Baby Indie

New Adds to Baby Indie Radio: Hospitality, Sharon Van Etten, Deer Tick, Ben Kweller, Air

2012-02-12T08:16:00.000-08:00

Hospitality

Hospitality is an American Indie pop trio from Brooklyn, New York, formed in 2007. The band is currently signed to Merge Records and released their first full-length album on January 31, 2012.

The band garnered buzz from Wired, NPR and others even before releasing their debut The album was met with generally positive reviews. Pitchfork.com gave it a 7.4, The AV Club rated it an "A-" and Rolling Stone awarded 4 out of 5 stars. Whitney Matheson of USA Today's Pop Candy named it her album of the week after its debut.

Sharon Van Etten

Singer/Songwriter from Brooklyn, NY.

The National’s Aaron Dessner was one of Sharon Van Etten’s earliest supporters, and was so swayed by the “Epic” track “Love More” that he performed a cover of it at the 2010 MusicNow Festival with Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon. That developed into a friendship and a working collaboration, as Dessner produced Van Etten’s new record “Tramp”.

Beirut, Zach Condon does make a guest appearance on the equally ukulele driven “We Are Fine”, a song about overcoming social anxiety.

Deer Tick

Deer Tick is an American alt-country band from Providence, Rhode Island led by guitarist and singer-songwriter John McCauley.

Ben Kweller

Adult Alt singer/songwriter from San Francisco.

Air

Air is a music duo from Versailles, France that mix electronica with 60s lounge and 70s lite rock.

Le Voyage Dans La Lune (A Trip to the Moon) is the seventh studio album

the album takes its inspiration from the classic 1902 silent film Le Voyage Dans La Lune (A Trip to the Moon) by Georges Méliès. A fully restored version of the film is currently playing at film festivals worldwide. Air composed an original score for this new film version of the film.

Just Added to Baby Indie Radio Playlist: Andrew Bird, First Aid Kit, Plants and Animals

2012-01-28T08:12:00.000-08:00

1) First Aid Kit -
Though they sound straight from the Heartland, First Aid Kit is a Swedish folk duo composed of sisters Johanna (b. 1990) and Klara (b. 1993) Söderberg. Their 2008 YouTube video cover of the song "Tiger Mountain Peasant Song" by the Fleet Foxes spread their name rapidly on the Internet, the sisters subsequently appeared alongside Fleet Foxes performing the song in a concert in Holland. Their new album is produced by Bright Eyes' Mike Mogis.

2) Andrew Bird -Eyeoneye

Andrew Bird will return with his sixth LP, Break It Yourself, on March 6th via Mom + Pop Music. He also has a great marketing idea that gives back to the fans: Ticket orders for each of Bird’s upcoming shows include a digital copy of the album, along with a download of Fake Conversations, a live EP culled from Bird’s fall 2011 tour, and a second live EP from the 2012 tour, which will be released in the spring.

3) Plants and Animals

Plants and Animals are a Canadian indie-rock band from Montreal (featuring two members originally from Halifax, Nova Scotia) which comprises guitarist-vocalists Warren Spicer and Nic Basque and drummer-vocalist Matthew Woody Woodley.[1] They often describe their music as post-classic rock.

Just Added to Baby Indie Radio Playlist: the Shins, Pterodactyl, Albert Hammond Jr., Blind Pilot, The Little Willies, Michael Kiwanuka

2012-01-15T08:17:00.000-08:00

1) The Shins - Simple Song

The Shins upcoming album will be titled Port of Morrow and will be released March 2012. The cover art for the album is designed by Jacob Escobedo. The new band backing Mercer on the 2012 tour includes singer/songwriter Richard Swift, Modest Mouse drummer Joe Plummer, Yuuki Matthews of Crystal Skulls and Jessica Dobson

2) Pterodactyl - The Break

Pterodactyl started formulating their brand of shrieking, stomping indie rock in the early 2000s. The band formed in Ohio and relocated to Brooklyn, where it attracted the attention of Brah Records

3)Albert Hammond Jr. - Thirteen (Big Star Cover)

Albert Louis Hammond, Jr. is an American musician and member of the garage rock band The Strokes, in which he primarily plays rhythm guitar and occasionally lead guitar, while playing keyboards sometimes live. He is also a solo musician. His father, Albert Hammond, whose career was primarily in the 1960s and 1970s, had even greater success on the singles charts as a songwriter and occasional singer.

4) Blind Pilot - Get It Out

Blind Pilot is an American indie folk band based in Portland, Oregon.

5) The Little Willies - Jolene

The Little Willies is a band formed in 2003. It features Norah Jones on piano and vocals, Richard Julian on vocals, Jim Campilongo on guitar, Lee Alexander on bass, and Dan Rieser on drums.

6) Michael Kiwanuka - Tell Me Tale

Michael Kiwanuka is a British soul musician of Ugandan heritage who is signed to Communion Records.[1] He has been compared to Bill Withers and Otis Redding,[2] as well as Van Morrison and the Temptations.[3] In January 2012, the BBC announced that he had won the Sound of 2012 poll.

Coming Soon in 2012: Dr. Dog, Leonard Cohen, Air, Shearwater, Lambchop

2012-01-01T11:10:00.000-08:00

1) Dr. Dog - Be The Void (Feb 7)

2) Air - Le Voyage Dans La Lune (Feb 7)

3) Leonard Cohen - Old Ideas(Jan 31)

4)Shearwater - Animal Joy (Feb 12)

5) Lambchop - Mr. M (Feb 21)

The Experts Speak - Top Albums of 2011 from ten critics, musicians, and djs

2011-12-27T10:27:00.000-08:00

1) NPR Bob Boilen's Favorite Album Of 2011

Diamond Mine by King Creosote & Jon Hopkins

2) Wild Flag's Carrie Brownstein's Favorite Thing of 2011

Eleanor Friedberger: Last Summer

3) WU LYF's Evans Kati - Best Reissue of 2011

Talk Talk: Laughing Stock

4) Fleet Foxes' Robin Pecknold Top Thing

(tie) 01. Kurt Vile: Smoke Ring for My Halo and Bill Callahan: Apocalypse

5) Pitchfork's top choice for 2011

Bon Iver - Bon Iver

6) Kevin Cole- DJ KEXP

My Head is an Animal by Of Monsters and Men

7) Larry Rose-DJ KEXP

Kaputt by Destroyer

8) The Needle Drop's #1

Helplessness Blues by Fleet Foxes

9) Metacritic Top Album of 2011

Let England Shake by PJ Harvey

10) Roling Stone's The Best Under-the-Radar Album of 2011

Josh T. Pearson – Last of the Country Gentlemen

New Adds to Baby Indie Radio: Jonsi, Black Keys, Amy Winehouse, Desertshore, Bill Callahan,

2011-12-20T10:42:00.000-08:00

Jonsi - We Bought a Zoo

The Black Keys- Dead and Gone

Amy Winehouse - Lioness

Desertshore - Mercy

Bill Callahan - Free's

New Adds to Baby Indie Radio: She & Him, White Denim, Black Moth Super Rainbow, Bombadil, Snowmine, Sea Lions

2011-12-10T09:08:00.000-08:00

She & Him - Christmas Wish

White Denim - Cat City

Black Moth Super Rainbow - Twin of Myself

Bombadil - The Pony Express

Snowmine- Hologram

Sea Lions -My Girl

New Adds to Baby Indie Radio: Sunbears!, Quilt

2011-11-27T09:03:00.000-08:00

Sunbears! - Give Love A Try

Quilt - Cowboys in the Void

New Adds to Baby Indie Radio: North Highlands, Kate Bush, Johnny Flynn, Holiday Shores, The Duke & The King, Tennis System

2011-11-24T07:35:00.000-08:00

Kate Bush - Wild Man

North Highlands - Bruce

Johnny Flynn - Barnacled Warship

Holiday Shores - Threepeat Got Old

Shaky - The Duke & The King

Tennis System - Hey, We Tried

New Adds to Baby Indie Radio: The Bees, Spectrals, Treefight For Sunlight, Carter Tanton, R.E.M.'s final single

2011-11-18T19:25:00.000-08:00

The Bees - I Really Need Love

SPECTRALS - Get A Grip

Treefight For Sunlight - Facing The Sun

Carter Tanton - Murderous Joy

R.E.M. - We All Go Back To Where We Belong

The Download 15 - October 22, 2011 from Sirius XMU

2011-10-29T09:24:00.000-07:00

The 15 most downloaded songs of the week according to Sirius XMU.

15 FRIENDS – I’M HIS GIRL

14 BLEACHED – SEARCHING THROUGH THE PAST

13 EVERYTHING BUT THE GIRL – NIGHT TIME (XX COVER)

12 ROB CROW – PREPARE TO BE MINED

11 BEST COAST / JOHNNY MARR – IN YOUR SLEEP

10 STONE ROSES – I WANNA BE ADORED

09 CHAIRLIFT – SIDEWALK SAFARI

08 SMALL BLACK – MOON KILLER

07 HEEMS – I WANT IT BAD

06 ZOLA JESUS – SEEKIR

05 GAUNTLET HAIR – TOP BUNK

04 YOUTH LAGOON – AFTERNOON

03 CLASS ACTRESS – WEEKEND

02 REAL ESTATE – GREEN AISLES

01 M83 – STEVE McQUEEN

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The Download 15 - October 15, 2011 by Sirius XMU

2011-10-19T18:30:00.000-07:00

It's the Download 15!! The 15 most downloaded songs of the week.

15 DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE – DOORS UNLOCKED (CUT COPY REMIX)

14 WILLIAM SHATNER – SPACE ODDITY

13 ELECTRIC SIX – INTERCHANGEABLE KNIFE

12 SHE AND HIM – THE CHRISTMAS WALTZ

11 SMALL BLACK - TWO RIVERS (FEAT. HEEMS)

10 THE WEEKND – INITIATION

09 TOKYO POLICE CLUB – KIM AND JESSIE (M83 COVER)

08 FUTURE ISLANDS - BALANCE

07 LOS CAMPESINIOS – HELLO SADNESS

06 LANA DEL REY – BLUE JEANS (LIVE AT THE PREMISES)

05 TENNIS – TELL HER NO (ZOMBIES COVER)

04 REAL ESTATE – GREEN AISLES

03 RADIOHEAD – LITTLE BY LITTLE (CARIBOU RMX)

02 YOUTH LAGOON – AFTERNOON

01 BJORK – CRYSTALLINE

Just Added to Baby Indie Radio Playlist: Ryan Adams, Lanterns on the Lake, Casiokids, Caveman, Blind Pilot, Big Troubles, Tyler Ramsey, Real Estate

2011-10-15T08:34:00.000-07:00

1) Lanterns on the Lake

2)Caveman

3) Blind Pilot

4) Ryan Adams

5) Casiokids

6) Big Troubles

7) Tyler Ramsey

8) Real Estate

Sirius XMU's The Download 15 for October 8, 2011

2011-10-13T18:37:00.000-07:00

It's the Download 15!! The 15 most downloaded songs of the week.

15 NEUTRAL MILK HOTEL – IN THE AEROPLANE OVER THE SEA (LIVE AT OCCUPY WALL STREET)

14 FUTURE ISLANDS – BALANCE

13 KING KRULE (FORMERLY ZOO KID) –THE NOOSE OF JAH CITY

12 ROSTAM WOOD

11 PHANTOGRAM – DON’T MOVE

10 MGMT – ALL WE EVER WANTED WAS EVERYTHING (BAUHAUS COVER)

09 FEIST – THE BAD IN EACH OTHER

08 YUCK – SOOTHE ME

07 LANA DEL REY – VIDEO GAMES (JAMIE WOON REMIX)

06 BRIGHT EYES / FIRST AID KIT – WE’RE GONNA BE FRIENDS

05 BJORK – CRYSTALINE

04 REAL ESTATE – GREEN AISLES

03 YOUTH LAGOON – AFTERNOON

02 ZOLA JESUS – SEEKIR

01 DUM DUM GIRLS – BEDROOM EYES

Just Added to Baby Indie Radio Playlist: Josh Rouse, Ski Lodge, Loney Dear, AA Bondy, Radical Face, Dan Mangan, Tin Sparrow, Pocketbooks

2011-10-08T08:42:00.000-07:00

1) Josh Rouse and the Long Vacations

2) Loney Dear - Hall Music

3) Ski Lodge

4) AA Bondy - Believers

5) Radical Face- Family Tree: The Roots

6) Dan Mangan - Oh Fortune

7) Tin Sparrow - For You

8) Pocketbooks - Carousel

Sirius XMU's The Download 15 - October 1, 2011

2011-10-04T22:32:00.000-07:00

The 15 most downloaded songs of the week.

15 FORD AND LOPATIN – TOO MUCH MIDI (PLEASE FORGIVE ME (ALAN BRAXE REMIX) ) (PRONOUNCED LOW-PATTIN)

14 MGMT – LUCIFER SAM (PINK FLOYD COVER)

13 TOM WAITS – BACK IN THE CROWD

12 DOMINANT LEGS – HOOP OF LOVE

11 JJ – YOUR LOVE (OUTFIELD COVER)

10 YUCK – SOOTHE ME

09 ROSTAM – WOOD

08 TWIN SISTER – KIMMI IN A RICE FIELD

07 REAL ESTATE – GREEN AISLES

06 GIRLS – HONEY BUNNY

05 CLAP YOUR HANDS SAY YEAH – MANIAC

04 ST. VINCENT – CHLOE IN THE AFTERNOON

03 RADIOHEAD – LITTLE BY LITTLE

02 DUM DUM GIRLS – COMING DOWN (DEE DEE SOLO SXMU SESSIONS VERSION)

01 YOUTH LAGOON – AFTERNOON

Sirius XMU's Download 15 for September 24, 2011

2011-09-29T20:10:00.000-07:00

The 15 most downloaded songs of the week.

