Moo–Dee. Moody. It’s in the raspy voice and all the sounds from the supporting instruments that follow suit. You heard it on the first full-length album from the Silversun Pickups, Carnavas, and this time around… It’s as if our hero has finished writing stories and songs and metaphors and manifestos about things he observes and now has summoned the courage to write them directly to the one he loves.
Silversun Pickups is the indie band that hails from Los Angeles, California. It’s the one that reminds you a lil bit of The Smashing Pumpkins in their sound, and maybe of Straylight Run in their makeup. Lead by both Nikki Monninger and Brian Auburt (who play bass and guitar, respectively)they might get some comparisons to the now-defunct but just-as-sincere Straylight. Rounded out by Joe Lester on keys and Christopher Guanlo on drums, the band also sought support from local strings players and wound up with a 16-piece orchestra to back them on tracks on their second full-length album, Swoon. The angry music and strong, haunting strings are best showcased, maybe, on track 2, “The Royal We.”
But our hero doesn’t need a private blog or journal. Let’s be perfectly clear. There’s no secrets this year. Her heart has been blown open. His too.
This is yet another short but sweet post. This cut today is the first single off of the upcoming release Primary Colours by The Horrors. It’s titled “Sea Within A Sea” and is just one great song. It goes eight minutes, but each time I listen, it seems like the first time I happen to look? It’s already halfway through the track. As of now, this is the best cut I’ve heard this year.
Okay, so I ran across this first track more on accident than anything else. It’s a freakishly simple casiotone sort of cut featuring what I’m guessing are the lyrics to “Technologic” by Daft Punk in reverse. The guy’s name is DJ Goldwwater (or Goldwater, the original blog I saw this on had both spellings). I’ve dug around for more info on this guy, but found absolutely zilch! So if you guys find something? Let me know.
Next up for this week is something I had nearly forgotten about in my vinyl collection. The Rapture burst onto the scene back in 2003 with their album Echoes, but the single for the track “House Of Jealous Lovers” was what caught my attention. Included on the wax was a remix by Morgan Geist of Metro Area, and here I give you said remix. Enjoy!
And if you have a sac, you’ll go out and buy stuff and support these guys. If you’re a chick, I guess that means you don’t have a sac. So I’ve really got nothing. I’ll just pretend I don’t want you or something. And trust me, that would hurt. Time to drink heavily, now.
I guess it’s true you never knew the passive power of the truth.
The Manchester Orchestra has recorded an epic album. An “I guess that’s the last in-store acoustic performance” album. A “28-month-long world tour” album, and a “too bad your favorite band is no longer a secret” tour. They are quite possibly the most talented musicians the music industry has ever seen. That’s a big statement, and I don’t make it carelessly.
Even Rainn Wilson knows they’re going to be as famous as any arena band you can think of. He twittered so (wull… kind of):
Mean Everything to Nothing is their second full-length album. We covered their recent EP here. This entire piece of work brings the layering of vocals, guitars, keyboarding and skins to epic heights. Andy Hull’s promise that this album would be aggressive has been delivered. That was my impression of some of these tracks as they were previewed right around this time last year on tour. As I listen, I am perplexed by what additional instruments I am hearing. This is an amazing congruence of sound. Actually, that is just the genius that is Chris Freeman on keyboards.
“And Chris doesn’t really play keys, it’s more like lead guitar. Most of the moments that sound like a crazy guitar are actually keyboard. He really made the record his own by writing ambient swells, piercing tones, and adding chunky, beefy distortion.” — themanchesterorchestra.com
“I am not ok, and there’s a beauty in that– a calming, a forgiveness.” The album takes us on a journey of self-awareness and acceptance, but even without listening to the earnest vocals and their meanings, you still have one of the strongest rock albums that exists. Track 5, “In My Teeth”, repeats the snarky phrase featured this blog post’s title (so timely, too…) Hull shares very plainly the intellectual struggle that the faithful possess. Did we ever really need it anyway? Will we ever find out?
You will notice that in the first half, the songs bleed together seamlessly as leader Andy Hull demonstrates his struggles with angst and anger. I bet you did what you did when you did just to tell every friend that you have that the Lord did it.
