With the world slowly coming to terms with the fact that John Taylor just can’t pull off feathered hair anymore, millions of Duran Duran fans are wondering what to do now. Not to worry. Fashions is here to make sure we all still know exactly what’s cool, and what’s not. Brooklyn-based members Matthew Maclaren Jonathan Hudak and Lepaux have taken on the heavy task of making sure our city gets down properly in style… just like the ‘80s would’ve wanted us to.

To that end, they’re pulling out all the retro synths, dark sunglasses, and perfect hair they can manage, and serving it up on latest atmospheric dance banger “Young Heart.” The track is a perfect display of New Order/Duran Duran four-on-floor gusto sure to rally you up for your next big montage. Grab your hot pants and hang on… it’s going to be a long night. – This band submitted their music for review here – Mike Levine

Brooklyn isn’t much known for its singing-to-the-rafters crooners these days. For that kind of anthemic bloodletting, one usually has to look across the Atlantic. Our borough is best known for its host of freaks, and the music usually exists on a planet accessible to only the more experimental among us. Well, Candidate must have had a sort of epiphany with their latest record ‘Psychic Dissonance,’ released a few weeks ago. The album takes these freak worlds and brings them to a place of shared anthemic pleasure.

Tracks like opener ‘April Again’ and ‘Untimely End’ remake psych jams as emotional excavations on par with bands like Sunny Day Real Estate and the genre-hopping Super Furry Animals. A hard group to pin down, they had a solid run at CMJ this year, where We Listen For You voted them one of the top 10 bands of the fest. Keep checking their website for upcoming live show. In the meantime, check out ‘April Again’ below – we just added it to our Soundcloud compilation of the best tracks by emerging NYC bands.

Featured on the cover of The Deli back in 2007, Clare and the Reasons play elegant pop propelled by married couple Claire Muldaus Manchon’s sublime voice and Olivier Manchon’s imaginative orchestral arrangement – they both worked on several Sufjan Steven’s songs, and scored several movies’ soundtracks. Definitely darker and more tribal than the band’s average material, the band’s new single "Bass Face" was inspired by a conversation the couple had in Berlin with a bass player, who claimed he "made no face" when playing his instrument. The single’s video (streaming below) protrays the "bass man" as some sort of new Elephant Man, while strolling aimlessly through the frozen streets of the German capital city.

Following a single and an EP, Brooklyn five-piece Gross Relations released last week a first (self-titled) full-length – and it’s tasty. Rarely has lo-fi seemed like such a good alternative to routine. Driving synth-heavy melodies through a stream of 90s alt-rock a la Lemonheads, Fountains of Wayne & acolytes, the album takes fuzz to its cheerful place through a (free!) collection of hopeful anthems. Starting with Signs – the most vivid example of this tendency – Gross Relations rethought the buildup of a pop rock song, one part at a time, as a path that doesn’t have to end in a scintillating explosion but can convey the exact same satisfaction in a crackling, confused mess of a climax. Download their single "Fine Tune Something" below. – Tracy Mamoun

Mp3: Gross Relations – "Fine Tune Something"

New Lungs are currently working on their second EP which is unnamed at present. Leading up to the late 2012/early 2013 release will be a benefit show at the Redmond Firehouse on Friday, November 30th. The concert features a five-band bill with Fringe Shift, Dear Mister Manager, Postmadonna, and Catalyst all on board too. 

This four-piece initially came together in fall of last year. A chemistry quickly clicked between the jammers-turned-bandmates, ironing out enough captivating material to record a three song EP called How to Operate Your Brain in December 2011. Let’s get their names and roles in the band out: Wes Gonzalez (guitar/vocals), Antoine Martel (guitar), Nick Emard (bass/vocals), and Rob Granfelt (drums). Together, they form – (take a deep breath now) – New Lungs.

Whew. Before leaping into their stirring sounds, their band geography is worth mentioning. With three of the four members away at university for much of the year, New Lungs spends most of their time thousands of miles apart from one another. It is difficult for many bands to keep a good thing going when they live in the same city limits. And it is likely that some music endeavors spread across such a vast distance would wither from lack of creative cohesion, passion, or talent. Thankfully, New Lungs appear determined to stick it out.

Look no further than their first three recorded songs to see how they exemplify a pastiche of the new and old. As a lyricist, Gonzalez wears his heart on his sleeve, a nod and debt to many exceptional ’emo’ (that genre can carry a caustic stigma which is frequently undeserved) bands of the ’90’s and 2000’s. His vocals are well-timed, emotionally-charged, and genuinely drive the music soaring and roaring behind him.

There is no weak entry-point for the band. New Lungs coalesce well as a foursome, as evidenced by their tight, passionate live performances. On their individual instruments they are each capable of introducing the right style of playing for the moment; when to kick up the dynamics, when to let the sounds of silence speak from within the gaps.

How to Operate Your Brain is not without its flaws, although I am not especially interested in dwelling on them. I am interested in the future this band is racing towards. As they continue to notch shows on their belts and dig away at their forthcoming EP, it is exciting to think what kinds of fresh compositions will pour forth from their collective craniums.

Keep eyes and ears tuned in for New Lungs news as the year continues. On the 30th of November they will appear at the Redmond Firehouse. Doors are at 7pm; tickets are $7; 100% of the proceeds go to Village Schools International. Support great bands for an even greater cause. Check out "The Emerald au Pair" below and visit their bandcamp to hear the whole EP. CDs are available for only $4.

