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Tuesday, May 14 2019, 6AM
"We are in James Chapman’s kitchen talking about his recently-purchased SodaStream machine. " -Clash Music from their recent interview with James Chapman, aka Maps. Read the whole interview here: bit.ly
"Drifting in and Out" was the KEXP featured song of the day for 2-8-2012. Find all the featured songs and subscribe here: www.kexp.org
Download another track from Washed Out's album, Paracosm, "Don't Give up" here: bit.ly
Check out this video of Black Pumas playing "Colors" in their hometown of Austin: bit.ly
Damon Locks has said the work was inspired by his time teaching art to maximum-security prisoners, as well as by police killings of unarmed black men. The song feels its most free, and freeing, after a spoken-word sample of singer, activist, and Civil Rights Movement heroine Lena Horne declaring, “I’m not gonna stop.” That’s when all the instruments drop out except for percussion, and we’re invited to rejoice with the ensemble as it belts out an exultant, collective statement of faith: “I still believe in us.”
There's a video for this too: bit.ly
Calexico and Iron & Wine are playing the THING festival in Pt. Townsend, August 24-25th. More infor @ thingnw.org
More from The Hold Steady frontman Craig Finn's new solo album, I Need a New War - Check out "Blankets" the song of the day from March 12th bit.ly
Zebra Hunt are playing the Woodland Theater on May 19th. That's really soon for those playing along at home. Tickets & info: bit.ly
Built To Spill are playing Spokane an June 21st, TWO nights in Seattle at Showbox Sodo, October 25-26, and FOUR night sin Portland at the Doug Fir October 31-November 3! Find all their dates: www.builttospill.com
Kurt Cobain was a huge Meat Puppets fan and would often mention them as an inspiration. "He was always in the moment," Curt Kirkwood said about Cobain. "He wasn't very conversive, just really, really casual. I was pretty blown away by the whole thing, just on the level of how it was and wasn't, like my concept of it. It was a strange thing to be around, because there was so much attention at any point coming from every direction."
Bono, March 1987, on the Joshua Tree songs: "A lot of the songs were ones that were recorded in Larry's spare bedroom or Adam's living room. When the red light's on we often don't respond to it. When we're just left to be, left to make music our own way, well some of the tracks are almost like demos. We had to fight to make them work and there were a lot of songs left over. It could have gone off in a number of different directions. We wanted the idea of a one-piece record, not a side-one, side-two thing."
Lord Huron performed "Time To Run" live in the old KEXP studio on October 22, 2012. bit.ly
Seattle visionary OCnotes (aka Otis Calvin III) recently dropped his contribution to the fourth volume of Sub Pop’s legendary Singles Club, the “Better Days” b/w “You Don’t Shampoo Your Hair” 7-inch.
OCnotes records under a number of projects including as a member of Knife Knights, one half of Metal Chocolates, one-third of Indian Agent, one-half of Freekazoidz and is a member of the Black Constellation. He also puts in work currently as a live visual artist & musical collaborator with Shabazz Palaces. At KEXP, he DJs the show Sunday Soul every Sunday from 6-9pm.
This track was ther 4-26 song of the day! bit.ly
This album, Bundle of Joy, was featured in the movie High Fidelity.
Early in their career, Altered Images, were championed by BBC Radio 1 DJ John Peel, for whom they recorded a radio session in October 1980.
It’s impactful to listen to these songs through a transgender lens – and some of the songs do touch on Blum’s experience coming out as non-binary and transgender
“Honestly, I think it was just, like, the next chapter of my therapy session,” says Blum. “The last record was like, ‘Oh, okay, for the first time I’ve admitted to myself that I am struggling’ But after that, you have to take all that self-examination to the next step, which is: ‘Why do I do the things I do? What are these cycles in my life that are or are not helping me?’ That’s the place that I was in when I wrote almost all of these songs.”
Cherry Glazerr performed "Told You I'd Be With The Guys" live in the KEXP studio February 8, 2017. Hosted by DJ Cheryl Waters. See it here: bit.ly
Stef Chura's new album, Midnight was produced by Will Toledo of Car Seat Headrest and will be out on June 7th. You can catch Stef Chura at Barboza on July 31st
Angel Olsen will be back in Seattle at The Moore on... December 11th. Never too early for holiday shopping? Tickets go on sale Friday: bit.ly
“‘The Void’ is a sci-fi story, partly-inspired by playing table top RPGs, but informed by the pretty dreadful state of the world at the minute,” the band explained in an interview with NME. “It draws from that cosmic horror tradition, and I think we were trying to channel Roky Erikson with the lyrics."
In a 2003 interview with Performing Songwriter magazine, Bowie explained: "In England, it was always presumed that it was written about the space landing, because it kind of came to prominence around the same time. But it actually wasn't. It was written because of going to see the film 2001, which I found amazing. I was out of my gourd anyway, I was very stoned when I went to see it, several times, and it was really a revelation to me. It got the song flowing. It was picked up by the British television, and used as the background music for the landing itself. I'm sure they really weren't listening to the lyric at all (laughs). It wasn't a pleasant thing to juxtapose against a moon landing. Of course, I was overjoyed that they did. Obviously, some BBC official said, 'Oh, right then, that space song, Major Tom, blah blah blah, that'll be great.' 'Um, but he gets stranded in space, sir.' Nobody had the heart to tell the producer that."
Combat Rock is 37 years old today! Not that we need another reason to play The Clash...
