One Track Mind: The Strokes "Under Cover of Darkness"
The Strokes - Under Cover Of Darkness by thebluewalrus
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The Strokes - Under Cover Of Darkness by thebluewalrus
Marketing and merchandising have invaded just about every inch of space that you hold near and dear. We were surprised to find that some bands' reaches go even further. Check out the bizarre ways in which some of our favorite artists attempt to brand themselves.
Below is the very first Street Music Video review, in which we present a stream of consciousness reaction to a particularly intriguing music video. This week, we watch Sleigh Bells' "Rill Rill," which takes us from the desert to a middle school and back, all the while telling a gruesome tale of abandonment. Or something like that.
Cymbals Eat Guitars, a rock band from Staten Island, will bless Penn with its presence tomorrow night.For those of you who couldn’t get enough of what they had to say in the magazine, here’s an extended version of the interview. Be sure not to miss the show (Friday at 8 p.m. at The Rotunda).
Originally from New Jersey, Real Estate is a four-piece band whose sound might be deemed psychedelic. But even then, that would be oversimplifying. Read on to delve into the nuances of their sound and songwriting (and why those nuances may be derived from the mid–90s), and be sure not to miss the show (Friday at 8 p.m. at The Rotunda).
End–of–year lists in the music world gain credibility by doing one of two things: they either compile a bunch of albums that have already been validated with critical acclaim, or they include obscure bands just to score some indie cred. We’re doing neither in this list: here’s a handful of underground bands that released some pretty awesome music in the past 12 months — music that, despite being under the radar, is highly listenable. Fire up your computers and plug in your earbuds; let us show you what you might have missed:
The Decemberists never seemed like the kind of band to pull any punches. Their discography is full of literary allusions, SAT words and an epic mentality fit for a fairy tale — not exactly the kind of fare that leads to a major label deal. Yet, somehow, Colin Meloy and co. made it to the top of the indie heap, never abandoning their quirky sensibilities in the process. And though they have amassed their fair share of haters, they weren’t a group whose uniqueness could be called into question… until now.
Netherfriends is Shawn Rosenblatt, a 23-year-old Chicagoan-via-Suburban Philadelphia who produces buoyant psychedelic pop that ranges from frustrated to ecstatic in tone. His 2009 debut EP, the promising Calling You Out, showed Rosenblatt stretching his sound over several different styles, while this year’s Barry and Sherry, Netherfriend’s first full-length, is a cohesive work that connects poppy versus and choruses with dream-like instrumental segments. Rosenblatt is currently touring the country with a rotating cast of musicians as he attempts to write, record, and play a song live in each state as part of his 50 Songs, 50 States project. Street caught up with Shawn in Chicago at the Pitchfork Music Festival, where he discussed crazy shows at Penn, playing a sixteen-year-old’s beach house, and the economic struggles of being a musician. Here iis our conversation: Street: I’ve been reading a lot about your 50 Songs, 50 States project. How far along are you? Shawn Rosenblatt: I have 22 states done right now. It’s been 3 months. So I have 22 states done and then I’m moving west towards Seattle.
Born out of a bedroom psych-folk project by singer-guitarist Luke Temple, Here We Go Magic has bloomed into a buzzworthy indie rock act with two albums under its belt. Street caught up with drummer Peter Hale after the band’s show at the Pitchfork Music festival. Street: So Luke Temple recorded the Here We Go Magic debut alone on his four-track. How do you think recording with a full band altered the creative process on the second album? Peter Hale: First of all, there were five of us doing it. [Laughs.] We just lived in a house in upstate New York and just kind of let the album come out of our own experience there rather than thinking about it in terms of ‘lets go make a record.’ So that’s actually really similar [to the first album], but other than that, playing together, working out parts together and stuff is obviously different than someone coming home after a day at work and laying something down on his tape machine, you know? Street: Did you record the second album digitally? PH: No, we actually borrowed a TASCAM quarter-inch eight-track from a friend and used Luke’s four-track to supplement that. So, like, probably ninety percent of the record was done on an eight-track or a four-track. We have to use Pro Tools to bounce things down and then bounce them back to tape. But pretty much everything that gets recorded gets recorded to tape, except for a few of the backing vocals, just for expediency. Something you want to do a million times, like singing a vocal take over and over again, sometimes you can actually destroy the tape doing that. So we opted to do that on the computer a little bit, but then that’s all bounced back to tape. But all the instruments were recorded to tape on that record. Street: OK, cool. So I saw you guys live at Pitchfork the other day and it was a great show. PH: Thank you. Street: I noticed you used scarves to deaden the snare and floor tom during your live show. Can you explain why you used that effect? PH: I guess there’s a sort of double reason for that. One is that it just kind of flattens the sound in a way that makes it…I find just more appealing sounding. And another reason is that when you get into a situation where you’re playing lots of shows in different sized venues, you can be in control of the sound of the drums a lot more, and the sound guy doesn’t have to figure out how to EQ it…you know, when you get to a place like Pitchfork, you’ve got like a fifteen minute changeover. You’re not gonna get a proper soundcheck…so it’s one way to like, kind of, just take a lot of the guesswork out of it. I didn’t know that when I stared doing it. I just started doing it because I thought it sounded a lot like Captain Beefheart [laughs]. Street: Did you deaden the drums in the same way on the album? Or is that just a… PH: Yeah, yeah. The recording’s the same, yeah. Street: How did you approach arranging the songs from the debut album to play live? PH: [ . . . ] People just started to play what they imagined was the song, like someone singing a song they only know part of the lyrics to, you know? Because even Luke doesn’t even know what some of that stuff is anymore, because it was just was so fast when he made it. So a lot of it was just trying to make something sound like that first record, and the stuff we play live is definitely the more ‘song’ songs from the record. I think its regrettable that people sort of distinguish between what they call the songs and what they call the ambience. And definitely, we don’t play any ambient tracks. We play “Tunnelvision,” we play “Fangela,” we play “Only Pieces” and those definitely have strong melodies and pretty decipherable rhythmic things happening. So it’s just kind of honoring the integrity of the song, and we were excited about it in the first place. Street: One last question. When the band whispers in the background of “Collector,” what are you all saying? I’ve been wondering about that for the past several months. PH: [Laughs] Well, I guess I can tell you this. It’s a combination of “If you see something shiny, pick it up.” And we all say it in different patterns. Some people just say “Pick it up, shiny, pick it up.” Some people say the whole phrase, and then other people alternate with “If you see something shiny,” “If you see something shiny pick it,” “If you see something shiny pick it up.” And that’s how you get everything to start swirling. Like when we recorded that on the record, Luke and I did doubles of that with each other that were just, like, as many combinations of that phrase that we could come up with. In different harmonies. And then the girls [Keyboardist Kristina Lieberson and bassist Jennifer Turner] do their version of that. And then Mike [guitarist Michael Bloch] does his. And then that’s how we do it at the show.
