DOWNLOAD: Guards - Guards EP

Guards
Guards EP
DOWNLOAD

Here's another incredible free album for you, from New York band Guards. 3Syllables are putting this out on limited edition 12" in November, but it is also available to download for free from their Bandcamp right now and it is one of the most exciting and fresh reinventions of recent history I've heard all year - this will make your weekend.  With no web presence other than a recently activated twitter account - possibly at the insistence of friends Cults and Best Coast - and the Bandcamp, Guards offer a fresh enigmatic yet uncontrived take on their self-promotion. Similar to Twin Sister, which I like to describe as Vintage, this is a sound that rolls so many references into it that it sounds instantly classic - IS instantly classic - take opening track Resolution of One; as soulful as a Stax ballad with an injection of garage-rock adrenaline to take it into an altered dimension of musical lineage that continues through the album to mix disparate elements and meld them into a beautifully high-functioning Pop music; a multiverse of free spirited downtuning and dissonance, lilting horns and shimmering waves of chilled surf twang; Cults join them on Sail It Slow, dialling the pace down several notches with a slow-motion take on 50's heartbreaking milk-bar jive; closer I See It Coming matches the epic scale of Arcade Fire with chime backed ooohs and aaaahs but adds a feral a kicking upswing of tenacious rock and roll With an album that's as effortlessly all-encompassing as this they're easily a band that is going to get catapaulted to...you know, like MASSIVE Blog Hype or something even bigger, and deservedly so.

Before the physical album release, they're putting Resolution of One out on 7" through Small Plates now, which you can order from HERE and to celebrate their first ever gig the band have put up new song Swimming After Dark to download from Yours Truly:

DOWNLOAD: Swimming After Dark


They tagged themselves as “alternative, doom, new wave, power pop, rock & roll, New York"  Seem like good people.  Tweet 'em @guardsmusic

Best Coast - Our Deal

This may be all over the blogs by now but I couldn't go without reposting here. The cleanest recorded clearest eyed Best Coast song yet that leaves just as big a lump in the throat as others, if not more so because of the clarity.  And I never thought I'd hear myself say that.

After the jump:

http://blackiris.tv/brightfalls/

VIDEO: Best Coast - When I'm With You

This really needs no introduction, other than the exciteable words - Best Coast's debut video is here!

Best Coast & Pocahaunted

One of our favourite bands just split up, divided into two mitotic super cells of West Coast sun saturated summer sensuality. Pocahaunted is no longer the duo of Amanda Brown and Bethany Cosentino. Amanda is taking Pocahaunted further out into the cosmic wilderness with a fuller band, essentially a supergroup of artists from the Not Not Fun records roster - Cameron Stallones (Sun Araw; organ), Diva Dompe (BlackBlack; bass/vocals), Ged Gengrass (Antique Brothers; drums), and husband/co-NNF label owener Britt Brown (Robedoor; guitar). Phew. Mega band.

NNF put out the final Bethany & Amanda Pocahaunted cassette before they split, 'Live From The New Age', which hints heavily towards this new sound with intensely heaving waves of drone lifting higher out of the vocal fog, hitting sharper peaks and rocking wider ripples as they splash back into the mix. Here's a video of the new incarnation playing eariler this monthon the European Tour at the Galeria Zé dos Bois in Lisbon, Portugal (04.07.2009)




Pocahuanted

New horizons in two directions. So where to now?


Bethany has sailed out onto a hazy washed-out technicolour sun-kissed beach front sound with Bob Bruno (Goliath Bird Eater; drums). Together they are the fantastic Best Coast. There's been a lot of positive vibrations buzzing around blogs heralding the Song of The Summer - The Sun Was High (So Was I). Suitably, beautifully justified hype that might well see this band get wider recognition that Pocahaunted - it's certainly a more populist sound with the modern lo-fi harmony buried in overdrive feel of bands from everyone beween My Bloody Valentine and Times New Viking - but this is far prettier, joyful, happier and above all more in thrall to the Beach Boys sense of of the psychedelic 60's West Coast.

Found this video on YouTube which is Sun Was High set to excerpts from Un Homme Et Une Femme by Claude Lelouche (1966). It kind of works really nicely, kind of doesn't but it's here for you anyways. I think it's probably better to jus thear it and conjour your own imagery.





In Bethany's words on her MySpace she says:

"allow me to reintroduce myself
so i am back in california, and i thought what could be more fitting than to record a bunch of songs about summer and the sun and the ocean and being a lazy creep? so this is what i'm doing.

originally this project was called "sun dried" but then i realized that reminded me too much of old ladies with bad sunburns so i changed it to best coast. meaningful for two reasons, one is that obviously the west coast is the best coast, and two, BC are my initials.

the songs that are up here are just "demo" versions of the songs i have been writing, but my bff bobb bruno has been crazy at work adding drums, beach boys bass lines, and other amazing things. we are insanly trying to get this shit recorded and once we have at least one song fully recorded, i will put that shit up. i'm really fucking excited about this and i hope that every11111 likes it and can make out to it on a beach blanket this summer.

PEACE,
bethany"




The debut Best Coast cassette Where The Boys Are is out now on Blackest Rainbow and a self-titled 7" featuring "Sun Was High (So Was I)", "So Gone" and "That's the Way Boys Are" will be out very soon on Art Fag Recordings.