A tasty mix, this one - one of my two or three favourites out of all those which have come through IMP in the last year and a half or so. The gal who made it obviously knows her way around this kind of music (lo-fi bedsit jangly pop, for want of a better way of describing it), and so there are spiritual forerunners and founding figures (Orange Juice, the Velvet Underground - that latter via "I Found a Reason"), more recent icons (Belle and Sebastian (a song, "Rhoda", that I not only didn't know, but is quality B&S into the bargain), the Magnetic Fields (the delicious "100,000 Fireflies"...I have a mandolin, I play it all night long, it makes me want to kill myself...), the Lucksmiths), assorted other scene figures (the Ladybug Transistor, Camera Obscura), a couple of slightly left-field but fitting selections (Sebastien Tellier's excellent funk soul electro pop ditty "Divine", She & Him's utterly charming "Sentimental Heart"[*]), and some seriously good tracks from acts that I've never even heard of before ("Givers Reply" by Ramona Cordova, "It's Going to Be Soon" by Rocketship).
(from Julie in Honolulu, HI)
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[*] She & Him of course piqued my interest, seeing as Zooey Deschanel is one of the reigning indie goddesses in my books, but somehow I didn't expect their stuff to be anything more than endearing throwaway pop pastiches at best. The album could still turn out to be like that, but "Sentimental Heart" hints at the possibility of something more - Deschanel's got a natural and rather captivating singing voice, and it's a well constructed and arranged song, complete with girl group harmonies in the bridge about two-thirds of the way through...this could be pretty good. What can you do with a sentimental heart, indeed.
