Posted on 16 September 2009
The last dispatch from Air’s Love 2, the effervescent “Sing Sang Sung,” would have made a lovely cruising-on-a-summer’s-day video. (Instead the French men paid homage to platform videogames.) If we were playing director’s chair quarterback again — and with music as visual as Air’s, it’s a fun game — “So Light Is Her Footfall”’s wah guitars and string synth patches would soundtrack a short built of film-noir intrigue, perhaps a private dick following a lovely mademoiselle as she lightly steps down shadowy corridors all alone alone alone alone alone alone alone. Dunckel and Godin don’t explain why they suddenly start talking about her footfall in the past tense later in the song, but that’s what we have videos for.
Continue reading New Air - “So Light Is Her Footfall”…
Posted on 04 September 2009
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The off-kilter Seattle art-punk trio Talbot Tagora spin and flop sideways in “Ichthus Hop,” a two-and-a-half minute song, ostensibly about fishes or at least swimming/moving like one, that’s as dissonant as it is catchy. (It sounds like you imagine brain freeze sounding.) The track’s collagist stop-animation video looks like Pop Max Ernst and includes spinning dragonflies, clocks, crows, planets, peacocks, butterflies, pills, and, yes, a fish. The song comes from their Hardly Art debut Lessons In The Woods Or A City, but the guys have a number of self-released/etc collections of various sizes to catch up on, if you’re into it.
Continue reading New Talbot Tagora Video - “Ichthus Hop”…
Posted on 24 August 2009
So remember the secret show PJ played at Seattle’s showbox, the one that Cameron Crowe filmed Target related video, the one that Pearl Jam’s lawyers tried to erase from the internet? Pretty sure this is it! I mean, it LOOKS like a Target commercial. As Scott mentioned, you sorta keep expecting someone to jump out with affordable housewares … or a red bullseye on the kick drum. It’s “The Fixer” and this is its video. Enjoy.
Continue reading New Pearl Jam Video - “The Fixer”…
Posted on 21 August 2009
Man, the “What might have been lost” sing-along on “The Wolves (Act I & II)” is going to be particularly spine tingly on this one. One-time only, at Hollywood Forever where all the actors are buried. Cemetery gates at midnight, show at ~6AM on 9/27. Get your tix.
Posted on 20 August 2009
Along with packing a mouthful of a contributing artist list, Neil Finn’s 7 Worlds Collide project has introduced us to the world of Phil Selway: Singer-Songwriter via the Radiohead drummer’s singing and songwriting of “The Tie That Binds Us.” That song appears on the Finn/Tweedy/Marr/Selway/O’Brien/etc. “supergroup”’s The Sun Came Out LP tracklist, as does another Phil song titled “The Witching Hour.” Like last time, it’s some FanTube that gives us our first listen.
Generally when the Radioheads go it alone, the results still have a transcendent air (think The Eraser or There Will Be Blood). Selway’s sensitive man with guitar thing, however, is more earth-bound; whether it’s the approachable prose (”Take me out into the night / show me, show me wonders and delights”), the pretty but fallible vocal, or the basic chord movement, it’s fragile and imperfect and utterly human. That’s not a slag, though (I too am human), and actually it’s fun to watch, and juxtapose its net effect with the alien games he contributes to when sitting behind a drumset.
Continue reading New Phil Selway (Radiohead) - “The Witching Hour” (Live In London)…
Posted on 20 August 2009
Norah has carved out a special space for herself in the Living Room/Rockwood Music Hall side of the LES music hang; in a circuit full of singers and sidemen with jazz in their roots, she’s the chosen one who at a whim can crossover to pretty much anything she wants — indie (via covers and concerts), conscious rap, comedic rap, and the money-making super-broad mainstream (see: a trillion albums sold) — and seemingly never breaking a sweat. Even when making the vaunted musician-to-actress leap and landing in what might be the worst movie of all time, it’s like she gets points just for trying, in a world where nobody actually gets points just for trying. She’s like the half-Indian Zooey Deschanel. Brown-eyed instead of blue, and just as bulletproof.
And her stock in the eyes of those who appreciate indie songwriting will only go up when they hear how she explains her choice of Jacquire King to produce her forthcoming, fourth LP (”I got in touch with [him] initially because he engineered one of my favorite records of all time, Tom Waits’ Mule Variations“). Or when they learn that along with frequent songwriting partner/”Come Away Me” creator Jesse Harris, she’s co-written songs for this next set with showmate Ryan Adams and Okkervil man Will Sheff. According to today’s press release, Norah’s got a whole new backing band (including Beck’s drummer Joey Waronker, soul keyboardist James Poyser, and guitar hero Marc Ribot) and cast of characters helping out on this record, and that she’s “taken a new direction.” We haven’t heard a note, but in as much as press releases can sound, it actually sounds like it. More soon.
Posted on 20 August 2009
“Walkabout” isn’t the best track on Atlas Sound’s second proper full-length Logos, but it is the song that features a member of Animal Collective, which is likely why it got out there first. Truth is, it’s kind of album’s curve ball moment. Even though its more skeletal than some of Logos (see, for instance, the show-stopping “Quick Canal”), the spaciously intimate “Attic Lights” nails the collection’s vibe better and feels more representative of its overall aesthetic. Cox offered some background on the song in his initial Logos statement:
Sasha Vine [of Sian Alice Group] provided a double-tracked improvised violin part to “Attic Lights” which was recorded backstage at a Deerhunter/Sian Alice Group show in Brighton. It might be my favorite moment of the album. I played it for some younger friends of mine. They cringed. They wanted more songs like “Walkabout.” Something with a big beat. I told them when they get older they will appreciate things like harmonicas and violins…
And Fleetwood Mac covers. Take a listen to “Attic Lights”:
Continue reading New Atlas Sound - “Attic Lights”…
Posted on 20 August 2009
According to their MySpace, Babies is the project of Vivian Girls’ Cassie Ramone, Woods bassist Kevin Morby, Bossy drummer Justin Sullivan, and Stupid Party’s Nathanael Stark on bass. All that said, it’ll largely be the songwriting project of Morby, because bassists need side projects. Take a listen to the shambling guitar-pop howler “Meet Me In The City.” Morby takes lead vocals and Ramone handles the distant girl-group backups.
Continue reading New Babies - “Meet Me In The City”…
Posted on 20 August 2009
Last weekend the Walkmen gave the Guggenheim Crowd a triumphant take on You & Me’s “On The Water.” Just in time for their push through the late-summer/fall festival season, here’s an animated Nir Ben Jacob-directed video for the track that takes us to a dark-blue farm and a pair of rabbits who call the place home. When the farmer shows up with his confetti gun and hunting dog in tow, it takes on the feel of Modest Mouse’s recent whale watching trip, albeit via Watership Down and in reverse.
Continue reading New Walkmen Video - “On the Water” …
Posted on 19 August 2009
Looking more and more like a werewolf himself, E performed three Hombre Lobo tunes as well as his take on that vagrant Bob Dylan’s “Girl From The North Country” at MySpace’s Transmissions. Download at MySpace.
