Posts Tagged Indie Dance
10 February 2009 at 12:20 am
· Filed under Music ·Tagged Britpop, Doves, Honeydip, Indie Dance, Jetstream, Pop Punk, Saint Etienne, Shoegaze, Thorns Of Life
Nothing cohesive tonight, but I do have a couple quick notes:
- A reader left a link in comments a link to a recording of that Thorns Of Life show at 924 Gilman on the 31st. A really good recording, too, excellent sound. Big thanks!
- Pitchfork (who, to be honest, I don’t have that much use for these days) posted a great interview with Bob Stanley of Saint Etienne the other day. Well worth the read (and good to hear that those 2xCD reissues of all their albums are still in the works!).
- “Jetstream”, the Doves track that was released at the end of January as a teaser for their forthcoming album Kingdom of Rust
, has been in heavy rotation around here, and still sounds freakin’ awesome. The song’s only shortcoming is that, after building up the tension over its course, it doesn’t really resolve it at the end. But it is the album opener, and given how impeccably sequenced Doves albums generally are, I’m guessing that the next track will provide the tension release. Easily the album I’m looking forward to the most right now.
- I stumbled on the 1999 album Portable Audio Science by Japanese shoegaze band Honeydip on Shoegazeralive, and have been listening to the second track, “Jesus & Mary Jane”, over and over (one of these days I might even give track #3 a try!). Worth checking out if you’re into My Bloody Valentine-style guitar drone.
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26 January 2009 at 1:04 am
· Filed under Music ·Tagged Indie Dance, Indie Pop, Method Of Modern Love, Saint Etienne
Okay, I swear, this is my last post on Saint Etienne’s “Method Of Modern Love”. It’s not like the single’s even out or anything. But I got my hands on a copy of the song a few days back and I’ve been listening it since, so I wanted to share my thoughts.
First, the bad news: the entire song isn’t quite as fantastic as that heavenly 30 second clip of the chorus that was posted a few weeks back. How could it be? That bit is just feather-light pop perfection, and the rest of the song couldn’t possibly have lived up to it.
Disregarding that unrealistic expectation, though, the track is brilliant. It’s so great to hear Saint Etienne once again taking a dip into full-on dance floor material, especially when the song is as catchy and well put together as this one. The middle eight is a bit creaky, but everything else is just perfect, from the retro-80’s synth intro on. Hopefully this won’t be the last we hear from Saint Etienne this year.
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16 January 2009 at 10:03 pm
· Filed under Music ·Tagged Indie Dance, Indie Pop, Method Of Modern Love, Saint Etienne
I feel a bit pathetic, gushing like a fanboy over every crumb Saint Etienne throws out about their forthcoming “Method Of Modern Love” single … but in all honesty, the song just sounds drop-dead fantastic, the best thing I’ve heard out of them since “Stars Above Us” (I’d be even more excited if I thought the song would get a domestic release in the US). The band is now streaming a clip of the song off their MySpace page, longer than the one that circulated in late December, and it still sounds awesome.
They’ve also now released the cover art:
The single is out in the UK on February 9th.
UPDATE: Via Chartrigger, you can hear the various mixes from the single here.
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30 December 2008 at 10:36 pm
· Filed under Music ·Tagged Indie Dance, Indie Pop, Method Of Modern Love, Saint Etienne
Via Chart Rigger, Popjustice has posted a 30 second sample of Saint Etienne’s forthcoming single, “Method Of Modern Love”. Wow, this sounds fucking fantastic! And after the lush pop of their last album, it’s great to hear Saint Etienne doing a straight dance cut again — “Method” just shot past the upcoming Doves album as my most anticipated release of 2009.
Now, will somebody please please please get at least a few of these recent Saint Etienne releases out in the States?
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8 December 2008 at 12:13 pm
· Filed under Music ·Tagged Indie Dance, Indie Pop, Method Of Modern Love, Saint Etienne, This Is Tomorrow
From the Saint Etienne mailing list:
There’s a new single in the offing, a double A-side of “This Is Tomorrow” (which I wrote about here) and new song “Method Of Modern Love”. It comes out in the UK on February 9th.
The single will be released on two CD’s, a 7″, and digitally, with various mixes of the two songs (including a Cola Boy remix of “Method” on CD2!). No album art yet.
UPDATE: Popjustice has a 30 second sample of “Method” here. (12-30-2008)
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29 October 2008 at 12:17 pm
· Filed under Music ·Tagged Indie Dance, Indie Pop, Saint Etienne, This Is Tomorrow
Saint Etienne’s “This Is Tomorrow” isn’t exactly a new song. It was composed for their film This Is Tomorrow, was streaming off their MySpace page for a while, and was released as a freebie 7″ with a 2007 issue of magazine The Illustrated Ape. But it wasn’t particularly easy to get your hands on a copy until the release of retrospective London Conversations
recently.
