And now, an NTSIB Thanksgiving tradition: an extended session from one of our favorite artists. This year it is almost a full hour of one of the finest folk balladeers / shit-stirrers / magnificent trolls working today: Father John Misty, recorded live at KEXP in the summer of 2015. The songs are all from his latest, I Love You, Honeybear.
Happy Thanksgiving/Thursday, NTSIBberss.
tinörks, of Osaka, Japan, is a folktronica band. I was intrigued by this mainly because I wondered how “folktronica” manifested, exactly. In this instance, at least, it’s a ambient experimental noise with a soothing, gentle texture. It’s what I imagine a Zen garden would sound like, if a Zen garden had hands and could use a keyboard.
Here are three songs from ODOMYUNICA, which is, as best I can tell, their sixth and most recent record. You can hear the rest, and explore their back catalog, on bandcamp.
Komorebi [after a rain]: After a spring rain, I think, when everything looks bright and clean, as opposed to an autumn rain, when the world has a bruised cast to it. This is for a cheerful, hopeful nourishing shower, not a downpour.
Ljus och snö [candles and snow]: At least part of this record was inspired by the Northern Lights; this song does sound like the warm glow of candles in the window during a winter snowfall while the sky is ablaze with colors.
Railnöscape [rainscape]: This rain is a little bit . . . I don’t know, more jagged? A shade grayer, I suppose. Icy droplets that propel one to hurry between stores and get the errands done quickly.
Family Force 5 are something of a chameleon, by which I mean every time I catch up with them they’ve changed their look. This year’s style appears to be a complex fusion of “video games” and “’80s nerd.” This time around there’s also been some line-up changes: their lead singer (Solomon Olds) retired, and their drummer, his brother Jacob, has assumed frontman duties.
The infectious jams are the same, though. I saw them earlier this year at Warped Tour, at the end of a long, hot day, in front of an impatient crowd awaiting headliners. Family Force 5 started with Sweep The Leg and never took their feet off the pedal. The thing that really stood out: despite the heat, and the impatience, they had ’em dancing all the way to the back.
I am not normally one for yacht rock, but somehow, Los Porcos have won me over. I suspect it may be that the idea of pig-themed yacht rock is so deliciously absurd that I just can’t resist.
So you can see the awesome album art and hear one of their tunes, here’s Porc Noise Complaint, from Porco Mio, their new EP:
Long may you glide, my porcine friends; may yours breezes always be soft and warm, and your champagne never grow warm.
Dignitary, of Los Angeles, has what can only be termed a cinematic aesthetic, genre: punk noir. Mike Cuenca, their frontman, was at one time a filmmaker, so this is not an accident. The two videos below are for Demon Beside Me and Destiny’s False Turn, both from their recent EP The Tautology; together, they tell a creepy tale of love and murder.
Demon Beside Me: the tale begins, with a coven of witches, and a few of the seven deadly sins:
![Dignitary - "Demon Beside Me" Music Video [Goth, Post-Punk]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/lVPnTs6lAoo/0.jpg)
Destiny’s False Turn: things take a turn for the murderous at a Halloween party:
Below are two remixes from Taxes: Lost at Sea, which is about clinging to love in the face of disaster, and Your Other Left, which is about a commingling of nostalgia and rage into a curdled stew of bitterness. I listened to the originals, and Lost At Sea has been expanded and given some quasi-orchestral layers, while Your Other Left has been completely reconfigured in tone and tempo, to align with that of Lost At Sea.
They are both very good, and you should listen to them:
Lungs and Limbs are from San Francisco, CA. Lifelike is their first EP.
I’ve been listening to it on and off for a few days now. I keep drifting back to it as a palate cleanser. It’s pop music, light enough to encourage repeat listening, but there’s some thudding drums and reverb in there to add some weight and texture.
This is So Sweet, the first song, and, as it happens, the one that hooked me:
I’m also fond of Kaleidoscope, because I’m intrigued by the way they use light as a metaphor in the lyrics, and strategically deploy bright shining synth tones throughout the song:
Ok kids. We’re switching gears. Putting the ethereal experimental noise back on the shelf and taking down the obnoxious noisy punk rock with a little bit of folky swing winding through it.
Killing Kuddles are from Atlanta, and today we’re going to listen to Sinking Ship and Dirty Mouth from Sinking Ship, from an EP they put out this summer.
Sinking Ship is also the first song, and when the guitars kicked in I just kind of smiled and nodded, because awww, yeah. Put this on your roadtrip playlist when you blow out of town in search of a fresh start.
Dirty Mouth has a little bit of rockabilly flavor – but is played at breakneck punk speed. Mostly about cursing and staying up late and trying to not let your mom know you get up to those kinds of shenanigans.
Grace, by Aloric, is a tribute to Jeff Buckley. It starts out spare and delicate, and evolves into a textured, orchestral expression of raw feeling with undercurrents of big aggressive drums. I like it, and you should listen to it:
As April tweeted a few days ago: The Queen is back.
Here are Missy Elliott and Pharrell Williams with WTF (Where They From) and a video that includes a broad variety of hot dance moves, amazing costumes, and even some puppets. The parts of New York City visible in the background are not where I am from, but – those places, or places like them, felt like home for a long time.
![Missy Elliott - WTF (Where They From) ft. Pharrell Williams [Official Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/KO_3Qgib6RQ/0.jpg)
