New Sunday proposals are here for your listening pleasure. Enjoy!
The New Tigers. Thanks to the excellent blog The Jangle Box I have another reason to love Finland: this quartet from the ever-pretty city of Turku. Active since late 2008 (seems the origin of the band was a wedding), they released a debut EP in 2010. After many gigs and some studio recordings, their first, self-titled album arrived on September 2011. And now a split single with the Swedish band Top Sound, covering their song "I Have Been Replaced". Using the fuzz as an envelope in which they hide the brightest melodies, or mix the immediacy of lush pop with sparse moments or sonic blasts, the Tigers are shoegazer magicians.
The Pear Traps. Among the best bands reaching my inbox lately there's this Chicago group, formed after a Craiglist ad in early 2009. After a self-titled EP in 2011, here comes "The Elsewhere" EP, four haunting tunes that immediately recalls Real Estate's masterpiece album "Days". Laid-back indie-pop/rock where guitars sound shimmery and adventurous, where the storm can be as warm as the sun, and where lo-fi aesthetics moves forward from its "comfort zone", announcing the promise of something very big. A name to follow close.
Pure Bathing Culture. Let's go to Portland, OR, to meet Daniel Hindman and Sarah Versprille. The duo began writing songs together in 2009. After two years, they moved to "Portlandia", and officially started their music project, quickly getting the attention of multi-instrumentalist/producer Richard Swift. With his help, they released their self-titled debut EP this spring, and what a debut it is! Pure retro-pop gold! Sorry for the excess of exclamation marks, but it's hard to contain my enthusiasm! Can you imagine Beach House leaving the "darkness"? Or Tennis looking to the 80s? Sophisticated, lush, charming. Awww, the joy of great pop music.
My Grandfather Came Skiing (Kun Isoisä Suomeen Hiihti, Finnish original title)- Daniel Katz
Let me introduce you to Benno, the narrator's grandfather of this novel, and a fantastic creation that makes the first work ever translated to Spanish from Finnish (thanks to Libros del Asteroide) writer Daniel Katz, a discovering to celebrate.
Katz, who debuted in 1969 with this work that goes beyond the concept of a novel, having more in common with the storytelling oral tradition of Finland, achieves something pretty remarkable. He explains a lot from his country's history and Europe in a few pages. He goes through many wars, the Russo-Japanese in 1905, the First World War, against the Soviet Union and then the Second World War, but without any drama. On the contrary, Katz will provoke us many laughs and smiles. And he tells us the story of his family, without making it a realistic personal biography, but a very entertaining collection of adventures.
But in my modest opinion, all the achievements of the novel are mainly thanks to Benno's powerful character. His attitudes, brutal sarcasm, the hilarious dialectical fights with his wife Wera, his constant flirtation with absurd obviously brings to memory the memorable "The Good Soldier Svejk and His Adventures During the World War" by Jaroslav Hasek, converting the book into a refreshing take of how ridicule, and therefore parodic, is the patriotic compromise. Of course, while you are reading, and frankly being amused by it, you are also being introduced into a compelling familiar story. But thanks to the particular humour, the characters are not dramatic, sappy figures, but remarkably active actors of the World History of the twentieth century.
My complaint with "My Grandfather Came Skiing" is its last part. The Arje and finally Andrei chapters have a completely different tone, more somber and depressing, the opposite from the lightweight, surreal and sarcastic we were having until then. I can understand the reason, but nevertheless, it makes you end the book with a very strange, unsatisfying feeling. Sad, because Katz's novel is highly recommendable.
Yesterday was a very special date for me, musically speaking. On August 8th of 2001, the U2Elevation tour arrived to Barcelona. It was my first U2 concert.
With the perspective of time “All That You Can’t Leave Behind” has revealed as a pretty irregular record, despite having some of the best songs the Irish have created in the last decade, with "In A Little While", a personal favourite on top of it. But anyway, I can only remember my excitement for the album then.
I also remember how hard it was to get the tickets: U2 decided to go for "intimacy" and do arenas (Palau Sant Jordi) instead of stadiums. That, plus the fact Barcelona was the only Spanish date of the tour, made the search of tickets a real quest. Oh, that long, neverending, nerve-destroying queue months before the concert...Unforgettable.
I was so eager to the gig, that to make this post I had to seek for information about who was the support act, Stereophonics (a quite famous band in UK by then). But no band in the planet could had even compared to the shadow of the four Irishman that day. From start to finish, from "Elevation" (one of the songs I hate the most from the band) to "Walk On", I enjoyed every second of it. There were some memorable moments, like "Stuck in a Moment" followed by "In a Little While", "Bad" followed "Where the Streets" (and Bono running the burning read heart stage) , my first "Pride", where my voice got swallowed by emotion.... the celebration of The Edge's 40th anniversary (happy 50's b-day Edge by the way!!), being with my brother....
10 years have passed since then, and I have seen U2 five times overall, in stadium and in a foreign country (Helsinki, Finland) but even they were amazing concerts cannot be compared to the magic of seeing your heroes for the first time...
Sorry for the nostalgic post... but the truth is I owe quite a bit to Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr. Thanks for the fire!
The Pear Traps. Among the best bands reaching my inbox lately there's this Chicago group, formed after a Craiglist ad in early 2009. After a self-titled EP in 2011, here comes "The Elsewhere" EP, four haunting tunes that immediately recalls Real Estate's masterpiece album "Days". Laid-back indie-pop/rock where guitars sound shimmery and adventurous, where the storm can be as warm as the sun, and where lo-fi aesthetics moves forward from its "comfort zone", announcing the promise of something very big. A name to follow close.
