Advance copies of Neil Young’s new album Prairie Wind are floating around, I heard it yesterday and it sounds excellent, just as one might expect, this album has more of a country rock organic sound, unlike Greendale which was more of a rocker. If you didn’t know already, I’m a really big fan, blah blah blah, On the Beach, Everybody Knows This is Nowhere, blah blah Decade, at least. Anyway here is one of the tracks off the album. You can also stream The Painter at Neil’s Webpage. This song probably won’t be posted for very long so get it while its hot!

Neil Young - Far From Home

So those boys and girls from Broken Social Scene are back with a new self titled album, with the number of band memebers standing at 12 strong. I saw them play live twice, two years ago with Metric in Philly, and last December at the Bowery, and both times I was pretty much taken aback by a very rocking live show, but then it hit me, what makes this band any different than the bloated rock acts of the 70’s? The Journey’s? The Bostons? Does the fact of me standing here in this audience totally compromise any of the punk rock roots I so strongly(and probably wrongly) base my musical elitism upon? As I watched 5 members of the band strum the same chord all on acoustic guitars, I think “Do they not have a law of diminishing returns in Canada?” I try to look at it as being the subject matter of the two bands are completely different, Broken Social Scene have potty mouths, and like to sing about swallowing someone elses spit, drinking piss, fellatio, etc. Hardly “hooked on a feeling” material, but couldn’t “Anthems for a Seventeen Year Old” have totally fit in an American Eagle commercial, of young lusty girl pearing from a second story window, and having her beau standing in the front yard longingly looking up at her. Seems like angst anyway you slice it to me. What would Joey Ramone think?

I know I totally enjoy Broken Social Scene, and I’m sort of scared to think if I would like Boston, the feel good happy sunshine bloated rock acts of the 70’s, I never really gave them a try. I know im not going to run out and get their catalog, just becuase someone is goin to write an article (on Pitchfork no doubt) about how Boston got a bad wrap from the punks, and really were a great and highly influential band. I do know that Broken Social Scene needs to be 12 members, because after listening to Jason Collett’s solo cd, which to put it plainly sucked bullets, right down to the cover art of him waxing nostalgic in a distant stare, looking like Nick Drake the best he can. So can I say that Broken Social Scene are better than the sum of their parts, as all rock bands should be I guess, but when your adding 12 parts to begin with? Anyway I’m posting “Superconnected” from the new self titled album, and it’s much better than that “Shorelines” song that has been floating around everywhere.

Broken Social Scene - Superconnected

So you’re a relatively small band, thats been around for a few years, finally building yourself enough national attention to mount your very own nationwide tour. Imagine your excitement, you wake up the first day tickets go on sale, and see that they are selling out with in hours. Then you realize its mostly due to the opening act you booked, the unproven, super hyped (admitidly desereved), Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. I would still be absolutely excited to know that all the shows were selling out, it’s kind of the way things normally work with shows but in reverse, opening acts cling to larger acts to bring their small time gig to a larger audience, and in hope bring a larger audience to themselves. I’m not saying one band is greater than the other, CYHSY are so hot right now, but The National are a great band in and of themselves. Here I am posting one of my favorite songs from the album, along with a link to a great post from Music (for Robots) pointing to the first song I heard from the Alligator “Mr. November”, which sort of has a “wash your hair once every two weeks” Nada Surf kinda thing to it, so it should be the biggest song on the radio, and that’s not a bad thing!

The National - Abel

Last night, after I got disgusted with the VMA’s, as I’m sure most of you did, I decided I would watch the new Flaming Lips Rockumentary “Fearless Freaks”, while doing so they only briefly mentioned and passed over one of my favorite lip, Ronald Jones. I believe he was single handedly responsible for the ultra awesome weirdo guitar sounds from two of the Lips best albums, Transmissions From The Satellite Heart and Clouds Taste Metallic, he bailed out and, according to the documentary, was the catalyst of the bonkers Parking Lot Experiment, followed by the Boom Box Experiment, and later Zaireeka!. I believe those two albums are more quintessential Flaming Lips, Soft Bulletin was great, but really didn’t poses the “Best if Played at Maximum Volume” aspect these albums had, and that was mostly due to Ronald Jones. He was a guitar master, that mainly focused on unconventional methods of playing to produce unconventional sounds, but it was still from the same instrument everyone else in rock has ever touched, just that when he touched it it screamed a new beauty. Today the Flaming Lips rely on Steven Drozd’s ability to play multiple synths, and basically create orchestras through savvy recording technology, Ronald Jones’s guitar playing was the atmospherics, he was the orchestra. I don’t really know why they only included him in about 5 minutes of the film, maybe because he declined further inclusion, he is reportedly terribly shy, I just wish they would have given us more insight to his part of the process. He left the band due to his anxiety over Steven’s drug use, and playing live shows. On the Flaming Lips web page, they have a quote from Wayne Coyne that sort of answers the “where is he now?” question, “He’s probably now back in his bedroom making the greatest music the world will never hear, and maybe that’s the way it should be.”

Here are two of my favorite songs off of Clouds Taste Metallic, coincidentally the first two tracks off the record, I believe Ronald should get his due respect for being one of the most influential guitar players of the 90’s.

