Stop Okay Go

Cats and Dogs and Madelines

Here's the perfect Judy Collins-esque song for a Sunday morning from the inbox.

I was watching an old Robert Altman movie the other night and was amused by his direction; how his camera wanders and focuses on things not part of the main action, usually dogs. (Kathryn Bigelow likes cats.)

This song's lyrics are like that. Poetic imagery and attention to small details. While waiting for someone, the pumpkin turns to mush, with her "paws on the windowframe..nose making streaks on the pane."

Madeline will be touring the East Coast in support of the Tour EP that will be available for digital download on March 3rd and was made with the help of SOG favorite Karl Blau. Madeline I Waited All Day mp3 was here.

Fatebook

Two slowish, frankly Eurotechno songs that have piqued my interest lately:

Ada/Lovestoned. I believe that Lovestoned came out last year but it's just now getting the remix treatment from a buncha different sources. :

And the "voice of a young Freddie Mercury" heard in this song by The Diogenes Club. I very much like how at around 1:10 it starts to sound like warped vinyl:

No Sugar Crash Jitters

 

The Stance: Jenny Jitters mp3 was here.

From the Inbox: Halifax's The Stance have their sophomore effort I Left Love Behind A Long Time Ago coming out on February 23rd. The band's music is fun and cohesive and another reminder how bands needn't reinvent the wheel or get experimental in order to produce something shiny and new. These guys all on the same page, a page torn out of a jukebox circa 1979.

Futureback

++Nicki Minaj leaks. (via) Listen to Girlfriend here, girlfriend.

++Fine Solange, if you're friends with KBarnes I guess you're allowed to hang out on these pages.

++A typo in this headline paints NBA rapper Ron Artest as "Ron Artist." But with lyrics this wise it's more like Ron Artestotle if ya asks me.

++Geeky hardware troubleshooter Rihanna sends Steve Jobs running back to the drawing board after pointing out an iPad design flaw.

++Dang, the horns in 5-0 were so sharp/crisp.

++Kewwlll... Hugg&Pepp have jungled the heck out of Miike Snow's Silvia and then chopped and screwed him into oblivion (above). Take that, Miike Snow!*

Unsafe Situations

Dos and Don'ts: It's refreshing when musicians are both articulate and self-aware. In this older interview, a down-to-earth Robert Smith talks about his own "preposterous" appearance and how he uses makeup to make his features more discernable.

So makeup is still good when it comes to performing, but alcohol is not. Really the whole interview is about the things Smith will and won't do onstage. Personally, I would like to see him embrace his fears and perform drunk, bearded, without make-up, barefoot, in a musical with Ashlee Simpson. Would pay good money for that.

Such Great Heights

Here's a service-y type message from the inbox: If you're an up and coming band looking for a break, the Truck America festival will be held at the Full Moon Resort, Big Indian New York from April 30th to May 2nd, 2010. Last year's participants included Fanfarlo and The xx.

The festival is an offshoot of the Truck Festival in Oxfordshire UK that has run for the past 13 years and included The Lemonheads, Supergrass, Overkill River and Yacht.

This year, Mercury Rev will be performing and they're looking for more bands to add to the line-up, so roll the dice and hitch yer wagon to a star here. More info about Truck America here.

Acid Western

From the inbox: Corey McAbee and Bobby Lurie make up the band known as The Billy Nayer Show. They've written, produced and directed a feature length film, Stingray Sam, that was divided into episodes that are now available to view online. They mix live action, collages, photo montages, old singing cowboy serials and (hey why not) sci-fi, to produce something that sounds completely original (though the one guy's deep voice is reminiscent of Jens Lekman's Pocketful of Money) It'll haunt ya*: Billy Nayer Show: Lullaby Song mp3 wastch khere.mp3

Get it down yonder.

Before and After

This Hurricane Bells video has got it goin' on in a kool Strokes kind of way...
snooped around some more and come to find out that the Hurricane Bells were on the New Moon soundtrack. (Eeps, haven't seen either of the Twilight movies!)

Now here's the same song with a much cleaner sound and look, like a Proactiv commercial:

While both versions are good, I prefer the roughness of the version up top, where everything is dark and it sounds as if they had to play through after the amp got kicked in.

Afterschool Special

So the buzz seems to be a'buildin' about The Runaways, the new movie starring Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning, the twin forces who will be running Hollywood for the next few years. Initially it looked like a redux of Let Er Rip, err, whatever female movie you want to fill in here. I like a good Girl Power flick as envisioned by Hollywood execs, long as it's not too far off the estrogen charts. And this movie seems far less gag-inducing than The Pregnancy Pact.

Anyway, I don't know that much about the Runaways. Coming up I used to love both Joan Jett and the cheesy Lita Ford (though right now in my mind's cobwebs I'm confusing her with Samantha Fox*) but know nothing of Cherie Currie. You Tube has some neat older live footage of The Runaways and Cherie Currie in action. Fanning resembles her around the eyes (It's too bad that ScarJo wasn't a few years younger), but it will be interesting to see if she can pull off the ferocity that comes through here.

Give Me Your Hand

From the inbox: The Buffetlibre djs are back with another remix of the song Two by The Antlers.

The Antlers hail from Brooklyn and their album Hospice was on many a 2009 favorite list. Much like Bon Iver, lead singer Peter Silberman planned to isolate himself from the world for awhile, but before he did, he and his crew wrote a few songs as an "elegy for his planned disappearance." The somber songs formed the storyline of a man watching a loved one die of cancer that eventually became Hospice.

