Merchant Ship's Discography

It's 12:58 AM, and I can't sleep.

Not in the regular way, as in, "I'm not tired, I can't sleep." I'm tired as fuck. I wish I would just lay down, but... It's a dead night. There's a painting in my head, and I can't stop thinking it. I want to sleep. I don't have anything to do tomorrow, I want to sleep.

Merchant Ships is a band that broke up in 2009, then got back together. They're really damn good. It's one of those bands I wish I was in. There are a lot of those. It's the perfect music for watching your best friend ruin his life, viewing your girlfriend killing your ambitions, missing friends you know you'll never see again, smoking away the night with new ones, thinking about the only love you've ever wanted, but can't have. It's the teenage condition, and Merchant Ships are the soundtrack.

I have a theory that everything in my life stands for something I feel that I've lost about my childhood. As if I'm trying to gain back innocence and wonder. As if I, somehow, through my actions and words, can travel back in time and spend more afternoons in my backyard digging up rollie pollies. This band is when I would scream. I would scream for hours on end simply to make the noise. Not that I don't still do that, but... I think my escape is working. Wait, not escape. I meant trap.

You Were Perfect

Foals - Antidotes

Cassius, you're second best
This is Foal's first album, and it's a bit dancier in places - I use cassius as an alarm clock to wake the fuck up in the morning, but I can fall asleep to Olympic Airways some of the time. You'll want to dance and sing, it's a little soft, but a little bit dancier than Total Life Forever (which btw the fucking music industry reverted my TLF post back to a draft twice, coooool guys) but you'll know how to sing the words to this too. It's not so cold, a bit less polished, but just as perfect. Depending on the mood, I prefer this to TLF.
Also, I have a stencil of this album, so if you live in Tallahassee and happen to see the man with the mouth on the cover spray painted (link to a shit picture, oh blackberry) somewhere, it was me.

Foals - Total Life Forever (repost of a repost)

Forget the horror here.
Foals second album, total life forever, is fucking gorgeous. They have an obsession with the sea, and something probably broke yannis' heart or something, I don't really know, but this whole album is very melancholy, sad, and sort of broken. Beautiful, 10/10 album, very calming, and with wonderful british accents and sad, softly sung beautifully high falsettos. Moving tracks, full of emotion, wonder, and all sorts of things like sorrow and ice. If you want an adventure (a sad one, but with high parts) then get this. It's like mathrock (Antidotes) meets Post-rock (if I had to pick a postrock band for antidotes to have met, dated, fallen in love, and had a baby with, it'd probably be The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place, or maybe Far From Refuge). Soft and lovely, with all sorts of pretty sounds that will make you shiver in all the right ways. It's like sitting on the beach when it's fucking freezing and the wind's running through your hair and maybe you get dumped or something. Or you're just having a really bad day. Or you're sitting on said beach remembering your ex or somebody important who is just gone, maybe dead? maybe just gone. It's an album to be sad to. But in a good way. It's healthy for you. Fuck, you might even dance to parts of blue blood.
preview.

anyway apparently blogspot/DMCA takedown sent this back to draft-land

wat


SUCK IT I WILL NOT PUT THIS POST TO REST

By Surprise/Hightide Hotel - Split

And I'm just not convinced that this is just coincidence
Hightide Hotel and By Surprise, my two favorite new wave of emo bands, did a split together. This split created my favorite song in the world. This song I know all the words to, I can sing along, I can tap to the beat, I can sing the whole thing on my own and get it right and get the beat and timing right down to the very milisecond. That's how much I love this song. It's called Shuttle. It's the 4th track. By Surprise has some good heartfelt songs too. So does Hightide Hotel, they even have a track called Elementary Biology that I am going to get a line or two from tattooed onto me, it's obviously a very good song. But shuttle makes this split the best thing I've ever heard. You should like it. You'll wanna learn it for that new girl you like who you really wanna get with so you play it on a cheap guitar at a bonfire surrounded by really shitty beer but really awesome people. Hightide Hotel sounds like a rawer Snowing. A bit rougher around the edges. By Surprise sounds like beards.
PS By surprise has a song called CB radio and that song is my JAM.

