- Doug Stephen in FOR FUCK SAKE EVERYONE KNOCK IT OFF WITH THE GOD DAMNED ACCORDIONS JESUS CHRIST Woah, okay Vice Magazine.
- Doug Stephen in Vampire Weekend - S/T I’ve never listened to a solo Paul Simon record, or to Graceland, so I don’t know about that. But the songs I’ve heard by Vampire Weekend...
- bjyhore in New Single: Patrick Wolf’s “Accident and Emergency” She had actually been robbed of it cant be cruel. Mistress. I could do. jennifer lopez porn Three.
Those ‘Freaks on a leash’ have been affected by Al Gore’s Go Green Machine and what better way to give back but by exploiting the most current fad, Bio-fuel! Today they announced they would be producing their own form of Korn branded bio-fuel. And what impossibly clever name are they giving this endeavor? Oh, nothing retarded like Korntastic. Wait. What? They are naming it Korntastic? Uh, whoops. Never mind. Limewire.com writes:
“Korntastic will be a domestically produced alternative fuel derived from plant based energy sources. The product will emit a significantly smaller amount of CO2 than regular fuel does. The band has arranged to have bio-fuel replace gasoline in the 16 touring vehicles on this year’s Family Values Tour. Lead singer Jonathan Davis says “We can’t save the planet overnight but this is our way of saying everyone has to start somewhere. As a touring band it’s our responsibility to start making a difference. We encourage all other bands touring this summer to do the same.””
Uh yeah. Did I mention they also dropped a new album today? They named it Untitled. Yeah, like I said. CLEV-ER. To help them with their apparent drought of ingenuity I figured I’d give them a freebie name for their next album. “Korn presents; Songs of Korntastica or how Korn figured out how to market an environmental fad and capitalize as greedily as possible.” Little long? Naw. That’s Avant-garde. If Fiona can, Korn can. Can… can… oh, I GIVE UP! ITS KORNTASTIC Y’ALL!
Source - Limewire.com
Believe it or not, the Shins existed before Garden State. Despite how it may have seemed at the time, they did not spring fully formed from the womb of Natalie Portman. In fact, Oh Inverted World, the seminal Shins album that became the indie badge of identification after Zach Braff’s film, had been out for a few years before the movie ever hit theaters. In the resulting media saturation, many new fans emerged, but it seemed that the discerning music crowd started to turn away. Too many overnight fifteen year old fans with Samtastic pink hoodies was a lot to bear for people who had loved this band, and this album, since it’s release in 2001. It would be a few years then, after the hype of the Myspace generation’s answer to Say Anything had died down, that the Shins regained their regal place at the top of Mt. Indielympus.
And I’m here to tell you they deserve to be there. So what if you see Zach Braff in your mind’s eye when Caring is Creepy or New Slang begin. Those songs, along with the rest of this record, transcend their brief moment of blinding popularity. When you strip away the angst associated with this album because of the movie, you’re left with a gentle, passionate declaration of talent and influence.
The guitar work on Oh Inverted World draws from influences as varied as reggae and country/western music, and thus recalls the work of bands like the Clash, the Kinks, and most importantly, the Smiths. And the triumphant yet heartbreaking lyrics, powered by James Mercer’s powerful yet vulnerable voice, recall Morrissey at his best.
Oh Inverted World would have been fine without Garden State’s help. It was a declaration of things to come. And long after the dust of Zach Braff’s surprisingly resilient career has cleared, this album will remain a vanguard of a movement that has had a profound effect on rock and roll.
I actually came to Rilo Kiley sort of the reverse way from a lot of people, since the first I heard of them was through a side project, Jenny Lewis with the Watson Twins’ Rabbit Fur Coat. I wasn’t particularly impressed with that effort, if the truth were to be told — it was pleasant enough, and the harmonies were nice, but it came out at nearly the same time as Neko Case’s Fox Confessor Brings the Flood, which set the bar for red-headed torch-Americana awfully high.
The upshot of all this is that before I listened to it, I didn’t have a good idea how much to expect from RK’s new album, Under the Blacklight. As it happens, the answer is: quite a bit indeed. Under the Blacklight isn’t just worlds better than Rabbit Fur Coat, it’s one of the better things I’ve heard this year (though by no means the best).
