We have spent the last eleven months by listening to a stack of music albums. To close the year, we’ve listed our ten best albums which definitely have put us to the cloud nine while listening to their musics.

10. Arcade Fire – Reflektor :

If only the albums was as good as ‘The Suburb’, we would put them sitting on the peak of the chart. But we didn’t say the album is bad. Reflektor still kicks it with some of the Suburbs’ rhythm, which we really love, and the album still has a strong rock roots with an intertwined of dark tunes. The lack of emotion from the album might take you a couple of times to really get the sense of Arcade Fire.

Recommended Track : Reflektor

9.Disclosure – Settle :

The band have been hailed for their dance music and given an outstanding call-out. ‘Settle’ is 100% a sugar land for a fan of Groove Armada or Artful Dodger. Knowing that ‘Settle’ is the duo’s debut album, we are blown with its content. What not to love! The album itself will give you the finest house music, 90’s electro and some modern dance music. Somehow, it also gives us a chill that their music is reflecting the era when Basement Jaxx were dominating the dance music industry.

Recommended Track : Disclosure ft. James Woon – January

8.Phoenix – Bankrupt! :

They have catapulted into the big leagues with “Wolfgang Amadeus…” The hardest task is to maintain their album quality and their popularity. Instead of making Wolfgang Amadeus part II, they’ve decided to make something different with their own touch. Layered thick synth flavored with heart-thumping drums and the way their vocalist Thomas Mars pronounce exotic words such as “Drakkar Noir” and “Oblique City”, that’s just the Phoenix way of maintaining their lovely status among their fans.

Recommended Track : Tryin’ to be cool

7. QOTSA – Like Clockwork :

Like Clockwork is the long awaited album from Queens of The Stone Age after their hiatus in 2009. In August 2012, Homme with his band mate began to record their sixth album. Like Clockwork is the first independent album from this California based band. However, it doesn’t shrink the musical quality, they still creates fantastic album from astounding songwriting, badass guitar riff in full effect, and not to mention the great musicians who collaborated with them such as Alex Turner, Jake Shears, Trent Reznor, James Lavelle, and Sir Elton John.

Recommended Track: If I Had a Tail

6. James Blake – Overgrown :

The second album of James Blake is unequivocally an amazing job. The album is being written beautifully with a nice touch of dub step, we really think James Blake is one of the most genuine artist who can describe dub step in a very classy way. The album also takes some hip/hop and soul music to make it classier. As a result, Overgrown has earned him a Mercury Prize and got him nominated for Grammy Awards 2014.

Recommended Track : Retrograded

5. Justin Timberlake – 20/20 :

The new king of pop, Justin Timberlake is bringing the sexy back again with 20/20 experience. His third solo album takes over the number one spot both in the UK and US charts, it has reached nearly a million in its first week sales. The former leader of the famous boyband *NSYNC is probably the only singer who can make a seven-minute track without making the listeners feel bored with his falsetto voice, groovy beats, and skillfully written lyrics. Nonetheless, 20/20 Experience cannot beat the massive success from Timberlake second album Future Sex/Love Sounds that helped him get four Grammys. It’s hard to keep the 21 years of experience in the right track, but we must say that Timberlake has successfully nailed it.

Recommended Track: Let The Groove Get In

4. Foals – Holy Fire :

Foals’ third album, “Holy Fire”, is a solid proof of their hardworking career. They could’ve easily followed their signature sound that they have created in “Antidotes” and “Total Life Forever”. But now, they were trying to capture the energy and improvement outside their comfort zone. Most new bands have copied Foals’ signature guitar sound but they’ve failed to reach the stage where the Oxford guys have reached. There’s a simple explanation, it is mainly because most of the bands don’t have the character and maturity that Foals gained in the past few years.

Recommended Track : My Number

3. VW – Modern Vampires of the City:

When the guys from Vampire Weekend said that their third album would be ‘darker’ from the first two that preceded it, they didn’t mention that it would sound better too. Vampire Weekend entered the music industry with the image of a group of preppy, young college graduates singing about (mostly) their days at the campus, but this year they had shown people that it’s not the only thing they’re good at. Modern Vampire Of The City is full of well-crafted, beautifully threaded tracks.