The Flaming Lips - Abandoned Hospital Ship

The Flaming Lips - Psychiatric Explorations of the Fetus With Needles

A few days ago I posted a review for the Sufjan Steven’s show at the Bowery last Friday, in said blog posting I stated that it would be cool for Kanye West to sample Sufjans, “Zombies, blah blah blah”, upon posting I received one comment from Josh at Blogs are for Dogs (which is a great blog and totally recommend) stating that someone by the name of Two Face John McCartney had already created a mash-up between Kanye’s “Jesus Walks” and “Zombies.” IMO this was a huge let down, first of all, this song sounds little more than someone taking the a capela vocal of Kanye’s tune and just merely playing it over a looped intro to Zombies. There is no attempt at matching up the BPM just seems like a straight playing two songs at once, sort of like an offices fight between an Indie fool (played by me) and a hip hop enthusiast (played by my co-worker who shall remain nameless, but its a small office so he will figure it out). The true skill to the mash up is completely lost here, and if I was say the innovative mash up king Mark Vidler of Go Home Productions , I would be pretty disappointed by the attempt. Then again I don’t really know much about Two Faced JM, for all I know he could be just some kid starting out and had a great idea for a mash-up and went with it, but as the title says this mash-up stuff has to stop. Read the rest of this entry »

I went to the Sufjan Steven’s show last week at the Bowery Ballroom, like many of the rest of you, and not to dwell on a subject that I have already previously spoke about, I had a wonderful time. Such a wonderful time in fact I did not want it to end. Being quite the ambitious person I am after the show had ended I was hanging around drunk, and decided “Hey, wouldn’t it be great to have a nice conversation with Sufjan himself?” So I handed my girlfriend my wallet and walked right on by security, at first he was gruff, not allowing me back inside, I gave him some sob story about losing my wallet and he let me right inside. So I was back inside, no real victory there, still had a long way to go. I head on over to the back stairwell by the womens restroom and breezed past another security gaurd, as I walked up those stairs I passed one Katrina Kerns on her way down,I believe she was returning a glass to the bar or something. Committed to the bit of finding my wallet, I went up stairs to the main floor area I pretended to search around the bar for a bit, and made my way back downstairs. Read the rest of this entry »

Proof that music is a tricky little bag to tag, the recent success and subsequent popularity of Animal Collective is baffling, at least to myself. Very seldomly will you catch someone standing on the street humming a tune to “Who Could Win a Rabbit”, most of their songs are unhummable (yeah, I made up a word, jealous?) yet still they are growing larger and larger, like a fern you received from your then girlfriend/now ex-girlfriend, they just won’t seem to go away. At first I found myself absolutly fighting this music, stating the only reason it would ever sell a record is because Ryan from Pitchfork said its good, and for some reason people like to listen to him. I found Campfire Songs boring and largely unlistenable, Song Tongs grew on me, and now I find that the new album Feels has leaked, and I can’t really shake it from my winamp. Have I myself finally sucumb to the constant barrage to the indie hip marketing, is a complete wardrobe of Urban Outfitters clothing flying into my closet as type this very post? Not very likely, maybe I grew as a music listener myself, maybe they are writing more intesting songs. I guess I could chicken and egg myself to death with this, I choose not to think about it anymore and just enjoy listening. Grass is the first single off the album, here it is for you cheapskates, but like all the music I post here, I fully recommend buying the album when it comes out because its as good as gravy on your Thanksgiving Turkey. Wait! There isn’t a Turkey in the band is there? I wouldn’t want to offend anyone.

Animal Collective - Grass

Warner Bros. records has released a statement that may just be the death of music the way we know it presently, or the way commercial music is known presently, or the way music execs think music is known presently because in actuallity its something different from that entirely. You may know that the album format has not been paying off as of late for the big four record labels. Artists release modertatly well recieved pop singles, the consumers races to their P2P network and gobbles them down, never really paying much mind to the rest of the album, which probably sucks anyway. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday had a rather cryptic permalink containing the words “Neil Young Signs On” and “Death to the Album”, I unfortunatly didn’t get time to write about either of those yesterday, so here it goes for today. (”Death to the Album” will come later)

Apparently Neil Young has decided to stay the course with his long time partner Reprise Records, stating that “Once you have been with a company that long they feel like family.” You all may remember he left Reprise in the early 80’s and did some wildly experiemental albums, with Geffen, which prompted him to get sued for not sound enough like himself, and in turn prompted Neil to rush out and get a hat emblazed with “You Can Take This Job and Shove It. ” Back with Reprise he recorded more wonderful albums including 2003’s Greendale, which saw mass cross promotion from DVD’s and Books, all of which I purchased, and would dutifully do again. And looks like I will have an oppurtunity to do so, announced on Friday, Neil Young’s newest album Prairie Wind will be released on Sept. 27th, and there is a movie in the works to be filmed by Oscar winning director Jonathan Demme (Silence of the Lambs if you were wondering) . The film and album has mostly to do with Neil Young’s upbringing in rural Canada, and is showcased by a few shows he did last week in Nashville, at Ryman Theatre. Read this article to find out more, from a far more reputable news source.In the article there is a quote near the bottom of the page, in which one fan says “I’d just like to buy him a beer.” I think that pretty much sums up how I feel too.

A few posts back I mentioned a bunch of indie artists that have been covering Neil Young songs, one of which I mentioned was James Mercer of the Shins covering “Harvest”, so I figured I might as well post it, this will be the last cover I post for a while so ENJOY!

James Mercer - Harvest (Live Acoustic) Moonshine Festival Austin 10/10/2004

Back on August 6th at the Newport Folk Fest* The Pixies played their “first ever live accoustic set.” Go here for links to very shaky and moderatly distant video clips of them rockin out folk-core!

*I am not legally obligated to tell you this but I feel compelled to tell you this post has been brought to you by Dunkin Donuts, mmm donuts.