LA BIG VIC – “FAO Schwartz” Live at Cameo Gallery from Elise Oh on Vimeo.

This post is the first in a series of Tuesday Tracks to highlight bands featuring NYU students or alumni. Email jennpelly@gmail.com with NYU bands that don’t suck, please.

Brooklyn’s LA BIG VIC is the project of Peter Pearson, Toshio Masuda, and Emilie Friedlander, a current NYU grad student in the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute’s Cultural Criticism and Reporting program. Their single “HEYO (Silver Morning”) tore up the blogosphere earlier this year, and comes off their debut cassette from Whip Cassettes. Download it below. Read more…

This semester, the Fales Collection’s much-much-blogged-about Riot Grrrl Collection will finally be available for students, faculty and scholars. The collection, available around November, archives papers (read: zines), audio materials and other awesome punk memorabilia from esteemed riot grrrls like scene-leader Kathleen Hanna (of Bikini Kill and Le Tigre), Johanna Fateman (Le Tigre), Molly Neuman (Bratmobile), Becca Albee (Excuse 17), Tammy Rae Carland (founder of lesbian record label Mr. Lady Records in 1996) and more.

Check out photos from the collection (including Kathleen’s totally radical stickered-up filing cabinet, which was once used to hold up a van seat during a Bikini Kill tour!) and a conversation with senior archivist Lisa Darms, responsible for the collection, below. Read more…

Monster Island

Navigating the city’s various musical haunts might seem daunting, but you’ll be golden once you weed out the venues that suck. If you’re into innovative brands of indie rock/pop, experimental, electronic, punk, minimalist or anything else that can reasonably be rendered alternative, focus on Brooklyn’s circuit of all-ages DIY show spaces (read: basements, lofts, living rooms, warehouses, nontraditional, etc.) with these three easy steps. Read more…

Dream Diary – Something Tells Her from Future Sweden on Vimeo.

Dream Diary’s aesthetic is packed with even more beautiful nostalgia than the concept of a Book of Dreams itself. The Brooklyn four-piece plays pure, unadulterated indie pop that sounds transported from 80s and 90s UK territory — think 80s Glasgow indie as upbeat as The Pastels and jangly as Creation Records-era Primal Scream, finished off with stronger pop sensibilities a la Phil Spector, 60s doo-wop, or 90s Swedish pop like The Cardigans.

Packed with an innocence that makes their MySpace headline (“We’ll play your prom”) all the more appropriate, “Something Tells Her” sees guitarist Madison Farmer (Steinhardt ‘07) applying harmonies and a shiny, danceable lead riff over singer/guitarist Jacob Sloan’s melodic, Morrissean vocals. Recent fans of The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, take note — Dream Diary is your new favorite band.

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While studying media at NYU, recent grad Alex Craig (Steinhardt ’10) hosted “Secret Decoder Ring” on WNYU. Chances are slim that the average music-listener could identify a single artist Craig played on the two-hour block of hyper-underground noise-pop and indie rock from the 80s and 90s: upbeat jangle from 80s cassette enthusiasts Cleaners from Venus, dream pop/shoegaze from The Rosemarys, Scottish indie-poppers Close Lobsters, and other obscure, fuzzed out 90s rock.

Craig’s education in under-the-radar sounds has served him well post-NYU. His Ridgewood, NJ-based band Big Troubles—the project of Craig and high school friend Ian Drennan—has received massive blogosphere support since breaking out last July, and wholly embodies the dreamy-but-dissonant sounds of “Secret Decoder Ring,” with additional doses of reverb and a blown-out drum machine for good measure. In 2010, Big Troubles have played a steady stream of well-attended shows at New York DIY spaces like the Silent Barn, Market Hotel and Monster Island Basement.

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