this song has been mocking me for forever. it comes on almost EVERY time I am driving with the radio on and I am insanely in love with it.
for the longest time, I tried to convince myself it was Billy Corgan singing--but I knew in my bones that it wasn't. I always forget to look it up, but today, the nice man deejaying 92.3 said it was SILVERSUN PICKUPS and I just got my hands on it. the dj also mentioned that the band has been nominated for a Grammy--best new artist.
as for the song: it sounds so much like Smashing Pumpkins, but with more glitz, if that makes any sense. it's shiny. it makes me dizzy. it gets me pumped.
I'm gonna give the whole album a listen, that might have been an overlooked one this year...
...but the year isn't over yet!
PS don't get confused. the band has a chick, but it's a boy singing. yeah.
Jamie Cullum - Lover, You Should Have Come Over (Jeff Buckley cover) [mp3] Jamie Cullum's debut, Twentysomething has consistently been one of my favourite albums for over five years now. it's mostly composed of covers, but it exposed me to songs before I knew the originals (ex. Hendrix's "Wind Cries Mary" and Radiohead's "High and Dry"). I love Jamie Cullum very very much. I don't listen to his second album (Catching Tales) as much as I should. when I was looking through the new issue of Q last week, I noticed that he had a new album out. must get my hands on that.
I was at his show Friday in Amsterdam, a guy came on stage and Julian sad something like: "happens to me every night that crazy people get on the stage" :)
HAHAHA. who do you think started this trend? one day, when Julian and the rest of the Strokes and I are all old buddies, smoking our pipes, we will laugh heartily at this.
because, whether it's with a handful of drunk friends or to a bunch of super-attentive five year olds, I will always be a story teller at heart. and to me, music always tells the best stories. thank you all for letting me share my favourite musical tales with you.
BONUS: Oasis - Champagne Supernova [mp3] the epic closer to (What's the Story) Morning Glory, and my second favourite Oasis song. it's funny, for all music that is not The Strokes, I have clear favourites--songs, albums, everything. with The Strokes, though, I can never manage to pick favourites. well, except for this, I suppose.
every time I sift through clearance racks at record stores, I always come across Travis albums. I'm a person who has never understood the band Travis, or, for that matter, other UK bands that flirt with the not-so-subtle and not-so-well-excecuted fluctuations between gentle songs and thrashing ones.
The Subways, though, are another story completely.
the band is three people. guitar, bass, drums. guitarist Billy Lun does most of the lead vocals but bass lady Charlotte Cooper occasionally joins in, and it always creates an insanely pure rock sound, maintained by their drummer Josh Morgan.
they are to the 00's what Nirvana was to the '90s. or a cool indie rock version thereof, anyway. they obviously aren't as groundbreaking as Nirvana, or as important, but they're still fucking awesome and have grunge energy up the wazoo. I love it when I find threesomes who managed to make such fantastic amounts of racket.
but then, they can also pull off songs like "Lines of Light" extraordinarily well. it's an acoustic song that would have fans of "Wonderwall" tearing up. for the record, it reminds me a lot of "Mary Jane" by The Vines. The Subways generally emulate The Vines in the best way possible, but particularly in the perfect balance of slower songs and ones that are the musical equivalent of drug-frenzies/drunken rocknroll dance parties
I picked up the Subways' debut album Young For Eternity ages ago from a clearance rack, because the little 30 second samples of the songs I heard from those little red machines intrigued me so much. that was the same day I put down the Travis debut for the very opposite reason. I grew to love The Subways more and more and now am passing them on to you.
now go forth and have some rock n roll adventures.
I just heard "Slow Poison"-- the new single by The Bravery -- and decided that posting an actual Joy Division song would be more worthy of your time than nonsense derivative stuff. and what better than my favourite Joy Division song?
I have no words to describe how amazing this is. one of my favourite bands on one of my favourite websites. epic combo. I don't ever want to be a bride but it must have been amazing for that lady to have such an incredible band do an impromptu transcendent performance on her special day.
(speaking of transcendent experiences, I have such an intense crush on Laurent.) I love how he cradles the guitar as he holds it upright in the second video. and "One Time Too Many" is one of my favourite songs ever. ah, this is pure bliss. It's Never Been Like That is my favourite Phoenix record, the band does two songs from it and the two singles from Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix.
the raw keys are powerful and lusty. messy in a good way -- like Cold War Kids on their first album. awesome, considering CWK probably wouldn't have been a band if it weren't for Spoon. also, didn't the two bands tour together? or am I thinking about Delta Spirit and CWK?
I recall hearing this song a few months ago on some youtube video, I probably posted about it too. but this is just a whole new level of awesome.
what I love the most about this is that it's the first new song-from-an-LP I've heard from Spoon since I saw themin concert, and it just brings back mounds of excellence. because they are such a fucking spectacular live act.
Spoon just has a knack of creating the most stellar key/guitar combos ever. I'm mesmerized by the guitars in this song (they remind me very powerfully of Bowie for some reason). and Britt's voice. oh yes.
you know those pleasant chills you get when you stumble across something that you never would have imagined existed?
you know how some songs you never expect to hear live?
it's a cover, but a damn good one at that. Fab wrote the song years before the conception of Little Joy, so it makes the whole shindig double awesome.
thanks so much to Olivia for telling me about this gem! "Clear Skies" is probably my favourite unreleased Strokes track. it's so simple and perfect.
UPDATE: there is excellent news of the Strokes confirmed for another UK gig, the same weekend as Isle of Wright. this makes me very happy because it annihilates the itty bitty fear I had that the June 12th gig was a one-off thing for a while. get ready for Spring/Summer-Strokage.
