1r0n & Win3- The Cr33k Dr@nk the Cr@dle (2002) / The Se@ & the Rhythm EP (2003) MP3 & FLAC

"Love is a scene I render when you catch me wide awake. Love's a dream you enter though I shake and shake and shake you."

Until a homemade tape made its way into the hands of Sup Pop co-owner Jonathan Poneman (with an assist from the editor of Portland-area art mag Yeti, who had previously included an Iron and Wine song on a Yeti compilation CD), Sam Beam was the perfect embodiment of the "bedroom artist": working as a Miami-area Professor of  Film & Cinematography by day, by night writing hauntingly beautiful folk songs as equally grounded in the Delta-Blues as they were Nick Drake. He had been writing songs for the better part of a decade when a friend lent him a four-track recorder, and it was from these homemade demos that Beam's Sub Pop debut, released under the moniker Iron and Wine, was culled. While it's tempting to compare The Creek Drank the Cradle with other contemporary, feathery-voiced, folk-based singer-songwriters (there is a seemingly endless supply of them out there), Beam's debut sounds unique, not only due to the meticulously constructed yet lo-fi pedigree of the songs, the way the album as a whole reaches back to influences that pre-date folk music's 1960s-era heyday in addition to displaying an affinity with idiosyncratic Tahoma artists such as John Fahey and Robbie Basho, but also lyrically, as his use of imagery and symbolism, especially relating to animals, lends the album a singular and affective emotional tenor. On the loping opening track, "Lion's Mane," Beam's hushed, lullaby-esque vocal delivery provides perfect accompaniment to the gentle, woody-sounding acoustic guitar arpeggios and slide guitar accents that dominate the song's minimalist arrangement. Lyrically, Beam tends toward impressionistic images of love's allusiveness, perhaps suggesting, with lines such as, "Love's like a tired symphony to hum when you're awake," that is is inevitably so. Yet, as is the case with many of his songs, an animal symbol, in this case, a lion's mane, is used to interject a particularly ambivalent sense of hope into the narrative. Beam's Delta-Blues influence steps forth loud and clear on Southern Gothic tales such as "The Rooster Moans"; with its plucked banjo and slide guitar, it taps into the creaky mystique of an old 78, which serves as the perfect backdrop to its narrative of a young man's journey toward perdition. Another aspect that sets The Creek Drank the Cradle apart is Beam's astonishingly effective use of over-dubbed vocal harmonies. For example, on the achingly dark "Upward Over the Mountain," he over-dubs additional vocal tracks sung at a higher pitch but buried deeply in the mix; the ghostly effect that results is largely responsible for the song's considerable emotional impact. On his follow-up album, Our Endless Numbered Days, Beam, now with a professional recording studio at his disposal, left behind the charming austerity of his debut, and while the more polished results are often equally impressive, Beam's early songs possess a hazy timelessness that no studio could hope to replicate.

Television Personalties- "The Painted Word" Video (1984)

Here's a highly influential band from the original Post-Punk era that more people need to know about...

Blur- 10 Year Anniversary Box Set (1999) MP3 & FLAC -For sradams777-

"I met him in a crowded room where people go to drink away their gloom. He sat me down and so began the story of a charmless man."

