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Monday, Dec 2 2019, 6AM
"A Sort of Homecoming" is the first track on The Unforgettable Fire, the first U2 album produced by Brian Eno.
The National celebrated Record Store Day Black Friday with Juicy Sonic Magic -- a complete recording of their two-night stand at the Greek Theatre in Berkeley last fall. This isn’t your everyday live album: it was recorded from the audience with two microphones and an analog tape recorder, bootleg-style. The National gave it an official release -- a limited-edition set of three cassette tapes. Maybe you can still find one out there?
Here is SOAK covering The National’s 2010 song “Bloodbuzz Ohio”. “Matt Berninger is one of my favorite lyricists,” SOAK, real name Bridie Monds-Watson, remarked in a statement. “There’s something so special about the imagery The National manages to create within their music and I often catch myself imagining each song as its own movie trailer. I love the manic world this song creates.”
The Innocence Mission have released a second track from the upcoming album, See You Tomorrow. Listen to "This Boat on their bandcamp page: bit.ly
A reunion of THE SUNDAYS was rumored in 2014. Nothing so far but we'll keep hoping.
R.E.M. performed this on Late Night with David Letterman in 1983 before it even had a title in what was the band's first national television appearance. Michael Stipe remembered in Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage 1982-2011: "They were all really nice to us, we were so green. The producers told us before the show that Dave would come over and talk to one band member after the song, and so Peter was chosen to represent us all. We made it through the song fine, but when Dave came over to talk I sat down on the floor monitor, and from that moment on, forever and ever, I was dubbed 'enigmatic.' What a crackup."
In an interview, David Gray was asked what drove him to become a singer-songwriter. He responded "The first things that I was affected by were Madness and the Specials, the whole Ska movement that was happening in like 1979, 1980, and I was crazy for that.
Beyond that, I love the Cure, the Smiths, and the Cramps. At the same time, I was diving into indie music of the time like the early 80s. I also discovered singer/songwriters like Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits and Nick Drake. Later I found Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, and Van Morrison. I really got into what Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground, the Doors, Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin were doing. So, growing up it was an explosion of possibilities in music."
Nick Drake's record company, Island, claimed that they had lost track of him, and only knew about the album Pink Moon when he walked into the office and delivered it.
Miya Folick's cover of Death Cab for Cutie’s 2005 classic “I Will Follow You Into the Dark.” is on the soundtrack to Hulu’s new series Looking for Alaska, a coming-of-age drama set in 2005.
“To me, the greatest songs are the ones that feels like they always existed, like they were just waiting out in the ether for someone to discover them,” Miya Folick said in a press release. “It makes 100 percent sense that Ben Gibbard wrote ‘I Will Follow You into the Dark’ in 15 minutes and feels like he channeled it. The song feels like a gift given to us to cope with loss and the unknown of death. It is a deeply special song, and I felt privileged to sing it.”
You can get Kiwanuka on limed edition yellow vinyl with a signed print: bit.ly
Bonny Light Horeseman's debut album is out January 25th, the same day they're playing at The Tractor! Tickets & info: bit.ly
Israel Nash performed live in the KEXP studio on October 16, 2018 and opened with "Rolling On". See the full set here: bit.ly
Recording of The Meadowlands originally began in January 1999, but writer's block and a loss of faith in the tracks they were recording meant The Wrens took four years to complete the album, with many songs being rewritten or scrapped as recording proceeded.
Perry Farrell on "Then She Did..." "The song is also about the buildings in New York City. They’re not as old as the buildings in Europe, but they’re old, man. It’s crazy how many people have died in those buildings, and they just pull them out and give the keys to the next couple or family, and in they march and set up house. I was just thinking so much about the societal cycle of life, how people find a place to live, and they sometimes die in the place that they were once living, and then the place becomes a hollow shell for someone else to come in and inhabit."
This song finds Yannis Philippakis singing about a loved one dying far away from home. "On 'Into The Surf' there's this shadow of death, of someone not returning from a voyage," he explained to DIY magazine. "There's a type of Greek folk song that's always to do with the immigration of Greek people and how dying on foreign shores is always viewed as the worst fate – to die far away from your home and your family."
Angel Olsen will be live on KEXP next Wednesday, December 11th at 11am. This one will fill up so get signed up starting at 9:30
This is the best-selling 12-inch single of all time in Britain, a fact pointed out in the movie 24 Hour Party people, which chronicles the rise of their label, Factory Records. It is also one of the longest charting singles ever, at 7:25.
