Joie De Vivre

I am leaving my home here on the prairies soon to go live on the coast, but unlike the many from my home before me I find myself less enchanted. I like the sort of reverie that comes with being out in the rural areas here in the midwest. Flat land with more golds and yellows than the eye can see for most of it. It's put me in the mood for some softer music and looking for things that would suit the leaving feeling. Along with searching for good quotes and one found itself in a band I know next to nothing about and had only just listened to for the first time yesterday night.

The quote is "You can suck in all the sun you want, but you can't burn away your home." It just seems to fit my disenchantment with a place that everyone else is so excited to go to. The band is Joie De Vivre (A French saying meaning "Joy of Life") and the album is "To the North."

I know nothing about these guys right now except that they are playing with Owen soon, cite American Football as an influence, and most of all sound a helluva lot like a Sunny Day Real Estate worship band. Sometimes I find the vocalist has an eerie similarity to the vocalist from Sunny Day Real Estate seemingly enjoying to mix between lazily sung/spoken portions rising into the explosive yet beautiful higher ranges for emphasis here and there.
The lyrics are all extremely well written and it's a great album for just sitting and listening to.

Probably would have been a better post earlier in the week or the week before because this is the perfect rainy day anthem album. Not so much for a day of beautiful sunshine and heat.

Big thanks to Mark for hooking me up with this album.

Listen Here.
Download Here.

Transistor Transistor/Wolves Split

This split was probably one of my first emo records following discovering bands like Saetia and Hot Cross. I do not remember exactly what influenced me to pick it up. I'm willing to bet something to do with the cover. I just know this is back when I was working my first record store job and I worked at a store that had a pretty good punk section that I'd spend hours mulling over and entire paycheques on.

The Wolves side starts out with guitar that seems impossibly loud, leaving you to expect it to dominate and drown out everything else, only to find out that all of the levels seem to be at this maximum volume. Somewhat muffled, distorted vocals are shouted out tearing through the wall of guitar that's constantly being built make this band a complete unrelenting attack. The songs are extremely technical and well produced even played at max volume. Wolves has members of Orchid so if you want to ignore everything I say just check them out based on that alone.

The Transistor Transistor side is just a continuation (or beginning depending which side you start with, really) of the battle that Wolves kicked off. Trans/Trans also have an intense vocalist though they trade off yelling/speaking/noise making duties quite a bit. The guitar has an edgier tone to it often playing rhythmic lines that confuse you into a convulsory dance or just keeps your head bobbing a lot. Trans/Trans have a real techy feel to them with an almost Refused approach to punk. I can never get over how well written their songs are every hook bleeding into the next perfectly never giving you a chance to be bored by their songs. The same member from Orchid who was in Wolves is also in Trans/Trans. Perhaps that's where this standard of excellence comes from, hmm?

Not to be a dweeb but I'd consider this a very "artsy" hardcore/emo album which is not a descriptor I'd typically get to use for this kind of music. This is just one of the many reasons I have such a hard-on for Level-Plane records.

Listen Here [Wolves]
Listen Here [Transistor Transistor]
Download Here

Song of Kerman

This post is a continuation post of yesterday's post.

Gray Before My Eyes went on to become a band called "Song of Kerman." I really dug Gray Before My Eyes but Song of Kerman has a much more full sound. In Song of Kerman they have a full band, or at least if they had one in GBME, one that plays at full capacity. If you enjoyed GBME at all I highly recommend this record since it overshadowed theirs almost immediately once I found it.

Song of Kerman is an emo band that existed around '98 (at least that is when this record is dated around) from Orlando, Florida. This band is really interesting as it's heavy emo and has a really passionate angry feel through a lot of it, but the bass chugs along adding a lighter mood to the album. On top of that they do a lot of vocal experimentation sometimes it feels as though they added a slight distortion to the vocals, others it waivers into an awkward/eerie singing voice. The guitar cuts through nearly everything and the vocals almost always fade back to a raspy shout from which you can usually understand the lyrics quite well from--Kind of unusual for heavier music. A lot of the songs involve a lot of spoken portions coming out over plucky guitar and building into further spasms of shouting and guitar. The structure of these songs is extremely well put together and even after multiple listens the album still feels fresh and interesting.

Unfortunately finding this album except by mp3 would be extremely difficult considering it's extremely limited with under 500 copies floating around released posthumously. Further information about the band is equally as hard to find. I do not know if the members went on to other projects or if they were in anything else simultaneously.

I do not know what else to say about this album except that it has a great emo, hardcore and rock aesthetic so it should be added to your collection.

Also I did not rip the album--So I just want to apologize about tracks 2&3 and 8&9 being compounded. Nothing I can do about that, really.

Download Here