Really lovely track, although it does seem like they might be starting to become pretty influenced by their friends Born Ruffians. Anyway, hopefully they will keep it as is - it's very strong in its acoustic form.
TPC's follow-up album to Elephant Shell is in production, but no details of release have been announced.
FADER TV has been going all around, catching up-and-coming acts play covers of their favorite songs at their hometown bars. Here's the last installment- Holiday Shores!
Julian Casablancas is streaming his solo album on NME, beginning today. The album has leaked, but hold out for the physical release next week, I bet the liner notes are totally rad.
He's announced a few dates in California and a European tour.
Fantastic London-based indie group Good Shoes announced today that they will be releasing "No Hope, No Future" on January 18th. The disc is their follow-up to 2007's "Think Before You Speak".
The single is Under Control, listen on myspace! Free second single, The Way My Heart Beats, here.
Tracklisting:
01 The Way My Heart Beats 02 Everything You Do 03 I Know 04 Under Control 05 Do You Remember 06 Our Loving Mother In A Pink Diamond 07 Times Change 08 Thousand Miles An Hour 09 Then She Walks Away 10 City By The Sea
Once upon a time in the early part of this decade, I was a die-hard John Mayer fan. Then I started listening to The Strokes.
And now with the news of Battle Studies, JM's first album since Continuum in 2006, I've dug up all of the CDs that comprise his back catalog and had quite a trip. He's probably the guitarist of this generation. However, this doesn't really come through on this new single Who Says. First of all, he knocked off his own song Stop This Train on the opening riff and the lyrics are underwhelming and topical (pretty much emotionless) compared to his older work. No doubt it'll sell, and the fiscal prospects are probably the reason why he went back to the studio, but it seems like a step backward.
Let's give Battle Studies a chance anyway. It's slated for November 17.
The Postelles have been done with their full-length record for a couple of months now, but still no news on release date. Albert Hammond Jr. produced it, so if you're unfamiliar with this Manhattan-based group, they sound like The Strokes (plus The Beatles).
They released a self-titled EP last year. Many of the tracks are built into the LP. Listen to a brand new song from said album, Can't Stand Still on myspace.
Julian Casablancas released another track from his solo album Phrazes for the Young (RCA, USA 11/3) recently: "River of Brakelights". It's sort of creepy, but the arrangement is genius.
How does a band become of needlepoint and Tom Hanks?
Washington State's poppers Yarn Owl pull it all together.
How did you come up with your name? Yarn Owl was born from a piece of yarn art better known as needle painting. Javier Suarez, the lead singer, owned a nice collection of yarn art with his roommate one day, I, Ted Powers was sitting in his apartment and noticed a fine work featuring an owl. I thought oh what a nice name for a band “yarn owl”. That is how we arose with the name yarn owl, simply based on a needle painting.
Who or what has influenced you the most? Javier: The Beatles Tyler: Explosions in the Sky Tim: early indie rock, tom hanks Ted: built to spill, jazz, piano lessons
Tell us about your first show: Our first show wasn’t really a show. It was at a house party in a tiny living room. We were still young as a band and had only 20-30 min of material. We played a short set and people seemed to like it. Our first official show was after we recorded our first EP. It was at the Comet tavern in Seattle, which is a dive bar with a very historical presence in Seattle. We traveled 5 hours after pulling an all nighter finishing up our record to play the show. It was awesome and couldn’t have asked for a better public appearance. WE have a recording of the entire show too, courtesy of our good friend Chris Early.
What have the last 12 months been like? Crazy, we have released a cassette with Leftist Nautical Antiques called tiny dots. We did a mini tour with the Helio Sequence to Salt Lake City and Boise, opened for the Grand Archives, recorded a ton, and recently just finished up a 6 songs which we are shopping out to labels. The new recording is not yet determined to be released but is titled “stay warm.” The first track off the EP is on myspace titled Bicycle. We recorded this with Chris Early in Seattle and got is mastered by Ed Brooks who works at studio litho which is owned by Pearl Jam. Ed worked on the fleet foxes recrods too!!
