The Sweet Boys - Foible Pangs

[adecentman]

Hello everyone,

My friends and I have been working on this album for the last 3.5 years, and now that it's finally out in the world I can't think of a better place to share it with likeminded folks than on Twoism!

Coming after my little album 'Life Is Meaningless | Clouds Are Beautiful', this full-length certainly feels like a certain departure from the world of impressionistic nature-inspired electronic tracks to a slightly more human, relatable, 'pop' language, but the lushness and attention to sonic detail in the arrangements (which BoC have so masterfully taught us over the years) still remains.
Additionally, I think you guys might appreciate a certain track that contains some good ol' fashioned subliminals and Sandison 9ths + Aug4ths....

Hope you enjoy it.

http://www.wwwdotthesweetboysdotcom.com
http://www.thesweetboys.bandcamp.com

[Mexicola]

If it's all as good as the opening track then this could be very special indeed.
Wow!

EDIT: Oh my word, this is incredible!!!

Seriously Twoism, get on it, this has come out of leftfield and knocked me into the middle of next week.
Quite extraordinary and rather wonderful.
Almost a Bibio vibe to the vocals in places, but this is indie par excellence.
Do I detect a Doves influence too perhaps?
Sweet Girls is MBV with a BOC interlude in the middle - Jesus, this just gets better, and better and better!

This soars!

[Mexicola]

Moderators prerogative, bumping because I listened again this morning and its stunning.

Best thing I've heard in ages.

[Aerial Boundaries]

First track in

Getting a big cocteau twins dream pop vibe. Oh a bit of Tame Impala as well?

Amazing melody.

Will update when I've listened to the rest

[fujee]

Cracking album! Downloaded it, will be sending a payment tomorrow. Track 7 is wicked, love that ambient section which builds into fuzzy guitar, kinda like a reverse You Made Me Realise. Anything with loud warped guitars and eclectic influences all over is gonna have my sustained interest. Nice one guys

[IanRedpoint]

I was holding off posting my thoughts until I'd had a chance to listen to it a couple of times…

This really is the best guitar record I've heard in ages. Lots of little flickers of influences, sure, but it's such a solid collection of songs and played/recorded so well. Seems criminal that this is just self-released. I'd be buying this on vinyl without hesitation if I could.

My favourite track keeps changing (currently Res(e)t) and that's always a good sign. Cover is great too.

[Cupz]

My goodness, some serious effort! Very nice!

*bought for 3$*

[Techboy]

loved it. *bought*

[Mexicola]

Glad others are warming up to this. This ain't just my favorite Twoism related release this year, its simply one if my favorite releases over the past year full stop.

Had it on my headphones a few days now and it benefits repeat plays hugely.

A staggering piece of work!

[Aerial Boundaries]

Got around to listening the whole way through.

What an album, definitely buying it.

[adecentman]

n_n

Really stoked y'all can get down with it! Thanks a ton for all the nice sentiments thus far, and thanks even more for simply letting this music swim around in your synapses : )

Mexicola here butting in - debuting our new fangled 'Spoiler' function at Mikey's request. Click below if you'd like inside info on the record. Enjoy - let's hope this works!

Spoiler: show

It really does make sense to me that the Twoism crowd would be receptive in this way since pop has certainly been a language of music our band has approached through the cracked lens of time--as we know, so many of BoC's themes dwell in memory's abstraction of truth, and I can't help but feel as if we act out these concepts by making 'rock' music in a postmillennial world. As kids that were slowly coming into consciousness as the last era of rock's true ethos was debatably ending, most of our entire concept of rock music has been completely subject to generation loss--as a direct result it would seem that every externalized concept and footnote that could've been posthumously attached to rock music has come pre-packaged and built-in to our baseline understanding of its musical language. That hyper-aware aspect is probably part of what fueled the eclecticism y'all have picked up on--an attempt to be in conversation with as many of the parameters we love in pop/rock as possible. Add to that our eschewing of rock's tried and true practice of going into the studio to bang out an album as quickly possible and we end up with a bunch of songs where every little aspect has been subject to weeks/months/years of scrutiny, and thus from our point of view every bit of audio finds itself attached to various memories and meta-musical contexts that get sucked into the phenomenological realm of music (a concept which again is very present in BoC's perspective on sound).

So yea--long story short, that's the musical context I'm workin with--maybe i'm undermining myself myself by providing this anecdotal sort of context (it's so very exciting to me that you guys can come at it with a clean slate and still enjoy it as you do), but I can't help but wonder if an aspect of your enjoyment is due to these very 'BoC' concepts! Would love to hear your thoughts on this, especially if your perspective differs wildly from my hypothesis.....

