Music Blog Today
Music News and Commentary.
September 04, 2010
Grab Our Feed
Grab Our Feed
Music News and Commentary.
September 04, 2010
You might not think it from the relaxed and super cool attitude I take here on my blog, but when I'm at work I have a lot of nervous energy. I get what 'Seinfield' termed "jimmy legs," legs that constantly move. Rather than try to overcome and eradicate this often distracting energy, I've recently begun channeling it by listening to dance music podcasts. I've discovered that techno's steady beats keep my feet productively tapping while not giving me too many lyrics to concentrate on.
Here are three of my new favorite dance podcasts:
Push The Night - is deejayed by former KUPS "In the mix" dj Brad Miller. What is unique about this podcast is that each episodes features a different style of dance. Recent shows have focused on Electro, Nu Disco, House, Trance, and Prog House, Downtempo and TechTrance. If you're like me and have a hard time differentiating between the various genres of dance music this is a great way to begin your techno tutelage. Push The Night is free, typically about an hour long and comes out about once a month. You can find the archived episodes on iTunes and at Brad Miller's Website.
Dance is a feeling - is a podcast dedicated to solely to house music. House is electronic dance music characterized by a heavy influence of soul and funk. Dance is a feeling is presented by DannyDance and is also about an hour long with episodes coming out about once every week and a half. The music Danny plays is infused with Latin and Tribal influences that, according to his website, come from growing up in Miami.
Shake Down - is an all trance all the time podcast that mixes contemporary trance tracks with old school classics. What is unique about Shake Down is that even though each episode is hosted by DJ Cristopher Reddick, the mixes each week come from guest hosts, and thus have a wide variety of tastes.
I've recently decided that not only am I going to post music news, album reviews, tour announcements and random musical thoughts, I'm also going to begin sharing some of my favorite online musical resources, probably about one a week. Some of these sites include ways to be social with your musical tastes, other to organize and discover new music, but most of them are going to be places to find free & legal new music.
The recent ruling on the legal battle involving one of the last surviving peer-to-peer networks, LimeWire, got me thinking about music ownership and copyrights. The lawsuit against LimeWire, started in 2006 by the RIAA finally ended with the p-2-p provider being found guilty of inducing copyright infringement, amongst other charges. I'm torn on the subject. I've never used LimeWire and I do feel an artist has right to own their own music (insert large diatribe about corporate label's and indie music ownership). At the same time I love finding free new music and respect bands that understand that their music is not just a product to sell, but a powerful way to introduce themselves to and connect with new music fans. This is where largeheartedboy.com comes in.
Large Hearted Boy is a music blog run by David Gutowski, out of "the deep American south" that brings together a wide variety of Gutowski's indie interests, both musical and literary, ranging from the unique Book Notes where young and upcoming authors choose playlists that relate to their latest books and it's intellectual doppelganger Note Books, where musicians discuss their literary side. Gutowski, who refers to himself on the site only as "boy" is able to treat a wide variety of musical styles without respect of genres and somehow manages to retain a unity that can only be attributable to his personal investment in everything he posts. But by far my favorite regular feature of Large hearted boy is it's "Try It Before You Buy It" that features legal downloads from new releases coming out each week. Many of the albums also include links to websites where they can be streamed in their entirety.
This week's Try It Before You Buy It features a large range of tracks form a chill spoken word blues track off of Andre Williams' new That's All I Need, to Daniel Higgs art-synth Footprints on the Ceiling Of Your Mind, stopping by Glee's 3rd volume of 'showstoppers' and remastered Duran Duran and Jon Spencer Blues Explosion albums being rereleased this week. If you drop by this week's TIBYBI I highly suggest checking out Keepaway's Yellow Wings for an upbeat and easygoing lo-fi sound somewhere between the Shins and The Flamming Lips as well as the melancholic and cleaver "Oh, The Divorces" by London songstress Tracey Thorn.
Be My Thrill, the Weepies' long-awaited follow up release to their 2008 album, Hideaway, is coming out soon.
You may not be familiar with the Massachusetts-met, indie folk-pop band The Weepies, but if you watch Grey's Anatomy, One Tree Hill, Scrubs, or Dirty Sexy Money (just to name a few) you've probably heard them and they probably put a smile on your face. The Weepies weave a sweet blend of earnest lyrics, upbeat arrangements and soft vocals that pick you up and put a spring in your step no matter what kind of day you are having.
