Indie One Hit Wonders

These aren’t even hits, technically.

I listen to a whole metric crapload of new music, and I’m really diligent about marking songs with a star-rating when something really pops out for me.  Later, I go back and see that plenty of times only one song stood out to me.  These songs are often spectacular in some way, but the rest of the album just doesn’t even register as something I want to write about.

These are some songs I’ve totally fallen in love with but ultimately can’t recommend the rest of the album.

First up is indie darling Bear in Heaven, from their album Beast Rest Forth Mouth.  They were indie darlings last year, but they just sounded generic to me.  However, this song You Do You just sounds like some amazing modern Genesis song (minus Phil Collins):

[audio:http://thesweetsnob.com/wp-content/uploads/03-You-Do-You.mp3|titles=Bear in Heaven – You Do You]

Next is from Blackroc, a vanity project by otherwise awesome The Black Keys working with a bunch of otherwise awesome rappers like Mos Def, RZA, and Q-Tip.  Sounded great but nothing really quite moved me except for the back-from-the-grave collaboration with some old recording from Ol’ Dirty Bastard and a nice verse by Ludacris.  It’s a crass rap called Coochie as in “That Coochie got me so confused I don’t know what to do.”  Note the reverb-dripping Black Keys licks.

[audio:http://thesweetsnob.com/wp-content/uploads/01-Coochie-ODB-and-Ludacris.mp3|titles=Blackroc – Coochie (ODB and Ludacris)]

When this song, Fortune Teller by Forest Fire came on, I was so convinced this album was going to blow me away.   It didn’t.  But I still love this song about “melting faces with gatlin’ gun social skills,” that asks the musical question, “why not kill someone you hate?”  I’ve been feeling like this socially a lot lately.

[audio:http://thesweetsnob.com/wp-content/uploads/02-Fortune-Teller.mp3|titles=Forest Fire – Fortune Teller]

Really this whole album by Citay is not bad at all, but nothing else on the album quite carries the spirit of an Angelic Choir led by a leaderless Van Halen.  Check the lovely instramental Careful With That Hat:

[audio:http://thesweetsnob.com/wp-content/uploads/01-Careful-With-That-Hat.mp3|titles=Citay – Careful With That Hat]

Okay, this song is a tour de force.  I can’t even believe someone good enough to do a song like this would do the rest of the songs on his album On Blue Fog as kind of a regular folk album.  The guy is Andew Ethier, and the one hit wonder is a song called On Lies.  I am not shitting you, this song is amazing top to bottom.  Amazing guitar work, amazing Dylanesque singing that runs from growl to howl like necessary, and a spectacular sax solo near the end.  This is a 6:15 journey that I wouldn’t mind being on the soundtrack to my autobiography:

[audio:http://thesweetsnob.com/wp-content/uploads/06-On-Lies.mp3|titles=Andrew Ethier – On Lies]

Anyone else have any indie one hit wonders to recommend?   Disagree and think one of these artists has other awesome stuff?  Like or hate one of these songs?

Let me know.

this blog post is now over, thank you for reading.
as a reminder, it was called: Indie One Hit Wonders
it's categorized as: Reviews, Songs
link to it, please: Sunday, May 15th, 2011

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