Sunset Rubdown

I have been attempting to pirate the new Sunset Rubdown album for the last couple of weeks and the internerd has really let me down this time. So, Instead of posting music I'm going to just vent my frustration.

This frustration has two components, one of which is from not being able to get the music from my conventional spots er...Hype Machine blogs which really in the whole scheme of things isn't that much frustration - it's like a 2 out of 10, about the same level of frustration as say, having your roommate not refill the ice cube tray. The real frustration though is dealing with the realization that I'm not like a member of the cool blogging nerd community that shares all the secret songs and albums before they are released and that is like more of a 9 out of a 10 frustration. And if I haven't said it already a thousand times - my whole life revolves around three things: Getting air conditioning in to my mom's basement, avoiding debt collectors and stealing music before anyone or at least as soon as anyone else can.

So for anyone who hasn't encountered it before - here is the Frustration Scale:

1 - Trying to make a post on your dumb blog about a frustration scale and realizing your computer is too lame to even have any paint type program and thus having to utilize something that's really more like an ascending frustration list.

2 - The ice cube thing.

3 - Being barely above the height of the average girl and thus much less tall than the average girl model making it that much more difficult to score with the only chicks you care about scoring with.

4 - Leaving your atm card and driver's license at a bar that's like thirty minutes from anywhere where you normally would find yourself.

6 - Not being creative (drunk, high, bored) enough to come up with a number 5 on a frustration scale/ascending list.

7 - Trying to kill some warcraft dragon with a bunch of noobs and some guy from Finland. Seriously...more than a million downloads.

8 - Not being able to get more than $400 for the sex tape you made of your best friend and a girl that looks exactly like a Puerto Rican Lindsay Lohan.

9 - Having 500 words or more written on anything but a typewriter or cocktail napkin randomly deleted by the cybergods. And that whole not being intercool thing.

10 - Accidentally drowning your dog because you just wanted to see how far you could throw a frisbee in to the middle of a frozen lake.

Bon Iver

Whoa two singer songwriter posts in one week what the hell is going on. Well I wouldn't be posting unless the stuff really blew me away and god does it ever. Bon Iver is actually the project of a broken hearted lumber jack named Justin Vernon who locked himself inside a Wisconsin cabin this past winter and recorded this stuff himself. Vernon sings in a yearning falsetto and is generally only accompanied by an acoustic guitar though a few tracks have some horns added to excellent effect. The stuff is soulful and mournful which in his vernacular adds up to beautiful.

And O yes he did do a short set before the Land of Talk / Rosebuds show I was at earlier this year. As I recall, he did have some box set up that added some atmospherics to a very still room. He wasn't on the billing so I didn't really know who he was - there were only about 15 people in the room so the experience was very personal.

Bon Iver - For Emma.mp3
Bon Iver - Skinny Love.mp3

The album For Emma, Forever Ago is available here.

Pitchfork wha??

I started making this post because I wanted to make a pun about how both DJ's and Doctor's are on residency and they're both uh smart and stuff but jesus christ it's just too lame for me to even figure out.

Anyway if you think you know something about music - you don't. This interview melted my mind though I'm sure the two of them were sitting there at their laptops or something looking up shit between each response. That's what I'm telling myself anyway. Either way the breadth of musical reference is pretty impressive.

Stars

I've been trying to spend as much time with the new Stars album In the Bedroom After the War as I can lately. And therein lies the problem. Maybe I've changed, maybe they have. Maybe they've grown up faster than me but I feel as if I'm forcing myself to love this album.

Amy Milan's voice is as beautiful and probably more prominent here than ever. The album on a whole is just that - very pretty, but I can't find anything quite evocative about it. There is a pronounced lack of the vibrance or bravado I guess that was so evident in songs like "Set Yourself on Fire," and especially "Your Ex-lover is Dead." There is a definite step away from the sound of "Ageless Beauty," which was new and shoegazery for Stars in 2005 but there's nothing like that here. In the Bedroom After the War recalls biologically and sonically to the sound of Torquil Campbell's adult contemporary side project Memphis and the first Stars album Heart.

Nearly every song here is a ballad - if there's anything that Stars have never lacked, it's earnestness and this album bleeds it. And if you ever forget it - the strings that accent nearly every track will remind you - and if not nearly every track - then why does it feel that way? I know, Stars use strings frequently and have done so for a while but instead of being the featured voice like they have in the past, they seem to be a cloying Goo Goo Dollsish presence here - just a production effect - and I guess that's just a bit disappointing.

Probably my favorite song on the album is "My favorite book," which is introduced by a divine Amy Milan vocal - I mean seriously she sounds just as good as anyone acapella. It then proceeds into a jazzy Hall and Oatesy chorus full of island frills and Doo doo doo's which though totally out of character for Stars is actually a pretty interesting dynamic. There are interesting moments in other songs as well: "Life 2 The Unhappy Ending," features a short but well done venture in to electrodance and Torquil Campbell has his own Michael Jackson er...Justin Timberlake moment on "The Ghost of Geneva Heights."

None of the songs have quite the power though of past Stars efforts. Even the released track - "The Night Starts Here," isn't the jam I'm gonna start my night out with - of course unless it's Tuesday and "OMFG I have a BIG CLIENT to meet with at 8am tomorrow." No, it really only has one place and that's in your bedroom after like a really big fight or something and it's just fine that way but that's all.

My Favorite Book.mp3
The Night Starts Here.mp3

A.A. Bondy

I'm not really usually a huge singer songwriter fan but there's something pretty incredible going on here with A.A. Bondy. The picking in "Black Rain" is beautiful. Imagine Zeppelin's "Going to California," without the multitracking.

The album exudes the folk timbre that M. Ward has done very succesfully. But on American Hearts, Bondy keeps the songs pretty minimalist - only his voice and the occasional harmonica to accompany the amazing guitar playing. Bondy's voice can sometimes sound a bit like Conor Oberst, but thankfully without all the drama - though I do know that he has played some shows with him.

American Hearts is out September 4th.

Black Rain, Black Rain.mp3

New Wes Anderson

Well the Wes Anderson movie looks fantastic of course. Adrien Brody is playing surrogate for Luke Wilson but that seems to work just fine. I'll probably be watching this trailer about 40 more times between now and release (September 27th in NYC).



The songs in the trailer are from The Kinks. If you want to download them, go here: The Playlist.

Please Refrain From Purchasing the Hyperbole

This is the first installment of a series I've always wanted to do. Basically bloggers like to talk on and on about how one or another artist is all great and then other bloggers start to think to themselves - "o well I better write something about this artist as well or I won't be interhip," and then you just end up in this quagmire of bloated talk about an artist who's music just isn't all that great but just happens to be the artist of the moment. E.g. Tapes n Tapes, Joanna Newsome. So this little feature is where I'll point out who those artists are and why you should maybe give a second thought to purchasing the hyperbole.


St. Vincent (Annie Hall) has eyes that are so big you'd think she was about to eat your grandmother. According to her press photos she also enjoys wearing garbage bags, pretending to be lost, and standing barefoot in puddles of water while holding giant metal rods towards darkening thunderclouds.

She actually plays the guitar pretty well but she sings like a fed up Mary Poppins. Probably the only tolerable song I have heard from her with the possible exception of a cover of "These Days," a song which I had previously thought to be unbutcherable is called "Now, Now." The song is accented by these precious little guitar harmonics and for four minutes Annie manages to channel her innate cuteness.

The rest of the songs sound as if they were recorded to soundtrack a musical where Woody Allen has imprisoned her in the dungeon of a transylvanian castle, lets her out for two days in Prague, and then forces her back into the dungeon to compose an album while Woody's neurosis gradually wins her over.

If you still want an mp3 from St. Vincent then I suggest you try the internet - they're giving em out for free everywhere.