Extenuating circumstances have kept me from posting my favorite songs and albums of 2010 – namely, eating and drinking my way through the holidays.
We also host an annual New Year’s Eve bash for which I make a mix of 20 or so songs – or whatever will fit on 80-minute CD-Rs – from the past year that we pass out as party favors. Though I’m likely not considering Frightened Rabbits’ The Winter of Mixed Drinks for the short list of my favorite 2010 albums – I still like it quite a bit – The Loneliness and the Scream is a song that made the cut for the CD.
It’s one of the two songs singer Scott Hutchison performed acoustically backstage in Belfast for Bandwidth; Living in Colour was the other. Both were captured on video.
As promised, Elbow followed through on its “special surprise” for Boxing Day, releasing a live video of Lippy Kids, the first taste of the forthcoming album, build a rocket boys!, due for a March 7 release in the UK.
Singer Guy Garvey said his writing was inspired by his return to an area where he lived in his teenage years, and the drum-less Lippy Kids – which strolls along beautifully on a foundation of understated piano work – captures that nostalgic spirit: “Do they know those days are golden?”
The song also birthed the album’s title, which apparently has caused some punctuation angst, at least for the band’s keyboard player/producer, Craig Potter, who has taken to Twitter a bit to discuss the missing comma that has, um, given pause to some fans (including myself). My day job as a copy editor compels me to point this out, though it hardly will detract from my enjoyment of the album, I’m sure.
Assuming the title is a command to the boys (and the exclamation point indicates it probably is), the title should read: “build a rocket, boys!” (Let’s not even begin with the all-lowercase issue.) The AP Stylebook notes the following examples for using a comma “in direct address”: “Mother, I will be home late” and “No, sir, I did not take it.” I suppose it’s possible the title describes the boys, but then Elbow would be missing hyphens to indicate a compound modifier: You don’t wanna mess around with those build-a-rocket boys! Potter’s assessment?: “Punctuation Smunctuation. What’s wrong with it? Well, there could, be, a comma, in there, but, it depends, on, how you, say it.”
We can probably all agree that Garvey’s voice here soars above these petty concerns, eh?
Almost three years after releasing the Mercury Prize-winning (and one of my 2008 favorites) The Seldom Seen Kid, Elbow will put out its fifth full-length album, build a rocket boys! on March 7 in the UK (which I hope means a March 8 release in the United States). No single was released when the announcement was made on Wednesday, but the band did offer this: “Stay tuned for a special surprise on Boxing Day.” (For us Yankees, that’s Dec. 26.)
In an interview with BBC 6 Music News (embedded below), singer Guy Garvey explains that the album’s title – lowercase with exclamation point – comes from the opening track, Lippy Kids – “something positive and encouraging that really sums up most of the themes of the record was what was necessary.”
Garvey goes on to explain that his writing was inspired by his moving back to an area where he lived in his late teens. “It’s about the years I’ve spent here growing up, the difficulties of it and the great things about it, too.”
Can’t wait.
Tracklisting for build a rocket boys!:
1. Lippy Kids
2. The Birds
3. With Love
4. Neat Little Rows
5. Jesus Is A Rochdale Girl
6. The Night Will Always Win
7. High Ideals
8. The River
9. Open Arms
10. The Birds (Reprise)
11. Dear Friends
I spent a good deal of time discussing Christmas songs with my next door neighbor Tim the other night, and we both agreed that no song better describes, as Liz Lemon put it on last week’s excellent 30 Rock, “the horror of Christmas,” better than the Pogues’ classic “Fairytale of New York.”
Gritty, desperate and offensive, the banter back and forth between the song’s narrators perfectly captures the image of two lovers fighting over broken dreams and shattered hopes, which, for all the joy this season brings, are pretty much unavoidable as trees go up and festive lights are lit. “I could have been someone,” Shane MacGowen bellows, to which Kristy MacColl answers, “Well, so could anyone.”
Some of the boys from Limbeck are back with a new band named The Young Dudes and they have a Christmas song for you.
The band has so far only played one show that I am aware of but have a few more lined up. They have posted online the first song anyone has heard by them a Christmas track called “I Got Nothing Cool.” That may or may not be true but at least I got a new track from Rob and Pat.
The band has a very similar sound to that of Limbeck’s southern California twangy indie rock. Loud open guitars and tambourines make the song a perfect holiday pop song.
Some of you may like to know that Limbeck bassist Justin is currently in the Phoenix band Source Victoria (they have never been mentioned on this blog).
You can get the song bellow for free, you just need this download code:Â xmas2010
Earlier this month, Spoon released a compilation of demos and alternate versions of songs that the band previously made available as bonus tracks on its website, a monthly practice Britt Daniel and Co. has kept up since April 2008.
