New Music: Misun

This past weekend DJ JD (that's me!) participated in a Year's End Listening Party, hanging with some of my favorite music addicts as we try to cram a year's worth of sharing and listening into about five hours.  

Just thinking about it makes me both excited and anxious.   When your turn comes up, you have just three cuts.  You hope to make a connection, but irregardless if you succeed, it is all a blur.  

It makes me pine for those long evenings back in college when the gang would spend an evening digesting an entire album together, decoding its meaning and talking about its significance.  Wasted youth is wasted on the young. (That is not a typo.)

So much didn't get played - (Barsk didn't even play Mogwai!) - that I am reminded why I decided to start this blog: to share music that I dig. 

So, here was a late 2013 discovery for me that I am excited about, a band called Misun (pronounced Me-Sun) from Washington D.C.

The band termed their sound Aquawave but I happen to think it fits just fine under the banner of well crafted Pop music. Considering they are a DC band, perhaps it would be most fitting if they had "Go-Go" in their genre tag.  

Regardless of how you would describe them, I had these three cuts lined up in my iPod for the Listening Party and they never got airtime.  So here they are for your listening pleasure, dig in. 

Battlefields


Battlefields sounds like it could open a Quentin Tarantino movie.  A surf retro shuffle with tough soul. 

Nothing Else


Nothing Else was actually the first track I heard from Misun thanks to Pigeons & Planes, a site with a ton of daily content.  Most of what I hear there doesn't stick with me but this shimmering kiss off song obviously sent me on a hunt for more.  

Sharpshooter


Sharpshooter give us a just a tinge of dubby reverb and a bleary vocal delivery with just the right dosage of The Ache.  Oh yes.  

With these three tracks as a representative sample, it seems evident that Misun are still building their sound and that is exciting. From what they have come up with so far, it is clear that the field is wide open. 

They have released a great deal of singles digitally for free on Soundcloud so far, but nothing in any physical format.   That is about to change with their first 7" single (preview below) now taking pre-orders and shipping February 18th.  



Will I be purchasing?  You betcha!