What I feel and hear in Track 6, “100 Dollars” is the acceptance that I am going to mess up and do dumb things, I am going to totally lose my shit in front of the ones I love, and… I am going to recover from that and forgive myself, and move on to find my place and purpose in life. From this point in the album, this mystery – our purpose – begins to slowly unfold and reveal itself, and then switch gears and remind us that it’s still a mystery that just might remain intangible. Listen to Track 7, “I Can Feel A Hot One” – which you may have heard before, but now in the context of this life journey called Mean Everything To Nothing, understand it as the awakening and the turning point of becoming a self-aware adult.
Back to that 11-part concept video, it’s true. A video to go along with each of the tracks on the album. Watch part one here (it is, obviously, the video for Track 1 – “The Only One.”
If you want more videos, someone wrote a great blog post about another video in the series, Shake It Out.
And He whispered ‘fear is logical’
In keeping with the idea that this is an album to go down with all the greats in recent decades, at the end of the album there is a hidden track. A stripped down, quiet track that gives us an end to the journey, still at peace with the fact that we may not know exactly where we went, or why.
Chances are slim we are right But I’d never think it any otherwise So we’ll find the answers in time When the bodies pile up sky high
If I am willing to travel to South Carolina, San Francisco, Phoenix, and Las Vegas to see The Manchester Orchestra, you know damn well I will be first in line to purchase this album when it comes out on April 21, despite the fact that I already have an advance copy. Are you going to be with me?
No, this won’t be some weird post about Brokeback Mountain or something. It’s about an album I recently picked up again after not having listened to it for years. The second album by Stone Temple Pilots, Purple, could possibly be the best album of the 1990’s. Yes. I said that. Better than the self-titled debut by Weezer, even. This is one of the very few albums I can listen to beginning to end and enjoy. That’s how I base my own personal “rating system”. So it’ll differ with yours, no doubt.
Well, of course, the song “Vasoline” is the first track I heard from it, and goddamnit-all if I still don’t just absolutely love this song. So here it is.
And as for another little ditty? How about Scott Weiland’s solo career? Well, His first solo album, 12 Bar Blues, is mostly crap, to be honest. The first three songs on it I absolutely love, however. The following is the cut “Barbarella”. It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy, like good – or bad – liquor. And somehow it doesn’t take my self-respect away like the liquor does.
Remember Cornershop? No? Yes? Who cares? Well, I just felt the need to post a couple songs of theirs. The first one is the first track off of When I Was Born For The 7th Time. The latter? Well, you may recognize it from the overkill it got on the radio a good 12 years ago. It’s not the original, however, but the Fatboy Slim remix of their massive hit “Brimful of Asha”. All-in-all, the album could be one of the most underrated albums of the ’90’s, not to mention one of the best from that decade. It took time to grow on me, but now every so often I have to take a listen and be reminded just how good this one was. Enjoy.
And yes. I want you to buy something. Stop cheaping out. I’m watching you. Like Santa Claus with a bad meth habit and a restraining order. Or something like that. Either way, it’s scary.
I often have trouble with electro music, and I almost always find it difficult to get through an album that suffers from Multiple Personality Disorder. But Made in the Dark by Hot Chip must match the exact coordinates of my brainwaves, because I am all over it. When Mark Pytlik from Pitchfork reviewed it, he said:
“But of all of their many virtues, focus isn’t one… A string of self-conscious interruptions, perfect pop moments, show-offy sonics, and inscrutable non-sequiturs, the lovable but flawed Made in the Dark has moments that come off as almost gluttonous– and that’s even by Hot Chip’s standards.”
He might as well have been talking about me! Am I right or am I right?
This album is a year old already, but how I suddenly became the review-every-new-album chick, I don’t know. I’m sharing this with you just because. If you haven’t checked out Hot Chip yet, please let me introduce you. This is a five piece band from London, all of whom possess DJ backgrounds. They found themselves in good company at this year’s Grammy awards, with “Ready for the Floor” nominated alongside Daft Punk’s eighty-fifth rendition of “Harder Better Faster Stronger” for Best Dance Recording.
I am just in love with the flow of this album, where the synth is not overused but I still get a zippy (yes I said zippy) vibe from the faster tracks, and it only took a second listen to fall right in place with the ballads that are interspersed throughout. Perhaps it’s because each track consistently possesses cute, witty, sappy, silly, or just plain inane lyrics.
This is the track whose refrain nearly made the title for this blog post. I think it’s a good representation of the album: a nice mix of the electro pop and the slow burn tracks on Made in the Dark.
What is it, I don’t remember Made my being so much better If I can have just one pure thought
The boys are reportedly back at work in the studio, without any tour commitments on the horizon. The idea was originally to work fervently to release the album in Fall 2009, but they have been drawn in to play a track here or there in support of some good causes already this year, such as War Child and Crisis.