15 KAVINSKY – NIGHTCALL (FEAT. LOVEFOXX FROM CSS)

14 TWILIGHT SAD – KILLIT IN THE MORNING

13 HEEMS – COMPUTERS

12 WILD FLAG – ROMANCE

11 SMITH WESTERNS – END OF THE NIGHT (PEAKING LIGHTS REMIX)

10 ZOLA JESUS – SEEKIR

09 GAUNTLET HAIR – KEEP TIME

08 TWIN SISTER – SPAIN

07 JENS LEKMAN – HAVING AN ARGUMENT WITH MYSELF

06 CLAP YOUR HANDS SAY YEAH – SAME MISTAKE

05 WAVVES – NODDING OFF (FEAT. BEST COAST)

04 NEON INDIAN – POLISH GIRL

03 DUM DUM GIRLS – BEDROOM EYES

02 GIRLS – HONEY BUNNY

01 ST. VINCENT – CRUEL

Just Added to Baby Indie Radio Playlist: Wilco, CANT, Laura Marling, Veronica Falls

2011-09-26T09:20:00.000-07:00

1) CANT - Dreams Come True

2) Laura Marling - A Creature I Don't Know

3) Veronica Falls

4) Wilco - The Whole Love

Just Added to the Baby Indie Playlist: Neon Indian, Clap Your Hands and Say Yeah, Calexico, Mikal Cronin, Megafaun, Baths, Jens Lekman

2011-09-21T18:39:00.001-07:00

1) Neon Indian - Era Extrana

2) Clap Your Hands and Say Yeah - Hysterical

3) Calexico - The Guard

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4) Mikal Cronin - It Is Alright

5) Megafaun - Megafaun

6) Baths - Pop music, False B-sides

7) Jens Lekman - An Argument with Myself

Just Added to Baby Indie Radio Playlist: Girls, St. Vincent, Blitzen Trapper, Mates of State, Blacklips, Nick Lowe, Luke Temple

2011-09-13T17:50:00.000-07:00

1) Girls - Father, Son, Holy Ghost

2) St. Vincent - Strange Mercy

3) Mates of States - Mountaintops

4) The Blacklips - New Direction

5) Blitzen Trapper - American Goldwing

6) Nick Lowe -The Old Magic

7) Luke Temple - Don't Act Like You Don't Care

Adult Album Alternative Charts: The Baker's Dozen - 9/10/11 SiriusXM The Spectrum

2011-09-13T17:28:00.000-07:00

1. Dawes – Time Spent in Los Angeles

2. Motopony – King of Diamonds

3. The Head & The Heart – Lost In My Mind

4. Needtobreathe – Drive All Night

5. Ryan Adams – Lucky Now

6. Brett Dennen – Comeback Kid (That’s My Dog)

7. Florence + The Machine – What the Water Gave Me

8. My Morning Jacket – You Wanna Freak Out

9. Coldplay – Every Teardrop Is A Waterfall

10. Wilco – I Might

11. Feist – How Come You Never Go There?

12. Foster the People – Pumped Up Kicks

13. Jayhawks – She Walks In So Many Ways

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Just Added to Baby Indie Radio Playlist: Drums, Rapture, Bon Iver, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Widowspeak, Patti Smith, Lindsey Buckingham, Glen Campbell

2011-09-06T17:35:00.000-07:00

The Drums - Money

The Rapture - It Takes Time To Be A Man

Bon Iver - Come Talk To Me

Charlotte Gainsbourg - Memoir

Widowspeak - Nightcrawlers

Patti Smith Group - Frederick

Lindsey Buckingham - That's The Way Love Goes

Glen Campbell - Ghost on the Canvas

Indie Rock Charts - The Download 15 (by Sirius XMU) - September 3, 2011

2011-09-06T17:13:00.000-07:00

1.ST. VINCENT – CRUEL

2.STEPHEN MALKMUS & THE JICKS – NON ONE IS (AS I ARE BE)

3.Neon Indian – Hex Girlfriend

4.LANA DEL REY – VIDEO GAMES

5.GIRLS – HONEY BUNNY

6.BEIRUT – SANTA FE

7.Surfer Blood – Miranda

8.Wavves – I Wanna Meet Dave Grohl

9.Dum Dum Girls – Bedroom Eyes

10.ATLAS SOUND – TERRA INCOGNITA

11.Male Bonding – Tame The Sun

12.ACTIVE CHILD – PLAYING HOUSE (FEAT. HOW TO DRESS WELL)

13.Jack White/Insane Clown Posse/JEFF T - Leck Mich Im Arsch

14.Health – Goth Star (Pictureplane Cover)

15.Purity Ring – Belispeak

Adult Alternative Charts - The Baker's Dozen (by SiriusXM TheSpectrum)- 9/3/11

2011-09-06T16:57:00.000-07:00

1. The Head & The Heart – Lost In My Mind

2. Motopony – King of Diamonds

3. Dawes – Time Spent in Los Angeles

4. Coldplay – Every Teardrop Is A Waterfall

5. Needtobreathe – Drive All Night

6. Ryan Adams – Lucky Now

7. My Morning Jacket – You Wanna Freak Out

8. Brett Dennen – Comeback Kid (That’s My Dog)

9. Feist – How Come You Never Go There?

10. Wilco – I Might

11. Jayhawks – She Walks In So Many Ways

12. Florence + The Machine – What the Water Gave Me

13. Laura Marling – Sophia

Just Added to Baby Indie Radio Playlist: Beirut, Stephin Merritt, Mother Falcon, Gold Leaves, We Are Augustines, Magic Trick

2011-09-01T22:15:00.000-07:00

1) Magic Trick
The Glad Birth of Love

Fresh & Onlys front-man Tim Cohen solo project, four songs in 45 minutes, folk with more than a hint of prog, Cohen keeps the mood mellow

2) Gold Leaves
The Ornament

Grant Olsen of Arthur & Yu, indie folk-pop

3) Beirut
The Rip Tide

(piano, horns, strings)

4) Mother Falcon
Alhambra

Mother Falcon is a 12-piece orchestral band born in Austin, Texas who play a combination of classical and indie folk.

indie music.

5) Stephin Merritt
Obscurities

The creative force behind the Magnetic Fields releases a collection of hard-to-finds.

6) We Are Augustines
Rise Ye Sunken Ships

Emotional indie rock, like Arcade Fire or Mumford & Sons

Indie Charts - The Download 15 - August 27, 2011 (SiriusXM, XMU)

2011-09-01T22:04:00.001-07:00

15 DJ SHADOW (FEAT. AFRIKA BOY) – I’M EXCITED

14 THE WAR ON DRUGS – BABY MISSLES

13 THE WEEKND – LONELY STAR

12 GANDADDY – HEWLETT’S DAUGHTER (ORIGINAL CASSETTE TAPE DEMO)

11 STEPHEN MERRITT – THE SUN THE SEA AND THE SKY

10 THE RAPTURE – HOW DEEP IS YOUR LOVE

09 CSS – HITS ME LIKE A ROCK

08 BEIRUT – SANTA FE

07 BON IVER / JAMES BLAKE – FALL CREEK BOYS CHOIR

06 ACTIVE CHILD – PLAYING HOUSE (FEAT. HOW TO DRESS WELL)

05 ATLAS SOUND – TERRA INCOGNITA

04 ST. VINCENT – CRUEL

03 LANA DEL REY – VIDEO GAMES

02 GIRLS – HONEY BUNNY

01 STEPHEN MALKMUS & THE JICKS – NON ONE IS (AS I ARE BE)

Adult Alternative Charts (The Baker's Dozen - 8/27/11)

2011-09-01T21:19:00.000-07:00

The Baker's Dozen - 8/27/11
SiriusXM The Spectrum

1. Dawes – Time Spent in Los Angeles
2. Needtobreathe – Drive All Night

3. The Head & The Heart – Lost In My Mind

4. Motopony – King of Diamonds

5. Jayhawks – She Walks In So Many Ways

6. Coldplay – Every Teardrop Is A Waterfall

7. My Morning Jacket – You Wanna Freak Out

8. Wilco – I Might

9. Laura Marling – Sophia

10. Feist – How Come You Never Go There?

11. Death Cab For Cutie – You Are A Tourist

12. Brett Dennen – Comeback Kid (That’s My Dog)

13. Ryan Adams – Lucky Now

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The Muppets Go Indie, Kermit History, Andrew Bird, and more.

2011-08-28T08:43:00.000-07:00

If you grew up in the 70s and 80s, you grew up with the Muppets. Muppets: The Green Album, is a new collection of Muppet songs covered with much love and care by Andrew Bird, My Morning Jacket, Weezer, Sondre Lerche and other artists.

"Bein' Green" is a popular song written by Joe Raposo in 1970 for the first season of the children's television program Sesame Street. It was originally performed by Kermit the Frog (voiced by Jim Henson).

In the song, Kermit begins by lamenting his green coloration, expressing that green "blends in with so many ordinary things" and wishing to be some other color. But by the end of the song, Kermit recalls positive associations with the color green, and concludes by accepting and embracing his greenness. ("It's beautiful! And it's what I want to be...")

Research by Children's Television Workshop in 1989 indicated that "many preschool children failed to recognize that Kermit felt happy about being green by the end of the song."

Kermit the Frog is puppeteer Jim Henson's most famous Muppet creation, first introduced in 1955.

The Muppet Show ran on CBS from 1976 to 1981. Musical guest stars included Elton John, Paul Simon, Alice Cooper, Blondie (Debbie Harry), Dizzy Gillespie, and Kris Kristofferson.

OK GO covers the theme song.

Many of the cover songs from the tribute record come from The Muppet Movie.

Roger Ebert gave it three-and-a-half out of four stars. He stated, "The Muppet Movie not only stars the Muppets but, for the first time, shows us their feet."
The film sold nearly 26 million tickets and grossed $65,200,000 domestically (adjusted for inflation, this would equal $206,509,960 in 2010 dollars), making it the highest-grossing Muppet film.

In 2009, it was named to the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for being “culturally, historically or aesthetically” significant and will be preserved for all time.

The film's soundtrack was released by Atlantic Records in 1979. The songs were written by Paul Williams and Kenny Ascher. Williams recalled to Songfacts: "Jim Henson gave you more [creative] freedom than anybody I've ever worked with in my life. I said, 'You want to hear the songs as we're writing them?' He said, 'No. I'll hear them in the studio. I know I'm gonna love them.' You just don't get that kind of freedom on a project these days."

A new Muppet movie written by Jason Segel, with songs by Flight of the Conchords' Bret McKenzie is due in November.

Clem Snide's Journey

2011-08-13T10:23:00.000-07:00

New EP inspired by Clem Snide's 2010 performance of Journey's "Faithfully" for the Onion AV Club's undercover series.

"Faithfully" is a popular song and power ballad by the band Journey, and the second single from their album Frontiers. It peaked at #12 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1983, giving the band their second consecutive top twenty hit from Frontiers. The music was composed by guitarist Neal Schon and the lyrics were written by keyboardist Jonathan Cain and performed by Steve Perry. While the song was relatively successful on the charts, it has gone on to become one of their most recognizable songs, and has enjoyed lasting popularity.

The song describes the relationship of a "music man" on the road. The difficulties of raising and maintaining a family, two strangers having to fall in love again, and staying faithful while touring are brought up. However he suggests that he gets the "joy of rediscovering" her, and insists "I'm forever yours... Faithfully."

The music video featured a then-unique "life on tour" theme parallel to the song's lyrics, showing the band's performances in different venues and their travels around the USA. Steve Perry can be seen shaving his short-lived but talked-about moustache in the video. This video utilized footage from the documentary video Journey: Frontiers and Beyond narrated by John Facenda, voice of NFL Films, shortly before his death in 1984. The concept of the "road video" was later utilized by several other bands, including Bon Jovi, Guns N' Roses, Genesis, Mötley Crüe and Richard Marx.

Clem Snide is an alt-country band featuring Eef Barzelay (guitar, vocals)

"Clem Snide" is also a character in several novels by William S. Burroughs, including Naked Lunch, The Ticket That Exploded, and Exterminator!.

Journey is an American rock band formed in 1973 in San Francisco, by former members of Santana. Allmusic has described Journey as "one of America's most beloved (and sometimes hated) commercial rock/pop bands." According to the Recording Industry Association of America, Journey has sold 47 million albums in the United States, making them the 28th best selling band. Their worldwide sales have reached over 80 million albums. 1981's "Don't Stop Believin'" is the top-selling catalog track in iTunes history. Height of popularity: 1981–83

"Lights" is a song recorded by American rock band Journey and written by Steve Perry and Neal Schon, released in 1978. The song is a ballad about Journey's city of origin, San Francisco. It was one of Steve Perry's first Journey songs, and was recorded soon after his joining the band. It is frequently played at San Francisco Giants baseball games (including a version led by Perry himself at Game 2 of the 2010World Series.

New Psychedelic Pop from "Wonderful"

2011-08-07T11:39:00.000-07:00

For fans of the Polyphonic Spree and Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros

Wonderful's "Wake Up To Dreamland" was recorded in makeshift cabin studios in remote locations throughout the Pacific Northwest - Cannon Beach, Mount Ranier, the Skagit River, and floating cabins in the North Cascades.

The Ladybug Transistor: Clutching Stems

2011-07-23T09:49:00.000-07:00

The Ladybug Transistor is a Brooklyn-based indie pop group associated with The Elephant Six Collective. Formed in 1995. Clutching Stems is The Ladybug Transistor’s first album since drummer San Fadyl died in 2007. Opening track is catchy hybrid of early-’80s new wave and late-’60s sunshine-pop.

Sondre Lerche: Dominoe

2011-07-22T10:12:00.000-07:00

Rolling Stone gives “Sondre Lerche” a 3-star review:

“‘To divert my mind/I try to make another love song rhyme,’ Sondre Lerche sings on his sixth album. That this couplet (in “Coliseum Town”) technically fails to rhyme itself is just one of many wry touches on Sondre Lerche…. the man has grown since his early-2000s days as an indie-pop prodigy: Now a dependably intriguing wordsmith, he still shows no shortage of unusually intelligent quirks.”

Documentary music video by director Kate Barker-Froyland. Assembled from footage she shot on the road and during different stages of making Sondre Lerche's new self-titled album

The Middle East: I Want That You Are Always Happy

2011-07-21T11:03:00.000-07:00

Middle East is a 7 piece band from Australia.

Most known for their song 'Blood' - featured in the films Accidents Happen and It's Kind of a Funny Story as well as an episode of the Australian television comedy-drama series Offspring and a TV commercial for the European bank BNP Paribas

I Want That You Are Always Happy is a mostly dark, quiet record, with a few exceptions below.

Pure Indie Pop from the Brown Recluse: Evening Tapestry - and Who is Joe Meek

2011-07-20T10:58:00.000-07:00

Indie Pop from the City of Brotherly Love!

Sounds Like: Classic Sunshine pop & Belle and Sebastian.

Influences from the band's website: Taking influence from the psych pop of The Zombies and Margo Guryan, the tropicalia of Os Mutantes, and 60s producers like Joe Meek and Phil Spector, and Curt Boettcher's The Millennium/Sagittarius

WHO IS JOE MEEK?
Robert George "Joe" Meek (5 April 1929 Newent, Gloucestershire–3 February 1967 in London) was a pioneering English record producer and songwriter.

His most famous work was The Tornados' hit "Telstar" in 1962, which became the first record by a British group to hit #1 in the US Hot 100.

Meek's concept album I Hear a New World is regarded as a watershed in modern music for its innovative use of electronic sounds.

His commercial success as a producer was short-lived and Meek gradually sank into debt and depression. On 3 February 1967, using a shotgun owned by musician Heinz Burt, Meek murdered his landlady before turning the gun on himself.

Diego Garcia: Laura

2011-07-19T11:29:00.000-07:00

"Laura" is the new album from former Elefant frontman Diego Garcia. Musically - yé-yé sixties french pop, Argentinean tango, and seductive Spanish guitar.

