Recommended: Some Indie Gems

I have really fond personal memories of these two. I went to concerts with them both headlining, and it always evokes a bittersweet sense nowadays when I hear them come on. I took someone special with me to those shows then, and that person is gone now and never to return.

I don't know if I can see them live anymore.

But I can still listen, and remember. Just like a smell will forever link you back to a visceral place in time, so do these bands pull me back to those moments when I felt I was nothing more than a rock and roll bimbo, happy as a newborn puppy and quite as innocent. It's ok, I think I'm finally over it. And that is the only reason I will post them here now.



Ra Ra Riot - [self-titled]

What a fantastic group. This sextet, a group of close college friends from Syracuse, merge indie rock with strings (violin and cello) to really take rock into a very sweet feeling on this debut EP. I was even more impressed the first time I saw them live; each member gave a very spirited performance and meant absolutely every note they played. The aforementioned connection to the death of my friend is compounded by two strange coincidences: firstly, their well-written song "Dying Is Fine" for obvious reasons, and secondly the fact that their close friend and drummer for the group died this past summer, about a month before my own companion did. If I've never mentioned to you before that I don't believe in coincidences, believe me now when I say it.




Tokyo Police Club - A Lesson in Crime

I remember listening to this while reading the first chapter of Gravity's Rainbow both for the first time, and ever since then can't seem to shake the connection. Now that's not to say that this album is in any way dark or depressing - if anything it's the opposite. When I heard this for the first time I instantly thought "hipster music", as obnoxious a term as that can be, but even more jarring was the realization that I actually liked it. A lot. The music is fun and poppy, with kind of poor-quality-recording but marvelously executed drum rhythms that are among my favorite percussion bits in indie rock to date, sometimes even outdoing my favorite band Minus the Bear. I won't be able to describe them much better than that, they have a very different sound. Give em a shot. I mean, one of their signature songs from this EP is about robots taking over the earth - I kid you not.