This became the first ever hip-hop song played on Mars when NASA's Opportunity Rover broadcast it in 2004.
The Free Nationals, primarily known as the backing band for Anderson .Paak, are stepping out on their own. The group has announced its self-titled debut album, due out December 13th
Antibalas' new album, Fu Chronicles, is out February 7th and they're playing The Neptune on February 20th. Tickets & info: bit.ly
Caribou, the project of songwriter and producer Dan Snaith, has shared "Home," his first new music in over five years. "I'm always listening to lots of music and sometimes a loop just jumps out at me," Snaith says in a press release announcing the song. "That's how it was with Gloria Barnes' 'Home.' I kept returning to it... ... When I've played it to friends, several of them have said that they feel like it's speaking to their circumstances, about people close to them. We've all had moments when something changes suddenly and catalyses a change in your whole life, when you need to go back to something familiar, pick up the pieces and start again."
No word yet on a new full-length.
You can get Family Dinner on limited edition yellow vinyl here: bit.ly
This song preaches the importance of being yourself, a point of view that often features in Oasis tracks. Noel Gallagher admitted to Select magazine: "It's just a typical Oasis thing. 'Shut up moanin' and fuckin' get on with it...' It's the same sentiments as in nearly every song we do. You know, Supersonic – 'You've gotta be yourself.' It starts to get a bit boring, but those are the lyrics I feel comfortable with."
“Boyish” started its life as a demo in Michelle Zauner’s song-a-day project and went on to be included on Little Big League’s sophomore album, but Zauner decided to reimagine the song for Soft Sounds From Another Planet, her second album as Japanese Breakfast.
Bandmember Simon Raymonde recounted that he would record Fraser's vocals alone for days at a time, during which he first "fully appreciated how amazing she was": "She'd come into the control room and say, 'What was that like?' and I'd scrape the tears away and say, 'That was alright, Liz'. She didn't get off on praise. If I said. 'That was fucking amazing', she'd say 'I thought it was shit.' I learnt not to be too effusive, which was difficult because I was so blown away with what I was hearing."
Best Coast are coming to The Showbox on March 4th. Tickets & info: www.showboxpresents.com
Colin Moulding of XTC wrote this one and said "First song of mine ever to make the A side of a single, and a bit special to me as a result. I like to reminisce and this one sprang from spending the greater part of my adolescence on a council estate and having the church hall hop as the only way of getting me rocks off. I go into a trance everytime I think of those young socialists meeting in the church hall every Friday night. Well, you have to write about something, haven't you?”
“So Heavy I Fell Through The Earth,” the latest single from Grimes' upcoming album Miss_Anthropocene, comes out February 21st. It’s the third single that will be included on the album, following “We Appreciate Power,” which came out almost a year ago, and “Violence,” which came out back in September.
In a press release, vocalist Sarah Barthel provides some insight into the new song:
“In A Spiral” started from a beat that Josh [Carter] had in his back pocket for quite some time, which I had gravitated to immediately and written some vocal ideas for. But the song was waiting for the right moment to reveal itself to us… We threw it on at the last minute while we were preparing to go record in Joshua Tree at the magical Rancho de la Luna with our friend Boots, and once we got out there everything started to fall.
Pete Rock produced this track, which is based on a sample of "I Love Music" by the jazz musician Ahmad Jamal. Rock was playing Jamal's 1970 album The Awakening when he heard the track and started integrating the drums. When Nas heard what he was up to, the rapper suggested that Rock sing the hook instead, which he did.
Seattle rapper and producer Ishmael “Butterfly” Butler on this album: "At the time, I wasn’t thinking about musical categories. I was just using the samples that I could get my hands on; they were from records that belonged to my moms, my pops, and my uncles. My father was a stated jazz aficionado and he was into all the avant-garde stuff; he was a big Eric Dolphy fan. Mom liked Motown and CTI jazz; Donald Byrd kind of stuff. That shit was fly too. My sound also came from what I was listening to: DJ Premier, Prince Paul, Cocteau Twins, P-Funk, Prince. A gumbo of all of that stuff became our sound."
This song was co-written by Junior Murvin with the legendary reggae producer Lee "Scratch" Perry. At a session at Perry's famous Black Arc studio in Jamaica, Murvin and his backing band The Upsetters were jamming on a version, when out of nowhere lyrics, structure and melody all came together and Perry made the snap decision to record the song in that form that very day. The next day a dub remix and alternative versions were recorded, and by the end of that week the record was released and gaining heavy airplay in Jamaica.
