The Diamond Rings, “On Our Own” (2010) find it on Special Affections Bedroom pop is a lot like acoustic-guitar-and-vocals songwriter stuff: it’s easy to overlook faults because the stripped down presentation suggests that a simple, burning desire to create rather than obsess over details, but it also means that there’s nothing to hide behind, so [...]

find it on Lisbon For those just tuning in, Fine Tune Friday is my favorite track of the week, picked out for no other reason that it’s the new song that beats out all others for listening time. When The Walkmen’s debut came out eight years ago, it was downright revelatory. Tracks like “We’ve Been [...]

Sambassadeur, “Sandy Dunes” (2010) find it on European If you’re on last.fm, have a decent-sized library on there and have never listened to your Recommendations radio station, you’re seriously missing out. Nowhere on the web is there a better spot for finding new music you’ve never heard that takes into account both the type of [...]

find it on Grinderman 2 Look, Grinderman kind of scare me. Even the humor of the lyrics to “No Pussy Blues” off of their first album was deadened by the savagery of the sound. I agree that their two albums are great soundtracks of male midlife crisis, but music is so harsh that the mid-life [...]

Maximum Balloon, “Groove Me (feat. Theophilus London)” (2010) find it on Maximum Balloon Side projects make the most sense when they’re one element of the original band or something totally different. You can see how tensions can arise when one member wants to go in one direction and another in another, so given free time, [...]

Fellow NH writer xtiandc and I have a minor disagreement about the seasonal place of Pet Sounds. I think it’s the perfect summer record…he thinks it’s a soundtrack best in winter. So if two people can hear the same album with complete opposite feelings of season, then it seems kind of dumb to try and [...]

Sharon Van Etten, “One Day” (2010) find it on Epic I haven’t (yet) joined the parade of people gushing over the new Sharon Van Etten record, instead being in line with XtianDC‘s feelings that it’s an up and down record. But wow is this song ever an up. It’s the kind of song that ensures [...]

Deerhunter, “Desire Lines” (2010) find it on Halcyon Digest There’s some songs that are like snake charmers for air guitarists. This is one of those songs. It has a catchy “woah-oh” thing going on, but it’s when those droning guitars–the ones that sound like they were plucked out of England/Massachusetts circa 1988-1991–really get going at [...]

There’s a line in the title track of Belle and Sebastian’s new record that’s a dead giveaway of the album: “Write about love, it can be in any form. Hand it to me in the morning.” This album comes off like an assignment. It’s not drudgery math homework but more of an creative writing essay: [...]

find it on Pop Negro The summer of 2010 was a banner summer for songs perfect for the season. Just about every week, there was a carefree, fun track that made you want to kick everything away and be outside. Well, we have one more before the cool sets in (right?) and as if to [...]