Monday, November 29, 2010

Tan Dollar's "Unofficial" First LP [WRONG!]

Hello, hope you all had a nice holiday. I'm back at work, finally, and back to blogging, too.


As you can see, the blog has a new banner. And after the debacle of last Monday, when I had negative comments for a new album that were immediately picked up by a member of the band and some of its appreciators, I thought this would be a good time to define this blog's purpose, for my own sake as well as for any readers who might be interested.


So what is 8-Tracks Fierce?


The weird name comes from the podcast that I started doing a year-and-a-half ago and quit after five episodes, which you can play in the sidebar player. I would talk about eight recent tracks that I found at least mildly interesting, and the "fierce" part was just sort of added on for kicks.


I started this blog a couple of months ago and plan to reboot the podcast in January (1/11/11, to be exact). The blog was a little all over the place at first, but I quickly started focusing on noise pop and shoegaze. Last week I realized that there is a certain type of shoegaze (I call it "flower-gaze") that I will never appreciate, so it doesn't make sense for me to write about it here.


So from this point forward, this is simply a blog about new noise pop. If a shoegaze album can fit into the noise-pop category, I'll talk about it, but if it's a style that doesn't fit that description, you won't see it here because I would have little good to say about it. By the same token, if a noise-pop album or single comes out and I think it's crap, I will write about it because it's noise pop.


So now that we have that out of the way, let's talk about the new Tan Dollar album, which came out of nowhere just this morning.



Change Your Mind - Download here

  • Tan Dollar - Change Your Mind (Beko) [Blogspot]
    • A sing-songy album from this three-piece from Irvine, CA, with eight tracks that seem to be all about lost summer love. Features a new drummer.
    • Fun, cheap keyboards in the left speaker, jangly guitar in the right on most tracks.
    • Vocals often out-of-tune, but in that noise-pop way that can sound so right when done well, as it does here.
    • Short, no-nonsense, straightforward pop tunes. '60s-inspired bubble gum in the best way.
    • Exactly what So-Cal noise pop should be. Absolutely perfect. And completely free. Beko delivers again, and so does Tan Dollar. 
    • Beko considers it their second LP (the first was the latest Procedure Club album, shared here previously). Could this be considered Tan Dollar's first full-length album? No, but it's a fantastic signifier of what their first album could be like. [Edit: Mr. Sam Farzin left a comment pointing out that Tan Dollar's first album came out last January! It has 13 tracks and is entitled Your Body As a Temple. It was released on the Life's Blood and Mirror Universe labels. Thanks, Sam! I sure feel silly. I'll have to check that out!]
    • Download here.

The B-side opener is a mind-blowing psych-out tune complete with xylophone.

Tan Dollar - "How Can It Be True?" (Change Your Mind; 11/29/2010)

2 comments:

  1. this isn't the first tan dollar album at all! their "first LP" would probably be "your body as a temple" available here---> http://lifesblood.org

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  2. Oh man, I feel ridiculous! I totally missed that one. Thanks for pointing that out, Sam!

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