Here’s the second entry in my autumn-inspired series of tunes that are worth turning up while fall still hangs around. (A reliable source tweeted today that the trees are still pretty green in NYC, so I don’t feel quite so behind from my West Coast vantage point.)

Dropped by Warner Bros. Records after releasing just one album on Sire (2009’s Here, Here and Here), Meg & Dia have returned to their not-so-long-ago DIY days of distributing their own music.

It’s Always Stormy In Tillamook is the new EP from the Draper, Utah band, which was first birthed as a duo by sisters Meg and Dia Frampton. These new songs were recorded at the start of the summer in a secluded cabin in Tillmook, Oregon, a town most famous for the cheddar cheese it’s churned out for over six decades. 

Really, I don’t know much about Meg & Dia’s previous records, but I do know that Dia’s girlish voice has an older sister in Nina Persson of The Cardigans. And also that the third track on It’s Always Stormy In Tillamook, “Less Of Me,” has a dramatic ebb and flow that measures up to the best of Britpop (particularly on the verses, and then on the guitar solo midway through). Maybe the musical references hearken back even earlier, because I also can’t help but want to draw a connection to Echo & The Bunnymen’s “The Killing Moon.” Maybe the two tunes share reverb and nothing more.

Anyway, the loudly crashing romanticism of “Less Of Me” is music to my ears right about now because who doesn’t desire “Less of me, and more of us” as chillier weather comes calling? Hear here:



Purchase Meg & Dia – “Less Of Me’ via iTunes, Amazon MP3.