Silk City Diner Bar & Lounge

Come join us for Silk City Streaming #5!

This week, we’re featuring a new EP by Surfer Blood and a debut LP by Class Actress.

Enjoy!

Surfer Blood Tarot Classics, streaming courtesy of pastemagazine.com

“West Palm Beach, Fla. based indie-rock quartet Surfer Blood are releasing a four track EP in following up their 2010 debut album Astro Coast. The EP, titled Tarot Classics starts off with the beach-pop “I’m Not Ready” which is follows the sound they crafted on their debut. The rest of the songs, however, are a slight departure from that debut full length.

The songs push their breezy aesthetic towards new heights when they add horns and step on the distortion pedal (though not too heavy) giving the foursome new room to grow. Tarot Classics closes with the ambitious “Drinking Problem” where the band implements a heavy dose of synths and drum machine beats.”
- Dave Monick/pastemagazine.com

Class Actress Rapprocher, streaming courtesy of spin.com

“The musical past of Elizabeth Harper, the frontwoman for Brooklyn electronic pop outfitClass Actress, is fairly well-documented– it’s something even the band doesn’t attempt to hide. And yet, with the arrival of Class Actress’s debut full-length, Rapprocher, that past seems worth pointing out again, if only to illustrate the drastic turn her career’s taken over the past eight or so years. In 2004, years before Class Actress came into existence, Harper released a self-titled solo album of singer/songwriter-y material with no spangly synths. Even if what she was doing then wasn’t terribly compelling, you get the impression she valued substance over style. Skip to five years later when Harper linked up with producer Mark Richardson (no relation to Pitchfork’s editor-in-chief) and engineer/multi-instrumentalist Scott Rosenthal for Class Actress’ debut EP, Journal of Ardency, and you can almost hear her sonically relocating from open-mic night culture to cool, cosmopolitan glam– in other words, from one part of Manhattan to, well, another part of Manhattan.” - Larry Fitzmaurice/pitchfork.com

Hello all,
Join us in the diner today at 5pm for the 3rd installment of Silk City Streaming.

This week’s featured albums:

Real Estate Days
Real Estate doesn’t take long to set a tone of wistful, rose-colored nostalgia on Days, its second album of reverb-y beach-pop. From the very first words out of singer-guitarist Martin Courtney’s mouth — “Back when we had it so easy / I would surrender completely” — it’s clear that Courtney looks to wallow in the past as a means of escaping the burden of now. - read more at NPR

M83 Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming
Check out an exclusive interview with M83′s Anthony Gonzalez at Urban Outfitters.

Happy Hour drinks from 5 – 7pm! Enjoy!

Welcome to our 2nd week of Tuesday Streaming at Silk City.
Tonight, we’ll be featuring two albums that in a one way or another, have been heard before.

First, we’ll stream Radiohead’s TKOL RMX 1234567. Throughout the summer, the band released remixes of their last full length The King of Limbs, featuring artists such as Caribou, Four Tet, Jamie xx and more. On October 11th, these remixes will be released as a full album and in the meantime, you can stream them for free. Google it – the link is all over the place. It’s Radiohead.

Second, we’ll be streaming the remastered reissue of  Superchunk’s 1994 album Foolish.

“In certain key ways, Superchunk‘s Foolish perfectly sums up what made so much early-1990s indie rock so great. It was rambunctious enough for kids who craved the caffeinated buzz of punk rock at its catchiest. It was also tender enough for kids who loved hearing their own human-sized romantic foibles reflected in indie’s everyperson approach to the love song.Foolish can be plenty fast and plenty noisy, but it skips the meathead aggression that’s a nasty side effect of so much fast and noisy music. It’s unafraid of getting down to personal angst, but smart enough not to get all gross and mawkish about it. It was made by a group who could have walked off stage and gone to their day jobs without having to change out of their Rock Band costumes. These are the kind of songs about bad breakups, worse parties, and lonely walks home that you and three of your friends might have written.” …read more at pitchfork.com

We miss the days of awaiting a new album release and actually going to the local record store to purchase the cd in its sturdy cardboard package. And we miss searching the store for the RIYL albums mentioned in our fav “alternative” music magazine, hoping we’d love them since cds were NOT cheap and there was nothing worse than being let down by someone’s recommendation. But as much as we can reminisce, we’re also super excited at how much new music is widely available these days. It’s hard to keep up with every release coming out, but we’re here to help you try.

Every Tuesday we’ll choose a new release (or two) to stream in the diner during our happy hour from 5-7pm. Absorb the new sounds while enjoying a tasty (and cheap!) beverage. Our dinner menu also starts at 5, and Chef Dave’s specials are nothing but delicious!

Tonight commences our first Tuesday Streaming
with Twin Sister‘s debut LP In Heaven.

Starts at 6pm. Enjoy!

“…with melodies as strong as these, invention is hardly a concern. From the quiet, vibraphone-soaked opener “Daniel” to “Eastern Green,” the itchy, harmony-driven finale, every track seems to be constructed, first and foremost, around simple, striking vocal hooks—mostly sung by Estella, who oddly never sounds like the same person track-to-track. On “Daniel,” her cuddly, modest alto barely rises above a whisper, as if she recorded her parts at 3 a.m. on the band tour bus. On the mesmerizing “Gene Ciampi,” which sounds the opening theme to a psychedelic children’s Western, she explores a throatier texture: “If you like Gene Ciampi / You will love his movies,” goes the addicting, stupid chorus—but wrapped around that see-sawing, harmonica-doubled melody, it sounds like pure poetry.” – www.pastemagazine.com