Hello all!
Time to start countin' sheep, 'cause I'm going into dream pop now. This genre, which I consider to be a pretty obvious subset of the whole indie ordeal, is very ear-pleasing; artists tend to initiate a sound that floats you down the mental lazy river...(hence the name of the genre, heh). It turns out I have been listening to "dream pop" for a long time, but I just recently came across this very fitting alias.
I'm going to start with the album "In Ribbons" by the Pale Saints, a lovely British band that broke onto the scene in the late 1980's/early 1990's (wikiwikiwikipedia!). I sort of feel like I understand better now the roots of the alternative genre that influenced Pablo Honey-era Radiohead. The Pale Saints mastered the alt sound through their proper execution of pedal-enhanced guitar work, crooning male and female vocals, and prominent bass lines, all of which are complimented by satisfying drum beats.
The interchanging between male and female vocals also adds a nice diversity to their song line ups. They also do not hold back from presenting long musical interludes, which only enhance the feel of the album. For example, the second track on the album, "Ordeal", only has about one minutes of vocals that lead the listener into a haven of instrumentality that absolutely paved the way for shoegaze.
Each song on the album has something unique about it, although it all ties together to create the sound associated with this band. If you close your eyes, you can really picture some kind of warped dream world. The Pale Saints found the right formula for taking dreamlike concepts and turning them into really decent, texturally interesting music.
My Picks by the Pale Saints:
Babymaker from "In Ribbons"
Ordeal from "In Ribbons"
Stay tuned next time for Mazzy Star, Beach House and more!
Love,
Danielle
photo cred:
http://www.eso-garden.com/index.php?/weblog/C37/
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