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Pop Rock Nation

Category: Releases

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  • First Listen (and Free Download): The Thermals “I Don’t Believe You”


    Portland indie-rockers The Thermals are known for writing nerdy, two-and-half-minute punk songs with an off-handedly topical point of view. You could call their most recent albums concept records, but that’s just a fancy way of saying they’ve been relatively thematically coherent. Last year’s, Now We Can See dealt with morality, mortality and science while their 2006 record The Blood, The Body, The Machine was a more narrative affair on the intersection of organized religion, governmental authority and personal agency.

    The group, led by singer-songwriter Hutch Harris, is getting ready to issue their fifth album next month. The album’s called Personal Life, and this time around, their focus is on love and relationships, the things that make relationships great, and the things that destroy them. It’s a direction hinted by the song “Separate” (issued earlier this year as one side of a split single with the Cribs), although lyrics like “separate I’m amazed I ever gave away all I held so dear” are ambiguous enough that they could just as easily be a pointed repudiation of political bipartisanship as they might be the post-break-up musings of a freshly single free-thinker.

    “I Don’t Believe You” is the lead single from Personal Life, and it’s an immediately lovable bit of candidly dismissive, singalong power-pop, even if it can’t match last year’s “Now We Can See” in either recklessly energetic dorkery or googly-eyed catchiness. Click below to hear the song for yourself. In addition to releasing the song as a good old-fashioned 45 (with a download card that includes two bonus videos), the band’s label Kill Rock Stars is currently offering the song for free download at their site. (Thank you Kill Rock Stars. You’re awesome.)

    The Thermals – I Don’t Believe You by killrockstars

  • Awesome Song Alert! “Credible Threats” by The One A.M. Radio

    According to the lyrics of his latest song, Hrishikesh Hirway, the main man behind indie pop band The One A.M. Radio, isn’t getting much sleep these days. But the chipperness (and consequent awesomeness) of his music has apparently increased in direct proportion to his insomnia. The group’s latest single “Credible Threats” is a modestly upbeat little ditty with adorably wordy verses and a playful, chutes and ladders melody, backed by pretty, ripply guitar parts and anchored by a buzzy retro synth drone. The cumulative effect is vintage Belle & Sebastian as filtered through Devo, the fatalism and urgency of the lyric just barely masked by Hirway’s softly witty, matter-of-fact, slightly detached, but ultimately vulnerable delivery. With its dorky bum-ba-dum breakdown and krautrocky instrumental coda (replete with singalong “oohs” over flying saucer synths), “Credible Threats” is just a funny sounding (but not necessarily funny funny) song about a guy who stays up at night cataloguing all the ways an unspecified “they” say he might die. That Hirway’s an emphatically mild-mannered American living in an hysterically angry America, with a “funny” name and what Sheriff Arpaio might deem a “terrorist complexion”, or at least “illegal” colored skin only underlines his probably-not-for-nothing, paranoia-tinged anxiety. I mean, here’s a guy who’s been watching himself some serious news lately. And then there’s this great couplet at the bridge:

    Tom Brokaw’s talking about a dirty bomb
    I got another call from my poor Mom.

    The song comes with this cute little video by director Andrew Huang. (Dig that choreography!) And James Cameron will be thrilled to know that Huang also did a 3-D version of the video which you can watch here. OR: Better yet, why not get yourself a copy of the 7″ single of the song directly from the band? (I just ordered mine.) In addition to the supercool colored vinyl, you’ll get downloads of the three mp3 tracks as well as the 3-D video, along with your very own set of 3-D glasses with which to watch it. All that for a mere $5.00 ($7.50 with shipping). But it’s only available in a limited edition of 500. So if you like it, you should put a credit card number on it. Like now.

    Here’s the 2-D version:

  • “Say No To Love” by The Pains of Being Pure at Heart: More Adorable Than Surprised Kitty?

    With their self-titled debut last year, New York’s The Pains of Being Pure at Heart established themselves not only as one of the cleverest American indie pop bands to come around since Velocity Girl in the 1990s, but also, unquestionably, the cutest – in both sound and appearance. It was a noisy record, but the noise wasn’t abrasive so much as warm and fuzzy, and when you could hear the lyrics, they were full of puns (“Young Adult Friction”), alt-pop-cultural references, and coy tales of teenage ribaldry. Now, after releasing a more studio-polished EP (Higher Than the Stars) last fall, the band has returned with a new 7″ single (on “sea foam green” vinyl, even!) called “Say No To Love” b/w “Lost Saint”, both sides of which sport a jangly, retro-flavored melancholy that recalls 90s alterna-faves like the Lightning Seeds, the Cranberries, and Ivy. The band’s also put out a video for “Say No To Love” that delivers a 10,000 kiloton bomb of adorable on the viewer. Nibble on this, Suprised Kitty!