under the covers

A radio station in my area is calling for listeners’ favorite cover songs for a theme over Valentine’s Day weekend – Under the Covers. Here’s what I’d play:

Between the Buried and Me – Colorblind (Counting Crows)
Ted Leo – Since U Been Gone/Maps (Kelly Clarkson/Yeah Yeah Yeahs)
Colin Meloy – Cupid (Sam Cooke)
Death Cab for Cutie – This Charming Man (The Smiths)
Magnetic Fields – The Book of Love (Peter Gabriel)
Peter Gabriel – Flume (Bon Iver)
She & Him  – You Really Got a Hold On Me (The Miracles)

Ready to let me be a guest DJ, Triple M?

2010
02/09
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we’ve got some new ones

Philadelphia’s Dr. Dog played a massive set to a sold-out crowd at Madison, WI’s High Noon Saloon on February 5, 2010.

“The Old Days” kicked off the show with boundless energy, the cries of “down, down, down” reflecting off the wall-to-wall crowd. Dr. Dogs best songs live are the same as their best songs on the album; “Army of Ancients” and “From” shimmered and sparkled even more in a live setting than they already did in the can.

Dr. Dog is a band that is clearly comfortable playing together, each instrument building on the next and creating a cloud of sound that cushions the terribly beautiful harmonies coming from the band’s three vocalists. If Dr. Dog and Fleet Foxes put out a song together, heads would explode from the glorious harmonics.

In addition to covering Fate, Dr. Dog previewed several new songs. A standout was “Me & the Mirror” with fuzzy guitars and wailing organ. All of the new material was exciting and made for anxious anticipation of a new album.

Opening band The Growlers started off strong with a sound that could have come from a lost collaboration between the Doors and a surf-rock band, but after the first few songs lost steam with rambling melodies and churlish stage banter.

SET LIST: The Old Days, Worst Trip, ___ , Me & the Mirror (new song), Army of Ancients, ___ , new song, From, The Pretender, new song, ___ , ____ , ____ , ___ , My Friend, ____ , The Beach, The Rabbit, The Bat & The Reindeer

ENCORE: Oh No

For more photos from the show, be sure to check out our Facebook page.

2010
02/08
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january mp3 round-up

If you’ve been following us on Twitter, you’ve probably got all these already. If not, here’s a recap of all the mp3s we gave away last month.

RIGHT-CLICK/SAVE LINK AS TO DOWNLOAD
Black Tambourine – For Ex-Lovers Only
Fredrik – Locked In the Basement
Radar Brothers – Horses Warriors
Parenthetical Girls – Evelyn McHale
Inlets – Bright Orange Air
Let’s Wrestle – We Are the Men You’ll Grow to Love Soon
Seven Saturdays – Secret Things
Portastatic – Foam Hands (Destroyer Cover)
Josiah Wolf (WHY?) – The Trailer and the Truck
Christmas Island – Bed Island
The Beets – What Did I Do?
Beach Fossils – Time
Eat Skull – Don’t Leave Me on the Speaker

SPECIAL BONUS SAMPLER FROM SUB POP
Cybersex 2.0

2010
02/01
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the graft didn’t take

Duluth, Minnesota, home to Retribution Gospel Choir, is a cold, gray place. The natural expectation would be for art to reflect flat cold of the region, but RGC somehow channels the static into something beautiful and pulsating with life on 2.

The album carries a bass heartbeat throughout, ticking away the 34-minute sophomore release. Everything on the album sounds familiar, but with a few exceptions it’s hard to pinpoint any one influence, leading to something original. Counterintuitive, but trust me on this one. Fat guitars with gnarly solos, skittering, skipping cymbals that crash into expansive drum rolls, vinyl crackles and radio static populate 2, giving it the feeling of being tuned in from another time and place.

The front end of 2 is a little more in the straightforward, bar band-friendly vein, and offers up the best candidates for singles and new listeners, particularly “Hide It Away“. That’s not to say the rest of the album is lacking; the sounds and concepts build on each other, creating a thicker, denser listen as you go along, releasing in the last song with the band’s cry for a blessing, for RGC “put our hearts in the promised land / we buried ourselves in the arms of our enemies / so the last thing I need is a lover”.

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2 drops 01/26/10.
Download “Hide It Away” here.

2010
01/25
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now the lightbulb’s gone off

Absolutely no one will be surprised that Spoon put out another fantastic album. No one. So we’ll just get that out of the way right now: the album is great, go listen to it now, please. Now, a bit more analysis for those who are interested in more than the bottom line.

Where Spoon’s last release, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, was ebullient with its horns and straight-up soul, Transference is stifled and intimate and doesn’t show its hand. Opening track “Before Destruction” is almost more of an impression than a song proper, piquing the listener’s curiosity as to where the album is going. The album fleshes out with hypnotic basslines and dance-ready drums, with ebbing guitar and relaxed vocals giving the songs shape.

The album blends both dug-in-the-ground, shit-kicking, Austin pride (“Written in Reverse”, “Trouble”) with outside influences like the harnessed energy of the early-90s alt-rock charts (“Got Nuffin”) and Duran Duran, if they’d been darker club kids instead of Miami Vice extras (“Nobody Gets Me But You”). Though these things may seem disparate, they all come together for a remarkably coherent release.

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Transference dropped 01/19/10.
Listen to the album here.

2010
01/19
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