Song of the Day

Archive for April, 2011

Hot off the press Tonight the City Skyline’s self titled second album, released April 19th this month, is the latest work from Martin Moore and Brian Farvour out of Milwaukee, WI. I’m honored to review this group which came to my attention through direct submission by Martin.

The 7 song indie pop rock album moves between softer piano trimmed love songs and pounding guitar riffed anthems of desperation and longing. The group’s lyrics though simple and honest are able to pack a passionate punch and hit hard for me in this song Mantra For A Dark Lit December.

Be sure to listen to the entire album Tonight the City Skyline on SoundCloud.

You can connect with them on Facebook or Twitter through their official website here.

Their album was just released this month and is for sale at iTunes & Amazon at the links below.

Buy Tonight the City Skyline on iTunes

Buy Tonight the City Skyline at Amazon

We Find New Top Indie Music For You

Please check out our amazing list of music that we’ve been compiling for you. We’re all about finding great music that is hard to find and bringing it to you so you can discover new music and artists that you’ll love. Use the categories on the left or the tag cloud on the right to navigate. Also, check out our playlist in the upper right corner of our site.

We Promote Indie & Alternative Artists With Music Reviews

Our goal is to spread the word about the ten of thousands of amazing bands that exist today but that never get a proper showing or chance to get exposure. We try to review as much music as we can. Until now the site has only had one writer but we are starting to add more and increase the amount of reviews and songs we are able to post.

We Accept Artist Music Submissions

To submit a request to have your music reviewed on our blog, please do the following.

1. Select 1-3 of your songs to consider, we usually only pick one, but giving us options is nice.

2. Upload the song or music video to YouTube, SoundCloud, Vimeo, etc so we can embed it on our blog.

3. Link to us on your website, blog, or page using the following code.  

<a href=”http://songoftheday.co/” title=”Song of the Day indie music review blog”>Song of the Day</a>

(This is optional, but will improve your chances of being featured)

4. Email the following information to submissions(at)songoftheday.co:  
a) the links to your music on YouTube or SoundCloud
b) a link to your band’s webpage where you added our link
c) a link to an image of your band (if not we will just use what we find)

Please forgive us if we don’t reply back to you. We review all submissions and do our best to give everyone a showing, but not all submissions are used. Some factors that make us decide to not post music include: no embeddable music, poor production or sound quality, music video looks like a home video, our personal discretion.

Let’s say you just broke up with your girlfriend.  Or your girlfriend broke up with you.  But she didn’t tell you that you guys were broken up, just moved to Denver instead.  And now you’re writing emails everyday that you never send and running 5 miles a day because you gotta shed those 10 pounds you gained while dating her plus another 5   just so she knows what she’s missing when she comes back to pick up the knee high boots she left in your apartment.  This song is your soundtrack. It’s a wall of sound made from haunting, complimentary male and female vocal lines, the classic loud/soft/loud structure, an epic build up for the bridge, and solid simplicity wrapped in extensive layers of fuzz.  Less is so much more.

This track kicks off Broken Water’s appropriately titled debut album, Whet, that came out last year on Night People Records.  Although if you didn’t know any better you’d swear this came out in ’93 and was possibly the last thing Kurt Cobain heard before he blew his brains out.  You’ll probably be able to recognize some of their influences; Pavement, Sonic Youth, My Bloody Valentine, Olympia’s own Unwound, even traces of Hum can be heard.  Perfect blend of early nineties Pacific Northwest nostalgia and lo-fi indie rock sensibilities.  This is what getting in on the ground floor sounds like.

Lissie’s from Rock Island Illinois, which is part of the Quad Cities, four cities that all straddle the Mississippi consisting of Bettendorf and Davenport Iowa along with Moline Illinois. It’s sort of the like the Kansas City of Iowa and Illinois, but that has nothing to do with music I guess. Although I’m proud to say I grew up just a 30 minute drive from there in Muscatine Iowa, so it’s interesting to see another person from the heartland getting the music out.

Lissie’s made big waves recently ever since the release of her debut EP “Why You Running” in 2009. Her real name is Elisabeth Maurus and she’s already got her name published in a lot of places. But I thought it’d be right to feature her here on my Song of the Day blog.

