At this time, I thought I would share some of the more popular things about the site over the past year in a nice little “in a nutshell” post.

Most Popular Concert Videos:
1st // Casiokids Live at Roskilde in 2008 (12,772 views)

2nd // New Song from The National (11,458 views)
3rd // MGMT performing “Weekend Wars” Live at Roskilde 2008 (7,719 views)

A bit surprising when I went to check the stats on my flickr page, but the most viewed concert photos by far were some terribly grainy shots I took at a Tegan and Sara show almost two years ago. Most likely due to getting picked up by some fan forum, it’s nevertheless still sad to see some of my better photo sets be dwarfed in comparison. Oh well!

Most popular Concert Photos:
1st // Tegan & Sara Live in Copenhagen (1,267 views)

2nd // Wavves Live in Munich (206 views)

3rd // Neko Case Live in Munich (64 views)

Most Popular Posts:
1st // PT Music’s Top 41 Albums of 2009 (1,526 page views)

2nd // Keyboard Sample Pad (1,322 page views)

3rd // Guest List: Burgers’s Top 30 Songs of 2009 (862 page views)

The next section I have no solid numbers on, but based on page views of track reviews as well as the number of referenced sites, I think I can gauge roughly which mp3s had the most downloads:

Most Popular mp3 Download:
1st // Moonface: Dreamland EP

2nd // Rainbow Bridge: Big Wave Rider

3rd // PT Music’s Laid & Paid Weekend Mix

Well that does it for the concise recap of the past year or so. Here’s to a musically prosperous 2010!!

You know the expression “never judge a book by its cover,” well it seems applicable with vinyl records as well. Although the front of Big Wave Rider b|w Birdcage looks like someone threw up a bag of skittles on top of a magazine collage, the music from Olympia-based duo Rainbow Bridge has been one of my favorite finds of the year. I first came across them when the infamous Pitchfork forkcasted (sounds dirty, I know) their single “Big Wave Rider”. In a summer chalk full of lo-fi electronic outfits like Neon Indian and Washed Out, it was refreshing to hear some dirty White Stripes-esque garage rock burst onto the scene.

The A-side of the 7” features their insta-hit “Big Wave Rider”. Not particularly concerned with maintaining a steady tempo, guitarist Adam Croce intros with a series of arpeggios before entering into a lazy strum repeated throughout the song. Somehow drummer Bridget O’Brien-Smith is able to keep the wheels from falling off completely, bringing the song back from the edge of implosion and driving it forward. The lyrics, with the repeated “big wave rider / try to ride a little higher / you’re a glider / sole survivor”, certainly adds to the carefree feeling of the track.

The B-side is composed of a duo of sub two-minute songs. The first, entitled “Birdcage”, sounds like it could easily pass as an early Man Man with it’s bouncy rhythm and oddball percussion. “Sensitive as a Dream” is a drugged out psychedelic nursery rhyme that, with its dark undertones, is sure to give children more nightmares than pleasant sleep.

If the displayed hand-written count of 476/500 is to be believed, there aren’t too many copies left to grab. If you aren’t down with sifting through your local record store to see if you can find a consigned copy, you can order directly from their label True Panther. Also, I recommend seeing them live — I caught them opening recently for Real Estate and they almost outshone the headliners (quite a feat, I know)! Here’s an mp3 of “Big Wave Rider” to try to win you over:

Rainbow Bridge // Big Wave Rider

There was a sweet show yesterday featuring recently crowned Best New Music inductee Real Estate alongside future Underwater Peoples labelmates Pill Wonder with Northwest homegrowns Rainbow Bridge sandwiched between. Holocene, the very slick venue where the bands were playing, also had a DJ spinning some 80s-tastic tracks in between sets with acid washed stock video footage playing on a huge projector screen — mixing nicely with the “chillwave” vibe of the acts.

I was excited to check out openers Pill Wonder just because I noticed they had a 12” in the queue and was hoping that they played some of their new material (a man can only gauge so much from four tracks on their myspace). I wasn’t disappointed as the seven piece (!) band exceeded their 30 minute time slot churning out their patented psychedelic tinged garage rock for a crowd of about forty. They ended strong with a solid funkadelic/r&b number with bassist Hans doing his best James Brown impression. All-in-all, it was a lively set.

Next in line was the male/female guitar/drums duo Rainbow Bridge. With a set of trolls on stage and the drummer donning a fake beard, I was halfway expecting a quirky kitsch act. Much to my surprise, they played some kick ass garage rock tunes which made me think about how Jack & Meg White probably started out playing to similar crowds in Detroit in the late 90s. Undeniably the crowd pleasure for the group (and arguably the whole night) was their hit track “Big Wave Rider“. With simply sung lyrics “big wave rider / try and ride a little higher / you’re a glider / smile wider” over sparse instrumentation, it didn’t take long for the audience to join in and sing out the chorus.

By the time Real Estate took the stage at 11pm, the crowd had swelled to around eighty or so folks, mostly clad in skinny jeans and eighties regalia of some sorts. In response to the size, the band said this was one of the best crowds on the tour — something that I am sure Porlanders hear quite frequently. Any questions about whether this band was overhyped or undeserving of a constant stream of buzz since their SXSW showing were put to rest when they opened up with the infectious guitar line on “Beach Comber”. Now most reviews I’ve seen of Real Estate tend to follow a madlib like recipe: “Their [adj. / wobbly] guitars invokes a sense of [childhood story of the beach] — with the repetitious [instrument] enforcing that feeling”, however, when you see them live you get a sense on how much more this group is than some band riding the “chillwave” fad of ‘09.

Through the glimmering tautophony lies these bluesy syncopated guitar solos that Matthew Mondanile (aka Ducktails) and Martin Courtney shine on — not to mention the commanding power bassist Alex Bleeker has on his instrument (something that will surely translate over to his “solo” work with The Freaks). As time elapsed, you couldn’t help but be swept away by their performance and get lost in their sound. This partly affected my determining of the setlist, as I tended to loose interest in knowing the exact song they were playing and got caught up more with the feeling they were invoking through their tunes:

1 // Beach Comber
2 // Pool Swimmers
3 // (?)
4 // Fake Blues
5 // Suburban Beverage
6 // Black Lake
7 // (?)
8 // (?)
9 // Atlantic City
10 // Fake Blues

I think it goes without saying that if you get a chance to see this band play in an intimate venue, do it because these guys are just going to get more of a following as time goes by. Here is a video of them playing “Fake Blues” at SXSW this past year along with some songs of theirs:

Real Estate // Beach Comber

Real Estate // Fake Blues