indiestats:
by surprise 31,427 plays (2,928 listeners)
hightide hotel 76,634 plays (4,613 listeners)

A Love Like Pi - The Atlas And The Oyster

Oh, this is my body, I can give to you.
ALLP is the catchiest thing you will hear this month. Energy filled, packed with electronic boops and beeps, smushed with dance-y layers of delicious synth bits, and the catchiest, most power-packed vocals to ever happen to "indietronica" (as much as I fucking hate that word). From lyrics about little girls (Oh you're so young, oh you're so young, oh lolita oh lolita) to sympthonic bodies (my body isn't quite a symphony, but if you would put your ears close to me...) to cheating (caught you cleaning up your lovers mess) this album is a fucking trip and a half. You will dance, you will get caught up, you will sing every chorus, and you will do it with wild abandon. I recommend this for jamming out, a+ album, top 10 favorite of mine, and if you don't like it, you have no soul. The 4k listeners on lastfm (but 145k plays) shouldn't exactly hurt your indie cred either.
ps I can steal the upload from Sky because I showed this band to him - hello sky~


indiestats
145,234 plays (4,472 listeners)

Pheramones

HEY GUYS SORRY I'VE BEEN OUT OF IT AND I HAVE LIKE RIDICULOUS AMOUNTS OF SUNBURN BUT HERE YOU GO IT'S AMAZING AND I'VE BEEN KEEPING THIS SECRET AAAAAAAAH CAPS

LIKE RAIN! LIKE RAIN! LIKE RAIN! RAIN!
I have not to date found the Amelia side of the split. It doesn't matter. Imagine if Matt and Kim was just Matt who knew how to play the drums, didn't whine when he sand,g and maybe didn't quite understand a beat, but had a grungy fantastic way of dancing about and making cool little interludes with a keyboard, and then all Kim did was produce! Okay. Well. You just imagined Pheramones. With 375 listeners on last.fm (and ~7k LISTENS) you'll be indie as shit to be the first one to introduce the "simplistic, minimalistic keyboard pop jams" music these two produce. Heartfelt as fuck, adorable lyrics, dancy as fuck, but I don't recommend listening with a headache.

Lightning Bolt - Wonderful Rainbow

THIS IS WHO I WENT TO SEE TONIGHT.

motherfucking lightning bolt

AND THEY ROCKED MY FACE OFF JUST AS MUCH AS THEY WILL YOURS, IF THEY DON'T WELL THEN I'M SORRY YOU MUST BE DEAF

Margot & The Nuclear So Sos - Dust Of Retreat

Alright, so I just got home from the hospital, I've been convulsing for nearly 16 hours, I'm exhausted, and I just want to rest. I can't though, 'cause I'm convulsing so hard.

everyone and their mother will wanna get this.

And this album is perfect for that. It's got that radio-rock feel, but it's softer in some parts. It's rocky, perfect, and calming. The guy singing (I'm too lazy and tired to look up his name) has lovely vocals. The lyrics are nice, and overall, the band reminds me a bit of the Dangerous Summer... except there's the occasional funky jazz beat, and unconventional instrument... Like hey, that's a piano, oh wait that's a fucking saxophone. It's like the dangerous summer had a baby with Forgive Durden, and that baby has a fairy grandmother named Dear and The Headlights. Last.fm calls them orchestral pop, and I guess I can kind of see that. It's calming and funky, and I recommend it.

"Jackson C. Frank" by Jackson C. Frank

Sometimes I forget that I listen to folk music primarily. I mean, I love punk rock so bad. It holds my hand and leads me down a path I need to walk. It's my best friend when I need a shoulder to cry on. Punk rock means the world to me, but folk is the universe.

Which is cheesy and self-centered, but oh well.

This is Jackson C. Frank. To quote from wikipedia:

When Jackson Frank was 11, a furnace exploded at his school, sending a ball of flames down corridors until it ended up in Frank's music classroom in the Cleveland Hill Elementary School in Cheektowaga, New York. The fire killed eighteen of his fellow students and burned over more than half his body. It was during his time in the hospital that he was first introduced to playing music, when a teacher, Charlie Castelli, brought in an acoustic guitar to keep Frank occupied during his recovery. When he was 21, he was awarded an insurance check of $110,500 for his injuries, giving him enough to "catch a boat to England."

