I began the week lamenting our return to hellish heat by featuring a band from San Diego, so why not end the week on a similar note?
I wish I would have had the new album by the Donkeys, Born With Stripes, on our road trip – its melodies breezy and inviting (not to mention a touch psychedelic).
The band is going to play a string of dates this summer – including June 18 at Yucca Tap Room – leading up to a seven-show run with the Hold Steady in late August. Check out the lead single, Don’t Know Who We Are, which is a good way to slide into your weekend.
Earlier this year, Nocando topped off one of El-P’s tracks from his 2010 instrumental release Weareallgoingtoburninhellmegamixxx3 with vocals, forming a West Coast/East Coast collaboration that begs for a full album of material.
We saw the video for the track from El-P in August, a strangely uplifting depiction of a young boy attempting to rise above the urban decay around him.
Nocando’s version – directed by Kyle Gray – turns our attention to the withered wasteland at the Salton Sea, a toxic graveyard that offers a West Coast counterpart to this dire vision of what feels like a real-world backdrop to The Road.
Check out a behind-the-scenes look at the video, shot and edited by Humberto Hidalgo:
We just spent a long weekend in San Diego/Temecula for a wedding, and I had the same thoughts every Arizonan does in the throes of idyllic 70-degree temperatures: How fast can I move here? It’s hard to describe the deflating feeling of driving back across the merciless desert into the awaiting inferno of another Phoenix summer, the temperature gauge in the car mocking you all the while. Granted, those California dreams are quickly tempered by reality – you pay what in rent? – but even in my sunburned state, I dream of summers in which I can wear a sweatshirt at night.
As I attempt to transition back to the real world this week, I at least have this breezy ode to the Left Coast from Dirty Gold to soothe me. The San Diego trio linked up with Autumn Tone Records – headed up by Aquarium Drunkard proprietor Justin Gage – in December and released an EP, Roar, in April – just in time to carry us through the summer.
Aaaaahhh, 2005. Do you remember? The second wave of music blogs – including this one – were sprouting up and we were all drunk on promotional CDs, determined to find the Next Great Myspace Band. We swore the good times would never end. Yes, those were heady days in the blog(spot) world – before Twitter, Tumblr and Facebook ruled the world. And before Blogger started crushing our souls and erasing sites without warning.
I, for one, devoured most everything that came through my mailbox and inbox. Bands and artists came and went, but many left an impression. One of ’em was Tom Vek, a young Londoner who quite successfully meshed synth pop and rock on his bustling 2005 album We Have Sound.
It was all a little jagged and a little raw but still danceable (the remixers loved it and Pitchfork sorta did, too). I couldn’t wait to hear what Vek would do next. Turns out, waiting is all we would do.
I guess, according to his new official bio info, this five-plus-year hiatus was all part of a master plan: “Following the justification of his debut album’s reception, Vek wanted to fulfill the idea of a ‘multi-faceted individual’ and remain in complete control of his creative output. An artist with a unique and singular vision, Vek has a systematic way of working. The second album’s creation was two-fold: a 3 year set-up period followed by a 2 year stretch of musical output. A process encapsulated up in the album’s title, Leisure Seizure.”
In other words, Vek has a new album called Leisure Seizure due for digital release on June 7. Whether 2011 will be as kind to him as 2005 was remains to be seen. But this new track, A Chore, is off to promising start.
I’m a latecomer to the three-piece band from North Wales and now regret missing its show last month at the Rhythm Room, which surely must have been a deafening experience.
This song, Whirring, which got a major co-sign from Foo man Dave Grohl, comes off the band’s first proper full-length, The Big Roar, which was released in January.
What can I say: I’m a sucker for that big, shoegaze-era wall of a sound – and also when a dude puts his head through a bass drum.
Low can be so suffocatingly bleak at times – OK, most times – that even the slightest moment of lightheartedness can feel so much more than that.
In the latest edition of the Onion A.V. Club’s Undercover series, the Minnesota-based slowcore outfit tackles Toto’s “Africa” with results that are both unintentionally hilarious (Alan Sparhawk’s breathy grunts on the opening beat) and beautiful (Mimi Parker’s voice is amazing).
Low’s great new album, C’Mon, was released last month and I encourage you to read Scott Tennent’s great analysis of it at Pretty Goes With Pretty.
Not sure how I hadn’t seen this series from TDK before, but here’s a pretty cool five-plus-minute video interview with members of The Walkmen, who discuss their influences and making mixtapes, among other topics. I especially enjoy the guys talking near the end about the inevitable consequences – most notably the “decimated” attention span, of which I am a sufferer – brought on by the iPod generation.
Phoenix rapper Random, who has to be one of the busiest and most prolific musicians in the Valley, is about to find himself with a lot more time on his hands. The self-proclaimed “TeacherRapperHero” took a brave leap of faith by resigning as a middle-school teacher to focus on his music career full time.
I hope to catch up with him about this soon – maybe over some grub at The Main Ingredient – because I have a ton of respect for him being a teacher (a career path I’ve often thought about pursuing) and even more for walking away from it to chase his dream as a musician.
But it seemed like a good time to bring it up because now that his teaching stint is officially over, Random is already coming up with creative ways to inspire and connect with fans. He’s creating a reality show of sorts called Life After Lesson Plans, a web series that will chronicle this next step.
The 10-minute pilot – which shows, among other things, Random and Black Materia producer Lost Perception signing and packaging CDs to ship (such a glamorous life!) – premiered a few days ago and it’s a great introduction into the mind of one of the most accessible and down-to-earth guys you’ll come across.
So congrats to Random, and this only underscores why it’s so important for fans to support artists they like.
Finally, after almost six years of writing this blog, I have reason to use John Stamos’ name in a post title. I expect my traffic to explode accordingly. People are Googling “John Stamos,” right?
But seriously, this is a pretty gorgeous video for Try to Sleep, the first single off Low’s newly released album C’Mon.
Turns out, Stamos, who looks very Mad Men-esque here, is a fan of the band: “I’m actually good friends with their producer Matt Beckley, and he had played me some of the record while they we’re making it, which I loved. Ironically it turns out I was a big fan of one of their older songs Cue the Strings … I’m a sucker for a well written song with great harmonies, and when it came time for them to cast the video, they asked if I’d like to be involved, I liked the concept I was happy to be a part of it. The new record is on all the time at my place. One of my favorite indie bands.”
Sometimes, these moments can be subtle, which seems to be the case on the new album build a rocket boys!, a mostly subdued but elegant offering. That said, I probably overlooked Open Arms upon my initial handful of listens. But then I saw a video of Elbow performing the song live for Comic Relief as part of Red Nose Day, and, well, when you add a children’s choir and put the song’s chorus – “We got open arms for broken hearts – in this context of helping the needy, it’s hard not to get wrapped up in the power of it.
The band also released an official video for the song (albeit an edited version, by about 40 seconds or so), featuring the artwork of Oliver East:
