First Listen (and Free Download): The Thermals “I Don’t Believe You”
August 17, 2010
Portland indie-rockers The Thermals are known for writing nerdy, two-and-half-minute punk songs with an off-handedly topical point of view. You could call their most recent albums concept records, but that’s just a fancy way of saying they’ve been relatively thematically coherent. Last year’s, Now We Can See dealt with morality, mortality and science while their 2006 record The Blood, The Body, The Machine was a more narrative affair on the intersection of organized religion, governmental authority and personal agency.
The group, led by singer-songwriter Hutch Harris, is getting ready to issue their fifth album next month. The album’s called Personal Life, and this time around, their focus is on love and relationships, the things that make relationships great, and the things that destroy them. It’s a direction hinted by the song “Separate” (issued earlier this year as one side of a split single with the Cribs), although lyrics like “separate I’m amazed I ever gave away all I held so dear” are ambiguous enough that they could just as easily be a pointed repudiation of political bipartisanship as they might be the post-break-up musings of a freshly single free-thinker.
“I Don’t Believe You” is the lead single from Personal Life, and it’s an immediately lovable bit of candidly dismissive, singalong power-pop, even if it can’t match last year’s “Now We Can See” in either recklessly energetic dorkery or googly-eyed catchiness. Click below to hear the song for yourself. In addition to releasing the song as a good old-fashioned 45 (with a download card that includes two bonus videos), the band’s label Kill Rock Stars is currently offering the song for free download at their site. (Thank you Kill Rock Stars. You’re awesome.)
The Thermals – I Don’t Believe You by killrockstars
Awesome Song Alert! “Credible Threats” by The One A.M. Radio
July 16, 2010
According to the lyrics of his latest song, Hrishikesh Hirway, the main man behind indie pop band The One A.M. Radio, isn’t getting much sleep these days. But the chipperness (and consequent awesomeness) of his music has apparently increased in direct proportion to his insomnia. The group’s latest single “Credible Threats” is a modestly upbeat little ditty with adorably wordy verses and a playful, chutes and ladders melody, backed by pretty, ripply guitar parts and anchored by a buzzy retro synth drone. The cumulative effect is vintage Belle & Sebastian as filtered through Devo, the fatalism and urgency of the lyric just barely masked by Hirway’s softly witty, matter-of-fact, slightly detached, but ultimately vulnerable delivery. With its dorky bum-ba-dum breakdown and krautrocky instrumental coda (replete with singalong “oohs” over flying saucer synths), “Credible Threats” is just a funny sounding (but not necessarily funny funny) song about a guy who stays up at night cataloguing all the ways an unspecified “they” say he might die. That Hirway’s an emphatically mild-mannered American living in an hysterically angry America, with a “funny” name and what Sheriff Arpaio might deem a “terrorist complexion”, or at least “illegal” colored skin only underlines his probably-not-for-nothing, paranoia-tinged anxiety. I mean, here’s a guy who’s been watching himself some serious news lately. And then there’s this great couplet at the bridge:
Tom Brokaw’s talking about a dirty bomb
I got another call from my poor Mom.
The song comes with this cute little video by director Andrew Huang. (Dig that choreography!) And James Cameron will be thrilled to know that Huang also did a 3-D version of the video which you can watch here. OR: Better yet, why not get yourself a copy of the 7″ single of the song directly from the band? (I just ordered mine.) In addition to the supercool colored vinyl, you’ll get downloads of the three mp3 tracks as well as the 3-D video, along with your very own set of 3-D glasses with which to watch it. All that for a mere $5.00 ($7.50 with shipping). But it’s only available in a limited edition of 500. So if you like it, you should put a credit card number on it. Like now.
Here’s the 2-D version:
“Say No To Love” by The Pains of Being Pure at Heart: More Adorable Than Surprised Kitty?
