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august 2013
8.1.13
Cut Copy has shared their new single, "Let Me Show You Love". Originally this was limited to only 120 copies that were pressed on vinyl on the spot at a music festival, but after one of the purchasers converted the audio and uploaded it to YouTube, the band released their own official stream:
It's kind of an average single, and since I don't know if it was meant primarily as a publicity gimmick with the real-time pressing or whether it's a preview of an upcoming album (I haven't heard any news on that front), it's hard to judge whether it's a leftover that fit their purposes for the stunt or whether it really deserves the same scrutiny as their official releases.
It's not a bad song——it would fit in perfectly well tucked away in a Cut Copy album with a certain flavor to it——but I don't see this as a band- or album-defining song. |
8.2.13
New selection of 100 MP3 albums for $5 from Amazon, and since I no longer know how long these will actually be available for, you should grab anything interesting while you can.
Must haves: Kanye West's The College Dropout, Nine Inch Nails' The Downward Spiral, John Mellencamp's American Fool, and Spiritualized's Sweet Heart Sweet Light.
Recommended: Massive Attack's Mezzanine, and Yeah Yeah Yeah's Show Your Bones.
I'm considering M.I.A.'s Kala and at least one of the two Jason Isbell records that are listed. |
8.5.13
Conor Oberst's recently revived Los Desaparecidos have released another two songs on a 7 inch single, "Te Amo Camila Vallejo" and "The Underground Man", and are also streaming them for free:
Both songs are pretty good if you like their debut album (I do), but neither is especially revelatory. The second one wears out its welcome a bit faster, but again, neither would be out of place on a sophomore record from the band. |
8.6.13
I am suddenly and very unexpectedly infatuated with Ben Gibbard's solo album, Former Lives, which I gave up on months ago after only a couple of listens. Interested to see if this lasts... |
8.7.13
You don't hear much from Ryan Adams these days, and certainly not much that's newsworthy outside his circle of fans, but I have to give him credit for his recent Twitter grenades lobbed at Sean Hannity, the most incendiary of which (to Hannity, at least), was Adams calling him a "little chicken man".
This may not seem like much, but it was enough for the Fox News host to
spend an entire segment foaming at the mouth about Adams for no particular reason. His staff apparently tried to invite Adams on the show, which only generated another tweet from Adams calling Hannity a "terrorist", which further fueled the host's ire.
Adams didn't make any real arguments in his tweets——he was basically just namecalling in what turned out to be a successful attempt to get an angry response——but Hannity's reaction was hilariously disproportionate, especially because he spent most of the segment lecturing two female guests (one of whom was a beauty queen and one of whom was supposedly a regular contributor to Fox News, but you'd be hard pressed to figure out who was who) about how no one knows or cares who Ryan Adams is so he doesn't even deserve a response or any acknowledgement of his tweets (even though Hannity spends more than three minutes of air time doing just that).
The funniest thing, though: one of Hannity's guests calling for accountability and integrity on Twitter. I can't tell if that's more stupid or out of touch (although it's definitely both). |
8.8.13
After my run of downloading albums from some of the most popular bands of the late 70s and early 80s over the past year or so, I'm still a bit shocked that I like the Cars so, so much more than the Pretenders. But I guess that's just who I am now. |
8.9.13
Marnie Stern's contribution to Adult Swim's singles series, "This Was It", won't be available for download until
August 12, but you can stream it on Spin's site in the meantime.
I've been pleasantly surprised at the quality of material that artists make available to Adult Swim (TV on the Radio's 2007 contribution to the Warm & Scratchy compilation, the extremely lo-fi "Me-I", is one of
favorite songs from the band), and this track is no exception. It feeels a touch unfinished and short, like there's a closing payoff that she hasn't written yet or is withholding for a more formal release, but if you like her style, you'll like this after your first listen and like it more and more the more you listen. |
8.12.13
Adult Swim made Marnie Stern's contribution to their compilation album, "This Was It", available for download today. If you already love Marnie (and why wouldn't you?), you need to grab this posthaste. |
8.13.13
And more free music: Nine Inch Nails are offering "Copy of a" from their upcoming Hesitation Marks as a free download from Amazon. I like this even more than the previous track they shared back in June, "Came Back Haunted", and I'm getting really excited about this album. |
8.14.13
Whatever it was that briefly struck me as good about Ben Gibbard's Former lives has vanished as swifly and strangely as it appeared. Now I'm wondering just what it was I heard in those songs a week ago, the same way a week ago I wondered what I had been missing about these songs before that. |
8.15.13
Kim Deal shared a new track and video today, "Are You Mine?":
I'd kind of lost hope that Kim Deal/the Breeders would never make a song I loved again, but this might be my favorite song by Kim Deal since Last Splash's "Sea Hag". I'm going to have to go check out some of the other singles she's released recently now. |
8.16.13
I'm becoming convinced that Amazon changes its
new amazon selections
of 100 MP3 albums for $5 from Amazon every two weeks instead of once a month now, since the selections this month definitely changed over on the first of the month and changed again sometime between the 14th and today (making the 15th a pretty good candidate). If this is the pattern, that means you'll have at most two weeks to grab any selections that you want after reading about them here.
