For Real Estate’s Martin Courtney, returning to his native New Jersey  last summer after graduating from college may have been a regressive move, but it also turned out to be a productive one.

“I almost exclusively hang out with people from high school these days,” the singer and guitarist says, echoing that common post-collegiate experience of hometown dive bars and procrastinated job searches.

But Courtney also spent last summer writing songs and jamming in his parents’ basement with guitarist Matt Mondanile, bassist Alex Bleeker, and drummer Etienne Duguay, laying the groundwork for what is, little more than a year later, one of 2009’s most promising new indie-pop acts in a year replete with lo-fi fast-burners. Six months after its first gig, Real Estate—which plays at the Rock & Roll Hotel tonight with Japandroids and Neon Indian—was generating buzz at the South by Southwest festival in Austin and tickling the blogosphere with woozy, summery singles. Now, the band is about to release its self-titled debut on Woodsist Records.

Read More “Off the Beach: Real Estate @ Rock & Roll Hotel” »

It’s likely no accident that, at least on cursory listens, Psychic Chasms (Lefse Records) sounds out-of-time and incidental, like the gauzy score to a local-access television spot long relegated to the backwaters of YouTube. Certainly, there’s a degraded and lo-fi quality to this debut by Neon Indian, the project of 21-year-old Alan Palomo, who is based in Austin. That hissy, washed-over aesthetic is essential to the 30-minute album, but unlike the other glo-fi acts the blogosphere slobbered over all summer, Psychic Chasms has a productive tension between sound and songwriter.

Read More “Reviewed: Neon Indian’s Psychic Chasms” »

Neon Indian: “Should Have Taken Acid With You”
Houston, Texas/Brooklyn, New York’s Neon Indian waxes nostalgic about a missed opportunity to experience romance whilst getting experienced. The music–Daft Punk-style dance pop rendered with bargain bin synthesizers–suggests that he eventually found another opportunity to drop out. But that doesn’t make this moody gem any less affecting.

Kid Cudi: “You Can Call Me Moon Man”
“You Can Call Me Moon Man,” Kanye protege Kid Cudi reveals that he’s not from the Midwest, as previously believed, but from the heavens. Specifically, the Moon. And what’s it like on the moon? Dark, apparently. Cudi spends most of “You Can Call Me Moon Man” dropping sobering boasts along the lines of “Shit is so damn sick/ No antibiotic could ever fucking stop it/ If you copped it, please O.D.” Other lines–”I make immortal songs for the mortals to cruise with,”– imply Cudi might be getting high on hot air.

Gang Gang Dance: “Live @ Southpaw, April 2008”
Just in case you forgot they were out there, Gang Gang Dance recently slipped a full live set into a podcast by Social Registry (the band’s US label). Because the concert was taped all the way back in ‘08 and is largely made up of tunes from the group’s last record, Saint Dymphna, so none of this is new, exactly. Then again, the way that the songs “First Communion” and “House Jam” are mashed up here with slurry jams, you might not recognize them right away, anyway.

Six Organs of Admittance: “The Ballad of Charley Harper”
In his paintings, Cincinnati-based artist Charley Harper sought to simplify nature–to create an ordered representation of a complex reality. There’s a good chance that Six Organs of Admittance’s “The Ballad of Charley Harper,” with its slowly cycling melodies, is an homage to that sensibility. Ben Chasny uses simple components–an acoustic guitar, some distortion, a single lyric–to suggest some larger and more elusive mystic truth.