June 30, 2010
With their self-titled debut last year, New York’s The Pains of Being Pure at Heart established themselves not only as one of the cleverest American indie pop bands to come around since Velocity Girl in the 1990s, but also, unquestionably, the cutest – in both sound and appearance. It was a noisy record, but the noise wasn’t abrasive so much as warm and fuzzy, and when you could hear the lyrics, they were full of puns (“Young Adult Friction”), alt-pop-cultural references, and coy tales of teenage ribaldry. Now, after releasing a more studio-polished EP (Higher Than the Stars) last fall, the band has returned with a new 7″ single (on “sea foam green” vinyl, even!) called “Say No To Love” b/w “Lost Saint”, both sides of which sport a jangly, retro-flavored melancholy that recalls 90s alterna-faves like the Lightning Seeds, the Cranberries, and Ivy. The band’s also put out a video for “Say No To Love” that delivers a 10,000 kiloton bomb of adorable on the viewer. Nibble on this, Suprised Kitty!
First Impressions: Jerrod Niemann
May 24, 2010
Sunday morning, I came downstairs and sort of half-heartedly flipped on the TV. The show I wanted to watch was still a good 18 minutes away, but sometimes it helps in our house to stake the claim in advance. As it happened, my partner must have been watching one of those Bill Engvall-hosted, hey-y’all-check-out-them-rednecks reality shows the night before, and the TV was still tuned to CMT, which – amazing these days, given the “M” in its initials – was actually playing a music video. Blame it on Sunday morning inertia: I didn’t rush to change the channel. But then, after a minute or so of doing nothing in particular – oh, look at the fog out there, it’s gonna be a muggy day, I thought absently to myself while surveying the progress of my garden – I found myself nodding and humming along to the tune they were playing on the TV.
The song, “Lover, Lover”, by one Jerrod Niemann, has one of those ultra-laid-back choruses, the kind conducive to lazy Sunday morning head-nodding, but which also fairly begs to be the soundtrack for all your summer tailgate parties, bonfires, and grill-outs; its simple complaint – you don’t treat me no good no more – delivered without self-pity but with a matter-of-fact cool underscored by richly chorded Opryland harmonies, all accompanied by little more than clapping hands, an acoustic guitar, and a bass drum keeping the downbeat as dutifully, as reliably, as unpretentiously as a 50s sitcom father providing for his family. Boring, bordering on enticing. (Or maybe it’s the other way around?)
In the song’s video, Niemann comes off as a paragon of unspectacular manhood and charmingly impish macho – he’s not going to stick around for further neglect, but he’s not going to get all tear-in-his-beer about it either. Instead – so the video goes – he’ll just sit out on the front steps, looking not-so-bad in blue jeans and a t-shirt, strumming his guitar, singing his song, and, y’know, inviting (or rather, enlisting some of the neighbor kids to put up handwritten posters inviting) passers-by to gut the apartment of all of his corporate career-woman girlfriend’s prized possessions. (Don’t try this on Craigslist!) I’m sure there’s a retrograde comment on the evolution of traditional gender roles in there somewhere, but… shoot, do you hear that bass voice in the harmonies?
Kansas-native Niemann has been making a decent living as a songwriter for the last half-decade or so (although he didn’t write “Lover, Lover” – it’s a Sonia Dada cover), scoring his biggest hit when Garth Brooks recorded “Good Ride Cowboy”, and recording a couple of self-released records along the way. Last year, he became the first artist signed to Brad Paisley‘s new label Sea Gayle Records, and started work on his major label debut Judge Jerrod and the Hung Jury. While citing such old-school country stars as Eddy Arnold, Lefty Frizzell, and George Strait as influences, Niemann doesn’t seem to belabor the typical country image too much. He eschews the traditional cowboy hat for something a little more train conductor. He may be a-pickin’-and-a-grinnin’, but not on a hay bail against a Hee-Haw blue sky backdrop; rather on the front stoop of his building in the shadow of a big city skyline. “Lover, Lover” is a great little song that’s already a Top 20 country hit, but with its effortless, just-this-side-of-gimmicky, Uncle Kracker-ish chorus – the song’s strongest but also most artistically suspect asset – it’s making its way up the Billboard Hot 100 as well.
Judge Jerrod and the Hung Jury is set for a July 13 release and is currently available for pre-order.
