The War on Drugs Bring "Missiles" to Fallon

(Part two in an 11 part series to spotlight "Feller's Albums De L'annee" Unlike all those other bloggers, I refuse to evaluate the year until it's over. Also, I got kind of lazy in December. Full disclosure, you know? Enjoy...)

<embed width="600" height="361" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" wmode="transparent" src="http://static.photobucket.com/player.swf?file=http://vid1089.photobucket.com/albums/i359/dg11469/January 9 2012 - January 15 2012/thewarondrugsfallon.mp4">

The War on Drugs hit up Jimmy Fallon last night to play "Baby Missiles," one of the tracks from last year's great Slave Ambient. I caught them at The Black Cat in Washington, D.C., last August and they filled a small room with rock and roll while the tightly packed crowd jumped and danced. The steady stream of PBR helped a bit too.

I'm partial to their first album, Wagonwheel Blues, just because it's great, but Slave Ambient builds on the airy rock and frontman Adam Granduciel's Dylan-like drawl and delivers on exactly what is great about that first record. Singing about freedom and the road and strange reactions to people, you (or I, obviously) get the feeling of being on the road, watching America crawl by through a bus or train window, as if running from or to something. And there is a lot to find comforting in that kind of rock album. Maybe I'm just itching for that kind of road trip. Which doesn't change how good the album is anyway.

Before hitting that show, though, I wasn't convinced enough to spread the word. The fact is, they jam, letting the songs fly, just as they do on Fallon's stage, with the help of ?uestlove there. If they come through a town I'm in, and I'm not required to see be somewhere else, I plan to occupy a space in front of the stage they're on. In the case of "Baby Missiles," I'm especially a fan of the harmonica. And that guitar sound during the solos. Mmmmmm. Good stuff.

Buy Slave Ambient at Amazon. (It's only five bucks and worth every penny or more. Go buy it!)

The Jimmy Fallon clip is thanks to Some Kind of Awesome, a blog all of ya'll should be reading.

Posted via email from One Stupid Mop

Refused - The Deadly Rhythm (WOOOO! Coachella!!)

The Deadly Rhythm by Refused Listen on Posterous

The line-up for this year’s Coachella festival was announced yesterday. The list is pretty amazing, what with Radiohead, The Black Keys, Dre and Snoop, The Hives and a very long list of bands and artists that are sure to have the festival sell out quick and fast.

Of the entire line-up, and it is a deep, deep line-up, the two eye-catchers come from bands that fans have long wanted to reunite, one of which has sworn up and down for more than a decade that they were over forever: At The Drive-In and Refused.

The post-punk heroes, each of which has had a somewhat profound affect on punk and music as a whole, will play their first shows together at the gigantic festival.

At The Drive-In gained popular attention once Grand Royal Records (AKA The Beastie Boys) signed them and got “One-Armed Scissor,” from their pretty widely loved album “Relationship of Command” on MTV. Then the band splintered into the prog-metal mindfuck of The Mars Volta and more straight forward rock of Sparta. While TMV will release a new album this year, Sparta hasn’t put out a new album since 2006, though they’ve been playing live recently.

ATDI getting back together is not the most shocking thing though since they’ve been teasing it for at least two years. The problem with the band was that Cedric Bixler-Zavala and Omar Rodriguez-Lopez felt held back, so they left and formed another band, in addition to writing, recording and releasing about 10,000 projects a year.

Refused, on the other hand, imploded and swore they’d never come back after their ground-shaking The Sound of Punk To Come changed the face of hard music - at least in retrospect. The album turns from melodic to blistering hardcore on a dime, with a series of political statements that show the band’s preference for socialism over pure capitalism, and is universally lauded for sounding so unlike anything else at the time, despite hardcore not being a new idea.

Check out “The Deadly Rhythm.” Yeah, hardcore from an album whose name is stolen from an Ornette Coleman classic (“The Shape of Jazz To Come”), and a song that samples Bo Diddley’s “I’m A Man,” but sounds like getting your face kicked in, rebuilt and then kicked in again. Punk. As. Fuck.

These bands matter, and now they have returned. This is a big deal people. Melodramatic enough for you?

Posted via email from One Stupid Mop

The Shins reveal "Simple Song"

The first single from the long-awaited, heavily-anticipated fourth Shins album, Port of Morrow, has been posted as a stream at The Shins website. What's the best part of "Simple Song?" It sounds like The Shins. Considering that band leader James Mercer dismissed the entire band after its last effort, this could have been a crap shoot. Not really. Mercer was gonna write a bunch of great new songs, which is what he does every time out. Alas, we get what we want.

