Artist of the Day: The Dodos

The first rule of releasing an album is to expect it to leak, and the rule looks as solid as ever when Carrier (scheduled for an August, 27 release) began trickling into the collective consciousness as early as a month ago. I'm not going to go into too much detail about how it sounds, as it would be more than a little unfair on the band and record label, but what I will tell you is I've just pre-ordered the LP with ever-expensive international shipping because, fuck man, it's brilliant.

The Dodos came into existence in 2005 when Meric Long met Logan Kroeber after a brief stint of gigging as a one-man singer-songwriter. As a two man band, the duo found their success creating chirpy acoustic + percussion folk which always seemed a little rough around the edges and better for it. To bolster out their sound they employed a small flurry of musicians to help out while on tour, and this finally culminated in a more long-term addition with Chris Reimer. Carrier commemorates Chris, whose unexpected death a year after joining took the band back to the two-man team they started off with eight years ago. Carrier is therefore a much bleaker experience than we've come to expect from The Dodos, and the raw, electronic-less direction they're taking is clearly visible on the great (but not anywhere close to best on the album) single "Confidence," which you can stream below.

Or at least you would if Soundcloud was embedding properly. For now, here's the link.