Meanwhile, I'd like to thank everyone that's paid for it--you're personally helping to pay off our practice space rent!! So sweet of you guys! For real. Perhaps one day we'll do a physical release of this and send some copies your way


Now let's get down to specifics:

Track 7 is wicked, love that ambient section which builds into fuzzy guitar, kinda like a reverse You Made Me Realise.

Hehehe, i was certainly getting a little forward with my love for MBV on that one. So interesting that you note You Made Me Realise--on early live versions of that track we'd play a processed sample of the wall of sound bit from that song to fill out the end of the ambient section--you knew!

Getting a big cocteau twins dream pop vibe. Oh a bit of Tame Impala as well?

We all love Cocteau Twins, but I think we may have wrote this one before we got really into Heaven or Las Vegas (El Salvador was originally written in 2011 but re-recorded in 2014, seems crazy in retrospect...), but you're right on point with Tame Impala though, back in 2012 we were ripping them off pretty hard. Trivia: the silly working title of El Salvador was Tame Weenhead (i.e. Tame Impala, Ween, Radiohead), though we were trying to rip off 'The Beatles - Because' as well though....

This really is the best guitar record I've heard in ages. Lots of little flickers of influences, sure, but it's such a solid collection of songs and played/recorded so well. Seems criminal that this is just self-released. I'd be buying this on vinyl without hesitation if I could.

My favourite track keeps changing (currently Res(e)t) and that's always a good sign. Cover is great too.

n_n! At one point it seemed inevitable that we were going to do a vinyl release, but the sweet boys are a logistical nightmare, and nowadays it's looking like less of an immediate reality... That being said, who knows! Would love to see that album cover on a record sleeve. The drawing (done by Lyla Ribot) is perhaps the only piece of 'fine art' that I've ever purchased--15 bucks back in 2011! What a steal! Sometimes Res(e)t is my favorite as well--I think it might be the best example of the songwriting symbiosis between Kevin and I.


Anyways, I concede that I might be running my mouth way too hard on this post, but it's a slow day at work, so why not?
thanks again,
-mikey // the sweet boys

[Mexicola]

Ever feel like you were in on something special right at the ground floor?

Watch these guys people, I have high hopes..

[adecentman]

hehe, oh you~~ just you wait until 2060 when I put out something really next level ; )

Meanwhile, I guess I can't edit my posts after a certain period of time? Right after I submitted that monologue up there I realized that perhaps it's dumb to spray my personal contexts all over this album where people might not want them fascistly invading their thoughts--so if that applies to you, don't read my post!! Part of me wants to discuss the heck out of it since it's been floating between just a few friends and I for ~4 years now, but at the same time I can't help but think I should really just let it live out its own organic life in your minds, where you could actually allow it to develop into brand new concepts of your own... or maybe both are possible?

[Mexicola]

Spoiler code added, as requested. Let me know if you want that removing/adapting

[Cupz]

I can't help but wonder if an aspect of your enjoyment is due to these very 'BoC' concepts! Would love to hear your thoughts on this, especially if your perspective differs wildly from my hypothesis.....

Personally, thats the only thing that bugs me. I don't feel like this has anything to do with boards of canada at all and the winks toward boc I could do without. You are obviously inspired by similar things, I love the nostalgia, this a really really REALLY REALLY solid pop/rock album but boc'ish it is not, and you should be proud that it has transcended you.

[Aerial Boundaries]

I can't help but wonder if an aspect of your enjoyment is due to these very 'BoC' concepts! Would love to hear your thoughts on this, especially if your perspective differs wildly from my hypothesis.....

Personally, thats the only thing that bugs me. I don't feel like this has anything to do with boards of canada at all and the winks toward boc I could do without. You are obviously inspired by similar things, I love the nostalgia, this a really really REALLY REALLY solid pop/rock album but boc'ish it is not, and you should be proud that it has transcended you.

I agree, but I actually don't find much in this album that IS distinctively BOC in sound or style. I'm hearing people like mbv, cocteau twins, even some SOTL-like guitar drone in track 7 (please tell me I am right there!). The only thing that reminds me of BOC is of course 'A New Clear Dawn' as a title, and the occasional static-y end pieces and intros.

I have no doubt that their philosophy and overall approach is inspired by BOC, but I'm not catching many sonic nods of the head here.

