Belle and Sebastian - Write About Love (FLAC)

Belle and Sebastian released a new full-length this year, and it's strange to see how much and how little they've changed since Tigermilk. Write About Love is their eighth studio album, an impressive feat in the fourteen years that they've been around. Although it has a much bigger emphasis on production than previous releases, due mostly in part to the influence of Tony Hoffer, who has worked with acts such as Beck and Phoenix in the past, the personal touches of Stuart Murdoch and company still make this album uniquely Belle and Sebastian.

Towns' and cities' populations up and grow,
The workers move to the suburbs,
In between I watch and go,
I run along side rush hour traffic a prayer for every car.

Belle and Sebastian - The Boy with the Arab Strap (V0)

"Belle and Sebastian are a 7 piece pop band from Glasgow, Scotland. Their music can usually be described as "pretty" or "delicate," but without the negative connotations that those words may convey. The band formed as the brainchild of Stuart Murdoch. He recruited members "by instinct" in an all-night cafe in Glasgow. Eventually he found 6 other members, all college students, and Belle and Sebastian was born. The band originally was to just be a small school project type thing, and they initially agreed to release two albums and then split.

Their first album, Tigermilk, which was released in May of 1996 was an underground success almost strictly from word of mouth. Only 1,000 copies were in circulation, and reports were that copies were going for 75 pounds. The album was eventually re-released on a wide scale in 1999. The band's second album, and the one generally attributed to putting Belle and Sebastian on the map, was If You're Feeling Sinister. It recieved wide acclaim in the UK as well. The Boy with the Arab Strap is the bands third formal album. While this album doesn't break new ground for Belle and Sebastian, it consolidates their talents, and the result is an album full of folk-pop treasures."

Download.

Belle and Sebastian - If You're Feeling Sinister (V0)

The recipe for a perfect autumn day: equal parts Belle and Sebastian and Carissa's Wierd. Both gentle and falling, like leaves onto a sidewalk, into and out of your consciousness just often enough to feel a leaf brush your skin or to a hear a lyric like, "Who's seeing you at all?" The truth is that no one is, and Belle and Sebastian have the unique ability to be freed by this fact, to escape to the egocentric fragility and expansiveness of a child's wit and imagination. Every moment is just as surreptitious as it is intimate, and even the synthesized moments of If You're Feeling Sinister seem completely organic.

Download.

Belle and Sebastian - Tigermilk (V0)

On a bus stop in the town,
"We rule the school,"
Written for anyone to read and to see.

On a bus stop in the town,
"We rule the school,"
Written for anyone with eyes in their heads.

Download.

Warpaint - The Fool (V0)

After Warpaint's Exquisite Corpse was released on the Manimal Vinyl label in 2009, their small but devoted Los Angeles fanbase grew enormously. Warpaint has toured with several bands since then, including The xx and Akron/Family, probably the two best representatives of their genre-bending tendencies. The Fool is an exercise in everything haunting; I have heard few records this beautiful and blood curdling at the same time. Although postulations about the album of the year are typically imprudent and even at times overwrought, Warpaint stand a good chance of making their mark not only on this year, but, assuming that they keep releasing music like this, the coming decade.

Your brown eyes are my blue skies.
They light up the rivers that the birds fly over.

Johnny Foreigner - Grace and the Bigger Picture (V0)

Johnny Foreigner is mostly associated with bands like Los Campesinos! but much unlike LC!(!!!!!) JF follows a much more punk and much less cute method of telling you sad stories and wanting to kick your metaphorical ass. Lyrics are a lot more blunt than LC!, instrumentation is limited to mainly a guitar/drum/bass combo with female/male/male vocals throughout and constant sing-alongs (for you and all your campfire friends that like jumping and singing wildly and sometimes accidentally falling into the campfire and then having to go through intense burn treatment [totally worth it though] where in time you'll be back to doing stupid shit near campfires again) that you can enjoy over and over again.

If you get the chance to see them live with LC! on their current tour in the US, take it. It's a god damn amazing experience.

OUR TOWNS RUN BY CRIMINALS? YES!
Don't be a hater, take another sample

Download because you can write a blog post better than me.

Tram - Heavy Black Frame (320)

It's been said countless times before, but I really dislike some of the terms people use to come up with names for genres. It seems like genres used to have interesting names like "jazz" (which was a west-coast slang term for Chicago music), but now people only use other genres and adjectives to describe music now. Not very original. Such is the case with "slowcore."

But in any case, Tram are an amazing "slowcore" band who use an interesting mixture of emo and folk lyrics to create emotionally engaging albums that make for an incredible listen. They are often atmospheric in tone and some songs are borderline shoegaze.

I'm really digging these guys, you should check them out. Heavy Black Frame is a definite keeper. It's been on heavy rotation in my library for a while now, and they never disappoint.

Download here and buy here.