We are busy with work and going to college too, but this all has been super exciting. We hope the next 12 months can be just as fruitful.
Musically, what would like to achieve in the upcoming year? I would love to see us get married to a label we all enjoy to release our music to a larger audience. This would involve working with a producer and releasing our records on vinyl. In terms of musically, we all want to get better and become well versed in more instruments. We have recently started adding in a pianet, glockenspiel, and some other odds and ends.
Who would you like to play with, living or dead? The Beatles
Any last words? Thanks for finding us, it was so nice to find someone out of the blue listen and like us. We hope that you like the new recordings and stay in touch.
Some interesting news rolled in a few days ago: Polaroid is making its comeback in 2010, with intent to mass produce their iconic One Step Camera and several varieties of instant film.
Much controversy over Michael Jackson's upcoming single This is It. The track was penned and arranged in the 80s by Paul Anka. MJ recorded it with him, but lost interest (however, he kept the master tape). Anka made the song available to a Puerto Rican artist Safire in the 90s and it was released without much flack. Let's see where the publishing ends up.
I saw a woman on the subway wearing a Girl Talk shirt under a navy blue crushed velvet blazer today and figured it was a good time to post about GT.
Gregg Gillis (Girl Talk) is a hipster DJ who makes mashups. He released his album Feed the Animals with the Creative Commons/name-your-price system, which proved to be a huge success. There's an interesting Wikipedia entry about the songs he used for the tracks; the number of samples per mashup is huge, which is sort of a surprise.
Apparently Harlem Shakes have broken up without any (publicized) reason! It's unfortunate, their full length Technicolor Health was a fantastic album and they had started to build a solid following this year.
There is one side project, ARMS. It's Greg the guitar player and some of his friends. They're playing some CMJ dates and releasing an LP, Kids Aflame in the US on 10/27. http://www.myspace.com/armsongs
Dave Portner: Yeah. It's like 28 minutes long, five songs. The title is kind of a play on "fall behind," when you move the clocks back. Everything seems to be very seasonal or weather-oriented for us this year. I wanted to keep it a little bit in line with that. It felt like Merriweather Post Pavilion was really springy or summery. We always try and push for our releases to come out at a specific time. It didn't really happen with Merriweather, unfortunately, but that's because we just really wanted to get that one out quickly. But with this one, we were hoping it would come out in the fall, so Fall Be Kind. I think digitally it's probably going to come out in the middle of November, with a pre-order kind of thing for vinyl or CD for the beginning of December.
Nikolai, The Strokes' bassist, has been training for a marathon and fundraising for Team for Kids, a charity about helping children in underserved communities.
Follow his running diaries on twitter.com/FraitureTFK We found out about The Strokes being in pre-production on his page, so hopefully there will be some more news on that matter soon.
A mysterious page has appeared on amazon.com...a pre-order for (supposedly) Animal Collective's second full length for this year, "Fall Be Kind". Release date, December 8th.
They're also re-releasing 2003's "Campfire Songs" in January on Paw Tracks.
From Grey's Anatomy to department store commercials, the lovely and insanely talented pianist/vocalist Regina Spektor has conquered just about every medium with her carefree tunes and beautiful voice. Next stop: Broadway! The singer was approached to score Beauty, a new show by Tina Landau.
Catch Regina play Saturday Night Live this weekend.
Graham Wright, Tokyo Police Club's (extremely energetic) keyboardist, has been releasing free, really mellow solo work for quite some time now. His latest is Crooked Moon, a home recorded love song.
Get it for free at Bandcamp. Read what he wrote about the track on his tumblr.
EDIT; 12:52am: Still much work to be done. Looks like it's going to turn into a week long project. If anyone knows how to fix the home-about-legal-contact buttons, please let me know. I have no idea how to align them. Please excuse the sidebar as well...it's in severe disarray!
Penpal is an indie duo from Chicago. They sound a little like Bombay Bicycle Club, but stripped completely of BBC's punk/rock influences. Their debut is mostly instrumental music..great for studying.
Posts
