Little Dragon is back with a new album in Ritual Union and I couldn’t be more excited. I’ve followed Yukimi Nagano and her crew of Swedish masterminds for a few years now. After my first exposure I noted that it is only a matter of time before LD “blows-the-fuck-up” to quote myself exactly. They possess the elusive mixture of great musical composition, pop sensibility, underground hipness, mass appeal, and explosive live performances. Topping it off: a gorgeous front-woman with an elegant, understated charisma.
A brief review: In 2009, a friend in San Francisco starts telling me about this great little band. Little Dragon visits Orlando in 2010 and plays an astounding show for about 40 people. Although the crowd is small, they are wildly engaged. Later, Yukimi makes an appearance on Gorillaz 2010 album, Plastic Beach. LD returns to Orlando in early 2011 to play another mind-blowing show, this time, for a packed house. Since then, they worked with Big Boi (after he was tipped off by Andre 3000), performed on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon (at the request of Questlove), and contributed to albums by David Sitek and Rafael Saadiq. This leads us to Ritual Union.
Ritual opens with the title track and it sounds like Diamond Life going down on Amnesiac marrying layered, dreamy pop with soulful vocals. “Brush the Heat” is reminiscent of later Dee-Lite with Yukimi’s playful sultry voice sliding gracefully through the skating rink disco beat and piles of synth. “Shuffle the Dream” swaggers through 80’s pop territory with its steady, walking electronic bass line and “Nightlight” reveals a more mature and progressive sound while maintaining all that is great about Little Dragon. “Summertearz,” a song debuted on their last tour, is one of my favorites. Riding a slinky beat and loops of percussive instrumentation, harmonized vocals charge directly out of my speakers and down through my man parts. This band is just getting bigger and bigger and Ritual Union is the oversized party bus to drive their fat sounds farther.
Ritual Union by Peacefrog Records
Written for Tampa’s Suburban Apologist
Now that the fervor over the chill wave has receded maybe we can sit back and evaluate the music for what it is (or isn’t). Whatever chill wave was – or is – it really only turned out 3 “bands” that I can recall: Toro Y Moi, 
Is it just me being a harbinger of music to come or is this a trend that the masses are influencing? I find myself being drawn to more music with overt 60’s derivations. Bands like Best Coast and 
The Love Dimension walk a very thin line between derivative late 60’s flower rock and nuanced hat-tipping to a bygone era with their slavish attention to genre. The token sounds of tambourine, Hammond organs, and fuzzed-out guitars loaded with reverb could, in the wrong hands, evoke the term, “knock-off.” TLD manage to pull it off with grit and passion while re-introducing new ears to a straight-forward interpretation of rock n roll – something to be admired and noticed in a market of squawking electronic indie music.
San Francisco based artist, Chelsea TK, has her first official full-length release in Terra Attero. It is a boisterous and swirling amalgamation of style and soul infused with layers of instrumental loops, driving drum work, clever electronic bits, and Chelsea’s expansive, entrancing vocals.
Arcade Fire’s newest album, The Suburbs, is a musical encapsulation of the experience growing up in the suburbs, USA (maybe Canada). One perspective is the oppression and banality of tract housing and strip malls that angst-y youth rail against. Another is that of the reminiscent adult waxing whimsical and romanticizing a misspent youth, the sneaking out of windows at night or taking a parent’s car to pick up a summer love – the powerful memories tied to youth that makes suburbia so magical and fun in retrospect.
Curtis Lane is the debut album from Active Child, the namesake of L.A songwriter Pat Grossi. Blogs and journalists are bubbling with giddiness and positive reviews for Active Child. I assume the warm reception is because this EP comes across like a more elegant, ethereal Animal Collective. The first song, “I’m in Your Church at Night” sneaks into the speakers like a church hymn and then builds with echoing 80’s drums, graceful synthesizer, and Grossi’s angelic croon (He was actually a member of the Philadelphia Boys Choir). The opener may have the most cinematic scope of the 6 songs on this disc, but they all carry a somber, haunting tone that enriches the impact of Curtis Lane and hints at the prospects of an interesting newcomer on the scene.
M.I.A’s new, grinding cacophony MAYA is an album crafted for the new “connected” society. Themes and sounds are piled in a shaker, swirled violently and poured out in clumpy snippets of odd melodies and mish-mashes of style and presentation. It is like MAYA was made by and for the ADD, short attention span of the modern human. The album shifts and jerks mercurially from boastful hip-hop and college party anthems to subversive political propaganda.
dude needs a little rock! It is nice to hear a fresh treatment to straight-forward guitar rock and Tame Impala is able to do so with a contemporary twist on 60′s rock ‘n roll.
Duos, duos, duos – what the fuck? They are everywhere, crowding the music scene with interesting variations of electronica, pop, and rock. Of course there are The White Stripes and The Black Keys, but it goes way beyond that. Let me see, there’s