usounds September 24th, 2007
Rolling Stone interview clip with Britt Daniel and Jim Eno:
Rolling Stone: What’s the most rock star thing you’ve ever done?
Britt Daniel: Ten years ago in Salt Lake City I jumped offstage and knocked somebody on his ass during a song. I was wondering why he was at the show because he kept giving me the middle finger. It was a pretty small show and there weren’t a lot of people there, and I was like, “Hey, nuh-uh,” and he just kept doing it song after song. Finally he did it again and off we went.
Jim Eno: Britt jumped offstage, hit him, and then the crowd attacked the guy and dragged him out. And the rhythm section kept playing.
bowiewonderworld.com: The Bowie clothing line hits stores on Oct. 15 and will be available exclusively at Target. Wait…what?
David Bowie/Target Men’s Look #1
Tiny Mix Tapes: The Forbes richest musicians list includes Bon Jovi. $67 in the shade.
aversion.com: The Libertines working on a “Best of” album that should blow everyone away with their 2-album catalog.
MSNBC: Marilyn Manson serves up his own brand of absinthe (Mansinthe) and great hair.
Andrew Boe September 24th, 2007
Rating: 8.4
What a pleasant surprise the new Marissa Nadler CD was when it arrived in my mailbox. She is a relatively new artist from rural Massachusetts whom I knew nothing about. Songs III: Bird on the Water is her third record, and it is her first that was professionally recorded. It is a folk album in the true sense of the word and it is great. There are no traces of what most would refer to as alt-country. Refreshingly, there is hardly one shred of country at all in this sophisticated collection of folk songs. The songs themselves are quite bare, with minimal ethereal accompaniment and contain a moderate amount of shimmer and echo. The songs are somber and haunting, and if I were to come up with a quick comparison, I would say that she sounds something like a modern day female Leonard Cohen, but she also grasps her own autonomous voice.
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Logan Vessey September 20th, 2007
Rating: 8.2
“I think that’s the scrappiest version I’ve ever done of that in my life.”
That’s the line 21-year old Jamie Treays (aka Jamie T) uses to describe the album version of “Brand New Bass Guitar” to lead off his debut album, Panic Prevention, and I’d say that “scrappy” is an apt description of the album as a whole. He’s been compared to a number of seminal British musicians, from Joe Strummer to Mike Skinner, and those two influences in particular are apparent all over this album. He’s already been critically and commercially well-received over in the motherland, and is making moves in the States with his interesting blend of hip-hop (”So Lonely Was The Ballad”), spaz-dance-punk (”Operation”) and even a little scatting (”If You Got The Money”). The album flows seamlessly with vocal interludes all throughout and a very consistent tone, which might be what makes it so refreshing.
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usounds September 19th, 2007
Usounds has been really busy for the last week and a half recruiting new writers, finding rare albums and bangin’ hos. So they pulled my ass out of the Himalayas to join the usounds reserve (which is kind of like the Army reserve but with less soldiers and more hard drugs and hella bitches) to do some mp3 reviews.
Georgie James “Need Your Need” [mp3]
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Matthew Wendus September 18th, 2007
Rating: 8.7
Andorra, the latest release from Ontario-based digital maestro Daniel Snaith, is about as good of an indie electronica release you’re likely to hear all year. Snaith has been playing under the name of Caribou since 2004 after the threat of a lawsuit from punk rocker Dick Manitoba forced him to change his previous title of the same name. Whatever Canada-inspired moniker he chooses to adopt, what hasn’t changed is his ability to direct his own sonic landscapes into a diamond-honed product. Still in his late-20s, Snaith has demonstrated a powerful presence as a producer and digital musician. The music of Andorra ranks as not only some of his most intricate work, but also that which finds itself in good standing to make top-10 lists for 2007.
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Andrew Boe September 17th, 2007
Rating: 7.0
It is a bit challenging to introduce Akron/Family to those who may not be familiar with them. The group consists of four young men who mainly write a strange blend of folk-rock that most people will instantly lump into this trendy new category termed ‘freak folk.’ They are not from Akron, OH, and as far as one can tell, they have nothing to do with the town. Instead, they hail from various small towns in the US and have settled in New York City. Their new CD and 2xLP is their third full length album entitled Love is Simple, and it is a continuation of what we have seen and heard from the group on their previous releases.
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Andrew Boe September 10th, 2007
Seattle, WA - September 3, 2007
After spending the better part of at least a decade controlling Sputnik satellites from his remote position somewhere at zero gravity, Roky Erickson, of Thirteenth Floor Elevators fame, has decided to come back down to planet Earth in order to sing his wonderful songs about vampires, serial killers, ghosts, mythological beasts and other assorted creatures. In 2005, Erickson started performing again after disappearing from the public eye for many years. You had better be grateful for that because without his presence, rock music today would be missing an awful lot of character. Roky and his current group, the Explosives, performed for the first time ever in Seattle at the Bumbershoot festival, and they were incredibly competent, engaging, and touching at the same time.
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usounds September 6th, 2007
NME: For some reason that dude from Reno 911 thinks it would be a great idea to make a Broadway musical based on Morrissey’s songs.
Yahoo News: Music vids are going lo-fi because of falling sales and file sharing. Maybe that’s why we posted a video today that features joyful puppets.
Andrew Boe September 6th, 2007
August 28, 2007
On a blazing Indian summer evening in downtown Portland where the second floor of the Crystal Ballroom became soggy with humidity and stagnant air, I had the privilege to witness the legendary Bert Jansch in concert. From the opening notes of “It Don’t Bother Me,” the title track from his second LP in 1965, it was like observing someone who invented the fucking guitar as his fingers were so agile that it made me never want to pick up the instrument again. His unique way of playing has almost single-handedly modernized the way that acoustic based music is played. The other thing about Jansch that makes him so amazing and untouchable is that he does not confine himself to merely be a member of one genre like so many artists do, rather he takes his folk, blues and rock influences and adds just as much of his own autonomous style to create an amalgam of music that is both highly varied and also instantly recognizable.
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usounds September 6th, 2007
Enon temporarily stash a few dead bodies near a high school football field until the weekend when they plan on renting a boat and disposing these carcasses once and for all in the Delaware River
Enon’s new album, Grass Geysers…Carbon Clouds is due out October 9th on Touch and Go Records. Here’s the first single from the album and you can check out tour dates on MySpace.
Mirror on You [mp3]