Originally a fair to middling Shoegaze band who had arrived too late in the game to be successful purveyors of the Manchester sound that dominated their early efforts, Blur eventually re-invented themselves as Brit-pop revivalists, and in the process, became one of the most important and influential U.K. bands of the nineties. Blur- and before that Seymour until they changed their name at the behest of their record company, in hindsight, a very wise move- were little more than scene-jumpers with a tepid first single, "She's So High," until coming under the influence of producer Stephen Street, who was best known at the time for his engineering and production work with The Smiths. Under Street's tutelage, Blur came up with their breakthrough single, "There's No Other Way"; however, internally, things were disintegrating: while Blur were quickly outgrowing their dependence on the Manchester scene for inspiration, Food Records was very resistant to a change in direction, as they were evidently more interesting in milking the Manchester sound for as long as possible. Things eventually came to a head on the ensuing U.S. tour in support of the band's debut L.P., Leisure, during which relations between band members began to disintegrate and homesickness reached epidemic proportions, as Damon Albarn recalls, "I just started to miss really simple things [....] I missed everything about England, so I started writing songs which created an English atmosphere." Thus, the seeds for Blur's transformation were sown. Despite an occasionally nationalistic tone, especially in interviews, Blur's decision to foreground the "Englishness" of their music was not unlike The Kinks' decision, 25 years earlier, to move from Mersey-Beat-influenced Garage-Rock to Ray Davies' psychedelic-tinged explorations of traditional British culture, with the irony being that in Blur's case, it made them superstars (at least on their side of the pond), while for The Kinks, despite resulting in unprecedented artistic heights for the band, it considerably diminished their mainstream commercial appeal (if only temporarily). With albums such as Modern Life Is Rubbish, Parklife, and The Great Escape, Blur were at the forefront of a British guitar-pop revival that included bands such as Suede, Pulp, The Boo Radleys, Elastica, and arch-rivals, Oasis, to name but a few. During these years, Blur cultivated a well-publicized rivalry with Oasis that, at times, verged on a feud; however, what distinguished Blur's brand of Brit-Pop from that of bands like Oasis was its post-modern sensibilities, not the least of which was the ability to sound simultaneously tongue-in-cheek, even humorous, and viciously satirical in a socio-political sense. Another aspect of the band that contrasted sharply with the competition was their penchant for artistic re-invention, a characteristic largely attributable to guitarist Graham Coxon. During their Brit-Pop years, Blur was quite dismissive of and staunchly resistant to the influence of American indie music on the British music scene, leading Albarn to claim at one point, "If punk was about getting rid of hippies, then I'm getting rid of grunge." Nevertheless, by the mid-nineties, Coxon was falling under the influence of various American Lo-Fi and Noise-Rock bands and consequently had no interest in continuing in the vein of The Great Escape, something that very nearly spelled the end for Blur, as his band-mates were initially not eager to re-invent themselves at the height of their commercial and critical appeal. However, they eventually came around to Coxon's idea of making music "to scare people again." The result was Blur, which Albarn termed, "English slacker," an album that largely redefined the band's sound by assimilating American Lo-Fi influences such as Beck and Pavement and garnered the band critical acclaim while (at least initially) alienating their fan-base. Blur's final album of the decade, 13, saw the band move even further afield of their Brit-Pop past by ending their long-standing relationship with Stephen Street and enlisting William Orbit as producer, who reportedly gave Coxon free-reign in the studio and encouraged Albarn to explore his crush on gospel music. As a result, 13 stands as Blur's most stripped down and darkest album, but also its most self-indulgent. When all is said and done, Blur was probably the most consistently great British band of the nineties, which is even more impressive given the fact that, stylistically, they were not a band to rest on their laurels.

John Maus- We Must Become the Pitiless Censors of Ourselves (2011) / Love Is Real (2007) MP3 & FLAC

"And this is the time to gather at tables aloud with memory of our lost play
and silent pageantry."

A brief glance through some of the critical reviews of John Maus' three albums, and it becomes clear that he is a polarizing figure, inspiring either condescension or adulation with very few reviews falling in between. While some describe the music as featureless or derivative, others characterize Maus' sound as opening new vistas of possibility in pop music. In actuality, Maus embraces a gloomy, Lo-Fi aesthetic, which is largely constructed with vintage analogue synthesizers; however, he is not shy about introducing conventional pop elements into the mix, but does so in a way that refuses the glossy seductions and easy resolutions that straightforward pop deals in. On his second LP, Love Is Real, Maus approximates the overly bright yet wafer thin sound of eighties synth-pop but strips it of all its clarity by throwing it down a well of hazy reverb and by using his sometimes clumsy and often exaggerated doom-filled Ian Curtis croon to lend the songs a dark, claustrophobic feel. For example, on "Love Letters from Hell," a cheap drum machine and strangely funereal synth-based organ effect conspire to create a context for Maus' Dubby Post-Punk vocals that is equal parts Vangelis, Joy Division, and Lee Perry. While Maus' third album, We Must Become the Pitiless Censors of Ourselves, does not stray far from its predecessor in terms of inspiration, it does demonstrate greater sonic depth, superior song-writing, and a slightly better drum machine. "...And the Rain" offers an interesting study in Maus' method; taking the most banal elements of cheesy eighties synth-pop, burying them in layers of foggy reverb, and juxtaposing them to his throaty vocals dripping with both sentimentality and irony, Maus approximates what Stephin Merritt might have sounded like fronting B-Movie in 1983. Nevertheless, there are moments on We Must Become the Pitiless Censors of Ourselves where Maus transcends his deconstuctive retro-mode and points the way toward something new and intriguing. "Believer," the album's lead single, is one of these moments. Sounding a bit more produced than the rest of the album, the song's refracted Gregorian chant-style vocals provide an epic sense of depth, making Maus' stream of consciousness lyrics sound like echoes of something profound, and the procession of indelible hooks makes "Believer" easily the most memorable track on the album. Maus' music may not be as transformational as he wants it to be or, perhaps, as we want it to be, but given half a chance, it becomes clear that he is mining some interesting musical territory here.