Anyway. Here are the picks for the mid-month selections which are pretty slim pickings:
No must-haves this time, but there are
a few decent records: Soundgarden's Superunknown, Gorillaz' Demon Days, and Shane McGowan's (of the Pogues) The Snake. And that's it.
Temple of the Dog's eponymous debut (and only release) is an interesting artifact: it features members of Mother Love Bone (the deceased lead singer of which is the inspiration for this album) working both with Chris Cornell and Eddie Vedder on vocals (although mostly with Cornell, who conceived the project). Of course, after Cornell returned to his main gig with Soundgarden, Vedder stuck around and formed a band with the other members of Temple of the Dog, and a year later they would release their first album as Pearl Jam, Ten. There aren't really a lot of great songs on here, but "Hunger Strike" is pretty amazing (featuring vocals from both Vedder and Cornell). And if you're a Pearl Jam nut (which I'm not), it might be interesting to hear the band figuring out who they are together before they really became something together.
There's not a lot here for me. As much as I know I should, I just can't pull the trigger on the David Bowie or Daft Punk selections that occasionally show up here. I've resigned myself to understanding their importance in the development of modern music without feeling a real emotional connection to their work. |
8.19.13
of Montreal shared another track, "She Ain't Speakin' Now",from their forthcoming album Lousy With Sylvanbriar (which seems to have lost its insistence on all lowercase since they shared the first song from the record last month):
My reaction is pretty similar to "Fugitive Air"——not a bad song, especially if you're a fan of their pre-Sunlandic Twins stuff, but Sunlandic Twins is where I really started to love the band, so I'm not sure if this release is going to be a great one for me. |
8.20.13
Nine Inch Nails shared a third track, "Everything", from Hesitation Marks, which is due out in a couple of weeks:
I don't like this one as much as the other two that I've heard so far, but it could grow on me. Maybe. But it's odd and non-NIN-y enough (there's a guitar part towards the end that reminds me a lot of the Cult's "She Sells Sanctuary") to make me believe the rumors that it was meant to be packaged as the new song on a greatest hits album and not written alongside the rest of the material on Hesitation Marks. |
8.21.13
Janelle Monae has posted a song from her new album, The Electric Lady, on YouTube, a duet with Miguel titled "Primetime":
Janelle has been building to a mainstream breakthrough since her last album, The ArchAndroid, and there would be no one happier than me to see her become a global star, but this song is just a little too generic and ordinary for someone of her talents.
I still have high hopes for the album, though——the first song from the album, "Q.U.E.E.N." (with Erykah Badu) was full of the beautiful weirdness that made me fall in love with Janelle in the first place, and I believe that this weirdness is going to dominate the new record even if there are some relative non-starters like "Primetime" (although I won't be surprised if it's these less interesting tracks that end up becoming the most popular, which I'm okay with if it drives people to pick up the full album to hear what she's really all about). |
8.22.13
I wrote a mid-length entry (3-4 paragraphs) about Amazon's recent non-delivery my preorder of No Age's new CD, An Object, my first negative experience with them since switching to buying all my physical music media from them a couple of years ago, and how that negative experience was compounded by their support page essentially saying I had to work it out with the carrier.
But then the power went out before I saved and I don't feel like rewriting it, so I'm not going to. |
8.23.13
Last entry until September. We're going out of town on vacation next week and as is my custom, I won't be posting anything. I won't be surprised if I don't listen to any music at all until we're back——I've recently tended to listen to talk radio while on long drives, and when I'm at the beach I no longer prefer to listen to music on headphones while sitting in the sun——I'd rather just listen to the sound of the ocean. |
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