Just around the corner. Get your sick days ready because Lolla is coming to town and bringing the noise. Rather than fill up this site with the usual paragraph after paragraph of word vomit, straight to the goods.
Nothing sucks worse than a second record… sometimes.
the other side of the hamptons
“You have your whole life to make your first record and 24 months to make your second”
How do you duplicate the experience and passion you put into your first [hit] album, the record that made you famous, into another commercially popular product that the public will both love again and you will be satisfied with?
Needless to say, this is a difficult process. Creating In Utero likely pushed Cobain over the edge (exception to the rule [mega hit] – but also not true second album). I don’t think Ezra Koenig went through the same angst to push Contra through production, but he didn’t have to worry about continuing to define his own genre.
With this in mind, in the face of huge expectations in the wake of The Rhumb Line, The Orchard doesn’t fall flat on its face. It lacks the powerful, emotional pace of its predecessor, explores new territory, and delivers some quality new tracks. It also maintains Ra Ra’s reputation for delivering music that is extremely tight, technically. It’s slower, more thoughtful, and maybe, like a lot of second albums, will be appreciated more by the fans that truly support the band than album before it.
A few of the choicer singles:
Shadowcasting (Jackson Browne, anyone?)
Do You Remember
You and I Know -> Note cellist Alexandra Lawn’s debut as lead vocals (another good reason to see them live)
Enjoy, and see these guys in concert as soon as possible (Oct 5th at SmartBar would be a good choice)
Duff
After over 2 years of waiting, Cut Copy fans are getting their first taste of new material from the Aussie synth-pop crew. But this isn’t your standard synth-o-matic affair that you have grown to know and love. The standard club banging mega-electropop that you’ve probably heard in your sleep has been replaced by a new brand of summer-y electro-rock that you might expect if one of the Beach Boys had stumbled onto DJ equipment.
“Oh yeah those blogging assholes thought that they were really hot shit and then they disappeared”
Well….. true. Until recently. See there’s this really agonizing time-suck called work and it was jealous of the blog taking our leisure time – but no more excuses. We are lazy and the blog went into a coma.
So what do we do? Rather than go on about the endless details of stone polishing, insect taxidermy, and prostitution, I found it more useful to associate a picture of each of your favorite bloggers at work.
(Working theme songs upcoming upon my using a non-work typewriter to upload it)
Well, it’s almost August, if you didn’t know – marking the one year, semi-active, almost legitimate anniversary of this site. So thanks for pretending you still come here and thanks for actually stopping by.
Anywho, (if not currently in chicago please disregard this section) if at some point this summer you have found yourself moving from street fair to festival, or festival to concert, or concert to bar, or garden-walk to pool party, or baseball game to happy hour, or Chicago and summer, you may have found yourself asking, “But wait, where are the new summer jams???”
The answer is I don’t know. For as gracious as summer has been (again, if not from Chicago please go back into your earthen hut and contemplate moving to Chicago) with abundant sunshine, high temperatures, a very very wet lake, and unlimited opportunity for day partying, the hot new tracks have really not been flying out of the studio lately.
Not to worry. As usual, The Hood Internet has you covered for all of your hot remixed track needs. Yes, you are correct, they already get a disproportionate share of this site (and my) posts, but you honestly have to hate fun to not enjoy their new summer mixtapes at your next, barbecue, rooftop, after-hours, etc. Such an easy process to make your next party a success:
1) Go to thehoodinternet.com
2) Download new mixes (trillwave is a good start)
3) Reap benefits of awesome party
About time we came out of hibernation – thanks for coming back. More coming soon.
DD
P.S. If you aren’t listening to Yeasayer’sOdd Blood right now and loving summer please return to aforementioned earthen hut.
Do androids dream of electric sheep? Do robots sing electro? I think yes. Tape Deck Bros are a Canadian electro duo – the best thing out of Canada since Nickelback. These two tracks have been hanging around for a while but really caught my ear today. Nothing like stumbling on some fun tracks for the weekend.
Does this signal the return of the blog? We’ve been in a serious coma the last few months, so maybe this will wake us up. Blackbeard is about to show Acapulco what seersucker suits are all about – I’m sure he’ll bring back some club bangers with him.
Delphic’s new album “acolyte” just came out. My computer is not letting me post new songs, but I do have the first single off of the album from a kitsune mixtape that came out a while ago.
The whole album is really interesting…definitely a must. Sorry I couldn’t post more samples, but I will try to come back to it in the future.
Youth is not wasted on the talented. Between ABX and STV SLV, the young prodigies of Neon Indian, the future of music becomes clear: it’s weird, it’s capable, and it’s so unpredictable that you cannot help but be excited. Traditional harmony, rhythm, pop melody don’t matter; only the notion of what sounds cool. It may be shocking, surprising, even uncomfortable, but in the end so good that you may not notice it tonight, or on XRT tomorrow, but these brains are far enough ahead of their time that you should be lucky to see them in a small venue now before the rest of their world realizes their talent. It’s not a deadbeat summer; it’s a new season altogether.
“The Knife, in collaboration with Mt. Sims and Planningtorock, are to release the studio version of the opera ‘Tomorrow, In A Year’, on the 1st March 2010.
Commissioned by Danish performance group Hotel Pro Forma to write the music for their opera based on Charles Darwin and his book ‘On the Origin of the Species’, The Knife decided to make this a collaborative process, working with artists Mt. Sims and Planningtorock for the first time, to capture the huge width of the Darwin and evolution theme. They extensively researched Darwin related literature and articles, with Olof attending a field recording workshop in the Amazon to find inspiration and to record sounds.”
Should be….interesting. Always a big fan of Karin Dreijer Andersson, especially her solo album Fever Ray and her work on the intense, glowing in the dark, Silent Shout.
Here’s a leak from Tomorrow in a Year, “Coloring Pigeons”
imaginationland2
kelbsss
blackbeard1
busybomb
duffduchov