Caribou - Tour CD 2007

Attended Pitchfork Music Festival last weekend, had an absolutely fantastic time there, saw some mind-blowingly good performances from the likes of Animal Collective, Spiritualized, !!! and Les Savy Fav to name a few. One band, Caribou, already had me sold before I even stepped foot in Union Park, so it was really just icing on the cake when they crushed it Saturday afternoon. Afterwards, while perusing their merch tent, I picked up this tour-only CD.

This is an incredible album, and it's a real shame they put some of this on a CD mainly sold only on their 2007 tour. Track one, to begin with, is a 30 minute DJ mix by Dan Snaith (the main force behind the "band" Caribou) that covers everything from 60's pop to krautrock to modern electronica. I can't seem to find the tracklist for the mix anywhere, which is a real shame, because every song is amazing. Tracks 2-7 are all Caribou originals and exclusive to the tour CD. After being slightly disappointed by the straightforward pop of their 2007 release "Andorra", I can only hope these tracks set the tone for all future Caribou releases. "Seven Oaks" and "Yo-Yo" show a return to form for Snaith, sounding like B-sides from his 2003 CD "Up In Flames", shoegazey pop electronica at it's finest. "Stones", "Woodcarver Steiner" and "Shim Shimmer" seem like studies in beat-making, being more like sketched outlines of future songs than complete works themselves. Still, the songs hold their own, particularly "Woodcarver Steiner" with its looped acoustic guitar and occasional vocal flourishes. The most curious song on the album is the closer "Hummingbird". Sounding more like LCD Soundsystem than Caribou, the song is a bleep-bloop foray into electronic drums, something Snaith has (until now?) bitterly despised. All in all for a $10 exclusive tour CD, the album is fantastic and worth every penny, which of course is why i'm giving it to you for free:

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=HS6SVWFV

Ungdomskulen - Ordinary Son

First, the bad news: Ungdomskulen's 2007 release "Cry-Baby" will not save dance-punk as we know it. I wanted it to, and after listening to this track, you'll want it to, but the album simply isn't that great as a whole.

The good news, however, is we still get treated to a few sparkling gems that hopefully foreshadow a very bright future for Norway's Ungdomskulen. "Ordinary Son", the first and best track off of "Cry Baby", combines arpeggiated overdriven guitar with a punchy bassline, all while not swaying far from the ticka-ticka sixteenth notes that restore my faith in the high-hat as a viable part of the drumset. This is no exercise in discipline, however. This is a full on, seven-and-a-half-minute progged out jam. It's got two seperate sections for gods sake. Imagine if Fugazi dropped all that political mumbo-jumbo and decided they wanted to make arena rock, or if The Dismemberment Plan decided lyrics were for suckers and embraced their inner Muse. Okay, this track is way better than either of those two ideas sound, but still, it comes close to explaining "Ordinary Son" and all its goodness.

Ordinary Son:
http://www.mediafire.com/?nzm5byu4jvm

For Tyler: