Nickel Eye - Where the Cold Wind Blows [mp3]
Saturday, March 26, 2011
Friday, March 25, 2011
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Death Cab For Cutie to play The Fillmore in June (PRESALE + more tour dates)
the band is playing mostly smaller, intimate venues to support their forthcoming seventh album, Codes and Keys. you can preorder the bundle on their WEBSITE
Death Cab For Cutie Tour Dates:
5/18, Toronto, ON (Phoenix Concert Theatre)#5/20, Chicago IL (Metro)#
5/21, Minneapolis MN (First Avenue)#
5/24, Edmonton, AB (Shaw Conference Center)*
5/25, Calgary, AB (Stampede Corral)*
5/27, Bend, OR (Les Schwab Amphitheatre)*
5/28, George, WA (Sasquatch!)
6/1, New York, NY (Bowery)#
6/3, Washington, DC (9:30 Club)#
6/4, Philadelphia (Trocadero)#
6/5, Boston (The Paradise)#
6/7, Los Angeles (El Rey Theatre)#
6/9, San Francisco (Fillmore)#
* w/ Bright Eyes
# w/ the Lonely Forest
PRESALE tomorrow 10AM-5PM, regular tickets go on sale Saturday.
presale password = codesandkeys
The Strokes at SXSW - "Under Control"
and, just like that, it's my favourite Strokes song all over again.
beautiful.
beautiful.
The Strokes on Letterman:"Taken for a Fool"
this...is fucking intense
I really don't know where to start. jeez. um, this song is awesome? and I want to watch this for hours on end? yeah that about sums it up. YAYYYY ANGLES!
Sunday, March 20, 2011
The Strokes Post #640
the show that started it all...
Nikolai: "It would have been funny if we were like 'We're gonna start a band now. This is the best night of our lives! But it was actually. It was one of the best nights of our lives"
Saturday, March 19, 2011
The Strokes Post #639
I took a much needed one day break from Angles and now it sounds INSANE. but no matter. read THIS INTERVIEW (originally posted by TSN)
Can a member of The Strokes be replaced? Nick : “It will never happen. It’s in our contract : if one of member leaves, the band is over. It’s a sacred clause. We’re tied by it”
DO you realize some of your fans will hate the synths part? Nick: “You can’t make everyone happy. I’ve always liked the fun swing of Last Nite, Someday and UCOD but we have to grow too. It’s impossible to make every fan happy. The other members are my barometer. We’ve thought this way since the very first record”
UCOD is 100% pure Strokes…
Albert : “It’s really funny that 2/4 became the Strokes’ sound. Classic Strokes. When I play it to my friends, they’re happy, they smile. It’s The Strokes calling : making people happy. It’s the comeback of happiness (laughs)”
band of the week: Eels
who: Mark Oliver Everett (who goes by "E")
what: indie folk, oftentimes delightfully aggressive, with Beck-type vocals and idiosyncrasies up the wazoo. sometimes synthy, sometimes horn-section-y, always interesting.
where: er, So-Cal
since: 1995
listen: Eels - Flyswatter [mp3]
from the thoroughly excellent Daisies of the Galaxy (2000)
official website (with Euro tour dates)
Friday, March 18, 2011
The Strokes Post #638
I have a pair of red skinnies but NIKOLAI I WANT YOUR COAT.
photos via SPIN.com
the SPIN cover article on The Strokes is really, really good. it hits newsstands on Tuesday. I never even knew Nikolai had a second kid...
photos via SPIN.com
the SPIN cover article on The Strokes is really, really good. it hits newsstands on Tuesday. I never even knew Nikolai had a second kid...
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Elliott Smith - She Won't Look at Me
five never-been-heard songs from our beautiful Elliott have been unearthed.
download all five tracks HERE
Hanni El Khatib - Build. Destroy. Rebuild.
a new single from my current favourite new artist. I really dig his voice and delivery on every song I've heard so far. I really hope this guy breaks on through to the other side, he fills my heart with garage rock goodness and the cup he's holding full of tribute to Jim Morrison overfloweth
Singles.
Last week, I picked up some goodies at Amoeba San Francisco and I got around to listening to them last night. It got me to thinking about 7" records.
You would think that in this day and age, when singles are easily attained as mp3s and you can google a band's new work on your smart phone before you can say "radio play", that these 7" would no longer have a place in the industry. After all, most of the radio stations which used to utilize them to hook the public on a song before a band's album would be released have been digitized, and these singles, alongside full lps, are becoming very much a niche product, for musical nerds and purists alike.
