Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin slept on my floor once. I begged them to teach me the chords to “Pangea,” a track from their then-fresh debut album. We played some other songs that night (there was a glorious Radiohead sing-a-long) but the band had to pass out before another day in the van. Had we had more time, we might’ve plumbed the archives; instead, I’ll dream of what might have been with Tape Club, a career-spanning collection of demos, outtakes and tracks that didn’t quite make their three studio albums. It’s ramshackle and charmingly amateurish like the best indie-pop, at times revealing the group’s ’90s emo influences and turning to ’50s sweetness at others. Whatever the era, it sounds pretty amazing right now.
(In a Christmas miracle, Tape Club is $8 on Bandcamp; the hard copies arrive Oct. 18 on Polyvinyl)
Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin – “Yellow Missing Signs”: mp3
With its title an inversion of the Beach Boys’ exclamation-bearing 1965 album, twee duo Chalk and Numbers’ latest song doesn’t stop the resemblance there. “Summer Nights (and Summer Days)” pays homage to the band’s cavernous drums and their heartbeat bass (shout-out to Carol Kaye), skipping the Boys’ trademark harmonies in favor of Sable Yong’s double-tracked warble. The pared-down vocals keep the attention on the words, a time-honored tale of a summer romance doomed by the coming change of seasons. By the time the keyboard solo arrives, you’ll be clutching your heart, remembering that last kiss by the campfire.
The new track arrives on the official release of the band’s superb He Knew, out this week on iTunes and beyond. (Though not on Bandcamp, weirdly.)
You may remember Moby’s “Porcelain,” the Play single with the pretty synths and without Gwen Stefani. The cool kids stopped paying attention in a fit of jealousy after he dated Natalie Portman (or in compliance with Eminem’s admonition that “nobody listens to techno,” perhaps), but he has at least one super-fan: Washed Out’s Ernest Greene, whose “Eyes Be Closed” plays like a slow-motion write-around that tries desperately to avoid “Porcelain’s” superior melodic elements. (And the hi-def production is significantly less charming than the bedroom grooves of his early work from last week or whatever, but I digress.) It doesn’t make for a great mash-up, but you can compare ‘em after the jump. Am I and the Gorilla Vs. Bear commentariat wrong? Let me know. Oh, and “Porcelain”: still a jam.
One icon covers another. Maybe Steve will play guitar on the next Callahan record and complete the circle. He and the Jicks play Amoeba tonight; his as-good-as-can-be-expected Beck-produced new album, Mirror Traffic drops today as well. [Via TwentyFourBit]
Here are my L.A. concert recommendations, short and sweet, for the week. Only things I actually would like to see. On days with multiple listings, they’re in descending order of priority. Click below to add the ongoing calendar to your Google Calendar, iCal, etc. Read the rest of this entry »
Like a blue-chip stock, the music of Beirut is dependable without much room for growth. Listening to the band’s latest, The Rip Tide, one gets the feeling Zach Condon’s songs are unlikely to ever step left of the middle of indie-rock’s Starbucks-bound road. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course; somebody has to be the genre’s Norah Jones. But the new album does offer one stand-out: “East Harlem,” a strident piano-pop cut that’s colored in by gently clacking drums, a sub-Sufjan “triumphant” horn section and guitar (ukelele?) sounds so ramshackle-quirky, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Zooey Deschanel or Winnie-the-Pooh strumming along in the music video. Yet the combined cliches make for a startlingly fresh recipe — and the only song on the record that doesn’t make me wonder why I’m not listening to Jens Lekman instead.
Here’s a glorious hour of Radiohead playing their still pretty amazing The King of Limbs, on YouTube for what the band calls “a limited time.” Please tour, fellas!
Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin slept on my floor once. I begged them to teach me the chords to “Pangea,” a track from their then-fresh debut album. We played some other songs that night (there was a glorious Radiohead sing-a-long) but the band had to pass out before another day in the van. Had we had more time, we might’ve plumbed the archives; instead, I’ll dream of what might have been with Tape Club, a career-spanning collection of demos, outtakes and tracks that didn’t quite make their three studio albums. It’s ramshackle and charmingly amateurish like the best indie-pop, at times revealing the group’s ’90s emo influences and turning to ’50s sweetness at others. Whatever the era, it sounds pretty amazing right now.
With its title an inversion of the Beach Boys’ exclamation-bearing 1965 album, twee duo Chalk and Numbers’ latest song doesn’t stop the resemblance there. “Summer Nights (and Summer Days)” pays homage to the band’s cavernous drums and their heartbeat bass (shout-out to Carol Kaye), skipping the Boys’ trademark harmonies in favor of Sable Yong’s double-tracked warble. The pared-down vocals keep the attention on the words, a time-honored tale of a summer romance doomed by the coming change of seasons. By the time the keyboard solo arrives, you’ll be clutching your heart, remembering that last kiss by the campfire. 
