Indie stars The xx seem to be taking it easy these days, but the same can’t be said of their beatsmith extraordinaire, Jamie Smith, who runs around with the under the name of Jamie xx these days. Apart from his prolific remix work, Smith is set to drop I’m New Here on February 22, which features reworkings of some choice cuts from soul master Gil Scott-Heron, dunked in a ripe dose of xx production. Snippets of the upcoming album can be found all across the net, but the latest track to drop now comes with it’s very own pink rectangular block as a visual aide. Slick, just like the song.
Despite the fact that solid information on Wu Lyf is exceedingly scarce, they’re the type of band I feel I know better than half the bands whose middle names and favourite TV shows I could find on their myspace pages in a matter of minutes. For one thing, they’re genuinely different from anything else around right now. They’re a band who seem to willingly defy and avoid any sense of definition; the most unwilling of rock stars. But for a group so determined for mystery and behaviour that seems to only perpetuate their legend, their elusiveness only serves to shoot down the idea that it’s all a gimmick. And if that isn’t enough, the music should speak for itself because what Wu Lyf have is something truly special: tortured, melancholic and absolutely mesmerizing. I couldn’t recommend it enough.
To mark the death of Scottish singer-songwriter Gerry Rafferty, acknowledged here on Tuesday, Dave Grohl and the Foo Fighters dug out an old cover of the late great’s biggest hit, ‘Baker Street.’
The Foos’ cover of ‘Baker Street’ originally appeared way back in 1998 as a b-side to their ‘My Hero’ single (this being back in the days when physical singles actually existed, although most were on CD by then, thus rendering the term ‘b-side’ technically obsolete).
Do you want to know why I’m starting to believe that 2012 is the end of the world? Because it has to be. Hell, at this point I hope it’s sooner. Consider this a small sign of the apocalypse: a couple of weeks ago, Billboard announced Nickelback’s Dark Horse as the best selling hard rock album of 2010. Dark Horse is a terrible album by an awful band, an album so bad that it relies on idiomatic blanket statements to emphasize just how bland it is. It’s like listening to dry paint. Paint which is dry because Dark Horsecame out in 2008 and yet here we are, with 2010 coming to a close and listeners still finding new ways to avoid the heap-shit that is Nickelback’s sixth album.
I found this online. Isn't the world a depressing place to live?
That’s where Fred Durst comes in. Maybe, just maybe, he’ll be the hump that breaks the [dark] horse’s back. Then maybe, just maybe, we can take Dark Horse behind the shed and shoot it one, two, three times in the fucking head. Limp Bizkit has the chance to save hard rock, but for that to happen, and for Durst & co. to make my weirdest dreams come true, they’ll actually have to release Gold Cobra, their first release in a decade with their original line up. The problem is, I’m starting to think it’ll never come out.
As much as year-end lists are basically a conglomeration of everything said about an album over a twelve-month period, it would be criminal not to repeat once more the artistic merits of Joanna Newsom. Newsom went from a quirky (bordering on annoying) harpist intent on increasing her listeners’ patience to a well-developed songwriter and accomplished vocalist who learned how to trim the fat from her songs to create a much better product, and from an elfish girl who posed in animal skins to a sexy woman in hot pants and high heels. She has always had ambition, but never has she been as focused as she is on Have One on Me, which overflows with realized potential and the kind of songs we always knew she could write. Perhaps what is most surprising about the album is the fact that, after her grating warble on Ys, the songs on this album go down easy. Yes, like falling asleep. – Channing F.
Scottish singer-songwriter Gerry Rafferty died on Tuesday following a long illness. He was 63.
Rafferty enjoyed moderate success in the early ’70s with Stealers Wheel, landing a lone hit single with the Dylan parody ‘Stuck in the Middle’ before breaking up in 1975. ‘Stuck in the Middle’ was given the new lease of life in 1992 when director Quentin Tarentino chose it to score the iconic torture scene in Reservoir Dogs.
After Stealers Wheel broke up, Rafferty resumed his burgeoning solo career and, in 1978, released his best-known work, City to City. The album’s success was fueled by its lead single, ‘Baker Street,’ whose burning saxophone hook has been credited with the “Baker Street phenomenon,” an explicable ursurge in saxophone sales across the UK in the late ’70s.
Rafferty never recreated the success of ‘Baker Street,’ in part an effect of his shyness and unwillingness to perform live, but he periodically released albums right up until the turn of the millennium.
It’s hard not to have a grudging respect for Jimmy Kimmel.
Not really funny enough to draw in Conan’s fans and not polished enough to draw in Leno’s golden oldies crowd, he just sort of swims along in the half-life that is ABC’s night-time schedule. He has that sort of look about him, as if he grew upwith the dream of becoming a talk show host and stoically accepted the deserved beatings that came with that dream. But he also has the look of a grizzled former idealist, of a man who’d worshiped a certain Italian-American pocket-plunger before finding out he was a cunt.
Kimmel is good, not great, but occasionally he and his team come up with some genuine gold: think ‘I’m Fucking Matt Damon’ or the completely undisguised loathing he exhibited for Leno during the Conangate fiasco. This Josh Groban sketch falls into that category. The only really disappointing aspect is the fact that we won’t shortly be able to buy the advertised 752-song opus inspired by the great man’s tweets.