Paisley Underground Series, #18: The Chesterfield Kings- Night of the Living Eyes: 1979-1983 (1989) / Here Are the Chesterfield Kings (1982) MP3 & FLAC

"Cry all night girl, I won't care, you can't hurt me, I won't be there."

Since its original release in 1972, Nuggets, the legendary compilation of mid-sixties Garage-Rock, has served as a fertile inspiration to any number of underground music scenes ranging from hardcore Punk to psychedelic revivalism. One reason for this is the raw energy and D.Y.I. ethos that characterized bands such as The Electric Prunes, The Standells, and The Seeds, which, to some extent, created the blueprint for both the Punk and Post-Punk movements a decade later (it's no coincidence that Nuggets was curated by future Patti Smith guitarist Lenny Kaye). During the late seventies and early eighties, Los Angeles functioned as something of an underground epicenter for not only Punk, but psyche-rock as well, while the east coast played host to a major Garage-Rock revival spear-headed by bands such as The Lyres, The Fuzztones, and a Rochester band called The Chesterfield Kings. The band was conceived by Greg Prevost, a music journalist and record collector who had previously fronted a garage-punk band called Distorted Levels. In their original incarnation, The Chesterfield Kings went to great lengths to recreate the sound, look, and feel of original Nuggets-era bands, even going so far as to press limited copies of their early singles to render them just as collectable as those of the bands they were emulating. Until releasing their second album, Stop!, The Chesterfield kings were primarily a covers band, but one specializing in only the most esoteric Garage-Rock obscurities. As such, on their early singles, which were eventually collected on Night of the Living Eyes: 1979-1983, and their debut LP, Here Are The Chesterfield Kings, the band is able to consistently avoid sounding derivative because the material is, by and large, unfamiliar and the performances are informed with Punk-inspired fury and a meticulous attention to mid-sixties-era authenticity. The tracks comprising the first half of Night of the Living Eyes 1979-1983 are the band's initial pre-debut LP releases, which tend to showcase a more basic, punk-influenced sound than their later work. For example, on "Exit 9," a cover of a long-forgotten Garage-Rock gem by The Heard, The Chesterfield Kings manage to capture the grimy psychedelic feel of the original while injecting a little Punk rage for good measure, and when all is said and done, it's their version that sounds definitive. While their debut LP, Here Are The Chesterfield Kings, turns down the Punk quotient a notch or two, the results are no less impressive, as on The Turtles' "Outside Chance," which features razor-sharp guitar notes and sneering vocals that lend the song a little more bite than The Turtles were able to give it. Over the years, many have written off The Chesterfield Kings as being too derivative and one-note, but where a lot of their contemporaries eventually abandoned Garage-Rock for a more conventional, and thoroughly forgettable, hard-rock sound, The Chesterfield Kings have, for the most part, stayed true to the rich tradition that provided them with their original inspiration.

Billy Bragg- "Strange Things Happen" (1984) Live on The Tube

I'd have a hard time coming up with a musician I admire more than Billy Bragg. Here he is strapped into his busking gear singing to a bunch of bewildered onlookers. I love the part where he stops momentarily and sings to the girl:

The Antlers- Burst Apart (2011) MP3 & FLAC

"Pulled together but about to burst apart."

I'll be honest, after Hospice, an unrelentingly bleak yet achingly gorgeous exploration of the impact of death on the living, I had no idea what to expect from The Antlers on their follow-up, Burst Apart. While the conceptual ambitions of the previous album certainly paid off in the form of a creative breakthrough, they clearly decided to traverse a different path on Burst Apart, which was a wise move as the album has a more expansive, wide-ranging feel than its predecessor. Yes, Pete Silberman still wends his expressive voice through the darkest corners of emotional turmoil and its aftermath, but in doing so this time around, The Antlers let a few momentary flickers of light shine through. Burst Apart, true to its name, is a collection of smaller statements rather than a group of songs all bending to the arc of a single narrative; however, when listening to the album the first time through, it is striking how big these songs sound, and even more impressive is the fact that they pack a similar emotional punch to Hospice without the tether of a single conceptual setting. On the album's opener, "I Don't Want Love," Silberman effortlessly leaps back and forth between a Jeff Buckley croon and a Jonsi-esque falsetto, while the band moves between Post-Rock crescendo and dreamy abstraction. Perhaps the most surprising track is "Putting the Dog to Sleep," which features one of Silberman's least restrained vocal performances married to one of his best lyrics; however, what really makes the song distinctive is its torch-song pathos and unsettling atmospherics. With Burst Apart, The Antlers have managed to retain the emotional impact that made Hospice so memorable and have me highly anticipating what comes next.