– Cameron LaFlam

After years of playing with Portland rockers Skidmore Fountain, guitarist and vocalist Randy Bergida broke off to form The Letter Yellow. The Brooklyn-based band started out of Bergida’s solo work, releasing the debut album “Walking Down The Streets” back in September with a full band rounded out by Mike Thies – met during his Skidmore days – and Abraham Pollack. “Walking Down The Streets” features a melodic, alt pop sound with thoughtful tinges at times reminiscent of The Smiths, and serene lyrics that detail Bergida’s life on both ends of the country, with stories of Brooklyn cafes and driving up the California coast. The band will perform at the Rock Shop on November 5.

You know when you’re the subject of one of Anna Haas‘s songs, you’ve done something right. From the suffering children, Marilyn, or ‘The Real New York’ off latest record ‘Crazy Is,’ the singer-songwriter always responds to her muses with a unique understanding of life’s complex realities.

Hailing from Nashville, Anna absorbs the Country croons of Gillian Welch along with Regina Spektor’s tender intimacy, and mashes it all around to an effective hook and chart-busting melody. All that, and she’s also (according to Lucky Mag) one of the most stylish music women out there today. Need more proof? Check out how she deals with men (and some creepy puppets) in the album’s first single ‘Maypole’ – streaming below.

View the video here, see her live at The Living Room on November 1st (she’ll be premiering a new video that night), and check her site as she’ll be announcing national tour dates later this month. – Mike Levine (@Goldnuggets)

This is going a couple of weeks back, at The Everymen’s ‘NJHC’ release show. Yet I’m still not sure if since, I’ve seen as endearing/straightforward comical as this pudgy shirtless papa-bear punk singing "Suffragette City" from the bottom of his soul. And that was only the icing on the cake. Jamie and the none-too-sharped-dressed lads, known as The Brooklyn What, is a big and noisy rock&roll all-man band from… well, Brooklyn (duh!), who hardly hide that candid generosity with which they deliver, a trait which that their records can barely begin to convey. Don’t take my word for it though, go see them at Saint Vitus on November 16th, and watch out for ‘I Want You On A Saturday Night’ (streaming below), one of their standards, the one to get the girls going. – Tracy Mamoun

By putting out four successful albums, playing national tours like Warped Fest, and delivering gigantic riffs and reverberating rhythms to fans over the past 8 years, The Architects have established themselves as THE rock band of Kansas City. And this year, Midwest Music Foundation is pleased to have this four-piece group headlining Apocalypse Meow this Saturday. Today, we talk with bassist Zach Phillips and get some insight on what the group is up to. 

 

So apparently Prince Rama has written ten new hits to accompany the upcoming end of the world. The band has put together a pseudo-compilation album for their latest effort "Top Ten Hits of the End of the World" (released by Paw Tracks … Avey Tare’s label) set to hit the cosmos November 6th.

The two sisters Taraka and Nimai Larson have decided to cover various songs from otherwise fictional bands that highlight our pending doom in what can best be described as one of the most exciting aural acid trips you’re ready to take this year. Lead track and apocalypse anthem "Welcome to the Now World" should already be familiar to children that grew up singing this song in schools… or at least they did in this band’s parallel universe. Complete with old style electronic effects referring of the fictional computer-generated band (Hyparxia) that Prince Rama are supposedly channeling, the song produces a space-age effect hypnotic enough to help you conjure up some new Gods to pray to.

One of the most fascinating freak groups to come up in Brooklyn in quite some time, the band recently mesmerized us at their CMJ performance and will be back in NYC in December from their international tour with label-mates Animal Collective. – Mike Levine (@Goldnuggets)

Surely the youngest act to hit the CMJ stage this year, The Orwells is an Elmhurt, IL-based self-defined ‘Flower Punk’ five piece fronted by the impressively charismatic Mario Cuomo, this tall blond stick-figure who owns the stage like few are able to. Especially that early in the afternoon (2pm when I saw them). Call them perfectionists, or just really good at what they do, fact is, rarely do you see a band so well prepared to take on its crowd. With so far one album, “Remember When’ (first self-released a year ago) to their name, full of the passionate lo-fi ballads that would tend to set their effervescent, American spirit-soaked, sometimes erratic garage aesthetic right in the footsteps of the Third Man himself, they’re a definite favourite of this year’s talent quest, one we’ll have to be keeping an eye on. Oh, and if you’re curious, why not listen to Mario Cuomo rap. Sure worth your three minutes. 

With one album to their name, a second in the making, and already a sizeable fan base, EndAnd are the outsiders to keep an eye on. Thoughtfully split between polished recordings and DIY methods, their "Adventures of Fi in Space" cross the paths of bands like Husker Du, Nirvana or Queens of the Stone Age, finding on their way this tricky balance between aesthetic satisfaction, pop sensibility, and a dedication to hard rocking. Pulling through power chords and fuzzed-up weirdness with a strongly disarming sensitivity, they’ve managed to reach some unexplored confines of 90s heritage, off the beaten tracks, where everything you thought you knew just suddenly sounds a little peculiar. – See the band live at Union Hall on 11.09, read Tracy Mamoun interview with the band here.