"Police and Thieves" had already become a huge hit in the UK before the British Punk band The Clash made the song even more famous with their cover version on their debut album. Originally recorded simply to fill space, the band were incredibly nervous about being a white rock band covering a reggae song so deeply entrenched in Jamaican roots. In the Westway to the World documentary singer Joe Strummer explained: "We had some brass neck to do that. By all rights they should've said 'ya heathen mon, ya ruined de works of Jah!' But they were hip enough to realize that we'd brought our own music to the party."
Algiers are coming to The Crocodile on March 29th. Tickets & info: bit.ly
As drummer Chris Frantz explained in a 1984 interview with NPR, he and bassist Tina Weymouth created the original track in a jam, then took it to the band where they refined the groove. To form the lyrics, they picked words that fit the rhythms, which is why the words don't make a lot of sense. This is common practice in the world of funk, where you don't want the lyric to get in the way of the groove on a feel good song.
Bone Machine was recorded and produced entirely at the Prairie Sun Recording studios in Cotati, California in a room of Studio C known as "the Waits Room". Waits said of the bare-bones studio, "I found a great room to work in, it's just a cement floor and a hot water heater. Okay, we'll do it here. It's got some good echo."
John Lennon was apparently so captivated by this song, he worried he would never be able to write anything that could compete with it. Lennon quoted it in his 1980 Playboy interview, which was one of his last. He said, "Listen, there's nothing wrong with following examples. We can have figure heads and people we admire, but we don't need leaders. 'Don't follow leaders, watch the parking meters.'"
"What we create together as friends is 10% music and the rest is just time," songwriter Adrianne Lenker told the LA Times this May. "We've melted into each other," bassist Max Oleartchik averred. Though several members have worked on solo projects, the members of Big Thief have lived and breathed Big Thief for years. The band speaks of its writing process with reverence – songs are more received than written. But its practice is mundane in its own way, as much hard work as divination. The group rarely collaborates with other musicians, and the same producer has helmed all four of its records. Big Thief's new releases sound not so much like distinct artistic statements as they do reports from four dedicated canal builders, carving a deeper channel for this music to run through.
Here’s what the band had to say about the track:
We haven’t had the easiest year as a band but we are closer for it. “Two Sense” is the coming together of a shared energy between the four of us that says, put the art first, stand up for your own vision and right to self determination, cut lose from dogmatic thinking, and make some short term sacrifices to stay true to who you are. We are really proud of the song and the EP to follow. The time we decided to record the EP was the time we realised we had something to say with our music, we hope it resonates!
Their first attempt to work together was based around the idea of an "organic dance band" consisting of Deal on bass, Donelly on guitar, and two drummers. A year and a half passed without the pair recording new material. During this time, they decided their attempt at dance music was not working, and resolved to repurpose their songs for a different genre.
PJ Harvey and Flood have covered Nick Cave's "Red Right Hand" for Peaky Blinders. Check it out here: bit.ly
“‘ANIMAL’ is a song about rebellion, retaliation and rage,” Corin Tucker said in a press statement. “It is a song about letting go of all politeness and filters and letting the ‘animal’ side speak. The vocals for this song were recorded in St. Vincent’s home studio, a perfect place to unleash a voice like this.”
"Get off the Internet" acted as a clarion call to activists to return to real life protest. As Johanna Fateman said in a 2002 interview, it was a reminder to people “not to become isolated in their apartments or their offices with their e-mail. People get so involved in online discourse that it sort of becomes meaningless — it’s kind of like being in a hall of mirrors or something. That’s what that song is about to me — it’s about actually remembering what your priorities are.”
Kathleen Hanna continues:
“We definitely don’t want to come off saying that the Internet can’t be used as a totally amazing tool as well. But like any tool, it can also be used destructively or to the exclusion of other tools… I just think that sense of human connection in the flesh is really crucial right now. Also discussions on the Internet — because they’re so anonymous — can get really mean and unproductive really quickly.”
PINS wrote: The track is about how sometimes we feel like we only exist to make money for other people, it’s a swizz. We are promised things by saviours, these people who have come to rescue us, but it’s not true. “Serve The Rich” was my opportunity to assert myself. I’m saying that we as PINS, musicians, women, Labour voters, and feminists, are here to save the kids, we’re here to save each other, we’re here to save ourselves.
Wolf Parade are coming to The Showbox February 11th. Tickets & info: bit.ly
