Friday New To Me: Decemberists Scavenger Hunt Edition
As you may or may or man not know, The Decemberists have just put out a new EP, Long Live the King a collection of outtakes and demos from their not great for The Decemberists, but still good by every other standard release The King is Dead. As a lead-up of sorts, they released five of the EP’s six tracks across blogs the week before the album came out.
Always late to the party, here is my favorite track, “Foregone”
While I loved the whole EP, and I hope that their Demo “I 4 U and U 4 Me” makes its way onto a future album, if this were a reality competition, and I got to pick one eliminated challenger to participate in the finals (even I’m not following this metaphor anymore), it would be “Foregone,” it just does such a great job bridging the feel of this The King is Dead with the sound of some of their older tracks.
You can see the original posts on Paste, Vulture, Rolling Stone, Stereogum, and The Huffington Post.
Their cover of the far too long and not very good cover of the Grateful Dead’s “Row Jimmy” remains unreleased
First Peek at Rocket Juice and the Moon
by Michael
For those of you who don’t know, I love Damon Albarn. To me, the man can do no wrong, and I will listen to basically anything he puts his hands on. His new band, Rocket Juice and the Moon, is no exception. This time around he’s playing with Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist, Flea and the man who created afrobeat, drummer Tony Allen. Name issues aside(he admitted he didn’t pick it, and doesn’t enough care to change it) this is yet another fantastic offering from Albarn. Its exactly what you would expect from him, in that you would never expect it.
You can listen to all the tracks from their live performance now on their YouTube page, but here is the perfect taste:
I’ll admit it, before I googled him, I had no clue who Tony Allen was, but my god is he a fantastic drummer, and definitely the driving force in the band’s sound. I’m also happy to see that despite the fact that The Red Hot Chili Peppers haven’t put out a good album since By The Way in 2002, Flea hasn’t lost his skill as a bassist.
Thoughts? Opinions? Leave ‘em in the comments.
The Blues Bonanza sure are a band that exists.
by Michael
Hey, remember me? I’m that guy who used to write on here sometimes, well now I’m back.
What draws me back you ask? Well, close personal friend/musician Lou “Retarded Baby” Guberti has asked me to review his band, The Blues Bonanza‘s new EP, Sludgehammer. At first, all I could think of was the last time Lou asked me to review something, but then I also remembered I love telling people my opinion.
SO HERE WE GO AGAIN!!!!!
To start things off, let’s listen to a track together:
There are definitely some hurdles for me when it comes to listening to Sludgehammer. The biggest by far is Lou’s voice. Now I’m not saying it’s a bad voice or anything, I just find myself giggling uncontrollably every time he starts singing. Unless you know Lou, you probably won’t experience this problem.
Another hurdle is, this isn’t my style of music. I don’t know what makes a . . . hard rock? (I dunno, its not metal) band good. What I can say is that there is definitely some Queens of the Stone Age flair in their songs, so if you like those guys, definitely check this EP out.
In the end, this album is definitely a freshman effort. It sounds like it was recorded in a basement, and while the band as a whole are technically proficient, everything is pretty formulaic. The solos sound more like scales or fingering exercises than real solos (which probably won’t be an issue if you see them live), and the songs get a bit repetitive at times.
THE FINAL VERDICT:
In no way is the album perfect, but I’ll be damned if it isn’t enjoyable. There’s a tongue-in-cheek quality to the whole album (probably most visible in their track “The Bro Song”) that really makes me smile. Also, the tracks are fucking catchy. If you were cool enough to listen to “Marty McFly” back when I told you to, its probably still stuck in your head, and will be for another hour or so. The Blues Bonanza may not be the voice of a generation, but I’ll take this over Katy Perry any day.
I was originally gonna develop a new ranking system based on Fonzie, but it would take too long explaining that there is only 1 Fonzie, and nobody can be as perfect as Fonize, so the best score a person could ever get is 0.99 Fonize, and the scale is exponential, but if I did do it, these guys would get 0.45 Fonzie. Make of that what you will.
Can’t get enough of my snark? Make sure to follow me on twitter @LetterstotheTV
Wanna talk about tUnE-yArDs?
You know when you hear something that hits so close to your softest innards that you feel like you’ve been suckerpunched and liked it? And like you kind of want to feel it again? Guys, I haven’t been this excited about an album in SO LONG. I think Merrill Garbus might be brilliant, but god is it hard to listen to a lot of her songs in a row. I promise you won’t hear another album so challenging but so rewarding for the rest of the year. Ready? Let’s go. Read more…
Let’s Get Out of This Country
Has anyone else been throwing up with rage after reading the news today?
Before I moved to France, I spent a lot of time listening to this one over and over and over again.
Let’s get out of this country/ I have been so unhappy.
What does this city have to offer me?/ I just can’t see.
Hey more blogging to come in the coming days, thanks for sticking with us.
All the World’s Best Things
Forgive me, this is not strictly indie-rock related, and please allow me to pretend I have readers who might be distressed by a minor content detour. Here’s a video of the protesters in Madison singing “Do You Hear the People Sing?” from Les Miserables and it features all of the best things in the world:
- A famous showtune with modified topical lyrics
- Progressive politics
- A slightly out-of-tune marching band
- Impassioned Midwestern theater geek men
- Colored posterboard
- Hippie drum women
- Misattribution (I don’t think Victor Hugo wrote this song, but if he did, woo he is even more dreamy than I thought!)
- Redheads in cravats
Ok, enough jokes, this video still gave me chills. Let’s not talk about THAT any more. But the video, we can talk about that.
Under Cover of Darkness
I like to think of my adolescent and early adult years as divided into periods when I am listening to The Strokes all the time, and the Dark Times. Even though it sounds like the whole band took a lot of adderall while writing this song–has there ever been a Strokes song that sounded so goddamn gleeful?–I pretty much love it. Please enjoy and bask in the sunshine of “Under Cover of Darkness.”
If you are obsessively following this album like I have been, you probably heard that other, weirder song that they leaded as well. Angles is gonna be ridiculous!