What I really love about singles is the b-sides. A lot of times, you come across things you would have never heard before. My findings last week included Broken Bells' "The High Road",which includes a beautiful instrumental b-side called "An Easy Life". After I heard it, I hopped online to find and post an mp3, but I couldn't find one. The song was a vinyl only release. I also bought The Soft Pack's single collection. They released their fantastic eponymous debut album as a box set of 6 45's as a Record Store Day exclusive--5 singles containing two songs a piece from the album and two extra tracks on the sixth 7". I love things like that. And while the internet and digital media can be wonderful for artistic expression, so can vinyl singles.
Sometimes, I'll spend an entire Sunday afternoon listening to my singles. Because music sounds better on vinyl, because I like the slowed down process of consuming music, but mostly because I have nothing better to do ; )
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
record review: The Strokes - Angles
Nikolai Fraiture, the bassist for NYC band and world-dominators-in-progress The Strokes once referred to Angles as the album which should have been released between Room on Fire and First Impressions of Earth. I never really understood what he meant until I had listened to the album a couple of times. Sonically speaking, the band’s first two albums, including their universally acclaimed debut Is This It are more classic, with muffled production and an old school vibe, mixing upbeat and down tempo tracks to a delightful and continuously revisitable listening experience. First Impressions of Earth, however, jumped very far from ITI and RoF and this essentially impulsive leap baffled critics and fans alike, garnering harsh backlash for the band once dubbed “the saviours of rock and roll”. But how was FIoE different, really? It was the band’s most cleanly produced album, but more than that, it featured both incredibly aggressive tracks like the bass-heavy “Juicebox” and the Eastern-sounding “Vision of Division” as well as a handful of calmed down tracks including the mellotron-driven “Ask Me Anything”. In other words, it strayed too far, too quickly, from the first two albums, which Rolling Stone had called “perfect twins”.
Angles is The Strokes’ first collective release in five years (during which time the band members released a total of five side project albums) and it shows that frontman Julian Casablancas really has taken everything leading up to its release to heart. What critics said, how fans reacted, and more importantly, what the rest of his band thought and wanted. Angles starts off with two incredibly catchy songs, kicking off with the beat-drenched dance floor/lady-of-the-night anthem “Machu Picchu”, and the “Under Cover of Darkness”, the album’s first single with undeniable, crossfire guitars and the best chorus that anybody anywhere has heard in years.
But then the album slows down to the in-betweenness that Nikolai had mentioned, both regarding production quality and content. Angles seesaws between in-your-face intensity (“Metabolism”, “Gratisfaction”, “You’re So Right”), and mellow groove tracks that oddly combine Julian’s obsession with soul music and 80’s New Wave music. At one point, during “Two Kinds of Happiness”, Casablancas channels Ian Curtis so thoroughly, it’s slightly disconcerting, especially because he tackles ambitious falsettos in other tracks. But out of the ten songs here, that’s the only track I have issues with. And it’s growing on me.
“Call Me Back” is one of the best tracks on Angles, building slow vocals over a simple guitar progression. “Wait time is the worst”, oh yes it is. The song dazzles and hypnotizes, just as Is This It worthy album closer “Life is Simple In The Moonlight” does. “Taken for a Fool” is the coked-out brother of the pothead “12:51”, racier, skankier and less prone to fascination with shiny objects. “I hope this goes over well on the toxic radio”, Julian sings. “Monday, Tuesday is my weekend.” In other words, fuck it. The Strokes are back, and they’ve finally reached the level of confidence and stability to properly channel their creativity without roller coaster ups and downs. Because in the end, more than anything else, Angles is a fresh, interesting record. It’s not like anything else out there today and proves that no matter what you say, you still care about The Strokes. Everyone does. The Strokes don’t matter because they’re cool or wealthy or handsome. The Strokes matter because, in a world filled with posers, pricks and pop music that is genuinely crap, they manage to salvage that thing that we turn to for hope, inspiration and solace—music.
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
new music: The National "Think You Can Wait"
this song was inspired by Win Win . that looks like a movie worth watching.The National "Think You Can Wait" [mp3]
Matt B says: “It’s about very normal and good people trying to do their best and the struggle to be good.”
damn.
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