Posted on 05 August 2010
The 25-year-old is expecting her first child with boyfriend Sam Cooper. She announced she was retiring from performing and would maybe write songs for other musicians back in September 2009, and had been talking about settling down for a while (Allen suffered a miscarriage in 2008). Tabloids noticed she’d quit drinking and smoking over the last few months, but Allen confirmed her pregnancy today via Twitter.
Posted on 05 August 2010
Reader Jim tipped us off to this 1993 Pablo Honey ad campaign that aligns Thom York & Co., aka “Oxford, England’s rowdiest new band,” with Beavis And Butt-head (twice!). Also, please note, if you want to become “a RADIOHEAD,” you’ll need to send your fan mail to Capitol Records in c/o “I Wanna Be A Creep.”
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Posted on 05 August 2010
The Dead Weather did “Blue Blood Blues” for Letterman last night. Jack White played drums, and Alison Mosshart — or at least Mosshart’s hair — helped on guitar.
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Posted on 04 August 2010
“Hologram” is the third single from These New Puritans’ second album Hidden. I like the purple drank feel of the goth-romantic Salem remix. You get the album version for the piano-humping official video.
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Posted on 03 August 2010
You know Andrew Youssef as the man behind some of Stereogum’s best west coast concert photography. Starting today you’ll see Andrew’s galleries posted under his own byline, with his own short blurbs.
Squeeze showed us that the iPad can add some spice to a live performance. While they did bring back the gimmick for “Cool For Cats,” the new wave heroes didn’t need any other tricks for a solid nineteen-song set that included hits “Tempted,” “Goodbye Girl,” “Pulling Mussels (From A Shell),” and “Hourglass.” The English Beat helped round out the nostalgic night.
Posted on 03 August 2010
When Hamilton Leithauser stopped through for a Progress Report he focused on Lisbon’s rawness:
We have all these rock songs and they’re really stripped down, they’re really like a guitar, a bass, and a drum a lot of them so far. And then we’re going to put a few other things on them, but the core sound is a minimal thing that is really sort of raw … For us it’s just new. Maybe because we’ve just always put so much garnish all over our crap for some reason. It’s kind of nice.
“Rock” came up a a bunch. He also mentioned “power shuffles,” aka “really powerful” waltzes and noted that the new batch of songs possess “so much juice.” The best laid plans? Or did he and his Walkmen stick to that general aesthetic template for their followup to ’08s You & Me?
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Posted on 02 August 2010
“Am I Real?,” which closes Nite Jewel’s six-song EP of the same name, finds L.A.’s Ramona Gonzalez and new member Cole MGN in usual dusky karaoke-pop form. Daniel and Andrew Aged of Teen Inc. bring some of their ’80s new-wave/Was (Not Was) jazz-funk to the party.
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Posted on 02 August 2010
Broken Social Scene’s video for “Forced To Love” is from the future. Arts & Crafts’s video description:
“It’s an experimental 3D scanning technology that detects the displacement of a grid pattern of any object in front of it,” [director Alan Poon] explains. “The data is then used to rebuild the object in three dimensions. Each band member’s performance was scanned using this technique and manipulated in the computer to create the effect you see in the final video.”
Better than will.i.am. in the CNN holodeck? Yes, but also because anything at all is better than will.i.am in the CNN holodeck. The video was directed by MAKAPOON (Adam Makarenko & Alan Poon).
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Posted on 02 August 2010
The Memoryhouse remixing Oberlin duo Teengirl Fantasy’s debut full-length 7 AM is out this September. Closer “Cheaters” is a fun overlap of gauzy electronics and soulful gospel vocals. Think of it as a hipper version of Primitive Radio Gods’ “Standing Outside A Broken Phone Booth With Money In My Hand.” Or a later, poppier version of Deerhunter’s “So Long,” if that first comparison hurt your heart/sense of style.
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Posted on 02 August 2010
Wild Beasts were just nominated for the Mercury Prize, and they’re on tour again, so their label Domino is celebrating with this new EP featuring their single “We Still Got The Taste Dancin’ On Our Tongues,” an acoustic version of “The Devil’s Crayon,” a Jon Hopkins remix of “Two Dancers,” and this rare Japanese b-side “Through The Iron Gate.” Have a listen:
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