New Music: Santogold - "Big Mouth"

Now this is something totally new for 2012. Eagerly awaited for, literally, years, the first single from Santigold's forthcoming Master of My Make-Believe is called "Big Mouth." 

It sounds nothing like her first album, rules just as hard, and hopefully will find its way into the clubs so Santi can be a huge pop star. It's not gonna happen but a man can dream, right? At least we're finally gonna get a follow-up to the still perfect Santogold.

Download "Big Mouth" for free by singing up for Santi's mailing list at her website. (Worth it!)

Buy Santogold at Amazon and welcome yourself into the year 2008. 

Posted via email from One Stupid Mop

New Music: Orbital - "Never"

Never by Orbital Listen on Posterous

Almost two years ago to the day, I posted a live version of Orbital’s “Halcyon,” which has one of the greatest pay-offs in live electronic music EVER. Today comes the announcement that the Hartnoll brothers, Paul and Phil, are back together and have a new album on the horizon.

“Never” is the first single from Wonky, due out in April, the duo’s first new album in eight years. That alone is exciting news. Even if the track feels a bit run of the mill.

I can vaguely remember seeing a video for the track pop up early fall last year but there wasn’t an announcement or news, just the track. The tapping beat and revolving melodies are what Orbital does best and, as the video suggests, sounds like a very late night drive home from a very late night.

Nothing monumental from Orbital, other than the standard, high level of quality the Hartnolls have always maintained. But we’ve only heard one track, so there’s no telling what else they’ve pumped out of those brilliant bald heads.

Orbital’s official website.
Buy Orbital’s music at Amazon.

Posted via email from One Stupid Mop

Heems of Das Racist drops new album

It seems that Heems, of Brooklyn hip hop visionaries* Das Racist, wants everybody to have a new album today, so he’s giving away a new one, called Nehru Jackets, for free.

According to the email I just got, the album/mixtape includes members of the Queens, NY, community organization SEVA which is working to raise awareness of redistricting efforts in the borough. Also included on the tape are Mr. Muthafuckin' eXquire, Action Bronson, and Childish Gambino, all of whom were branded underground hip hop heroes via 2011 year-end lists.

Grab the mixtape here. I haven’t listened to it yet, or even downloaded it, but I’m sure it’s no waste of time...

But wait, here's a track from the tape: "You Have to Ride The Wave” (ft. Danny Brown and Mr. Muthafuckin' eXquire)"

*I’m calling them visionaries because Relax got a lot of spins in my world. There’s a pretty good chance it’ll be on that slow-to-appear Top 11 of ‘11 I’ve been posting, but you never know...

Posted via email from One Stupid Mop

Sleigh Bells - "Comeback Kid"

param></object><span><a href="http://soundcloud.com/sleighbells/comeback-kid">Comeback Kid</a> by <a href="http://soundcloud.com/sleighbells">Sleigh Bells</a></span>

New track from Sleigh Bells? I may have the day off work but this would make any day better. You can't beat Alexis Krauss over some new overmodulated guitar stabs and pounding beats. It sounds like they're going a little pop. Not that Sleigh Bells weren't a little pop before. Or maybe it's just that I'd like to see an Adele-like rise to superstardom for noise pop. Yeah, I know it's not gonna happen. This is one of those albums that has expectations high for 2012, and now the second single is as good as the first one.

I'm not sure what I'm more excited for, the mini-tour of Florida with Diplo (wooooooo Fort Lauderdale stop on February 11) or the new album, Reign of Terror, which is out February 21, and thus far is living up to the promise of the 2010 debut, Treats.

Buy Treats from Amazon. And, maybe go see them in concert.

(via A/V Club)

Posted via email from One Stupid Mop

Sleigh Bells - "Comeback Kid"

Posted via email from One Stupid Mop

Weezer - 'Say It Ain't So' (Live on Letterman circa 1995)

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The reason there are so many people in their mid-20s to mid-30s who hate Weezer isn't because the band sucks, because they don't. The reason is because they were so good, putting out the blatantly perfect Blue Album and Pinkerton and never recovering - either from Rivers Cuomo's crushing depression that the latter didn't arrive with the same massive gigantic splash as the former, or because Matt Sharp just got sick of Cuomo's bull shit.

This, to be honest, is an argument I've made before, and will make until the end of time. Even now, there is no song on either album that fails to wake me up and lock me into whatever speaker it pours out of. Each of the 20 songs on the official, original releases of the album, and most of the b-sides from the era, are great songs with no explanation needed. The crunching, fuzzed guitar sound. Half-emo cynicism in the lyrics. For three glorious years, Weezer was a band apart.

"Say It Ain't So" was one of those early hits, and one of ten tracks on the Blue Album, that converted pretty much everybody to a fan. The hate is all about knowing that Weezer will never write songs as good as they did on those two albums. Well, unless Matt Sharp rejoins the band and shocks the world.............

Weezer put out deluxe editions of the Blue Album and Pinkerton in 2010.

