[svgallery name="melrose-aug09"]

Kings of Convenience – “Gold In The Air of Summer”: mp3

Photo by Lalla_Ali

If it’s not obvious enough on their records, Alec Ounsworth, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah’s frontman, is a pretty willful young dude. Willful enough to release two albums, Ryan Adams-style, this year, one under his own name — the upcoming Mo Beauty — and Skin & Bones, his debut disc as Flashy Python. Ironically, the album (out now and streaming below, surprise!) ignores the band name in favor of murky, serious-sounding indie mired in Elephant Six-y sludge. Not as crisp and tuneful as Clap Your Hand’s debut but certainly an improvement on the (probably) intentionally unlikable Some Loud Thunder, Flashy Python won’t surprise any of Alec’s fans, but it’ll get its coils around you just the same. The title track is the album’s best moment, a freewheelin’ guitar carnival that lets him gets his Tortured Artist ya-yas out while also providing necessary jam-fodder. Stream it all after the jump. [Via P4k] Read the rest of this entry »

[Ed. Bootleg archives continue as we migrate from Blogger.] As promised: Another She & Him radio sesh. Catch their performance on KCRW here.

She & Him – “Magic Trick”: mp3
She & Him – “Change Is Hard”: mp3
She & Him – “Bring It On”: mp3
She & Him – “You Really Got A Hold On Me”: mp3

Previously: She & Him – KCRW Session | Bootlegs Archive

As I noted in my Jay Reatard review yesterday, it already feels like the explosion of next-wave lo-fi/garage that burst into indie popularity last year is fading from public favor. Let’s hope there’s still time for the Marked Men, a Denton, Texas band who released Ghosts in January to notice more minimal than a Paris Hilton bikini. Ghosts is a fast, furious rock ‘n’ roll record, a super-charged spin on Gentleman Jesse and His Men’s own amp-busting retro-rock (which I was, uh, maybe a li’l hyperbolic about last year). But with membership in these under-the-radar acts rotating as fast as their fist-pumping 7″s, it’s amazing that the Marked Men have made it this far — Ghosts is their fourth album, and their experience shows. Unfortunately, singer/guitarist Jeff Burke reportedly ditched the band to move to Japan after its release, so it might also be the end of the line. Let’s all buy it and get him to come back, yeah? Lo-fi needs some heroes.

The Marked Men – “Ditch”: mp3

More: New Music

Jay Reatard was born just a few years too late. A publicly obnoxious blowhard with shoulders chipped like Pringles, his music has the welcoming melodies of late ’90s PG-13 power-pop — a walking contradiction that might make him the missing link between Fred Durst, Andrew WK and, like, Letters To Cleo. Watch Me Fall is little more jittery and a lot more lo-fi than Jay’s genre predecessors, but even as he pillages the Ramones’ three-chord aggression, he can’t help dressing up the songs in melody. Tracks such as “Man of Steel” reach back even earlier (to Bowie’s “The Man Who Sold The World,” for one) and as the new lo-fi/garage trend begins to retreat before the incoming chill-wave/glo-fi/gorillavsbearcore pop culture explosion (which is uniformly awesome, by the way), Reatard may be a man out of time — but he’s one to watch.

Jay Reatard – “It Ain’t Gonna Save Me”: mp3

(Watch Me Fall is out Aug. 18 on Matador)

More: New Music

Learn To Love: My new column — quick, five-song introductions to bands you need to know — launched with The Radio Dept.

New Music: Radiohead’s new, orchestral track, “Harry Patch (In Memory Of)”

Bootleg: Beck & The Flaming Lips’ ‘02 collab.

The Canon, Examined: Tasty twee jams from Sushi.

(Photo by David Greenwald)

Previously: The Week In Rawk

Photo by Aylin Güngör Dedeoglu

LEARN TO LOVE: Five-song snapshots of essential bands. Start here and dig deeper.

The Radio Dept. – “Why Won’t You Talk About It”: mp3
(from Lesser Matters, 2003)
The Radio Dept. – “Pulling Our Weight”: mp3
(from Pulling Our Weight EP, 2003)
The Radio Dept. – “The Worst Taste In Music”: mp3
(from Pet Grief, 2006 — their best yet)
The Radio Dept. – “Freddie and the Trojan Horse”: mp3
(from Freddie and the Trojan Horse EP, 2008)
The Radio Dept. – “David”: mp3
(from David EP, 2009)

(Buy Radio Dept. albums from Labrador)

Everybody Cares, Everybody Understands is back: Friend-of-Rawkblog and excellent music blog ECEU has returned after a brief sabbatical and moved to Tumblr. Go bookmark.