As 2010 grilled our patience for new Glassjaw material from crispy to charred, we got a record from California’s Letlive that was arguably just as good as anything the former ever released. Fake History might not have Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Silence’s cathartic, slightly uncomfortable angst or Worship and Tribute’s deranged perfection, but what Letlive ape from their most obvious influence they amplify, polish, and release with more honesty and heart than Daryl Palumbo’s cryptic lyrics and ironic vocal style could ever allow. Letlive don’t shy away from cheese – lead singer Jason Butler’s clean vocals have more than a hint of Claudio Sanchez – but they’re not winking as they indulge in it. Fake History oozes passion, Letlive selling rage as though they are under the impression that they’re the last angry band out there. And though there’s not much density to the album, there doesn’t need to be. Letlive remind us that sometimes you don’t have to give an album a great deal of thought for it to be all sorts of awesome. – Adam D.
It has come to the point where we can safely proclaim that Floridian quintet Anberlin could not record a bad album if they tried. Their fifth LP, Dark Is the Way, Light Is a Place, may not be as ambitious or influential as Cities, nor as catchy and immediate as New Surrender, but it turns out to be a real grower. Densely layered and subtle musical touches abound, but it is Stephen Christian’s majestic vocal work that takes center stage. From the catchy ‘Impossible’ to the acoustic ‘Down,’ from the hard-hitting ‘To The Wolves’ to the splendid ‘The Art of War,’ there is something for everyone on this slightly back-loaded LP that contains absolutely no filler. – Davey B.
The Saddest Landscape got everything right in 2010. Mostly, it involved just being there. See, ever since their hiatus five years ago, there’s been a Saddest Landscape-shaped hole in the musical scene where a band who continually pushed sonic boundaries used to be. Then, out of nowhere, they took everything that happened in post-hardcore since their departure and crammed in
As anyone who knows me knows I’m pretty big into Twitter. I use it a lot—follow me at @tylrmunro if you’re into shameless plugs—and one of the users I enjoy following* is Jose3030. In addition to running 3030fm, Jose is known for having a quick trigger when it comes to capping basketball clips and either putting them on YouTube or converting them to GIFS.
This is not one of these such instances.
And you know what? I’ll leave my commentary out of it. This one kind of speaks for itself
Is Jose3030 the first to discover this? More importantly, does that really matter?
*okay, so I don’t actually follow Jose3030, mostly because I ultimately see his best content via re-tweets. I should probably still follow him, though, and you probably should too if you’re a basketball fan.
From First to Last to simply first, Sonny Moore’s debut as an electro fiend with a penchant for wicked bass drops and unintelligible Auto-Tune somehow worked, in its own messy way. Skrillex will never win any critical awards, but as the rawest form of party starter, few could match up to the relentless stream of house, electro and dubstep that Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites spits out. Pills not included. – Rudy K.
Girls’ follow-up EP still wrestles with all the youthful pensiveness that made Album such a revelation but this time Christopher Owens’ melodrama ditches its scrappy lo-fi distinction for a timeless, polished gleam that’s much more welcoming. With partner Chet “JR” White’s production coming into full swing, this is the sound of a confessional with guitars evolving into an actual band. – Kiran S.
The Jezabels are the rarest kind of alternative rock band. They’re musicians who don’t let accessibility get in the way of artistic ambition, who boast a rhythm section operating as much…
Do you love to write? Are you passionate about music? If so, you might just be the person or thing that we’ve been looking for.
We’re in the hunt for fresh and dedicated members to join our ranks at staff and contributor level. We don’t care much for degrees around here, but a pre-requisite for any position is that the candidate has the ability to write independently to a consistently high standard.
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I had a plan to close out this series’ final episode with an epic epilogue but whatdafuck it’s Christmas, and to celebrate here is the undisputed greatest Christmas song of all time.
Check back next year for all twelve songs in a slightly different order.
It’s fitting that we should begin Christmas Eve with a rendition of ‘Silent Night,’ for it was the song that was sung by British, French and German soldiers during the Christmas Truce that was referred to in yesterday’s post. It was the only Christmas song they knew that had been translated into all three languages, having originated as a German carol (‘Stille Nacht’) from the pen of Austrian school teacher Franz Xaver Gruber (music) and priest Joseph Mohr (lyrics).
It’s interesting to note that the original, besides being German, differed from the modern in that it was intended as a mid-tempo dance tune rather than the slow-paced lullaby that it has become. First performed in 1818, the song was a fast success and it spread quickly through the various churches of Europe, eventually making its way to America and its first English translation in 1859. More or less everybody is aware of the “standard version” so I’ll push right ahead and highlight artists who’ve put their own unique spin on the track.
First up, we have Enya. Ireland has been a recurrent figure in this series, but for once I have a reason other than familiarity for focusing on a song, as the former Clannad singer’s recording is ample demonstration of the song’s inherent flexibility: the original can be sung in at least 44 different languages with very little lost in the way of meaning.
By contrast, Simon & Garfunkel’s 1966 recording involves a radical rethink of the song’s…
