Music and tums are true post-Thanksgiving delights. As the latter appeases our stomachs after binges of food and drink, music soothes us with its accessibility and lack of commercialism. TV and radio become tiresome with all those Black Friday advertisements and we all arrive at a point where familial small-talk becomes grueling. Music is an obvious refuge for pure entertainment as a result (after the obligatory nap, of course). Most holidays are like this, and with the month most associated with them now here it only makes a compilation like this more appropriate. Music always plays a big role in some form in these months, whether it involves listening to a group of carolers or using headphones to make the family’s Christmas party less painful for yourself.

With the holidays and new year also comes one of the most exciting times of the year for Obscure Sound. As always, you can expect the “Best Albums of 2009” feature in the coming weeks. Other fun year-end features will be published sporadically before and after that, in addition to any potential 2010 breakouts that I come across. I have been assembling this year’s best-of feature for some time now and it is looking great. I look forward to sharing it. For now though, enjoy the great artists featured here throughout the month of November. There is plenty to give thanks for here, as this compilation and the ten preceding ones this year have suggested.

01. Afternoon Naps – Beach Bums (post)
02. Brazos – Day Glo (post)
03. The Roofwalkers – Port of Calls (post)
04. Cats on Fire – The Borders of This Land (post)
05. The Silent League – Here’s a Star (post)
06. Savoir Adore – The Scientific Findings of Dr. Rousseau (post)
07. Mr. Gnome – Vampires (post)
08. I Heart Hiroshima – Pink Frost (post)
09. King Midas Sound – Cool Out (post)
10. Flotation Walls – The Flickering Projection (post)
11. Ruby Throat – Billows Her Skirt (post)
12. Morningbell – Marching Off to War (post)
13. Cantinero – My House (post)
14. Savoir Adore – We Talk Like Machines (post)
15. Brazos – My Buddy (post)

DOWNLOAD ENTIRE COMPILATION>>> (60.8 MB, .RAR)

The post Obscure Sound: Best of November 2009 appeared first on Obscure Sound: Indie Music Blog.

The month of October always seems to root out the Album of the Year contenders, making this and November one of the most active months in new music releases. Similar to the several months preceding the Academy Awards for film, many marketing agencies and labels are thrusting out the last of their ’09 products before focusing on the new year. This includes everyone from veterans (The Flaming Lips) to newbies (Surfer Blood), each providing their fanbase with an early gift for the holidays. This month provided everything from infectious electro-pop (UltraChorus, Midnight Juggernauts) and ambitions psych-rock (The Flaming Lips, Her Vanished Grace) to indication of several stylistic revivals in the vein of surf-rock (Surfer Blood) and psychedelic electronica (Washed Out). Even unclassifiable artists like The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble  and Lymbyc Systym provided focused and memorable efforts this month, making October 2009 unsurprisingly a month where artists of all different genres find a meeting point in their qualitative nature.

01. Surfer Blood – Take It Easy (post)
02. Washed Out – Belong (post)
03. Total Babe – Bearbones (post)
04. Midnight Juggernauts – This New Technology (post)
05. The Flaming Lips – Convinced of the Hex (post)
06. Tim Williams – Ozone Street (post)
07. A Brief Smile – Bigger Lies (post)
08. UltraChorus – Bestin the Farther (post)
09. Her Vanished Grace – Blue (post)
10. The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble – Embers (post)
11. The Library – Tomorrow Is Better (post)
12. Aficionado – The Myth About Real Life (post)
13. Lymbyc Systym – Ghost Clock (post)

DOWNLOAD ENTIRE COMPILATION>>> (52.3 MB, .RAR)

The post Obscure Sound: Best of October 2009 appeared first on Obscure Sound: Indie Music Blog.

