I know very little about car models and brands. It is just something that I was never interested in. I never really enjoyed playing with model car kits or with hot wheels. Like most boys of the 80's though, I owned my share of toy cars. I didn't really choose my toys and I sort of just used my imagination. I much preferred the spaceships to cars, actually, and I really thought we would all be driving some sort of spaceship by now anyway. It is 2010! Remember when that seemed so far away? I guess it just seemed like the year you would turn 20 if you were born in 1990!...which is a bit crazy to me still. The children of the 90's are growing up too. Movies obviously played a big part of the way I thought about the future. They influenced us all, and often more than what we learned in the textbooks, although I do remember learning about the future in school a bit. I remember having to write an essay in elementary school about what I thought the future would be like. I had to "invent" something that would be commonplace in the future. I would kill somebody to get a hold of that essay! I still have most of my high school and college papers but I think in high school I decided I wasn't ever gonna need to read my papers on Harriet Tubman or the Challenger shuttle disaster that were from middle and elementary school. I think they have been recycled back into other paper products at this point. My essay on the future might have been influenced by the movie
Back to the Future more than anything I had been taught in the classroom, but I do remember having a good imagination -- or maybe I just combined the movies
Tron and
Back To the Future in my mind.
Back To The Future came out in 1985.
Tron came out in 1982. I would like to think I wrote this paper in 1981, but it may have been a couple of years after that. Maybe my teacher actually took my paper and sold it to Hollywood and made off with a million bucks! I really need to find that paper. I was talking to one of my friends the other day about my first movie memory. Both
Tron and
Back To The Future are early movie memories. I can still remember the theater I saw
E.T. in and where I was sitting. I can also remeber
Empire Strikes Back, which I think is my first movie theater memory. Back to the paper... I wrote about these highways that were all tracks. You would just get in your car and tell it where you wanted to go and it would drive there for you. My invention was great because I remember that I claimed, "No more car accidents!" I think I drew pictures and everything. The cars looked more like miniature limos and they came with their own cassette tape boom box, of course. I guess I was not smart enough to invent the mp3 or the Ipod. Or maybe I did and I just don't remember. It was a long time ago.
You are probably wondering how I got to be talking about all this if you are still reading along with my journey through my memories. I will relate it all to a new album I love very soon, don't you worry. I loved the Delorean in
Back To The Future. And the car doors in my future highway that I designed opened up much like the Delorean in
Back To The Future. So of course I was excited about a band named
Delorean! It could have been some lame metal emo band that got to the name first, but I'm glad it was this Delorean, a band with a new album out on
True Panther. The album is called
Subiza. And yes, it does
sound like the future...or maybe some version of the future that I imagined in the 80's. It sounds a bit like a fun beachy
Miami Vice soundtrack at times. Or what the hip grandchildren of the
Golden Girls would have been listening to. It is also spacey and dreamy. Beachgaze dream pop! I love the new music coming out from bands like
Washed Out, Best Coast, Surfer Blood, and
The Drums. It's getting me excited for a new generation of musicians. I love the shoegaze so I am of course excited about all the nugaze coming out this last decade, but this band is not nugaze. They are more influenced or at least sound like 90's house and pop dance. They sound more like
Pictureplane than Beach House. It's
Marky Mark meets the
Beach Boys. It's the
KLF meets
OMD. It's just good. They don't really need a category. This is my first time hearing Delorean but this is actually this Spanish band's third album. It's a fun dancey album! You should love it. I am already in love!
Another one of my favorites is the brilliant
Joy Formidable. However, I have been loving this album for a long time now. I am so happy that it has finally made its way out domestically and with a much larger pressing on CD and vinyl.
A Balloon Called Moaning came out originally in a very limited box set. I am proud to be the owner of one of the 500 boxes put out by a great little record store in England. However, I was worried that this band would disappear before they could be heard by everyone. I wantedeveryone to love them as much as I do. The album is just brilliant! It is short and perfect. It reminds me of the first time I heard
Elastica or
PJ Harvey. It really is that good. Led by a female singer, it is a more punk version of Brit pop. But they could have come out right along with
Echobelly and
Sleeper. And mix in some
Throwing Muses and you might get a sense of what they sound like! I could not stop listening to this record -- I had to give it a break for a while but it is now gladly back in my rotation. It was in my top albums list of the year last year and I might just have to put it in my top albums list of this year too for its domestic release. Get it and love it! You really can't not fall in love with the Joy Formidable.
Buy the new album A Balloon Called Moaning by The Joy Formidable!
The National just released their new album last week. It is called
High Violet. The National has been around since 1999 but this, their fifth album, might turn out to be their biggest album yet! Their first two albums were released on Brassland.
Alligator came out in 2005 and
The Boxer was released in 2007, both on Beggars Banquet.
The Boxer was a really fantastic album. Many of us loved it and had high expectations for this new album, but I knew it would not just be another
Boxer. It is just as good, it just takes some time to love. You've got to give the album a couple listens and let it get inside you. I have always love the dark and brooding men of indie rock -- the
Tindersticks, Smog, and
The Black Heart Procession are all some of my favorites, as well as the older
Magnetic Fields albums,
Arab Strap. All good stuff! I do love these guys and am happy to have them back in my life. This new album is on 4AD, which is a perfect home for them. I like the album packaging. I like the violet. I like the National. The songs are dark and there is no denying it. Some of the songs on this album are titled "Terrible Love," "Sorrow," Runaway," and "Afraid of Everyone." These are not happy songs, but everyone needs some music like this every once in a while. This band might help you explore the darker side of life, but hopefully it will help you through those dark times. Thank you, National.
Buy the new album High Violet by The National!
also out 5/4...
More! by Booka Shade
Forgiveness Rock by Broken Social Scene
MCMLXXX by Lazer Crystal
Together by The New Pornographers
Optimist by The New Young Pony Club
Baby Ouh! by Stereo Total
At Echo Lake by Woods
also out 5/11...
Sea of Cowards by Dead Weather
Relayted by Gayngs
Latin by Holy Fuck
No Singles by Japandroids
Nothing Hurts by Male Bonding
Warm Slime by Thee Oh Sees