They’re a group of top blokes, I reckon. I want to share with you just one more song, and then you can get to the checkout section, because you know you want to.
Every time that we walk the streets I try my best to keep up with the beat You’re everything that I never could keep I hear the sound and it starts to repeat
So initially, I was really wanting to post this Diplo cut I heard recently. I mean, this shit is just brilliant. However, since I’ve maintained some semblance of contact with his people, I wanted to give a heads up and get an OK. Well, the track “Smash A Kangaroo”, it turns out, is actually on an album where the profits go to help give music-education to underprivileged indigenous kids in Australia. Here’s what turntable lab has to say about the cut:
Earlier this year while touring in Australia, Diplo got the chance to do some music workshops with kids incarcerated in a juvenile detention center in the rural Maningrida district. Because of the restrictions placed on the kids by the Australian government, the results of those sessions may not ever get a full release, but for now we’ve got “Smash A Kangaroo,” a one-off charity single produced by Diplo and featuring, well, the kids! If you haven’t heard this one yet, think Wilcannia Mob, the young Indigenous Australian rappers who appeared on M.I.A.’s album earlier this year. Also includes the instrumental version, which is exclusive to TTL Digital.
Now, get your ass over to the Heaps Decent website, and check that shit out! I don’t want none of you peeps to be cheapin’ out! This track is well beyond hot!
Okay, now on to what you guys are probably here for – some music. First off, yes I actually own all of this stuff. I spent the better part of about 7 years DJing, so I have managed to collect a lot of vinyl, and have even bought a lot of this digitally, as well. The tracks below are all just shit hot. If you guys haven’t heard of Switch? You should be ashamed. Granted, the only really good cut on M.I.A.’s Kala is the Diplo produced “Paper Planes”, and not Dave Taylor’s contribution, but Switch hasn’t really been the same since Trevor Loveys took off on his own. And yes, Dave Taylor was indeed part of Solid Groove before that, and they were just as fuckin’ hot.
So here you go guys. A few tracks I like, and today, most are Switch and Solid Groove heavy, with a pretty much unknown Felix Da Housecat remix tossed in for good measure.
First off are the Switch and Solid Groove cuts. First off is a tweeked out – and it’s called “Untitled”, actually – track they remixed for Blackjoy that’s featured on the Freerange compilation that collects the remixes Switch/Solid Groove have done for them. It’s unbelievably good. Seriously. I mean it. If you have a seizure listening to it? It’s because of all the soda you drank. Not because of how awesome this cut is.
Next is a Solid Groove original that’s on another Freerange compilation – Colour Series : Yellow 01. It’s very upbeat and bouncy. Dig this. Here’s “Jus Everybody” by Solid Groove.
Next is the last of the Switch stuff. It’s a remix they did for the group Playgroup, which featured KC Flightt. Those old school househeads will remember KC Flightt from the track “Voices”. A classic. Anyhow, here’s the Switch remix of “Front 2 Back”. Probably my favorite of all the Switch cuts here.
Last is a little treat. I got lazy and didn’t want to dig through all my records to find this, so I bought it on iTunes. It’s the Felix Da Housecat remix of Garbage’s “Androgyny”. Not too many people seem to know about this one. Take my word – it’s awesome. He has a pretty simple formula and stays with it, and on this particular remix, it works well.
And of course? Go buy some of this! Don’t be a deadbeat! If you are going to be a deadbeat, at least wear a stained t-shirt and live in a trailer. At least then I could go, “Well, he had a trailer!” Then I could just shrug my shoulders and have no answer to your impoverished lifestyle.
For some reason, I don’t fully understand the incessant comparisons between Neutral Milk Hotel and The Decemberists. “They’re like Neutral Milk Hotel,” I could understand. But “they’re no Neutral Milk hotel,” I have a hard time with, since the latter band formed long after NMH stopped recording albums.
A criticism for sounding like the band that influenced you? This makes no sense. Is it a regional thing? That a band from the pacific northwest shouldn’t dare sound like a band from the south?
Ah… Is that it? Harrison Hudson! Another twitter calling-out of a band! Wait, add it up… Harrison is from the south… Hmmm… Do I have a theory in the works?