From the WTF Files: A Secret Stash of “Soviet Funk”
March 11, 2010
For most of us, the most daring unauthorized use of company property we’ll ever commit is to print off our March Madness brackets for the department pool. Which is amazing given the relatively tame punitive consequences of committing greater corporate sins. I mean, yeah, I’d probably get fired (and deeply embarrassed) if I got caught doing something indecent – say, distributing internet porn, or watching highlights from Glenn Beck – on my work computer. But that’d probably be it. Maybe a misdemeanor charge here or there, a fine, some probation, a bad reference. Whatevs. I’m confident I wouldn’t get dragged out of my home and shot in a city square, or tossed in a jail cell for indefinitely. Maybe it’s the predictable leniency of the punishment that keeps most of us from doing anything brilliant or consequential (and therefore risky) with our acts of petty corporate theft. If we were going to stake our lives on it, it would have to be brilliant, right? 
Meet Pavel Sysoyev, Cold War-era Soviet government employee, and probably the closest thing to Herbie Hancock to ever emerge from the obscure Russian outpost of Abakan, a city of about 160,000 located just north of Mongolia in the Republic of Khakassia in extreme southeastern Siberia. Although to say he “emerged” from Abakan is a bit of a mis-statement. Mr. Sysoyev (who now lives in St. Paul, Minnesota) may, in fact, be more famous now in the American Midwest than he ever was anywhere in Khakassia where the fact that his recordings of his original, American-influenced funk and jazz compositions (and those of a burgeoning local underground he mentored and produced) were made after-hours on top-of-the-line government-owned equipment – and this at a time when American popular musical forms were as freshly and ambiguously legal in the U.S.S.R. as medicinal marijuana is now in the U.S., and far less respectable – made widespread release of his music in his home country a laughable impossibility.
It’s only more than 35 years after the fact that the underground jazz/fusion/funk scene Sysoyev grew under cover of night in his little Soviet-financed musical petrie dish is seeing the light of release, thanks to Minneapolis-based Secret Stash Records, who, just a couple months ago, released an LP called Soviet Funk – Volume 1 (on red vinyl, of course) with a second volume slated for release next week! Soviet Funk – Volume 1 compiles ten instrumental gems (Look, Ma! No language barrier!) from Pavel Sysoyev’s vaults (attic? closet? little cubby hole under the floorboards?), from sessions dating to the early ’70s, a few credited to Sysoyev himself, but also including bands Sysoyev produced like Pomogite and Da/N’et. As startling as the mere existence of these recordings is (not to mention their sudden ready availability to schmos like me), it’s even more startling just how fricking great they are.
The songs themselves are smart and sophisticated, full of jaunty, stylish melodies, unexpected rhythmic twists, and harmonies that occasionally wink-nudge at the Russian classical music tradition the players came from, but the playing is incredible – and incredibly joyful – and the recordings sound as sharp as anything Creed Taylor set to tape in the same time period. For all the musical sophistication behind it though, it’s an immediately groovable record with no shortage of catchy, accessible tunes like the opener “Gostiny Dvor” whose bubbly, flute-driven melody sounds like a forgotten hit single. This is a record that compels you to keep flipping it over (and to keep doing that dorky little dance that you do when you’re fairly certain you’re alone with your record player) instead of browsing your shelves for what to listen to next. [Note: by "record", I mean "not a CD": Secret Stash is a vinyl-only label, but their records do come with .mp3 download cards for those of us who love our iPods as much as our turntables.]
In advance of the release of Soviet Funk – Volume 2, Secret Stash is now offering a free .mp3 download of a track by Pomogite, the seven-minute “Ubijcy v Belyx Xalatax” (did I mention it’s instrumental?) - an explosive saxophone-driven jam full of firework syncopations and out-of-nowhere time changes, bookended by a couple of elegant solo electric piano meditations. Proof that Volume 1 was no fluke - in fact, it’s a strong suggestion that Volume 2 is even better. I can’t wait.
