The Cornell Daily Sun (https://cornellsun.com/author/jfieldscornellsun-com/page/3/)
If you’re the type of listener that likes The Fray, The Format or the more recent releases from The Goo Goo Dolls, than you should definitely pick up The 88’s third album, Not Only… But Also. Let me preface with this: The album isn’t anything spectacular, it is simply piano-based alterna-pop-rock that is very kind on the ears. So kind, in fact, that iTunes promoted the opening track “Go Go Go” as the free single of the week last week.
Los Campesinos! have an exclamation mark at the end of their name because in the past they’ve made listeners want to scream out and dance like crazy people. We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed unfortunately just makes the listener want to put on their previous album. I refuse to believe that this album was made by Los Campesinos!; it sounds like it was made by the lazier, less-passion-filled Los Campesinos_. Their characteristic ADHD-styled shouts and speaking interludes feel forced and thrown together last minute on this album.
A single yellow light began to shine on singer-songwriter Mirah just before 10 p.m. on Sunday evening, and it continued to beam directly on her for the next hour as she entertained an engaged audience at Castaways in downtown Ithaca. The shoeless singer took to her chair at center stage, tuned her guitar, readied her amplifier and apologized to the audience.
She explained that she had to sit down while performing because a drum had fallen on her foot the night before. — thankfully no bones in her foot were broken.
Thomas Sanders of Tap Tap (which I trashed last year in a Sun review), is now part of a newer band called Pete & the Pirates. Sanders has made huge improvements with this endeavor and I’m totally digging it. Even one song, “She Doesn’t Belong to Me,” that was originally billed with Tap Tap — which I didn’t like — I now like as a Pete & the Pirates.
About a year and a half ago, Lesley Greene was sitting with her husband, playing ukuleles on her porch. Her neighbor, Gretchen Hildreth, walked by and, according to Lesley, “Somehow the idea came to us of a festival where musicians play music on their front porches.” This past Sunday afternoon in Fall Creek, that idea became a reality for the second time in Porchfest II.
Nearly 40 bands and musicians gathered on assorted Fall Creek porches and front lawns to fill the autumn air with a multitude of tunes. Co-founder Lesley Greene said that she was “happy to include everyone who wanted to be included.” And inclusion was key, as the acts ranged from an elderly recorder ensemble to the world’s first synthesizer band, to an all-girl high school pop band.
Within the space of a year, electro-dance-pop has taken off in the indie world. While females like M.I.A. and Santogold were busy blowing up around the U.S., two artists from Melbourne, Australia took up my attention span. I reviewed my first Australian obsession, Muscles, last semester. Now I happily introduce to you Cut Copy: a three person all male alterna-dance group, who bring out the best awkward dancing hipster jerks imaginable.
Although the genre doesn’t officially exist, please file Fleet Foxes under Nature Rock. The album is worldly, folksy and progressive. Listening to it makes the thought of escaping into the woods with nothing but your own self seem perfectly okay. Upon listening, one’s reaction is not expressedly happy but rather almost transcendental, becoming extremely cognizant and resulting in a reflection of your surroundings — possibly Emerson and Thoreau’s perfect soundtrack for a trip to Walden Pond. While each song is flawlessly composed, the sounds exude an aura that the five band members simply allowed their instruments to take them on a pathless jam session, which led to the most heavenly waterfall of music in the entire world.
Alcohol.edu needs to add a new section because music has now been linked to alcohol intake. Results from a new study show that bar-going, loud-music-listening drinkers could be more likely to hug the toilet the next morning. Research done on the effect of music and alcohol consumption found that loud music leads to more alcohol consumption in less time.
Nicolas Guéguen, professor of Behavioral Sciences, at the Université de Bretagne-Sud in France led the study that observed forty 18-25 year-old males at two different bars in Western France. The results are currently in press and will be published in the October issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research.
The Kooks lead singer, Luke Pritchard, might have slipped into a bit of a depression over a girl, but resisting the uppers was a great decision. This broken heart has written an album full of depressing lyrics that, somehow, doesn’t dishearten the listener.
Do you want to be happy? Then Move Every Muscle, Make Every Sound! (Or at least listen to the album.) Take the advice given in the album’s first song and “Shout, shout, let all your feelings out!” or “Scream, scream, at the top of your lungs!”