subjects and distinctly unfunny themes, especially in the harrowing and graphic car-crash epic Tonight Is the Night I Fell Asleep at the Wheel.

The 12 tracks nimbly fuse bright jangly guitars and peppy melodies with often disturbing or fretful lyrics. In first single Pinch Me, the dreary tale of a man mired in tedium unfolds over a shimmering slice of upbeat pop. The tug of war between the silly and the serious gets literal in Never Do Anything, where a cheeky remark counters every pained confession. Remove the strident and overwrought Sell Sell Sell and Maroon suggests itself as a worthy disc. In fact, their best! 

The Morning Birds

Pastoral spectacular-sounding harmonies

Mix one part classic pop; one part emotive rock n’ roll swagger and you'll get THE MORNING BIRDS - a cool Indie Pop Band from Idyllwild, CA featuring the awesome twosome - Jennifer Thorington and Samuel Markus who play sublime pop and experimental (and super luscious) rock'n' roll. 

The Morning Birds are a pleasant hybrid of sonic and spiritual understandings expressed through music, art, and moving images. The Morning Birds cinematic tones make you feel as if you’re floating on a cumulous cloud at daybreak being transported to another time and place. Enuff said, Hearing is Believing!! Hear why they are different & shop one of their 6 great Morning Birds albums now @ www.themorningbirds.bandcamp.com. Alternatively, check out their website  and like their fanpage on Facebook.

Soul Rising by Black Box Down

Awesome FREE indie pop track 

Checkout "Soul Rising", a great new track by BLACK BOX DOWN, the side-project of STAARK songwriter/producer Matt Cumming. Matt wrote and recorded this haunting song by himself in just ONE day and yet, it sounds supremely awesome - a rather striking song with slightly strange lyrics! 

Download "Soul Rising" for FREE along with an equally great free track "Call Your Bluff" from the official band site. Pls do share the love by liking the BBD Facebook fanpage too!

So Indie - Radio Mix

Melodic Indie Rock and Indie Pop Ear Candy!

Catchy Indie Pop and Indie Rock tunes from the likes of Beirut, Band of Horses, Bravery and more on the 8tracks Radio Station of Websnacker! Please remember to like the Websnacker fanpage at http://facebook.com/websnackerblog to stay connected with the good karma and hear more such great music! 

It's Not Your Fault - New Found Glory 
Dark Light Daybreak - Now It's Overhead 
Get Myself Into It - The Rapture 
Believe - The Bravery 
My Night With The Prostitute From Marseille - Beirut 
Silver Lining - Rilo Kiley 
The Great Salt Lake - Band of Horses 
Silently - Blonde Redhead 
Rhinemaidens - The Envy Corp

 

So Indie ! from Websnacker on 8tracks Radio.

Neutral Milk Hotel - In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

Rewind to one of the Best Indie Rock Albums of the 1990's

When the dust settled across the music secen of the 90s, Neutral Milk Hotel's 'In the Aeroplane Over the Sea' was  recognized not only as one of the best Indie Rock albums of the 1990's, but as one of the best records ever made. 

I don't say this to snobbily provoke people who still haven't heard of this then obscure but now famous group, and I certainly don't say this to somehow stroke the ego of its frontman Jeff Mangum, whose gentle brush with quasi-fame was more than enough to scare him into seclusion, corresponding with the outside world every now and then just to tell them there will never be another Neutral Milk Hotel album. 

I say it because it's one of the few things I sincerely believe about music, and because I feel, strongly though probably naïvely, that if everybody owned In the Aeroplane Over the Sea the world might magically turn into a better place. I'm not the only one who feels this way. In fact, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea commonly inspires reactions like this in people (reactions, incidentally, which horrify its creator). 

For a very small group, the figure of Jeff Mangum brings out a level of devotion similar to that inspired by literary figures like William Blake and Walt Whitman. Like Blake, Mangum references a deeply personal mythology that roots surreal imagery in emotional realism and is built on mystical themes like reincarnation, otherworldly beings, and the holiness of freaks and outcasts. Like Whitman, Mangum's words all flow out in a rapturous stream of lines and lines. And like both writers, Mangum's work is composed equally of an enveloping compassion for people and a horror at their hatred and violence. 

One of the things that's so amazing about this album is that it's so ambitious it seems like it should have been a total, laughable failure. Using acoustic guitar, drums, a heavily fuzzed bass, bowed banjo, theremin, zanzithiphone, uillean pipes, and Salvation Army clarions of trumpet and trombone, Mangum and co. attempt an epic psychedelic folk-punk concept album about Anne Frank's life, death, and subsequent reincarnation through the art of her diary, which causes its reader to create an elaborate fantasy about forever protecting her by being reborn fused to her as a Siamese twin. And it works. 

Mangum sings about dead dogs dissolving and draining away, semen staining mountaintops, bridges bursting and twisting around, shrouded and rose-eyed ghosts watching the earth from an orbiting comet, bottled fetuses tapping on jars, their hearts filled with singing needles, couples alone in afternoon rooms pushing fingers through each others' mouths, through notches in each others' spines, into each others' souls. 

It all sounds ridiculous, but it's dead-serious and indescribably moving, because actually Mangum is singing about the horror and beauty in the world, and about transcending that horror by allowing that beauty to annihilate you. He's singing about love, but much bigger than love between a boy and a girl; he's singing about loving the world that surrounds you and even loving those who try, and succeed, to destroy you. And he's also singing about something else, something that can't really be put into words, but that is true and living and moves through his unlikely imagery and sonic tapestries, glowing brighter with each successive listening. 

Everyone I know who has this record treasures it. It has helped my friends sunk in depression, I've been to weddings where selections have been used as the first dance, I know people who want it played at their funerals. And I understand why Mangum, emphatically humble and self-effacing, must be terrified by the level of devotion this little collection of songs inspires, but I also understand that devotion. 

In a world that constantly seems crass and cheap and mean, where cynicism is the dominant philosophy and sarcasm the dominant conduct, where what matters most is showing off what you can buy, where the most popular television programs encourage us to laugh at ordinary people willingly allowing themselves to be publicly frightened and humiliated for money, this record shows you the world trembling with beauty, transparent, enveloping, able to be redeemed or destroyed by how much love you bring to it, and, ultimately, holy. Will Robinson Sheff  

My First Mix on 8Tracks ! Hear it ! Share it !

Hear 'Indie Lovely' on 8tracks

With most of the content lockers and download sites going underground, I have been looking around for a reliable website where I could upload and safely share my music collection with my blog and twitter followers without them or me worrying about the RIAA or Copyright vs Piracy crap! 8tracks.com is an online radio site fits the bill in all aspects. Its 100% legal and you can also hear via your iPhone! 

So, here is my first cut on 8tracks (and more is certainly on the way). My first mix "Indie Lovely" features lovely Indie Rock and Indie Pop tracks to enliven the mood including great tracks by Animal Collective, Florence and the Machine, Keane & more ! 

I'm Not Bad - Alucidnation 

Where Is My Mind - Yoav featuring Emily Browning (Sucker Punch Extended Soundtrack) 

People - Animal Collective 

Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up) - Florence and the Machine 

Under Pressure - Keane 

Another Wrong To Right - Mercir 

Dejalo - Rilo Kiley 

Way out - Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Click here to hear this tracks on 8 tracks or just click the artwork below! Pls remember to like www.facebook.com/websnackerblog to stay connected with my good karma on 8tracks.

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Indie Lovely from Websnacker on 8tracks.