Monday, September 14, 2009

The dance rock trend

After buying Phoenix's new album, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, a few weeks ago (I love it, by the way), it made me think about all of the enjoyable bands out right now that play a brand of dance rock. 2009 has already seen at least two outstanding releases from this category with the Phoenix album and Passion Pit's Manners.

2008 also saw its fair share of great dance rock albums. M83, Cut Copy and Hot Chip all released solid records combining dance beats with guitars, bass and keys. You might even be able to throw TV on the Radio's Dear Science in this category as well. And would MGMT's debut have been anywhere near as popular as it was if it wasn't for "Electric Feel" and "Kids"?

The trend is even showing up in unlikely places. Animal Collective's 2009 release Merriweather Post Pavilion is practically all electronic with a full-out raver ("Brother Sport") as the final song. Even the likes of My Morning Jacket got in on the action on their latest album, Evil Urges, with "Touch Me I'm Going to Scream Pt. 2."

I'm not going to say we're experiencing an "electronic dance rock" era or anything. But it seems like there are so many good options out there right now. (Let's not forget probably the best option from this category -- LCD Soundsystem.) So I'm wondering if people agree with me, or if this maybe is just a type of music that I have gotten into recently, and that I wasn't paying attention as much before.

1 comment:

  1. I totally agree with what you are saying. LCD Soundsystem seems to have given birth to all these groups if you ask me. They were really the first to gain semi- mainstream success with their single "Daft Punk is playing At My house" I think they were all in the shadows before, but now with better technology and easier at home production (Pro Tools) I think there will be more and more electropopdancerock groups being picked up by record companies. If you listen to older MGMT stuff you can see that they were probably held back by lack of good production. The music was there, they just needed some help getting it to sound so unique.

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