The Antlers- Hospice (2009) MP3 & FLAC

"You return to me at night just when I think I may have fallen asleep. Your face is up against mine, and I'm too terrified to speak."

The hardest part of dealing with death is its incomprehensibility, the way it lifts the curtain on our quotidian lives and forces us to stare, if only momentarily, into an abyss of ineradicable absence. Anyone who has lost a loved one knows this disorienting feeling intimately, a stark sense of finality that no amount of preparation and emotional adjustment can soften. In a certain sense, The Antlers' debut Hospice is about how we engage with, and sometimes hopelessly struggle against, this incomprehensibility. Hospice, with its concept album ambitions, stands as something of an anomaly in this age of micro-genres and iTunes, but it wears its narrative well and is bolstered by Peter Silberman's dynamic but never flashy vocals. Lyrically, the story is ostensibly about a cancer patient, Sylvia, bitterly struggling through her last days and a hospice nurse who, despite the hopelessness of the situation, falls in love with her. Some have compared this album to Lou Reed's harrowing masterpiece Berlin (although Magic and Loss also comes to mind), and the comparison is apt; both albums are unblinking in their examinations of trauma, and both albums manage to integrate story and music masterfully, making them well-worth returning to despite the uncomfortable subject-matter. And this is something to remember about Hospice, concept album aside, it contains some wonderfully lush (and sometimes creepy) Chamber-Pop whose expansiveness can verge on Post-Rock at times. Coupled with Silberman's memorable voice, it all makes for a very distinctive and emotional listening experience.

The Antlers- "Kettering" (2009) Live, Spinner Interface

Brooklyn prodigies with some serious mood music:

Ride- Smile (1990) MP3 & FLAC

"And when I see you sliding past, I make my plans, and then my plans slip through my fingers just like sand."

While My Bloody Valentine is often cited as the pinnacle of the Shoegaze movement of the late eighties and early nineties, Ride's first smattering of EPs and their debut full-length, Nowhere, are nearly as good, with the added bonus of pushing the "wall of sound" approach into regions more visceral and less fussed-over than their contemporaries. On Smile, a compilation of the band's first two EPs for Creation, the influence of Psychocandy is palpable, and like The Jesus and Mary Chain, Ride are careful to wrap their layers of distortion around sugar-sweet garage-pop gems. For example, on one of the album's obvious highlights, "Chelsea Girl," Ride tap into a mid-sixties garage-psych sound but take it somewhere new with heavily distorted guitar squalls and Loz Colbert's manic drumming. While "Silver" heads into darker neo-psychedelic territory, "Furthest Sense" nods in the direction of My Bloody Valentine, but whereas that band buries melody in layers of guitar refraction, Ride pushes the song's pop structure to the foreground. Though Ride's debut album (and masterpiece) is more fully-formed and better recorded, the EPs comprising Smile should by no means be overlooked.

Paisley Underground Series, #1: Various Artists- Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era 1965-1968 (1998) Box Set (4 Discs) MP3 & FLAC

"I can't get your love; I can't get a fraction. Uh-oh, little girl, psychotic reaction."

I've decided to initiate this massive series with what is arguably the closest approximation to a point of origin for The Paisley Underground. Originally released as a double album in 1972, Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era 1965-1968 was the first substantial attempt to re-appraise the incredibly fertile American garage-rock movement of the mid to late sixties. This movement, much like The Paisley Underground, was quite diverse, including garage, psychedelic, country and chamber-pop bands (and everything in between), some of which virtually invented the category "one hit wonder." Overall, Nuggets builds a spectacular and exhaustive counter-narrative to the sixties rock mainstream. For every derivative gem, for example The Knickerbockers "Lies," which sounds a bit like a Beatles tribute band, there are songs such as "Dirty Water" by The Standells" and "Psychotic Reaction" by Count Five, both of which clearly anticipate the unique marriage of garage, country and psychedelia that would blossom (again) in the early eighties. The original 1972 double album comprises the first disc, but don't stop there because the remaining discs harbor many obscure gems ripe for rediscovery. One of the best (and strangest) is "The Little Black Egg" by The Nightcrawlers, an ingenious mash-up of Jangle-Pop, Southern Gothic, and psychedelia. Nuggets is an essential point of departure for anyone interested in psych and neo-psych music.

