Gimme gimme gimme Hindi Rokk
Ok, let’s talk Hindi Rock.
I’m sort of kidding, but that’s what Montreal multi-instrumentalist Rishi Dhir occasionally jokingly refers to his music as. Rishi first came to my attention playing sitar, guitar, bass, and keys in The High Dials, a band I’ve made no secret about being a total fanboy of.
His new band is called The Elephant Stone. They’re absolutely fan-damn-tastic. Here, let’s start off with a song that just screams sunny Sunday afternoons:
I mean, if you were going to teach guitar-pop theory, you could just use that song as exhibit A on how to do everything right.
That song is on the new Elephant Stone EP, called “Glass Box” and along with “Yesterday’s Gurl” (which has an amazingly sneaky hook in the chorus) is totally worth investigating.
And if you dig that, you oughta check out The Elephant Stone’s 2009 album, The Seven Seas, which goes from straight-ahead Mancunian-sounding guitar jangle through a steady progression of adding more and more interesting ideas as each song goes by. Here’s the cliff’s notes on that progression:
“Bombs Bomb Away” (What a glorious, awesome, shimmery cool song, especially when they do the key change the last time through the chorus)
After “Bombs”, the album gets more layered….and here’s the title track, the fourth song in:
“Seven Seas” (Ok, sure, it nicks “Across The Universe”, but still, here comes the sitar baby!)
And here’s the album closer. Go grab a bong, we’ll wait. Ready?
“Don’t You Know”. That right there is seven and one-half minutes of pure unadulterated awesomeness.
Best of all, you can listen to both the full lp from last year and this year’s new ep right here:
http://www.elephantstonemusic.com/music_listen/
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Hey There! We’re BACK.
Take that, Google Evil Empire!
In a process that was completely painless once I actually decided to try to figure out what I needed to do, I think popnarcotic is back in business.
One tiny, tiny change that hopefully trips no one up: the “www” is gone from the front of the URL. If you’re using a browser from sometime after 1997, the URL line in it should self-correct anyway, so if you’re addicted to typing “www”, don’t let us stop you.
Also, obviously switching from Blogger to WordPress, the formats aren’t exactly the same. You may see a few oddly formatted pictures or something. Best advice there: deal. Or let me know and I’ll see if I can fix it. All fairly recent links should work just fine, and the blog proper is as it ever was, albeit with a slightly newer look to it. Dare I say it: WordPress and the variety of options, UI, and sheer excellence of what it gives you blows Blogger/Blogspot/Google out of the ocean.
Back in a while with blatherings on why you should be listening to Hindi Rock, pimping of Teenage Fanclub, Dragoon, and Sweet Apple, and most importantly–me getting all serious and telling you that if you’re not a raving fan of a Seattle band called The Cute Lepers, you may hate rock and roll. Only slightly kidding with that last bit.
Popnarcotic 