Free Music Friday 24!

Bandcamp.
Is there a better website for discovering new music? I think not.
You can get free albums, unlike MySpace where you have to stream one song at a time.
You can download the whole album and keep it. Once again, MySpace streams.
You can buy it directly from the band if you like their shit.

If it wasn't for Bandcamp, I wouldn't have done Free Music Friday. About 70% of this stuff comes direct from Bandcamp. And it's generally some random band that has absolutely no info and I have no idea how I stumbled onto it.

Which brings us around full circle to this Free Music Friday. It's a band called Step Dads. And the only picture I could find is from their Facebook.

There is apparently a very attractive female in this band, according to the picture. Which of course means I like them a lot already.

But in a non-sexist way, I decided I liked this band way before I knew that. You see, they are that noisy type of post-hardcore that I love. Post-hardcore to most of the young generation is just synth/breakdowns/bad-core music (think Bring Me The Horizon etc), so it always irks me that the old/good style of post-hardcore is lost. That's another rant for another day though.

The last few weeks I've been blasting a lot of the Black Powder and Black Eyes and really any of that good old-style of Dischord records style of music. Also the amazing Arms Exploding album that someone over at Phatry Records was nice enough to package for free in a vinyl order for me. Basically old-school amazing post-hardcore. And it's made me so nostalgic that I've also been blaring a lot of At the Drive-In. The point is, I've fallen back in love with the more "classic" style of post-hardcore, especially the times when it just disintegrates into a very noisy-style.

Step Dads are that style. I wish I knew more about them, but so far apart from their Facebook and Bandcamp, I've seen nothing. Except they're from Indiana. Go the midwest! (my old stomping grounds).

Over on their Bandcamp, you can get their EP for absolutely free. Chuck it a listen if you like the sound of anything I've mentioned so far this blog post, or you just want some excellent, noisy and slightly chaotic music.

They also have a song called Legos. I basically want to be in this band.

One sentence album reviews (#15)

Yoyoyo, so if you don't know by now, well... I do one sentence album reviews on my Twitter when I feel up to it. I normally build up a review list over the week and post them during the work days to keep me somewhat sane. When I build up a few, I post them all here for historical reasons.

Today saw me hit a new point, I've run out of reviews. I've been so busy lately that I've got a giant stack of CD's next to my comptuer, a stack of vinyl on my bookshelf and about 130 hours of new music queued up on my computer. So, as a consequence, it might slow up for a while. But here's the last bunch:

Lonely Island - Turtleneck & Chain (2011): A few funny songs, but mainly sounding like the Beastie Boys did 20 years ago, with bad humour 2.4/5

Saul Williams - Volcanic Sunlight (2011): 1st listen: like 2 minutes only of spoken word. Disappointed. 5th listen: a clever rap album 4/5

Foo Fighters - Wasting Light (2011): They have gone slightly back in time and got their heavy back. I scarily like it 4/5

Death Grips - Ex-Military (2011): Excellent grimey rap with lots of classical rock samples that make my inner music nerd jump for joy 4.5/5

Fucked Up - David Comes To Life (2011): A departure from their hardcore to make a brilliant rock opera. May alienate old fans. 5/5

Touche Amore - Parting The Sea Between Brightness And Me (2011): Hardcore that sounds like La Dispute had a musical baby with Defeater. 4.5/5

Face to Face - Laugh Now, Laugh Later (2011): This is how pop-punk should be. A lesson from the masters 4.5/5

Boy Hits Car - Stealing Fire (2011): A very American rock sound, kind of like nu metal crossed with classic Iron Maiden style vocals 3/5

Braveyoung-We Are Lonely Animals (2010): Instrumental post-rock eh? So you build up each song slowly into a drawn out crescendo? #cliche 1.5/5

Bullets in Madison - We Became Your Family When You Died (2010): starts as boring post-rock and then slowly merges into a Thom Yorke sound. 2/5

Cloud Nothings - Cloud Nothings (2011): Jangly lo-fi guitar pop. Sounds like a lot of other bands, but with more personality due to raw and rough edges 4/5 The song Heartbeat is a contender for song of the year

Crocodiles - Sleep Forever (2010): This album is from the wrong decade, it needs to be in the mid 90's new wave-era. Oh the memories 4/5

The Black Powder - The Black Powder (2008): Unclassifiable noisy-post-punk-hardcore (that's a classification I guess). The kind of band I want to be in 4/5

Ampere - Like Shadows (2011): 11 Songs, 15 Minutes of good hardcore. They exemplify short and sweet 4/5

The Antlers - Burst Apart (2011): It took me 5 listens to take it all in, as it's so quiet and unassuming. Modern elevator music maybe? 2/5

Kindest Lines - Covered In Dust (2011): A band that grew up listening to way too much of the Cure and wants to keep their spirit alive 4/5

Arctic Monkeys - Suck It And See (2011): Less garage rock and more indie, there's 2 songs that channel Interpol deeply 3/5

City & Colour - Little Hell (2011): I like Alexisonfire, but I don't like Dallas' solo stuff, way too mopey. #emo 2/5

The Paper Scissors - In Loving Memory (2011): Australian band making brooding moody indie. Channeling their inner dance-goth I think 3/5