One Song

flora cash, for someone
Soundcloud

One Song: Flora Cash - For Someone

Joel Frieders | February 9, 2016
Holy fucking gooseballs all up on my goosepimples, this dude sounds like a freshly shaven Glen Hansard. Not only is this Flora Cash song the first song to make me immediately look out my window to my right and watch each individual snowflake flake, but this might be the first time I've felt a song this huge make me feel this small. "For Someone" is the song that plays in my imagination when some young wide eyed little girl finds the music box you've been trapped inside for decades up in some random attic and casually turns the key expecting nothing. Then the picture quickly zooms out and we're living life through the eyes of innocence, experiencing love, heartbreak, success, failure, and then it somehow ends with the little girl I just mentioned dancing at her...
howard, glass
Soundcloud

One Song: Howard - Glass

Joel Frieders | February 5, 2016
Up until last week I knew nothing about Howard. PPPR sent over this link for their new single "Glass" that's dropping inside their new EP Please Recycle which arrives March 25th, 2016, but I only listened to it because PPPR seems to send music that tends not to suck as much butt as other PR peeps' rosters suck butt, so I clicked.  And then the fucking music started clicking and chirping and blurping and blooping and blorping and thwapping, and then here I am with my pants around my ankles and I'm shuffling to and fro and fro and to and I'm a fucking puddle of folktronica excrement bro. This shit is exactly what my thoughts sound like if you catch me staring off into the great yonder, especially considering how great our yonder is here in the Chicago...
la girlfriend, XIV
Soundcloud

One Song: L.A. Girlfriend - XIV

Joel Frieders | February 3, 2016
Three things happened this morning. 1. L.A. Girlfriend dropped a new album titled Neon Grey that I didn't know was coming out. 2. I only got thru the second song, "XIV". 3. I've only listened to "XIV" on repeat since I heard it the first time. Jesus fucking balls on a two door wineberry Toyota Camry with the O, the T, and the A scraped off of the rear bumper so alls it reads is TOY, this fucking song is BALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLS. I don't care what songs she's planning on releasing as singles, this song is already at the top of my list for my favorite fucking song of 2016. I'm not only dancing under my desk, I've stood up and done the whole whip each individual arm in circles while my plaid skirt falls below my knees thing when the song demands I do as...
professor soap, the young, the ideas
Soundcloud

One Song: Professor Soap - The Young, The Ideas

Joel Frieders | January 27, 2016
Last weekend, I was going through SYFFAL music submissions while also reading packet information for my meetings this week. This isn't me being lazy on either the reading or the listening, it's just become something I've learned how to do since SYFFAL somehow caught on and at the same time I took on some responsibilities that require 700-1000 pages of reading a week. I click over and open a few videos and hit play, then click back and keep reading. I do this for hours. Pretty much every weekend.  This particular round of R&L ("read & listen") had me deleting emails from all over the fucking world, and reading dozens of pages top to bottom, and skimming hundreds more. I must've deleted fifty submission emails before finding something I could listen to all the way through. But when...
vessels, 4am,
Soundcloud

One Song: Vessels - 4AM

Joel Frieders | January 27, 2016
I specifically remember writing about the song "Apollo" from the group Flight Facilities a few years ago. I still listen to that song all the fucking time, but I actually remember writing about it, that's how epically important that fucking song is to me. I can remember sitting at my kitchen table, almost perched up on my fucking toes I was so into describing how that fucking song made me feel.  Cathartic, therapeutic, erotic, whatthefuckever it was, hearing that, and then writing that, it's a fucking memory of a time in my life when a song touched a nerve and I had the opportunity to spurt my inspiration all over my stomach. Sure, nobody probably read it, just like no one will probably read this, but that isn't why we lose money to host a website where we only jack off the music we want...
School Of Seven Bells, ablaze
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One Song: School Of Seven Bells - Ablaze

