“The End of the World Is Bigger Than Love” is one of a handful of new songs Jens Lekman played during his brief, beautiful west coast tour last year and like “New Directions” before it, it’s received a gorgeous string-laden studio treatment. Without an attached album or even single announcement, Jens is simply letting this one run wild into the world, a world whose collapse would be bigger than love. Guy needs to see 2012 (or not). Trade your e-mail to hear it:
Lekman explains it all, charisma rolling off his back in endless Swedish sheets, on his website.
It’s a great couple of days in indie-electro land: tonight, Faded Paper Figures bring their post-Postal Service pop to Spaceland, and tomorrow, the Echoplex gets its best bill since the mind-blowing Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti/Magic Kids/Puro Instinct triple: Nite Jewel, Memoryhouse, Baths and a Kisses DJ set. Also in great stuff this week: U.K. folk wunderkind Laura Marling plays the El Rey and Pepper Rabbit plays a triumphant Spaceland show. More dates on our ongoing Los Angeles calendar.
Faded Paper Figures – “Invent It All Again”:mp3 Memoryhouse – “Sleep Patterns”:mp3
Your Youth is the latest band to join the #90srevival trending topic, touching on the alt-rock influences that seemed so indie-uncool just a year or so back: Weezer, Jimmy Eat World and the nerdier parts of the year 1994, mostly, played through the beloved lo-fi lens of Pavement and Built to Spill. Unlike our pal Wavves, though, the Brooklyn trio seem to be genuine dorks — and accordingly endearing. Not that they need it, but Your Youth’s debut EP, Aloha, comes with built-in cred: it’s due on Gigantic, home of the good Walkmen albums and Harlem Shakes (R.I.P.). Garage, rock:
The critics roundly abandoned Rufus Wainwright after Poses, missing the high-water mark of Want One but somewhat rightly maligning his successive releases. All Days Are Nights, the golden-voiced singer-songwriter’s attempt at bombast eschewment, seems to have won them over again (all except Pitchfork, rarely an enthusiastic supporter of artistsassociatedwith Jon Brion) — and why shouldn’t it? For Rufus fans, it’s hard to imagine a more satisfying hour than hearing him alone at the piano, his distinctive warble soaring over Gershwin-esque meanderings in some smokey Casablanca bar. It’s true, the songs, melodic as they are, lack the pop bounce of his past work, and don’t quite hit the highs of Want One ballads “Dinner at Eight” and “Natasha.” For sheer aesthetic pleasure, though, All Days Are Nights captures Wainwright at his most humbly generous.
The first official video for The School’s retro-pop stunner Loveless Unbeliever. So candy-striped and Down With Love-ready I’m surprised Ewan McGregor doesn’t pop in for a guest vocal. (P.S. Down With Love:a movie that still rules.)
It bears remembering that the Dirty Projectors made the finest album of last year. Mount Wittenberg Orca, a song cycle initially written for performance at New York’s Housing Works in a benefit concert organized by Stereogum’s Brandon Stosuy, isn’t a proper follow-up — but it is a worthy sequel. The mini-album finds the band diving head-first into the harmonic mazes they explored on 2009′s Bitte Orca, determined to reach the limits of indie rock lung capacity. The music stays spartan, leaving the voices room to shine (or shatter glass) and Bjork bjorks around harmlessly, sounding particularly nice playing call-and-response with the DP’s vowel sound montage on “On and Ever Onward.” Don’t play this one for your cat.
I love that “indie rockers talking about weird snack foods” is the P4k equivalent of “Hollywood star talks about how she’s OK being single in her 30s.”
Daniel M’Mburugu is probably the hardest motherfucker to ever step foot in the rural farmlands of Kenya. On June 22nd, this 73 year-old grandfather was out in his farmland minding his own business when all of a sudden this gigantor leopard jumped out from some tall grass and mauled the fuck out of him. The beast let out an earth-shaking howl and pinned M’Mburugu to the ground, scratching the shit out of his chest with its back claws and trying to bite his face off with its gleaming fangs. M’Mburugu tried to free up hispanga (Swahili for “big ass machete”) so that he could take a good swipe at the creature that was slowly killing him, but then all of a sudden JESUS CHRIST sent a messenger pigeon down to him with a note that read:
Dear Daniel,
Fuck the machete. Just rip this motherfucker’s tongue out.
Love, God
So Daniel M’Mburugu dropped his machete and shoved his hand into the leopards mouth. The leopard chomped down on his hand, be he totally didn’t even give a fuck. He just pulled the fucking leopard’s tongue out of its head, causing it to die and get totally pwned by a 73 year-old dude. After he was done wrecking the leopard’s shit, he told his neighbor to go get him some salt just so that he could rub it into his wounds, pound his chest like Tarzan and prove to everyone that he was the baddest motherfucker in town. Awesome.
It’s a great couple of days in indie-electro land: tonight, Faded Paper Figures bring their post-Postal Service pop to Spaceland, and tomorrow, the Echoplex gets its best bill since the mind-blowing 
The critics roundly abandoned Rufus Wainwright after Poses, missing the high-water mark of Want One but somewhat rightly maligning his successive releases. All Days Are Nights, the golden-voiced singer-songwriter’s attempt at bombast eschewment, seems to have 
)
It bears remembering that the Dirty Projectors made the finest album of last year. Mount Wittenberg Orca, a song cycle initially written for performance at New York’s Housing Works in a benefit concert organized by Stereogum’s Brandon Stosuy, isn’t a proper follow-up — but it is a worthy sequel. The mini-album finds the band diving head-first into the harmonic mazes they explored on 2009′s Bitte Orca, determined to reach the limits of indie rock lung capacity. The music stays spartan, leaving the voices room to shine (or shatter glass) and Bjork bjorks around harmlessly, sounding particularly nice playing call-and-response with the DP’s vowel sound montage on “On and Ever Onward.” Don’t play this one for your cat.
