Rock ‘n’ Roll Photog: Video Grab Bag

This week, Jennifer shares some music she’s excited about right now, along with visual accompaniment.

Hellogoodbye put out their first record, Zombies! Aliens! Vampires! Dinosaurs! in 2006; I stumbled over it in 2008 and promptly bought it because of the seriously irresistible title. The track in the video above is one of my favorites, and indicative of their then sweet synth-poppy sound. After some wrangling with their now ex-label, they have put out a new record, entitled Would It Kill You? (less synth-y, but still poppy; also still delicious) and are hitting the road with, among other people, Gold Motel. That link back there leads to a free-for-Tweet-or-Facebook-Like tour sampler, which I highlight and heartily encourage you to check out because it includes a Gold Motel cover of Here (In Your Arms) which I cannot stop listening to, and much more besides.

And then hopping over a couple of genres, for the psychadelic surf-rock fans in the audience, I bring you The Black Apples, who recently released a vinyl LP into the wild. You can find digital excerpts on bandcamp and the full LP on iTunes. Why I like it: They have TWO drummers and a lot of sweet grooves. In my collection, they occupy the “sounds like Scooby Doo” category with MGMT, but their sound is heavier – big solid drums and crisp guitars, as opposed to candy-colored dreamy noodling. They are having a record release party this Friday, January 28 at 7 PM Origami Vinyl in Echo Park, Los Angeles, CA, and, special note to Colorado and New Mexico, they will be headed your way in early March!

Brett Detar formerly the lead singer for The Juliana Theory, has recently launched a solo career. I found him and his new record when I was noodling around on Facebook one evening and, ladies and gentlemen, if you enjoy old-fashioned country, you need to get yourself over to his website right now and check out his tunes. My favorites: It’s Only The Night, Cocaine, Whiskey & Heroin, A Miner’s Prayer and This City Dies Tonight.

And finally, I leave you with the lyric video – as in, video composed solely of lyrics – for Panic! at the Disco’s new single, The Ballad of Mona Lisa from their third record, Vices & Virtues, which is expected later this spring. I am a tiny bit of a typography nerd and so I must tell you I am all a-flutter because they are using new and different (and lovely!) fonts here and in their other promotional materials. I do also like the song; they would appear to have left behind the ’60s stylings of Pretty. Odd. and jumped back into the present with both feet, and I can’t wait to hear the rest of the record.