how animal collective makes me FEELS

Today I bought Animal Collective's album Feels after practically listening Strawberry Jam to death, and not only does it come with some very wonderful cover art, it is also a very wonderful album.
Definately the best chillout album I've ever bought, Feels is much more acoustic than Strawberry Jam. I could seriously listen to it on repeat for over 24 hours and not get bored of it, and even after that i would probably look back at those 24+ hours as the best of my life.
I think its probably around half way through Flesh Canoe you come to realise how wonderful the world is, and then by the end of Bees you simply want to join a hippy commune and make bead necklaces for the rest of your life.

I also just found this pretty cool french site which has some live sessions from Animal Collective and other artists up for free download in video or mp3 form!
I strongly suggest you check out the live version of Flesh Canoe on that site, I think I probably like it more than the album version.

I'm back

After a month or three of silence, I am back from doing my GCSEs! And oh how a lot has happened since then. My musical interests have changed and I have been listening to A LOT of new bands. Im not forgetting the oldies though, oh no! Which brings us smoothly to the first thing I want to talk about in this post; Best Fwends.

A couple of weeks ago I finally got round to ordering their album (play.com does it for around £5). At 34 tracks which add up to less than an hour of music you cant really go wrong, so as soon as it arrived I set about listening to it about 50 times on repeat all week and was most severely brainwashed by the funkiness of their tunes. The first track (definately one of the best on the album) "Aaww-Some" set down the rules from the off with the catchy chorus: "we are best fwends and dont you know that we are awesome!"
What follows is 28 more tracks of childish, happy, DIY electro-pop-funk-punk-rock, with an instrumental and some remixes on the end for good measure.
One simple fact about this album is that listening to it makes you happy. No matter how depressed or angry you are when you put the album on, by the end of it you'll be jumping round your room with a grin on your face shouting "TIGERS ON VASELINE! WE TAKE BATHS AND WE GET CLEEN!"
This could possibly be one of the greatest feel good albums ever made, you simply cant help but dance around in your chair to tracks like "dream off" and "sk8 or live".
Yes, the album really is this good (even if it did win VICE magazine's worst album of the month award) and i give it a 8/10 on the awesome-o-meter.

Now for something totally different, ska punk.
Well, I say ska punk but I really dont know very much about ska so Ill just stick with that.
Streetlight Manifesto are a band I have been listening to a lot of recently after downloading their album "Somewhere in the Between". To be perfectly honest I dont really know how to describe them very well...
They are a guitarist, bassist and drummer, along with two saxophone players, a trumpet player and a trombone player.
One of the greatest things about this band is the brass section, which give Streetlight punchy, fruity sound and perfectly compliment Tomas Kalnoky's slightly gravelly vocals.

And finally, a note about the blog.
Ive been thinking of making some changes around here recently for the millionth time, possibly even a domain change, so if it looks a bit wierd/different/has another new name next time you come to look at the blog, its perfectly normal :)

links:
Streetlight Manifesto Myspace
Best Fwends Myspace