On their fourth LP in four years, this North Carolina psychedelic folk trio seems comfortable just where they are—pretty much on their backs watching the clouds. Megafaun is a lush, focused, and unquestionably sleepy record, recalling some grassy, shaded area between 60s soft pop and full-on Grateful Dead. Gone are most excursions into weird noise, or really any tension at all, and within a few tracks that shift proves to be quite welcoming. Roll around in this one.
Everyone’s favorite Swedish pop orchestrator next door is back after a four year absence, and he’s full of charming little stories. The title track puts him on walk through the city with an inward debate, while “Waiting for Kirsten” depicts his friendly stalking of Kirsten Dunst at a music festival. It’s all very Paul Simon with an accent of him. And look out for the disco-horn solo in “New Directions”, a song that gives endlessly wordy directions, of course.
Primal, howled vocals, rim-tap percussion, textured blips…Nurses have flourished in a post-Animal Collective world since 2007. Dracula, the band’s third release, finds them determined to step out from the common avant-pop comparisons. They do this with grooves— heavier basslines, elastic beats. Almost dance-able, or at least, head-nod inducing, tracks are notably geared for light steps despite their dense sonics. There’s still plenty of freak in their folk, there’s just a lot more fun too.
Chronically underrated Canadian indie rockers Besnard Lakes recently did the score for an interactive web documentary called Welcome to Pine Point, and now offer it as an EP. To best appreciate the music on its own, one might at least want some understanding of the feature, which details the time-capsuled history of a former mining community through an interface built on photos, yearbooks, and 80s era home videos from the community’s one generation. The band’s contribution is their most subtle and sentimental work to date, perfectly complimenting the overtly nostalgic tones of this visual experience, and it can make for a rather moving listen separately as well.
This self-titled debut from UK twee-pop quartet Veronica Falls rounds up a handful of heavily buzzed-on tracks, and makes good on the promise for more where that came from. As mentioned in our piece on 90s revivalism with their Slumberland label mates Pains of Being Pure At Heart, the boy/girl dynamic re-imagines familiar, jangly guitar rhythms of the past with a new cheeky darkness. Slightly morbid thoughts in a peppy package.
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