Rock ‘n’ Roll Photog: Gold Motel, Travie McCoy, The Young Veins

This week, Jennifer takes a break from shutterbuggin’ to give a run-down of some of the music she’s digging on currently.

Summer House, the first LP from Gold Motel, incorporates songs from their self-titled EP, which was released earlier this year. Perfect in My Mind and Don’t Send the Searchlights have been in heavy rotation on my iPod since then, and having now heard the new songs, I expect We’re On the Run will be joining them in the future. Led by Greta Morgan (formerly known as Greta Salpeter, when she was with The Hush Sound) Gold Motel specializes in bouncy pop fun, though if you listen closely some of the lyrics have a bit of a melancholy edge. Still, this record is like summer camp for your ears, including both daring sun-drenched adventures and doomed summer romances.

Tour Status: Their tour with Skybox is currently winding down, but they will be playing two festivals in Chicago in July: The Great Illinois Performers Festival (July 10) and the Local Music Revolution Festival (July 11).

Travie McCoy, Lazarus

Travie McCoy is the front man for Gym Class Heroes, and in the video above, he’s the one driving the car. This is his first solo effort, and is the record he made after a particularly rough year. Some of the songs are joyful and fun (Billionaire, We’ll Be Alright), and some of them are frankly kind of wrenching and hard to listen to (Don’t Pretend); so far my personal favorites are Need You and Superbad (11:34). I’m also developing a growing affection for Akidagain which includes references to G.I. Joe, the Wu-Tang Clan, and Groundhog Day. Overall I think I like it because it really does reflect the internal chaos of pulling yourself together after your life has been upended: some days are good, some days are bad, some days you just would like your most complex decision to be about what kind of ice cream you want for dinner.

Tour Status: Starting in July, he’ll be hitting the road with Rihanna and Ke$ha as part of the Last Girl on Earth tour.

When I went to their New York shows in April , they only had two songs out. They released several more through the late spring, and then the full record finally dropped earlier this month. (It’s currently streaming on their MySpace as well.) It is just under 30 minutes of 1960s-inflected beach rock-flavored tales of love and other misadventures. It’s actually kind of difficult for me to narrow down only one or two favorites, but new tracks I’m particularly fond of include Maybe I Will, Maybe I Won’t, Heart of Mine, and the iTunes bonus track, a cover of the Everly Brother’s Nothing Matters But You, which Ryan Ross and Z Berg (The Like) sing as a duet.

Tour status: Currently wending their way across North America with Black Gold and Rooney.