NEWS: Xiu Xiu announce new album “Always”, stream new single “Hi”
No, i’m not upset with you, Jamie. I mean, it’s not like you made at least one Xiu Xiu record every single year since 2002, only to leave me hanging after 2010′s supoib (that’s how New Yorkers say superb) “Dear God, I Hate Myself”. Oh no, it’s not like that at all. Oh wait, it is like that. But I’m not mad, i’ll be fine. At least, now I will be. Yes, fans of the emotionally explosive exploits of Jamie Stewart, Xiu Xiu are back with a new album, a new single AND a new logo. The latter of which may or may not look exactly like the XX logo turned fleshy, which is neither here nor there (A: may, here). The new record is called “Always”, which implies the kind of permanence which musicians can scarcely afford, and it’s also had quite the tough birth, what with the gloriously luminous entity of Zac Pennington both joining and then quitting the band among mysterious and probably bitchy circumstances. Those poor creatures.
Here’s a tracklisting for it, followed by some words, which I wrote.
01. Hi
02. Joey’s Song
03. Beauty Towne
04. Honey-Suckle
05. I Luv Abortion
06. The Oldness
07. Chimney’s Afire (Mickensian Suicide)
08. Gul Mudin
09. Born to Suffer
10. Factor Girl
11. Smear the Quen
12. Black Drum Machine
“Always” will be dropping (that’s music journalist speak for “arriving at all decent retailers”, we sure are a crazy bunch) on the 28th of February in the glorious European union and the 6th of March for everywhere else. Not only that, but there “500 limited edition copies of translucent pink 180 gram vinyl available via Polyvinyl mailorder. A collage poster of Xiu Xiu tattoos and scars accompanies the LPs.” which sounds absolutely wonderful. Europe can get it here, whilst everyone else must click here for that sweet sweet cash transaction action.
SOMETHING I WAS GOING TO WRITE IN THE TEXT ABOVE BUT FORGOT AND NOW AM SHOEHORNING INTO THIS LITTLE BIT AT THE BOTTOM: Xiu Xiu have a new single, too! It’s called “Hi” and you can here it directly above these words. As the sexually confused offspring of Fabulous Muscles and Dear God, I Hate Myself, it’s one glorious mess of affected vocals, horrifically catchy melodies and deeply off kilter musicianship. Almost exactly like the kind you were waiting to hear ALL THE WAY THROUGH LAST YEAR. Sigh.
Alec
NEWS: At The Drive-In reunite, gang of gimps abuse one of my favourite albums
When Cedric Bixler-Zavala comes home from a day in the pretentious, bad-acid (if acid resulted in heightened anal retentiveness) office of Mars Volta, often rumoured to be nothing but a dirty dream of Geddy Lee, he cracks open a Bud. Exhaling as the ice cool beer hits the back of his throat, he reflects upon his days of heroin abuse. Next, he sits down to watch Golden Balls – all goes well until a horrific coincidence occurs – he becomes randomly and spontaneously aroused at the exact time Jasper Carrot appears on stage; he’s about the skulk off in search of a Detectives box set when he remembers that he has one last duty to perform today.
Descending the stairs into the basement, Cedric opens a large, walk-in refrigerator, wherein are stacked hundreds of pre-packaged parcels of dog shit. He scans the rows of boxes, picking out several. He then proceeds to post these to his old At The Drive-In band mates. His work done, he settles back down in his living room, nestled in between conspiracy theorist props, a box of tissues in his left hand, The Detectives season one in the other.
But don’t worry Ceddy, you won’t be running out of excrement anytime soon, At The Drive In are getting back together! I don’t know if you know yet, I mean, from the way you all denied that it would ever happen – saying that either you had no desire to play the songs or that everyone hated one another – I presumed that the Reunion Gods had made it so without telling you bu—-
Guess those shitty Mars Volta albums aren’t selling too well.