Recommended Track: Hannah Hunt

2.Daftpunk – Random Access Memory:

Random Access Memories was probably the most waited album of 2013. The excitement that was following its release was tremendous. Featuring collaborations with renowned musicians such as Giorgio Moroder, Julian Casablancas, and Pharell Williams, the album is filled with musical twists and turns. It’s also probably Daft Punk’s most personal work, what with them trying to maximize the use of natural sounds. Random Access Memories is a mix of disco, soft rock, and progressive rock, with some Broadway-style pop on the sides. With twenty years up their sleeves, it seems that the helmet-wearing duo have been getting better and better at what they do.

Recommended Track: Give Life Back to Music

1.Arctic Monkeys – AM :

Who The Fuck Are Arctic Monkeys is now an invalid question because, really, who doesn’t know Arctic Monkeys? Especially after their fifth album release which raised much raving reviews. The twelve tracks in AM have been threaded so perfectly that every aspect, from the guitar riffs to the glam-rock stomps, is simply irresistible. A wordsmith that Alex Turner is, the well-written imagery becomes highly seductive at no matter what pace. Slick slow-burning groove, infectious riff-rockers, a dash of R&B and hip-hop; genre no longer defines Arctic Monkeys as now they can make anykind of music and make it their sound.

Recommended Track: No.1 Party Anthem

Tracklist:

1. Tame Impala – Alter Ego

2. Pure Saturday – Awan

3. Everything But The Girl – Walking to You

4. Vampire Weekend – Finger Back

5. The Strokes – 50/50

6. Serge Gainsburg – La Javanaise

7. Jens Lekman – The Cold Swedish Winter

8. The Flippers Guitar – Coffee Milk Crazy

9. Medeski Martin & Wood – Let’s Go Everywhere

10. Camera Obscura – Do It Again

11. Paul Simon – You Can Call Me Al

12. Manucao – King of The Bongo Bong

Yup. It’s the time of the year again. Summer is finally here, and the cheery-yet-laidback holiday feel is back creeping on us. True to the tradition, we’ve picked out 13 summer anthems that fit the criteria to be the soundtracks of the most anticipated holiday of the season. Whether you’re sunbathing in the beach or just simply sipping on your lemonade at home, these tunes will make everything feel much more fun and jolly.

1. Trains – Wampire

With its lazy and breezy tune, Trains quickly puts you in a true summer mood. Its retro-funk feel will compel you to just relax, to lie down on the warm sand of the beach, and put your shades on as you bask in the heavenly sunlight.

2. 3am Spiritual – Smith Westerns

Craving for a peek of the new Smith Westerns album, Soft Will? This track might give you an idea or two of what the band have to offer. 3am Spiritual has some kind of a John Lennon-inspired melancholy goodness to it, completed with a touch of emotional guitar solo that will make you feel like you’re being thrown into a time machine and get sent back to the 1960s—which, is a cool decade, by the way. This is the song you’d want to be on play as you surf the waves of the Indian Ocean, or when you’re speeding down the highway that leads to your summer destination.

3. Alive – Empire of the Sun

The chorus of this song sounds pretty self-explanatory; “Loving every minute ‘cause you make me feel so alive,” sings Luke Steele. It’s a dancing ecstasy that sends tingles to every fiber of your body, making it hard for you to not break into a move. The shimmery synths make listening to the whole track feels like a trip to Neptune in the middle of summer; escaping from the hot, unforgivable heat, to the chilly and freezing planet. It’s been said many times that the mind is a powerful thing, and Alive will probably help you tone down the high temperature and cope with the heat wave that is to come during the season.

4. White Noise – Disclosure (feat Aluna George)

The sharp staccato synth melody, combined with the sugary sweet, almost-childlike voice of Aluna Francis (of Aluna George), is definitely the recipe for this catchy and dancy track. There’s probably nothing cooler than to have this song playing in a hip beach party you’re attending.

