GOOD LISTENER

Your weekly dose of need-to-hear music.

Pavement - “Cut Your Hair”
Lately, we’ve been touting handfuls of lo-fi bands here at NYLON. So it’s only fair to give a high five to one of indie rock’s greatest lo-fi bands ever, Pavement—which will both reunite and drop a best-of album next year. The artfully disheveled “Cut Your Hair” will undoubtedly pop up on said compilation, but it originally appeared on their second album, Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain. In it, charmingly literate/atonal singer Steve Malkmus offers this nugget of wisdom amid a succession of ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-OOHs: “Darlin’ don’t you go and cut your hair/Do you think it’s gonna make him change?” He’s got a point….
 
Yeasayer - “Ambling Alp”
Despite their attempts at being eccentric, psych-pop band Yeasayer sure do assemble a catchy tune. This free download is the first one from their second album, February’s Odd Blood; it’s a jerking, swelling number that percolates with rhythm in the most life-affirming way.
 
Pens - “High in the Cinema”
U.K.’s Pens could easily be the Best Coast tribute band, covering the songs that Best Coast never released. For the mix this week, we choose the herky-jerky “High in the Cinema,” which cannily unites said stoner drone with an ’80s punk-girl aesthetic. (A shout-out to NYLON TV’s Jay Buim for the band recommendation!)
 
Sean Bones - “Dancehall”
It’s not even December yet, and we already miss summer. What better way to daydream about June—coincidentally, the month when Sean Bones’s debut dropped—than to listen to his track “Dancehall”? The breezy reggae-rock confection instructs us to “All. Get. Down. Dancehall.” while a slide-guitar wails in the background. Sold!
 
Popo - “Kill Tonight”
Philly’s Popo have been around for few years now, but back in March, this single sparked more fervent interest in the Pakistani-American post-punk trio. They’ve been compared to the Germs, but we like to think of them as a more shambolic Wire. We’ll find out if they can live up to that compliment when the group’s first full-length is released this spring on Diplo’s Mad Decent label.
NISHA GOPALAN



This story was published on November 6, 2009.