Common Market - The Winter's End EP (Hyena Records, 2008)

With few exceptions, the state of modern-era commercial hip hop is a very sad one. "Bling" is most certainly not in, as the average man and woman on the street is more concerned with where their next rent check is coming from, as opposed to how many diamonds (see: cubic zirconia) they can fit onto one ring. The "fairytale-nightmare" of thug-life has come to a crashing halt.
Luckily, the underground is ready to surface. In fact, dynamic acts such as Aesop Rock, EL-P, Blue Scholars, and the mighty Common Market have been keeping hip hop alive - albeit under the radar.
Tobacco Road, Common Market's 2008 masterpiece was an amazing leap forward from their strong debut album - and has been on high rotation at In(High)Fidelity since it hit the streets last September. Tracks such as Trouble Is, 40 Acres and Nina Sing, highlight Common Market's aim to raise people's consciousness and at the same time raise their hands.
While Common Market - DJ Sabzi on the ones-and-twos / RA Scion rocking the mic - never shy away from weighty topics, The Winter's End EP (a digital only release), seeks to bring to a close the themes on Tobacco Road; to welcome in Spring in the Northern Hemisphere; and to also give Common Market fans something to sink their teeth into before another full-length drops.
Common Market is hip-hop for fans of good music. Their creativity and the message they carry with it appear to be growing sronger and stronger with every release.

Check Out: http://www.myspace.com/commonmarket

Record Strore Day Rundown

As you may be aware, your trusty scribe has been know to lend his pen to other publications whenever the mood strikes. Check out Ben's latest piece for The Rundown, where he talks up the glory that is Record Store Day. Click here!

The Pains of Being Pure At Heart - The Pains of Being Pure At Heart (Slumberland Records, 2009)

From the opening jangly guitars of Contender, the first song from the Pains of Being Pure At Heart's debut self-titled album, you will find yourself immdeiately hooked by the echoes of Brit-Pop's glory days circa 1986. The warm, infectious melodies; the superb boy/girl harmonies of singer-guitarist, Kip, and keyboard player-vocalist, Peggy, are enought to set your head swimming.
With an album running time of 34 minutes 58 secs - The Pains Of Being At Heart find a way to incorporate elements of shoe-gaze, good old-fashioned pop hooks and teenlove angst into songs that will be playing over-and-over in your head long after the record has stopped spinning.
Young Adult Friction is a perfect example of the band's winning combination.
Wall-of-sound guitars, fragile vocals, a propulsive drum beat - and the repeated refrain of "Don't Check Me Out" that closes out the song, which begs for a crwod sing-a-long.
Other songs on the album, including This Love Is Fucking Right! and A Teenager In Love, give you a firm indication of what this band is about. Forget about Heartbreak and 808s - try out some heartbreak with drums, bass, guitars and vocals. You will find it far more rewarding.
The Pains Of Being Pure Heart's bandwagon is well-and-truly rolling, and we here at In(High)Fidelity are hitching a ride. Ignore them at your own peril.

Check Out: www.myspace.com/thepainsofbeingpureatheart

It Ain't No Surprise - Leopold and his Fiction (Native Fiction Records, 2009)

Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man is without doubt one of the coolest, darkest films about the wild-west ever made. In the opening sequence, a meek accountant, played by Jonny Depp, finds himself stranded in the frontier town of Machine - a place not entirely dissimilar to hell on earth.
Machine is the complete antithesis of Mill Valley - the wild-west version of Marty McFly's hometown, depicted in Back To The Future III (possibly the weakest link in one of the greatest trilogies of all time). Even Bufford "Mad Dog" Tannen would not survive long in a town like Machine.
Which, in a round-about-way, brings us to Leopold and his Fiction - a very fine rock 'n roll band who hail from present-day San Francisco. Their sound is grounded in American roots music - blues, country, and healthy doses of garage rock. However, there is an edge to their music, a darkness at the edge of town that leads one to believe that they would be the perfect house band for the Machine Tavern - surely not a place for the faint of heart.
The band's debut album (featured here in 2008) revealed a band with a lot of promise, and Ain't No Suprise firmly delivers on that promise. In the louder moments (hear the excellent Sun's Only Promise), the band gives themself space to stretch out - crashing cymbals punctuating the howling guitar and organ leads. The quieter moments are more reflective, an acoustic slide-guitar accompanied by a plaintive, almost wistful voice, as on the gentle Tiger Lily.
Ain't No Surprise is one of the great new albums of 2009 and should serve to bring Leopold and his Fiction to a much wider audience. Here at In(High)Fidleity HQ, we are only to happy to do our part to help make that notion a reality.

Check Out: www.leopoldandhisfiction.com

Bon Iver - Blood Bank (Jagjaguwar, 2009)

At times, I am prone to making hyperbolic comments such as "I think the world would be a better place if everyone took the time to listen to Bon Iver at least once a day." However, is it hyperbole if I genuinely believe it to be true?
With their debut album, For Emma, Forever Ago, Bon Iver more-or-less took over my stereo in 2008. I bought the album on CD and then upgraded to vinyl. I proceeded to buy copies for friends and family, imploring anyone within earshot to immerse themselves in the restrained emotional beauty that was sure to pour forth from the speakers.
Blood Bank is a four-song EP that builds upon the foundation set by For Emma, Forever Ago, and while the sound isn't a grand departure from the earlier album, I am certainly not complaining. The EPs final track, Woods, is a beguiling piece of music, on which Bon Iver main man, Justin Vernon, builds an entire song out of a single couplet, that is multi-tracked time and time again and manipulated with the studio tool of the day: auto-tuning. Woods is strange, fantastical and fantastic all at once.
If I had to make one criticism of Blood Bank, it is that with only four songs, it is over all too quickly. That is a pretty piss-weak criticism, though. If you have not yet discovered Bon Iver, wait no longer.

Check Out: http://www.myspace.com/boniver