Jeremy Messersmith - Tatooine

2011-07-18T18:39:00.000-07:00

Star Wars given the Paper Treatment! Watch the Original Trilogy retold via paper animation set to the lovely song 'Tatooine' by Jeremy Messersmith
Animated/Directed by Eric Power

Twin suns of Tatooine, Taught me everything I know...(x2)

There's room up there for second chances,

Singles are fine but doubles are fantastic,

I'd like to think that there's a star for me and you,

Spinning round, falling for one another

Twin suns of Tatooine, Taught me everything I know...(x2)

Solos are fine but duets are romantic

A pair is grand but a trio'd be disastrous

I'd like to think that there's a star for me and you

Spinning round, falling for one another

Is Chillwave Recession Music? Cheap Instruments & Favorites from Washed Out

2011-07-12T10:56:00.000-07:00

The New York Times calls Chillwave "Recession-era music"

NYT's Jon Pareles on Chillwave: "They're solo acts or minimal bands, often with a laptop at their core, and they trade on memories of electropop from the 1980s, with bouncing, blipping dance-music hooks (and often weaker lead voices). It's recession-era music: low-budget and danceable Its musical predecessors are diverse and include the synthpop of the 1980s, shoegaze,[4] ambient, musique concrète and various types of music outside of the Western World."

The idea here is that the chillwavers are making music frugally in bedrooms with laptops, cheap keyboards, and offbeat record collections - just like the hip-hop artists of the Ronald Reagan recession years (minus the laptops). And unlike the broke fans of the 80s, one doesn't even have to buy a blank tape, with mp3s now growing on trees.

However, Rock has always been an art form for the poor/middle class/ those cut off from Big Daddy. Elvis, Buddy Holly, Little Richard, and Johnny Cash escaped the cotton fields and small town drudgery with cheap guitars. In the 60s, middle class kids took their Sears & JC Penney instruments to the garage and imitated rhythm and blues records. Punk would reject the arena rock of the 70s and get things back to the garage. And finally hip-hop did it with "2 turntables and a microphone."

Are you an inspiring musician with a limited budget?
Some Musical Ideas for Tough Economic Times.

1) THE JUG

2) THE WASHBOARD

3) THE SAW

4) THE SPOONS

MORE ON WASHED OUT

Ernest Greene aka Washed Out, whose new album Within and Without was released yesterday, shared his faves with Pitchfork. He is a surprisingly deep cat.

1)Favorite Old School Song: PM Dawn - Paper Doll

Washed Out says: "It's classic, down-tempo 90s pop. When I was starting work on my record, I didn't have much of a plan for where I wanted to take the songs. But then I decided to use more digital-sounding synths and a cleaner sound, and some of the songs started to take on the feel of some of the 90s stuff that I used to listen to way back in the day."

History: PM Dawn is remembered for their single "Set Adrift on Memory Bliss", which sampled the Spandau Ballet song "True", and featured a cameo by Spandau Ballet singer Tony Hadley in the music video of the song."Set Adrift on Memory Bliss" hit #1 the week of November 30, 1991, and holds the distinction of being the first #1 song on the Billboard Hot 100 chart following the introduction of Nielsen SoundScan to the chart.
"Paper Doll", which was one of the early singles Island released in the United Kingdom, was released in the U.S. as a follow-up to "Set Adrift on Memory Bliss," and peaked at #28 in early 1992. "Paper Doll" is said well over 100 times in the song, which makes it second only to MC Hammer's "Pray" which holds the record for the most times a title is repeated in an U.S. Top 40 hit

2) Washed Out's Favorite Recent Read: Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry by Jacques Maritain

Washed Out says: When I write music it's kind of mindless and very intuitive - and the book addresses that

History: Jacques Maritain (1882–1973), French philosopher and political thinker, was an influential interpreter & promoter of the thought of St Thomas Aquinas

3)Washed Out's Favorite Current Movie: Tree of Life

4) Washed Out's Favorite Instrument: Crumar Performer
Used by Space Jazz musician Sun Ra and Nick Rhodes of Duran Duran

The not so sweet indie pop sounds of the Cults

2011-06-17T11:23:00.000-07:00

On the surface, the sound of the Cults 2011 self-titled debut recalls the sweetness of 60s pop. For me, the Cults sounded a bit like a hipster version of the Free Design. How wholesome is that!

The Cults name Lesley Gore and the Shangri-Las as major influences.

However, underneath the Cults' sugar coated musical shell the listener hears quick, half buried samples of voices from Charles Manson, Jim Jones, and Patty Hearst. The opening of the Cults first hit "Go outside" features the Reverend Jim Jones preaching to his flock just before the mass suicide: "To me, death is not a fearful thing. It's living that's treacherous."

With the Jones sample at the start of the song, suddenly the simple lyrics take on different meanings.

I really want to go out
I really want to go outside and stop to see your day
You really want to hole up
You really want to stay inside and sleep the light away

I really want to go out
I really want to go outside and make it light all day
You really want to hole up
You really want to stay inside and not care where you lay

Well I know what's good
Exactly cause I have been there before
Yeah I know what's good
Exactly those things night cannot behold

I really want to go out
I really want to go outside and stop to see your day
You really want to hole up
You really want to stay inside and sleep the light away

I think it's good to go out
cause if you don't you'll never make a memory that will stay
I think that you should wake up
I think I want to live my life and you're just in my way

Is the singer telling her depressed partner "Go out and make the most of your life!" or is she a mindless disciple trying to convince with apocalyptic jubilance to go outside and drink the "kool-aid" with the others? I prefer to think of it as a "take on the day" pick-me-up.

Even the cover art for "Go Outside" now has a double meaning. Is it two people caught in a moment of spastic dance or the bird's eye view of two dead lovers?

The Cults second single "Abducted" features a sample from an interview with Patty Hearst. The lyrics suggest that love can be like the Stockholm Syndrome - the behavior of kidnap victims who, over time, become sympathetic to their captors.

I knew right then that I'd been abducted
I knew right then no one was above him
I knew right then that he would be breaking my heart

"Oh My God," third single from the Cults debut features a weaving of cult leader samples and the following lyrics:

Oh my god, I'm stuck inside the same position
I'm so tired of sitting around here with my boring life
Wishing I could find another name to go by
Late at night I'm dreaming about a time where I could change my side

Please don't tell me you know the rules to go by
I can run away and leave you anytime
Please don't tell me you know the plans for my life
I can run away and leave you here to stay inside dreaming

I'm so tired of all these honest decisions
Oh my god, I'm ready to walk right out that door
I never wanted a single thing for my life
All I wanted was to know was to know that I have never wasted my time

Please don't tell me you know the rules to go by
I can run away and leave you anytime
Please don't tell me you know the plans for my life
I can run away and leave you here to stay inside dreaming

Oh my god, I'm stuck in the same lame tradition
I'm so tired of thinking about the things that I have been missing
I never wanted a single thing for my life
All I wanted to know was to know that I have never wasted my time

Please don't tell me you know the rules to go by
I can run away and leave you anytime
Please don't tell me you know the plans for my life
I can run away and leave you here to stay inside dreaming

Once again the lyrics are up to listener interpretation. Is the singer ready to run away from her parents and become easy prey for a Charlie Manson? Perhaps she is stuck in a cult and ready to rejoin society?

Cults guitarist Brian Oblivion shares his favorite books: Okay, three with a Cults theme: ‘Helter Skelter’ by Vincent Bugliosi and Curt Gentry, because it’s all about Charlie Mason. ‘My Life in Orange’ by Time Guest is based on his own childhood and adolescence spent as a kid growing up in a cult. And Jack Kerouac’s ‘On the Road’, because of the cult following that the novel achieved. Kerouac changed contemporary thought with this book.

Kurt Vile Shares Some Old Obscure Favorites

2011-06-14T12:58:00.001-07:00

2011 has been a break through year for Kurt Vile, thanks to the moving single "Jesus Fever." He recently shared with Pitchfork some oldies that are currently on his iTunes playlist.

1) Black Sabbath gets mellow and jazzy on the 1978 track
Air Dance

Kurt Vile: "Air Dance" from Never Say Die, which is the last Black Sabbath record that Ozzy [Osbourne]'s on. My newest bandmate, Rob Laakso, turned me on to it. The beginning has these ultimate guitar harmonies, and then the most beautiful vocal delivery. His voice sounds amazing. It sounds like there's Auto-Tune on it, but there's not. It's the real thing. Then it gets all progressive and weird. It does take some strange directions, but it's super good.

2) John Martyn - Go Easy (1971)

Go Easy comes from the acoustic album

Bless the Weather.

Q magazine chose it recorded in three days. In November 2007, Bless the Weather was included in a list by The Guardian newspaper entitled '1000 Albums to Hear Before You Die'. Beck remade "Go Easy" for a webcast performance.

Kurt Vile: It's just the purest song I've heard in a long time. It's really simple, acoustic, and well-executed. Toward the end, he just kind of sings along with himself. It's super-simple. The way he delivers it reminds me, in a way, of James Taylor, except a way more soulful and natural thing. It kills James Taylor, but it's kind of in that vein.

Martyn's death was announced on his website on 29 January 2009, John Hillarby wrote, "With heavy heart and an unbearable sense of loss we must announce that John died this morning." Martyn died in hospital in Ireland as a result of double pneumonia.

Phil Collins paid tribute, saying: "John's passing is terribly, terribly sad. I had worked with and known him since the late 1970s and he was a great friend. He was uncompromising, which made him infuriating to some people, but he was unique and we'll never see the likes of him again. I loved him dearly and will miss him very much." English rock band Keane included a dedication to John Martyn at their Glasgow concert

3) Bert Jansch "Poison" (1969)

Jansch is a Scottish folk musician and founding member of the band Pentangle. He was born in Glasgow and came to prominence in London in the 1960s, particularly as an innovative and accomplished acoustic guitarist, but also as a singer and songwriter.

My Morning Jacket, Circuital, the Peter Pan Syndrome, and the Muppets

2011-06-04T11:24:00.000-07:00

As the members of My Morning Jacket approach 35 years of age, they wrestle with adulthood on their 6th release Circuital. On the title track Jim James sings:

Spinning out, gracefully
Going nowhere, quickly
I'm older, day by day
But still going back to my childhood way

Their first single from the new album, "Holding on to Black Metal," MMJ asks the question "are you too old to rock 'n roll?"

It's a darkness you can't deny
But it don't belong in a grown up mind
Distortion finds its place in a youngsters eyes
Coming into life you need its grind
But at a certain point you got to let it go
Or it will cross the permanent threshold
You know you gotta find it out in something else good
Oh black metal so misunderstood!

Puer aeternus is Latin for eternal boy, used in mythology to designate a child-god who is forever young; psychologically it refers to an older man whose emotional life has remained at an adolescent level, usually coupled with too great a dependence on the mother. The puer typically leads a provisional life, due to the fear of being caught in a situation from which it might not be possible to escape. He covets independence and freedom, chafes at boundaries and limits, and tends to find any restriction intolerable.

Peter Pan syndrome is a pop-psychology term used to describe an adult who is socially immature. The term has been used informally by both laypeople and some psychology professionals in popular psychology since the 1983 publication of The Peter Pan Syndrome: Men Who Have Never Grown Up, by Dr. Dan Kiley.

Quick facts on Circuital (album)

1) The album cover is a close-up picture of a Magic Tuning Eye fitted on old radio receivers in the 1930s. The purpose of tuning eyes in these radio sets were to help tune a station in at its strongest point on the dial. So when the perfect frequency was found, the Magic Tuning Eye would be lit up all the way (like the album covers). The percentage of light shown signified the strength of the signal.

2) "Outta My System" is a rejected musical idea that Jim James wrote for Dr. Teeth & The Electric Mayhem in the upcoming Muppets film.

3) "Slow Slow Tune" was featured in Gorillas in the Mist, an episode of American Dad!.

Eddie Vedder and the Ukelele

2011-06-04T10:21:00.000-07:00

From NPR's Ann PowersFor his second full-length solo album, Eddie Vedder has taken up one of the most useful creative tools available: limitation. It's embodied in a little finger-strummed thing that the Pearl Jam singer picked up during a beer run in Hawaii nearly 15 years ago, an instrument whose limits he never pushes, and which ends up refining and expanding his own range. Ukulele Songs isn't a novelty record; it's a statement of truth. Made calm and open by the ukulele's intimacy, Vedder sounds like someone getting out of his own way and discovering what really matters within his art. Ukulele Songs is about staying still enough to feel something calmly and clearly.

Ukelele history: The ukulele originated in the 19th century as a Hawaiian interpretation of the cavaquinho, small guitar-like instruments taken to Hawaiʻi by Portuguese immigrants.

The ukulele was popularized for a stateside audience during the 1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition held in San Francisco.

The popularity of the ensemble with visitors launched a fad for Hawaiian-themed songs among Tin Pan Alley songwriters.

From the late 1940s to the late 1960s, plastics manufacturer Mario Maccaferri turned out about 9 million inexpensive ukuleles. Much of the instrument's popularity was cultivated via The Arthur Godfrey Show on television.

Singer-musician Tiny Tim became closely associated with the instrument after playing it on his 1968 hit "Tiptoe Through the Tulips".

During the 1990s, new manufacturers began producing ukuleles and a new generation of musicians took up the instrument.

Hawaiian musician Israel Kamakawiwo'ole helped popularise the instrument, in particular due to his 1993 ukulele medley of "Over the Rainbow" and "What a Wonderful World", used in several films, television programs, and commercials. The song reached #12 on Billboard's Hot Digital Tracks chart the week of January 31, 2004.

Indie Ukelele: Dent May & His Magnificent Ukulele -May was chosen by Animal Collective to perform at the All Tomorrow's Parties Festival 2011.

Danger Mouse: Rome

2011-05-21T10:38:00.000-07:00

Brian "Danger Mouse" Burton and Daniele Luppi recently released a Spaghetti Western-inspired project dubbed Rome, featuring guest vocal spots from Jack White and Norah Jones.

Spaghetti Western, also known as Italo-Western, is a nickname for a broad sub-genre of Western film that emerged in the mid-1960s, so named because most were produced and directed by Italians.

Typical themes included the Mexican Revolution, bounty hunters, and revenge.

More violent than the traditional western, and with the morality of the American west turned upside down - many of the heroes of the Italian Western are in fact 'anti-heroes'. And it is not uncommon for the all the principle characters to be completely annihilated by the end of the movie.

The most famous composer for the genre is Ennio Morricone.

The High Llamas - Talahomi Way

2011-05-15T12:21:00.000-07:00

The High Llamas are a London-based musical group, formed by the Irish guitarist and songwriter Sean O'Hagan.
O'Hagan's work has included, Super Furry Animals and Sondre Lerche.

Influences include:

Brazilian jazz and bossa nova

Brian Wilson

"Talahomi Way" was released on April 11th ,2011 in the UK.It has received some very good reviews, but too sweet for indie radio.

Talahomi Way is a colourful record that has a spring feel at the start and an early spring evening feel at the end. There is reference to the pink evening sky.

Sean O'Hagan on the new album: The brass returns, soft and and hopefully haunting and we intend for the strings to twist and surprise. There is the smell of the ocean in a seaside song and you will notice a return of experimental in-between tracks which our fans so loved over the years.

