TV On The Radio - Will Do

Will Do by Tv On The Radio  
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TV on the Radio Will Do.mp3 (3437 KB)

Over the last month or so, I've found myself listening to Dave Sitek's debut album as Maximum Balloon because it's the closest to a new TV On The Radio album it seemed we'd have for a while. I've noticed a lot of things about the album in that time, aside from it being a very dance music kind of beast. Most of what I've noticed though leads me to think that he was just trying to fill time until his actual band got back together.

All of a sudden, here comes an announcement that a new TVOTR album, Nine Types of Light, will be upon us sometime this spring, and then yesterday, "Will Do" was posted by the band and released to radio. It's a pretty straightforward love song, but Kyp Malone's falsetto, as always, takes it to the next level. And Sitek's always overly deep production, which just reveals more and more the louder the track gets on headphones, is impeccable.

The thing that makes Sitek, and indeed TVOTR as a whole, stand at the front of the Brooklyn experimental pack is that they can bring together soulful vocals and all manner of sounds into a complete package. So where "Will Do" could conceivably be produced and sung by any number of duos, the layering and complication is what makes it special. Danger Mouse's specialty is that he strips things bare, and has a sound all his own. Sitek goes in the opposite direction, though with a sound that even more his own. Starting out with what could be a mid-90s Massive Attack-style beat, the song opens into the type of melodic groove fans have come to expect.

Here's the other thing: "Will Do" tells us exactly nothing about what this album is going to sound like. All we have is another slab of soulful music. Three days ago, I suggested that the new Radiohead album was made for alt-sex romance. Scratch that. TV On The Radio wants you to feel actual emotion. They want you to roll with it. My answer? Will do. 

Buy all of TV On The Radio's discography, or just the pieces you don't have, from Amazon.

Posted via email from One Stupid Mop

Hit The Switch - The Everfading Afterglow

The Everfading Afterglow by Hit The Switch  
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a80685be9d4b151391f28ea0ba46a9ad.mp3 (5652 KB)

Until I started reading some comments on stuff about these guys, I never drew the obvious line to The Offspring. Not just because their viciously speeding 2006 album Domestic Tranquility and Social Justice was on Nitro Records, which is owned by Dexter and Greg, but something about the band reminds me of the early Offspring stuff, you know, before they stopped giving a shit.

That said, you can hear some early NOFX and the faster Sum 41 stuff. Hell, bring up Strung Out, Diesel Boy, or whatever other mid-90s Fat Wreck stuff you want - this would fit in perfectly, but doesn't sound dated or ripped off.

Hit The Switch has all the ingredients to be a huge Warped Tour-pushed skate punk band. Yet even with my interest, and demos that I've had on my cell phone for two years from their second album, Observing Infinities snuck under my radar because the band basically self-released it. There is an explanation, but come on, I bet Fat Mike loves these guys. Sign to Fat Wreck - it's an album at a time and nobody ever gets fucked over. At least, if it happens, nobody talks about it.

Most of the first album was vague political messaging begging listeners to question, you know, everything, while pounding the shit out melodic-skate-punk-style. The second album is just as political, although I take this track as something personal, but that's me. There are solos on Observing Infinity, but the time shifts and stop-start on a dime skate-punk remains. 

These guys should be huge. Somebody send an mp3 to Kevin Lyman. Please.

Buy Domestic Tranquility and Social Justice from Shockhound or Observing Infinities from Interpunk.

Posted via email from One Stupid Mop

The Ergs! - Hysterical Fiction

Hysterical Fiction by The Ergs!  
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40096327910c360b4fc0ced05df1879a.mp3 (2899 KB)

I'll never understand why bands break up. If your band is getting huge like, say, The Ergs, why would you want to leave? Isn't that the idea - for lots of people to fucking worship your music?

The Ergs were a three-piece pop-punk band from New Jersey. I place their sound somewhere between Hagfish and Green Day but often faster, and the songs are almost always about girls and relationships. Is that an awful and boiled down description? You bet.

Drummer Mikey Erg's scraggly voice worked equally well on the fast punk tunes as it did on sad country songs like "Stinking of Whiskey Blues." That and the loud bass-playing of Joey Erg (which reminds me of Mike Dirnt every few songs), and well-written, melodic songs, are what made Dorkrockcorkrod and Upstairs/Downstairs thoroughly digestible over and over and over again.

"Hysterical Fiction," which thunders in halfway through the second half of Upstairs/Downstairs, brings in all these elements nicely. It wouldn't be out of place on the first Unwritten Law album either, but I like it better here because, strangely, it flows nicely into the aforementioned "country" song.

Apparently, Upstairs/Downstairs isn't available anywhere online (unless you want it on CD or vinyl), so just go grab Dorkrockcorkrod from Shockhound to start with.

