This morning I awoke to find my cell roommate, Rajni, sleeping on my leg. Monkeys can be heavy. Monkeys can also be strong. “Rajni, man, I’m late making breakfast for the masters, eek!”, I gave her a shove. She single-handedly flipped me off my hammock and onto the floor, face first. Monkeys = 1:Neha = 0. THIS. After spending all night coughing because she insists on smoking cigars before bedtime. All those cute gibbons and gorillas about and I get stuck with a smoking lemur.
Anyway, I crawled around looking for some type of wake up/make up music, something less aggressive than my usual fare of German synths, big bass, and synthetic hand claps (just like garba!). Something combining bittersweet melodies, energetic drums and clever lyrics. Something to make Rajni like me better so we can just chill, sing along and bond over heartbreak, instead of all this fighting-biting. Good thing I took my indie-loving friend Bird’s advice and brought along some most suitable fare…
Last December, Spin mag profiled a then under-the-underground band called Voxtrot and made it their ‘Band of the Day’:
The Austin, Texas quintet’s debut EP, Raised by Wolves, is a stunning mini-collection of John Hughes-heyday paeans, twitchy pop, and surging, Strokes-y dancefloor fillers. [link]
Had I been keeping open to the possibility of jangly guitars bringing me to my knees then news of lead singer, Ramesh Srivastava, would have hit SM tip boxes way sooner:
When Srivastava moved to Glasgow at the age of 19, he’d already written the tracks that would comprise the Raised By Wolves EP, songs with deft arrangments and charming melodies that evoke Belle & Sebastian, Morrissey, and the Lucksmiths, but with jagged, rumbling guitars remindful of early Cure and, sometimes, Joy Division. [Link]
Good ol’ fashioned guitar pop made by a twee Texan of Indian descent who writes Morrissey lyrics and sings in a vaguely Scottish accent. It really is a small world, no? The unprecedented word-of-mouth coverage their first EP, Raised by Wolves, has received in the music blog scene has helped propel interest in their second, titled ‘Mothers, Sisters, Daughters & Wives’, which dropped earlier this month.
The releases are quite complementary but I would choose the first one, if only because it includes the gorgeous, “The Start of Something”, which can be heard on their My Space page, and the easy falsettos on “Missing Pieces”. From what I read and hear their stage shows are mad fun so have a look their website for tour dates. Creative, sensitive, cute and a piano-playing blogger, sigh. Take me back to seventeen, cruel world :-) The only thing lacking in the mix at this point is a full length album.
