Last week we brought you the space-rock of Joseph Scott. We hope that you took a chance on it over at Amie Street. Maybe he got a bunch of his friends to buy it, but we’d like to think the fact that the price from his album has risen can be attributed to us. (If it’s not, just let us think it.)
This week we’re bringing you a full-length – Slight Fountain by the Philadelphian quintet Hermit Thrushes:
When “fragile” is used to describe a song or an album, it’s usually to denote that the music is quiet. When I use it to describe Slight Fountain by Hermit Thrushes, it’s because the music feels thrown together, propped up, and now everyone has gathered around to wait for it to crash gloriously down. The band, however, makes it work, adding enough texture and quirkiness to keep everything together.
Sonically, imagine that Elliot Smith was singing lead for Modest Mouse pre-The Moon and Antarctica. There’s enough melody to make the songs interesting, and the idiosyncrasies are strewn about generously. Unlike Modest Mouse, however, Hermit Thrushes don’t have a flair for the extended songs – the longest song is just over 4 minutes, beating the runner up by nearly a minute and a half – and the 14 songs on the album are finished after a scant thirty minutes.
Slight Fountain is a jumpy piece of down-tempo noise rock, eccentric and unpredictable. For an album that feels as though it’s ready to burst at any point, it’s the band that is on the cusp of exploding themselves. They’re obviously talented, and still carving out their lo-fi niche.
Download my favorite track below, stream another track after that, check their MySpace for tour dates and more information, and support them by buying the album over at Amie Street.
If you don’t want to buy the album, and instead want to try your hand at winning yourself a copy from us, simply leave us your potential weekend plans in the comments, along with an e-mail address where we can find you. We’ll pick what makes us most jealous and send off the goods. Remember, you also should have an Amie Street account.
Hermit Thrushes – Push (mp3) from Slight Fountain
Hermit Thrushes – Snowflake Heart (Stream) from Slight Fountain
tympanogram.wordpress.com 
Well I don’t like that they took a 90’s Canadian band name (Thrush Hermit) and just reversed it. And I don’t like that they are pretty much covering Polvo music. It seems like they thought they could get away with ripping off obscure old music and band names. Nice try.
Actually Hermit Thrushes is the name of a type of bird. I don’t think Thrush Hermit was anyway involved in the choosing of their band name. And if you think this is ripping off Polvo you seriously need to broaden your horizons. Hermit Thrushes is way more chaotic, way less repeditive, and not “post rock”. No disrespect to Polvo…
A hermit thrush is a bird. The Canadian band took the bird’s name and reversed it. Nice try.
Grilling the burgers, playing the frisbee, shooting the fireworx.