Sub Pop was kind enough to send over a few downloads for you fine folks from two of their upcoming summer releases.

Wolf Parade - At Mount Zoomer
“Language City“
“Call It A Ritual“

CSS - Donkey
“Rat is Dead (Rage)“

And don’t forget you can download “White Winter Hymnal” from Fleet Foxes here.

The latest release from Tall Firs, Too Old To Die Young, is a bit like an abandoned building on a vacant lot. Big space, room for potential, some points of interest, and a lot of semi-controlled chaos.

The three-piece leans toward melodic guitars and crashing cymbals at the album’s head, sounding like the Appleseed Cast would if they’d formed in the early nineties and had a less completely ridiculous version of the singer from the Crash Test Dummies fronting the band. Overall the first third of the album (and particularly the song “Hairdo”) is agreeable to the summer months and the open road.

The next third of the album is a little less structured. A large portion of “Warriors” is an instrumental jam that slowly reins in the chaos and comes back in surprisingly cleanly, while the slow-meld of “Good Intentions” is just a bit too nebulous. “Lookout” features paired guitar work, one in each ear, that proves to be an engaging listening experience.

The bluesy, All-American sound of “Loveless” leads off the album’s final third, sounding different from the rest of TOTDY but not out of place. “Secrets + Lies” serves up a low-key twang and a guy/girl duet that’s good enough to erase the near-comedic delivery on the previous track, “Hippies”.

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Too Old To Die Young dropped 03/18/08.
You can download “Hairdo” here, and find out more about Tall Firs here.

If I had to sum up David Walley’s 1998 release in one word, it would be ’snoozefest’. Teenage Nervous Breakdown: Music and Politics in the Post-Elvis Age is more of a personal nostalgic take on life than insightful look at how the rise of rock ‘n’ roll shaped the world.

Though the book contains research, most of Walley’s commentary is derived from his own experience and predilections. In and of itself, it’s not a bad thing, but would be better suited for a memoir. The heavy baby-boomer/ex-hippie/weren’t the fifties swell-slant makes it difficult for a younger audience to relate while simultaneously dating the perspective.

Also annoying is the clear fact that Walley never got over high school - he goes so far as to dedicate an entire chapter to explaining how society structures itself in much the same way high-schoolers do. While high school as life is a common metaphor, most of us get over the fact we were picked last in gym class and don’t fixate on it well into our forties. Hopefully for him he really showed the football team who’s boss by putting out this book.

While the content of the book did nothing to move me, matters were not helped by the format. The publishers picked a font that is hard to read (commas and periods are nearly indistinguishable from each other, and each letter has so many serifs it might as well be Middle Ages-era calligraphy), each paragraph has a large break in between (generally reserved for a separation of ideas), and there are several large block quotes per chapter (why not just read the other authors’ work?). This may be a nerdy conceit, but if a book is a laborious read regardless of content, it’s a problem.

If the title and proposed subject matter of the book intrigues you, I’d advise skipping Walley’s entry and going straight for Jon Savage’s Teenage: The Creation of Youth Culture. It does an amazing job of tracing youth culture’s rise to prominence and is well-written on top of it. It’s a bit heavier but will save you the waste of time Teenage Nervous Breakdown turned out to be.

It’s been far too long since I’ve made a mix. Here’s one to kick off summer:

Saturday Nights In Neon Light
01| Stars - Take Me to the Riot
02| Alphabeat - Fascination
03| Jimmy Eat World - Here It Goes
04| Vampire Weekend - I Stand Corrected
05| She & Him - Sweet Darlin’
06| Head of Femur - Jetway Junior
07| The Fashion - Solo Impala
08| Hot Chip - Ready For the Floor
09| Kate Nash - Pumpkin Soup
10| Shout Out Louds - Tonight I Have to Leave It

Finding music videos so you don’t have to sit through twelve hours of bad dating shows to find them yourself.

Band of Horses - No One’s Gonna Love You (surf tackles, candy glass, the Clapper)
Born Ruffians - I Need A Life (classic and new at the same time)
DeVotchKa - The Clockwise Witness (Live on Conan) (making us realize the tuba is under-utilized)
Frightened Rabbit - Head Rolls Off (elementary schools would benefit from in-house rock bands)
The Dodos - Fools (acoustic tunes are rarely this intense)

My dear friend and lovely photographer Chelsea Sutton is looking for the tattooed among us for her project Every Picture Tells A Story. Check it out!