Posted via email from One Stupid Mop

Ted Leo on new music, Obama and OWS

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There's no questioning that Ted Leo is true to his punk ideals. There's also no questioning that he's a great damn songwriter. This piece from ABC News, while not too deep, covers his thoughts on OWS, starting out in a new band, and writing new songs. If it wasn't on his Facebook page, I'd have never seen it, so thank The Zuck for that great social timewaster.

Check out some of Ted Leo's albums at Amazon.

Posted via email from One Stupid Mop

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

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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

The Slow Death - Sorry Sam

The Slow Death - Sorry Sam.mp3 Listen on Posterous

The number of bands hitting their self-deprecating, double-time punk stride is growing day by day. In fact, I don't know the last time I heard a new band do the mid-90s skate punk thing - it's almost like they've scaled it back to just blasting stuff out instead of trying to play as fast as humanly possible. 

I've got a bunch these kind of bands that'll be posted here in the next couple weeks, but today it's

The Slow Death who bring together members of Pretty Boy Thorson and the Falling Angels, the Tampa-based Rest of Us, and the hugely-missed (at least by me) The Ergs as they rampage their way around the country.

I’m not gonna muck this up too much. The album "Sorry Sam" comes from, Born Ugly Got Worse, in all its 12-song glory, is a somewhat gruff pop-punk blast of catharsis. It works, you know?

Pay what you want for The Slow Death’s new album, Born Ugly Got Worse, at Kiss of Death Records.

Posted via email from One Stupid Mop

Radiohead - "A Wolf at the Door (It girl. Rag doll)"

Radiohead - A Wolf at the Door (It girl. Rag doll).mp3 Listen on Posterous

The first song I heard in the car this morning was “Planet Telex,” the first track on The Bends, Radiohead’s second album. I did not intend to post about Radiohead this morning. Yet I found myself, this evening, flipping through their discography, from The Bends itself, up through various b-side collections and finally to Hail to the Thief and In Rainbows.

I’m not sure what I was looking for tonight, and I’m not sure if I found it, but I had a realization this afternoon that I spent most of my 20s being as lazy as humanly possible - this despite working 50- and 60-hour weeks at several jobs, being married and having three children, and working on and off on other stuff. Just because you are busy or working a lot does not mean you're actually accomplishing anything. I've done some stuff. I'm not sure I've gotten anything done though.

The on and off part is what bothers me too. That’s the part that isn’t good enough. Sure, I’m a bitter, ah, Millennial or late Gen Y or... It doesn’t matter. The point is, I’m one of these young people that isn’t happy. I know how much of it is my fault, and from the work I've done, I also know that the greedy schmucks a generation before me have sucked everything dry. I blame both, also knowing full well that if my personal version of lazy had not been so well engineered, I might be better off. 

It's not lazy on any level to work those kinds of hours. But if you're not meeting any goals, or enough of them, to push forward to some kind of larger something, then it's pretty much just life masturbation, no?

So, as I let the Radiohead discography flow, the “what happened” of “15 Step” is the perfect alternative to “Just” insisting that “you do it to yourself.” But there’s more, because being lazy is not just something that magically happens, without you noticing. It’s that you let it happen, you let it consume you, and by the time you realize it, it’s done. 

The reality is that you fight it or succumb in the hope that eventually you’ll come out of it. My 22-year-old self would be livid if I could separate him out, like the white from the yolk of an egg. I've heard that your 20s are made for this sort of thing, and nobody really gets serious until they turn 30 anyway. I don't know if it's true but suddenly I feel like a didn't milk a few years hard enough - and maybe that is as it should be.

“A Wolf at the Door” feels like cold water in the face. Or the alarm. Better yet, it's your car hitting the back of the one in front of you because you refused to look up from something far less important than driving. Maybe I've got Thom Yorke's lyrics all misunderstood and turned them into something for myself. I don't care, and hopefully he'll understand that I don't care.

Since the track is from Hail To The Thief, everybody can sound like a Radiohead genius for knowing it, because so many love to dump on what was essentially a superb album completely unlike what people wanted to hear from the band. Actually, it’s better than that. I’m not going to make the case for Hail To the Thief at this point though.

Anyway, there it is. Thanks for the insight, Radiohead.

Drag him out your window

Dragging out your dead

Singing I miss you

Snakes and ladders

Flip the lid

Out pops the cracker

Smacks you in the head

Knifes you in the neck

Kicks you in the teeth

Steel toe caps

Takes all your credit cards

Get up get the gunge

Get the eggs

Get the flan in the face

The flan in the face

The flan in the face

Dance you fucker dance you fucker

Don't you dare

Don't you dare

Don't you flan in the face

Take it with the love is given

Take it with a pinch of salt

Take it to the taxman

Let me back let me back

I promise to be good

Don't look in the mirror

At the face you don't recognize

Buy Radiohead’s Hail To The Thief at Amazon.