Other High Llama favorites include:

Shuggie Otis : Shuggie Otis (born Johnny Alexander Veliotes on November 30, 1953)[1][2] is an American R&B, soul, rock, blues, and funk singer-songwriter, record producer, and multi-instrumentalist. His composition "Strawberry Letter 23", recorded by The Brothers Johnson, topped the Billboard R&B chart and reached the top five of the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1977

Francois De Roubaix film soundtrack composer

Heitor Villa-Lobos (March 5, 1887 – November 17, 1959) was a Brazilian composer, described as "the single most significant creative figure in 20th-century Brazilian art music".[

Fleet Foxes: The Functioning Cog

2011-05-11T21:56:00.000-07:00

In what is quickly becoming the Fleet Foxes' signature song, "Helplessness Blues," Pecknold and his bearded angels chior earnestly declares their desire to become "a functioning cog in some great machinery/ Serving something beyond me."

The lyric has received a lot of press because of its very un-alternative/indie rock like message. Far more prevalent in rock music is the agenda "I am the great machinery!" Take for instance the infamous Sid Vicious cover of Frank Sinatra's "My Way."

Even the 60s and 70s folk that has clearly inspired the band often had the theme "if only the world was just like me."

Speaking of the 60s, it is interesting to read the band's reaction to being lableled as "hippies" when their debut dominated the indie charts.
"I am not a hippie," said lead singer Robin Pecknold in 2008. "Cocaine and Charles Manson destroyed them. As soon as 1970 hit, everyone in L.A moved into these big mansions, these big locked compounds. All the music became really inward focused; '70s music is way more self-centered."

Cass McCombs: Hermit's Cave

2011-04-26T12:25:00.000-07:00

Despite making music for much of the past 10 years, few people really know much about 34-year nomad Cass McCombs.

The new release Wit’s End and its lyrics only add to the mystery of the man.

On the track "Hermit's Cave" McCombs sings: "In my 27th year/I set out to confront my fears"

McCombs in a recent Paste interview: Music is the marriage of the feelings of the living to the wisdom of the dead. I’m one of those that maintain that there’s a world that is hidden from the common view and our lives weave with those who came before us. The true-life stories in my songs are political, they show how the hidden people live, how I see people are living today, what it consist of, the real stuff, they don’t preach how people should be living, we each got out own issues we got to deal with before meddling with others. Hank Williams said: “If you mind your business then you won’t be minding mine."

Hermit's Cave inspiration: Anthony of the Desert (c. 251–356) - Father of All Monks & Hermits

At the age of thirty-five, Anthony determined to withdraw from civilization and retire in absolute solitude. He crossed the Nile, and on a mountain near the east bank, then called Pispir, now Der el Memum, he found an old fort into which he shut himself, and lived there for twenty years without seeing the face of man, food being thrown to him over the wall. He was at times visited by pilgrims, whom he refused to see; but gradually a number of would-be disciples established themselves in caves and in huts around the mountain, Thus a colony of ascetics was formed, who begged Anthony to come forth and be their guide in the spiritual life.

Demons in the cave: One time Saint Anthony tried hiding in a cave to escape the demons that plagued him. There were so many little demons in the cave though that Saint Anthony's servant had to carry him out because they had beaten him to death. When the hermits were gathered to Saint Anthony's corpse to mourn his death, Saint Anthony was revived. He demanded that his servants take him back to that cave where the demons had beaten him. When he got there he called out to the demons, and they came back as wild beasts to rip him to shreds. All of a sudden a bright light flashed, and the demons ran away.

21st Century Hermit in a Cave

Hermit's Cave in Pop Culture: Empire Strikes Back

That place… is strong with the dark side of the Force. A domain of evil it is. In you must go."
"What is in there?"
"Only what you take with you."
―Yoda

Hermit's Cave in the Call's "I Still Believe"

I been in a cave
For forty days
Only a spark
To light my way
I wanna give out
I wanna give in
This is our crime
This is our sin

But I still believe
I still believe
Through the pain
And the grief
Through the lives
Through the storms
Through the cries
And through the wars
Oh, I still believe

The Head and the Heart: Down in the Valley - life as a hobo

2011-04-22T12:23:00.001-07:00

In the opening lines of “Down In The Valley”: The Head and the Heart romanticize the wandering life of riding the rails:“I wish I was a slave to an age-old trade/Like ridin’ around on railcars and workin’ long days.”

Hobo Reality: Many people forced off the farm heard about work hundreds of miles away ... or even half a continent away. Often the only way they could get there was by hopping on freight trains, illegally. More than two million men and perhaps 8,000 women became hoboes. At least 6,500 hoboes were killed in one year either in accidents or by railroad "bulls," brutal guards hired by the railroads to make sure the trains carried only paying customers. Finding food was a constant problem. Hoboes often begged for food at a local farmhouse. If the farmer was generous, the hobo would mark the lane so that later hoboes would know this was a good place to beg.

A list of people who rode the rails before they were famous –

•Musician Woody Guthrie

•Novelist Louis L'Amour

•TV host Art Linkletter

•Oil billionaire H. L. Hunt

•Journalist Eric Sevareid

•Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas

Dad Indie Rock: New Releases from Old Bands

2011-04-17T09:23:00.000-07:00

Dad Indie Rock refers to the bands of the golden days of college radio in the mid to late 1980s. These artists blazed a trail that others would follow to commercial success in the 1990s. Quite a few of these aging frontiersmen have new releases this year. Here's a list of a few.

1) R.E.M. - "Collapse into Now"

In January 1980, Michael Stipe met Peter Buck in the Athens record store where Buck worked. The pair discovered that they shared similar tastes in music, particularly punk rock and protopunk artists like Patti Smith, Television, and The Velvet Underground. Stipe said, "It turns out that I was buying all the records that [Buck] was saving for himself." Stipe and Buck soon met fellow University of Georgia students Mike Mills and Bill Berry, who had played music together since high school.[6] The quartet agreed to collaborate on several songs; Stipe later commented that "there was never any grand plan behind any of it". Their still-unnamed band spent several months rehearsing and played its first show on April 5, 1980 at a friend's birthday party held in a converted Episcopal church. After considering names like "Twisted Kites", "Cans of Piss", and "Negro Wives", the band settled on "R.E.M.", which Stipe selected at random from a dictionary.

2) The Smithereens - "Smithereens 2011"

The Smithereens are a rock band from Carteret, New Jersey, United States. The group formed in 1980 with members Pat DiNizio (vocals & guitar), Jim Babjak (guitar & vocals), Mike Mesaros (bass guitar & vocals), and Dennis Diken (drums & percussion) . The band's name comes from a Yosemite Sam catchphrase, "Varmint, I'm a-gonna blow you to smithereens!"

3) David Lowery - The Palace Guards

David Lowery (born September 10, 1960) is an American guitarist, vocalist and songwriter; he is the founder of alternative rock band, Camper Van Beethoven, and co-founder of the more traditional rock band, Cracker. Lowery released his first solo record, The Palace Guards, on February 2, 2011.

4) J Mascis -Several Shades of Why

J Mascis (pronounced /ˈmæskɪs/ MASS-kiss; born Joseph Donald Mascis on December 10, 1965) is an American musician, best-known as the singer, guitarist and songwriter for Dinosaur Jr.

5) The Feelies - Here Before

The Feelies are a rock band from Haledon, New Jersey. They formed in 1976.
Although the Feelies never sold a great number of records, their influence was felt on the indie rock scene. Their first album, Crazy Rhythms (Stiff Records, 1980) was cited by R.E.M. as a major influence. Film director Jonathan Demme and novelist Rick Moody have also cited the band as one of their influences.

The band's name is taken from a fictional entertainment device described in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World.

6) Edwyn Collins : Losing Sleep

Edwyn Stephen Collins (born 23 August 1959, Edinburgh) is a Scottish musician, playing mostly electric guitar-driven pop. Collins formed the musical group Nu-Sonics in 1976, which later became Orange Juice.

Collins released a 1994 single, "A Girl Like You", which was a hit in both the UK and the U.S. and was featured in the films Empire Records, The Secretary and Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle.

Meat Puppets

The band's thirteenth studio album, entitled Lollipop, was released on April 12, 2011

The Meat Puppets are an American rock band formed in January 1980, in Phoenix, Arizona. The group's original lineup was Curt Kirkwood (guitar/vocals), his brother Cris Kirkwood (bass guitar), and Derrick Bostrom (drums).

In late 1993, the 'Pups achieved mainstream popularity when Nirvana's Kurt Cobain, who became a fan after seeing them open for Black Flag, invited Cris and Curt to join him on MTV Unplugged for acoustic performances of "Plateau", "Oh Me" and "Lake of Fire" (all originally from Meat Puppets II).

Panda Bear: "Surfer's Hymn" lyrics, Surfing as Philosophy

2011-04-16T11:15:00.000-07:00

With the release of Noah Lennox's (a.k.a Panda Bear) Person Pitch, many critics compared the swirling, deeply textured headphone experience as Gregorian Chant filtered through Pet Sounds. The new release, Tomboy, is more minimalistic, but we are reminded of the Brian Wilson influence with a Beach Boys-like title: Surfer's Hymn. Like Wilson, Noah Lennox has proven that serious music can be kind and uplifting.

"Surfer's Hymn"

When there are hard times I'll step it up
When there are dangerous times I'll spot them up
I'll take my time to make up my own mind
To set it up when the times are calling for a steady creed

How do I know it's time?
Even if I've got mine
'Cause if the wise do know what wisdom is
If I could err on every good side every time

Out on the water
A rider can ready
Though waves comes crashing
A good board can steady
I wouldn't ever want to bet upon the balance on what's going on
Would I?

Stay
What's in my way?
Got to have it to get over it

To have an empty fortune when I fear
To have a deadly weapon, as it's called
Which is an answer to a challenge made by anything
Then to always know just what things violence needs

How do I know its time?
Even if I got mine
'Cause if the wise do know what wisdom is
If I could err on every good side every time

Out on the water
A rider can ready
Though waves comes crashing
A good board can steady
I wouldn't ever want to bet upon the balance on what's going on
Would I?

Why wouldn't I?

More on Surfing and Spirituality:

I Surf, Therefore I Am: A Philosophy of Surfing by Peter Kreeft

Kreeft, philosophy professor at Boston College and author of The Philosophy of Jesus and Socratic Logic, provides ten outstanding reasons to start surfing from ten illustrious sages, plus a manifesto supporting the right to boogie, and seven easy lessons for beginners.

Kreeft is seventy years old and prefers to surf on the East Coast

Quotes from the book:

“No, surfers are not fanatics, because fanatics are not happy and surfers are. Fundamentalists believe the Rapture is future; surfers know it is present.”

"When you catch your first good wave, you will feel gratitude, because you will know that you have not chosen it, it has chosen you. You simply put yourself into the holy place where the gift was given.”

“The sea herself is the most poetic thing on earth (except perhaps for a woman’s face), and a breaking wave is the most poetic thing on the sea and riding it is the most poetic thing you can do with it. Therefore surfing is the most poetic thing you can do on earth.”

“For that wave let you ride him at the last moment of his life, and his life was consummated for you. He died so that something in you could come to life in his death.”

Movies: Donavon Frankenreiter - i surf because short film

Beach Boys: Surfs Up:
"Surf's Up" is the title of a song written by Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks.
Composed in Brian's living room (1966/67), where he installed a huge sandbox with a Steinway piano standing in it so he could write lyrics inspired by life at the beach.
The title of "Surf's Up" was intended as an ironic gesture on the part of the two writers, pairing the dense, compositionally sophisticated piece with a title suggestive of the Beach Boys' earlier, simpler surfing-related material.

Richard Ashcroft: Are You Ready?, Babylon's Bad Press

2011-04-12T11:19:00.000-07:00

Richard Ashcroft, of Bittersweet Symphony fame, cries out on his latest single "Are You Ready?":

Come on people
Ooh, don't you hear my pain
I'm out here in Babylon
Waiting for the day

Babylon has appeared in a number of rock songs over the years - thanks to 1970s reggae and Bob Marley. The ancient city's meaning is often the same in rock music as it is in the Bible - a den of debauchery.

Why? The fact that Babylonian ruler Nebuchadnezzar was responsible for destroying the temple in Jerusalem and taking the Jews captive. He was vilified as the archetypal evil king. As a result Babylon's historical fate was sealed by the writers of the Book of Daniel as the original sin city, while Revelations completed the picture by giving it the mother of all prostitutes - the 'Whore of Babylon'.

Rocks Songs of Babylon

Steely Dan - Babylon Sisters

Babylon sisters = fallen women, fallen and degenerate lifestyles - he realizes he is getting too old for the life.

"Tell me I'm the only One" is a delusional reference to relationships with prostitutes, as he wants to believe he's more than just a client.

Leonard Cohen - By The Rivers Dark

By the rivers dark
I wandered on.
I lived my life
In Babylon.

In "By the Rivers Dark," he admits the constant threat to spirituality (in whatever form) in the modern world: "And I did forget/ My holy song/ And I had no strength in Babylon."

Bob Marley - Babylon System

Babylon system is the vampire, yea! (vampire)
Suckin' the children day by day, yeah!
Me say: de Babylon system is the vampire, falling empire,
Suckin' the blood of the sufferers, yea-ea-ea-ea-e-ah!
Building church and university, wo-o-ooh, yeah! -
Deceiving the people continually, yea-ea!
Me say them graduatin' thieves and murderers;
Look out now: they suckin' the blood of the sufferers (sufferers).
Yea-ea-ea! (sufferers)

Babylon is an important Rastafari term, referring to human government and institutions that are seen as in rebellion against the rule of JAH (God), beginning with the Tower of Babel. It is further used by some to mean specifically the 'politricksters' who have been oppressing the black race for centuries through economic and physical slavery

Babylon gets bad press?
Yes, many scholars argue. Evidence shows a civilized city (born 5,000 years ago) with magnificent architecture and rich culture.

Babylon in Pop Culture: Fritz Lang's film Metropolis interpreted Revelation's "Whore of Babylon" as the android Maria.

The Submarines: Till Death Do Us Pop, list of bands founded by married couples

2011-04-09T09:48:00.000-07:00

Can rock musicians make good music once they settle down and get married?

The Submarines are doing their best to prove that the answer is "yes" with their latest release "Love Notes/Letter Bombs."

Here are some of our favorite bands founded by married couples.

Plastic Ono Band

Wings

X

Stereolab

The White Stripes

Yo La Tengo

Arcade Fire

Mates of States

The Handsome Family

Captain & Tennille (You know you like this song.)

Starland Vocal Band

Ike and Tina Turner

The Cramps

Acid House Kings: Music Sounds Better With You

2011-04-02T16:05:00.000-07:00

Acid House Kings is a Swedish indie pop band. It was founded in 1991.

They have finished only 5 albums in their nearly 20 years together.

Their last record was over 6 years ago.

The new release is finally here: Music Sounds Better With You

Sounds Like: summery pop, sweet uptempo songs

Influences: Belle and Sebastian, the Smiths

Best quote from a review: You can’t get too philosophical when you’re in a candy store. (John Bergstrom)

Recent inspiration: Swedish dancehall music and castanets

Mountain Goats' warning: "Never Sleep. Stay Awake"

2011-03-30T21:08:00.000-07:00

"Never Sleep. Stay Awake" warns lead singer John Darnielle.

Dark themes dominate the latest Mountain Goats release "All Eternals Deck."