Her music has an extremely genuine, it’s all about the music vibe. She her voice, although perhaps seemingly rough at first listen becomes powerful and dexterous the more you listen. Her vocal chords are like a mix of Sia and Janis Joplin. I believe she’s about to make a dent in the alternative rock scene like a baseball bat to a birthday cake, but perhaps less messy and without hurting anyone’s feelings. Ok that’s a horrible analogy.

But Lissie has a softer side, one that shines bright with that good ‘ole midwestern folk feel backed by superior songwriting and complex vocal harmonies. Take a look below at another one of her songs that I really enjoy, “Little Lov’n”.

To hear more songs like this on my Song of the Day blog, click on the related links in the link cloud on the right side of the page.

I’ve got a thing for indie bands, San Francisco, music that’s uplifting, songs that you can dance to, music videos that are original, anything funny, quick drum riffs, black & white videos, and songs with choruses with non-verbal vocal sounds. This music video for Black Night by The Dodos off their latest album No Color hits a lot of chords for me. All that’s missing is a plane ticket to San Fran and a big group of friends causing a raucous.

The Dodos have released 4 albums since their first in 2006, so there’s plenty of this stuff to go around.

In a deviation from every other post I’ve ever added on here, I want to give a shout out to all the people and bands and energy that is the festival which we call Coachella. The funny thing is that I’ve never even been there. WHAT? Then how can I write about it? Well, sometimes hearing is believing. I heard it from the band Dream Thieves today on a flight into Moline while on their way back to their hometown of Iowa City. They were just returning from a week of great music and energy and shared with me photos and stories of their trip. I remembered seeing the lineup for Coachella and imagining it to be one of the most amazing events of the year, and I think it just may have been. I’ve been to Burning Man twice and thought that was amazing, but I believe Coachella is also fully capable of reaching Nirvana.

Of the most particular importance I want to highlight how you can make the most of not attending Coachella, and that is to listen to the bands that played there. I’m promoting them here because a lot of the bands that I’ve featured on this Song of the Day blog are listed in the Coachella line up. The Dream Thieves crew said that Arcade Fire put on the best show with the longest and least interrupted set of all, followed by several other fantastic headliners and lesser known but equally amazing artists. Bernardo, one of the Dream Thieves members who sat next to me on the plane recommended Yelle (Safari Disco Club) from Saint-Brieuc France, Delorean from Zarautz/ Barcelona, Spain, and also CSS (Cansei de Ser Sexy) from São Paulo Brazil.

John Brown’s Body is a poem, a song, and also a band according to Wikipedia. The last of the three would be this creative group of reggae masters from Boston and Ithaca. They’ve got what it takes to take Reggae to the masses, their blends of genres side steps from the classic straight Reggae traditions and creates something new that can make anyone shake a leg. They pump out tunes and keep the good vibes alive. Get some free music downloads off of their official John Brown’s Body website in the upper right corner by giving them your email address.

Here’s a band from Norway, Donkeyboy, with their song Ambitions off their one album Caught in a Life which released in 2009. The band is all male but they feature Linnea Dale who is one of the top performers from the Norwegian Idol and X-Factor shows akin to American Idol. She’s the first person who I’ve seen with that name besides my sister, and coincidentally they were born in the same year. Must have been a popular name that year.

For some reason fashion styles from the 80′s are being pushed by designers and stylists in Europe and the US. Although I have no idea why. But I speculate it’s because there’s a lot more clothing left over from the 80′s that’s still wearable than there is clothing from older eras, and stylists just love recycling things that are cheap and just laying around. But that’s just a wild guess.

Anyway, good song, the more you listen the more you’ll like it. There’s also another video for this song online, but I liked this one better. Here’s the other music video for Donkeyboy – Ambitions featuring Linnea Dale, enjoy.

Let me be your everlasting light. I know everyone’s heard of the Black Keys and maybe you wouldn’t put them in an indie category, but I don’t care, this is my music blog bitches! hahahahahaha

I actually didn’t really like their sound until I heard this song, now I like this song and they have my respect, what’s your favorite Black Keys song? Or don’t you got one?

Very cool music video and excellent song. I wonder if the whales listened to music if this would be their anthem for their relationships with humans.