Tuesday 27 May 2014

Foxing


Foxing are a five-piece band that formed in 2011 from Saint Louis, Missouri. What's their genre? It's somewhere between a blend of emo/indie/post-rock/math rock/electronic music, as if that narrows anything down. Alright, think of a band influenced by the likes of Explosions In The Sky, This Town Needs Guns, Listener, The Antlers, Tera Melos, Maps & Atlases, Death Cab For Cutie, Brand New, and A Silver Mt. Zion (and their 1000 names). Now imagine that said band came from the same music scene that spawned The World Is A Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid To Die, Empire! Empire! (I Was A Lonely Estate), Crash of Rhinos, and Prawn. And what do you have? Foxing.

This band utilizes a range of instruments in addition to the basic guitar, bass, drums setup. A trumpet is prominently used, as well as various string arrangements, and electronic tinkering, among others. Their guitars are very clean, often laden with delay and reverb. The drums focus more on forming rhythms than keeping basic beats. The vocals are varied, often ranging from spoken word parts to cracking shouts and sputters of intense emotion ("Why don't you love me back?"). The lyrical relatability and poeticism is painstaking, to say the least. The band crafts songs featuring endless crescendos, cathartic climaxes, and eventual breaking points, the formula of post-rock, but structure their songs to remain unpredictable and adventurous, which sets them apart from the predictably that plagues the genre. The Albatross in particular is an amazing piece of work that I highly, highly recommend everybody check out in its entirety. It has got to be one of the most solid albums put out in this realm of music in years, in my opinion.

Foxing released their debut full-length on Count Your Lucky Stars, and were quite quickly signed to Triple Crown Records, for good reason. Below is the aforementioned full-length and their earlier material. Be sure to support the band, and they are a must-see live band if you have the chance. Enjoy.

1. Friendly Homes
2. Sunspotting
3. Gold Cobra

1. Foxing - Ocelot
2. Send Away Stranger - Still Figures 
3. Send Away Stranger - You Look Like a Basketball Pro

1. Japanese Breakfast - The Woman That Loves You
2. Foxing - Tom Bley

1. Bloodhound
2. Inuit
3. The Medic
4. Pent up in a Blind
5. Rory
6. Bit By a Dead Bee pt. I
7. Bit By a Dead Bee pt. II
8. Den Mother
9. Calm Before
10. Quietus

1. Weave
2. The Magdalene
3. Night Channels
4. Laundered
5. Indica
6. Winding Cloth
7. Redwoods
8. Glass Coughs
9. Eiffel
10. Coda
11. Three On A Match

1. Indica Two
2. Redwoods Two

1. Grand Paradise
2. Slapstick
3. Lich Prince
4. Gameshark
5. Nearer My God
6. Five Cups
7. Heartbeats
8. Trapped In Dillard's
9. Bastardizer
10. Crown Candy
11. Won't Drown
12. Lambert

1. 737
2. Go Down Together
3. Beacons
4. Draw Down The Moon
5. Where The Lightning Strikes Twice
6. Bialystok
7. At Least We Found The Floor
8. Cold Blooded
9. If I Believed In Love
10. Speak With The Dead (feat. Why?)

1. Carly Cosgrove - Bloodhound
2. Insignificant Other - Inuit
3. Sweet Pill - The Medic
4. Prince Daddy & The Hyena - Rory
5. Home Is Where - Bit By A Dead Bee, Pt. I
6. Hey, ILY! - Bit By A Dead Bee, Pt. II
7. For Your Health - Den Mother
8. Colleen Dow - Quietus
9. The Medic (2023)
10. Rory (2023)

Sunday 25 May 2014

Tiny Moving Parts


Tiny Moving Parts are a three-piece emo/screamo band from Moorhead, Minnesota which formed in 2008 when they were still in high school. The band consists of two brothers (bass/vocals and drums) and their cousin (guitar/vocals), I call that a fam jam (#cringeworthylilwaynejokes). Anyway, these guys blow me away. For a three-piece, their sound is so tight, and they have masterfully established themselves as one of the front runners in the modern emo/screamo scene, along with great bands such as Old Gray, Native, Grown Ups, and the Merchant Ships-related bands. The trade-off vocal parts, the bright and twinkly guitars, as well as the math rock-level technical bits of the bass and drums are some of the distinctive characteristics that comprise Tiny Moving Parts' sound. They are one of those bands that make you want to sing along and cry along to at the same time, you know? Basically one of the best kind of bands. The vocals can be super catchy, but with some emotionally hard-hitting lyrics relating to topics such as nostalgia. They just got signed to Triple Crown, and for a fucking good reason. Check out all of this stuff below, though the early things are from when they were in high school, so the quality of recording and such is questionable, but the later stuff is absolutely killer, both for the music and production value. Enjoy.

1. The Poem
2. De La Exsorta
3. Me Vs. The Eohippus
4. The Mountain That Climbed Itself
5. Sfumato
6. The Accents From The Backwinds
7. The Sea That Drowned Itself
8. Searching For The Orang Pendek, With Biotite Eyes
9. Moving To Antarctica

1. sfumato ('08)

1. For the Sake of Brevity
2. I Remember My First Bear P.1
3. I Remember My First Bear P.2
4. Weather Too Unbearable For Bear To Bare
5. You Have No Idea How High I Can Fly
6. I Don't Care, Larry Bird?
7. We Don't Cross Fingers
8. I'll Sum This Up

1. We Don't Cross Fingers... LIVE
2. I'll Sum This Up LIVE

1. De La Exsorta

1. I'd Rather Soar With The Thought Of Birds Carrying Us Away
2. I'm Still Here, You're Still There

1. Old Maid
2. Coffee With Tom

1. Dakota
2. Along the Lakeside
3. Grayscale
4. Vacation Bible School
5. Clouds Above My Head
6. I
7. Waterbed
8. Amateur Night
9. II
10. John P.

1. Old Gray - Clip Your Own Wings
2. Old Gray - An Epitaph
3. Tiny Moving Parts - Swimming Lessons
4. Tiny Moving Parts - Fair Trade

1. Sundress
2. Always Focused
3. Fourth Of July
4. I Hope Things Go The Way I Hope
5. Whiskey Waters
6. Movies
7. The Better Days
8. Boxcar
9. Spring Fever
10. Entrances & Exits
11. Skinny Veins
12. Van Beers

1. Good Enough
2. Happy Birthday
3. Birdhouse
4. Headache
5. Common Cold
6. Stay Warm
7. Breathe Deep
8. Volumes
9. Minnesota
10. Minnow

1. Applause
2. Smooth It Out
3. Feel Alive
4. Caution
5. Wildfire
6. Whale Watching
7. It's Too Cold Tonight
8. Malfunction
9. Wishbone
10. Warm Hand Splash

1. The Midwest Sky
2. Light Bulb
3. Medicine
4. Icicles (Morning Glow)
5. Vertabrae
6. Polar Bear
7. Bloody Nose
8. Soft Spot
9. I Can't Shake
10. Hallmark

1. Decibel
2. North Shore
3. Demons Are Taking Over
4. Tangled Up
5. Jotting Notes
6. Downhill Spiral
7. All My Guts
8. Day Drunk
9. Bad Trip
10. 12345