A year of nothing!

Well guys and gals, it's been a year. The blog's lasted much longer than any other I've done. This is also the 60TH POST! Which is hardly a milestone but shut up. It's satisfying. The blog seems to have been kept alive primarily as a testing grounds for small-scale design and coding, with random babblings to keep it up & running. I have no idea how many people have read it, or will come to read it, but I really don't care.

In celebration I present yet another post of "you must hear" material, today lenient towards detailing a new area of music I've very slowly started move to into; that of Indie Pop. As a genre it seems reasonably present on the international stage, it's a shame it's not more prominent down here the times I'm forced to listen to and/or watch mainstream music broadcasting. I've only managed to come across these 4 artists through chance happenings (not the Naked & Famous so much).



It all starts with Windmill's Puddle City Racing Lights. This happened a year or so ago, having recently begun an off-root into post-rock and the general turning point of my musical taste into one more... open-minded, I suppose. I'm on another one of my Real Groovy ridiculous alternative sale section excursions (from which I commonly emerge with little gems), nearing the end of my journey as I near the end of browsing the alphabet, when I come across an album with intriguing cover art. The artist, album and track names don't drop any hints, I've no idea what to expect.

I was laughed at by those in the car at the time when the CD was placed into the stereo. Windmill's voice is... a little weedy sounding to say the least. However if you're the kind of person who's open-minded when it comes to vocals then you learn to love all his warbles and love, most of all, his incredible music. Quirky, almost experimental songs led by his piano, commonly featuring strings, a distorted drum kit, some electronics and a metric butt-crapton of backing vocals. The whole album has a heartwarming feel to it, the kind of music to put a smile on your face on the drabbest and rainy city days.

Next comes New Zealand's very own the Naked and Famous, with their album Passive Me + Aggressive You. This band became impossible to avoid earlier this year, with their single "Young Blood" flooding the airwaves, to the point of being over-played and despised. At first, the song went right over my head. As the weeks went on, the song stuck, and I started to enjoy it along with the rest of their music.

The album has since grown to sound a bit samey, with a few songs heavily out-shining others. These gems are what make the album worth listening to however, and spread out enough it provides for an enjoyable listening experience. The album feels written in hindsight of a childhood lost, and provokes great feeling of longing and nostalgia, paired with feelings of appreciation and satisfaction of the times gone, and the joy that follows.

Shortly following was a dive into the poppier side with Ellie Goulding's Lights. It was basically the same deal here as with TNAF, except Ellie's single "Starry Eyed" aired much less frequently. During the height of her popularity I may have heard or seen the single once a day on the radio or television, and I wouldn't have been surprised to not see head or tail of her at all. She still emerged every now and then and the single grew on me, not quite as infectiously or dramatically as TNAF, but enough to spark interest and check out her full album. Why Starry Eyed was chosen as a single in beyond me, as certainly it's one of her weaker songs.

Fact is, Ellie Goulding's music stands out from the rest of pop music. Her songs are complex, with uncommon, unconventional keys and intervals leading to a strange, dream-like tone to her music. She provides thick melodies between guitar, piano and synths, and beautiful harmonies through her layered vocals. All with a glimmering, glistening tone from a dash of electronics. To top it off, her lyrics alternate between the down to earth and sincere, and seeming like the creation of a hopeful dreamer with their head in the clouds. The end result is an album that is truly magical, on an overall musical scale, let alone in the pop music scene.

Ellie disable embeding of this particular video on Youtube (why?!), so here's Dailymotion as a bit of a change for ya.

The finale in my journey of discovery so far is The Family Jewels by Marina & the Diamonds. Another entry into the poppier side of this music, possibly more so than Ellie Goulding (I'd also guess she's even more into the glitz & glitter side too, if that's possible). Yet I'm hesitant to say that because, well, her music is... odd. A little inconsistent. Incredibly experimental and strange for something that was last.fm's #15 most played artist this year. Perhaps her eclecticism describes the incredible absence of her music down here, perhaps too avant-garde for New Zealands' relatively musically uneducated ears. I've heard her music twice this year; both times on C4 (NZ's music television), on shows past-or-borderline midnight.

The first time I heard her single "Mowgli's Road" I almost couldn't believe it. I'm not sure if the music or the video weirded me out more; both seemed to counter-balance each other and the whole experience felt rather surreal to somebody barely awake. It was the second viewing of the music video that stirred me into action, and I decided I had to hear the rest of the album. The result is an incredibly... different... well, that's all there is too it really. She obviously pulls a lot of influence and knowledge from a lot of sources and compiles it into a reasonably consistent pop album. I use the term "pop" loosely, as I mean it in the most literal of senses; her music is popular, but the link between her music and the general, mutually accepted sound of "pop music" is very slim.