Swell Maps- Jane from Occupied Europe (1980) MP3 & FLAC

"And the door's been bricked up, and the room is a mess, and we'd exchanged salvos even before we met."

In many ways, the early Post-Punk movement was a reaction to the overly simplified aesthetic (as well as ideology) of a UK Punk scene that had quickly become a caricature of itself by the end of the seventies. While the term "Post-Punk" has, over the years, become synonymous with the moody, scratchy, cerebral approach of bands such as Gang of Four, the movement was/is actually quite diverse. This is best exemplified by Swell Maps, who integrated the original Punk D.Y.I. aggression with more "arty" influences such as Can, and did so while casting a thick layer of cheeky irony over everything. While their debut, A Trip to Marineville, wasn't always able to integrate these different sonic palettes together seamlessly, their follow-up and swansong, Jane from Occupied Europe, stands as one of the most singular-sounding albums of "The New Wave." From the first few seconds of "Robot Factory," the lead track, it is clear that we have entered uncharted territory. With eerie psych organ, strange clicking effects, and distant mumbled voices, the song sets the tone for what's to come. Standout track "Cake Shop Girl," with its combination of guitar crunch and Kraftwerk-style synth-lines practically writes the book on integrating Punk and pop, a book bands like The Meat Puppets would be memorizing soon enough. Jane from Occupied Europe is, without a doubt, an essential document of Post-Punk's first wave.

Swell Maps- A Trip to Marineville (1979) MP3 & FLAC

"This is just another song; I guess it's rather long. This is just another song, and now it's gonna stop."

Even though brothers Nikki Sudden and Epic Soundtracks (not their real names in case you were wondering) had been tinkering in a band together for several years under the name Sacred Mushroom, it was not until the rise of the British D.Y.I. Punk scene of 1976-1977 that they began gigging and eventually found their way into a studio. When they finally got around to recording a full-length, the result was A Trip to Marineville, a mad scatter-shot of an album that manages to offer some of the best Punk of the era, but be warned: for the most part, this is not Punk of the simple three-chord-thrash variety. Mixing in surf guitars, Kraut-Rock flourishes and some glammy touches, there is simply nothing else from the original (Post) Punk era that sounds quite like Swell Maps. A Trip to Marineville is, among other things, the fruit of two distinct sonic approaches, the first being comprised of glam guitar crunch, Punk-Rock vocals, and quirky twists that always push the proceedings beyond the limits of Punk conventions. The second approach, as evidenced by songs such as "Gunboats" and "Adventuring in Basketry," indulges the band's obsession with Kraut-Rock legends Can, creating a unique mash-up of sonic textures that Swell Maps would explore to even greater affect on their next album, Jane from Occupied Europe.

Women- S/T (2008) / Public Strain (2010) MP3 & FLAC

"Grey balloons set toward the sun, fighting words underneath your tongue."

Wiry, metallic, clanging, unapologetically dissonant and still somehow sweetly melodic in a trebly, spiky Post-Punk sort of way, Women, a Canadian noise quartet with experimental tendencies, produces a sound caught in the gap between claustrophobic avant squalls and hooky pop confections. Nowhere do these poles come together more dramatically than on "Black Dice," a standout track from their eponymously titled debut. At first the song sounds like a classic nugget of mid-sixties lo-fi garage-pop, until the melody slowly and subtly starts to warp as if being played on a broken record player. And this is the curious conceit of the debut: pop songs flicker in the light before being whisked away into caverns of impenetrable (and sometimes irritating) noise. The album cover for the band's second album, Public Strain, couldn't be more apropos of the music contained within: a stark, dark-lit snowstorm punctuated by the burning glow of poetic beauty. This time, the pop songs no longer descend into the caverns of noise; rather, they provide the blurry outlines that give vestiges of form to the spectral dissonance. Simultaneously beautiful and exceedingly bleak, it's hard to shake the feeling that Women are really on to something original when listening to a song like "Venice Lockjaw," with vocals sounding as off kilter as they do haunting- imagine The Clientele cross-bred with The Velvet Underground. Women produce a singular sound well worth multiple spins for those with ears to hear.

