Early April Roundup.

The Foreign Films-Ocean Moon (New Songs and Hidden Gems). Bill Majoros spent most of the previous decade working on and releasing his 3-disc epic The Record Collector, the proper followup to his brilliant 2007 double-disc debut Distant Star. His latest offering is Ocean Moon, a more modest 9-track disc which starts off with six new tracks then revisits a trio from The Record Collector, recontextualizing them into a loose concept album of sorts about being in love, both with a woman and with the music of the 60s. The six new songs are all quite excellent, from the Zombies-like opener "Dream With Me Tonight" to the "sha-la-la-la-la" chorus of "Katie and the Crystal Hearts" to the latter-day Jeff Lynne stylings of the title track. Will these six new songs end up as part of some multi-disc release in the next few years? Stay tuned, but tune into these new ones now.

iTunes



High on Stress-Hold Me In. Like many, six years ago I was bummed to hear that Minneapolis rockers High on Stress broke up, and like many I'm thrilled that Nick Leet & company have reunited. Hold Me In sounds like they never went away, delivering a dozen tracks in the vein of The Replacements-meets-early Wilco. "Work Release" is a great opener, with "my heart's on work release" a metaphor worthy of some of Westerberg's best. "Dakota" features a country beat, "Never Got That Far" is a great folk-rocker with ex-Billy Pilgrim Andrew Hyra joining on vocals, and speaking of guest stars, Laurie Lindeen (of ZuZu's Petals and Westerberg's ex) duets with Leet on what's perhaps the album's best track, the yearning "Wish This Moment Gone". A return to form, if not an improvement on form.

Bandcamp



Surrender Human-Surrender Human. The Chapel Hill NC music scene might not be what it was in the 90s, but three veterans of that era have teamed up in their best effort to bring them back. Matt McMichaels (vocals, guitar) of the late great Mayflies USA joins Ben Folds Five bassist Robert Sledge and drummer Tony Stiglitz (Jett Rink, Chris Stamey) as Surrender Human, and their debut disc finds them in fine form. It's a mix of 90s slacker-era indie rock with an older and wiser pop sound, and fans of any of the bands these guys played in or with will love it. The bright rocker "Boxcar Reel" lets you know what you're in for, the catchy "Let You Down" could have been a staple on college rock radio stations 25 years ago, and "Girls Not Talking" is some nifty power pop. Surrender to this one.

iTunes

New Foreign Films single.

Although Bill Majoros has yet to release a proper full-length followup to his brilliant 2007 double-CD release Distant Star, he has managed a somewhat steady stream of singles and EPs over the past year or two and now he's back with a new single, which you can get for free at Bandcamp (and which you can listed to below):

EP of the Day, 11/4/10: The Foreign Films EP.

Bill Majoros a/k/a The Foreign Films gave us one of the pop masterpieces of the decade with 2007's double-disc Distant Star, and his long-awaited followup is nearing the light of the day. To give us a taste, he's released a free EP on Bandcamp that's a preview of the new album due in the spring. These four new tracks will certainly whet your appetite - "Fire from Spark" has the psychedelic majesty of Distant Star, "City of Bright Lights" has a New Pornographers-like urgency to it, "Imperfect Perfection" has the feel of a James Bond theme from a parallel universe, and "A Message" compares well to Radiohead. And did I mention it was free? Enough blabber, here's the link.

Foreign Films (among others) added on eMusic!

Eagle-eyed reader Al M. has alerted me to the fact that The Foreign Films' Distant Star is now on eMusic. It's a contender for the year-end top spot, and normally I don't advocate using up 22 of your monthly downloads on a single disc, but I'm making an exception here. He also pointed out that Robo Sapiens, the new disc from Roger Joseph Manning Jr's electronic project, Malibu, is on there as well.

Not to mention a couple I managed to find by myself: The Resonars' Nonetheless Blue, a fine psych/jangle pop disc that has been on the front page of Not Lame for weeks, and the Michael Harrell EP, Greetings From The Village, that I featured last month.

Monday miscellany.

Some random bits as we face another work week:

* I've never been a big fan of Melissa Etheridge and her whole "female Springsteen" sound (although I am a big fan of the actual Boss and I highly recommend Magic). But "Message to Myself" from her new disc is a great (power) pop track and has found its way onto my iPod. It's streaming at her myspace.

* I guess the siren sells records. Earlier this year the Josh Fields disc constantly went out of stock at CD Baby, and now I notice that The Foreign Films has done likewise.

* Kool Kat is featuring Ben Forrest Davis' Roughs among the new releases this week. "The gorgeous debut by former and founding member of Sugarcult released on Ric Menck's Bird Song imprint" is how they describe it, and I have to say I like what I've heard. I mention this disc because it's available at eMusic, in case you haven't burned through your monthly credits yet.

CD of the Day, 10/8/07: The Foreign Films-Distant Star

For the third time* in this blog's history, here comes the siren:


There are discs about which I can wax poetic, and then every once in a while I come across one that makes me feel like Chris Farley in those old SNL skits where all he could do was slobber over a celebrity and saw "you were awesome". Such is almost the case for The Foreign Films' Distant Star (I say almost because this post is going to be a bit longer than just "it's awesome"), a 2-CD masterpiece of psych pop that takes the sound of luminaries like John Lennon, Robyn Hitchcock, XTC, contemporaries like Cotton Mather, Robert Harrison solo (the disc is very reminiscent of Future Clouds and Radar, only more consistent), Robert Pollard, Deleted Waveform Gatherings, and mixes it up to create something that stands astride its influences as its own artistic statement.

All of you Matherites out there should truly be stoked by this one; on the heels of Stockton's release featured last week, this one will be truly up your alley. The Foreign Films is actually Hamilton, Ontario's Bill Majoros, and he's a vocal cousin to Lennon and Harrison (Robert, not George). Majoros has been a vet of the music studios for 15 years, as sideman and producer, and it shows on his debut as frontman (he wrote all the tracks as well) as the disc is a sonic as well as melodic delight. Given the band name, it's almost a cliche to describe the sound here as "cinematic", but if the shoe fits...

As far as the individual tracks go, there's 22 of 'em, and I haven't found a bad (or even mediocre) one in the bunch. This is the type of disc that cries out to be listened to the old-fashioned way: all at once, consecutively, preferably on a nice set of headphones. Which is not to say it doesn't work on the iPod either; when these tracks came up randomly among those from other artists, they stood out as well. I guess it's obligatory that I single out a few; coming to mind first are the disc's bookends, opener "Remember to Forget" drew me in the first minute I heard it as a sample on CD Baby, and the closing suite, the 8 1/2-minute "The Snowglobe" is one of the few of those that actually work. "Invisible Heart" is another standout - it's one of the more rocking tracks on the disc - and "Clouds Above Radio Towers" is the quintessential Cotton Mather-meets-GbV track. But there's really no drop-off in the others either. I do throw the phrase "top 10 of the year contender" around a lot (probably more than 10 times a year, for sure), but this is a top 5 contender and maybe even higher. I'll just wrap it succinctly: Get. This. Album. Now. (It's priced at $12.97, typical for a single disc)

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*for those keeping score, the other two sirens were for Travis Hopper and Josh Fields. In retrospect, the Hopper was an excellent album, but maybe not quite siren-worthy. Fields, on the other hand, still deserves his.