Moving to nogenremusic.com!

The great Blogocide of 2010 has struck too many great folks out there to ignore the Sword of Damocles swinging ominously above my head. I don't blame Blogger; they have to protect their own interests against (frivolous) DMCA complaints. Once the (frivolous) complaints started mounting against my site, I decided to move. It is an act of pure self-preservation: I like doing this and I want to continue writing about music. I have spent the past week figuring out how to make Wordpress bend to my will. I have tried on more themes and configurations than I care to recount. But I'm happy with the design. The shark on fire is gone, but his spirit lives on.

No Genre Music's new home is now at www.nogenremusic.com.

Please update your bookmarks accordingly.

Additionally, I have set up a new email account for submissions. If you want me to listen to anything of yours, please send it to nogenremusic@gmail.com.

NEW Wolf Parade LP

Exclaim is reporting that a new Wolf Parade should expected on June 29 on Sub Pop. What's even more exciting is that the band recorded 15 songs and over 80 minutes of music. Dan Boeckner is on record as saying that the band would consider an LP plus EP set of releases or . . . wait for it . . . a double album. The album was recorded live (with "zero" overdubs) and consists of "a few songs that are really, really intensely keyboard-heavy" and some songs that are "heavy '80s coke rock." Considering that the band promised a prog-rock spectacle with At Mount Zoomer, we should probably take his word for it on this one. The band also expects to release a 7'' single ahead of the new album. And if you needed more good news from the camp, Boeckner also said that he and wife Alexei Perry are going to be writing songs for the next Handsome Furs record tentatively planned for next spring.

Check out a defining performance of "I'll Believe in Anything" from CMJ in 2005:

Swimming in Strawberry Yogurt

Blithe Field "Ghost Riding the Whip"
Blithe Field "Bible School"

Some albums are musical Advil to me. Literally. I listen to them when I feel a headache brewing behind my eyes. The best headache defense albums are ones that push a fair amount of repetition but introduce enough modulation to keep things interesting. The repetition helps me relax, while the modulation gives me something to focus on. My two go-to albums are Brightblack Morning Light's eponymous debut and The Books' The Lemon of Pink. Blithe Field's latest album, Beautiful Wave '74, is now among that rarefied bunch, an album that relaxes and focuses me enough to fend off a gray after-work headache.

Blithe Field is Ohio's own Spencer Radcliffe, who, incidentally, is friends with the one-man show behind Foxes in Fiction. Spencer's latest album, Beautiful Wave '74, employs a simple formula: buttress a simple organic melody with spoken word samples and found sounds. The album is simple without being childlike, reserved without being restrained. The two songs I've posted here ("Bible School" and "Ghost Riding the Whip") give you a glance of the range on the album. The cool beat that drives "Bible School" is belied by mid-song monologue about rectangles and straight lines by a British guy (who sounds remarkably like Martin Amis). Meanwhile, the gorgeously hypnotic "Ghost Riding the Whip" never sounds as busy as all the blips and tocks that actually make up the song.

I'm kind of excited to leave a frustrating workday of meetings and bureaucracy with a headache bubbling in my gray matter. Blithe Field's Beautiful Wave '74 is going to be right there with the antidote.

You can check out Blithe Field here and here, where you can purchase a copy of the new album.

Teenage Fanclub

Here's a fact that few are willing to remember or acknowledge: back in 1991, when Spin was a reputable publication, the magazine named Teenage Fanclub's Bandwagonesque the best album of the year. It's important to remember that 1991 also saw Nevermind and Out of Time and Efil4zaggin and Gish and De La Soul is Dead and Ten and and Trompe Le Monde and The Low End Theory and Girlfriend and 2Pacalypse Now. All in all, a year that inexplicably saw Teenage Fanclub come out on top. Then again, you'd have to be one stingy bastard to deny that "Ain't That Enough" is a thoroughly charming song.

I'd always figured that they stopped releasing albums after the wonderful Songs from Northern Britain. But on June 8th, Merge will be releasing a new album, Shadows, by the band. On the heels of Alex Chilton's death, it's nice to see some Big Star acolytes carrying the torch.

Check out the first single here.

Forced to Love // All to All

I apologize for the absence. My real job has been monopolizing my time and energy and general life will for the past week. Also, I've been working on some BIG changes for No Genre Music. I'll announce them, you know, whenever.

In the meantime, scope out a pair of excellent new tracks from Broken Social Scene's forthcoming Forgiveness Rock Record. First up is your standard issue Kevin Drew love song, "Forced to Love." It's loud and brash and passionate. It's just another really good BSS song. But then there's "All to All," a lovely tune helmed by Lisa Lobsinger of Reverie Sound Reverie. The song is an engaging disco-flecked number that lilts and postures in ways that we haven't heard in a very long time from BSS. Stream/Download (for a fee) both right here.

Aepreantly Knauwt

mp3: RXRY "Aepreantly Knauwt"

With "Aepreantly Knauwt," the latest RXRY track, the balance between the organic thump of the bass and the metallic shivers of a machine is so tenuous that you're afraid to listen too closely. The whispy threads of song linger in that liminal state between consciousness and unconsciousness; it's careful only to reveal as much as it needs to for you to register its presence.