Joel Frieders | January 26, 2016
School of Seven Bells have always sounded like a mysterious reenactment of what my loins would look like under a microscope.  Sure, there's indescribable emotions and blindfolded sensations and socially unmentionable pleasures and pinky-involving kinks, but what's immediately apparent is the complete lack of shame. HOW DO THEY DO THAT? How do you create music that's best served while wearing a leotard on earth in 2016? SVIIB, and more importantly the new single "Ablaze", feel like a witchdoctor prescribed cross-pollination between The Naked & Famous and (GASP!) Savage Garden ("sweet like a chic-a cherry cola bro!), but in a way that takes the vanity and rhythms and overall seethru clothing of Empire of the Sun and mixes it with some child-like nostalgia of an...
Radiation City, Juicy, Indie Music, review
Soundcloud

One Song: Radiation City - Juicy

Tom Doz | January 22, 2016
Radiation City is easily one of my favorite bands of the SYFFAL era. Their music must have a spell over me because the vocals are so soft and chilling....specifically the female vocals. And while the band consists of two heterosexual couples....it's the girls who are meant for each other. I feel like I've listened to Radiation City enough to be able to distinguish who is singing what, but I just can't because their voices sound so similar. It's probably why their harmonies go together like vodka and Tang. MMMmmm.  So, when you get the gals harmonizing together with their silky jazz tone AND then add reverb?!?! I'm hypnotized. I'm like a cat's head following a ball swinging from the end of a piece of yarn.  OH LAWDY, I love Radiation City...
shirlette ammons, aviator
Soundcloud

One Song: shirlette ammons ft Amelia Meath - Aviator

Joel Frieders | January 21, 2016
WHAT ARE MY HIPS DOING RIGHT NOW?!?!?! AM I SHAKIRA?!?! WHY ARE MY HANDS ACTING LIKE MADONNA IN THAT ONE VIDEO OF HER IN THE BLACK ROBE IN THE DESERT BRO?!?!?! Whoever the fuck shirlette ammons is, this is some shit! "Aviator" sounds like nothing I've ever heard while sounding slightly familiar at the same time. That rhythm is something I could both make AND deliver babies to. (SNAPS SURGICAL GLOVES AGAINST WRIST) It starts off like Blind Melon's "Car Seat", but then someone throws a jar of grape jelly against the wall and a procession of dancing nuns in mauve habits walks in and all of a sudden it's a satanic Robert Palmer "Addicted to Love" music video out of an instructional BDSM porn video.  I admit it, I have no idea what's going on, but I'm 3/4 erect,...
astronauts, civil engineer
Soundcloud

One Song: Astronauts - Civil Engineer

Joel Frieders | January 21, 2016
I fucking love how the pocket this fucking band plays inside of is so fucking comfortable. Astronauts sound like the most comfortable fucking cabin in the woods on earth, and while slightly mysterious, I don't get that rapey vibe at all. What? Was I not supposed to comment on their lack of a rapey vibe? I'm just being honest! Most cabins in the woods have at LEAST a small amount of potentially rapey qualities about them, but not this cabin in the woods bro. The Astronauts' cabin in the woods is furnished with futuristic and sustainable housewares, linens woven with recyclable textiles, and pictures of their mum.  "Civil Engineer" is the slight and subtle head nod inducing ear pillow you needed today without knowing you actually needed it. Watch...
dan san, dream
Soundcloud

One Song: Dan San - Dream

Joel Frieders | January 20, 2016
I love how Dan San sounds all at once like a soundtrack to a beach vacation home movie, something you'd imagine would play in the background in a candy factory and/or on a tropical fruit commercial. But what's weird is that I get the distinct vibe that Dan San has never actually seen a beach or something tropical in anything other than a BBC documentary. It's the disconnect between the beachy keen vibez and the Damon Albarn (Blur, Gorillaz) denim and leather jacket that make me pretty confident that the members of Dan San just drink out of coconuts to feel more relaxed bro. Dan San is the band that wears boots to the beach and never takes off the aforementioned denim and leather jacket bro. "Dream" feels like...

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