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Jan Recap / Feb Preview

Jake Craney
Latest posts by Jake Craney (see all)

January came and went quickly as the music machine ramped back up to full steam. Our STAFF PICKS will be posted tomorrow on the 1st as usual, but tonight we’d like to offer a recap of the month and a look forward.

GroundSounds was 120 posts strong in Jan and had a productive Grammy week, doing over 20 interviews at 4 different events. The first few have already been posted, check out our Youtube page to watch them all!

We had really cool live studio and rehearsal sessions with Gentlemen Hall and Ghost Town Jenny (vids up soon!) and we premiered two new songs from Bedouin and Mount Pressmore.

We conducted 15 print interviews with bands like The Fratellis, The Wild, Hedley, Blondfire, The VeeVees, Moon Taxi, and more. We had fun chatting with New Beat Fund high atop Topanga Canyon. They gave us an acoustic performance on their deck, which you can check out HERE

Awesome new songs were released, including the latest from Foster The People and Tokyo Police Club, as well as a passionate return to form for Taking Back Sunday. Tracks from The Crookes, Tan Sister Radio, NO, Curtis Harding, and Tennis were all pleasant surprises.

Three fantastic albums were released in January (along with more I’m sure that have slipped past the radar). Against Me! returned with Transgender Disphoria Blues, an emphatic “fuck you” of a record with a powerful message. The Hidden Cameras released AGE, an album that may go largely unnoticed by the general public, but definitely shouldn’t. It’s intriguing, cinematic, almost sinister at points, but it is an album that stays with you and is an early contender to be included on Top 10 lists at the end of the year. Young The Giant also released their new album Mind Over Matter. The album is slightly scatterbrained, with some excellent tracks and some that seem out of place. While not a completely consistent and amazing album, the band still showcases their ability for top notch songwriting and vocals and this release should allow them to stand their ground with contemporaries like Atlas Genius.

Looking ahead to February, we will be treated with Voices, the new album from Phantogram. A band generating a lot of buzz, Modern Baseball, will release You’re Gonna Miss Us All, an impressive album which sounds like a mix of Say Anything, The Front Bottoms, and The Wonder Years. We’ll also see the release of what is sure to be one of the best indie releases this year, So Long, See You Tomorrow, the latest from Bombay Bicycle Club. LA’s own NO will release their debut album El Prado, which promises to be an excellent album in the vein of The National and Editors.

GroundSounds will of course be on the grind in Feb. On the 11th we’ll be interviewing one of the year’s top breakout candidates Sir Sly before their show with St. Lucia. We will have that interview along with a review and photos from the show. In addition, we’ll have the majority of our Grammy Red Carpet interviews edited and posted in the next few weeks. Expect at least a dozen more print interviews with some of the hottest up and comers in the music world and of course, new songs and videos as they are released. The shortest month won’t be short on content, keep checking GroundSounds for new music on a daily basis!

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