Indie At The 2011 Grammy Awards

Hey guys, so two weekends ago, the Grammy Awards were on TV, and it has made me very excited for the future of indie rock music

It was a great step forward for many indie bands as their popularity skyrocketed in one night. This especially goes out to two bands in particular. The Arcade Fire and Muse

The Arcade Fire won the Album of the Year award for their album "The Suburbs" beating out mainstream pop icons like Lady Gaga and Katy Perry as well as indie rapper Eminem. I found this quite amusing as on many radio stations and media outlets over the couple days following were commenting on The Arcade Fire, most exclaiming they had never heard of the band before the awards! I found this quite amusing because it just goes to show you don't need to be well known to make good music. The Arcade Fire was huge in the indie music scene this year with the release of this, their newest album. This 7 man/woman band from Montreal first graced the music scene with their 2004 release "Funeral". This album was accompanied by the song "Rebellion(Lies)", their most famous song to date and their song that has the most play on mainstream radio of any of their releases. Since then they have released the album "Neon Bible" in 2007 before releasing this latest disc. I really hope that after this success they will not decide to sign to a major record label but rather stay to their roots and keep making the music they do. Below are their first two singles off this most recent album.

Ready To Start

The Suburbs

Muse won the Rock Album of the Year award for their album "The Resistance" beating out old time rockers like Tom Petty, Neil Young, Jeff Beck and indie rock group Pearl Jam. Muse, who is much more famous world wide rather than in North America, hail from England, and have been playing this same style of music since their introduction to the music scene in 1994. This three man band, before the Grammy Awards, were probably best known for their song "Knights Of Cydonia" appearing in Guitar Hero and Rock Band video games. Since then Muse has slowly started taking the world by storm, winning the prize for "Best Live Band" the past two years. Their unique style really comes out when listening to them live because they sound the same live as they do on disc. With the release of "The Resistance" we should start seeing a lot more Muse in mainstream radio as their singles "Uprising", "Resistance" and "Undisclosed Desires" are all masterfully put together. Muse is a band that you know will be indie for life; they have been around for so long already and are so, so good at what they do, you can be sure that they will not throw it away for money. Below are their first two singles from this most recent album.

Uprising

Resistance

Hope you guys enjoy these two fantastic indie bands

Till the next post

Jon

New Bands Of The Week

Hey guys,  once again I've posted the new bands of the week!

Make sure you listen to them all and give a vote on your favourite!

This week I decided to go with a theme, so all the bands in the list this week are older, very well known indie bands by anyone who has even listened to music the last 10 years. These are their newest singles, and I was hoping I could find out which was your guys' favourite

Last weeks winner was Guilty About Girls, with their song "Candy Candy" here it is for all those who missed it...

Hope you all are discovering some amazing new bands through this, have fun listening


Till next time


Jon

Indie Rock Review (Mumford & Sons)

This post is dedicated to Heather P-J

For those of you who are yet to hear this surging indie-folk band I really hope you take an interest into them after hearing these three songs.

This band was recently nominated for two Grammy Awards, Best New Artist and Best Rock Song (Little Lion Man). They also performed their current single "The Cave" and by the response of the masses, I believe that the fans of this incredible band grew in numbers exponentially during this performance.

This band hails from West London in England and is part of the "West London Folk Movement". These band members all attended King's College School in West London along with the band members of other indie-folk band Noah And The Whale.

Mumford & Sons are very well known on the Northern European music scene as, for the last four years, they have been producing EP after EP and gaining a huge fan base. With the release of their first album in 2009 "Sigh No More" they became an instant hit world wide with their song "Little Lion Man". This pushed for the success of their second single "Winter Winds", this song wasn’t very successful in the North American market but in the rest of the world it became a hit. Then there came "The Cave"; their third single and the one that they played at the Grammy Awards recently, the song that the millions who watched fell in love with and now is pushing the band to stardom. Keep an eye out for their newest single just released "Roll Away Your Stone", this song should be hitting radios very soon.

In my opinion this band is amazing, a cross between the folk style of a band such as Great Big Sea, the upbeat spontaneity of Barenaked Ladies and the watery vocals of Jason Wade (Lifehouse).

This band is great and will continue to be great as long as they keep doing what they are doing. I really hope that they don't decide to sign to a major record label because of their Grammy Award success; for if they do I think we may see the end of them. However, if they keep doing what they are doing I'm sure that you will hear much more from this band and soon too. Their great mix of fast paced folk and slow paced emotional songs is amazingly put together.

If you don't already know the name, learn it. Below are three of their singles from "Sigh No More".

Winter Winds

Little Lion Man



The Cave



Until the next review

Jon

New Bands Of The Week

Hey guys, I've posted the new bands of the week!

Make sure you listen to them all and give a vote on your favourite!


This time i included some more popular indie along with some lesser known indie, so let me know what you think :)


Last weeks winner was The Black Keys, with their song "Tighten Up" here it is for all those who missed it...

Hope you all are discovering some amazing new bands through this, have fun listening


Till next time


Jon

Indie Rock Review (The Dirty Heads)

Hey guys and gals again,



Sooooo in between my blogs that discuss indie rock and your introduction to the indie scene of music I will be doing music reviews from past years or present releases.

I hope that by giving these reviews you can better find new groups or artists that may interest you. All the while that I'm doing this I will also keep posting my "Bands Of The Week" on the side bar, so keep up with them too as they will be changing each week and may not be the same as these reviews.

Here is my first review; it is going to review the band known as The Dirty Heads. I also plan on doing a bunch more reviews on releases from the last two years over the next couple weeks, so keep following. Please remember, all my reviews are opinionated, so you may hate what I like and like what I hate, I will try to stay open minded but I just want you to know that, if I rip on a band, it doesn’t mean you won't like them.