It’s hard to even describe what Under the Blacklight sounds like, precisely. It’s all of a piece, but the seamlessness between the tracks belies a degree of stylistic variation that’s quite high. “Silver Lining” is driven by alt-country slide guitars, “The Moneymaker” is a booming, spare rocker with a lead riff heavily influenced by ’70s classic rock, “Breakin’ Up,” with its wiggly one-finger synth line, could almost be a lost New Wave track — and that’s only three of the eleven cuts on display here. Some of the other songs, such as the title track, exist in a sort of dreamy netherworld between Big Star and Neil Young, but Lewis’s siren voice, which sounds much more confident amid RK’s relatively thicker textures than it did with the Watson Twins, gives them a sonic signature that’s all Rilo Kiley’s own.
The playing on Under the Blacklight is crisp, confident, and tight. Drummer Jason Boesel and bassist Pierre de Reeder in particular are meticulously precise, but never to the point that the music sounds stilted or mechanical. Rilo Kiley don’t like minor keys or slow tempos — perhaps the most unifying characteristic of the music is that it sounds deliberately, relentlessly upbeat.
Deceptively upbeat, actually, given the almost noir-ish lyrics. People age and relationships disintegrate over a backdrop of drunkenness, illicit sex, and general cruelty in pretty much every song here. In the hands of a different band, most of the themes could easily match the music, but Rilo Kiley aren’t writing party songs; they’re interested in hollowness, in the way that things decay. Even the closing track, “Give a Little Love,” with its deliberately cliched verses that for the most part sound like a pep talk given by an overly excitable high schooler, comes eventually to the lines “I keep you close in my wildest dreams / my rearview mirror / and you’re waving to me our last goodbye.”
In places, though they aren’t particularly frequent, the lyrics do become the album’s most noticeable weakness. Clunky lines like “Funny thing about money for sex / You might get rich but you’ll die by it” (from “Close Call”) surface intermittently throughout the album; they’re less noticeable than they might otherwise be because Lewis’s vocals smooth them over well, but there are enough of them to make me dock the album a point or so. Lyrical subtlety isn’t Rilo Kiley’s forte, alas.
But despite the occasional flaws, the record comes off as a very real success. Although it’s their fourth full-length, Under the Blacklight is Rilo Kiley’s first effort on a major label, and here’s hoping it brings them some well-deserved attention from a wider audience. It’s an album that has earned it, whether or not the acclaim actually eventuates.
Release date: August 21, 2007
Label: Warner Brothers
Rating: 7.5/10
First and foremost: I love concept albums. I believe it makes the artist really think about an overall album and doesn’t allow them to just slop ten songs on a disc and go on their merry way (if you can call those things “songs” Ashlee Simpson). Yet unfortunately sometimes concept albums can overstep their boundaries and be pretentious. (see: prog rock in general).
The Streets’ A Grand Don’t Come for Free is a concept album with a grasp on reality… or it could be the script to a pretty run-of-the-mill Hollywood romantic comedy, I’m not quite sure. The main plot laid out by Mike Skinner is boy loses money, boy gets girl, boy loses girl, boy loses money forever in a fight (or) boy finds money. That’s right! This album even allows the listener to decide which ending they would like better, but more on that later (that’s your spoiler alert). So take that main plot and add life’s little trinkets such as talking to girls in takeaway restaurants, getting lucky by not placing a bet that would have lost, and getting completely fucked up and you have A Grand Don’t Come for Free.
Mike Skinner really took a chance by following up his debut album with a concept, but he made the right choice by going with what he knows. Each song itself is a story you could picture him telling you in a pub the day after it happened over a pint of Fuller’s. His delivery isn’t what one would call smooth but the offbeat flow draws you in more to that feeling of familiarity since it isn’t so polished. The opener of “It Was Supposed to Be So Easy” isn’t what you would expect to hear as the jump-off track of a hip-hop album with a jerky monotone chorus and a fairly laid-back tone in Skinner’s voice, but it only grows from there.
In relationship-based songs like “Could Well Be In” and “Dry Your Eyes” the more down tempo beats are accompanied by a softer voiced Skinner who shows his feelings for the apple of his eye with honest lyrics and sincerity in his voice that conveys true feelings without the sap. The exact opposite comes out in songs like “Get Out of My House” and “Fit But You Know It” where exasperation is shown with a more jacked up Mike (with the help of some liquid courage) showing that he can run the gamut and is no one trick pony.
So the whole troubled relationship story can get old, but A Grand… offers much more. Another story arc of the disc deals with Mike losing £1000 of his savings and becoming paranoid wondering who could have taken it in “What Is He Thinking?” The production builds up the frantic paranoia that the inner-monologues of the characters in the song are obviously feeling on both sides. “Empty Cans” is the song that takes the choose-your-own-adventure approach to rounding out the album. The first choice has Mike’s broken TV hauled off by a TV repairman who later tells him that he found something in the back of the TV which Mike thinks is a ploy to get more money out of the repair and fisticuffs are thrown. The second choice, signaled by a rewind sound cue and then accompanied by a similar beat to the former option, has Mike’s buddy Scott coming to help fix the TV and then finding that the £1000 had slipped through a crack in the back.
