Lo-Fang

I went down to Munich last night to see CHVRCHES. It's actually my 2nd time seeing them. They played at the music festival I went to in Singapore and Australia. I watched their set in Singapore, but only saw half of the first song in Australia. Their set overlapped with Daughter, who I planned to see (hardest decision of the day), and they had sound problems at the beginning so ended up starting late. They put on a pretty great show in general, though it was a bit disappointing last night, if I'm being honest. I know they've only got one album (a great album), but they played for 1 hour. 1 hour and 5 minutes, including encore. It was kind of ridiculous. And the crowd was really shitty. Generally German crowds are pretty good, but not last night. Everyone was really quiet, nobody was really dancing or anything. It was really strange. I felt bad for Lauren Mayberry, cause she's adorable and I just want to make her happy. They did have some pretty awesome lighting going on, though.

Me and my best friend Henry
on the first day of Spring

Anyway, last night's concert is not what I'm here to talk about. Before the concert I went to see my friends the Mangs. I also spent the weekend with them. I know them from Japan. They were living in Iwaki at the same time as me, and before and after as well, but Andreas is originally from Germany, so they've since moved back here and live in Munich with their kids. One of which, Henry, is my best friend. He's 3, but we get along really well. We like to play with Legos. Obviously. Who doesn't? Their daughter Anna didn't used to like me, she always gave me weird looks like she didn't trust me. Now she smiles and lets me hold her without crying, even for extended periods of time. When we're together she does most of the playing, and it's generally focused on my ears and beard, or flicking my bottom lip with her finger.

Anna likes me!
(even if she doesn't look like it)

I spend the weekend with them pretty often. I'd say at least once a month when I'm in Germany I go down to see them, either for the full weekend, or just for an evening or something. And when I go for concerts I generally stop in and have dinner with them first. Our weekends are usually pretty relaxed. We'll go out for a few hours to the park or a museum or whatever, but there's only so much you can do with little kids, and only so long we can be out and about before they start complaining. Which is when we head home to play with Legos again. So generally nothing too eventful, but it's always really nice to go down and hang out with them. It seems like wherever I go I find these families that adopt me, and it feels like I'm just hanging out with my family when I'm down with them for a weekend, which is really nice.

This weekend was pretty eventful, though. In addition to Anna now liking me, we went and saw baby Polar Bears at the Munich Zoo. The weather was supposed to be really shitty all weekend, and for the most part it was, but Saturday morning it was nice, so we managed to go see them. As did like 16,000 other people or something, according to German news. But then, there are 4 month old twin polar bears, so can you blame everyone for going to see them? They were bigger than I expected, like the size of a small/medium sized dog, but their adorableness lived up to all my expectations.

Eisbären

Sunday was when the real fun happened, though. Normally if I go to Munich for the weekend I get a ride with a colleague instead of taking a car on my own. Then he'll drive me back with him on Monday morning, which involved getting up very early. I decided this weekend that I would head back up Sunday night and get a good night's sleep instead of waking up really early on Monday morning, so the Mangs decided they'd drive me up. They'd been meaning to come see Schrobenhausen (which they now tell me is cuter than most tiny German country towns, and better maintained, so that makes me feel better about being here), so this was the perfect chance. And we took the opportunity to go to Schrobenhausen's premiere (and only) tourist attraction: The European Asparagus Museum.

I've been meaning to go, because how could I miss the opportunity to go see something so ridiculous? Schrobenhausen is the asparagus capital of Germany, so it makes sense they'd have it here I guess. The place is, as one would expect, very tiny. But I did learn a lot about asparagus. I knew it was a delicious vegetable, but I did not realize how much people actually loved it historically. In fact, they loved it so much that it was the focus of many works of art, including a couple by Manet. And there are special serving dishes for asparagus. It was also considered impolite to eat asparagus with a fork and knife, so these special finger tong things were designed specifically for eating asparagus. Even Mr. Faberge, of Faberge egg fame, made a special solid-silver, gold-plated set of special asparagus utensils for the Russian Tsar. It's kind of ridiculous how far this love for asparagus used to go, but I do really want a couple pairs of asparagus tongs...

