So last night, I finally remembered that I should listen to this new Cults album. The New York duo of Madeline Follin and Brian Oblivion were pretty much the poster children in 2010 for blog buzz leading to, as Borat would say, “Great success!” with their 3 song EP appearing completely out of nowhere and sweeping the blogosphere, eventually leading to a record deal with Sony (yeah, one of those “major labels”). They’ve just recently finally released their self-titled debut album and since I enjoyed so many of the tunes that I’d already heard from the album, I couldn’t wait to listen to it in full. But, I kept forgetting to. Until last night. And it turns out that it’s pretty great. It’s got this total old school almost Motown vibe to it at times, but there was one track that stood out among the rest and that’s, you guessed it, “Bumper”. Almost definitely the most Motown sounding song on the album, there’s just a certain simple and understated soulfulness to this one, and I can’t get enough of the male and female vocals going back and forth. Such a great effect. I don’t know whether it was intentional or not, but releasing this album right at the cusp of spring turning into full blown summer (even though we didn’t have much of a spring this year) was pure genius. I can see this album soundtracking any sort of carefree summer activity I may partake in over the next few months.

Cults, aka Madeleine Follin and Brian Oblivion (is that his real last name?) may perhaps be the best example of the blogosphere making an artist in recent history. The band completely out of nowhere released a 3 song EP early last year and within a matter of days they were posted on every website in town and later that year were signed to Columbia records and even performed at Coachella just last week. As the May 30 release of their highly anticipated album In The Name Of draws ever closer, we’ve gotten a chance to hear another new track, “Abducted”. I think the reason I like Cults is because they’ve got this total old school sound. It’s not really Motown, but it’s some sort of relative of that time period. It was ever present in their debut “Go Outside”, the recently released “You Know What I Mean” and definitely in this latest tune. In this case, there’s a total old school intro with some serious lo-fi vocals, and then just when you’re comfortable with that, you get smacked in the face with sound. I haven’t actually been following the group TOO closely, but I think this is the first time we hear some male vocals too, is this true? Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, because I am wrong quite a bit. That’s what happens when you go off what you think you remember hearing instead of “doing research”. Anyway, I like this tune.

Cults – Abducted by cultscultscults