Thematically, the song is very much in the vein of 2002’s “Finisterre” (title track to the album of the same name
), with its unabashed futurism and optimism. Musically, it’s a nice, mid-tempo dance track, with a breathy, infectious chorus. The muted la-la-la break midway through the song is quite nice, too. On the whole, the song sounds a bit more dance oriented than most of their last album
, but retaining some of the warmth of that album’s sound. I’m glad to see it finally getting some sort of wide release.
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21 September 2008 at 12:12 pm
· Filed under Music ·Tagged Burnt Out Car, Indie Dance, Indie Pop, Saint Etienne
I’ve been posting entirely too much about Saint Etienne’s recent activity these days, but their new single, a remixed version of “Burnt Out Car”, comes out tomorrow, and the band is now streaming it off their MySpace page. Sounds great, a bit more chipper and sonically detailed than the version on Travel Edition, which was a bit minimalist. A bit more drums too, I’d say. Now, will someone please sell the single via digital download in the States?
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19 September 2008 at 8:04 am
· Filed under Music ·Tagged Burnt Out Car, Indie Dance, Indie Pop, Saint Etienne
Burnt Out Car
I already wrote about Saint Etienne’s new “Burnt Out Car” single (out September 22nd in the UK), but today they sent out a message to their mailing list featuring the cover art (to the right) and a bit more information.
The single will be out on 7″ and a two-part CD single. The 7″ features new song “River” as a b-side. CD1
features two new songs, “Night Vision” and “Destroy The Building”. CD2
features the new mixes by Mark Brown. “Burnt Out Car” itself (one of my fave Etienne songs, as I already said) is a new mix by Xenomania.
In other Saint Etienne news ….
The release of London Conversations has been pulled back to October 13th, due to “our complicated deluxe packaging”.
If you’re lucky enough to live in London, the band will be doing signing/DJing at Rough Trade East from 7 to 9pm on October 14th.
Finally, the band says they’ve got a couple new songs “in the bag” for their next album. But no additional information on that.
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14 September 2008 at 6:08 pm
· Filed under Music ·Tagged Indie Dance, Indie Pop, Saint Etienne
As I said yesterday, Saint Etienne is pretty much my favorite band these days (not that this is a particularly coveted title or anything). But I’ve actually only been into them for a couple years, since I picked up Travel Edition
just before Christmas in 2004.
There are undoubtedly a whole host of reasons for why it took me so long to turn on to the group – starting with the immense hostility I felt towards dance music in my early 20’s – but I think the number one reason is the record cover you see to the right. I remember stumbling on it in the CD singles section of a Tower Records in 1991 and thinking that it just looked too impossibly fucking twee to respect or take seriously. I think it actually made me angry. Then I think I bought a Soup Dragons single instead. Ah, youth.
Honestly, I have no idea why I had such a strong negative reaction to that particular cover. I think it had something to due with the sunny aura of the photo – I remember thinking that they must be some awful modern version of the Osmonds or something. And then I pretty much paid no attention to the band for more than a decade.
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13 September 2008 at 8:30 pm
· Filed under Music ·Tagged Burnt Out Car, Indie Dance, Indie Pop, London Conversations, Saint Etienne
This isn’t exactly new news, but it’s on the verge of actually becoming relevant. Saint Etienne has a “new” single coming out in ten days in the UK, on September 23rd. Scare quotes because the single is actually a new mix (by Xenomania) of “Burnt Out Car”, which was originally released in the mid-90’s. But several of the b-sides (“River”, “Destroy The Building”, “Night Vision”) appear to be new songs. There are some remixes by Mark Brown as well.
I’m hoping that this one will be available for download in the States, because “Burnt Out Car” is one of my favorite Saint Etienne tracks, and I’m really looking forward to hearing this. Hell, they’re pretty much my favorite band – I’m looking forward to just about anything by them.
London Conversations
Following close on the heels of the single will be a new career-spanning Saint Etienne best of, London Conversations, which will be available in single disc, double disc, and triple-disc-with-DVD versions. The double disc version is the only one I’ve seen a tracklist to. It includes the new version of “Burnt Out Car”, obscurity “Lover Plays The Bass”, and “This Is Tomorrow”, which I believe has been previously only available on a single included in a magazine. The rest are the usual singles and key album cuts, though at this point the band’s discography has grown so large, it’s really impossible to hit all the great tracks even across two discs (what? no “Jack Lemmon”? no “Woodcabin”?).
You can read more about this stuff from the band’s blog.
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