Liam
FEIGN INTEREST: Best Coast have ‘Grown Up’, Beth C—weedweedweedweedweed
This week, Beth C., of Best C. fame was reported as saying to Pitchfork, “I need to figure out a way to get people to stop thinking of me as the ‘stoner, cat loving’ girl,” She then added, conclusively “I’m not really like that anymore.”
Meanwhile, her boyfriend, the equally famous and distorted Nathan Williams of Wavves infamy tweeted “weed basketball weed basketball weed basketball”
Thanks.
More interestingly, however, Williams revealed this hilarious soundbite: ‘fuck! got beat the fuck up by rob kardashians boys last night FUCK!’
Best Coast, much to the enjoyment of young girls and people who like all their music to sound the same, are back in the studio, and with Jon Brion to boot. Does that mean anything to you? No, you’ve probably never even heard of him. Regardless, their new direction is reportedly, ‘more emo’. Whether this means they’re heading into the murky waters of early 90s emo indie rock or just writing songs about how your boyfriend won’t pay attention to you because he’s too busy inserting sealed bags of blueberry kush into his previously violated anus is yet to be determined.
Liam
STREAM: The Flaming Lips and the Plastic Ono Band’s joint EP
Fond of Embryonic? Consider Yoko Ono to be one of the worlds very finest purveyors of largely ignorable avant-garde experimentation and screaming inside art galleries to the bemusement of understandably distressed onlookers? Well, kid. Sit down and get a piping hot load of this shit. I actually really enjoyed this, I hope you do too. I’m not sure why I’m hiding this text.
“The Fear of Litany”
“Do It”
“Brain Of Heaven”
“Atlas Eets Christmas”
Alec
VIDEO: Youth Lagoon – July
I quite liked Youth Lagoon’s debut album, “The Year of Hibernation”, I did. I even wrote about it here, remember? Back when it was little more than a few lines of code at the bottom of some words, ah, those were the days. It’s been a thermonuclear minute since then though, and I’ve been somewhat lacking in my declarations of admiration for it. So here goes; “The Year of Hibernation” is still a deeply pretty slice of minimalist pop and astonishingly, I continue to rather enjoy it (note: it’s still up for streaming on my original post). So, suck on that, people.
As the kids are likely to do, Trevor Powers and his one man music video machine Tyler T Williams have been busy beavering away making videos to go alongside the music. This one’s for “July”, which is a song that was on an album and now have a video to go alongside it. There’s nosebleeds, skinny people, televisions that are no longer made and enough instant nostalgia to last you a good few hours. Or, at the very least, until you find another fucking app to take pictures with incorrect colours and thick black frames, you horrid human being.
Check it, above.
Alec
OH BOY: Kindness’ “World, You Need a Change of Mind” details, artwork
One man Arthur Russell fan, nu disco spearhead and international man of mystery Adam Bainbridge is a slippery character. Imagine him covered in baby oil, bubbles and a thin sheet of surprisingly resilient ice. Yeah, he’s just that hard to pin down. Still, as WU LYF will attest to; there’s only so long you can live in the shadows before Pitchfork begin a new round of Internet Musical Circlejerk and you’re forced uncomfortably into everyone’s ”look how ahead of the curve I am” playlist. The same fate has befallen the Kindness man, and he is now SELLING THE FUCK OUT (sarcasm) and releasing an album of his previously hard to attain music. It’s called ”World, You Need a Change of Mind” and according to Apple’s music store, it’ll be available for purchase on the 19th of March, the year of our lord 2012. Here’s a tracklisting, where some of the words can be clicked. You should probably do that.
01 SEOD
02 Swingin Party
03 Anyone Can Fall In Love
04 Gee Wiz
05 Gee Up
06 House
07 That’s Alright
08 Cyan
09 Bombastic
10 Doigsong
You’ll be able to buy it from all wonderful record stores. Also, Merry Christmas.
Alec
VIDEO: Arcade Fire – Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)
Arcade Fire, ey, what can you do with them, the pervasive scamps? At first we pined for a follow up the underrated Neon Bible, we practically felated the perceived ability of those mostly Candian kids. Then we got the first sniffs of The Suburbs, and it was oh so sweet. But wait, this has been going on a good long while, hasn’t it? 5 singles, a short film, an extended edition and a good number of videos later, Arcade Fire seem pretty bloody cozy sitting atop their pile of carefully clipped 5 star reviews and Grammy’s whilst reminding everyone that, yeah, it was a good record.
