I’ve written before about Emusic.  Great service for indie music.  I’ve found a lot of good stuff there.  But I tend to run out of things to download after a couple of months.  Anyway, they’ve sucked me back in with 75 free downloads (and you know I can’t resist free downloads), so here’s the result of my first troll through their recent catalog.

Miike Snow

First thing you need to know is that this group includes producers and songwriters who have worked with the likes of Britney Spears.  Second thing you should know is that you shouldn’t hold that against them.  Sure, there is an undercurrent of pop music’s current love of layered yet simplistic electronica here.  In some tunes you can feel the band vacillating - pop, indie, pop, indie.  And in a way, this is a perfect album to come to the realization that the line between the two is really not as bright as some might lead you to believe.  After all, a 3-5 minute catchy song is a 3-5 minute catchy song, regardless of the label.  Of course, there are also songs on this album, such as Plastic Jungle, which I’m convinced would be Top 10 hits if they had been given to Ms. Spears.  As Miike Snow, they are relegated to deep tracks on a good album.  Other songs also seem to be looking for another artist to perform them.  Sans Soleil sounds like it is auditioning for a spot on Roxy Music’s Avalon album (which for the record is not a bad thing).  The languid Faker longs for a female crooner in the Fiona Apple vein.  And there are a couple of straight-up electronica tracks, which always sound a bit generic to me.  Overall, the album does carve out its own identity and has some of the best tracks I’ve heard this year.  Both Burial and Sylvia amble along completely enjoyably.  With its alternating plucky guitar riff and breathy bouncy vocals, Song For No One should be getting airplay everywhere — it would have been a perfect summery hit.  And then there is Animal.  Complicated lyrics that make you pause, interesting melding of styles in the backing tracks, catchy but not cloying — OK, maybe there is a bright line between pop and indie.  Regardless, Animal would make my shortlist for best track of the year.

Apsci

There’s been a strange subset of indie music over the last few years comprised of male-female duos where the two musicians usually have a deeper relationship of sorts — brother-sister, husband-wife, etc.  The White Stripes, Matt&Kim, The Fiery Furnaces, The Raveonettes, Mates of State.  The common characteristics seem to be odd rhythms, surreal lyrics and occasional outbursts of pure noise.  They are all also capable of songs (and sometimes only parts of songs) that are blissfully melodic and catchy.  ApSci fits perfectly into this sub-genre.  In this case, the duo are husband Ra Lamotta and wife Dana Diaz-Tutaan.  I’ve seen Apsci billed as indie hip-hop, which I think is unfortunate because in my mind the tracks where they rap are by far the weakest on the album Best Crisis Ever.  Seriously, tracks such as Let’s RIP The Town Up and Afford Me This Poetry felt so forced to me that it was like watching the head cheerleader and star quarterback try to get their Kanye on at a high school assembly.  Not good.  Luckily, the right notes outnumber the wrong here.  Both Lamotta and Diaz-Tutaan have great voices that shine on the songs that lean away from hip hop toward indie pop and electronica.  I would happily listen to a whole album of tunes like Big Adventures and Crazy Crazy Insane (both of which have been featured on IndieFeed podcasts).  Or consider the tag-team vocals on The Tradeoff, which I guess leans toward their hip hop side but lowers the false-note bravado on their rhyming to allow their voices to shine and the song to be less juvenile.  But to really understand why Apsci is a band to keep an eye on, listen to their cover of R.E.M.’s Swan Swan H.  It is one of the most bizarre and compelling covers I’ve heard in a while.  Diaz-Tutaan’s delivery of Michael Stipe’s lyrics reinforces both how surreal they are and how beautifully they’re put together.  In this cover, Apsci lets their freak flag fly and I think that’s the model they should follow for work to come.