5. Demon Dance – Surfer Blood

Demon Dance is the second single off the new Surfer Blood album, Phytons. Judging from the sound of this song, it seems that Surfer Blood have managed to maintain their signature indie-meets-grunge roots. It’s packed with gritty pop vocals and hooky, Weezer-ish guitar, but the light melody makes the song a perfect company as you do your summer activities–maybe even get you to sing (or shout) along to a few lines from it.

6. Diane Young – Vampire Weekend

Aside from the funky bass and clattering drums, the surf guitar from Rostam Batmanglij also makes this somewhat abstract song something immensely fun to listen to. If this doesn’t immediately put you in a summery, groovy party mood, we’re not sure what would.

7. She Changes the Weather – Swim Deep

Mighty guitar squalls? Check. Frontman Austin Williams cooing like a Romeo? Check. This could be the soundtrack for your beautiful summer love.

8. Guns – CHVRCHES

Hauled as the band’s “best track to date” by many, Gun has an electro-pop sound and simple bass. It doesn’t sound too flashy or boisterous, which makes it a perfect summer festival sing-along.

9. The National – Sea of Love

Sea of Love (from which the band’s new album—“Trouble Will Find Me”– had taken its title from) is a tender, vigorous rock song that charms its way to your heart at the first listen. It could also be the perfect song for a slow, humid day.

10. Jessica – Major Lazer (feat Ezra Koenig)

It’s a low-paced ska-tinged jam that triggers a modicum of head nodding. The first thing that crosses your mind once you hear the intro would be an image of  an exotic tropical island with white sand and palm trees on the sides. Add Ezra Koenig’s vocal, and you’ve got yourself an engrossing song to hum to as you take a walk to the beach.

11. No Shelter – Blouse

No Shelter feels like a valley girl-acid trip, coated in some post-punk feel and a flavor of west coast America. The Portland band surely succeeded to deliver all the hazy goodness in this song.

12. Blurred Lines – Robin Thicke (feat T.I. and Pharrell)

When you ignore its racy content, the track is a bubbly bit of disco-shuffling R&B, with the (almost) right balance of smooth and soulful.

13. Get Lucky – Daft Punk

Okay. Some of you are probably shaking your head right now, saying that this one should be on the top of the list. The rest would probably argue that the hype has murdered this song for you that you can’t even listen to it anymore. But still, you can’t deny that the song sounds so, so good. Get Lucky is a formidable old-school disco jam. It’s intoxicating with the combination of minor chords and regular disco-type “up” beats throughout the song. A number of critics have even called it a track that represents “all that’s right in electronic music.” All in all, it’s a fun song that fits the happy mood of summer, a tune that easily gets one to sway their way to the dance floor.

 (Shafira Desliara/Photo: Karpe Diem)

Vampire Weekend – Diane Young

The band’s musical architect, aesthetic director, and also producer, Rostam Batmanglij said on his twitter page that “It is a good time to tell you I think it’s our best record“. With help from Ariel Rechtshaid as co-producer, Batmanglij and Rechtshaid successfully built the ‘dark’ character on this album and made it to be their best record. If you listen the song ‘Hudson‘ and look at the album’s cover, it’s an art photograph taken by Neal Boenzi for The New York Times on November 24th 1966, you can easily feel the ambiance of the tunes.

Photo by: Alex John Beck

Batmanglij and Koenig started writing materials for their third album right after they finished ‘Contra‘ tour in 2010. The band’s drummer, Chris Tomson helped them writing ‘Hannah Hunt‘, a song about Koenig’s classmates in college. After all the material wrapped up the band who just performed on Saturday Night Live last Saturday (11/6) began to record the album at L.A.’s Vox Studio.

