Free Concerts @ NPR

Check this out. NPR is hosting a bunch of streamed concerts on their website for free. The sound quality is good. You need RealPlayer. Artists featured: Interpol, Sigur Ros, White Stripes, Bloc Party, Wilco, My Morning Jacket, Kings of Leon, Secret Machines, and more. Check it out.

Spoon"I Turn My Camera On" (John McEntire remix)

This is a great track. It kicks off with some backwards, loopy effects, but it really doesn't stray far from the original disco-era Stones feel. Some Royksopp-inspired bleepy synths are strewn about, and there's some extra, subtle percussion added. Mostly the song gets a nice smoothed-out treatment, and gets extended out past the six minute mark with some dirty, filtered, loopy bits tacked onto the end for good measure. This is a really nice remix.

Keane"Goodbye Yellow Brick Road"

Yeah, yeah, laugh all you want. I like Keane. I bought this track for 99 cents from iTunes and the money goes to charity. It's off the HELP compilation album. This track is a simple, beautiful rendition of the classic Elton John tune. (And yeah, I doctored that photo so that it looks like the cover of Fun House just to piss off all you hard-ass, Stooges-loving, Keane-hating tough guys.)

LadytronWitching Hour

So a few weeks ago I was kicking around on iTunes, and just for the hell of it, I listened to some clips from the new Ladytron album, Witching Hour. I was pleasantly surprised. So I downloaded the whole album. And then, "pleasantly surprised" gave way to blown away. Ladytron has delivered a vision of the future of guitar-based music. Not since Radiohead's OK Computer, or Primal Scream's XTRMNTR has such a guitar-driven record hit me in the gut and brain with such awe-inspiring force. This album sounds like nothing else out there. Like all great music, it does draw from previously laid blueprints. New Order, Sonic Youth, Neu!, Lush, and Radiohead spring to mind. But Ladytron has carved out a unique, 21st century sound for themselves and they have therefore arrived at a place where few bands get to. This album is truly a vision of the future. The right balance of layered guitars, synths, beats, live drums, everything... delivered with ghostly vocal firepower. I am convinced this album will stand the test of time. I can confidently say that it is a true classic.

Stereo MC'sParadise

A few weeks ago, I picked up the new Stereo MC's album, Paradise. It is outstanding! Totally on par with their early 90's output. Seriously... close your eyes and it's 1992. And that's a good thing. Tight grooves, brilliant melodies... these guys know how to make some seriously high quality music. This album is a must have for catchy beat lovers. Everything is just right. You'll have songs from this album swirling around in your head for days. These guys always have one foot in the past, one foot in the future... as it should be. Set it off!

Happy Mondays"Playground Superstar"

The new Happy Mondays single, "Playground Superstar" kicks ass. Horns, harmonicas, fuzz bass, and of course, Shaun Ryder's anthemic vocal blasts of lyrical drugginess. Pure rock n' roll.

Serena Maneesh

Just getting around to absorbing Serena Maneesh's self-titled disc. Someone is finally successfully picking up where MBV left off nearly 15 years ago. For those who would say that these guys sound too much like MBV, I say that you are not listening with open ears. It's not MBV's fault that they created a genre. And it's not Serena Maneesh's fault that they know how to make good music. And good music is good music. Period.

A Northern Soul

Richard Ashcroft has a new album coming soon. If you're a fan, you should be excited. Here's what he told XFM:

“It’s sounding shit hot,” he explained. “I’m pleased with it. It’s got a good mix to it: there’s some good raw rock ‘n’ roll on it, some moments of beauty and lushness, but there’re some tracks that are pretty raw, pretty heavy.

“And I think, lyrically, for me it’s hitting the spot,” he continued. “There’s a lot of different topics and things I’m going into, and for a time I was thinking about that very English way of writing tunes back from ’65 and ’66. The Stones, The Beatles, [all the songs] have a bit of Dylan twisted-ness in the sound, but they retain an Englishness to them.”

“That’s what I wanna be, a great English songwriter. I don’t want to be anything else, I realise that now. That’s my job, that’s my duty, to write tunes, not to fuck around.”