His songs are beautiful, and if you enjoy this, I highly recommend you obtain "Blues Run the Game" as well.

Just your shadow on the window
And your step on down the hall
You never wanted me babe
You never knew me at all

My Heart To Joy - Seasons In Verse

I can't stop listening to this.


Get this.

There's lots of yelling, lots of sweet chords, and lots and lots of rock-y, sweet vocals. It's beardcore I guess, (oh god don't shoot me for saying that) but it's sweet rock. I guess you could call them emo if you needed to put them somewhere, but they're nothing like anything the Kinsellas ever touched, so don't expect it. A bit post hardcore, but really, just fun rock to dance around to. The lyrics are a bit fun to scream at your steering wheel, but in a bit more of a positive way then you might think.

Carissa's Wierd - Songs About Leaving

I'm sad, confused, angry, tired, and utterly, entirely, ridiculously completely alone.
If my life right now was a movie, it'd be mostly depressing, cliche, boring, and pretty much nobody would wanna watch it, because the same things would end up happening over and over again.

and then this would be the soundtrack

Gregor Samsa - Rest

This is a long-time favorite of mine. It's full of gorgeous melodies, beautiful vocals, and dreamy, dreamy layers of sound.

Just fucking get this
Gregor Samsa's not a new new band. Formed in 2000, they know what they're doing. They've stayed a well kept secret (for the three bands named gregor samsa on last.fm, there's 100k listeners - not much, if you divide that by 3, it's roughly 33k) in the world of music. And for good reason - too much of them, and you're in love and can never listen to anything else again. Not that you'd want to, because none of your hipster friends have ever heard anything like this. Post rock crescendos, beautiful female and male vocals, calm songs that suddenly plunge into what feels like a gorgeous, gorgeous nightmare (First Mile, Last Mile) and then suddenly you're back in a beautiful dreamland filled with softness and pillows and reverb and a really pretty lady. It's like... one of those dreams you have after tripping balls and partying really fucking hard - it's weird, it's beautiful, and you want more of it. It's like somebody took you to another planet with lower gravity than our little Earth, and let you drift in space. You're staring at all the stars, right? Realizing how fucking small and insignificant you are, despite the trust funds, fancily cut hair (which you didn't do but will pretend you did to the end of the earth) and suddenly - none of it matters. None of it. Not the parties, not the coke, not the polaroid pictures you took, not the starbucks barista who's really cute... don't even think about it. You're wrapped in a blanket of sound and beautiful piano melodies are rushing over you and you feel okay, despite knowing in your soul you're really not that okay... but it's a content "I'm not okay." You're happy with being not okay, with being little, with being a small human. We're all okay. Take this album, this present, go lie down in a field or in your bed or near the ocean or in the woods or near whatever is nearest and isolated and vast, and play this album. I promise you, it's the best experience you can have.

a sneak peek at your present

La Dispute - Somewhere At The Bottom Of The River Between Vega And Altair

This is pretty much my favorite album of all time. The lyrics are just deep enough for you to feel pretentious, after all, the lyricist does have a degree in poetry from some prestigious college that I can't remember, but it's somewhere you could only go to if you drained your entire trust fund, and way laid off the coke.

get it, mediafire
La Dispute is a beautiful, beautiful band. They sound sort of like mewithoutYou, but they're way more emotional in the lyrics, and they put themselves entirely into their music. It's not quite starbucks approved, because it might be a little too violent in places, but there's other parts that are calm, the calm before the storm. They're basically like you - they could have been 'scene' at one point, but now they're much too 'deep' for that... if you were into 'hardcore' or 'emo' (and not the real kind, either) at any point in time (including now, secretly, when you're home alone and you put on that Emmure record or that fucking local hardcore band's cd), you will adore this. If you're one of those faggots all about the lyrics - you'll adore this. They are a fantastic band, and if you don't have this, you aren't worth a single little penny of your trust fund.
MMMM HEY LOOK, FANCY!
preview
their wordpress