ON ROTATION

Field Music, Plumb
XTC is one of my favorite bands of all time. There was so much to love and admire about the band's creative approach to making music. Every song and every album made you pay attention to what they were doing. Field Music, the brother act from Sutherland, England fall into a similar creative bucket as XTC and may just be the most interesting band, creatively speaking, in England right now. Listening to Plumb, I felt like I had been handed an invitation to go into the minds of these two musicians as they were conducting a grand experiment. As David and Peter Brewis play with every aspect of their music, timing, sound, space, and styles, I found myself engrossed in Plumb. And like with XTC, every song made me sit up and pay attention. 
                                                        A New Town 

Bahamas, Barchords
Last year I fell hard for Afie Jurvanan's debut album Pink Strat. So much so, that I had to track him down for an interview. Now Jurvanan, who records and performs under the name Bahamas, is back with Barchords, the follow up to that great album. It is another fine album that picks up where Pink Strat left off. Jurvanan's music has a relaxed and breezy way about it and the general mood of both albums reflects this. What separates Barchords from Pink Strat is the way in which Jurvanan stretches musically. His songs here have a bigger and richer sounds and Jurvanan shows us just a little bit more of his wonderful talent as a guitar player. 
Lost In The Light  

Chairlift, Something

The first time I listened to Something, all I really heard was what I perceived to be an '80's knock off album by bands like Ah-Ha. But on my second listen I was able to take the album on its own merits and found the pure joy of Something. Caroline Polachek and Patrick Wimber, the duo behind Chairlift, definitely have a strong affinity for the synth pop from a few decades ago, but by paying it with respect, they are able to take the best of what that music represented and give it a contemporary twist. This album really charmed me and while it made me a bit nostalgic for the music of my youth, I chose to listen to Something one more time instead.  
Wrong Opinion   

Islands, A Sleep & A Forgetting
Islands wrote that their new album is "a bummer of a record, pretty much the whole way through. Do you like to commiserate over things that go sour in your life? Do you feel better when someone pours their heart out on wax? Cool." Nick Thorburn and the band were being a bit cheeky when they wrote this, but lifting the title of the album from a William Wordsworth poem, you know that there is seriousness behind them. Thorburn's lyrics, if read on their own, might actually take the wind out of your sail, but the beauty of this album is how he wraps them in music that is so warm and comforting, he makes you feel like everything is going to be just fine at the end of the day....and I can live with that.
                                                        This Is Not A Song