1) "All Eternals Deck" refers to a fortune teller's deck of cards - The tarot were used from the mid-15th century in various parts of Europe to play a group of card games such as Italian tarocchini and French tarot. From the late 18th century until the present time the tarot has also found use by mystics and occultists in efforts at divination or as a map of mental and spiritual pathways.

Tarot Cards in "The Wolf Man"

Tarot Cards in "Live and Let Die"

2) Beware of the Children of the Night -

The track "Damn These Vampires" features the lyrics:
Feast like pagans
Never get enough
Sleep like dead men
Wake up like dead men
And when the sun comes try not to hate the light
Some day we'll try to walk upright

Crawl til dawn
On my hands and knees
God damn these bite marks
Deep in my arteries
Crawl til dawn
On my hands and knees
God damn these vampires
For what they've done to me

BBC Vampire doc

3) And the spookiness continues- Ssssnakes!

Birth Of Serpents Lyrics
Crawl through the tunnel and follow, follow the light north west
See that young man who dwells inside his body like an uninvited guest
See the tunnel twist
Clutch your birth rite in your fist

Sink low, rise high, bring back some blurry pictures to remember all your darker moments by
Permanent bruises on our knees
Never forget what it felt like to live in rooms like these
From the California coastline to the Iowa corn
To the rooms with the heat lamps where the snakes get born

Snakes in Church

4) Be ready to take the law into your own hands

Words of Advice from the track "For Charles Bronson" "Stay cool and seldom speak," Darnielle sings. "Try to hold the gun straight."

Arctic Monkeys' Turner Releases Solo Soundtrack "Submarine"

2011-03-24T17:06:00.000-07:00

Alex Turner's solo release has more in common with his side project "Last Shadow Puppets" and its love for the 60s. A mostly acoustic affair, the soundtrack features strings from The Composers Ensemble (arranged by Owen Pallett)on track 6 "Piledriver Waltz"

Submarine is the debut feature film of Richard Ayoade, a friend and director of various Arctic Monkeys music videos.

Submarine Plot: (By Patrick Samuel) Adapted from Joe Dunthorne’s 2008 novel of the same name and set in Swansea, it’s the story of Oliver Tate (Craig Roberts) who’s doing his best to survive secondary school and keep his parents together.

The girl he likes, Jordana (Yasmin Paige), has bouts of eczema which he’s noticed from staring at her so much. He’s also noticed she likes bullies, so to win her over he picks on an overweight girl; it works, though not in the way he originally planned. Their relationship starts off with a bit of blackmail, followed by some petty arson and it’s not long before he’s buying her books by Shakespeare, J.D. Salinger and Nietzsche.

Nietzsche on Hardship

At home, his permanently depressed and unemployed marine biologist father, Lloyd (Noah Taylor), sips hot lemon from a mug he never washes while his mother Jill (Sally Hawkins) takes to hanging out with an old boyfriend, a mystic ninja called Graham (Paddy Considine) who lives next door. It’s not a situation he’s happy about. While he carefully monitors every detail of his parents’ lives and tries to keep the mystic ninja away from his mum, it eventually comes between his relationship with Jordana.

Story compared to Salinger’s Catcher In The Rye and Kureishi’s The Buddha of Suburbia

the Strokes: Machu Picchu

2011-03-22T19:21:00.000-07:00

On the Strokes newly released "Angles," Julian Casablancas sings on Machu Picchu:

And now you've heard that
Weathers turn to grey
Life in the shade
A violent cloud
And that's on USA
... on the rise
... in the sky
I'm just trying' to find
A mountain I can climb

Machu Picchu is located at an altitude of 7,875 ft above sea level.
Often referred to as "The Lost City of the Incas", Machu Picchu is the most known symbol of the Inca Empire.

About 5.000 people must have worked to build Machu Picchu

The Incas used dry stone technique to build the city. No mortar was used, the stone bricks were simply put together without any material to stick them together.

All rocks used were split perfectly and the bricks were put together like a huge puzzle. Some of the bricks are so tightly put together that one cannot even put a knife between them.

Machu Picchu ("Old Peaks") is one of the New Seven Wonders Of The World.
The site was built around 1460 but abandoned as an official site for the Inca rulers after a century.
The site was forgotten by the world until 1911, when it was discovered by Hiram Bingham, an American historian.

Machu Picchu received great deal of attention after the National Geographic Society devoted their entire April 1913 issue to it.
Researchers believe that Intihuatana stone was built as an astronomic clock or calendar.
In 1911, some people were found living on the site and a number of female mummies were also discovered.

Danielson's Daniel Smith's love for Moondog and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

2011-03-19T14:20:00.000-07:00

Danielson's Daniel Smith recently shared some unusual personal favorites with Pitchfork.

1)Last Great Book I ReadI haven't read any books in a while, but I actually was just given one to read. It's a pretty heavy book called The Divine Milieu by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a French (Jesuit) priest. He was ostracized from the Catholic church and was a pretty radical outlaw. It's pretty amazing stuff about the divine in nature.

Teilhard and his work have a continuing presence in the arts and culture.
Examples include:
Philip K. Dick's A Scanner Darkly
Father Lankester Merrin in William Peter Blatty's The Exorcist.

The Jesuit is also the target of right-wing conspiracy theorists.

In 2009, Pope Benedict XVI praised Teilhard's idea of the universe as a "living host" although the ecclesiastical warnings attached to his works remain.

2)What's your favorite older album of the moment? Moondog: H'art Songs. I've really been enjoying the playfulness of that. It kinda reminds me of Robert Wyatt, and I'm a huge Robert Wyatt fan

Moondog was the pseudonym of Louis Thomas Hardin (May 26, 1916 – September 8, 1999), a blind American composer, musician, poet, and inventor of several musical instruments. Moondog removed himself from society through his decision to make his home on the streets of New York for approximately twenty of the thirty years he spent in the city. He could be found on the streets of New York wearing clothes he had created based on his own interpretation of the Norse god Thor. Because of his unconventional outfits, he was known for much of his life as "The Viking of 6th Avenue".

***In 2011, Smith released Best of Gloucester County, the first Danielson album released solely through his Sounds Familyre Records label. Guests include Sufjan Stevens on banjo and vocals and a cameo from Jens Lekman.

Tahiti 80 - Darlin' (Adam & Eve Song)

2011-03-17T20:04:00.000-07:00

Tahiti 80 are a French indie pop band from Rouen and Paris. The group was founded in 1993 by Xavier Boyer, Pedro Resende, Médéric Gontier and Sylvain Marchand. Their name comes from a souvenir t-shirt given to Boyer's father in 1980. During winter and early spring 2010, Tahiti 80 have recorded their 5th album. They will precede "The Past, The Present & The Possible", which features contributions from Tony Lash & Tore Johansson, with an e.p called "Solitary Bizness". The album was released in early 2011.

Adam & Eve background:

In Christian doctrine, the Fall of Man, or simply the Fall, refers to the transition of the first humans from a state of innocent obedience to God to a state of guilty disobedience to God. In Genesis chapter 2, Adam and Eve live at first with God in a paradise, but are then deceived or tempted by the serpent to eat fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, which had been forbidden them by God. (The standard of good is God.) Adam and Eve make their own wills the criterion of good and evil. After doing so they become ashamed of their nakedness and God consequently expelled them from paradise.

Adam and Eve in Rock n Roll History

Joni Mitchell's "Woodstock"

We are stardust
We are golden
Caught in the devils bargain
And weve got to get ourselves
Back to the garden

Punk poet/pioneer -Patti Smith admired Eve and her search for wisdom. The New York Times said of Smith "She sees herself as the bearer of poison fruit of human knowledge." She did not accept the traditional teaching of original sin from the Bible creation story - as stated in her classic "Gloria."

Bob Dylan: Slow Train Coming is singer-songwriter Bob Dylan's 19th studio album, released by Columbia Records in August 1979. It was the artist's first effort since becoming a born-again Christian. The track "Man Gave Names to All the Animals" retells the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden.

Bruce Springsteen: Pink Cadillac

Well now way back in the Bible
Temptations always come along
There's always somebody tempting
Somebody into doing something they know is wrong
Well they tempt you, man, with silver
And they tempt you, sir, with gold
And they tempt you with the pleasures
That the flesh does surely hold
They say Eve tempted Adam with an apple
But man I ain't going for that
I know it was her pink Cadillac

Rare Acoustic version

Iron Butterfly: song's title was originally "In the Garden of Eden" complete with churchy organ sound, but at one point in the course of rehearsing and recording, singer Doug Ingle became intoxicated and slurred the words, creating the mondegreen that stuck as the title
"in-a-gadda-da-vida."
Clip from Playboy After Dark

Black Francis & the Golem

2011-03-16T18:19:00.000-07:00

Charles Michael Kittridge Thompson IV aka Black Fracis aka Frank Black is best known as the frontman of the influential alternative rock band Pixies.

The Golem is a soundtrack written and performed by Black Francis at the San Francisco International Film Festival for the 1920 film The Golem: How He Came into the World.

The film concerns itself with the legendary creation of the Golem, which had appeared in the earlier film, by Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel. In the 16th century, the Jews of Prague face persecution. Rabbi Loew creates a giant Golem out of clay to protect the people. Unfortunately, the creature rebels, setting fire to the ghetto, and wreaks deadly havoc. In the end, a small girl stops the Golem by removing the amulet (magic 5-pointed star) from its chest.

Theme: Hubris (pronounced /ˈhjuːbrɪs/), also hybris, means extreme haughtiness, pride or arrogance. Hubris often indicates being out of touch with reality and overestimating one's own competence or capabilities, especially for people in positions of power.

The existence of a golem is sometimes a mixed blessing. Golems are not intelligent, and if commanded to perform a task, they will perform the instructions literally. In many depictions golems are inherently perfectly obedient. In its earliest known modern form, one story has Rabbi Eliyahu of Chełm creating a golem that became enormous and uncooperative. In one version of this story, the rabbi had to resort to trickery to deactivate it, whereupon it crumbled upon its creator and crushed him. There is a similar hubris theme in Frankenstein, The Sorcerer's Apprentice and some golem-derived stories in popular culture.

Radiohead & the use of Fairy Tales

2011-03-09T21:24:00.000-08:00

Radiohead recently released King of Limbs to critical acclaim and great fan interest. The album cover promises dark mystery.
Artist Stanley Donwood stated that the album's artwork is inspired by Northern European fairy tales and their association with forests and woods: "It's very much about natural forms. I'd heard something about the northern European imagination, in the sense of all our fairy stories and mythical creatures, they all come from the woods - Little Red Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty, Hansel & Gretel [...] Me and Thom [Yorke] were working on these ideas of strange, multi-limbed creatures that are neither malevolent or benevolent, they're simply there, part of the living spirit of the forest. That's come through into all of the work."

Other Fairy Tales in the work of Radiohead:

The Pied Piper in 'Kid A'

In the tale of the Pied Piper, a village overrun with rats. A man arrives dressed in a patchwork of colors and offers to rid the town of the vermin. The villagers agree to pay a vast sum of money if the piper can do it – and he does. He plays music on his pipe which draws all the rats out of the town. When he returns for payment – the villagers won’t cough up so the Pied Piper decides to rid the town of children too! In most modern variants, the piper draws the children to a cave out of the town and when the townsfolk finally agree to pay up, he sends them back. In the darker original, the piper leads the children to a river where they all drown (except a lame boy who couldn’t keep up). Some modern scholars say that there are connotations of pedophilia in this fairy tale.

The Three Little Pigs in 'Wolf at the Door'

The tale of the Three Little Pigs and the Big Bad Wolf was included in Nursery Rhymes and Nursery Tales (London, c.1843), by James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps.[1] The story in its arguably best-known form appeared English Fairy Tales by Joseph Jacobs, first published in 1890 and crediting Halliwell as his source.[2] The story begins with the title characters being sent out into the world by their mother, to "seek their fortune". The first little pig builds a house of straw, but a wolf blows it down and eats the first little pig. The second pig builds a house of sticks, but with the same ultimate result. Each exchange between wolf and pig features ringing proverbial phrases, namely:

"Little pig, little pig, let me come in."
"No, no, by the hair on my chiny chin chin."
"Then I'll huff, and I'll puff, and I'll blow your house in.[3]

The third pig builds a house of hard bricks. The wolf couldn't huff and puff hard enough to blow the house down. He attempts to trick the little pig out of the house, but the pig outsmarts him at every turn. Finally, the wolf resolves to come down the chimney, whereupon the pig boils a pot of water into which the wolf plunges, at which point the pig quickly covers the pot and cooks the wolf for supper.

The story utilizes the literary Rule of three, expressed in this case as a "contrasting three", as the third pig's house turns out to be the only one which is adequate to withstand the wolf.
Retellings of the story sometimes omit the attempts to trick the third pig, or state that the first pig ran to the second pig's house, then both of them ran to the third brother's house of bricks. The latter is often an attempt to write out death or violence in the story.

"The Eraser" My fairytale Arab princess. Be careful how you respond.

Sheherazade is a legendary Persian queen and the storyteller of One Thousand and One Nights.

The frame tale goes that every day King Shahryar would marry a new virgin, and every day he would send yesterday's wife to be beheaded. This was done in anger, having found out that his first wife was betraying him. He had killed one thousand such women by the time he was introduced to Scheherazade, the vizier's daughter.

In Sir Richard F. Burton's translation of The Nights, Shahrazad was described in this way:

"[Shahrazad] had perused the books, annals and legends of preceding Kings, and the stories, examples and instances of by gone men and things; indeed it was said that she had collected a thousand books of histories relating to antique races and departed rulers. She had perused the works of the poets and knew them by heart; she had studied philosophy and the sciences, arts and accomplishments; and she was pleasant and polite, wise and witty, well read and well bred."

Against her father's protestations, Scheherazade volunteered to spend one night with the King. Once in the King's chambers, Scheherazade asked if she might bid one last farewell to her beloved sister, Dinazade, who had secretly been prepared to ask Scheherazade to tell a story during the long night. The King lay awake and listened with awe as Scheherazade told her first story. The night passed by, and Scheherazade stopped in the middle of the story. The King asked her to finish, but Scheherazade said there was not time, as dawn was breaking. So, the King spared her life for one day to finish the story the next night. So the next night, Scheherazade finished the story, and then began a second, even more exciting tale which she again stopped halfway through, at dawn. So the King again spared her life for one day to finish the second story.

And so the King kept Scheherazade alive day by day, as he eagerly anticipated the finishing of last night's story. At the end of one thousand and one nights, and one thousand stories, Scheherazade told the King that she had no more tales to tell him. During these one thousand and one nights, the King had fallen in love with Scheherazade, and had three sons with her. So, having been made a wiser and kinder man by Scheherazade and her tales, he spared her life, and made her his Queen.

Jangle Pop Supergroup: The Baseball Project

2011-03-04T17:24:00.000-08:00

The Baseball Project: Major-league sports fans from better-known bands R.E.M.,Young Fresh Fellows, Dream Syndicate, and Golden Smog. Their second album is Vol. 2: High and Inside.

“Pete Rose Way” is an indie folk tribute to the blacklisted Cincinnati Reds’ hero.

Perhaps the best track on the album, "1976" remembers recently deceased Detroit Tigers’ phenom Mark “The Bird” Fidrych.