Speaking of the whole album we can assume that it is different than the two previous albums. You can see the preppy Ivy Leagues grads have become more mature in every songs both for musics and lyrics. But you still can feel their unique characteristic. Like in ‘Diane Young‘ or ‘Dyin’ Young‘, ‘Unbelievers‘, ‘Finger Back‘ and ‘Worship You‘ you can still jumping around and dance your ass off (just like what you do when you listen to the songs on their previous albums). In the last track ‘Young Lion‘ you can hear Batmanglij’s tender voice because this song is written and sung by him.

The actor and director Steve Buscemi, who directed Vampire Weekend American Express Music Unstaged at Roseland Ballroom, said, “What I love about them is that you can either just get off on the musicality of it or go deeper.” and we couldn’t agree more with him.

]]> https://www.svanapaper.com/the-modern-tunes-from-vampire-weekend/feed/ 0 https://www.svanapaper.com/the-next-big-thing-parquet-courts/ https://www.svanapaper.com/the-next-big-thing-parquet-courts/#comments Sat, 04 May 2013 06:03:26 +0000 Alcander Alonzo http://www.svanapaper.com/?p=4122 From the Big Apple comes a big talent, Parquet Courts. The band consist of Andrew..]]>

Photo by: Matt Ellis/Spin

Earlier this week, the four-piece Columbia alumni held a concert directed by Steve Buscemi for American Express Music Unstaged at Roseland Ballroom, New York City, where they finally played the newest song from MVOTC Obvious Bicycle for the first time. It was also the first time we saw Ezra Koenig sang without his Epiphone Sheraton II/Rickenbacker 330. According to Rostam Batmanglij’s interview with NPR regarding Obvious Bicycle, “This song is interesting because it evolved. It started with a very hectic drum beat that I made, and that inspired me to play piano, and I just played these simple piano chords that came very quickly. I was listening Plastic Ono Band, the John Lennon album a lot, and that might have had some inspiration on me.” Their most recent track is obviously different than the other Vampire Weekend’s song. Also in this interview they leaked a short clip of ‘Hudson‘, another track from the new album.

Last night the band performed ten songs during a live session at Maida Vale Studios for BBC Radio 1′s Zane Lowe and they played all the six new songs. This is the set list and times: Diane Young – 00:48 | interview – 3:44 | Holiday – 8:04 | White Sky – 10:21 | Obvious Bicycle – 13:38 | Shots/Everlasting Arms – 18:05 | Step – 22:28 | Ya Hey – 26:56 | Diplomat’s Son – 32:28 | Unbelievers – 38:56 | Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa – 43:13 | A-Punk – 46:57 | Diane Young (encore) – 51:18.

After performing two new songs “Diane Young” and “Ya Hey” from their new forthcoming album, Modern Vampires at SXSW, Vampire Weekend finally released their official “Diane Young” music video which apperently was only about burning car with a background of New York skyline and “Step” which basically a lyrics video with New York city daily life as the background. They must’ve been very proud of their Yankee roots, huh?

Well, anyway based on their official web, the album itself will be out May 7 in the U.S. and May 6 in the U.K. via XL Recordings. Through this song, we can clearly hear that they are trying to expand their range of music with more of jazz and soul vibe, but off course without deleting their own charachteristic. So what do  you think about their new songs?

Band of Horses got to kick off the one-night festival. The band who are originally from USA performed their beautiful set for about ninety minutes with their hits like, “Knock Knock” , “Island On The Coast” ,”Is There A Ghost , and “No One’s Gonna Love You”.  The temperature of the festival was a successfully heated by the band who were formed in 2004 and they closed their performance with “Funeral” .

After Band Of Horses, Vampire Weekend clashed the night with their up-beat songs. The Four-pieces of Ivy League injected the crowd to be more energetic as well as the beat got to be more pumped. They performed “Cousins” as the starter, and as you know, it was explosive. Later, the set was continued by songs from “Contra” and their self-titled album like “A – punk”, “Giving Up The Gun”, “Horchata. The band who have previously released the launching date of their new  also performed a song titled “Unbelievers” or mostly known as  “Song#2” by their avid. Since Vampire Weekend only made it to Singapore as their stop in South-East Asia, They didn’t forget to thank to some Indonesians, Filipino, and Americans who made it to Singapore just to catch their performance. Later, it was found out that Vampire Weekend invited a couple of Indonesian Fans to the back stage for a meet and greet with them.