New Release of the Week 1/26/10: Corinne Bailey Rae
January 26, 2010
Corinne Bailey Rae’s self-titled 2006 debut was one of the surprise successes of 2006. Her amalgam of soul and acoustic pop won her 2 million fans here in the states and won her a ton of Grammy nominations, and she did it without the benefit of a huge radio hit.
It’s pretty fair to say that a follow-up would have taken less than four years to complete, had Corinne’s husband not died from a drug overdose back in 2008. That event shook Corinne to her core, and she went through a period where she (justifiably) did not feel like writing songs and making music.
Finally, two years after her husband’s tragic death and nearly four years since her debut album’s release, Corinne is back with her sophomore work, “The Sea”. Advance reviews have largely been positive, and I’m looking forward to hearing the album. You can check out my pal Jeff Giles’ review of “The Sea” over at Eat Sleep Drink Music right here.
Also out this week:
*Lady Antebellum “Need You Now”: This co-ed trio is the hottest thing in country music right now not named Taylor Swift. The title track has already been a huge country hit and it’s made its’ way into the Top Ten on the pop charts as well. Expect “Need You Now” to open at the top of the Billboard charts next week with huge numbers.
*Michael Jackson “This is It” DVD: Those of you who didn’t get the chance to catch “This is It” in theaters really missed out. Despite the drug addict rumors, Michael was on top of his game as he was rehearsing for his run of shows in England. He also comes across as more human than anyone who’s followed him in the past two decades would think. Seriously-even if you’re not a super-fan, you’ll be impressed by the movie. There’s not a ton of bonus footage on the DVD, which kinda sucks.
*Barry Manilow “The Greatest Love Songs of All Time”: Is it me, or has Manilow done about 30,000 different versions of covers albums? Isn’t this guy a songwriter? Can’t he write his own material?
*David Sanborn “Only Everything”: One of the few horn players I can think of that I can immediately recognize when I can hear him-the others are Miles Davis and (sigh…) Kenny G, Sanborn is a legendary figure in jazz as well as pop, having played with everyone from David Bowie to Lenny Kravitz. I also have a soft spot for the guy because I was at one point co-workers (and friends) with his son Jonathan and he was surprisingly cool for a celebrity’s kid. His daddy raised him right. Anyway, the elder Sanborn’s new album features guest appearances from James Taylor and Joss Stone, among others.
Get the complete list of new releases from the fine folks at Pause and Play here!
First Listen: Gorillaz’ “Stylo”
January 25, 2010
Since the Gorillaz project was conceptualized a decade or so, I’ve gotta say that in terms of Damon Albarn projects, they’ve been my favorite. Blur’s always been kinda scattershot for me, and The Good, the Bad and the Queen was one of those albums I regretted buying after the first listen. Honestly, I could care less about the marketing gimmick (in this case, the band being “animated”)-all that matters to me is whether the music is good or not. For the most part, it has been, and Gorillaz has rightfully become the most critically adored and commercially accepted project of Albarn’s career-at least here in the States.
Anyway, there’s a new Gorillaz project coming later this year entitled “Plastic Beach”. The first single from it is called “Stylo”, and it features Albarn’s nasal vocal tones with assistance from a vaguely-recognizable Mos Def (who has officially recovered his mojo) and soul legend Bobby Womack (who can still sing with power past retirement age, if this song is any indication). The song itself is a little on the repetitive side, but I like the overall vibe of it. All Gorillaz songs seem to have this haunting quality to them.
Check out the song on Gorillaz’ official website and let us know what you think.
New Releases 1/19/10: Spoon, RJD2 & More
January 19, 2010
Hope that those of you who had a 3-day weekend had a good one, and hope that those of you in Massachusetts made it out to the polls today. Welcome to yet another Tuesday, one in which there are less new releases than normal-yep, it’s January. Here are some of the highlights.
Spoon “Transference”-I really tried to like “Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga”. Really. It just didn’t do anything for me. Of course, that probably just shot down the tiny sliver of indie cred I have left, but I don’t care. I did catch Spoon doing a soundcheck a couple of months ago, and they sounded pretty good-until the actual show, when they were completely upstaged by the two bands opening for them (Phoenix and Passion Pit). Anyway, we’re not about negativity here-this album should officially catapult Spoon into the major leagues.