Though I think it’s unfair to properly review such a haphazard collection that’s essentially just a treat for fans and completists, Matthew Perpetua makes a good argument at Pitchfork (6.3) that the 10-song compilation is a little lean. Not only that, it’s already dated.
Spoon apparently isn’t going to stop the bonus cuts with the CD. A demo version of The Mystery Zone has been offered up for your December pleasure. It’s raw and acoustic and about half the length of the album version, but it’s easy to connect the dots to the finished product, even if the demo is tagged as “The Midnight Barber” for the artist.
Pedal-steel ace Jon Rauhouse, a mainstay in Neko Case’s band and a Phoenix native, spent some time at Wavelab Studio in Tucson in October to record material for his fifth album. It was a rare spot of downtime for Rauhouse, who was on the road for much of the year playing for Jakob Dylan and Billy Bob Thornton.
Thanks to Notable Music Co., we have our first taste of the Tucson session. Damon Booth, VP/GM of Notable Music – an independent music publishing company founded in 1962 by composer and jazz musician Cy Coleman – asked Rauhouse to do a cover of Witchcraft, a song composed by Coleman and then released as a single by Frank Sinatra.
Rauhouse took it a step further – recording a version with vocals by Rachel Flotard of Visqueen and backed by his Sestet. Rauhouse told me in an e-mail that he’s polishing off the instrumental, but the vocal version is available on eMusic and iTunes.
I’ve always loved the pedal-steel guitar for its emotive strains, and combined here with Flotard’s stunning voice, the song takes on a moody vibe, like something emanating from a smokey noir-style lounge.
The players on this track include:
Jon Rauhouse: pedal steel
Rachel Flotard: vocals (Visqueen)
Tommy Connell: guitar
Jacob Valenzuela: trumpet (Calexico)
Kevin O’Donnell : drums (Andrew Bird)
Will Lovell: bass
Jeff Livingston: piano
The official press material from Jagjaguwar promises that No Witch, due out Feb. 22, is the Cave Singers’ “rock record.” That might be true, but the first single at least, Swim Club, isn’t too far of a departure from the cozy campfire folk-rock of the trio’s first two albums, which were released on Matador.
If more robust sounds do indeed await us on the rest of No Witch, it could be the result of the Cave Singers collaborating with producer Randall Dunn, who helped guide the most recent Black Mountain album and has worked with heavier artists such as Sunn O))) and Boris.
No Witch tracklist:
1. Gifts and the Raft
2. Swim Club
3. Black Leaf
4. Falls
5. Outer Realms
6. Haller Lake
7. All Land Crabs and Divinity Ghosts
8. Clever Creatures
9. Haystacks
10. Distant Sures
11. Faze Wave
12. No Prosecution If We Bail
Because it’s not enough to buy an album once these days, an expanded version of The National’s High Violet is coming out this week. As explained in the promotional video above, it contains new songs, B-sides, live tracks and that alternate version of Terrible Love.
In a strategic marketing move just in time for the holidays, Black Friday has been dubbed “Violet Friday” by the band, which will make High Violet 2.0 available for just $7.99 at participating stores for one day only.
Check out one of the new songs, Wake Up Your Saints (via Prefix), a rather upbeat (by The National’s standards) track that was left on the cutting-room floor.
It was strangely coincidental that just a few days before Girl Talk made the Internet wet its collective pants by releasing his new album, All Day, DJ Z-Trip was interviewed on Last Call with Carson Daly, politely scoffing at the notion – again – that a “mashup” is anything more than a cute label.
“It’s really something that’s a bit redundant because it’s just mixing,” Z-Trip says in the interview. “It’s what DJs do. … But the thing is, DJs have been doing that forever.”
I’m not about to launch into a software-vs.-vinyl debate – there’s no doubt technology changed the DJ game. But I’d hope that anyone who fawns over Girl Talk would take the time to research his predecessors. No better place to start than Uneasy Listening, Vol. 1, the oft-imitated 1999 classic from DJ Z-Trip and DJ P that was mixed from vinyl (let that sink in while you listen to it). Even better: It’s available as a free download at Z-Trip’s site.
As for the rest of the interview with Carson Daly, Z-Trip talks about producing new Public Enemy material and his role in the DJ Hero games. What you won’t see here is a list that was shown after the interview heading into the commercial break of the five albums that changed Z-Trip’s life:
1. Pink Floyd, The Wall
2. Prince, Purple Rain
3. Public Enemy, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back
4. Clash, Combat Rock
5. Frank Zappa, Freak Out!