Idels will be live in the Gathering Space on May 29th at 1:30!!! bit.ly
Inspired by the intensity of their live performances, director Samuel Taylor shoots Crows' ferocious new music video--Wednesday's Child. A puritanical retreat eventually descends into chaos and unhampered mayhem as the devil takes hold of people--turning a community getaway into a manic witch hunt. See it here: youtu.be
Snapped Ankles performed live at Studio 9294 in Hackney Wick, London, during KEXP's International Clash Day broadcast on February 5, 2019. The video was just posted so check it out! bit.ly
Fat White Family: 'Every one of us had a hard drug or drink problem'. Read the Guardian interview here: bit.ly
The lyrics were inspired by US president Ronald Reagan's belief that Christ would return after a nuclear war. The "two tribes" are America and the Soviet Union, who were engaged in the Cold War, putting the entire world under threat of annihilation.
Of Monsters And Men have dropped their first new single in four years with ‘Alligator’. “We are so excited about Alligator, the first release from our upcoming album,” said singer Nanna Bryndis Hilmarsdóttir. “The song very much speaks to the excitement and energy that we feel about being back.
“We can’t wait to share more music and see everyone again.”
The song's lyric video features footage from the movie Black Orpheus, over which the words are displayed. The 1959 Portuguese-language film was the inspiration for the Reflektor tracks "Awful Sound (Oh Eurydice)" and "It's Never Over (Oh Orpheus)." bit.ly
Operators will be at Neumos on Sunday, July 9th! Tickets & info: bit.ly
Back in the days when groups released “long-playing records” on vinyl, the first thing you’d hear when flipping Power, Corruption & Lies over to play the second side was this statuesque stunner. Like ace early B-sides In a Lonely Place and Hurt, Your Silent Face heavily features Sumner’s melodica. The rest of the song combines a sequenced rhythm, glacial synthesiser melodies and an unforgettable Hook bassline and is so audibly influenced by Kraftwerk it was given the working title KW1. However, that beautiful grandeur packed an unexpected lyrical twist. In 1983, the interview-shunning New Order were still shrouded in mystery and regarded with reverence. So Sumner’s eyebrow-raising, straight outta Salford kiss-off – “You’ve caught me at a bad time, now why don’t you piss off?” – was astonishing to fans. Morris later explained: “It was a very majestic piece, and we thought, ‘Ah, it’s getting too serious.’”
Aware that Kim Deal was seeking more creative input, Frank Black set her a challenge using a circular chord sequence he'd developed. "We started doing a bit of their loud quiet loud dynamic, where we would bring things down to bass and drums, the kind of thing you'd hear on a Sisters of Mercy song," he recalled to Uncut. "I wanted to do a song that didn't change chords, like Lou Reed's Sweet Jane. So I just said to Kim, let's do a song called 'Gigantic,' this is the bass riff, quiet in the verses loud in the choruses."
This 2017 track from The Breeders marked the first new music from the band since 2009, when they released their EP Fate to Fatal.
Combat Rock was released on this day back in 1982. That makes it.... old.
Happy birthday to David Byrne who turns 67 today! Just a few days ago David Byrne performed Talking Heads‘ ‘Slippery People’ with Mavis Staples during her 80th birthday celebrations. Watch it here: youtu.be
Pure Bathing Culture will be playing the Columbia City Theater on May 31st! Tickets: bit.ly
OMD will be playing ZooTunes at the Woodland Park Zoo with the B-52s on August 7th!
Last year Editors released their sixth album Violence, and enlisted the help of Fuck Buttons' Benjamin John Power, aka Blanck Mass.
After releasing Violence last year, Editors said to Billboard of the collaboration, "We thought well, if he could have some kind of influence on what we were doing, it might put this record into a place that would surprise us and give it a freshness. So yeah, he got on board. He started working on nearly every song we’d worked on. We got to the point then where we had two albums; we had this album we had done in Oxford and you have like the alternative kind of Blanck Mass version of the record. Then we needed some more help, and we got a guy called Leo Abrahams, a producer to come in and help fuse these things together and find the right balance."
Tennant said in 1000 UK #1 Hits by Jon Kutner and Spencer Leigh, "We arrived in the studio and Bobby O had programmed Michael Jackson's Billie Jean drum pattern. Chris started to play along and I started playing chords. In terms of the lyrics, the inspiration for West End Girls came from The Message by Grandmaster Flash. I remember once staying at my cousin's house in Nottingham and we were watching some kind of gangster film with James Cagney, and just as I was dropping off to sleep, the lines 'sometimes you're better off dead, there's a gun in your hand and it's pointing to your head' came into my head and I thought 'that's quite good' so I went off to find a pen."
TR/ST will be live on KEXP tomorrow at noon! Get signed up to see them starting at 10:30. Tomorrow night's show at Neumos is sold out so this is your chance!
This was released as the first taster of Liars' Mess album. Speaking to NME about the LP's lyrical content, frontman Angus Andrew said: "In general, the lyrics toy with the idea of having a problem or a messed up head, like I do a lot, but then acknowledging that and utilising it rather than harping on about how difficult it makes things. Even though the reality of it is still fairly troubled and distraught, it's fun and immediate – and you won't have to spend too much time thinking about it."
Shovels & Rope are out on tour but no stops west of Colorado...so far.
Plan Ahead! The Black Keys will be with Modest Mouse at the Tacoma Dome in Tacoma, Washington on Saturday, November 23rd, 2019.: www.kexp.org