What about Death Cab for Cutie? These three groups are often pitted against each other as if in a favorite child competition. What’s with this? It makes me conjure Max Bemis…
Despite your pseudo-bohemian appearance and vaguely leftist doctrine of beliefs, you know nothing ABOUT art or sex that you couldn’t read in any trendy new york underground fashion magazine…Proto-typical non-conformist. You are a vacuous soldier of the thrift store gestapo. You adhere to a set of standards and tastes that appear to be determined by an unseen panel of hipster judges-BULLSHIT-giving your thumbs up and thumbs down to incoming and outgoing trends and styles of music and art. Go analog baby, you’re so post-modern. You’re diving face forward into an antiquated past, it’s disgusting! It’s offensive! Don’t stick your nose up at me!
Oh beanie-wearing artsies… Can’t we all just get along? Let’s get to the album review and leave the competition behind. This Tuesday, The Decemberists’ fifth studio album is to be released. (And I will beat the horse for just a moment to point out that The Decemberists are still making music.) This album, The Hazards of Love, may be the album to catapult the band past the other indie/experimentals into first position in the hearts of the genre’s followers, although the reviewers at Entertainment Weekly seem to disagree – they assigned a D+. Then again, that particular reviewer doesn’t seem to appreciate rock operas in the first place.
A rock opera? Yes. That’s what The Hazards of Love is. And for the first time in a long time, I can conceptualize the story from beginning to end on such an effort. Track 10, “The Rake’s Song”, is probably one of the best illustrations of such. Look, I appreciate metaphor in song. But in a rock opera, you’ve got to be literal. And I love that about this song. And you can count on The Decemberists to utilize historical, outdated, or just plain British colloquialisms throughout their lyrics. Do you know what a rake is?
Another item to appreciate about The Decemberists is that this opera is being performed in its entirety at their live performances, such as at South by Southwest last week. It’s meant to be heard all at one sitting; should it not, then, be performed all at once? This album gets The Little One’s approval. It’s good. Sit back on some cushy tasseled pillows with a hookah and enjoy it. I especially appreciate the album art. It’s just as I would have imagined for this story.
Just one more item, to further confuse my pac-nw versus deep indie south theory, The Decemberists are slated to play Bonnaroo in June, but not Sasquatch! in May. They’ll be playing two phases of a tour over the summer, so browse their myspace or their website to follow them.
Tell me now, tell me this, A forest’s son, a river’s daughter, A willow on the willow wisp, our ghosts will wander all of the water.
So let’s be married here today these rushing waves to bear our witness, And we will lie like river stones rolling only where it takes us.
Okay, this week are two songs – one of which I sort of liked – whose videos make me want to stab my eyes out.
The first is one sent to me to promote a new remix album Bloc Party will be releasing soon. This is the video for the Armand Van Helden remix of “Signs”. This is an absolutely atrocious remix, and the video smacks of a few people in a room going, “You know what we could do? We could make the video SO controversial, that people could actually stand to listen to the horrible song!” And then they all agree, have a few drinks, then do massive amounts of drugs and make this godawful video. Song is horrible, video is marginally better. And I’m saying this as a fan of Armand Van Helden. Circa 1998, that is. Now I’m convinced he can’t make anything worth a flying fuck, any more. This just proves my point.
The next one is for a song I just recently heard by a band by the name of Empire of the Sun. First of all, their MySpace page looks like an example of what happens when your ego goes horribly wrong. “Join The Empire”? No fucking thanks. Not to mention there’s some annoying girlie-punk-crap player someone embedded so I couldn’t even listen to the band whose music I wanted to hear. Guess it’s for the better. So I viewed this video for the song “Walking On A Dream” and oh my god. It’s so fucking terrible. I now can’t even stand the song. That’s sad. Someone please give me my dignity back.
You know what? Normally I tell you to buy the music, right? Well fuck that this week. Instead, I’ll tell you to buy the random shit I have below. At least you’ll get some use from it.
Silversun Pickups is the indie band that hails from Los Angeles, California. It’s the one that reminds you a lil bit of The Smashing Pumpkins in their sound, and maybe of Straylight Run in their makeup. Lead by both Nikki Monninger and Brian Auburt (who play bass and guitar, respectively)they might get some comparisons to the now-defunct but just-as-sincere Straylight. Rounded out by Joe Lester on keys and Christopher Guanlo on drums, the band also sought support from local strings players and wound up with a 16-piece orchestra to back them on tracks on their second full-length album, Swoon. The angry music and strong, haunting strings are best showcased, maybe, on track 2, “The Royal We.” 