RJD2 “The Colossus”-Ramble John Krohn, better known as RJD2, splits the difference between Moby and DJ Shadow. Each successive album has been less hip-hop based and more indie-pop based, which is fine. The guy’s talented. People slept on his last album, “The Third Hand” (which, to me, was Moby-er than ever before), but it was pretty good. “Colossus” might be my sole purchase this week.
“Crazy Heart” Original Soundtrack-If you watched the Golden Globes Sunday night, you’re well aware that Jeff Bridges took home the Best Actor in a Dramatic Motion Picture trophy for his performance of a down-and-out country singer in “Crazy Heart”. Newcomer Ryan Bingham also took home Best Original Song for “The Weary Kind”, also from this movie. Bridges (who turns out to be a pretty fine singer) turns in a few vocal performances here, as does Colin Farrell (!). The soundtrack was produced by T-Bone Burnett, who brought us one of the most popular soundtracks in recent years: “O Brother Where Art Thou”.
Also in stores today: a new one from Motion City Soundtrack (produced by Blink-182′s Mark Hoppus), British favorites The Editors (produced by legendary boardsman Flood, of Depeche Mode and U2 fame) and a new Eels record.
Get your complete list of this week’s releases here.
New Releases 1/12/09: Vampire Weekend and More!
January 12, 2010
Let’s get right to business.
*Vampire Weekend’s debut was my favorite album of 2007. It was really light in mood, had a fun vibe, and was different from just about any album that came out that year. In the fickle world of indie-rock blogging, you’re only good until the mainstream has caught up with you, and with a guest appearance on “Saturday Night Live” and almost 500,000 albums sold, they certainly don’t qualify as anyone’s secret anymore. While I have no doubts about the musical merits of their sophomore release, “Contra” (which is out today), I am curious to see how many hipper-than-thou types turn their noses up at the band when they wet their pants at the mere mention of the band’s name two years ago.
*If you’re like me, you hear the name “OK Go” and you think “treadmills”. Their video for “Here We Go Again” was a viral sensation. Even though I knew of them before the video (thanks to a song called “Get Over It” from their first album which appeared on an MTV compilation), they’re going to be stuck with that video probably for the rest of their careers. Anyway, the power-pop band is releasing album #3 today. “Of the Blue Colour of the Sky” is the title-and I assume said title is a joke and not the band trying to be pretentious.
*For those of you who make sure to tune in to “106 & Park” every night, you’ll be very happy to know that former B2K member Omarion is releasing his latest album, called “Ollusion”. This guy has a pretty dedicated fan base, but for whatever reason he just can’t seem to cross over. Two of his three previous solo albums debuted at #1, but quickly skidded down the charts and neither has crossed the million-sold mark here in the States. Having been released from his Sony Music contract, Omarion is now on his own EMI-distributed label after brief and unproductive stints in the camps of Timbaland and Lil Wayne.
*Isn’t it good to know that Ringo Starr’s still kickin’ around? The legendary ex-Beatle releases “Y Not” today, and it’s filled with as many guest appearances as one would expect from someone who gathers a ton of A-list musicians and heads out on the road every year. The featured artists on Mr. Starkey’s latest effort include Ben Harper, Richard Marx, Joe Walsh and some guy named McCartney.
Get the full list of this week’s releases (as well as future release dates) over at Pause and Play .
First Look: “Soldier of Love” by Sade
January 11, 2010
Sade’s new album is running neck and neck with the new one from Vampire Weekend (out tomorrow) as my most anticipated album of 1st quarter 2010. Sade always brings the goods, and after a ten-year gap between albums, let’s just say we’re salivating for new work from the British band.
A month or so ago, I premiered their new song “Soldier of Love”, and now the video has premiered. This is certainly the first Sade video I can remember with choreography, but the video fits in with the militaristic metaphors strewn throughout the song. Also worth noting is the fact that Sade (the woman) looks as good as she did twenty-five years ago!
Anyway, check out the video and let us know what you think.
