It was only a few years ago that Myspace seemed too good to be true: After years of having to sift and winnow through online clutter to discover new music, it offered one, standardized place for bands to stream their work, making it easier than ever to stay on top of new music. Of course, the site was riddled with viruses, pop-ups and errors that eventually rendered it practically unusable, and now there's a much better alternative that makes Myspace look downright primitive: Bandcamp. It's the gold standard of music sharing sites, and particularly in the last couple months, local bands have been putting it to good use, releasing so much great, free music that it's been difficult to keep up with it all. It's worth the effort to try, though. Set aside a couple hours sometime this week and catch up with these releases:
Babes - Sides: I know almost nothing about the Milwaukee group Babes, which in April posted to Bandcamp Sides, an endlessly re-playable full-length of feverish, lo-fi sketches. There are shades of Perfume Genius's traumatized pop and The Notwist's glitch-pop trances here, but there's much more mischievousness than either of those acts bring with them into the studio.
Canopies - Canopies: I've been enjoying this perfectly realized EP of Toro Y Moi-style synth-pop a whole lot more than the actual new Toro Y Moi album. These guys have a timely, in-vogue sound, and they're doing it as well as just about anyone right now. (The A.V. Club's Matt Wild has a spot-on review of the record here.)
Old Earth - misc.: Milwaukee native Todd Umhoefer this month posted a host of his experimental folk recordings as Old Earth to Bandcamp, including his remarkable short albums Out the spheres of The Sorrowful Mysteries and *uncollected voices on The orchard moan, both recorded with members of Conrad Plymouth, as well as some of the new songs he's recorded since relocating to San Francisco (including the haunting EP 3 Names 2 Strains). Like Phil Elverum's oeuvre, Umhoefer's work is all very much of a piece, building on and playing off of repeated motifs, so it's a joy being able to hear so much of it in one place.
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I Love Annette - Local Live 7.5.11: Missed the performance from these local dreamy art-pop upstarts on WMSE's Local Live performance earlier this week? No sweat: They've got it archived on Bandcamp.
And the above releases are on top of last month's outstanding EP from Gold Coins and the debut from Stock Options.
Elsewhere around the net:
* Erin Wolf catches up with Into Arcadia in advance of their headlining gig at Summerfest tomorrow night.
* Rapper Karl ¡OYE! Iglesias has shared an awesome dubstep remix of his song "Grey Clouds" that more than transcends the gimmickiness of dubstep remixes.
* And the hip-hop duo AUTOMatic have released a hyper-smooth new single.
