“Revenge” by The Rollercoaster Project is currently my song of the week. Why? It’s a five-minute long Fuck Buttons-esque trailing piano driven atmospheric song with beautiful screaming. No really, beautiful, and I never though I’d say that about calls from the underground. You can listen to the track at Lala and then please tell me what you think. It’s good for concentrating on things that are far away, I think.

Such is realism. Right? No. Such is Realism, the brilliant new album from The Magnetic Fields. This is their NINTH album, following up from their Distortion album of 2008, which was… distorted. Follow that up with a nice shot of realism and I think you’re going somewhere good. The new album is an entirely acoustic (no distortion, I swear!) orchestral pop album. And it’s wonderful. According to the press release it “examines what ‘real’ really means in recorded music, exploring the sincerity (or lack thereof) of folk lyrics and their delivery”. This is a concept album about realism that is half filled with great romantic break-up songs and half filled with brilliant explorations of the idea of realism–explorations that include Christmas trees, mermaids, tea parties with dolls, ghost princesses, wolfboys, and dances with martians. Each song seems to give another person’s perspective on what’s real. And that, my dear, is delicious (especially the one about The Doll’s Tea Party– tasty and pink and filled with cakes!). And these lyrics are great.

There’s realism in the opening track “You Must Be Out of Your Mind” — “If you think you can leave the past behind you must be out of your mind”.

And then there’s the “realism” in “The Dada Polka” — “People of Earth, when you dance, dance the Dada Polka. Life is only a dream.”

And finally the breakup finale, “From a Sinking Boat” — “Know that I wrote my last words to you from a sinking boat”

The Magnetic Fields are notorious for writing brilliant pop songs, and they simply haven’t stopped. This newest album is a good continuation of the legacy that they started with “69 Love Songs” and “i”. This is worth listening to, if not for the catchy tunes, then at least for the supposed exploration of what’s real. That’s where music gets fun.

The new album is out on Tuesday, but you can preview the whole album at their myspace.

****Lastly, let’s all take note of the similarities between the album artwork for Realism (see the top of the post) and the artwork for Distortion, below:

Curious, no?

FALL BE KIND

So, yep they did it. To us. Again. Through the heart? Maybe.

Animal Collective released a new collection of songs: their Fall Be Kind EP. As a long-time AC fan, it’s kind of easy for me to slip into really loving everything they do. However, their last album (Merriweather Post Pavillion) sort of threw me through one of those trials we have in romantic relationship; the “you’re still really cute but you’re getting seriously irritating” romantic trial that some of us might know all too well. Summertime Clothes? Undeniably catchy. My Girls? Good god this is summertime bliss! But it didn’t blow me out of the water. More importantly, it didn’t blow my head off with greatness, it didn’t rub my face in fleshy dirt the way Sung Tongs was capable of doing. So consider me, at this point, a skeptical yet still enamored fan.

The new EP? Compelling. Gorgeous. “Bleed” is the most wonderfully hypnotic song that I need to hear every morning that I need to hear late at night that a crazy night of storytelling is incomplete without. The whole EP draws out, brings me in, hypnotizes me, and brings me to that meditative state that only a good cup of distortion and repetition could take me to. The final verdict? A good move in the Animal Collective story. It’s possible that they hype can scare us all out of our skin at times, but there’s nothing like some good meditative noises and shouting to wash it out of our systems.