Music I Liked – Wooden Shjips, Amarok, Echo Ladies, Vanhelga, Yuno

All my music last week came from reading music blogs. Among the best were Wooden Shjips, Amarok, Echo Ladies, Vanhelga, and Yuno.

Wooden Shjips

I know I’ve heard Wooden Shjips before on KEXP. But often the radio is just on in the background and unless a song is truly mindblowing or super annoying, I don’t necessarily notice what I’m listening to. So it took a bandcamp blog post about their new album V. to get me to pay attention to this well-established Portland band. I’m glad something finally did it, because I really like these guys.

Amarok

Angry Metal Guy rated Amarok’s Devoured “very good.” I agree. Actually, from it’s gorgeous album cover to its lengthy blackened doom tracks, I think I like Amarok even more than they do.

Echo Ladies

I was alternating between reading music blog posts and cleaning up links on my own blog when I discovered Malmö, Sweden based pop band Echo Ladies. I read bandcamp’s blog post about the album Pink Noise then listened to the embed while I switched over to review the next old post in line for cleanup on my own blog. It was about my first trip to Europe, when I spent a summer with my best friend’s family in Malmö, Sweden. The serendipitous blend of first-time nostalgia and distorted synth-pop made my day.

Vanhelga

Also from Sweden, but sounding very different, is Vanhelga. AMG gave their release Fredagsmys a 4.0. That’s an unusually high score on that site, but well deserved in this case. I listen to a lot of music, and generally enjoy it all while forgetting to ever listen to any of it again. Every now and then I hear something that gives me pause. I hear it and think, “No wait, this is what I like! I could listen to this nonstop for days.” I could listen to Fredagsmys all summer without ever getting bored. I don’t know enough music theory to tell what makes one black metal band better than another (and the style is so rigid that I usually can’t tell them apart). But this one just tastes better.

Yuno

And now for something completely different. Yuno is a shut-in basement dwelling one-man music project that suddenly started getting attention after a decade of obscure bandcamp releases. But no really, it is different. It’s not even metal. It’s sparkly, shiny pink pop and I love it. Seriously, it may be called Moodie but you cannot maintain a bad mood when you hear this.