I’ve been listening to so much new music this past year, and I realized recently how much I really miss sharing it with folks. Back during my highfiber days, we’d have a weekly featured download with a short writeup of the artist. I doubt I can pull off a weekly effort, but I think I can at least manage to keep this semi-regular. We’ll call it “Viva Pirateria” because my first choice, “Download Free MP3s at Guttervomit.com,” seemed a little too much like search-whoring. (As always, these tracks will be deleted after 30 days. I can’t really afford the bandwidth costs involved in keeping them up indefinitely.)
Our debut batch of MP3s is all fun-rock; catchy toe-tappers you can play in the car with friends.
Spoon – The Underdog
From one of last year’s best albums. Spoon wrote a good two-thirds of the soundtrack to my favorite Will Ferell movie, Stranger than Fiction, back in 2006, and are the vanguards of indie rock.
Orson – Broken Watch
Orson isn’t the world’s hardest-working indie rock band, but they’re probably in the top ten. “Broken Watch” is from their 2006 debut. The whole album is full of sugary pop confections; perfect for a summer trip to the beach.
Someone Still Loves You, Boris Yeltsin – Modern Mystery
SSLYBY (and man, even the acronym is long) is oddly-named, but they’ve got a great jangly-rock guitar sound that’s reminiscent of Rogue Wave and Maritime. Their choice of name pretty much prevents them from ever going mainstream, so if you are a fan, you are 100% assured that these guys will never sell out.
Nada Surf – Weightless
I’ve been listening to Nada Surf since “Popular” back in 1996 (which is pretty much when everybody else started listening to them), but the recent two albums have exhibited a kind of growth to their musicality that has been both fascinating and off-putting for older fans. “Weightless” is very similar in technique to an older song “Killian’s Red,” but it’s got a much more fleshed-out outro.
In case any of the direct links above don’t work, ol’ Apache will hook you up.