So here’s another video, for the undoubted standout and “Heart of Glass” sound-alike (for you, Joe, merry Christmas) Sprawl II. It comes in both non interactive and interactive formats, both of which involve Reggie dancing around with some ribbons, except one of them involves you clumsily waving your limbs around in an attempt to perform even the simplest action. Don’t worry though, there’s no Kinect needed this time. Feel free to observe it above in the traditional way above, or if you’re feeling fresh, you can click here for some wild webcam fun.
Alec
GIVE MONEY: Help fund Stuart Murdoch’s “God Help The Girl” motion picture, impress girls in cardigans
You know what you have? Too much money. Sure you might be starving, clinging desperately to the last few packets of super noodles whilst you browse the internet on one of your twelve, semen encrusted and entirely magical iPads, but let’s face it, you’ve got too much. So what is there to do when you haven’t quite maxed out your overdraft? Obviously, you give it to your favourite Scottish twee merchant, Stuart Murdoch. He’s currently begging for your money on Kickstarter for his long mumbled film project “God Help The Girl”, which is described thus
Set in Glasgow, Scotland over a long, lazy summer, the film is about a girl called Eve who is in hospital dealing with some emotional problems and starts writing songs as a way of getting better. Her music leads her to a guy called James and a girl called Cassie each with talents and musical dreams of their own. The story emanates from the universal idea of having a dream and how living it can free you from your troubles.
The words “Glasgow, Scotland” in that description were originally in a bold typeface, but given this websites editorial stance on places where new born children can medically be more heroin than human, we took the time to remove it. Alongside getting MAD CRED from that who totally saw 500 Days of Summer he’s offering a wide range of awards, ranging all the way up to a walk on and line in the film. Disappointingly though, there’s no option to offer the full $100,000 in return for him admitting that he has produced nothing worthwhile since 2000′s Fold Your Arms Child LP and promising never to do bad things again, sigh.
Give your money here.
HEAR WITH YOUR EARS: Sleigh Bells – Born To Lose
It’s only been a mre 13 days since I originally drew your attention towards the rapidly emerging shape of Sleigh Bell’s newest record, entitled “Reign of Terror”. As an album presumably based on the year long period in the French revolution in which 16,594 poor Frenchies got their heads unceremoniously removed by big falling knifes, it’s bound to be crammed dangerously full with oodles of incisive historical observations alongside their usual musical mischief, fun for all the family, right? Anyway, here’s the first cut from that album, a shu gayze track called “Born to Lose” and it’s positively, unequivocally the least annoying song they’ve ever written. Subsiquently, it’s also the least fun one. Whuddathunkit?
Hear it above, yeah?
Alec
SAD FACES: Grinderman call it quits, mid life crisis aficionados mourn the loss
Grinderman, the side project of Nick Cave and his merry band of Bad Seeds, have been successfully channeling the musical output of that aforementioned stolen underground space since 2006. Along the way we’ve had two albums, both of which charted somewhere around the “Actually, pretty fucking great” marker on the “Any good?” scale. Which is a lovely thing, isn’t it? Besides, it’s not like anybody had lost faith in Australia’s only successful export outside of warm, foul tasting beer and the word “Crikey”. He’s basically been spectacular since the very second he shuffled his way out of his mothers poor, illustrious genitalia. So it’s with great sadness and a surprisingly large degree of understanding that I announce- alongside every other fucking website on the planet -that Nick Cave’s Big Boys Play Guitar Real Loud, Yeah, Grinderman have called it quits following a headline set at the Meredith Music Festival in Victoria by utilizing the following collection of words, which I have displayed below for your closure.
That’s it for Grinderman. It’s over… See you all in another 10 years, when we’ll be even older and uglier”
Boo hoo, indeed.
Alec