Kurt Vile & The Violators- "Baby's Arms" (2011) Live, AKA Records, Philadelphia

Wow, even better live!

W@rm Gh0st- Uncut Di@m0nd EP (2011) MP3 & FLAC

"Ditch my pride and let my body go. Cells collide and burst into a glow."

Warm Ghost's Uncut Diamond EP is both claustrophobic and epic, tightly constructed and deliberately unfocused. By marrying Kraut-rock-inspired soundscapes to Shoegaze ambiguity and occasionally spiking the proceedings with a hint of eighties synth-pop cheese, Warm Ghost manages to lend a dark emotional weight to these songs, at times invoking an ethereal moodiness that recalls the heyday of the 4AD brand of Gothic dream-pop. However, things are more fragmented here, and conversely, more openly romantic in tone thanks to Paul Duncan's blurry yet heartbroken vocals. Warm Ghost's aural bricolage comes together most effectively on the single, "Open the Wormhole in Your Heart," which is an ecstatic down-tempo masterpiece featuring Duncan's most affecting vocal turn. Hopefully there's a long-player by this band on the horizon.

Warm Ghost- "Open the Wormhole in Your Heart" Video (2011)

LoFi Goth-tronic with a dash of Shoegaze, and yes, it all works to great effect. More to come.....

Paula Frazer- A Place Where I Know: 4-Track Songs 1992-2002 (2003) MP3 & FLAC

"By some strange design I feign to believe that this image was mine."

While Paula Frazer's otherworldly Patsy Cline croon has gained her some attention over the years, her songwriting skills have long been overlooked. Part of this is due to the slightly heavy-handed production on Tarnation's two studio albums (this is even more the case on her solo albums), which tended to push her subtle melodies and evocative lyrics down in the mix. A Place Where I Know: 4-Track Songs 1992-2002 offers the chance to hear some of Frazer's best songs shorn of all the dusty bottom-of-a-well reverb of the studio recordings. What becomes evident after hearing many of these demos is that Frazer's voice and lyrical ability are more than up to the task of conveying a sense of tragic desolation on their own. While the recording quality of these demos varies a bit, this never gets in the way of the music, and in some cases, the tape hiss actually adds to the ethereal creepiness of the recordings.

The Jesus and Mary Chain- Psychocandy (1985) MP3 & FLAC -For oh hi there-

"It's so hard not to feel ashamed of the loving living games we play each day."

Most critics tend to describe Psychocandy as something of a mash-up of Beach Boys-style harmonies and Velvet Underground-inspired dissonance, and while these are unquestionably major elements helping to sculpt its overall sound, such descriptions tend to overlook just how singular this landmark album actually is. At the time of its release, Psychocandy was notorious for its piercing squalls of feedback, but looming just beneath this Noise-Rock veneer are some of the most achingly beautiful songs you're likely to hear. For example, on "Just Like Honey," the Reid brothers' naively laconic vocal harmonies coupled with the reverb-soaked production create an unlikely, and somehow perfect, marriage of Motown and Pych-Rock. To call Psychocandy "influential" does it no justice at all; the truth is, much of what followed in its wake, including everything from Shoegaze to Lo-Fi, owes a deep debt of gratitude to this album. If you've never heard Pscychocandy, I'm supremely envious; I would give anything to hear this album for the first time again.

Deerhunter- Turn It Up, Faggot! (2005) MP3 & FLAC

"Born of concrete, born out of chemistry, comes out of chaos, blooms into infinity."

Named after a taunt the band regularly heard at early shows, Deerhunter's debut, though more or less disowned by frontman Bradford Cox, stating the band was "just really desperate to put something out," is a beautiful mess that rewards the listener if given half a chance. While Turn It Up, Faggot! is often described as an impenetrable noise-fest, nothing could be further from the truth. Yes, the vocals are virtually indiscernible and the heavy wash of reverb drowning everything creates an atmosphere of impenetrability, yet the melodies somehow surface, allowing songs such as "N. Animal," "Adorno" and "Oceans" to transcend the noisy undertow of the album. More than just an interesting glimpse of a great band at a formative moment, Deerhunter's debut is a great slice of noisy, tuneful fragmentation.