If It's Too Loud...

Another slowish week allows us to look at some lesser-known stuff. Elbow - The Take Off and Landing of Everything : If you remember the British indie invasion of the early aughts, you might remember Elbow doing some interesting indie acoustic stuff that flew under the radar while Travis and Doves and Starsailor hit it somewhat big. Their first album really spoke to me on the sort of level that forced me into importing a bunch of stuff from a tiny record shop in England to get the b-sides, but the albums became more progressively rocking and less of a folksy thing. I feel like, on first listen, the new Elbow album comes the closest to restoring the classic sound that got me into them to start. The darkness is still there, mind you, but in terms of songs, there's a lot of memorable stuff for what's a quiet, unassuming, stealthy record. Definitely worth a listen. Divergent Soundtrack : Movies based off of young adult books have done a decent job over the last few years of...

Yes, Hong Hong Kong Kong is a terrible band name. That's kind of the point. It was chosen to annoy radio djs that had to announce it, if radio djs are even a thing anymore. While writing songs for the upcoming Submarines album, John Dragonetti wrote some that didn't quite fit into the Submarines' sound. As much as I like The Submarines, I was always a bigger fan of his 90s Boston based band Jack Drag, so I was expecting something more along those lines. Hong Hong Kong Kong are closer to Jack Drag than the Submarines are, but it's still got some of the Submarines' dreamy pop sound to it. Dragonetti has described the band as "alien love-pop," and that only makes sense once you listen to their first song, "Heidi's Love Stomp." You can listen to "Heidi's Love Stomp over at Indie Shuffle . Hong Hong Kong Kong's debut EP comes out March 11. For more information, "like" the band's Facebook page .