SEVEN NOISES

Yesterday I finally had the opportunity of seeing Best Coast live. It lived up to the expectations (even a good surprise when I saw their support drums was Vivian Girls' Ali). The songs and her voice didn't suffer at all and it was what you could expect after listening to her numerous singles. She's just started the UK tour, most of it sold out, fact that confirms the uprising fame she's got with just some not easy to get singles and not even an album yet on sale.
And the gig itself was not the only good surprise last night as, after the show, I wondered around the merchandising table and saw that her new single, Far Away/ Everyone's Gone, reportedly only available when you buy a set of expensive Escuche headphones, was there on the table for sale for £5.00. I don't even have to say that I jumped into the table and got me a copy as I previously thought I would never get this soon to be her hardest to find item. Anyway, I have to say that the headphones look amazing and are probably worth to get .
The two tracks on the single will not form part of their soon to be first album recorded on the Black Iris studios. It's slightly more Hi-Fi than the stuff she's put out before for other labels and closer to their single for Black Iris. Can't wait to hear the rest.

After the overexposure of end of the year (and decade) best of lists, this year for the first time in ages, I've decided not to do one myself. Whoever has spent a bit of time checking this blog during its nearly one year of existence will already know some of the singles I considered worth of checking and buying so you can do the review yourself going through the old posts. Anyway, after checking some of those lists you can just see some are just repetitive and some have nothing in common, looking as if they were from different planets taking into account the source they've been brewing in.
Anyway, If I don't do any kind of review about the last 12 months, it doesn't seem end of the year so I thought I would just comment what's been about in general 2009. And this year, more than the previous years and as it used to be in the nineties, everything's been about the record labels so i thought I would resume 2009 through them.
If there's been a label that has been the protagonist of the year this is Captured Tracks: managed by Blank Dogs, it has brought us not only his own releases but also great singles and EPs by Dum Dum Girls, Woods, Ganglians or Christmas Island. Together with them, the Brooklyn label Woodsist has worked as a parallel label to Captured Tracks. Managed by Woods, every single release they've put out has got the attention of the media, from Fergus and Geronimo, Real Estate or The Mayfair Set to Fresh & Onlys, Ganglians or Woods themselves.
We've seen as well the resurrection of a mythic label which was 20 this year; Slumberland Records, mainly thanks to Pains of Being Pure at Heart, has also brought us great records from Crystal Stilts, Brilliant Colors, Lichtenstein or Frankie Rose.
In the UK, Transparent Records has brought us great limited singles from Washed Out, Small Black or The Smith Westerns, Young Turks discovered us The XX and released singles by Wavves and Tanlines and No Pain in Pop brought us A Grave with No Name, Deep Sht or Trailer Trash Tracy's. Other great labels of the year were Mexican Summer (Washed Out, Weekend, Pearl Harbour), Art Fag (Crocodiles, Best Coast) , Black Iris (Foreign Born, Fool's Gold), Upset the Rhythm (Xiu Xiu, Future Islands) or Moshi Moshi (Kindness, Thecocknbullkid).
We also see how stablished record labels were as good as ever (Sub Pop and its singles Club) or got back on track (Matador releasing Girls, Cold Cave or getting Sonic Youth).
According to sounds this has definitely been the year when Lo-Fi was back in track and popularised again, folk overlooked and electronic music mainly resting. And yes, it was the year when Animal Collective got full coverage in the mainstream world, something that, looking way back, looks like it could never happen so maybe not everything's lost in popular music.

It took me too long to review these singles and now, their last one, is featured as best new music on Pitchfork today, which means that this post is kind of useless now, as you'll probably would have heard about this band by the point you read this post. Anyway, they are so damn good that extra praise is never enough. These three singles have been put out in the last months, actually the last two have just been released, and the myth is already created. Bethany story as Best Coast (with the help of Bob Bruno) is even shorter than the one from Fergus & Geronimo (check the previous post), and we can already see a bit of evolution in their sound. A former member of Pocahaunted she moved back to California to get influenced by the sea and the California boys. As you can imagine, the result is pretty close from the Beach Boys summery sound. Little by little they have been polishing the lo-fi and punkier sound of their first cassette Where the Boys Are, just slightly enough to sound a bit more 60s and 50s, something between a Spector girl band and a surf band but keeping the DIY spirit although a bit less rough. The first single Sun Was High (So Was I) in Art Fag is already sold out, so hurry up if you want to get Make You Mine, on Group Tightener and their about to be published, and the one who would definitely put them on the map, When I'm with You for Black Iris. None of them have a single song that doesn't make me want to pack my swimsuit, buy a surfboard and go to California to get a tan. Buy these records and put them on the shelf between the Dum Dum Girls and your scratchy copy of Pet Sounds. Surely, my new favourite band of the month.