So maybe A Grand… isn’t romantic comedy script as it a multiple storyline TV series where all the characters are intertwined somehow, but either way, all the stories and antics combined on the disc make for one hell of an adventure. If you want a hip-hop disc without the bling and rims and with something more relatable (like stealing a tub of ice cream when you’re drunk) then this one’s for you.
The Streets - A Grand Don’t Come for Free
Vice/Atlantic
8 of 10
A little over two years ago, a 23-year-old model and former stripper from the Chicago area attempted to kill herself after an argument with her mother by ramming her car into another at high speed in an intersection. The accident took the lives of three Chicago musicians: Michael Dahlquist of Silkworm, John Glick of the Returnables, and Doug Meis of The Dials. Jeanette Sliwinski survived her suicide attempt with a broken ankle.
Today, her murder trial begins with jury selection, with opening arguments slated to begin late today or tomorrow. Read about it in the Chicago Sun-Times or the Chicago Tribune.
The Chicagoist perfectly summarizes my feelings on this matter.
While i personally did not know any of the people killed, i know many of their friends (many of them can be found on this thread on Electrical Audio’s Messageboard), and my thoughts and prayers go out to them today. Be strong, my friends.
Even though I’ve been dreading it and secretly willing Mother Nature not to let it happen for months now, it’s been getting colder out. I’m seeing more jackets, scarves, Uggs, and even some full coats as I ride the bus along Michigan Avenue. Fall is finally hitting us. In a way, it’s depressing…well, it’s always depressing when we realize that storefronts no longer have doors open, the beaches exist without people relaxing on them, and waiting for the bus or the train seems to take an extra 15 minutes because of the wind. In another way, fall is exciting. Yuppies just love excuses to get out there and buy new wardrobes. Ladies get to bust out the aforementioned Uggs again…or buy new ones. That new “this is nothing in comparison to what’s coming in a month” smell hits the air. Albums like Winter Songs start hitting shelves–ooh, wait, sorry, not too tech savvy there–they start getting clicked on and pirated illegally.
Honestly, the first song to waft into the ears is ‘Snow Day,’ and it’s quite pleasant. It has a wistful, constant, tapping drum beat that lays the ground work while softly strummed cords give the illusion of windy happiness. Basically, it has a very winter-y sound, which, I guess, is the point. It’s a great song to listen to while people-watching from a bus window and a good pace-setting song for the beginning of a set of ‘em.
Unfortunately, some of the other songs don’t have that windy wonderment that the first one possesses. The entertainment factor is there, but the songs are not quite as engaging. For instance, ‘I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight’ is almost deterring to listen to. It has a decent basic tempo, but it never changes. It has a chipper, upbeat feel to it, but not enough of it. The lyrics kind of fall through the cracks too with their cliche-ness and inability to make me care.
There are two wonderfully done instrumentals on the EP that keep me listening, though. The musicianship gets high marks with its ability to literally make me feel excited about the prospect of winter, which is no easy feat. ‘Fall Two’ just has this aura about it, this essence of white and light blue that gives me an I’m-really-happy-but-also-really-depressed feel in my gut. ‘Winter One’ does the same thing, but in a darker, more down-trodden way. Its slower tempo and darker cords make me feel how I would feel if I had to walk across a snow-covered field in Chuck Taylors.
The group does a few covers for the EP that aren’t too bad. They transform Lyndsey Buckingham’s ‘Holiday Road’ from a hap, hap, happy upbeat road trip song into a play-in-the-leaves, sled-down-the-hill-and-crash-and-laugh-about-it song by extracting the drums and adding a lot of the same type of guitar playing they feature in ‘Snow Day.’
Matt Pond PA has been doing this for almost 10 years now. I couldn’t possibly say that they don’t have talent because I would be lying intentionally to cover the fact that a part of me really likes the sound these guys create…normally liking heavier stuff and all. As far as song craft, Pond has it down. Some of the stuff on ‘Winter Songs’ just doesn’t tickle my fancy. That’s not to say, however, that someone else’s fancy can’t be pinched and jabbed in a playful way by it. It’s playful music! If you’re looking for something to listen to on a cold day that you weren’t expecting, put it on. If you’re in a more up-tempo mood, save it for another time.
