Posted on 24 August 2010
A couple of months ago I passed along details about Songs For Singles, Miami trio Torche’s followup to 2008’s beloved second album Meanderthal. I mentioned “songs for singles” could mean radio hits or songs for folks in search of love or etc., but don’t spend too much time worrying about it because as main man Steve Brooks puts it: “Dude, it’s just a rock band.” Well, not just any rock band. Per usual, Brooks has a crazy way with riffs and hooks, all contained within something sludgier than your standard pop (i.e. the reason for the “Sludge Pop” descriptors. “Stoner Pop” could work, too). Whatever you want to call it, the self-produced Songs cycles through 8 songs in 21 minutes, though I’m told it’s not an EP. I guess it’s just a full-length with short songs? (The second track “Lay Low” clocks in at 52 seconds.) It all opens with this 2-minute gem “U.F.O.” Please note: This is not the David Lee Roth joke version included on Hydra Head’s free digital sampler a few months back. Though that version had its merits, too.
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Posted on 26 March 2010
Oasis is over (again), we paid our respects in a dignified manner, that brings us to the next chapter in the Brothers Gallagher. Last night at the Royal Albert Hall the spotlight was on Noel alone, though I’m sure he allowed a little to shine on former Oasis guitarist Gem Archer and the 50-plus Crouch End Choir, all of whom pitched into the elder Gallagher’s big solo reveal. Not that there were any new solo songs revealed, mind — according to the BBC Noel said “this was not the right time or place.”. He did promise that new songs are on the way and that they are “brilliant,” which, of course he did. Those attending heard a 17-song Oasis setlist, all but one from the ’90s. According to the BBC the crowd ate up every note, citing middle-aged women and men with paunches swaying in drunken reverie, singing each word, giving an affectionate stroke to an ego that’s doing fine on its own. But the man has written some jams, many of which he played last night, listed here sequentially:
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Posted on 26 March 2010
[Editor’s Note: The following guest post is by Ryan Muir, one of NYC’s most hardworking and talented photographers. After spending the better part of five days lugging his camera equipment all over Austin on our behalf, we sent him down to Monterrey, Mexico for NYC promoter Todd P’s MtyMx festival. Here’s Ryan’s report in photos, videso, and words.]
Last week Stereogum sent me down to Monterrey, Mexico to experience the inaugural Todd P/Yo Garage DIY music festival. While many things went wrong on the trip, many things also went so right. Chalk it up to event fatigue, but in some ways the tiny Mexican musical outpost taught me more about new music and cultural community than any experience the days previously at SXSW. In spite of the relative successes and failures of this ambitious and experimental mission, it’s difficult not to dwell on the obvious logistical complications (and implications) which set the festival back. From an outside perspective, it would be easy to consider MtyMx a failure by the measure of any typical music festival, especially the way it has been covered so far as nothing short of a humanitarian catastrophe, but from the onset, both in design and execution one should have expected that this was not promised as a usual music festival. This is a Mexican Todd P DIY-festival. There are no VIP lines.
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Posted on 26 March 2010
Last week at SXSW the Toronto quartet Holy Fuck visited Radio K and performed three songs from their forthcoming third album Latin. You’ve heard “Latin America” — via Chatroulett or otherwise — but they also offered previously unreleased “Stay Lit” and “SHT MTN.” The breezy, organic new collection sounds more like the band’s live show, so the session offers a nice entryway, vice versa.
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Posted on 26 March 2010
In profiling XXXChange’s remix of “O.N.E..,” we learned Odd Blood was created with a specific mission: Chris Keating told the NYT the band found “the specific elements, the defining elements, of the last record and … eliminate[d] those and create[d] holes. Then [we] … fill[ed] those holes in with other stuff that we like.” This remix from Doctor Rosen Rosen, who we’ve seen put his healing hands on Department Of Eagles and who you’ve heard name-checked in Fletch, is very much in the vein of Blood, then: Delete the original’s chime and flange, fill the gaps with pensive piano, Anand’s vocal track preserved then chopped and split, flip to a muscular and quasi-nasty electro-pop latter half that proves Rosen knows his way around a studio console. Ambitious, dope.
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Posted on 26 March 2010
The James Murphy-soundtracked (and cameod) Greenberg’s out in limited release today, which is maybe why LCD Soundsystem’s “Drunk Girls” surfaced yesterday and now we can pass along a snippet from another new one, “Pow Pow.” It’s a sing-speak “Losing My Edge”-esque anthem that conjures Murphy’s thing for Ultimate Fighting with the “Pow Pow” while name-dropping Michael Musto (who’s told to “eat it”), a nod that crystallizes the slightly old-school Downtown NYC party vibe. It’s being released as a UK single for reason.
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Posted on 26 March 2010
After BK BTW Suckers’ super set at the IAMSOUND party our first night in Austin, the songs from their forthcoming Wild Smile would’ve stayed in my head as a hotel-room soundtrack even if someone hadn’t slipped their new record to me as I arrived at the airport the day before. But someone did do that, so it’s been on heavy rotation — because it’s great, and because I’ve been wondering which of its jams they’d pluck to kick off the promo push: There’s “Before Your Birthday Ends” and its recasting Suckers as art-pop Prince acolytes, or “You Can Keep Me Runnin’ Around,” throwing their debut EP’s group-chanted uplift into a delicate spin cycle. But instead BTW in his own right Quinn Walker and crew have gone with “Black Sheep,” which takes Modest Mouse’s blueprint and reconstructs it inside the belly of the Glasslands Gallery. It’s a stomper.
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Posted on 26 March 2010
John, aka The Juan, MacLean’s 72-minute contribution to the DJ-KiCKS series (4/27 via !K7) — which he did live with two turntables, filters, and tape delay — opens with some Ian Breno dub, closes with Holy Ghosts’s Alex Frankel, and includes the 1o-minute “Feel So Good” somewhere in between. The latter’s a new track that includes vocals from cohort Nancy Whang and a loop from Maserati/Juan Maclean drummer Jerry Fuchs, who if you recall, died last year when falling down an elevator shaft in Williamsburg. It depends on the listener whether that knowledge makes the song uplifting or especially heavy. Download it here.
Posted on 25 March 2010
Posted on 25 March 2010
As you likely surmised after watching Ben Gibbard’s cover the Magnetic Fields, our show’s sponsor Samsung kindly hired a a video crew to memorialize the good times at Range Life. As a result I found myself with a mic in my hand having a chat with the morning benders’ Chris Chu. 1PM on day last of SXSW isn’t the ideal time to not look like a bleary eyed fool, let alone conduct a coherent interview, but Chris is smart and did the heavy lifting, talking about Austin and Big Echo and how it felt for us to sit really close to each other. I hope it makes sense! We talked a bit about our relationship with Alex Chilton, too, though that doesn’t make the cut here. Ask me about it next time I see you. (During their set, the benders would cover Big Star’s “I’m In Love With A Girl”; later that day, many artists could cover many Big Star songs.) In addition, we enlisted our friend Mallory Blair to Q&A her way through a few minutes with Wye Oak and Dominique Young Unique, who closed Range Life with an unexpected party-ending (though effectively, evening-party-starting) set that inspired many to ask me the same question: “She’s going to be huge but tell me … who is she?” That’s what this interview’s for. Dominique sets the record straight on her relationship with Yo Majesty, her age, and watching it gives you a sense for how her mind works. Once you get through that, then watch this. OK guys, that’s it — last post on our party. Until next year. You’re invited already.
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