Cloud Cult - Feel Good Ghosts (2008, Earthology)

Cloud Cult have long been an In(High)Fidelity favorite, and, with their latest album Feel Good Ghosts (Tea Partying Through Tornadoes), our love for all things Cloud Cult has been affirmed once again. It is a fantastic album and you should buy it.
You should buy it because of the great music, however, you should also buy it because Cloud Cult are a band that stand for something beyond their music.
Despite repeated offers from record labels to sign the band, Cloud Cult determinedly self-release all of their albums so that they are able to maintain complete artistic control over both the sound of their albums and the manner in which they are distributed. Cloud Cult work diligently to ensure that their releases leave no carbon footprint on our hastily perishing planet. The packaging they use is made entirely of recycled materials and the band tour in an eco-friendly van.
I have written much of Cloud Cult here on In(High)Fidelity and for good reason. If you have limited funds to put toward music purchases, why not put them towards a band that actually gives a shit about something real. Visit www.cloudcult.com now, to purchase the album directly from the band, before it is officially released in April.

Check Out: www.cloudcult.com

Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago (Jagjaguwar, 2008)

When I discover an album such as For Emma, Forever Ago, I immediately despair. I despair because I know my talent with words could never do justice to the beauty of the sound I hear.
For the past two weeks, I have been staring blankly at my computer screen, quietly becoming overwhelmed with the task of imploring you - the reader - to listen to an album of which you may have otherwise never heard. Is it enough to tell you that I have listened to this album repeatedly for weeks now, reveling in its quiet fragility; allowing the warmth of songs such as Flume, and, my current favorite, Skinny Love, to wash over me time and time again.
In trying to describe this album, the best I have been able to come up with is as follows: It is an album that makes me happy and sad at the same time; it is beautiful and fragile; it is a bit like the sound in my head when I try to think of how my heart truly sounds.
I'm not sure if that makes sense to anyone but myself, or if, indeed, it makes any sense at all. I do know, however, that For Emma, Forever Ago is one of those special albums that appears at the very time you need it most. J'aime Bon Iver.

Check Out: www.myspace.com/boniver

Key Tracks: Flume, Skinny Love, The Wolves (Act I and II), Re:Stacks

Yeasayer - All Hour Cymbals (We Are Free, 2007)

There has been much written in music pages recently, about Vampire Weekend and the way in which they have gotten all Paul Simon on our arses and injected afro-rhythms into their much-lauded self-titled debut album. From what I have heard of the album, it sounds like they have done a rather good job of incorporating these rhythms into their particular brand of indie-pop, however, our subject today is not Vampire Weekend. Nay, my friends, today we are here to talk about the band Yeasayer, and the beguiling album which they released a few months ago to quiet acclaim - All Hour Cymbals.
To be frank, when I brought this album home from the record store and threw it into my stereo, I thought I had been duped. I had heard only good things about the album from reliable sources, however, what I heard was... well, it was alright. It certainly didn’t blow me away upon first listen; or even the second listen for that matter.
However, through repeated listens, All Hour Cymbals began to open itself up to me. Instruments that I had not heard on previous listens; strange, engaging Eastern rhythms; layers of sound that danced around one another; a mélange of voices: singing, chanting, moaning. I was stunned that this sound had come from four guys holed-up together in Brooklyn.
Yeasayer’s sound is one that defies easy genre categorization. At times brooding, at others celebratory; thematically and stylistically, Yeasayer are all over the map, which, perhaps, may be their greatest charm. All Hour Cymbals is an album well worth taking the time to explore; and, having seen them put on one of the best shows thus far in 2008, I can vouch that Yeasayer are a band worth seeing live when they pass through your town.

Check Out: www.myspace.com/yeasayer

Key Tracks: 2080, A.H. Weir, Forgiveness

Black Mountain - In The Future (Jagjaguwar, 2008)

In the 1990s, groups of young men with long hair would often congregate in places where they could go about their business unnoticed (the southern Californian desert was a favored meeting spot); smoke a lot of pot, listen endlessly to riff-heavy rock from the 70s, and, eventually pick up instruments and make music of their own. The music they made, heavily influenced by the likes of Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin, came to be known as Stoner Rock - and, for the most part, it was good. The preeminent force in Stoner Rock, was the legendary Kyuss, whose lead guitarist, Josh Homme, would later go on to form Queens Of The Stone Age and bring his rock sound to a far greater audience.
While the term Stoner Rock fell out of favor at around the turn of the millenium, the reverberations of the genre's sound are still being felt today. Case in point: Black Mountain.
Released on what is fast becoming In(High)Fidelity's label of choice - Jagjaguwar - In The Future is an album of epic proportions, yet one that never over-plays its hand. This is no small feat, given that one of the tracks - the mighty Bright Lights, clocks in at just under 17 minutes.
To call Black Mountain's sound derivative, would be to sorely under-estimate the power and urgency the band brings to their sound. This is the best of what heavy rock has offered throughout the years, re-imagined for a time where war rages in foreign countries, while our own governments employ scare-mongering tactics to keep the population paranoid and sedate.
Black Mountain, however, are no one-trick ponies, and some of the finer moments on the album, the winsome Stay Free in particular, are those where the band pick up acoustic instruments and expose themselves for what they truly are: fine songwriters who are unafraid to where their hearts on their sleeves.

Check Out: www.myspace.com/blackmountain

Key Tracks: Stormy High, Tyrants, Stay Free, Bright Lights