Five Dollar Soul - "Wait For Me". Lurching indie rock that hunts for a cresting chorus amid dead-end guitars and a stark, taunting melody. It feels like a stunted melancholy, a sadness, anger or jubilance that's not yet free to blossom: "Wait. Please wait." Very remniscent of some of Idaho's work, the murky feedback sound and then a clear main line that rises out. Radiohead would throw in ninety seconds of dripdroppy electronics, but Five Dollar Soul don't bother; they let things slowly play through, never making it out, bumping into walls with a desperate man's blindness.
Tim Easton - "Carry Me". An alt.country ballad with soft hands. Fingerpicking, mellotron, snaps and backwards-flowing guitars blend like the Chemical Brothers' "Where Do I Begin," only this time there's regret and ache in the place of Beth Orton's bright-eyed potential. Easton's got a terrific voice, Ryan Adams' with the edges sanded off; gravel, smoothness, and a poet's care with words. A bass joins the weave, drums join in, and things slowly lift. It's Jay Bennett (formerly of Wilco) on backup guitars and mellotron, and we hear his penchant for pop experimentalism (closer to Revolver, of course, than Yankee Hotel Foxtrot). It's a beautiful song, gently churning. From 2001's The Truth About Us. [buy]
Into the Groove is a fantastic new pop mp3blog, finding excellent, underappreciated tunes. I'm really happy to see it around - the songs are great, and it's a wonderful counterpoint to some of the rest of our indie-centric habits.
Grab the Shout Out Louds track at Listen Closer. It's 90s alt.rock with a scratchy and wry Eef Barzelay voice, pop guitars that play with your expectations, scrambling toward a chorus and then falling back into weird surf flourishes. The organ hums like that friend who always has the best ideas.
New to me: Mark's Classical Gasp is a mp3blog that uses ogg vorbis instead of mp3, and boasts the radio-style format. Digging the righttogether blend of old and new. (Rickie Lee Jones! Franz Ferdinand! Cornelius b-side!)
Obligatory gmail swap update: USA Today, NPR, Baltimore Sun, MPR, Techweb, iMedia, #5 on Daypop. Almost 100,000 unique visitors in its first week. (I'm looking for a php hacker to help me out with something. Please get in touch!)