Ok, enough about me. I was debating between a couple of artists to talk about today. I had been thinking I'd do Milagres, which I said last time I might do, and I still intend to do, but instead I'm going to talk about Lo-Fang. You should still go listen to Milagres, though, because this is the second time I've mentioned them and they are great.

Anyway, I found Lo-Fang a few weeks ago, don't remember how. It's weird for me with Lo-Fang, because I really like him, but at the same time I'm kind of torn on him. I love his music, I think it's great, but there's something about it at the same time that just doesn't sound right to me. I think it might be his vocals, which are nice, but maybe they just don't seem to fit? I'm not sure. But none of this has stopped me from listening to his debut album, Blue Film, a lot. And thinking it's good enough that I need to share it with you. Because it is really good. So I don't know what my problem is. But I like him. I promise.

I'd say the closest thing I can think of is maybe Woodkid, but he's much better than Woodkid. There's a lot of great instrumentation on the album, and great use of strings together with synthetic elements which I love. I think it's done in a really unique and tasteful way. His first single, #88, is one of my favorite tracks on the album, and right from the beginning you can hear what I'm talking about.




I love the way he combines the picked strings with whatever that synthetic sort of rippy, stringy thing is supposed to be. I love that thing/sound. And then you get to the beat, and I love it even more. Great percussion and details. I'm a sucker for handclaps, which he uses really subtly. I just love every little detail about this song.

I think my favorite track on the album is Permutations, the closer.  I've talked before about how I love a good opening track to an album, and a good closing track is important too. This is a great closing track. The only thing I don't like about it is that it ends a bit abruptly, then the album starts over with Look Away, which is a very different feel from this and doesn't really flow together well. But the song itself is fantastic.




It's also worth nothing that Lo-Fang apparently performed all the instruments on the album, which is pretty impressive to me considering that there seem to be a lot of them. There are a few songs on the album which are a bit weird to me. He does a cover of Boris, by BOY, a band I really like, and I think he does a great cover, but again, there's something weird about it to me. I also think it's weird that he has a cover of You're the One That I Want from Grease. Not what I would expect from this guy. But regardless, the album is great, and the more I listen the more I like it. So you should go listen to more. It seems a bit hard to find some of his stuff online, but it's all on Spotify. Or you can just buy it. It's worth it.

Sylvan Esso

I had a tough time deciding what to write about today. This week has been a bit all over the place. Some bad, some good. No pictures this time, sorry. Maybe next week.

I'm kind of bored at work, and kind of sick, and found out my great-aunt passed away, which obviously did not make me very happy. Especially considering she's always been my favorite and is basically like a third grandmother. And then later that same night I was watching Girls (*spoiler maybe?*) and I saw the episode where Hanna's grandma died, so that didn't make things any better. And there are other things about the whole situation which really pissed me off, but we don't have to go into those here. So that's no fun.

But a lot of good things have happened this week, too. I found out yesterday that I can move out of my hotel and into my apartment here in Germany next week, which is earlier than expected. I also just changed my weekend in London to a week in the UK cause I'll be there for work, too, which means now I get more time in London with friends and I don't have to pay for the plane ticket. Then I finally booked trips for all my upcoming long weekends, so now I have weekends planned in Copenhagen and Madrid to see friends, and Estonia to use the Lonely Planet I stole from my sister. And I finally started House of Cards and holy shit I can't believe that first episode!!!

I don't really know how I feel right now. I'm sure I'll figure it out. For now at least I have good music and will be seeing friends in Munich this weekend. And this week I have very good music.

