The Album You Might Not Have Heard of This Year

By now you've probably seen tons of "Best Albums of 2011" lists, but most of them are pretty similar. I know I've seen Bon Iver - Bon Iver, Helplessness Blues - Fleet Foxes, Metals - Feist, and Undun - The Roots on just about every one. I can't argue with those. But, thanks to Spotify, I did come across a new artist, Radical Face, that seems to be under the radar. Their second album, The Family Tree: The Roots came out this year, but no one seems to be talking about it. Probably, because they're not really accessible through the usual veins; its "related artist" feed on Spotify is woefully small. For whatever reason, they haven't been talked about, and I just wanted to help rectify that.

This album is supposedly the first of a trilogy of albums under The Family Tree title.

I posted a loooong time ago about a movie I really like, which few people had heard of, A Vicious Kind. The climax of the movie is reinforced by a powerful track, "Welcome Home, Son" from Radical Face's first album. This made for a really poignant impact. I looked up the band from the movie's soundtrack on Spotify and the rest is history.



One reason few people probably know about the band is because their "hits" kind of all sound the same. But with a sound so distinct, I think that's bound to happen at first. They've been related to Sufjan Stevens and Bright Eyes on Spotify, but if I had to describe them I'd call them a hybrid between Bright Eyes and Circa Survive. Like if Bright Eyes only sung about really creepy things and sounded really ghostly most of the time. Maybe that impression comes from listening to their first album which is supposedly a a concept album about a haunted house or something. Either way their sound imparts that haunted quality quite easily. So check them out! Tell your friends!