On the heels of next week’s CMJ festival in NYC, Tim Williams is exemplary of the local favorites you are bound to find there. The Brooklyn-based songwriter caught one of his first breaks at CMJ in 2004, shortly after his debut Tales of Digression, and has been riding the wave ever since. Employing a very formidable style of indie-pop, Williams’ mixture of slick guitar riffs, inventive chorus-based hooks, and ardent vocals with the occasional yelps and grunts should cater to fans of Phoenix, Ben Kweller, Danielson, and Modest Mouse. His sound has a very contemporary feel to it, due in part to the continuous sense of capriciousness that his caressing vocals and versatile guitar work collaborate to produce. As a result, Williams has always been one or two hits away from holding a similar status as these major players. He has always enjoyed little more than local success though due to his past two album’s lack of exposure and focus. Their primary gratification was the demonstration of potential rather than fully embodied talent. The songs on Tales of Digression and its 2007 follow-up, When Work Is Done, sometimes appeared rough around the edges or devoid of focus, but what they did have was an imaginative premise with expertly integrated hooks. Cohesiveness was simply the final ingredient that Williams was missing to formulate his success.

Williams’ third album, Careful Love, continues the artistic maturity that its predecessor, When Work Is Done, showed off so impressively. It is not that Williams is particularly groundbreaking or stylistically inventive; his style of indie-pop should sound familiar to anyone with an ear or two. Instead, it is what he makes of it that is so worthwhile. Listening to snippets of any given track probably will not convince anyone of his artistic merits, but what a full listen of Careful Love exposes is a sensibility that is rare amongst most contemporary pop songwriters. There is a sense of virtuosity here, which in itself is a commodity since the respective genre is one where playing it safe is often advised. Williams does a little bit of both on Careful Love, mixing imminent college-radio favorites like “I Hit Another Wall” and “Oceans” with more avant-garde efforts (at least for the realm of indie-pop) that explore varying tempos, deliveries, and styles ranging from the dab of funk in “Ozone Street” to the electro-industrial influence of the rhythmically inclined “Right All Along”. When these are supplemented every other track or so that instead contain breezy, carefree indie-pop that requires little attentiveness to enjoy, it finds a nice middle ground between overly accessible indie-pop and intimidating avant-garde.

That Careful Love falls into neither category as a cumulative effort is a feat that his previous two albums did not accomplish, though When Work Is Done came close to doing so. Williams wrote this most recent effort after he successfully underwent open-heart surgery in May 2008, wasting no time after getting out of the hospital in writing tracks that packed more sincerity and expansiveness than before. One of the reasons for this expansiveness was the addition of a full band, which make their appearance on Careful Love in fantastic form. Where previous efforts would find Williams strumming his acoustic guitar with little to no accompaniment, the heightened sense of collaboration on Careful Love also attributes to the stylistic ambitiousness that the release portrays. “Stilts” is another nice example of Williams’ inventive indie-rock, utilizing the sounds of a sliding electric guitar and reflective arpeggio as Williams . This particular vocal technique is done throughout the album, with yelps or whoo-hoos making apt appearances on entertaining choruses that also include “Right All Along”, the orchestral dramatics of “I Want to Die in California”, and “Oceans”. The latter is so serene that it almost becomes reminiscent of Coldplay with its melancholic keys or Little Joy with its bright guitar chords. The title implies relaxation and the composition strongly enforces that carefree ideology with a brisk melody and flourishes of tropical bliss.

Another interesting cut on the album includes “I Want to Die in California”, a genuinely touching closer that reminds me of David Vandervelde’s fantastic debut, The Moonstation House Band. In that album he juggled grandiose orchestral-pop with the likes of indie-rock and glam-rock, resulting in something both nostalgic and groundbreaking. This effort is quite similar, finding Williams converting his classically soothing indie-pop croon to one with a western-ish twang. It feels particularly old-fashioned with its natural pianos and strings on an album that is primarily led by guitars and electronic tweaking, but that is also part of its allure. He finds himself singing in the vein of Dennis Wilson, who was able to turn the simplest pop songs into awe-inspiring achievements of emotion with his vocal and songwriting talents. A songwriter like that is perfectly justifiable for comparison, as Careful Love shows an artist who is just beginning to recognize his own emotive skills. Williams’ songs have resulted in an album that will be looked back on as the commencement of Williams’ most prominent growth as a songwriter. When he takes the stage at CMJ this year, audiences that saw him five years earlier will likely drop their jaws at this guy’s improvement. He is still showing heaps of potential, but he has durable quality and consistency to back it up now.

RIYL: Phoenix, Ben Kweller, Danielson, David Vandervelde, Modest Mouse, Dennis Wilson

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Tim Williams – Ozone Street

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Tim Williams – I Want to Die in California

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Tim Williams – Right All Along

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