What's nice about The Shins maintaining a constant sound - not that "Simple Song" sounds necessarily like anything on the band's previous three albums - is similar, to keep with the indie sound, Spoon. Is anybody breaking new ground? Well, Britt Daniel has a tendency to do a few new things, but for the most part what you get is a new set of songs that sounds different from the old ones but completely like Spoon. That's what this is. I, for one, am thankful for that.

Port of Morrow is out March 20. Preorder it from simplesong.theshins.com.

Posted via email from One Stupid Mop

The Black Keys - Hell of a Season

Hell Of A Season by The Black Keys Listen on Posterous

(Part one in an 11 part series to spotlight “Feller’s Albums De L’annee.” Unlike all those other bloggers, I refuse to evaluate the year until it’s over. Also, I got kind of lazy in December. Full disclosure, you know? Enjoy...)

One 2011’s biggest releases came toward the end of the year, from a band that has quietly become one of the biggest, most consistently great bands in the country - The Black Keys.

What the blues-rock duo has done over the last decade, without compromising anything, really, is evolve their sound from a somewhat derivative melding of the two music forms into a sound all their own. From their first album, The Big Come Up, the Black Keys have become adept at writing more and better songs every year since, with their sound evolving to balance the blues based attack that made that gritty first effort so addictive.

The new album, El Camino, is the first to feature Danger Mouse behind the boards for every track since Attack and Release in 2008, and it solidifies the partnership as just enough pop has been added to what probably started off as pretty hooky rock songs anyway.

El Camino finds Dan and Patrick finding their groove, literally, on most every song. Even where the lyrical content is a little heavy, as it can be with these blues guys, the up tempo riffage has everything moving.

The consensus among reviewers was that Brothers, the 2009 blockbuster from the Black Keys, was a down record, this rediscovers their rocking side. I don’t quite get that, but whatever. Maybe everyone just wanted a party record. Considering all the influence on here, what with echoes of all sorts of pop songs, in a good way, this should be a party record.

Coming in on the second half of the album, “Hell of a Season,” covers both those sides: lyrically, it’s a bit heart-wrenching, but sonically it kicks your sad ass off that ledge you’re looking out from. Or maybe it’ll pull you back off the ledge. Either way, it’s good. And so is the rest of the album. There’s no great mystery to it: Just good rock and roll.

Posted via email from One Stupid Mop

Diplo - Express Yourself EP sampler (ruuuuuuuuuuuuules)

 <span>DIPLO express yourself EP sampler by diplo</span>  

Diplo is preparing to launch a short but useful tour with Sleigh Bells that will see the underground heroes trouncing the state of Florida by hitting all the important locations - Gainesville, Jacksonville, Orlando, Fort Lauderdale, Miami and Tampa. Much like his tourmates, the producer has a new album ready go. Based on the eclectic, exciting sample above, he's making sure Sleigh doesn't totally steal the shows.

Posted via email from One Stupid Mop

Game, featuring Tyler The Creator and Lil' Wayne - Martians Vs. Goblins

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/gODGcVSzh1U" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Good stuff, despite the fact that Halloween was two months ago. Tyler, The Creator is about six months and three guest verses from being the Next Huuuuuuuuge MC. Which will be a lot of fun to watch cause the crazy religious groups are gonna go nuts!

Odd Future, members of which have been getting attention all year, are likely going to have a big big big 2012. Get acquainted now if you haven't already. It's worth your time, AND you'll look hip in the new year.

Posted via email from One Stupid Mop

Trent Reznor & Karen O - "Immigrant Song"

Hot on the heels of Trent Reznor discussing in an interview that the full length debut from How To Destroy Angels is being mixed as we speak, and that 2012 may - MAY - hold the promise of something new from Nine Inch Nails, comes a video to match one of two Reznor-produced covers. (The other is U2's "Zoo Station," recorded for a tribute marking the 20th anniversary of that band's classic Achtung Baby.)

I wasn't sure about Reznor and Karen O, with production help from Atticus Ross, covering the Led Zeppelin classic "Immigrant Song," but it's grown on me a lot. The noise, her voice, the cold electro-ness of the whole thing. I want to suffocate in it. That's at least a little bit because their version of the song sounds like the soundtrack to a movie murder collage, but whatever. I'm sure Karen O would make it a fun way to day.

Instead, this somewhat frightening video, directed by David Fincher to open The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, his new movie that opens next week, will have to do. Good thing it gets better with multiple plays - just like the song itself.

Posted via email from One Stupid Mop