"The Bird" got his nickname in the minor leagues from one of his coaches with the Lakeland Tigers dubbed the lanky 6-foot-3 right-handed pitcher "The Bird" because of his resemblance to the "Big Bird" of Sesame Street.

Fidrych also captured the imagination of fans with his antics on the field. He would crouch down on the pitcher's mound and fix cleat marks, what became known as "manicuring the mound", talk to himself, talk to the ball, aim the ball like a dart, strut around the mound after every out, and throw back balls that "had hits in them," insisting they be removed from the game. Mark Fidrych also was known for shaking everyone's hands after a game. On June 28, 1976, he pitched against the New York Yankees in a nationally televised game on ABC; the Tigers won the game 5-1. After a game filled with "Bird" antics in which he and his team handily defeated the Yankees, Fidrych became a national celebrity.

Teams started asking Detroit to change its pitching rotation so Fidrych could pitch in their ballparks, and he appeared on the cover of numerous magazines, such as Sports Illustrated (twice, including once with Sesame Street character Big Bird), The Sporting News, and became the first athlete to appear on the cover of Rolling Stone.

A mtraditional story telling track, "Tony (Boston’s Chosen Son)” remembers Tony Conigliaro, at one time the greatest young slugger in the game, career cut short by a shot to the face by a misthrown fastball .
Conigliaro was signed by the Red Sox in 1962, at the age of 17. In his sophomore season in 1965, Conigliaro led the league in home runs (32); he therefore became the youngest home run champion in American League history. He was selected for the All-Star Game in 1967. In that season, at age 22, he reached a career total of 100 home runs.
On August 18, 1967, the Red Sox were playing the California Angels at Fenway Park. Conigliaro, batting against Jack Hamilton, was hit by a pitch on his left cheekbone, and was carried off the field on a stretcher. He sustained a linear fracture of the left cheekbone and a dislocated jaw with severe damage to his left retina. The batting helmet he was wearing did not have the protective ear-flap that has since become standard.
A year and a half later, Conigliaro made a remarkable return, hitting 20 homers with 82 RBI in 141 games, earning Comeback Player of the Year honors.
During the height of his popularity in 1965, he recorded, having a regional hit, "Put-Put", which he performed on the Merv Griffin show, among others.

The album ends with the powerful closer “Here Lies Carl Mays” (November 12, 1891 – April 4, 1971)- the only pitcher in major league baseball who ever killed a man with a pitch.

More Trouble with Mays: Mays, pitching then for the Yankees, played in a World Series that others later would accuse him of helping to throw, bringing back still-lingering memories of the Black Sox scandal from just two years prior. These rumors were never proven, but they persisted long enough that, combined with an already negative reputation among other players both from the Chapman incident and from having a personality that few found agreeable, he was never elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame despite having lifetime statistics comparable to some other pitchers who were.

Toro y Moi & the vintage sounds of Piero Umiliani - plus 1969 footage from Sesame Street

2011-02-26T10:18:00.000-08:00

Toro y Moi:Toro Y Moi is the stage name used by recording artist Chazwick Bundick. His music has taken on many forms since he began recording, but he is now identified with the chillwave movement of summer 2010.

The stage name, "Toro Y Moi," can be roughly translated to "Bull and Me."
Bundick was born on 7 November 1986, in Columbia, South Carolina, and attended Ridgeview High School where he formed well-known Columbia indie rock band The Heist and the Accomplice with three schoolmates. He is of Filipino descent from his mother and African-American descent from his father.
Bundick graduated from the University of South Carolina in spring of 2009 with a bachelor's degree in graphic design. Late in his school career, Bundick formed a close musical relationship with fellow chillwave luminary Ernest Greene who plays under the name Washed Out.He has since been signed to Carpark Records, on which he released his first full-length album "Causers of This" in January 2010 .

His second album, Underneath the Pine, was released on February 22, 2011.

Sounds like: Chill Wave, French pop, Italian lounge, soul disco, krautrock, space-age bachelor-pad muzak, mellow pastoral psychedelia

Change from the last record: live instruments

Favorite Influences for new record: I ended up finding this crazy old Italian film online, called La Ragazza or something, with a soundtrack by Piero Umiliani. Once I found out who he was, I started looking up his stuff and it's just all amazing. The Italian guys have amazing, moving stuff.

Piero Umiliani was born in Florence, Tuscany. Like many of his Italian colleagues at that time, he composed the scores for many exploitation films in the 1960s and 1970s.
He later experienced a revival in films such as Kill Bill and Ocean's Twelve.

"Mah Nà Mah Nà" (1968) was originally used for a Mondo documentary about Sweden but was popularized by the Muppets, who covered the song several times; starting on episode 0014 of Sesame Street on 27 November 1969, then the Ed Sullivan Show on 30 November 1969, and again on the syndicated The Muppet Show in 1977. The track was also a hit in the UK, reaching #8 in the UK Singles chart in May 1977.

Umiliani died in Rome in February 2001, at the age of 74

Bright Eyes and Haile Selassie

2011-02-17T20:32:00.000-08:00

"The People's Key" from Bright Eyes is full of songs about doubt and redemption. Without a hint of the reggae that the title promises, the track "Haile Selassie" is a prime example:

Pilgrim across the water
We are the same brother
Hitchhiking back to Zion
Holding our tears as we flip the album
What if this leads to ruin?
You got a soul, use it
All this despair forgiven
Rolling away on the Wheel of Sevens
Sings like the Queen of Sheba
Voice through a Blonde Speaker
One dropping bubble and Leslie
Calling me home like Haile Selassie

Pilgrim beside the fire
It's been a long winter
We got a lot in common
Cover our heads as they split the atom
All of our days are numbered
I'll take in some comfort in knowing the wave has crested
Knowing I don't have to be an exception
Children they fill the bleachers
One is the next Caesar
Keep all their minds collected
Until he comes
Until he comes

How do you make a day in plain sight?
Too good to be true

Pilgrim up on the mountain
Barefoot and still climbin'
Filling the book of hours
Day after day in the filth and squalor
We are the chosen people
Safe from the next evil
One love!
Magnetic memory
Reel after reel
Spinning within me

I had the wildest dream last night
I was swimming with you in that cenote the Heavens made with black fire
Just woke up too soon

Another favorite is the powerful, closing track "One For You, One For Me" features the final lines: Now that we've come so far away from us
You and me, you and me that is an awful lie
It's I and I

One for the righteous, one for the ruling class
One for the tyrant, one for the slaughtered lamb
One for the struggle, one for the lasting peace
One for you, and one for me

One for the Führer, one for his child bride
One for the wedding, one for the suicide
One for the bunker, one for the broadcast booth
One for me, now one for you

How did we get so far away from us?
How did we get so far away?

One for the people, one for the parliament
One for the weary, one for the malcontent
One for the master, one for the protégé
One for you, and one for me

One for the bread lines, one for the billionaires
One for the missing, one for the barely there
One for the certain, one for the real confused
One for me, okay, now one for you

Now that we've come so far away from us
Now that we've come too far to say
You and me, you and me that is an awful lie
You and me, you and me that is an awful lie
It's I and I
It's I and I
It's I and I
It's I and I

The Meaning of I and I: refers to the oneness of Jah (God) and every human. Rastafari scholar E. E. Cashmore: "I and I is an expression to totalize the concept of oneness, the oneness of two persons. So God is within all of us and we're one people in fact.

Roots of Rastafarianism:
Marcus Garvey, a Jamaican labor organizer, founded the Universal Negro Improvement and Conservation Association in 1914.

He promoted the idea of Ethiopia as the cradle of civilization and the black person as a superior being. During the same period a "Negro Bible" was compiled, to prove that God and his prophets were black. A theory was developed in the 1920s of black supremacy and the return of all exiled blacks to their homeland.

But it wasn't until Bob Marley bound these doctrines to the hypnotic reggae beat that the world became aware of the religion called Rastafarianism.

Messianic Hope
In the Psalms, Rastas found evidence of their coming savior. In 1924 Marcus Garvey and associates prophesized: "Look to Africa, for the crowning of the black king. He shall be the Redeemer." Haile Selassie's coronation six years later in Addis Ababa was seen as prophesy fulfilled. Selassie himself was a great advocate of the Bible but kept quiet on the subject of his divinty. He remains a Christlike figure in the religion. He has gone away but is believed by Rastas to return and gather his faithful few.

Criticisms of:

West Indian Poet Linton Kwesi Johnson, who records his poems with reggae musicians, believes Rastafarianism is a mythical way of making sense of political reality, but dangerous in that it blinds its followers to the real picture: "It has a great deal which is positive in so far as sense of dignity and restored pride in a African heritage that was nearly destroyed by British colonialism. However, there are Rasta who beat their drums and chant their chants and get high, and for a moment they can find themselves at the foot of Selassie. But after the weed wear off and the music finish playing, then it's back to the harsh and ugly reality of life. One of the things about Rastafarianism is that it has prevented the masses from seeing who the real enemies are."

Apex Manor: The Year of Magical Drinking

2011-02-12T12:30:00.000-08:00

The Year of Magical Thinking is Joan Didion’s account of the year following the death of her husband, writer John Gregory Dunne, and her attempts to make sense of her grief while tending to the severe illness of her adopted daughter, Quintana.

What is Magical Thinking? Magical thinking often involves linking actions or events that could not possibly be related to each other. For instance, you may believe that simply imagining a horrific car crash will increase the likelihood of such a crash taking place. In another example, you may feel that if you don’t count to 10 “just right,” harm will come to your family. Of course, in both instances, either having a horrific thought or counting to 10 could not possibly cause the feared event to take place.

Didion first describes magical thinking at the beginning of chapter 3, while looking back on the period immediately following John’s death. During that time, she engaged in a pattern of irrational thinking, in which she believed that her wishes had the power to change reality. She thought that, by wanting John to come back, she would actually be able to bring him back from the dead. Didion’s depiction of magical thinking supports her claim that grief is a state of temporary mental illness, during which people engage in disordered, absurd thinking.

Something about temporary insanity and irrational behavior struck a chord with Apex Manor and their playfully titled debut "Year of Magical Drinking." Ross Flournoy, founder of Apex Manor was down in the dumps with writer's block and a love for the drink in Pasadena, Calif., when he heard about a songwriting contest for the NPR blog Monitor Mix. The result was a renewed love for music, a new band, and an album. Note to songwirters: never think you're too good for a contest.

Take a listen to Ross's old band, "Broken West"

Iron and Wine: Part of the Southern Gothic Tradition?

2011-02-05T08:33:00.000-08:00

More than one critic has described Iron and Wine as part of the Southern Gothic tradition. Whatizat?

1) Genre in American literature that takes place in the South
2) Avoids stereotypes like the contented slave, the demure Southern belle, and the righteous preacher
3) Uses the grotesque in settings, situations, and characters with a focus on racial bigotry and egotistical self righteousness
4) Characters have enough good qualities to keep the reader sympathetic and interested
5) Explores social issues without black and white morality, but with plenty of religious imagery

Classic Example: The Sound and the Fury written by the American author William Faulkner (Published in 1929)

The novel centers on the Compson family, former Southern aristocrats who are struggling to deal with the dissolution of their family and its reputation. The novel is separated into four distinct sections.

The first, April 7, 1928, is written from the perspective of Benjamin "Benjy" Compson, a 33-year-old man with severe mental handicaps. Benjy's section is characterized by a highly disjointed narrative style with frequent chronological leaps.

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's just a waking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."
—Macbeth V.v.

Carolyn Denard's essay "The Long, High Gaze" says Faulkner gives: "voice to the 'discredited' within the South - the alienated, the insane, the idiosyncratic - like Benjy,. These nationally and locally discredited get Faulkner's gaze… He does not simply praise these characters—the gaze is not applause; it is a sincere, lingering consideration of their place in the universe—how they fail and how they triumph, but always how they matter."

Example in Film: The Night of the Hunter - thriller film from 1955 starring Robert Mitchum in his iconic role of psychopathic preacher and serial killer Harry Powell(with the words "LOVE" and "HATE" tattooed on the knuckles of his right and left hands)

Lyrics from Iron and Wine: Me and Lazarus

Me and Lazarus, we shovel all the ashes out
Black bare linens blowing 'round
Back and forth and up and down
oh oh woah, guess I had nowhere else to go

Me and Lazarus kept bailing on the riverboat
Floating by the choir rose
Bobbing in the ebb and flow
oh oh woah, guess I had nowhere else to go

He's an emancipated punk and he can dance
But he's got a hole in the pocket of his pants
Must be a symptom of outstanding circumstances
Woah

Me and Lazarus, we fiddle with a baby spoon
Fever flowing through the room
Far too long and way too soon
oh oh woah, guess I had nowhere else to go

Me and Lazarus, we pick up papa's white boy blues
Hand-me downs and Sunday shoes
Never made the local news
oh oh woah, guess I had nowhere else to go

And I'm a liberated loser that can roll
But where my pocket was I'm peeking through a hole
A couple second-chances surely would console me
Woah

The Go! Team , Strawberry Alarmclock, and the Super Bowl

2011-02-01T18:05:00.000-08:00

The Go! Team just released "Rolling Black Outs"

While the new songs retain certain elements of the band's earlier work, leader Ian Parton also experimented with a new style. "Some of the songs have a pure, '60s jangly, almost Strawberry Alarm Clock/Byrds feel to them," Parton says. "I was trying to make it genuinely eclectic but without consciously [doing] so. I'm generally torn every day about what my favorite type of music is. ['Rolling Blackouts'] reflects that -- getting torn between all these different things.

Super Bowl Commercial: The Black Eyed Peas may not have done it for ya, but the Go! Team commercial sure hit the spot.

Destroyer: Kaputt, its musical Daddy (Roxy Music's Avalon), and the literature connection with author Curzio Malaparte

2011-01-29T09:05:00.000-08:00

Destroyer's Daniel Bejar embraces the alternative art rock of his Childhood- the 80s ambient sounds made popular by Roxy Music's 1982 release "Avalon."

Best/worst lyric from the Kaputt: "We can sculpturize the air for free."

Album title might come from an obscure Italian book: Curzio Malaparte is the pseudonym of Kurt Erich Suckert, born in South Tirol (part of Italy). As a reporter he travelled extensively through German-occupied Europe during the Second World War and did not shun the front lines. But he also had access to the "Big Names" of fascism, such as Himmler, Franck (the governor of Poland) and the son-in-law of Mussolini. But above all Malaparte remained an outsider with deviant opinions that landed him in Italian prisons a few times.

Kaputt describes the everyday horrors of war: sleeping in a house with a horse carcass rotting next to it, the upper ten of a city playing bridge while at the same time the Jews of their city are massacred. The 'beau monde' of Italy which is more concerned with the latest developments in the love life of Mussolini's son-in-law than with the fact that Italy is very obviously losing the war.

The most touching part of the book: A father who hides some small presents in his backyard so that his kids think in the morning that the English fighter planes were there to drop of presents rather than bomb the city to pieces.

