The Tough Alliance

I first talked about Sweden's The Tough Alliance last fall but had totally geeked out about them to my little mp3 e-zine or whatever [first incarnation of this hrr blog, if you were lucky enough to receive it and remember] during the late spring // early summer when I was totally in love with their very summery jams.

The two lads grace the front cover of the latest issue of Fader [download it here]. In the picture below, they are the whitebread Scandinavilads on the right, not the dancehall rhyme-spewing Busy Signal on the back/left. In the feature about them, the writer says their summer anthem and Swedish radio hit "First Class Riot" [download it below] "sounds like the sun emerging from puberty". I don't know exactly what that means, but I'm sure many of you don't know what I mean half the time I write about music I'm loving. Nonethenevertheless, I agree. I would have perhaps made that analogy/simile with their more summery anthem "Something Special" [download it below, too], which I blogged about last year. Then I said it was "good pop with a shadow of chill and a sprinkle of electronic coating the whole package". Unhuh.

TTA are part of a music collective in Gothenberg that also include like-minded and similar sounding Air France, who've kinda been my TTA of this spring/summer. They're on the same label and I'm pretty sure each often record with the other. Gothernberg, also home to space-dub chill maestros Studio, from what I can tell is like the new Bergen, Norway [home of Royksopp, Erlend Oye, et al]. Or like the new Bristol, England [home of Massive Attack, Tricky, Portishead, et al]. Little cities // big towns that harbor too much musical creativity. Like Austin or Denton, Tejas. Or any one block in the white parts of Brooklyn. Or any one block in the black parts of Brooklyn. Anyway,

Dig The Tough Alliance:
TTA - "First Class Riot"
TTA - "Something Special" highly recommended!
TTA - "A New Chance" highly recommended!
TTA - "Neo Violence"
TTA - "Koka Kola Veins"
TTA - "Miami"
TTA - "New York City Violence" [Alvy Singer remix]
TTA - "Taken Too Young" [a Taken By Trees cover]

Related:

Studio - "Brown Piano" highly recommended!
Studio - "Impossible"

Their album New Chance comes stateside later this year, but was released overseas last year. Purchase: Amazon : Strictly Discs : InSound : iTunes

=

Also, much thanks to those who came out last night to see me throw down a couple of the above tunes [two people even asked about the above "Brown Piano", which was cool], along with some Weezer, MIA, Ike & Tina, Santogold, Chromeo, and other crazinesses. For the first time, I was even tipped out by Matt the bartender, which was very nice. That was most likely in part due to y'all coming out and tipping your waitresses and bartender Matt. Thanks, it was a very fun night.

.

Is it Chinese New Year?

That's what it was the last time I heard fireworks on a day I normally don't associate with loud booms and frizzly lights. Only, at least from my block, the lights can't be seen. I hope that they're exploding underneath the clouds/fog somewhere.

I'm using this blog tonight, as I did just about everything else-- Facebook profile updating, MP3 directory re-organizing, espresso machine cleaning, the list goes on-- as an escape from homework. I don't have any amazing new music to share. Nothing too crazy happened to me this weekend. I can't even think of much to say. That's how bad it is. I want to tell you of an epiphany I had or great moral I learned or that I thought of the greatest movie or television idea, but none of those are true. It was, indeed, a pretty boring weekend for me, Chinese New Year or not.

Alright, so since I don't have anything new to give you, I'll give you something old. In the spirit of nearing the end of this [Western World] year, and the possibility of the end of the Chinese Year [although I really don't think it was, and I'm too lazy right now to multi-task and go look, so I should really just let go].... and the desire to sort out some of my favorites of the year, I'm giving some tunes that hopefully you have not yet completely forgotten about. They'd most likely make my Top 100 of 2007 list, if I ever made one.

El-P [feat Chan Marshall] - "Poisenville Kids No Wins", from I'll Sleep When You're Dead*
Wanna know what I like best about this song? The end. The instrumental at the end is like an entirely different track, and I love it. I also love Cat Power's chiming in during the chorus and her vocal stabs here and there elsewhere. I try and I try but just can't seem to like much more of El-P's stuff, which apparently puts me on the edge of the hip hop community, because people seem to really like him. Does it say anything that the two tracks I really love off I'll Sleep have guest appearances? By "rock"-ers, no less.
*InSound says this was a 2006 release; they're so wrong.

Cloud Cult - "Chain Reaction", from Meaning of 8
Wanna know what I like most about this album? The beginning. If you claim to know me, or have read some of my RDD/shshdh ramblings, then you know I like album intros-- rather, I appreciate really good ones. That's one thing that draws me into Cloud Cult-- each album has a brilliant intro, whether it's an instrumental track devoted to doing the opening work or [as in the case of "Chain Reaction"] it's an elongated instro of the first track. Every time I hear this song it puts me back into the Orpheum Stage Door's little space where I saw them play it [as an encore?] back in the spring. The best moment: the entirety of the drumless strumming and vocals of raw emotion that starts at the 1:30 mark. Shivers, people.

The Tough Alliance - "Something Special", from New Chance
I think I sent this out to RDD/shshdh'rs when I had first heard it in the summer. I played it a couple dozen times in the first few days I heard it. All of the stuff I've heard by them is pretty solid. Swedish boys doin' good pop with a shadow of chill and a sprinkle of electronic coating the whole package.