I think the last time I got this excited about a new musical find was Lief Vollebekk, so it's been a couple of months. I've found some really good new stuff since then, but nothing that got me this as excited as he did, or as excited as Sylvan Esso, my find from this morning, did. Sylvan Esso only has three songs, and when I first started listening to Hey Mami this morning, I thought it was kind of cool. Then it got to about 1:30 and I was sold.




This is what I imagine Tune-yards would sound like if she was produced by Jai Paul. And that sounds like a dream come true to me. And in the same week that Tune-yards dropped the first single off her new album. Between Tune-yards, Lykke Li and Ray LaMontagne's new albums, May 6th is going to be a good day for music.

Anyway, I heard Hey Mami and loved it, so I listened to Play It Right, the other track off of Sylvan Esso's first single, which came out last year. And I was not let down at all. Again with the Jai Paul-esque goodness. I'm starting to think that this is my sound of 2014. Between artists like Banks, SOHN, Kwabs and now Sylvan Esso, who all kind of fit into this dark electro-pop kind of sound, it seems that some of the artists I'm most excited about this year are right in here.





Until about 3 minutes ago the only things I knew about Sylvan Esso were what I wrote above, and the fact that they've toured with Volcano Choir, and currently have tour dates with Wye Oak and Tune-yards, which makes me like them even more. In fact they have a date in Berlin with Tune-yards, which would be incredible to be at, but it's while I'm home in the States in May. But I'm bored at work and so I jumped on facebook on my phone to find out more (and because I wanted to know who produces their music. Turns out it's them). I found out the fun facts that they formed in North Carolina, and that they apparently have a self-titled full-length album which they self-released last year. But I can't find any of the other songs from it online. Luckily this album will be re-released by their label in May. Not sure if their last song that I can find, Coffee, is off the original release or a new song for the reissue or what. But it doesn't matter, cause I have to wait for the reissue anyway. At least for now I have these three songs, though.





These guys have just jumped up to almost the top of my list of most anticipated artists of 2014. They're still behind Banks, but I can't wait to hear more from Sylvan Esso.

St. Paul & The Broken Bones

I've been meaning to write something for a couple of weeks now, and I've just been putting it off. I don't know why. I have a bunch of music to share, but just never get around to it. And I guess I've had trouble thinking of things to write. I did have a great weekend last weekend, though, which got me thinking that I could just write about what I'm actually doing at the moment and try to include pictures, so maybe I'll talk about last weekend.

I came back to Germany last week for work. I'm pretty sure that I've mentioned before that when I come here I live in a tiny little town that's about an hour north of Munich. It's cute and all, but super boring. There's nothing to do here, and I know nobody. In fact I'm pretty sure there's nobody living in this town between the ages of 15 and 50. Maybe 40. Which means evenings are extremely boring and all I have to do is catch up on TV shows. I made it through True Detective this week, and now I finally will start House of Cards Season 2. I know I'm a month late, I don't want to talk about it. I'm not happy about this. I need to watch it.

Anyway, one of the benefits of being in this teensy tiny town is that I'm basically forced to leave and travel every weekend. I'd die of boredom if I stayed here. So normally I get a company car or get a ride down to Munich and hop on a plane and go anywhere. Last weekend, my first weekend back, I decided to head down to Slovenia, adding another country to the list. Overall Slovenia is nothing special. It's a nice country with a charming, little capital city, but nothing amazing scenery-wise. Some of the attractions in Slovenia were great, though, and quite unique.

Predjama Castle

One of my favourite things was this castle I went to that's built into the mouth of a huge cave, on top of a massive cave system. It's been continuously expanded since it was first built back in the 13th century, and it's most famous inhabitant was besieged for a year there, and managed to live comfortably because he would use the cave system to sneak out to nearby towns and get whatever he needed. Eventually he was killed when a servant betrayed him and signaled the people who were holding the siege that he had gone to the bathroom, at which point they shot a massive boulder from their catapult and crushed the bathroom with him in it. Shitty way to go (see what I did there? Couldn't help myself). It was pretty awesome.

