Selling out: officially cool! Peep the Grizz’s latest at EW.

With new albums due in the coming months from the (new) Pipettes, (ex-Pipette) Rose Elinor Dougall and Lucky Soul, 2010 is shaping up to be a banner year for big-tent, female-driven indie-pop. Add The School’s Loveless Unbeliever to that list. Like the aforementioned acts, the Cardiff group is female-fronted, shamelessly hi-fi and even more shamelessly retro, with tracks such as “Is He Really Coming Home” and “Hoping and Praying” bouncing with The Life Pursuit-level flair. As acts such as Dum Dum Girls take a stone-faced, studied approach to the past, The School offer a different period: recess. Go out and play.

The School – “Is He Really Coming Home”: mp3

(Loveless Unbeliever is due in May on Madrid-based Elefant Records; you can stream it on Spanish site Deezer; update: and apparently is out now via import.)

Photo by David Greenwald

Coachella 2010: Sights + Sounds; Day 1; Day 2; Day 3.

First Look: Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti – Before Today.

Videos/MP3s: Harlem Shakes – “Strictly Game”; The Pass – “Colors”.

Bootlegs: Ryan Adams covers “Like a Virgin” and “Last Nite.”

News: The National’s High Violet is streaming on NYTimes.com; We Listen For You launched a podcast; footage emerges of Bill Murray jamming at a friend of mine’s SXSW party; The Wrens are recording a new album in earnest.

Deeper Into Movies: Kubrick’s The Shining.

More: News + Links | The Week in Rawk

My opinionated friends at We Listen For You are starting a podcast and nonsensically asking people to sign up by e-mail. So e-mail welistenforyoublog@gmail.com with the subject “WLFY Radio” and you should be getting a carrier pigeon to your MacBook any minute now. Update: They’ve moved it to Facebook.

In the short while between the release of the clip for “Strictly Game,” Harlem Shake’s first and only official music video for Technicolor Health, and the band’s untimely dissolution, I somehow missed the chance to post it. I’m remedying that now. The video’s an extremely clever homage to the fan-made photo montages that litter YouTube — you’ll notice the band blinking in the shots. How it didn’t go viral is beyond me, but then again, I could say that about the band, too.

Harlem Shakes – “Strictly Game”: mp3

More: Harlem Shakes | Videos

The National’s thoroughly excellent High Violet is now streaming on the New York Times‘ Web site, which also carries a gushing five-(web)-page spread on the slow-burning Brooklyn band. Has the Old Grey Lady ever done a full album stream premiere, much less one with this much cachet and anticipation attached? Either way, it’s impressive, and couldn’t have happened to a more deserving band. (Update: They’re on the front page of NYTimes.com. Wow.) Read the rest of this entry »

“Colors” is the first clip for the first single from The Pass’ first EP. A lot of firsts, but the band — a basement-bound, Kentucky take on Phoenix’s neon lovers’ rock — doesn’t need much of an introduction. You go forward, the video goes backward, and on the dance floor we will meet. (via We Listen For You)

The Pass – “Colors”: mp3

(The Colors EP is out now on sonaBLAST! Records)

More: New Music | 2010 Album Release Calendar

Warner Bros.

The deeper I burrow myself into the Kubrick oeuvre, the harder it seems to look at the rest of film — the entire art form! — the same way again. The Shining might be the best movie I’ve ever seen; it’s certainly the most impressive experience I’ve had in front of a screen for 90+ minutes in at least two years. Some brief thoughts: Jesus Christ, the art direction! Shades of red (well, one purposeful shade: blood-red) permeate the film, from the hotel lobby’s pillars to Jack’s (Jack Nicholson) jacket. It’s aided, of course, by bone-white and coffin-brown. The cinematography: slow and deliberate, like a hovering ghost — always moving over your shoulder, wide-angled but not quite omniscient. One can see where Sam Raimi’s rush-camera shots for The Evil Dead, released just a year later, originated. The wide lenses turn the hotel’s long hallways and spacious rooms as claustrophobic as a janitor’s closet. The music: half the raw dread of dissonant strings and white noise, the other the scare-baiting of shrieks of doomed melody. And then the acting, my God: Jack Nicholson opens the movie with the kind of manic delight that makes you wonder if he’s just fucking with you (a style notably repurposed, particularly in the Spider-Man trilogy, by James Franco) and then, as he turns monstrous, makes you realize he’s not. Frame for frame, The Shining is on every level such a tour de force that it makes even the most labored-over competitor seem like an afternoon’s scribblings. All that, and scarier than hell.

Previously: Deeper Into Movies: Dr. Strangelove (1964)
More: Deeper Into Movies | Film + Television