So here we go:

I'm going to start off with what I believe was the #1 biggest single of 2010 in the world of Indie Rock. This I believe is "Lay Me Down" by The Dirty Heads (feat. Rome). This is very fitting because Rome is one of the originators of ska-punk, being the front man of 90's ska-punk band Sublime. 

The Dirty Heads are also ska-punk band and they hail from Huntington Beach, California. This song was amazing, coming off of the record "Any Port In The Storm" it is really a diamond in the rough. This album was originally released in 2008, however off the original release only one single was put out, this being "Stand Tall". The album was then later re-released in 2010 with many bonus tracks including an acoustic version of "Viva La Vida" which is really well done.

However, I found that this band was very hit and miss, even though they have only released one album. "Lay Me Down" is absolutely amazing, "Stand Tall" is also a very strong song, and the acoustic cover of "Viva La Vida" is as solid as they come, but after that I found little substance to the record. They tried to pull off some heavier, fast-riffed music which I found lacked a lot of substance, and the acoustic songs that really made this record what it was were few and far between. I believe that the success of their sophomore album will depend on if they go to what they are good at, this being the up-tempo ska-heavy acoustic-punk we saw in their singles from “Any Port In The Storm”.

Below I have the videos for Lay Me Down and Stand Tall, if you wish to find the acoustic cover of Viva La Vida you can easily find it on YouTube.

Lay Me Down

 Stand Tall

Till the next review.

Jon

Intro To Indie

Alright guys, here comes my first legit blog post so we’ll see how I do.  :P

So what I what I was hoping to go over today is “What is Indie Rock?”

For some of you I have no doubt that you are avid indie fans like me, but others I am sure had no idea that this genre of music even existed. In this blog I am hoping bridge the gap between those two groups.

So first I’ll talk about, what exactly is “Indie”, what does the title mean?

“Indie” is short for independent, as in bands that are independent by themselves and that their music is 100% their own.

You may read this and think, isn’t every musician “indie" then?

No.

You see, there is a wave going through the music industry known as pop music, ever heard of it? Of course you have, it’s all that music they play on B101 or Z103 or those other pop-music stations. “Music that you can dance to”

This music is exactly what indie is not.

Basically you can separate all music in the world into either the pop category or the indie category.

What makes pop different than indie? It’s not cause it’s “dance music”, there is dance-indie music. The big difference is how their music is produced.

This may come to a shock to some of you, but all those big artists you hear on the pop stations of the radio didn’t actually write their own music. You see, there are three major record labels in North America, and if you can sing, and sometimes even if you just look good, they will sign you to a record deal. But, in this deal, those record companies actually use mathematical equations to find a beat/sound for a song that is danceable and will sound pleasant to the ear. This may sound ridiculous to you, but it’s true, this may disgust many people, but music is math, it’s the variations in sound waves, and with math you can find the optimum mix of frequencies. Unfortunately this means that people like Lady Gaga, The Black Eyed Peas and Down With Webster aren’t really writing their own music. Now, to further perhaps ruin your opinions on modern pop stars, you know those lyrics that are all so catchy? You know, like the songs that repeat lines like “Imma Be” or “I’m so Whoa” over and over again? Pure music genius right? Well those lyrics were not even written by those groups.  These three big record companies have professional song writers, these writers receive ideas from the band, and the beat from the record companies mathematicians, mix it together, and put out another chart toping dance song with the same constant bass beat as all those before it.

Now let me make one thing very clear though, pop artists are still talented, they can sing much better than most people in the world, but I just criticize their creativity.

You see, in indie music you find artists who write every single one of their songs, it’s what they want; it has all the raw emotion of the writer because the writer is singing it. So what if this music doesn’t fit the mathematical formula, I believe it is better because it is actually the song of the band, not of its record company. Independent record companies assist a band in recording, tell them what they like and don’t like. But they never write the band’s music for them.

My blog however will be focussing on the largest sub-genre of indie, which is indie rock. Over this semester I will be helping expose you to some of the most underrated artists and groups in music today.

I hope you all stay tuned and keep following, and I hope I give you a different perspective on today’s music industry.

That’s all for now, how did I do for my first time blogging? :P

Jon

Bands Of The Week

K, so after fiddling around with this thing a bit more I have decided to make a Bands Of The Week column on the right side of the page.

I will be updating this every week so it is a great chance for any of you to listen to some great Indie Rock and discover bands you have never heard of.

You will see two lists, one with bands names and one with links. These correspond to each other. For instance, the top band in the names this week is Hollerado, this means that the top link is a link to a music video by Hollerado.

You may notice, if you take the time to watch the videos, that indie rock videos are very low budget, they are usually made by the band members without any directing from the outside and just a run of the mill camcorder. This can make for some interesting videos :P watch them to know what I'm talking about.

Anyways, that's all for now,
Jon

The Indie Rock Blog

Hey ladies and gents, so I am starting up this blog for my writer's craft course at school, though I'm sure most people reading it will also be in that course. :P

For my blog I will hopefully be exposing you to a whole side of music that most have you have probably not heard much about, hence the title, the style known as Indie Rock.

Over this semester, for any of whom follows my blog, I will be:

Introducing you to the Indie Rock scene.

Giving you a brief history of Indie Rock and the original bands.

Reviewing and recommending music for those of you wishing to find some new groups/artists.

AND

Hopefully giving you a whole new perspective on the modern music scene. 

Any of those who don't know didn't know music is a huge passion of mine. I play guitar as well as a bit of piano and synthesizer, so talking about this type of stuff is something I really enjoy, so I hope you enjoy reading it.

That's all for now,

Jon