And the last,  Yeah Yeah Yeahs finally showed up to the stage and followed by a mass scream from the crowd. With the new hair colour, flashy jacket, spandex legging, and the striking red shoes, Karen O cs stormed the festival with the wild stage act!

photo credit: Faris NurHakim

Holidays! The best thing about holiday is you have a chance to do what you gotta do without have to think your stacks of assignments and stuffs. Mostly, people are doing vacation during holiday season. And we all know that sometimes it takes hours (or maybe days) on your journey to your getaway destination. So, to ease your boredom while waiting to arrive there, we have picked 15 Best song selections to accompany your day (we also put a short review for some songs and put the video for all of the songs) :

1.Vampire Weekend – Holiday
Just by seeing the title of this song, we already know that this song will cheer-up your day. The upbeat melody and catchy tunes will easily take you to hum along with this song.

2.Young The Giant – Apartment

3.Bombay Bicycle Club – Beg

4.Miike Snow – Paddling Out
Synth Pop Trio , Miike Snow put a really schizophrenic synths and contagious vocals in “Paddling Out”. And Paddling Out is chosen as the best track in “Happy To You” by Pop Matters’ Evan Swadey. The catchy riff of this song is inescapable.

5.Calvin Harris – Ready For The Weekend

6.Cut Copy – Take Me Over
The familiar sounds of 80s Soundwave in Take Me Over really put you in a disco pop level. Tell us when does disco pop themed song ever make you feel bored? True, It never happens.

7.Pop ETC – Yoyo

8.The Vaccines – No Hope
The snottier sounds of this song will never put you fell asleep (unless you just drank 20 pins of beer or you just consumed a palm of sleeping pills). Well, beside No Hope, we actually recommend you to listen to their “If You Wanna”, they both sound really good. And alike.

9.The Killers – Bones
This track is just so lovable. The 80s tunes and its scratchy riff is one of the reasons why we think this track should be on your holiday’s playlist.

10.The Kooks – Shine On

11.The Drums – Let’s Go Surfing
This is a very excellent single by New York-housed but Florida-reared band. A very beamed pleasantly melody of this song always boost up the holiday feelings. Well, the best situation for you to listen to this track is when you are about to…. Surf.

12. The Caesars – Jerk It Out

13.Animal Collective – Honeycomb

14.Arctic Monkeys – Fluorescent Adolescent

15.Weezer – Island in The Sun
Okay, you can’t go wrong with this song, especially when it’s on holidays! The laid-back cheer “hip-hip-hip-hip” sung by Rivers Cuomo is just so earcatchy and kind of gimmick for this song. The instrumental in the arrangement is summery and cool.

Those are our best 15 songs to accompany your might-be-so-boring holidays or maybe your so-boring-to-get-there moment! Hope you all enjoy it! (Alcander Alonzo)

Earlier yesterday (November 8th) Vampire Weekend, Band of Horses, and LAMC Productions tweeted the news about Big Night Out 2013.

Big Night Out began in 2009 and continue in 2010 and 2011 with a great band line up such as Muse, The Ting Tings, Stone Temple Pilots, and The Prodigy.

What are you waiting for? Book your flight ticket and get your BNO ticket at Sistic.com

Standard – $125
At the door – $140
Group Package – Buy 3 or more at $115 per ticket
VIP – S$250

Four pieces group from New York Vampire Weekend is back! They played their new song for the first time at the Cleveland House of Blues on 7/12/12  and they played it again at Pitchfork Music Festival 2012 last Sunday 7/15/12.

During a show that was otherwise jammed with crowd-pleasing jams from the band’s first two albums, they took the time to knock out an as-yet-untitled new song with a jumpy acoustic groove and a marvelously assured chorus.