Peter Silberman says that if he could go gay for anyone it would be Abe Lincoln (who would definitely be a coolster beardo if he were around today).

Archer

I don't know, maybe I just read way too much of the internet and it's all turning into a giant pink haze, but I could've sworn that D'Angelo put out an album last year. I'm not the hugest fan of the crooner of sexy songs myself, but I vaguely remember news of an album that I'm now reading didn't ever come out. D'Angelo's wiki says that the album, James River, a collaboration with Cee-Lo, Raphael Saadiq and Mark Ronson should be coming out soon. If it ever does come out it will be his first album in 10 years. Despite the fact that he's struggled with drug problems and a car accident, D'Angelo has continued to make guest appearances on albums by Common, Snoop Dogg and J Dilla.

Transplorted

A fan took an older Glasvegas song, It's My Own Cheating Heart That Makes Me Cry, and set it to a Doves video with mostly entertaining results. People should do this more often. Glasvegas It's My own cheating heart that makes me cry mp3 was here.

Got A Machine. Head.

++Via Transbuddha, Spike Jonze premiered a short film at Sundance titled I'm Here. The film is branded content, a commercial for Absolut Vodka (comparable to a Superbowl ad), about the romance between two robots and "creativity conquering conformity."

++Upgrayedd would appprovvve.

++Poopy. You have to go to Coachella to catch Majah Lazahhh in SoCal.

Event Horizon

Here's the soundtrack for that fantasy you have where you go into Guitar Center and coyly start playing on the keyboards and then proceed to tear it up so hard so that all the long-haired salespeople stop ragging on whatever they're ragging for a few minutes to gather around you and dance. ("Heyyy! Ho!"..they all say.) Mille Crysteena mp3 was here.

Giving credit where due, Cassette Culture discovered Swedish producer Mille whose Ratatat-like song has already been remixed by Edwin Van Cleef and Fear of Tigers.

Crysteena is available on 12" (I also love "Shaolin Temple")at Neon Gold.

AM in the AM

From the inbox: AM will be taking the 2010 Sundance Film Festival by storm on January 28th and 29th at 3:20 pm at the Stanfield Gallery on Main Street in Park City Utah. His new album Future Sons & Daughters will be born on February 13th. He's also set to perform on KCRW's Morning Becomes Eclectic on March 3rd and tour with Air in Miami as they open their first North American Tour in 3 years. Then on March 28th comes a show in L.A. at the Walt Disney Concert Hall. Whew!  Have a listen below.

(Wonder what he's lookin' at up there.)

AM Self Preservation was here mp3

Here's Your Pay

++Once again, I've been looking over the latest batch of Bootie Mashup posters. Some of the faces match up nicely. Who'dve guessed that Usher and Barry Gibb would have the same faraway looks in their similarly shaped eyes? 

The Britney Winehouse is, predictably, a little off balance.

Pharrell Beck brings to mind a less squinty JGL.

More here. The Bootie crew will be at the Echo the 6th.

++Got this little packet of mania in the inbox yesterday: Daisy, by Fang Island backed by Yeasayer. Hate to use the word anthemic, but really, if there's some small emerging country out there in need of an anthem, here it is. Listen to the amazing Rhoadsesian fingerwork in there. Fang Island's self-titled debut album hits the shelves on 2/23 and they play NY's Santos Party House with Andrew WK on 2/13. Fang Island Daisy mp3 was here and recommended.

++Anytime I see a picture of someone looking at something unseen and unknown, I always wonder what it is. If I had to wager a guess this time, it would be something that we in rain-soaked California haven't seen in ages..the source of warmth, growth and nourishment for the planet.

Guardian Ship

Here's video of tall Americanos Longwave performing the song Satellites at KEXP back in the '08. There've been a buncha songs that have romanticized the notion of the satellite in space. There's one more and it is KILLING me. Aw shoot, well there ya go.

Longwave Satellites mp3 was here.

Talk To the Hand

We The Kings "Heaven Can Wait" from S Curve on Vimeo.

Director du jour Nicholaus Goossen has built up a body of cleanly shot, raw, sometimes trippy work.*

In this video for We The Kings, the long pans and seaweed blue coloring give it a P.T. Anderson feel. We The Kings have a young, energetic and carefree abandon that I haven't heard since The Kooks and comes from not yet having to pay automo'bills.

We The Kings second full-length album Smile Kid is out now. We the Kings Heaven Can Wait mp3 was here.

Tick Tock

Ooh just got this song in the inbox. Brooklyn's Emily Long has been featured on the WB's The Lake. Long claims to be influenced by Ronnie Spector but I hear way more Stevie Nicks and Cyndi Lauper in her voice. So emotional. I'm far from being a teenager but this song wants to make me slit my wrists from having been heartbroken (Give it a few seconds to warm up:) Emily Long Anyone Else mp3 was here.

"You've ruined me for anyone else."
As an old, I can still relate. I feel the way about certain pizza joints. Sob!

Long's debut album When I Was In Love With comes out this Spring.

Cherie Bomb

I'm sort of a passing fan of The Dust Brothers* and was looking for something they've done with females and came across this older gem by April March. More info here; you can hear her fascination with things French in this song. In fact, it sounds like a funkier version of the song If by Charlotte Gainsbourg and Etienne Daho. April March Atention Cherie mp3 was here and recommended.