SXSW has come and gone, but if you want to relive some particular highlights without having to wade through the digital pages upon pages of music blog coverage all around the Internets, just check out the very awesome and high quality performance vids of great bands like Malachai (playing live for the very first time in the states), Shearwater (one of the most powerful live bands around today), Holy Fuck (with two never-before-recorded songs from their upcoming full-length), and more over at the Minneapolis college radio station Radio K’s Vimeo page. Sure when I worked there during college I had to pay for my own wristband, plane ticket, and didn’t get exclusive private performances of my favorite bands at a nearby Austin studio, but I’m not bitter or anything. I’m glad the station’s getting better and better access every year that my youth slowly slips out of my aging hands more and more. (Runs away bawling.)
-Chris Polley
I’m really not trying to only post news stories on Hall and Oates, although maybe I should because they are THE BOMB. But dreamy duo The Bird and the Bee released a new album last week called Interpreting the Masters, Vol. 1 (A Tribute to Daryl Hall and John Oates). The album consists of eight covers of classic Hall & Oates’ songs like “Maneater” (with Shirley Manson on backing vocals) and “Rich Girl” plus one original track called “Heard It on the Radio.” The Bird and the Bee performed the album live on March 5th at the El Rey in Los Angeles, and judging from the YouTube videos it might be the last time in a while considering it looks like Inara George’s baby is about to fall out upon a sneeze.
“She’s Gone” (one of favorites of all time by the way) performing with the ACTUAL John Oates!!!!
Since I’m a fan of both Hall & Oates and The Bird and the Bee I think this is a good and fun idea. They didn’t really do anything special with the original songs, but it’s pretty hard to improve on perfection I suppose.
-Felicia
The phenomenon that is Lady Gaga just passed another strange and unprecedented milestone. Not only did Lady Gaga tie Mariah Carey for the highest amount of number of one radio singles (6), she did it in the span of 15 months where it took Carey 12 years (Based on the Nielsen Radioplay Chart which started in 1992). Gaga’s song with Beyonce, “Telephone,” put them both in top spot with 6 number one records each. It took Beyonce 7 years to reach this milestone. Gaga’s first number one single, “Just Dance,” was released in January of 2009, and since then she has racked up 5 more number one records. Lady Gaga has gone beyond being popular. She has become a true superstar within the matter of a year. Part of her rapid rise in popularity is rooted in Lady Gaga’s total acceptance of fame and the spectacle that surrounds it. In this way, she is different than a Beyonce or Mariah Carey. For Gaga, it is all one big show. Every appearance is a performance. Lady Gaga has so much appeal across so many different audiences, she could become perpetually popular much in the same way Madonna rose to icon status in the 1980’s and 1990’s.
-Daniel Wipert
Somehow, sometimes I end up the last one to hear about something I should totally be up on from the beginning. It happens to the best of us (and me) all the time. This time, all I really needed to hear to get me excited was two names: Ben Folds and Nick Hornby. The former has maybe struggled to maintain his level of songwriting since the end of Ben Folds Five, but is still too awesome for words. Which is where the latter comes in: Nick Hornby is a terrific author, and very conscious of music. So it makes perfect sense that, in a new project tentatively titled Picture Window, Hornby will be writing lyrics to an album with music and vocals by Ben Folds. A track, entitled “Levi Johnston’s Blues,” has already been leaked. I haven’t heard it. I will very soon, I’m sure. But the recording is apparently finished, and now the album is set for a September release. No doubt, we here at AudioSuede will review the hell out of it when it gets here.
-Christian Hagen
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There are no albums up for OMD review this week.
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Here’s our Weekly Playlist!
Felicia – I went to The Temper Trap show on a whim last week due to an extra ticket a friend had. I was interested in going but I wasn’t about to break my back over it. I knew I was a fan of their hits, “Sweet Disposition,” best known as the 500 Days of Summer song and “Fader,” but I wasn’t sure about the rest of their music. Their live show was impressive though with lead singer Dougie Mandagi giving off hints of Aaron Neville at times, but in a not lame way. One of the standouts on their 2009 album Conditions for me was “Love Lost.”
Dan – Casiokids “Finn Bikkjen”
I know next to nothing about this band from Norway. All I know is that I have listened to this song about once a day for the last three weeks. It never gets old and it has a great mood to it. Why are the Scandinavians so good at this stuff?
Baxtor “Proof”
I came across this song after reading about Baxter on the Binary Entertainment blog. I am excited to see an underground scene developing across the world that centers on synth pop. It’s a strange concept but dudes are making really amazing synth pop songs in basements all over the world right now… Baxter is jamming in Helsinki, Finland.
Chris P. – “Swim Until You Can’t See Land” has been stuck in my head since I first heard it in December: true story. Frightened Rabbit’s been in the spotlight for a while now with their even more prettily produced sophomore effort The WInter of Mixed Drinks, and while they’re not necessarily doing anything fantastically unique, I think it’s deserved. They might be a tad saccharine, but their songs, especially this interminably catchy single, always sound honest and earned, never mechanical or pure formula, though certainly that helps bend the heartstrings sometimes.
“Over The Horizon” by bedroom electronica/neo-classical mainstay Akira Kosemura tells a similar story but with far less pomp and circumstance. It seems very simple the way he circumvents the heady cerebral connotation of his genre and heads straight for the heart with his minimal constructions of loops and keyboards, but after multiple listens it becomes apparent that the man, as meticulous as he may be, really chooses every sparse nuance with emotion as his primary consideration, not how smart it will sound or how intelligent it may be conceived. And that makes him eternally a cut above his peers. Check out the entirety of his new record, Grassland, for proof.
Christian – You, like me, might know The Heavy’s “How you Like Me Now?” from car commercials, but, after a pleasant experience in a local record store, I’m sold on this band. I know next to nothing about them beyond the songs I heard shuffling around to see if any idiot had pawned their Bowie collection (you never know, right?), but I’m going to be looking for a lot more from them very soon.
I thought it would be nice to close out this week’s playlist with a classic Jeff Buckley b-side, released as the final track on the Grace (Legacy Edition) disc. If you ask me, it’s a much better closing track than “Dream Brother.”