Optimus Primavera Sound. Hugo Lima/Optimus Primavera Sound
Optimus Primavera Sound’s second day of concerts was assuredly the big day of the festival, with major headliners Blur stepping up to play one of the most important concerts in Portuguese soil this year. But there was so much more to it.
When the National became what we could arguably call “present’s world greatest indie band”, a classification Brooklyn-via-Cincinnati group (tks, P4k) achieved among some folks with their widely acclaimed 2010 album High Violet, they’ve sort of crossed the river of relative “pop/rock starness”. That can be tough, can lead to get your own fans to stop from being your fans, can lead, in a band like the National, to an extreme, pernicious mainstreamization, to be sloughy about your song writing and music composition. Even if some people, like that friend of mine (no pun intended) who claimed that despite being a huge fan of Sad Songs for Dirty Lovers and Alligator, and “all tolerant” about Boxer (that enormous collection of catchy – though kinda sad – songs), thinks High Violet is awful, its drumming is unbearable, et cetera, et cetera, the fact is that a record like that only happens once in a blue moon. High Violet is the sad (and officier) version of Seinfeld, the sitcom, of the 21st century, in the form of a music record. Also, the National’s evolution with time is unbelievably well, I dare say flawlessly planned. They have grown as a band with the years, just the way most of their records do the more and more one listens to them (Alligator or its little brother Cherry Tree EP are, probably, the finest example of it), and their strategy is a good one: each time a new record comes out, a new sound, a new topic is added on top of what we already knew.
Fuga may be So.ma’s debut release, but none of the band members can be called a novice. Raising from the ashes of the mid-00s Portuguese powerhouse Madcab, which included now-well established musicians Luís Costa or Azevedo Silva, So.ma’s first EP follows the footsteps of said now defunct act and drinks from the same water that made Oceansize’s brand of neoprogrock (whatever that means) so popular in the latter years of last decade. You can stream and download the five tracks for free on their Bandcamp. Just follow the widget below.
DSS
<a href=“http://somapt.bandcamp.com/album/fuga” data-mce-href=“http://somapt.bandcamp.com/album/fuga”>Fuga by So.ma</a>
Another solid release from the amazing pop songs crafter that is Nicola Donà, or Horrible Present. It’s not the first time we’re posting about him and certainly this won’t be the last. These four brand new songs were progressively released in the weeks leading to this release and are now available for free download as a package (grab them on Bandcamp). “April 1944” is my song of the month. I’m glad I live in the same world as Horrible Present.
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This is the soundtrack of the sunny days you’re missing out by staying at home playing partypoker for hours (kidding, it’s been raining for two days now even here in supposedly-sunny-Portugal and it feels good to stay at home for a while). Blonde Summer’s second EP Slow Daze couldn’t be more appropriate for this season, as the band name lets loose.
Just by seeing the album cover and the band-album name combo I bet you imagine what this sounds like: surf-rock influenced pop tunes, drenched in sunlight and washed out vocals to chill by the poolside to. Opening tracks “Slow Days Fast Company” and “Robots on Command” are the highlights here – great riff on the chorus of this latter, though it seems like we’ve seen this before.
What we didn’t see happening plenty of times though is a feel good hit of the summer that is able to live beyondthat specific summer is hard to find. I’m having a hard time believing this could be the case, but hey, there’s still one month left. Could we just get a little bit of warmth for what’s left of this lackluster “summer”?
<a href=“http://blondesummer.bandcamp.com/album/slow-daze” data-mce-href=“http://blondesummer.bandcamp.com/album/slow-daze”>SLOW DAZE by Blonde Summer</a>