Posted via email from One Stupid Mop

The Ettes - Red In Tooth and Claw

The Ettes - Red In Tooth and Claw.mp3 Listen on Posterous

The Ettes were not a new concept for me when I saw them at The Black Cat in Washington, D.C., on September 4. I had heard a few mp3s, watched a video or two on YouTube. You know, not an obsession, but certainly not a real familiarity.

The crowd, which felt to be about the same number of people from start to finish, though I was up against the stage the whole time so I can’t be too sure, stood through The Bam Bams, who were intense, especially their super-focused drummer who smiled through the entire set, and Friends, who channeled parts of the 80s I’m glad I wasn’t all that into during my single-digit years of life.

Coco, Poni and Jem finally took the stage after this mix and proceeded to pound the shit out of the audience. Like, whoa.

When it comes to pounding, really, Poni is an animal. By “is an animal,” I mean she has certain qualities that set apart her favorite drummer, Animal, from the rest of the pack. Hanging over her set, while abusing the kick drum especially, she supplies a backbone that most bands would kill for.

The bassist is often the sane guy in the band - Flea notwithstanding - and Gem covers that. His playing also often has a guitar-like quality. He looks like the coolest mother fucker in the room. The band obviously has something to do with it.

Which brings me to Coco. When she howls, and her eyes roll back in her head before she starts pounding her guitar again, it’s hard not to fall in love for a second. The woman is fronting a ferocious punk band, and she sounds like the kind of “let’s fuck and move on” rock star that Robert Plant embodied. And like Plant, she’s got a few lyrics that cover that exactly.

This whole beat punk thing, that's their word, and which seems pretty accurate, finds the band’s albums progressively mellowing in speed, but maintaining heaviness. And everything is faster in concert anyway, resulting in a now two-month obsession over the full four album discography of The Ettes.

What I’ve come away with - full disclosure, I’m listening to their third album, “Do You Want Power” for the third time today, of which “Red In Tooth and Claw” is the first track - is that The Ettes, with Coco as their center-piece, are ahead of all the rock bands aping old sounds. They’ve taken from punk, 60s whatever, and country just enough to turn out a sound that doesn’t really sound like anybody else. Which is probably why their discography has remained on repeat since that night in DC.

Buy The Ettes album Do You Want Power, and the rest of their discography, at Amazon.

Posted via email from One Stupid Mop

Astronautalis & DJ Fishr Pryce - Mr. Blessington's Imperialist Plot (remix)

Astronautalis & DJ Fishr Pryce - Mr. Blessington's Imperialist Plot (remix).mp3 Listen on Posterous

Let's get this show back on the road, yes? It's been a minute since the Mop has cleared a floor as your (not so) humble record pusher worked himself through a word block of sorts. I know writer's block is BS to people who don't write but when you're just writing the same thing over and over and even you stop finding it interesting, well... Anyway, having been kicked in the face for weeks as two of my closest people lay down some great words for the masses, I think it's time. There is nothing more inspiring for a writer to get at it than being surrounded by other writers. 

The first track back is a mixtape mashup. We've posted a selection from the mind-expanding mixtape Astronautilus and DJ Fishr Pryce dropped earlier this year, and this morning, on the way to work "Mr. Blessington's Imperialist Plot" spoke to me.

The original version of this track is bit softer and more menacing, where here, Gaga suggests a covert strategy for blackmailing oneself to the top of an office hierarchy: pa- pa- pa- poker face, pa- pa- pa- poker face.

That's the way it's done in real life, right? Step on everybody on the way up, and then step on them on the way down? Boots on the ground people.

This is probably where I should use a superhero reference about getting back in action and making it happen but considering the subject matter of this first post back, I'm going with a villain: "This town needs an enema, and this mop has a long damn stick." Brace yourselves.

Posted via email from One Stupid Mop

DJ Shadow - I'm Excited (ft Afrikan Boy)

Fears about the new album from DJ Shadow are slowly alleviating for me. "I'm Excited" features a bouncing, galloping, dancey beat and an infectious "I'm excited" refrain between verses from Afrikan Boy. This is nothing like Endtroducing..., which is finally OK, because this track is a place I actually like going to.

This is a wonderful Friday afternoon gift, if you ask me, cause it makes me want to leave work now and get the party started. Check it:

http://soundcloud.com/island-records-uk/dj-shadow-ft-afrikan-boy-im/s-DXUH3

"I'm Excited" goes on sale August 1, and the new full length, "The Less You Know The Better," is out September 5.

Buy more music from DJ Shadow at his website.

Posted via email from One Stupid Mop

First flyer is out for the 23rd Annual Swing for Seniors Golf Tournament at Woodmont in Tamarac. We've got a new venue and lots of stuff on tap for this thing. Save the date NOW!

The Aging and Disability Resource Center of Broward County, a 501(c)(3) non-profit that helps educate seniors on services and assistance they are eligible for (and also my employer), is gearing up for the 23rd Annual Swing for Seniors Golf Tournament at Woodmont Country Club in Tamarac, FL.

Prizes and perks to be announced soon...........................

Posted via email from Stephen Feller