CHICAGO — Over the past several years, the Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago’s Union Park has valiantly worked to separate itself from the usual crop of summer festivals, attracting attendees with an ear for interesting bands and a yearning for more comfortable, personal concert experiences.
On a fundamental level, the two-man band is one of the most constraining paradigms in rock n’ roll. It’s dwarfed by the diversity and lushness of bigger outfits, yet it retains the artistic contention of the group. Caught in this uncomfortable middle ground, The Black Keys infiltrated the music world by embracing a raw and artfully-unpolished style, producing five albums and only briefly straying from their back-to-basics formula by incorporating noted producer Danger Mouse on 2008’s Attack and Release. On Brothers, the duo’s latest, the band drifts from this archetype just enough to keep things interesting, distilling the best of their time-worn blues while managing a modest sense of nuance and sonic growth.
Forgiveness Rock Record, Broken Social Scene’s fourth full-length, is an album without illusions. It’s a rock record, first and foremost: an album that pools its creativity in big guitars instead of ethereal tones and disjointed arrangements.
Here Lies Love consists of new wave icon David Byrne and British beatmaker Fatboy Slim attempting to tell the story of the former First Lady of the Phillipines, Imelda Marcos, and her nanny, Estrella Cumpas, through 22 songs, two discs, and a whole bunch of guest singers. No, we’re absolutely not kidding. Sound awesome? Well, unfortunately, it isn’t — the batshit-crazy concept is, oddly, one of the only elements of Here Lies Love that makes sense. The rest of the album’s development — the showtune-esque arrangements of the first disc, the guest vocalists’ shameless evocation of Disney princesses — is nearly a complete failure. The only tracks worth hearing are on disc two (seriously, never play disc one), though these selections are still rare. The songs that work generally stray from Byrne and Slim’s humdrum pop; “Dancing Together” features Sharon Jones’ passionate, idisyncratic yelp, and “Please Don’t” conglomerates the duo’s most creative ideas over a smooth Santigold vocal.
Winston Ojeda Jr. has plans for “total world domination.” The president of Musyck.com, a new website promoting itself as the “Fan-Powered Musyck Revolution,” has big hopes for his patent-pending brainchild. He sees it as the site that “will be the place to launch new tracks, albums and artists.”
Bonnaroo Located on a 700-acre farm in Manchester, TN, the annual Bonnaroo festival brings together some of the most talented acts across genres for a four-day bacchanalia of live music, arts and crafts, dance tents and booze. The festival organizers have also recently stepped up efforts to promote environmentalism and donate money to local organizations. This year’s festival is set for June 10-13, with performances from Kings of Leon, Jay-Z, Conan O’Brien, Phoenix, Damian Marley and Nas, LCD Soundsystem, The xx, The Flaming Lips and Kid Cudi — and that’s just naming a few. Check out details at bonnaroo.com.
The first time you hear Congratulations, you won’t like it. There’s no “Electric Feel,” no “Kids,” and you won’t hear this at a frat party. The lead single, “Flash Delirium,” doesn’t have a chorus, or verses for that matter. And the band even wrote a 12-minute-song about surfing in the Arctic Circle. But you’ve heard this already. What you may not have heard, though, is this: if you treat Congratulations with patience and an open-mind, the rapid chord shifts and structural changes of MGMT’s latest will take shape. And then you will probably like this album, and you may even love it.
On Titus Andronicus’ 2008 debut, the band begins the first song, the pummeling “Fear and Loathing in Mahwah, NJ” with a washed-out, barely audible verse. One minute into the track, the music stops, and a chorus of pissed-off punks yells “fuck you” into an undistorted audio channel, their voices echoing without an ounce of irony or satire.
If you’re anything like us, then going to a record store is the most exciting part of your week. If you aren’t, that’s okay; you’ll still love Repo Records. Located in the midst of the sex shops and general smut of South Street, Repo occupies a small, poster-adorned space filled wall-to-wall with CDs and vinyl. New releases are featured at the cashier counter, as well as a short supply of the stalwarts of the British music press. The rest of the music collection is, well, everywhere.
When the Gorillaz project came into existence, the purpose was clear: Blur’s Damon Albarn was not initiating a bland side project. He was, along with artist Jamie Hewlett, creating a world, a band, and, most importantly, a satirical prototype of musical fame, a colorful superhero costume intended to disguise his existence as a British tabloid target. While Albarn is still propagating the same characters on Plastic Beach, he has, for the most part, lost the magic of his disguise.
When I was in ninth grade, one of my friends told me that she heard Billy Corgan was an asshole.
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