Musical influence: late Roxy Music

Avalon, released in 1982, was Roxy Music's eighth (and, to date, final) studio album. Recorded in 1981-82 at Compass Point Studios in Nassau, Bahamas, it is generally regarded as the culmination of the smoother, more adult-oriented sound of the band's later work. It was a huge commercial success, hitting #1 in the UK (for 3 weeks) and staying on the album charts for over a year. Although it only climbed as high as #53, Avalon is notable as the band's only platinum record in the US. Bryan Ferry's girlfriend (and soon-to-be wife) Lucy Helmore appeared on the cover wearing a medieval helmet and carrying a falcon, evoking King Arthur's last journey to the mysterious land of Avalon and continuing the tradition for Roxy Music albums to feature images of women on the cover artwork (though perhaps less apparently than previous albums). The lush arrangements and synthesizer drenched sound of Avalon later found its way onto Bryan Ferry's solo work.

In 1989, the album was ranked #31 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the "The 100 Greatest Albums of the 1980s". In 2003, the album was ranked number 307 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. Avalon is the highest entry of four Roxy Music albums that made the list (Siren, For Your Pleasure and Country Life being the others).

Avalon in popular culture:

Two songs from the album have been used in Grand Theft Auto, appearing on the in-game's ficitonal radio station emotion 98.3 in 2002 & 2006: "More Than This" in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and "Avalon" in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories.

The Captain, a character from Marvel Comics' Nextwave: Agents of H.A.T.E., went briefly by the alias "Captain Avalon." He quickly dropped the moniker after learning from his mother that Avalon was the album playing when he was conceived.

In the Max Brooks novel World War Z, the title song is mentioned. It is sung by a Scripps College student "with a voice like an angel" to inspire the exhausted defenders before the last major zombie incursion, during The Battle of the Five Colleges in Claremont, California.

When the Toyota Avalon sedan was released to the New Zealand market in 2000, the advertising campaign used the song "Avalon". Due to the success of the campaign, Roxy Music/Bryan Ferry CD compilations in music shops soon had stickers proclaiming "Featuring 'Avalon,' from the Toyota Avalon car commercial".

Bill Murray performs "More Than This" in a memorable karaoke scene in the 2003 movie Lost in Translation.

"While My Heart Is Still Beating" was used in an episode of Ashes to Ashes

John Vanderslice: White Wilderness

2011-01-29T08:26:00.000-08:00

White Wilderness marks a musical departure for singer-songwriter John Vanderslice. The synths and electronic beats are replaced by the chamber-pop arrangements Minna Choi and her Magik Magik Orchestra.

Words of Wisdom: "You can't take back what you put in your head," Vanderslice sings on Convict Lake.

Vampire Weekend iTunes Session Covers Bruce Springsteen

2011-01-08T08:18:00.000-08:00

"I'm Goin' Down" was recorded in May 1982 during the first wave of Born in the U.S.A. sessions. The track went on and off and back on the short list to make the album, finally bumping "Pink Cadillac" out of a place and into the B-side queue.[1]

The song peaked at number nine on the Billboard Hot 100 pop singles chart in fall 1985. It was the sixth of a record-tying seven Top 10 hit singles to be released from Born in the U.S.A.

There was some controversy surrounding the release of yet another single from the album, which had been out for well over a year at that point. Cliff Bernstein, manager of Def Leppard and Dokken, said "I think a sixth single is a little bit of overkill"

No music video or remixes were made for the song.

Peter Buck and The Decemberists

2010-12-28T07:38:00.000-08:00

The new Decemberists album, The King is Dead, is due out in January 2011 with Peter Buck of R.E.M. appearing on three of the tracks. Colin Meloy has said that R.E.M. is an inspiration on some of the album's material.

Wilco side project: The Autumn Defense

2010-12-26T08:59:00.000-08:00

Recommended if you like: Fleet Foxes, gentle Neil Young, 70s AM Gold
The Autumn Defense is an indie band, composed of multi-instrumentalists John Stirratt and Pat Sansone. The following 2 tracks come from their 2010 release "Once Around."

The Autumn Defense began as a side project for Stirratt, who is best known for his work as bassist for alt-country bands Wilco and Uncle Tupelo. Stirratt collaborated with Sansone, who had been known for his work with Joseph Arthur and Josh Rouse, to produce a 1960s-style rock/pop album.

John Grant

2010-12-20T08:56:00.000-08:00

Dave Simpson guardian.co.uk: John Grant used to front the Czars, whose failure to translate acclaim into sales no doubt further fuelled his supersized self-loathing. However, after descending into a personal hell of booze, drugs and giving up music for waiting tables, the Coloradan has emerged with a colossus. Backed by superfans Midlake, these are songs of impossible love, near-suicide and redemption, with an air of vastness and contemplation recalling Dennis Wilson's masterpiece, Pacific Ocean Blue. With pianos and flutes, songs such as I Wanna Go to Marz and Where Dreams Go to Die combine a surreal, David Lynch, sideways look at capitalist America with choruses most artists could only dream about. The jauntier Silver Platter Club and JC Hates Faggots brutally poke fun at rich jocks and Grant's time as a gay child in a religious household respectively. But the emotionally wringing ballads – the witheringly honest Queen of Denmark and Jeff Buckleyesque Caramel – most suggest a man whose time has come.

Cotton Jones

2010-12-12T09:29:00.000-08:00

Cotton Jones (formerly The Cotton Jones Basket Ride), is an indie folk-pop band based in Cumberland, Maryland

Sounds like: traces of both the Band and Beachhouse

Christmas Scenes from Cumberland

Nick Cave and Harry Potter

2010-11-20T09:50:00.000-08:00

The dark gospel anthem "O Children" from the 2004 Nick Cave album Abattoir Blues/Lyres of Orpheus is a highlight from the latest Harry Potter film.

Director David Yates explained the Nick Cave choice:
"I listened to so many pieces of music for that dance, hundreds in fact, because I needed a piece of music that was poignant and tender but oddly uplifting. And I came across Nick's piece and I loved it immediately. It has that capacity to lift you up and break your heart at the same time. So we found Nick Cave and he said he'd be happy for us to use it."

Dan Radcliffe too is a fan of the song:
"When the Nick Cave song came on, I said to my friend, "That is the coolest Harry Potter has ever been."

Outsider Artist Royal Robertson & Sufjan Stevens

2010-10-23T10:32:00.000-07:00

The title of the 2010 album The Age of Adz by Sufjan Stevens is a reference to the work of outsider artist "Prophet" Royal Robertson. Robertson's work is used for the cover and interior design of the album.

Royal spent almost his entire life in Louisiana. Robertson left school having completed the eighth grade In his late teens he apprenticed as a sign painter and traveled to the West coast in his early 20's working as a field hand and sign painter. He returned to Louisiana in the 1950s to care for his mother where he continued to work as a sign painter. He married Adell Brent in 1955 and they had eleven children. Their marriage ended after 19 years when Adell left him for another man, moved to Texas taking their children with her and became a minister.

Robertson remained in Louisiana after his marriage ended and became a recluse.[5] He was largely scorned by his neighbors and was overcome by misogynistic rage towards his former wife and women in general. Robertson suffered from paranoid schizophrenia[7] and claimed to have had his first vision, a futuristic vision of a space ship with God as driver, when he was fourteen. When his marriage ended he began to record his visions in his imagery and writings.

Numerous hallucinatory visions of space travel where aliens predicted the End of Days through complex numerological formulas and warned him about the dangers of adultery and fornication led Robertson to believe that he was a victim of a global female conspiracy. He believed that his ex-wife's betrayal would be the cause of the cataclysmic destruction of humanity, and that his art was divinely sanctioned. According to social anthropologist Frédéric Allamel, Robertson saw himself as a patriarch in search of a new Zion and a prophet whose legacy would consist of his apocryphal work. He identitied himself as "Libra Patriarch Prophet Lord Archbishop Apostle Visionary Mystic Psychic Saint Royal Robertson". Robertson was a self taught artist with no formal training although according to Paul Arnett, a writer on African American vernacular art of the American South, Robertson took a correspondence course in art.

Badly Drawn Boy: It's What I'm Thinking: Photographing Snowflakes

2010-10-17T10:55:00.000-07:00

Nse Ette (Lagos, Nigeria): Badly Drawn Boy's new CD "It's What I'm Thinking: Part 1 - Photographing Snowflakes" is just as arty sounding as its title; soft lush sounds with a dreamy ambience acting as a backdrop for his plaintive vocals.
Opening is the Fleet Foxy "Safe Hands", followed by the more upbeat quivering beauty of "The Order of Things". "10 feet tall, but feeling small" he sings on the dreamy "What Tomorrow Brings", while the perky and absolutely magical "I Saw You Walk Away" finds his echoing vocals juxtaposed with arching strings.
Everything stands out on this superb collection, the countrified "It's What I'm Thinking", the gently chiming "You Lied" with hushed reverb-laden vocals, the groovy "This Electric", to the quirky "This Beautiful Idea" with disembodied vocals and Oriental chimes. Strangely beautiful, as is the entire album!

Belle and Sebastian: Write About Love

2010-10-17T10:34:00.000-07:00

Clash Music: this latest record inhabits a more delicate sonic framework, reminiscent of early B & S.

B&S major influence over the years: the psychedelic baroque pop legends from Los Angeles, California: "Love"

kelley stoltz: for dreamers

2010-10-17T09:55:00.000-07:00

Pitchfork: Kelley Stoltz does a mean Brian Wilson, a half-decent Roger McGuinn, a spot-on Marc Bolan. He's got a Tom Petty, a Nick Drake, and a David Bowie that wouldn't get him kicked out of Vegas . . .a gifted stylist searching for a style to call his own.

Pitchfork continues: To Dreamers is one of Stoltz's most satisfying efforts to date, sounding bolder and more invigorated than nearly anything before it.

Kelley Stoltz finally made prime time! If the dj's don't play it, t.v. commercials will. We are Stoltz fans and may not know it.

Stoltz, a San Francisco mainstay with a decidedly backward-looking sound, has watched a little like-minded scene build up around him over the last few years; the Bay Area's been hemorrhaging great psych-pop revival acts of late, many of whom Stoltz can count as friends and collaborators .... like Sonny & the Sunsets (for whom Stoltz has been drumming)

The Clientele: Minotaur

2010-10-17T09:42:00.000-07:00

The Onion: the EP's first five songs are as strong as any in The Clientele's catalogue.

Cokemachineglow:

hope that a band as consistently transcendent as the Clientele will continue on into the future.

Antony and the Johnsons

2010-10-17T09:09:00.000-07:00

With their fourth album, Antony Hegarty and the rest of his New York City band infuse atmospheric intonations, innovation, and heartfelt emotion into their experimental music.

Tiny Mix Tapes: Again and again, Antony gestures toward a light: a crying light, a swanlight, a luminous impossibility that beckons, ultimately serving only to illuminate the sadness of this world.

The Onion: Even when Swanlights doesn't always take corporeal form-that looseness also means several of its melodies simply fade into the shadows-Antony's voice remains a spectral wonder.

Antony's Influences: Eunice Kathleen Waymon (February 21, 1933 – April 21, 2003), better known by her stage name Nina Simone (/ˈniːnə sɨˈmoʊn/), was an American singer, songwriter, pianist, arranger, and civil rights activist. Although she disliked being categorized, Simone is most associated with jazz music.

Within one album or concert she could fluctuate between exuberant happiness and tragic melancholy. These fluctuations also characterized her own personality and personal life, amplified by bipolar disorder with which she was diagnosed in the mid-1960s, something not widely known until after her death in 2003, though she wrote of it openly in her autobiography published in 1992.[1] According to Nadine Cohodas, Simone's biographer, Ms. Simone was first diagnosed with multiple personality disorder and later with schizophrenia.

Matt Costa: Mobile Chateau

2010-09-23T18:45:00.000-07:00

Matt Costa's new, self produced release is influenced by his recent love of the sweeter side of 60's psychedelic rock. The Zombies and Donovan are amoung his current favorites.

Jenny Lewis new project: Jenny & Johnny

2010-09-04T09:36:00.000-07:00

Ann Powers: The heterosexual working couple may be replacing the band of brothers as the primary unit of the 21st-century rock group. Jenny Lewis and Johnathan Rice have been creatively and romantically involved for half a decade; the lady, one of indie's most successful thinking beauties, is the bigger star. Maybe that's why this project, though lighthearted, has some of the prickliness of a real relationship.
I'm Having Fun Now” distinguishes itself from Lewis' and Rice's solo efforts, or hers with band-on-hiatus Rilo Kiley, by going for a very specific tone. The fuzzy but bright production has been compared to classic AM radio fare but is really closer to the jangle pop of the 1980s — bands like Opal in L.A. and Let's Active out of North Carolina. It's prettier than what today's shoegaze revivalists do, but still a bit jarring and tart.

Jennifer Diane Lewis (born January 8, 1976[1]), is an American singer-songwriter musician, and actress. She is a member and primary vocalist of the indie rock band Rilo Kiley, and has released two solo albums. She was born in Las Vegas, Nevada, and is of Jewish descent.

Lewis made her professional debut in a Jell-O commercial. She was featured in the short-lived 1986 Lucille Ball sitcom Life With Lucy, where she was cast as one of Lucy's grandchildren.[4] She also had small roles on such TV shows as The Twilight Zone, Baywatch, Golden Girls, Growing Pains, Just the Ten of Us, Roseanne, Mr. Belvedere, and Brooklyn Bridge.[4]

Lewis appeared in over a dozen teen-themed movies, such as Troop Beverly Hills, in the late 1980s and in 1989 starred in The Wizard. She was featured in the 1996 made-for-TV movie Talk to Me with Yasmine Bleeth, as well as the films Foxfire, Big Girls Don't Cry... They Get Even, and Pleasantville.[4] She played the part of Evangeline "Eva" Saint Claire in the 1987 film version of Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel Uncle Tom's Cabin.[4] She played Beverly D'Angelo's daughter in the 1996 made-for-tv film, "Sweet Temptation". She continued acting until 1998, although the last released (Don's Plum, filmed 1995-6) wasn't released until 2001.

Eels: Tomorrow Morning

2010-08-28T08:30:00.000-07:00

By Hugh Montgomery: Career pessimist Mark "E" Everett has let the sunshine in, following up January's divorce-wracked End Times with a collection rejoicing in magnificent days and spectacular girls.

Sounds like the Killer B's: Beck, Beatles, Beach Boys

Sufjan Stevens: All Delighted People

2010-08-21T17:04:00.000-07:00

Pitchfork: He's baaaack! Literary indie-pop god Sufjan Stevens is touring this fall, and now he's returned to the fold big-time with All Delighted People, a new eight-song, 60-minute EP that he's released onto the internet effective right now! At this very second, you can cruise on over to Sufjan's Bandcamp page to buy the EP for a super-reasonable $5, or stream the whole thing for free above. Two songs on here are more than 11 minutes long.

Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan: Hawk

2010-08-21T16:48:00.000-07:00

(Pitchfork) Three albums in, the combination still feels unlikely: the once-chirpy Scottish twee star hooking up with the gravelly, drugged-out ex-grunge guy to make warm, languid movie-soundtrack Americana. Nothing in that last sentence seems like it should work. But former Belle and Sebastian singer/cellist Isobel Campbell and former Screaming Trees frontman Lanegan have the sort of chemistry that nobody can fully explain. Their voices hang suspended in the air together, Campbell's feathery light and Lanegan's thick and downtrodden.

