Ceremony and Thrushes live on WMUC

My college's radio is horrendous so I've taken to listening to other university stations online. Right now the University of Maryland has some great shows and DJs. They also pick up awesome bands for interviews and live performances. Today Thrushes and Ceremony were on the show. Thrushes is a shoegaze/dream pop band from Baltimore and Ceremony is a shoegaze band from Fredricksburg (look here for my post on their split LP with Screen Vinyl Image).

Thrushes were up first and I was surprised at how good they sounded. I listened to their debut album, Sun Come Undone, a while ago and nothing caught my ear. On the show they played new material that will appear on an upcoming releases. I especially like the second song, Trees.

Ceremony sounded great too. They played my favorite song, For Her Smile, and a few I had not heard before. In the interview they mention an already recorded album coming out this year. Cool!

You can download the complete radio show from WMUC's website. Right click and "save as" the Third_Rail_Radio_1800_2100 mp3. And tune in tomorrow at 1 PM for a live recording of The Pains of Being Pure at Heart!

Dead Leaf Echo - Pale Fire

Well this is cool. I never expected much to come out of this blog. I started it because I had way too much free time and figured I could spend some of that time introducing others to the bands I like. But last week I was contacted by the promoter for a group called Dead Leaf Echo. He offered to send me a copy of Pale Fire, the band's second EP, and after listening to some songs on MySpace I accepted.

Dead Leaf Echo come from New York and play shoegaze/dream pop with a tint of new wave. Think if Slowdive were from Manchester. Pale Fire starts off a bit rough with Warm Body which sounds out of place among the five tracks that follow. The second song, Thought Talk, is a better representation of the rest of Pale Fire with its male/female vocals and transition from soft and dreamy to noisy guitar sound about 3/4ths through. Other standout tracks are Tears and Cry The Sea.

You can listen to some tracks from Pale Fire as well as order the CD on Dead Leaf Echo's MySpace page.

Moscow Olympics - Cut The World

This could possibly be my favorite release of 2008. Moscow Olympics come from the Philippines and play catchy pop music that sounds like all my favorite genres mashed into one. Cut The World is their debut album (or mini-album. It clocks in at under 30 minutes) and it is spectacular. Not a dull song on this disc! Here is what IndiePages has to say:

This Filipino group was the talk of the indiepop world after their single last year, and this mini-album is just further proof of their greatness - in case one was actually needed! If you missed 'em the first time around, the band plays dreamy pop with a very noticeable New Order influence (especially in the guitar melodies), in the same fashion as bands like the Airfields and the Radio Dept. Simply put, the result is stunning, with a sound that's lush and beautiful and dense with jangling guitars and ambient synths, and with the requisite Pale Saints-ish lost-boy vocal style that often goes along with this kind of music. And the melodies are immaculate, as well. The only fault I found was the drum rolls in the chorus of "Safe", which were rather conspicuously off-time; I know it's one of those things that not everyone would notice, but it definitely stands out to me, though it thankfully doesn't hinder my enjoyment of the song. Brilliant and recommended!

Selected tracks:
Second Trace
Safe
Buy Cut the World from Tonevendor

The biggest fault of Cut The World is that it doesn't include Moscow Olympics' best song. Their only other release was a 7" in late 2007 and the A-side, Still, sounds like it could have been released on Factory in 1982.

Still
Talk Like This
Download the 7"
Buy it from Tonevendor

Extra: Moscow Olympics demo download