« Art Brut | Main | controller.controller »
Oppenheimer
This Oppenheimer's Manhattan Project is the tooth-achingly sweet and blindingly catchy "Breakfast in New York." And yeah, I admit, I did hear about the band on an mp3 blog, where the title track caught my ear.
Comparisons to Joy Zipper and The Postal Service, as well as Australia's The Disassociatives and (Bar/None labelmates) Architecture in Helsinki are sure to abound for the Belfast-based pals and bedroom popsters Rocky O. and Shaun O., who make up Oppenheimer. But I'm going to take those comparisons one step further and hit up my two other favorite points of reference when synths and vocoders engaged are in an excessively sweet pop confection -- ELO and Giorgio Moroder. And adding even more retro-panache, there's what I think are not coincidental echoes of Supertramp in "Breakfast in New York," as well as both Petula Clark and Elton John in "Saturday Looks Bad For Me." But lest that turn you off, I'm also here to remind you that there's hand claps and an egg shaker and some of the darn catchiest choruses I've heard in ages, too.
It's brilliantly warm and fuzzy stuff, and I guess it won't shock you when I confess that I really can't resist bedroom pop that's adorably twee and glitchy with synths at the same time. And Oppeneheimer met all criteria more than admirably.
Our friends in the UK, Scotland, and Ireland have gobs of chances to catch the boys play live -- but currently, Oppenheimer is playing only two dates in the US this March -- at SXSW and the Bang Fest in Bangor, Maine. Here's hoping they'll get more live dates booked -- from the articles that I've read, Oppeneheimer promises to be even more grand in person.
Oppenheimer - Saturday Looks Bad For Me
Oppenheimer - Breakfast in New York
Oppenheimer - Nine Words
There's not much yet at Oppenheimer's webpage, but there's lots of info at their MySpace page. Their self-titled debut album is due out June 6, 2006, from Bar/None Records.
Posted by Little Miss Rock'n'Roll at 02.02.06 at 12:30 AM
Comments
not that this takes anything away from their music, but the reason you heard of this band from an MP3 blog is because the label spammed a bunch of us with an email about them. disappearing fast are those good ol' innocent days when music bloggers posted stuff they discovered organically and were just excited to share it. yeah, i guess you gotta hear about new stuff somehow and ultimately people don't care about where it originated from, but it's still a little sad to think that some MP3 blogs have been co-opted so easily and directly by the labels. but then, maybe i'm just a naive romantic...
Posted by: angryrobot at 02.01.06 at 11:35 PM
the first two links didn't work..
Posted by: kaitlyn at 02.02.06 at 7:54 PM
Fixed!
Posted by: Queen of the Front Row at 02.02.06 at 9:09 PM
Not Found
The requested URL /archives/2006/02/mp3s/Oppenheimer - Nine Words.mp3 was not found on this server.
Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.
:(
Posted by: Darren at 04.02.06 at 5:41 PM
Comments are now closed for this entry.