The obvious point of comparison, and the one that critics have made over and over again with these two, is Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood, and the parallels certainly work. Like Nancy and Lee, Campbell and Lanegan's world-weary sprite/cowboy act lends a nice angelic/demonic dichotomy to everything they do.

Mark Lanegan when Grunge ruled the alt music scene

Isobel with Belle & Sebastian

The Like & Elvis Costello: Like Father, Like Daughter

2010-08-21T15:08:00.000-07:00

The Like is an alternative rock band from Los Angeles, California. The current members are Elizabeth "Z" Berg (vocals and guitar), Tennessee Thomas (drums), Laena Geronimo (bass), and Annie Monroe (organ). Since forming in 2001, the band has released three extended plays (EPs) and two studio albums.

Pete Thomas (Drummer for Elvis Costello) is the proud dad of the Like's Tennessee Thomas (drums)

Beachwood Sparks resurrected on the Scott Pilgrim Soundtrack

2010-08-18T23:27:00.000-07:00

Beachwood Sparks
Origin Los Angeles, California
Genres Indie rock, Alt-Country, Psychedelic pop
Years active 1997 - 2002, 2008 - present

Clinic - "I'm Aware" and the artwork of Peter Fowler

2010-08-14T10:49:00.000-07:00

Rewiring their trademark hyped up sound Clinic have entered a dream state of harpsichord, dulcimers and strings. And that dream state is best visualized by means of the psychedelic puppetry in their new video for "I'm Aware", their first single off of Bubblegum.

The video was directed by Peter Fowler (the gentleman behind many of Super Furry Animals artwork and visuals).

Lost in the Trees

2010-08-07T09:48:00.000-07:00

Bob Boilen writes: Lost in the Trees is the music of Ari Picker, a songwriter from Chapel Hill on a bit of a mission: Take a pinch of the brilliance found in classical music and mix it with his own. Lost in the Trees is orchestral folk where the "orchestral" part isn't an afterthought. This is mighty potent stuff.

The lyrics heard in the title track are taken from arguments Picker's parents had in the house he grew up in. But this isn't a data dump of depression; it's a record filled with hope and spirit.

"A few years ago, there was the soundtrack for Wes Anderson's The Royal Tenenbaums," Picker says, "and somehow there it all was — Ravel next to Paul Simon. I look at both my own songwriting and the music I admire most, and the common quality is that it's a sort of mash-up of everything and a labor of love."

Arcade Fire: The Suburbs

2010-08-05T07:28:00.000-07:00

"Never trust a millionaire, according to the sermon on the mount," Butler sings
on "City With No Children." And just when you think it's all going to get unbearably self-righteous, he adds, "I used to think I was not like them, but I'm beginning to have my doubts."

A 1950s film that introduces young people to the concept suburbs

1978 cult classic about the suburbs gone bad - Matt Dillon's debut

Jens Lekman: The End of the World Is Bigger Than Love

2010-08-01T09:12:00.000-07:00

One of our favorite troubadours, Jens Lekman, finally released new material since the sugary sweet 2007 indie smash "Night Falls Over Kortedala."

“The End of the World Is Bigger Than Love”‎ is Lekman’s new EP and also the name of the first single that can be heard below.

Dean & Britta: 13 Most Beautiful

2010-07-28T12:11:00.000-07:00

Dean & Britta (ex-Luna, Galaxie 500) were commissioned by the Andy Warhol Museum to compose and perform songs for 13 Screen Tests - short, silent portrait films made by Warhol in the mid-'60s. This live show has been touring the world for 18 months, with 50 performances to date, playing everywhere from the Sydney Opera House to NYC's Lincoln Center, to a 15th-century cathedral in Paris.

People in the trailer in order of appearance: Paul America, Edie Sedgwick, Richard Rheem, Ingrid Superstar, Lou Reed, Jane Holzer, Billy Name, Mary Woronov, Freddy Herko, Ann Buchanan, Susan Bottomly, Nico, Dennis Hopper. The music is an excerpt from the song "Knives from Bavaria (Spoonful of Fun)" by Dean & Britta.

Grizzly Bear side project: Department of Eagles

2010-07-22T10:36:00.001-07:00

Before Daniel Rossen joined Grizzly Bear in 2005, he was already working up Van Dyke Parks-inspired pop pastiches with his NYU roommate Fred Nicolaus under the name Department Of Eagles.

Album Description: This collection from Daniel Rossen (Grizzly Bear) and Fred Nicolaus contains B-sides and songs from the never released 2006 second album "The January Sessions."

Larry Fitzmaurice asks: Daniel Rossen's main act, Grizzly Bear, are unexpectedly popular, hitting the Billboard top 10 and provoking name-drops from such culturally disparate figures as Jay-Z and Michael McDonald. So why was In Ear Park, the 2008 sophomore effort from Department of Eagles, Rossen's side project with college roommate Fred Nicolaus, so criminally overlooked?

Danger Mouse & Sparklehorse: Dark Night of the Soul

2010-07-14T09:27:00.000-07:00

PopMatters: Dark Night of the Soul is a collaboration between Sparklehorse and Danger Mouse, with David Lynch adding musical contributions as well as a complementary 100-page book of original photography. It features appearances, vocally and otherwise, from the Flaming Lips, Jason Lytle (formerly of Grandaddy), Suzanne Vega, Iggy Pop, Black Francis, Vic Chesnutt, James Mercer of the Shins, Gruff Rhys of the Super Furry Animals, and Julian Casablancas of the Strokes.

The Story Behind the title: A term coined by 16th century mystic St. John of the Cross, "Dark night of the soul" is a metaphor used to describe a phase in a person's spiritual life, marked by a sense of loneliness and desolation.

Album Curse:

Mark Linkous-- better known as Sparklehorse - committed suicide by shooting himself in the heart outside a friend's house in Knoxville at 1:20 pm on March 6, 2010. He was 47 years old.

On December 25, 2009, album guest star Vic Chesnutt died from an overdose of muscle relaxants that had left him in a coma in an Athens hospital. In the 2009 interview with Terry Gross, while discussing the song "Flirted with You All My Life", he said, "You know, I've attempted suicide three or four times. It didn't take." In 2009, he sang on the track Grim Augury on from the album Dark Night of the Soul by Danger Mouse of Gnarls Barkley, Sparklehorse, and director David Lynch

It wasn't available in stores or online for a long period due to a copyright beef on the part of EMI.

Young Veins: Take A Vacation

2010-07-12T17:24:00.000-07:00

Ryan Ross and Jon Walker left the popular Las Vegas outfit Panic at the Disco in 2009, a year after the release of that band's second album, "Pretty. Odd.," a surprisingly baroque collection of 1960s-influenced pop-rock. Ross and Walker went on to form the Young Veins, and if you thought "Pretty. Odd." was 1960s-fixated, wait until you hear this new band's debut, "Take a Vacation!" From the crisp, buzzing guitars and tight vocal harmonies right at the start of the opening "Change," the Young Veins return us squarely to the mid-1960s, when every teen band in America was hunkered down in the garage trying to play catch-up to the British Invasion. Hence the Dave Clark Five/Zombies-style "Everyone But You," a quietly glowing minor-chord ballad, the jangly beat shuffle of "Maybe I Will, Maybe I Won't" and the effervescent title track. All 11 of these concise songs are played straight, without the slightest hint of nostalgia or hokey period trappings. Producers Alex Greenwald from the band Phantom Planet and Rob Mathes favor a bright, open sound with lots of space, leaving room for guitars to sparkle, snare drums to crack and other embellishments (occasional organ, castanets, handclaps) to contribute. Ross and Walker's vocals are filled with verve and enthusiasm, and their songs beautifully capture the spirit of a truly exciting time in pop music without once camping it up or attempting to modernize the sound. These are 29 pretty wonderful minutes - Sam Gneere

Teenage Fanclub: Shadows

2010-07-09T00:00:00.000-07:00

Pitchfork: "Sometimes I Don't Need to Believe in Anything" begins with Love singing about feeling alive and ends with the band skipping through a cascade of angelic da-da-da's. He's not the only one feeling better, either. "Dark clouds are following you/ But they'll drift away/ I watched the night turning into a day," sings guitarist Norman Blake on "Dark Clouds".

The lightly psychedelic "Into the City" ebbs and flows through tides of phased guitar into an outro of soaring Beach Boys-worthy harmonies

Blake's "Baby Lee", with its chiming open chords, is as sturdy a song as the band has ever delivered.

Dirty Projectors and Bob Dylan: I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine

2010-06-29T11:16:00.000-07:00

As part of the Levi's Pioneer series, the Dirty Projectors cover Bob Dylan's deep album track "I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine"

"I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine" is a song by Bob Dylan that was originally released on his 1968 album John Wesley Harding. It was recorded at the first John Wesley Harding session on October 17, 1967. It has been covered by many artists, including Joan Baez, Vic Chesnutt, John Doe, Thea Gilmore, Adam Selzer and Dirty Projectors.[ In addition, Jimi Hendrix at one point intended to cover this song, but felt it was too personal to Dylan and instead covered a different song from the album, "All Along the Watchtower

The lyrics describe a dream that is enigmatic and subject to interpretation.However, the lyrics do convey a deeply felt sense of guilt, as well as a vision of faith, righteousness, fear and betrayal. The sense of guilt is particularly prevalent in the final verse:

"I dreamed I saw St. Augustine/
Alive, with fiery breath/
And I dreamed I was amongst the ones that put him out to death/
Oh, I awoke in anger, so alone and terrified/
I put my fingers against the glass/
And bowed my head and cried."

The St. Augustine in the title has often been linked to St. Augustine of Hippo, although St. Augustine of Hippo was not martyred' He was, however, a philosopher who wrote about evil and guilt, and could have viewed himself as being martyred in the sense of being killed by his own sins. In the dream revealed in the song, St. Augustine wears a coat of solid gold, which may signify St. Augustine's own spiritual wealth. He also carries a blanket, which may be a sign of asceticism or of his compassion. St. Augustine searches for "the very souls / Whom already have been sold," a reference to the commercialization of mankind's inner self, a motif that will recur on later songs on the album such as "Dear Landlord" and "The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest." He tells "ye gifted kings and queens" that "No martyr is among ye now," but consoles them with the knowledge that nonetheless they are not alone. But the dream ends with the narrator realizing that he himself is among those that put St. Augustine to death, initiating his feelings of guilt as he now sees the error of his ways.

Below is the best Bob Dylan video of the MTV glory days

Shins & Squeeze

2010-06-24T09:27:00.000-07:00

The Levi's Pioneer Sessions online series has given us free mp3s of people like Dirty Projectors, She & Him, and Nas covering classic songs. And today, Levi's is offering the world the Shins' cover of Squeeze's new wave nugget "Goodbye Girl".

"Goodbye Girl" was the first single released from Squeeze's second album Cool for Cats (1978). Three different versions were recorded: one for the UK single, one for the American single, and one for the album. In the UK, the single reached number 63 on the UK Singles Chart.

In 2007, the just-reunited Squeeze recorded a new, guitar-heavy version of "Goodbye Girl" for an Under Armour television advertisement

Obscure Cover from Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti

2010-06-23T09:54:00.000-07:00

Compare to the 1966 Original from the Rockin' Ramrods

Along with the Remains, the Rockin' Ramrods were Boston's premier rock band in the mid-'60s. Unlike the Remains, they didn't gain even a modicum of exposure beyond their city, and are far more obscure even to '60s collectors. They were a decent if not significant group, sounding kind of like a Beatlized frat band, and relying largely upon original material, much of it penned by bassist Ronn Campisi. Over the course of more than half a dozen singles between 1963 and 1966, they competently tackled garage grunge, wild instrumentals, and some very pleasant hard pop/rock originals with prominent keyboards, somewhat in the manner of an Americanized early Manfred Mann. "Bright Lit Blues Skies," their best song, was a hit in the Boston area, but they achieved no other success of note before disbanding. ~ Richie Unterberger, All Music Guide

Magic Kids: Memphis

2010-06-21T10:35:00.000-07:00

Anthony Carew (allabout.com): In 2009, a troupe of Tennessean teenagers named Magic Kids dished up one of the year's best pop-songs. Channeling the Beach Boys by way of the Langley Schools Music Project, "Hey Boy" delivered 135 seconds of pure pop bliss: cascading vocal harmonies, Spector-esque wall-of-sound production, tinkling xylophone, blasting saxophone, and sweeping string parts.

Proving they weren't just one-jam wonders, Magic Kids threw out another couple of killer cuts: the rollicking "Good to Be," which kind of reminds me of Danielson Famile, and the suitably sproingy "Superball," all twee keyboards and sad swipes of violin.

Musically speaking, it's a case of old is the new new: each song is hopelessly, romantically in debt to the Beach Boys, but the familiar chord-changes on display sound gloriously innocent in Magic Kids' hands.

Jangle Rock with Nada Surf & The Birds

2010-06-17T12:50:00.000-07:00

NPR: Not many musicians can pull off relentless hope and sunny optimism while maintaining their gravitas, but Nada Surf makes it work. The Brooklyn band makes big, bright, chin-up rock 'n' roll about love and survival, aided by some of the brashest, sweetest choruses around, but it knows how to let wistful melancholy mingle with the sunshine.

It just so happens that "Electrocution" is, in every way, a perfect fit for Nada Surf's sensibility and philosophy; the electrocution referenced in the title is a stand-in for any old jolt of life-affirming energy. Fox's thoughtful words could just as easily come from Caws himself ("All that is beautiful / All that is needs to die"), as Nada Surf pays tribute to both a key influence and the idea that feeling alive is as important as being alive.

A Jangle Classic (1965)

"I'll Feel a Whole Lot Better" is a song by the Los Angeles folk rock band The Byrds that was first released in June 1965 on the B-side of the band's second single, "All I Really Want to Do".[1] It was also included on The Byrds' debut album, Mr. Tambourine Man.[1] Written by Gene Clark, who also sings the lead vocal, "I'll Feel a Whole Lot Better" features some of The Byrds' early musical trademarks, including Jim McGuinn's jangling 12-string Rickenbacker guitar; Clark's pounding tambourine; McGuinn, Clark and David Crosby's complex harmony singing; and a country-influenced guitar solo

It is also considered by many critics to be one of the band's, as well as Clark's, best and most popular songs, with Rolling Stone magazine ranking it at #234 on their list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

The song's refrain of "I'll probably feel a whole lot better when you're gone" betrays Clark's uncertainty about ending the relationship and whether such an act would be the answer to his problems or not.[3][6] The use of the word "probably" in the song is key, giving the track a depth of subtext that was unusual for a pop song at the time.[3] Jim Dickson, The Byrds' manager, has noted that this level of subtext was not unusual in Clark's songs of the period: "There was always something to unravel in those songs, the non-explanation of the complex feeling. For instance, if you remember I'll Feel a Whole Lot Better, it doesn't say: "I'll feel a whole lot better", but "I'll probably feel a whole lot better." For me, that makes the song. There's a statement followed by a hesitation."