[Mexicola]

I see both points of view, but I don't think it detracts. By the way, anyone catch the static/tv being tuned noise at the beginning of the final track (I think)? Reminds me of the same noise at the start of the last track by our favorite bands last major release

[IanRedpoint]

I have no doubt that their philosophy and overall approach is inspired by BOC, but I'm not catching many sonic nods of the head here.

That's exactly what I'm thinking too. I love the attention to detail being lavished on the music. It's great to hear that in an age when recorded music is being so devalued.

I like the theory that it's rock music distorted through the lens of memory. To me it's like a colour-saturated old polaroid of rock. It manages that rare thing of referencing the past without quoting it, and then playing it with enough energy and style to make it new again. The past inside the present.

Of course it's instantly comfortable for some of us who came at BOC from a rock/post-rock/shoegaze background, and it does it a whole lot better than the vast majority of psych-rock that's out there.

[adecentman]

Aerial Boundaries--you're totally on point. As far as the actual sonics of this album are concerned (with the exception of track 5, and some footnotes of audio here and there on a few other tracks), BoC was totally not the compositional focus whatsoever! Personally I think some of the sonic homages are almost comically derivative at times, with the aforementioned MBV + Tame Impala, as well as Radiohead and Deerhunter. But like you said, I think it's the philosophical/conceptual aspects of the album that could be coming from a BoCian place--since we've all changed so much throughout the last 3 years of writing and recording these songs there could probably be a million different points of view and parameters that would represent where this album comes from (which I think perhaps has evolved into a deep theme of the album itself), but I thought I'd dive straight into this particular conversation as it's not often that I get to converse with a bunch of folks that homogeneously have the 'loving BoC' parameter checked 'yes'. If I was on a forum for Oneohtrix Point Never I might have said similar things in my previous post about him instead of BoC--In many ways I believe he and BoC share many a philosophical perspective, and even the polar differences in their points of view seem to be in a similar enough universe to be able to enter into wonderful conversation with one another--but I couldn't help but go straight for BoC knowing statistically it'd have to strike a nerve (neuron?).

So, long story short--please forgive me for pigeonholing myself/my friends/our album! oops! I do tend to hope and believe that our album covers a much separate musical/conceptual ground than BoC, especially since my last album was even more forwardly derivative of them in a few parameters... Now where were we? Oh yeah, OPN - R+7, greatest record of the decade, right??

Anyway--maybe I should keep my mouth shut until I'm spoken to! hehe. I bust my friends' balls for writing artist's statements that shift our attentions away from the 'thing' itself, but then I go off and hypocritically do the same thing!! Oh well! I trust y'all to be insightful enough to organically generate your own perspectives, regardless of how much concepticide I've sprayed thus far

[Aerial Boundaries]

...since we've all changed so much throughout the last 3 years of writing and recording these songs there could probably be a million different points of view and parameters that would represent where this album comes from (which I think perhaps has evolved into a deep theme of the album itself)

...

Anyway--maybe I should keep my mouth shut until I'm spoken to! hehe. I bust my friends' balls for writing artist's statements that shift our attentions away from the 'thing' itself, but then I go off and hypocritically do the same thing!! Oh well! I trust y'all to be insightful enough to organically generate your own perspectives, regardless of how much concepticide I've sprayed thus far

I do get the sense that the focus changed a lot during the whole process, it's hard to predict on first listen what the next track is going to sound like. Sometimes you get this strong feeling from the first track (like I did with this one because track 1 makes such an impression) that having heard it you know straight away what the rest is going to sound like but that is definitely not the case here. Lots of changes in mood and tempo, but above all in form. You can hear lots of different angles production wise, various instruments and modulations that stops your ears tiring out after a while.

It sounds fresh the whole way through and that is important because it appeals to perhaps the more petty side of being a human and listening to an album, that if something is too narrowed down to a set of tools and ideas it can sound really boring unless you've also found that perfect sweet spot. That is why despite the extreme sonic consistency of a lot of BOC's work especially post-MHTRTC, you don't tire of it because they have it all down to a T. Most bands don't seem to get to that point but you have a good shot I think, from what I've heard. So my point is that until you've gotten to that place, it is great that you have experimented so much with this. The album sounds quite young and like it has a lot of drive and fire.

None of that is meant in any overly critical sense, I think it is a cracking album for that exact reason.

Oh and about you talking about the album, I don't think that is a bad thing. By and the large the listeners on Twoism are pretty independent and open-minded, so I doubt most of us will let what you say get in the way of our own interpretation.

EDIT: Listening to Res(e)t atm, that really loose percussion is cool. Reminds me of Peacock Tail.