Posted via email from One Stupid Mop

Radiohead - Separator

  
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08 Separator.MP3 (12664 KB)

Radiohead has always clicked best for me on headphones, and usually not on the first listen. "Idioteque" blew me away, in the car, the first listen, on the way home from the record store. OK Computer and Hail To The Thief (let alone Pablo Honey and The Bends) never baffled me at any point. But overall, this is a band that demands repeated listens, through all manner of speaker: car, home stereo (and I mean stereo, not that tiny shelf crap from Wal-Mart) and headphones. The King of Limbs takes this requirement to new lengths.

The range of reactions to this surprise album, a surprise because before last Monday the only thing we knew was that Radiohead was working on something new, has run the gamut, though nobody has embraced it full on. After listening to it about a dozen times in the last three days, I think I know why: They're too busy trying to have the first review, and get page views while the hype is high, to really let this thing sink in.

The King of Limbs is an album of textures, many of them dark, and even more of them subtle. But by the third time I let the understated bottom end of the album, especially "Bloom," "Morning Mr. Magpie" and "Little By Little," because when you've got it on repeat, those tracks, which are the closest to bangers this effort comes to, the moody experimentation at work lays itself bare. These guys are pushing out, but not in the what-else-is-there-to-do that resulted in Kid A and Amnesiac. This time, it's different.

As the title implies, Radiohead is a band lost in the forest. There have to be more than eight tracks that came from the Limbs sessions. With In Rainbows, the band held back on the loud guitars. Where that album was about emotion, this is all about nuance, so there's not telling what else could come up. Thom and company want us to get lost with them - which is why I posted "Separator," the last track on the album.

Get yourself a drink and plug in some headphones. Even if The King of Limbs has already been taken off your respective music player and buried deep on your hard drive, put those cans on your ears and let "Separator" seep into your head. This is 3 a.m. come down music. It might be alt-romantic sex music. Whatever. By the fourth or fifth listen, you'll be revisiting the rest of the album to see what you've missed. "Separator" makes sense the same way as when you realize that "Street Spirit (Fade Out)" is the best track on The Bends. It's the revelation that makes every song before it that much better.

The King of Limbs is already the most underrated album of the year because in the fast, faster, fasterest times we live in, nobody is giving it a chance. Radiohead is begging you to slow down and lose yourself in an album like the Internet never happened and the long-playing album never approached its death throes. Forget the reviews and let yourself wander. It's worth it.

Buy The King of Limbs directly from Radiohead. (Worth every single penny. But you knew I'd say that.)

Posted via email from One Stupid Mop

Real lighters for Mama I'm Coming Home!

Posted via email from Stephen Feller

Ozzy from box L318. KICK ASSSSSSSS!!

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Marqui Adora - Everything That Makes No Sense

Everything That Makes No Sense by Marqui Adora  
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06_Everything_That_Makes_No_Sense.mp3 (10497 KB)

So this will be a weird post...

I'm typically pretty gun-shy about posting about music I'm directly involved in, but I'm in a good mood so fuck it! ;)

I just finished my initial listen of Radiohead's "The King of Limbs" and it's lead me back to one of my bands songs from 2006. Well the song is a few years older than that actually, it started out with just John and I messing around with a Rhodes piano and playing a bunch of different live drum loops into Pro Tools some time in 2002 after the implosion of our Drum & Bass group, New Republic. Nonetheless, the song was finished with Marqui Adora and made the cut for our White Buildings EP in 2006 (and re-released in 2007).

ANYWAYS... It's my favorite song from Marqui Adora's catalog. We never played it live, we were too lazy for that, but it stands out, to me anyway, as one of the songs where we truly achieved something different. Yeah, John and I we're linstening to a lot of U.N.K.L.E.'s "Psyence Fiction" at the time but when it reached the finish line with Danny's wall of Vocals and John's swerving Bass lines and Anthemic Guitars it felt like the song reached a whole new place. No one else might see it that way, but to me "Everything That Makes No Sense" raised the bar a little higher for what we were capable of and how much harder we would have to work to top it (take note of the lack of our output over the past few years).

So now you're saying "That's nice Joe, but what's that got to do with Radiohead?" Yes exactly. The drums. Being a drummer it's what I pick up on first when listening to music. On "The King of Limbs" the drums for nearly every song are comprised of live loops of Phil Selway, and Thom Yorke I suppose, playing rhythms on top of them selves. I can relate because I've done it, although with far less reverb.
It's funny how new sounds can send you in all sorts of directions isn't it?

Get more Marqui Adore here for free and enjoy your International Radiohead Listening Weekend!

-Joe

Posted via email from One Stupid Mop