Undercover poplover, part 25

"This sounds a bit like goodbye
In a way it is, I guess
As I leave your side
We've taken the air
Take care,
Please take care"

Download (Mediafire)
1. The Last Dinosaur - Beat it
2. Yo La Tengo - Take care
3. Kenickie - Save your kisses for me

Update: The Pop! For Kids Project

Remember how I told you about my new blog? This project has been going for a couple of weeks now, and has already resulted in some truly lovely songs. Important note: all these contributions are exclusive, previously unavailable songs, mostly especially written and recorded for TP!FKP. I'm obviously very proud that this is going so well so far. The name of the project may throw some grown-ups off initially, but I think all of these songs are thoroughly enjoyable, no matter how old you are.

Here are the links to the song contributions up to today:

Mascot Fight - Dance like robots
A Smile And A Ribbon - Honey bee
MJ Hibbett - Monster Island
Zipper - Tamagotchi
Doctor Ew - Goodnight, my day is done
Vom Vorton - The world is round
Monkey Swallows The Universe - Inspector Flamingo

If you visit the blog, you'll also find interviews with some of the contributing artists. Speaking of interviews, Tyo from the Indonesion band Sometimes Always interviewed me about TP!FKP for his Heart Fanclub Radio blog.

Garbo's Daughter

Thanks to Xanthi's lovely mix I heard Garbo's Daughter for the first time, a couple of weeks back. In their bio they call themselves 'the last of the rock&roll innocents'. This is indeed rock&roll music, of the poppy, catchy, addictive kind. I don't quite know how I can do Garbo's Daughter's garagy popsound justice in a few lines, so I'll just say: I like it a lot.

Give the band a listen with the below downloads, or on their bandcamp website.

You can buy Garbo's Daughter's records at Floridas Dying, Surfin'Ki Records and Burger Records.

Download (right click, save as)
1. Garbo's Daughter - Private party
2. Garbo's Daughter - Nice girls don't explode

Why the sky is blue

Franziska is in Utrecht with a friend. I'm outside with Sam, planting the hedera climbing plants against our garden's fence. Warm rays of sunlight tempt me to take off my coat, to make the work more practical. I hold a cup with little steel hooks in my hand.

"Sam, can you hand me the hammer?" I say.
"Hammer. Hammer!" he says.
"It's lovely weather, isn't it?" I say.
"Hammer!" he says.

I take one of the hooks and lead the plant's tranche through it so it will grow in the right direction.

"Can you hand me another hook?" I say.
"Hammer!" he says, while giving me a handful of hooks.
"Thank you sweety." I say.

We work together for over an hour, and all the winter's stress falls off my shoulders. I dig the last hole for the last plant.

"Shovel." he says.

Together we carefully water the new plants.

"Papa?" he says.
"Yes?" I say.
"Papa." he says.

We go inside. Papa, I think.
Papa. That's me.
It's really me.

---

From day to day time doesn't change anything.
Take a handful of days and still nothing has changed.
Then take a couple of those handfuls and suddenly everything is different.
How does this happen? Time can be a fantastic thing.

I don't have a lot to say today.

I just wanted to wish you a good day.
A happy springtime.
A lovely year.

A wonderful life.

Sarandon - Age of reason

Three years after the provocatively/appropriately titled LP Kill twee pop Sarandon are back with their new full lenght Age of reason, on Slumberland and Odd Box Records. It's a concept album, even. Yes, really. It made me frown a bit when I read that, but it's good. The 33 minute story is about Big Trev, a man unhappy with his achievements in life and determined to now make a change. The album consists of some tracks where the story is narrated, and then the actual songs of course. I appreciate the effort of the story, but for me it's mainly about the music. And that's good. Really pretty good.

I've always loved Alan's running bass, Crayola's adrenaline-driven hooky guitars and Tom's high energy slaps all over his drums. Those are all back again, but even more sophisticated, as far as music this punk gets sophisticated.

If you like your music with a sharp edge and want your music to be for the heart, for the ears and even for the feet, you may not find many better albums to please you as much as this one right now.

Stream Big Trev here.

Pre-order this album here or (soon) here.

Let's Whisper - The shortest days

After a couple of EPs Let's Whisper are now ready to conquer the remaining bits of our hearts as well with their first full length album, The shortest days, which is also the first full lenght release for the WeePOP! label. Of course we all know Colin Clary and Dana Kaplan from their solo projects and their other shared band The Smittens.

Both Colin and Dana have very distinctive voices, so there's no mistake we're dealing with a Smittens spin-off here. Not that this is a bad thing, of course, or that this means Let's Whisper is not a full band in its own right. The music itself is a little bit more bedroom pop, but in an upbeat enough way and with such a full sound that it never gets boring.

The album starts off great with two already familiar songs: California girls and one of the hightlights, All happy endings. All songs after that stay as warm and heartfelt as the openers, with their trademark harmonies and the hum-along-melodies. After two listens the three other songs that jumped out most directly at me were Meet me on the dancefloor, Snowy Sunday afternoon and what could be called their theme song, Let's whisper, but it's too early to really name favourites. Every second of the almost 37 minutes sounds like lovely, instant nostalgia. Like The Smittens, Let's Whisper feels like home. A very special achievement.

Pre-order The shortest days here.

Download (right click, save as)
1. California girls
2. Shortest days

Motel Mozaïque 2011

From 7 to the 11th of April, this year's edition of Motel Mozaïque takes place, again in Rotterdam (the Netherlands). You can see the full program here, but the bands most worth mentioning here are probably Architecture In Helsinki, Belle & Sebastian, The Coral, Dum Dum Girls, José González, Josh Ritter and No Age.

3 x (not so) new

There's real new, and there's new to me. And then there's new to me, and new enough to me to not have mentioned them here before. Reading back through this blog, I noticed it's been quite a long while since I shared some newer music with you. That's surprising (or lazy, call it what you want), because it's not like there's nothing worth writing about out there!

Looking through this week's playlist on my last.fm page I quickly came up with the following three that surely deserve your attention:

Cuffs (Andrew Churchman from Pants Yell!'s new band)
Chalk and Numbers (indiepop sixties style)
The History of Apple Pie (jingle jangle heartbreak pop)

If you've been living on the moon like me and have not listened to these yet, enjoy!