Alpinisms

Today's Music of the Day is Alpinisms, by School of Seven Bells. A little background may help here: School of Seven Bells is the band of one Benjamin Curtis, formerly of the Secret Machines. The Secret Machines are still active, though I have to admit that Ten Silver Drops wasn't the greatest album (but I still bought a t-shirt for it). Still, the first Secret Machines album, Now Here is Nowhere, was great enough that its good karma (and some positive word of mouth) was enough to convince me to give Alpinisms a listen.

With the Secret Machines sound leaning towards some kind of indie arena rock, anthemic not unlike, say, British Sea Power, I expected Alpinisms to be a fairly straight-forward rock album. As it turns out, I was completely wrong. Alpinisms bears the name 'Benjamin Curtis' on its tracks, but there's not really a guitar or drums or even male vocals to be found anywhere on this album. The overall sound is somewhat futuristic, if the future was 1997, maybe; it's all electronics and ethereal female vocals.

I would have to file this somewhere between Zero 7 and perhaps Ladytron in my mental music catalogue; the overall sound owes a debt to Portishead, and possibly Blonde Redhead as well. It's not quite laid-back enough to be background music, but it doesn't quite demand attention strongly enough to be anthemic. I don't know if this album will stand up well in two or three years, but it's a nice change of pace, and I'm enjoying well enough for now. It's worth a listen though I couldn't recommend it to someone who enjoys a more, shall we say, traditional style of music.

In Other News:
Somebody fix my shoulder because it is getting on my nerves.

My Neko Case crush flared up hard today.
http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2009/01/neko-case-drives-us-batty.html
Enjoy!