First Aid Kit - The Lion's Roar

Sweden. A country that offers the worst and best of mankind. A country that gives us the artificial fakeness of Abba, Ace of Base and Ikea but has people who sound as authentic as possible. We talked a lot on these pages already of the genius of The Tallest Man on Earth. A man with a sound and voice straight out of the American hinterlands and not at all from his native Scandinavian homeland. Here now is another example in the two young ladies who are First Aid Kid.
They first came into the public’s eye and ears with a beautiful woodland rendition of a Fleet Foxes’ song. The band liked it so much they invited them on stage and from there on things took off. After a good first album comes the brilliant “The Lion’s Roar”. The voices sound like they come straight from Nashville and the songwriting is equally on par. With the help from Conor Oberst they also get well deserved indie-cred on the final song. The singles ‘Lion’s Roar’ is great and the follow-up ‘Emmylou’ places them exactly where they should be, in the ranks of Harris and June Carter. It’s a beautiful ode to country music love.
Sweden, please give us more.

Explorer 15, May 30th

Vacation time so it took me a little longer than usual, but here are 15 new songs

Young The Giant - Apartment
Music: Well manufactured indie rock
Video: Band playing in a cozy environment

Little Red - All Mine
Music: Getting a little too Coldplay-y at times, but another fine Ozzie band.
Video: Skateboarding lonely through the streets of Melbourne

San Cisco - Golden Revolver
Music: Reverb on high, you gotta love Australia
Video: Old home movies

British India - March Into The Ocean
Music: Heavier Stuff, anthem?, third Oz band on the list
Video: Guys on speed playing scrabble

Fleet Foxes - Grown Ocean
Music: Fleet Foxes
Video: Road movie

Deep Sea Arcade - Lonely In Your Arms
Music: They made the list before with the Zombies like Don't You Worry, similar style but more modern
Video: Don't adjust your television set.

Husky - History's Door
Music: Australia's Fleet Foxes?
Video: Band playing

Last Dinosaurs - Time & Place
Music: Really, I can't help so many Australian bands made the list, and yes 2:48 is a brilliant break
Video: Guys in nature.

Two Door Cinema Club - What You Know
Music: Starts very Darwin Deezy
Video: Young guys and gymnasts

Maps & Atlases - Living Decorations
Music: Old video, but the music is too good not to share
Video: Fake band playing

Herman Dune - Tell Me Something I Don't Know
Music: Vintage Herman
Video: By far the coolest video of today, also great that it's on Funnyordie, hitchhiking with a yeti! And yes, that's Jon Hamm.

Joy Formidable - Whirring
Music: Melodic noise is possible
Video: Let's move into a strange house

Beastie Boys - Make Some Noisehttp:
Music: Beastie Boys
Video: A legendary video already: Seth Rogan, Danny McBride and Frodo playing the Beasties, can you count the celebs?

The King Blues - Set The World On Fire
Music: Skarockpoprappunkpolitical
Video: Band playing and other stuff

The National - Think You Can Wait
Music: if you don't know the National there's something wrong with you
Video: For a movie, with funny bits

Quarterlife Crisis

Around the age of 25 men start to look at their life and start wondering where they stand. Comparisons come with other people of their age and with their parents at that age. Children, work, still studying, it’s all different but you can’t help comparing. Robin Pecknold is like all of us, realizing in the first line of the new album “Helplessness Blues” that his parents already had a kid. He is just back with his girlfriend and finally released the long awaited follow-up to the eponymous debut.

The beautiful title track explains a lot of his thinking of his place in the world, as a ‘cog’. A song with questions that everyone has at one point in their life. Who am I and what is that world outside really like. Realization comes in ‘Lorelai’: “so, guess I got old, I was like trash on the sidewalk”. “Helplessness Blues” is an album with more questions than clearcut answers, or as Pecknold sings in ‘Blue Spotted Tail’: “Why is life made only for to end?”.

Musically the album gives us nothing new. Expanding on the sound of the debut along the lines of all the great westcoast folkies from the 60’s and 70’s: Byrds, Beach Boys (the opening bars of ‘Lorelai’, Neil Young etc. The focus is on his vocals, harmony background vocals and acoustic instruments. While lacking the radio “hits” it features some future classics in “Battery Kinzie”, the title track and “Someone You’d Amire” which should be able to silence a crowd of 80.000. The sound worked on the first one, it does so again on the second.

The real strides have been taken in Pecknold’s songwriting. “Helplessness Blues” is a much more personal and mature record that for people in the same age group might be at times confronting but also rewarding. So I wasn’t alone when I thought those things that spun around in my head.

I was still mucking about at university at the age Pecknold and his Fleet Foxes made an impressive second album. Best album of 2011 so far. It’s been worth the wait and questions.