August 19, 2011

Today's Hotness: Saint Solitude, Weekend, Oupa

Saint Solitude
>> Sometimes records hit you at inopportune times, and so it was that early this year when we were toiling away on Ice Planet Hoth for the Day Job we found ourselves suddenly addicted to Saint Solitude's 2010 set Journal Of Retreat. The set soundtracked about a thousand frozen February mornings that started with a cup of coffee as the sun came up through a window by a desk on the 24th floor of an office suite in the midwest that faced the Mississippi River. We couldn't believe then that we'd missed songwriter Dup Crosson's wonderful collection of sunshiney indie pop strummery, especially since we had already written about Saint Solitude in 2009 here, and we resolved to keep an eye out for New Things from the band. Well, our vigilance has finally been rewarded, as we received word earlier this week that Saint Solitude's next long-player By Some Great Storm will be issued Sept. 27, and it apparently has been influenced in part by Mr. Crosson's love for Smashing Pumpkins. That sounds like a recipe for success to us. Folks on the band's email list were treated to an outtake from the By Some Great Storm sessions called "Deliverance," and we're thinking that if this great track (Bandcamp embed below) didn't make the cut, then the new, 12-song record is going to be full of what we critics refer to as "hot shit." By Some Great Storm was recorded at Landslide Studio in Asheville, NC and it will be released by Alive And Well Records. Mr. Crosson, who once plied his craft as a solo artist, has put together a new band to realize his compositions in the flesh, and the quartet will tour around the East Coast this fall. Watch this space for details.


>> Contemporary noise-pop heroes Weekend are following up their acclaimed 2010 effort Sports with a new short-player called Red. The trio's five-song set is the product of three weeks in the studio prior to a tour of Europe last month; a new full-length is slated for release in 2012. San Francisco-based Weekend, which formed fewer than two years ago, plans a tour next month to support Red. In the meantime, stream the new barn-burner "Hazel" below; the song welds melody to noise in completely gratifying fashion, as we think you'll agree. In case you missed it, the song "End Times" from Sports was released as a single in May of this year, and you can stream the radio edit of the track right here.

Weekend - Hazel by Slumberland Records

>> A brief follow-up to our mention of Oupa earlier in the week. The act's debut Forget is now streaming en todo at Bandcamp right here. And there is yet another video to gaze upon, this one for the piano ballad "Windows," which is stark and beautiful, despite not being a cover of the Garden Party classic of the same name. Garden Party you say? Let's post that to SoundCloud and have a listen, why the hell not? Oh, right... Forget was released earlier this week in the U.S., UK and France on the Fat Possum, Boiled Egg and Atelier Ciseaux labels, respectively.

Garden Party's "Windows" by clicky clicky music blog

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