The Weepies lyrical content takes a hopeful but honest look at tough situations. 'The World Spins Madly On,' the hook and title of a bouncy and simple song off their first release through Nettwerk records, Say I Am You, my first experience with their music and it struck a chord deep within me so strong that I left it on one-song repeat for a few hours. They have a way of singing lines like, "dating a porn star isn't all roses, she leaves you home on a Saturday night," with such aplomb that it is almost shocking.
Be My Thrill will be the second album husband Steve Tannen and wife Deb Talan have recorded in their home studio, and the first release since their son Theo was born in 2007. They opted to work on the new album instead of touring in 2008 and 2009 so they could stay home with Theo, wrote over 40 songs and pared it down to the 14 tracks that were approved by Nettwerk last December.
The digital release is next week on May 18tha and the street release will be a few days after that on May 25th. But if you can't wait that long to get a taste of "Be My Thrill' you can find a streamable version of the album single 'I Was Made For Sunny Days,' at Paste Magazine.
Music is emotional. Nothing earth shattering about that. The musical response is most often an emotional response. Only in contemporary indie rock you have to be careful about it, or else you'll be labeled 'emo.' Short for emotional, Emo has run a successful rhetorical battle through cultural iconography to bogart emotions for themselves. While many emo bands are actually quite good at constructing melodic hooks, their overemphasized seriousness actually comes off as being silly, saccharin and off-putting. There are two solid ways to beat emo. The first is to burry your seriousness underneath upbeat motifs and riffs you can dance to and feel good about at the same time. The other way is to out emote them. The National prefer the latter.
This week Brooklyn-based The National releases their long awaited 5th studio album, 'High Violet.' After receiving a fair amount of attention from 2007's 'Boxer' The National are sad-bastard music at its best. Front man Matt Berninger's voice is a combination of irony, stone faced brutality and a knack at getting to you without you being aware, reminiscent of both The Magnetic Fields' Stephen Merritt and Velvet Underground-er John Cale. Ranging from unrefined crooning to energetic bursts of momentary mania, Berninger finds an earnest tone that keeps you from questioning it's veracity.
Like their previously releases, 'High Violet.' invokes tropes common to real life, though not commonly treated (at least not well) in rock and roll. Somehow managing to pull the urgent and necessary out of the mundane, The National's characters are normal people going through the worst of times. The difficulty of subject matter is brilliantly mimicked in the complexity of the arrangements. Too unproduced to be lush, too well produced to feel accidental, the layers on each track wash over you and make you feel lost and isolated. While there is nothing in this album that hints towards triumph or resolution, there is something certainly cathartic about experience these songs.
'High Violet.' is probably one of the most highly anticipated depressing albums of the year. Like trying to run through a puddle of mud, 'Terrible Love' and 'Sorrow' stand as a checkpoint by which you have to pass, instantly reducing any excitement you may have built up for this release, bringing you down to the album's pacing. If you can listen to Berninger sing, "Sorrow found me when I was young,/ sorrow waited, sorrow won./ Sorrow that put me on the pills,/ it's in my honey, it's in my milk," and get it, get that it's simultaneously no big deal and devastating, then you may pass.
Many People Look forward to Cinco de Mayo, even if you don't hail form the state of Puebla where 4,500 men overpowered a stronger colonial force back in 1862. It's a great to get your party on and all over there are concerts and events planned. But if you can't make it out to any parties tonight you can still celebrate with Sioux Falls' own The Spill Canvas.
The Spill Canvas, an alternative rock band from South Dakota, are teaming up with AM Taxi from Chicago and New Politics, partially based in Denmark, to rock Dallas' the Loft. The Spill Canvas, who released their first album back in 2004 have been advertising this event on their website, twitter, facebook and mypace accounts. Somewhere at the crossroads of acoustic alternative and rock The Spill Canvas have been said to construct anthems of brutally honest youthful angst. But don't let that put you off them. Their slower songs are reminiscent of the simple power of Red House Painters and South San Gabriel, with a modern twinge. Even when plugged in The Spill Canvas are able to retain the clarity and intimacy of their acoustic sound with a carefully produced (read conscientiously not-overproduced) sound. They have toured with a diverse collection of bands, from Yellowcard in 2007 to One republic, The Hush Sound and Augustana.
The Spill Canvas are another in a long line of bands that are discovering the merits of UStream.com, a social platform based on live video streaming. Think Youtube, only live. Ustream makes it simple to produce your own program with multiple cameras and a channel page you can personalize to mathc your bands branding. You can even embed the stream into the html of your band's webpage and direct your fanbase there.
Catch The Spill Canvas performing at the Loft in Dallas tonight for Cinco De Mayo from anywhere you want.