Aside from Fjords, their propensity to excel at the Winter olympics and overpriced everything, I don’t know a whole lot about them. I definitely don’t know a lot about their music scene. Enter Deathcrush. I mean, first of all. What a name. DEATHCRUSH! How does that not get you excited for everything and anything. A three piece band from Oslo, they are young, loud and brash. Their music just exudes cool. This video of one of their tracks has blown away any notion I might of had for young people in Norway. This might be one of the shows you go to at SXSW where at the end of it, you are like “I’m too old for this shit” but then maybe it’s just exactly what you need at the same time. I don’t know.
It’s hard to believe that it’s been well over a decade since a rainswept Chris Martin strolled off a shitty beach and into our consciousness with that inescapable song Yellow.
Since then he has married Gwyneth Paltrow, wrote political things on his hand, named his children Moses, Table, Apple, Gravy and Northeast and generally tried to become U2. Coldplay’s popularity has not suffered- in fact, it has exploded and they are probably one of the biggest bands in the world today.
it was announced on Wednesday that Coldplay was playing Sxsw as part of the ITunes festival and so it brings this band back into my view years after I had abandoned them. Which brings me back to reminisce about their classic song “The Scientist”.
Featuring Chris Martin’s trademark sad singing accompanied by a touching piano arrangement, The Scientist was a track off their second album that help propelled the band into super stardom. You know, for what it’s worth, this was a reasonable song. On top of that, it had a really good video and gave us the classic line “Nobody said it was easy/nobody said it was so hard” which I’ve used in at least several witty Facebook comment threads. I think most people know the lyrics to this song anyway. Anyways, Coldplay are playing SXSW, maybe they are trying to gain back some indie cred. Maybe Apple paid them a million dollars. Regardless, they will be in Austin, playing the gorgeous Moody Theatre, and probably inspiring a million tweets from former hipsters losing their shit over songs like this.
Habibi is an all girls band from Brooklyn that brings all sort of sunshine to this dreary winter. They just released their self titled debut off the always great Burger record. The song, like the album, has got great harmonies with a nice retro-motownesque vibe while maintaining that trademark Burger Record garage rock aesthetic. People looking to celebrate diversity will also note that band member Rahill Jamalifard sings some parts in Farsi and that the band’s name is in Arabic.
or as our web designer Vik says “they’re like pipettes meets ravonettes meets JAMC”
They are definitely worth checking out. Coming to a music festival near you.
Brooklyn act Blue & Gold has this nice bluesy-rock vibe to them. They just recently released an self-titled EP and have been playing a lot of shows around New York, including one of my new favorite places – The Brooklyn Bowl. I hope Questlove paid them with Fried Chicken, cos that stuff was so, so delicious and I have noticed a lot of bands are really skinny. Maybe they aren’t skinny, maybe they are just malnourished. However, malnourished jeans wouldn’t really sell, so skinny it is.
Anyways, before I go even further off the cliff, their track, It’s Only You caught my ear. It’s got a nice guitar solo and yearning lyrics laid against a 50’s era rock backdrop. It makes me feel like this was a song Michael J Fox could sing in the movie Back to the Future to impress his future mother.
I think they are playing SXSW because they asked us if they could be on our showcase, which we really don’t have since we just go there to drink. Having said that, listen to their song.