Motion City Soundtrack recently released their Acoustic EP exclusively on iTunes. Featuring five acoustic versions of songs from their LP Even If It Kills Me, it showcases the band’s songwriting abilities and gives a new gloss to the included tunes.

Utilizing acoustic guitar and piano in place of the buzzing electricity of the band’s usual high-voltage formation, MCS augments the sound with strings, bells, and handclaps.

Singles “It Had To Be You” and “Broken Heart” maintain the basic feeling and momentum of the album versions when stripped down. “Can’t Finish What You Started” sounds even better in its acoustic form than the original version. The piano at the end of “Point of Extinction” gives it a heart-tugging depth that compliments the song’s original incarnation well.

The standout on the EP by far is opener “Fell In Love Without You”. On Even If It Kills Me the song is a frenetic kiss-off, but here it’s a subdued reflection. The song includes the line “only time will tell if violins will swell in memory of what we used to call ‘in love’” and is cleverly accompanied by violins starting at the second iteration of the chorus, hinting that maybe the narrator and his subject did have something after all.

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Acoustic EP dropped on 05/06/08.
Get more info on Motion City Soundtrack at their official website.

Owen (aka Mike Kinsella) returned to Madison on May 3, 2008 to play to a cozy crowd at Club 770. Kinsella was in good spirits, happily conversing with the crowd and cracking jokes.

“Sometimes I write a song and it sounds like Sheryl Crow, and I think, ‘This is awful.’ Then I write a song and it sounds like ‘Chocolate Rain’…”

After finishing up a set of his own material, Kinsella decided to throw down a few Fugazi songs, a preview of his upcoming benefit show for CAASE on June 19 at Beat Kitchen in Chicago.

At this show we decided to use the video option on our super-cheap camera and captured Owen performing “The Ghost of What Should Have Been” for your viewing and listening pleasure. Of course, we’re idiots and filmed it portrait style, not realizing we couldn’t rotate it in editing. Oops. Just crane your neck to the left and you won’t even notice.

Though things got off to a late start, the May 2, 2008 show featuring Rooney, Locksley, and The Bridges at Madison’s The Annex was worth the wait.

Opener The Bridges was an unexpected treat. Hailing from Alabama, the five-member band features drums, guitars, bass, and keys, but is set apart by its three- and four-part female vocal harmonies. The girls’ voices perfectly compliment each other, and the ease and style in which they perform hints at their roots despite there not being anything overtly southern about their music. Be sure to check out the live videos, as the posted album cuts don’t do The Bridges justice.

Following The Bridges were hometown heroes Locksley. Sporting a new bass player, the band was welcomed with enthusiasm by the crowd. The band has continued to grow as a live act, shedding the matching army jackets and synchronized bows of performances past and finally getting a few scratches in their pretty-boy veneer. The boys of Locksley still deliver tight instrumentals and impeccable vocal harmony, but have toed over to rock and roll from pre-fab pop.

Rounding off the evening was the indomitably happy Rooney. Bringing with them California’s good vibrations, Rooney played a mix of songs from both their LPs, as well as a few covers that clearly inform their sound (The Band’s “The Weight” and The Beach Boys’s “California Girls”). Vocalist/guitarist Robert Carmine had little trouble engaging the crowd, bantering with relatability and charisma. Rooney ended their set with the infectious single “When Did Your Heart Go Missing?“, leaving no one in the crowd standing still. Look for a new album from Rooney, to be recorded after the completion of their summer tour.

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PARTIAL THE BRIDGES SETLIST: All the Words, Pieces, One I Love, Runaway

PARTIAL LOCKSLEY SETLIST: All of the Time, She Does, Why Can’t I Be You, Into the Sun, Get Off Of My Cloud, Hotel Yorba

PARTIAL ROONEY SETLIST: Blueside, If It Were Up To Me, I’m A Terrible Person, I’m Shakin’, Calling The World, When Did Your Heart Go Missing?, Are You Afraid?, Paralyzed, All In Your Head, The Weight, California Girls

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

We had a crazy busy week, hence the lack of posts. Check back for concert reviews for The Bridges/Locksley/Rooney & Owen, as well as a mess of album reviews. Until then, here are some videos to pacify you:

Chromeo - Fancy Footwork (we’ve been waiting for a video since July - it’s finally here)
The Helio Sequence - Keep Your Eyes Ahead (Portland at night)
The Wombats - Let’s Dance to Joy Division (love the song to pieces)
The Most Serene Republic - The Men Who Live Upstairs (we’re suckers for boys and girls singing together)
Thrice - Come All You Weary (Live on Conan) (so different, so good)