tune yards: Bird Brains (2009)

http://www.mediafire.com/?z16ee0eeu42mwvn

When you have a woman singing really well, playing ukulele, and looping things like nobody's business and recording the entire cd into a one-track digital player... well, what's not to love?

Since signing onto 4AD, she is poised to be the next quirky-female-singer-songwriter-producer, to tour the world with St. Vincent and Dirty Projectors.

You know, in typing all this, i realize how much people rely heavily on myth that surrounds records. You know what? It sounds really bizarre and fresh and the homemade quality really hits the spot after reading about Beyonce and Lady Gaga. I love to hear someone make music that actually sounds like they were making music live. And when people only make music with loops (aka Juana Molina, Imogene Heap, Andrew Bird) i get really excited because of the limitations as well as the possibilities.

So there! I like it.

Shields Down- Powdered Sugar Avalanche

http://www.mediafire.com/?5uc3gdwbpym5hwh

Powdered Sugar Avalanche combines the Everything But the Kitchen Sink Brian Eno brand of pop music with the whirled sonics of My Bloody Valentine and the instrumentation of Magnetic Fields. It's ultimately a group of pop songs, but sounds a bit like Alan Lomax engineered a group of pop musicians that Brian Eno arranged and Kevin Shields produced. It's all over the place, in a nice way, i think.

The 'band' consists of brothers Ben and Leif Fairfield, who both make their own cds, and Lisa Chuang. Ben Fairfield tends to make poppy songs in the vein of Jack Johnson or Elliot Smith while Leif prefers the overall sound and feeling of songs, more akin to Brian Eno or Andrew Bird.

The songs here are shrouded in imagery and feel a bit like reading a book on a remote ocean shoreline. It has a song in Thai, a Chinese boys choir, and lyrics about Japanese history. It's familiar-enough as a pop cd, but even at its most intimate, it still feels pretty far off and abstract.

"Any Kind of Day" feels a bit like Sarah McLachlan-meets-Cush and "SwanDive" nearly sounds like Jeremy Enigk with a looser backing band. I have always appreciated bands that rotate lead singers, and i especially like the three part harmonies.



* If you ever get a chance to pick up a physical copy, it's printed letterpress! Woo ha!