Skip to main content

Fang Island

97
Fang Island

Fang Island
As much as I hate to admit, Fang Island came on my radar thanks to Pitchfork's glowing review (Sample praise from said review: "This widely infection Brooklyn band takes manic musicianship and shout-along chorus to another level.") of their sophomore effort, the self-titled, 2010's Fang Island. As a sophomore in high-school I was just really starting to get into alternative music or indie-rock or whatever the hell you wanna' call it when you discover there's more to life than Top 40 & classic rock. The band originally formed in Providence, Rhode Island in 2005 before re-locating and becoming based out of Brooklyn. Anyways, 2010 was the perfect timing for me and this band. I was looking for the new-modern-version of Iron Maiden & boy did I find it. Harmonies! Guitars! Rock 'n' Roll! Their song "Daisy" is a timeless track as it gets and still gets the blood flowing. After discovering their second album and falling in love with them right away, I worked my way backwards, which was easy to do because they only had two other releases: 2007's Day Of The Great Leap album and 2008's Sky Gardens E.P. Other than that, and after a little band-change-up, the band released 2012's Major. In a press release, the band said they chose the name Major in honor of "Valley girl colloquialism," "major key," and "Steely Dan's 'Any Major Dude'," among many other reasons. Unfortunately, Major would be the band's last release. Due to a number of reasons, whether it be the internet-buzz-'n'-hype and the high expectations to keep delivering or the geographical roadblocks of having members spaced throughout the East Cost, the band would officially call it quits in 2015. But you have to give it up for a band that only lasts 10 years (a true feat in itself [ask anybody who's ever been in a band- they know what I'm talkin' about]) and only released three albums, an E.P., and a handful of other tracks... all fuckin' rockin' and rollin'. Seriously, this band does not have a dull track. I'm a little sad I'll never get to experience a new Fang Island album. The music is anything but bland...
It's...
Fang Island

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Björk

28 Björk Björk If Billie Holiday is an American treasure, well, if you were to put that treasure underwater, froze it, thawed it out centuries into the future and doused some acid & baking soda on it, out of that treasure chest would come Björk. Originally gaining fame in her home of Iceland with her band, the Sugarcubes, Björk was bound to break solo & she did just that with 1993's Debut . Following that was 1995's Post , 97's Homogenic , 2001's Vespertine, 2004's  Medúlla , 2007's Volta , 2011's Biophilia  (the first album where I was truly a fan), 2015's Vulnicura and 2017's Utopia . There's a lot to unpack there... you can't skip her first three or four albums, they're all amazing. I like Volta  just because it seems to be the loosest (and most fun) album she has. Vulnicura  was her break up album, with Björk expressing that the album reflects her feelings before and after her breakup and the healing process. Her legacy...

Eels

91 EELS EELS After a couple of song-rich, keyboard-dominated albums released under the Man Called E moniker, Mark Everett morphed into the trio Eels with 1996’s [DreamWorks Records released] Beautiful Freak . At its best, the debut gave a trip-hop twist to the California singer/songwriter tradition; at its worst, it suggests one more bummed-out wise guy’s take on Beck’s collage-style rock. With a sense of humor that skews toward cynicism that’s alleviated occasionally by bouts of sincerity, Everett is not the likeliest subject to make a transcendent album about death. But he nearly pulls it off on 1998’s Electro-Shock Blues . The music is somber but not sedate, with bursts of saxophone, off-kilter orchestration, and outright noise evoking the turbulence beneath the deadpan vocals. The singer battles not only depression but also his penchant for irony, and his struggle to move beyond them makes for a fascinating if sometimes morbidly downcast listen. On 2000’s Daisies of the ...

Elton John

93 Elton John Elton John The Elton Run is a great road-trip game: Using the radio’s scan and seek buttons, see how long you can keep a continuous streak of Elton hits rolling. It’s been proven possible to follow the Elton Run up I-95 from Virginia all the way to Boston. The hazard: One sixth of your listening will be devoted to “ Your Song ,” Elton’s most overplayed standard even though everybody is over it at this point (Sample lyrics: “If I was a sculptor / But then again, no,” I think we can all agree we don’t need to hear that cheesy line anymore.) But Elton has a staggering number of hits; At least one in the Top 40 every year from 1970 through 1995 (!). With his electric boots and mohair suits, he’s the prima of all donnas, sitting like a princess perched in his electric chair. He entertains by picking brains. He sells his soul by dropping names. And for all his camp flamboyance, he’s aged into the most beloved entertainer on earth. Elton’s got about a million compilatio...