Rachel Been Portraits

BLONDE REDHEAD





BEACH HOUSE



http://www.rachelbeen.com/portraits

How I'm moved. How you move me With your beauty's potency. You give me life. Please don't let me go.

Kate Bush

COCOROSIE

SLEIGH BELLS

"Though both Krauss and Miller have been making music for a while-- he in the hardcore band Poison the Well, she in some kind of manufactured teen-pop group that never got off the ground-- it's easy to see them as a connected band with the right gimmick at the right time. They live in New York, they've played hip shows for important people, and from the beginning the online chatter has been almost as deafening as the guitar tones. But what works in their favor is that they've taken advantage of these breaks and marshaled their talent to make something that oozes joy. There's spirit to this music, and the sonic assault is celebratory, asking only that you come along with it and join in. All of which, for me, anyway, makes the hype melt away. And if it's true that records this intense and exhilarating don't always sustain themselves over the long haul, that's not a worry either. The visceral thrill of Treats may not last forever, but neither does life; right now, this feels like living it."

— Mark Richardson, May 14, 2010

John Grant

"John Grant used to front the Czars, whose failure to translate acclaim into sales no doubt further fuelled his supersized self-loathing. However, after descending into a personal hell of booze, drugs and giving up music for waiting tables, the Coloradan has emerged with a colossus. Backed by superfans Midlake, these are songs of impossible love, near-suicide and redemption, with an air of vastness and contemplation recalling Dennis Wilson's masterpiece, Pacific Ocean Blue. With pianos and flutes, songs such as I Wanna Go to Marz and Where Dreams Go to Die combine a surreal, David Lynch, sideways look at capitalist America with choruses most artists could only dream about. The jauntier Silver Platter Club and JC Hates Faggots brutally poke fun at rich jocks and Grant's time as a gay child in a religious household respectively. But the emotionally wringing ballads – the witheringly honest Queen of Denmark and Jeff Buckleyesque Caramel – most suggest a man whose time has come."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/apr/22/john-grant-midlake-queen-denmark-review

It doesn't hurt me.