The world needs more bagpipe, so I give you this: medley cover of Shipping Up To Boston and Enter Sandman.
I thought the confused people in the background at the market were hilarious. “What the hell is that noise? Oh, I see, it’s a girl with bagpipes…WTF?”
There is going to be a new Hop Along record that comes out in 2 days.
You can listen to the whole thing already, thanks to NPR.
https://www.npr.org/2018/04/02/597609359/first-listen-hop-along-bark-your-head-off-dog
It is a massive, beautiful, sweet, angry, gorgeous, glorious record. It is the great record Hop Along has always been thisclose to making. They hit the fucking bullseye this time.
Nice! Glad to hear you love it. I’m tempted but I think I’ll hold off on a listen until my vinyl gets here. A few months ago I ordered the new album plus their previous two.
Last night I did the same thing with The Amazing; new album plus two from their back catalog.
I also went for an impulse purchase of the Katamari Damacy soundtrack newly issued on 180 gram 2xLP which arrives Monday.
What a great release week!
Shit, I might need to get in on that.
I could definitely use a new album from Melody soon.
How is her health? Didn’t she have some kind of not-fully-disclosed accident or collapse or something?
Oh, also this week, Wye Oak is going to put out the first record of theirs that really has stuck to me.
All I know is what she disclosed at the time…there was an accident. I seem to remember something about it being bad enough to have caused an aneurysm. One hopes that an album release means she’s recovered.
While we’re on the subject, do I need this vinyl? Yes, I think I need this.
Here’s some more info but she’s still keeping it mostly private. Can’t wait for the new album! That vinyl package is a beaut.
Sharing this one mainly for the deadpan non-sequitur just past the 1 minute mark.
Panopticon is worth breaking out of the metal thread:
Their (well, his) latest is an enormous, thoughtful journey through the mystical beauty of the natural world by way of bleak atmospheric black metal and mournful country/folk, fused perfectly and played out slowly over a 2-hour-long double album.
I dunno if anything will ever top Kentucky in my eyes (hearing old-school Kentucky coal miner protest music fused with black metal was a real eye-opener for me), but my first listen on this one tells me that it’s gonna come close, at least.
I saw this band Ho99o9 play with 3TEETH last week and they were sick, two fantastic live bands. Ho99o9 (horror) are a hardcore punk/hip hop band, sort of Death Grips X Bad Brains. They have a lot of punk energy, heck one of the singers climbed into the rafters and dived from like 15-20 ft up into the crowd. There’s a few dates left on this tour to catch them both together if they come through your area, I think it’s worth it. Later this year Ho99o9 is opening for Prophets of Rage/Avenged Sevenfold for select dates.
This one kills live
This one shows a bit more the intersection of hip hop and hardcore punk.
Soft Science may be a band that look kinda like a hipster PTA committee meeting, but damned if they aren’t just a really fine dream pop band with a shoegazy edge. A lot of modern dreampop or shoegaze that I hear focuses a lot on getting the sound right, but sacrifices on the songwriting and melody…which is a shame, because underneath all the sturm and drang of MBV and Medicine and For Against are some gorgeous songs.
Soft Science isn’t too worried about using a keyboard sample to get the Shieldsy glide into one of their songs, if it lets them put it to good work in service of a killer hook. Like so:
And hey, how about a killer House of Love cover? Sure!
Sleepy Kitty have never made any bones about their abiding love for musicals, even though they’re pretty clearly an indie rock band. But the story goes that while on tour and listening to the Hamilton soundtrack (as one does), SK songwriter/singer/every instrumentalist Paige Brubeck noticed that certain Hamilton songs could be sung as Guided By Voices sounding songs. And so began a long project variously named “Guided by Hamilton” and finally “Bastard Orphan”.
It’s a cool deal that came out late last year, and finally they made a video for one of the songs, “Eliza”. Come for the cool tunes, stay to see Paige break out a Robert Pollard leg kick.
(Oh, and don’t go looking for this on Spotify, iTunes, or even Amazon. They’ve pretty much banned and refused to touch what was meant as a loving homage to the musical for fear of drawing the wrath of Mr. Miranda – even though all lyrics were used with permission.)
Pretty cool! My Hamilton-obsessed daughter was drawn to that like a moth to a flame.
So Paul Maroon, formerly of The Walkmen, has been doing a tongue-in-cheek advice column for the AV Club lately and it’s a lot of fun. Some interesting behind-the-scenes stories along with a healthy dose of comedy, such as:
But editing electric guitars is dangerous territory. If you get too fussy with them, it can tip the balance, and when you sit back in triumph to listen to your final mix, you’ll realize your band sounds like Imagine Dragons. (No offense to Imagine Dragons, who suck.)
Or:
You need to be quite careful with your contracts; getting an extra couple hundred bucks out of the band is meaningful to a promoter. And you need to avoid stupid things, like paying to have 60 cans of beer waiting for you backstage every night. After 15 years, that means you spent—lemme take a stab at the math here—$10 million on beer.
He even tackles questions that aren’t just music-related so you never know what to expect. Recommended reading! Here are all of them so far:
Lovely new music from Hope and David. She could sing phone books or Skrillex tweets to me all day and it would be heaven.
Here’s a Xiu Xiu/Mitski track
Over the past 6 weeks or so, every weekend the account for the 1980s band The Three O’Clock have been tweeting out pictures of them recording with Earle Mankey. So, I’m surmising new material. Not sure if it’s an album, an ep, a single, or what.
And I also realize that I’m not supposed to get too excited about old bands doing new material. But it is worth noting:
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First time recording material with original guitarist/backup singer/songwriting assistant Louis Guitierrez in the band since his departure to form Mary’s Danish after the Sixteen Tambourines sessions
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First time recording with that original lineup AND Earle Mankey since the Sixteen Tambourines sessions.
Which brings me to this: the last time all of those stars came together, it indirectly changed pop music forever.
(The story, perhaps apocryphal, but with enough verifications from those who’d know is this: Prince heard Sixteen Tambourines and became enthralled by the poppier side of the Paisley Underground. This resulted in…
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Prince recording Around the World In a Day, an entire album of his take on the same stuff the Paisley Underground was doing
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Prince signing the Three O’Clock to Paisley Park records
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Prince discovering The Bangles, developing a little crush on Susie Hoffs (who can blame him) and gifting them with “Manic Monday”. )