Artist Spotlight: Craft Spells

Only three months into 2012, and already it is shaping up to be a pretty eventful year for Brookyln-based independent label Captured Tracks. Jack Tatum and Wild Nothing are getting ready to drop their sophomore full length, Beach Fossils is working on new material, and just yesterday, Craft Spells announced the release of a six track EP, entitled Gallery, due out May 15th. Like Jack Tatum of Wild Nothing and Dustin Payseur of Beach Fossils, Justin Vallesteros started Craft Spells within the confines of his bedroom. Vallesteros moved from California to Seattle following an overwhelmingly positive reaction to his first track, "Party Talk". In his bedroom in Seattle, with equipment borrowed from friends, Vallesteros recorded Craft Spells' debut album Idle Labor, released by Captured Tracks in March of 2011. Idle Labor was one of the strongest debuts of any act of last year, being a nearly flawless hazy barrage of catchy guitar melodies, beats, and fun, nostalgic songwriting. And now after a considerable amount of touring with his band that he formed to promote Idle Labor, Craft Spells have just released their first single following the debut, "Still Left With Me". The single features a much darker tone than the poppy whimsicality of songs such as "Scandinavian Crush" and "After the Moment", but still features a similar production to Idle Labor, despite the transition from bedroom to studio. But the change shown on the track is indeed promising, and makes Gallery easily one of my most anticipated releases of this year. "Still Left With Me" can be streamed from Captured Track's Soundcloud below:

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Album Review: Craft Spells - Idle Labor

A friend of mine was recently explaining to me his theory on how music chronologically repeats itself in twenty year cycles. For example, in the 90's, we began to see a return to 70's punk influences in the form of grunge. With the beginning of a new decade, we are starting to see a reoccurrence of artists influenced by dream pop music of the late 80's. Just last year, we saw the twentieth anniversaries of The Cure's masterpiece Disintegration, as well as Cocteau Twin's Heaven or Las Vegas. Influences from both of these groups, along with many others from that era, are very evident throughout Craft Spell's debut album, Idle Labor. Like many bands signed to Brooklyn's Captured Tracks label, Craft Spells replicates a nostalgic and hazy rendition of 80's pop music (often slapped with one of the most horrid genre tags in recent memory, "chillwave"), while still managing to keep the music sounding somewhat fresh and authentic. Idle Labor is a well crafted pop album, that avoids beating the long dead horse of an overused, present-day dreamy brand of shoegaze.