Slovenia is also really tiny, so I managed to see about half the country in 48 hours. After the castle I headed south to the Adriatic Coast to see Piran, a really nice little town on a peninsula. It used to be part of the Venetian empire and is about 20 minutes from the Italian border, so it seems pretty Italian. In fact it's so close that I considered just popping into Italy for dinner on the way back, but I didn't want to have to pay highway tolls again. It's really different from the rest of the Slovenian towns and cities I saw, but I assume everything on the coast is. I spent a few hours exploring and actually could have been very happy just chilling there for the entire weekend eating Italian food.

On my way back to Germany on Sunday I made a stop in this town called Bled. I was told about it by a friend in Singapore last week, and then another friend mentioned it to me just before my trip, and I am very glad I went. The place was ridiculously beautiful. It's another small town, which is nothing special, I just drove through that part without even stopping, but it's the lake that the town sits on that's amazing. It's this lake up in the Alps with a tiny island in the middle that has an old church on it. Across the lake from the actual town are cliffs with a castle on top, so when you're on the far side of the lake looking back you have these ridiculous views of the snow covered Alps and the castle and the church, and it's all reflected in the lake, and it's amazing. I was there for like 30 minutes, just to walk around the lake a bit and take in the view, but it was still possibly the best thing I did in Slovenia.

Bled. Ridiculous. One of the most beautiful places I've probably ever been.

The drive was also pretty amazing. To get from Germany down to Ljubljana I had to drive through Austria, and it took me straight through the Alps. Despite the sun and warm(ish) weather, that country is still covered in snow. Like, a lot of it. So I was just driving through these incredible snow covered peaks. It makes it hard to concentrate on the road.

Seriously, I do not understand how I did not die on during this drive.

All in all it was a great weekend. Despite Slovenia itself being underwhelming and reminding me a lot of the Czech Republic, I had a great time. I'm not sure I'd go again, if I did it would just be for a weekend on the coast or in Bled, chilling, but I'm glad I went.

And now on to the music. There were actually a few bands I was considering talking about today, but it was kind of hard to choose. I haven't had any songs or artists who just jump out at me and really impress me lately, so nothing that I've felt I really need to come write a blog about to share with everyone. Which is why it's taken me two weeks. But there have been a few bands who put out new releases that I've been really impressed with overall. I had it narrowed down to 4 choices, those being Bear's Den, NO, Milagres and St. Paul & The Broken Bones. After chatting with a friend, I'm going with St. Paul & The Broken Bones. Which is actually a good thing, because while I've thought about writing about all 4 of these bands, St. Paul & The Broken Bones were the first one I thought of writing about since their newest release was the earliest.

St. Paul & The Broken Bones fit into that genre of white guys making throwback soul music. Think Mayer Hawthorne. Or even Amy Winehouse, now that I think of it. But I think they do it a lot better than most other people trying to do it (Amy Winehouse excluded). And there's a lot more rock to theirs, which I love. The Alabama band just put out their first album, Half the City, produced by one of the guys from Alabama Shakes, which should already be a good sign to you, and you can definitely hear it in the album. I heard Call Me, which I think is their first single, a couple months back. I tried to find more at the time, but sadly came up empty handed.





Since writing up to this point I finished my work day and came home, and have been listening to this album. And while they stick in my head as a throwback soul band, listening to it now I'm getting a lot more blues rock than I remember. Which is making me like the album even more. I did buy it as soon as it came out, so I've got their music to myself now, but surprisingly it is still hard to find their stuff online, hence the Spotify link, which I never really use. And It's actually really difficult to pick what song to share with you, cause the album is full of great tracks. So here's the one I'm listening to now, which is great, Broken Bones & Pocket Change.

 

You should still go listen to the other bands I mentioned before. They are all very good. Especially Milagres, cause I'm loving their new album. I won't say too much, though, cause they may be my next blog post. But think Wild Beasts. And for NO, think The National. And for Bear's Den, I guess think Mumford & Sons, except not. Much better.