New Stuff!

              

Hey, that’s pretty funny – Dave Matthews Band and Black Sabbath together!  Ahem.  OK, we got some new stuff from various sources and without making any value judgements, thought we’d present to you (for a limited time only!). UPDATE: Sorry, time’s up – links removed.

The Dave Matthews Band has Big Whiskey and the Groogrux King coming out on June 2.  The album is named after and dedicated to band member Leroi Moore, who died last August.

MP3: “Funny How It Is” by the Dave Matthews Band

Heaven and Hell is the perfectly legal name for the band formerly known as Black Sabbath, led by the perfectly venerable Ronnie James Dio.  Their newest, The Devil You Know, comes out April 28 and the first single is titled, appropriately, “Bible Black.”

MP3: “Bible Black” by Heaven and Hell

No need to further introduce Bob Dylan – his 46th album is titled Together Through Life, and “Beyond Here Lies Nothin’ ” is the first single.  Check out that cool guitar solo from Mike Campbell (Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers).  This is an unusual Dylan album in that all of the songs here were co-written: Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter collaborated on the words for nine of the 10 songs while “My Wife’s Home Town” co-credits long-dead bluesman Willie Dixon.  Y0u can read more about that here.

MP3: “Beyond Here Lies Nothin’ ” by Bob Dylan

Death Cab For Cutie has a new EP, The Open Door, out now.   It includes five tracks, with four previously unreleased songs and a demo version of “Talking Bird” from the 2008 studio album Narrow Stairs.

MP3: “My Mirror Speaks (EP version)” by Death Cab For Cutie

Fastball is an Austin-based unit that had a hit a long time ago with “The Way.”  Miles Zuniga and Co. are back, with the new album Little White Lies, out now.  The title track is a good sample of their catchy power pop.

MP3: “Little White Lies” by Fastball

Sonic Youth just joined Matador Records, and the new album The Eternal is coming June 9.  “Sacred Trickster” is a Kim Gordon tune that’s the leadoff song and first single.

MP3: “Sacred Trickster” by Sonic Youth

“I Heard It On T.V.” – Finding New Music On the Tube

In 1999, I flipped on HBO to watch a new show called “The Sopranos.”  The opening sequence featured Tony Soprano driving through New Jersey to a very cool tune that I had never heard before. After digging around, I found out it was called “Woke Up This Morning” by Alabama 3. Who? 

In one of the last scenes of Jerry Maguire, Tom Cruise is running through what appears to be an airport to get home and here the now famous phrase “you had me from hello.” I always loved the haunting song in that scene, but never knew what it was. Then earlier this year I was watching the Showtime show “Californication,” starring David Duchovny. It’s the saga of a down-and-out writer who gets laid more than one man probably should.  One of the episodes featured the song.  I went to the website and found out it was “Through the Hill” by Harold Budd and Andy Partrigde of XTC. Who knew?  

 

30 Days Out (From Christmas): Happy New Year!

Day 30 – Well, here we are: 30 days and about 400 Christmas songs later, we’re hurtling headlong into a brand new year.  We really enjoyed the holiday music, hope you did too.  So we’re going to leave you with a handful of tunes to put it between the ditches by (please make sure you do that on New Year’s Eve) and even though there are a few more days to go before 2009, we are going to take this opportunity to wish you a Happy New Year.  Tomorrow we will return to our regularly scheduled nonsense.  Alka Seltzer, anyone?

MP3:  “My Dear Acquaintance (A Happy New Year)” by Regina Spektor

MP3: “Auld Lang Syne” by the Beach Boys

MP3: “Happy New Year” by Abba

MP3: “New Year’s Resolution” by Otis Redding and Carla Thomas

MP3: “What Are You Doing On New Year’s Eve” by King Curtis

MP3: “Happy New Year, Baby” by Johnny Otis & His Orchestra

MP3: “Happy New Year/Auld Lang Syne” by the Small Stars

MP3: “The New Year” by Death Cab For Cutie

MP3: “New Year’s Day” by U2

MP3: “A Totally New Year” by Matt Pryor

MP3: “In The New Year” by the Walkmen

MP3: “The Little Drummer Boy/Silent Night/Auld Lang Syne” by Jimi Hendrix

Review: Death Cab & Portishead

     

This is going to sound like sacrilege, but Seattle’s indie-rock darlings Death Cab For Cutie are probably the closest thing we have today to the Beatles.  OK, OK, hear me out: they’re ultra-melodic, every one of their albums has at least two or three catchy tunes that can easily hook listeners and radio programmers if radio was still doing that kind of thing.  And lead singer Ben Gibbard has an icewater-clear voice that plants the songs’ hooks even deeper into your skin.  And, the instrumentation is always very tasteful and rarely over the top. 

So we have Narrow Stairs, the group’s sixth album where right out of the box all of these strengths come into play.  But at the end of opening song “Bixby Canyon Bridge” there’s a bit of dissonance that would suggest some darker moods to come.  With the next song, they come in a flood: “I Will Possess Your Heart” takes its time to unfold into a creepy stalker’s monologue, while the lyrics to “No Sunlight” (check the title) belie the song’s uptempo, poppy arrangement.  Most of the songs are right at the edge of the dead end, just this side of despairing, but they’re dressed up with DCFC’s jangly guitars and big beats.  Narrow Stairs is a great sunny-day, driving-with-the-top-down soundtrack for those who don’t listen too closely to the lyrics.

If that dark mood is your thing, then you’ll relish Third, the new one from UK trip-hoppers Portishead which is apparently their first album in more than a decade.   Try as I might, I couldn’t get too excited about the mechanical beats and electronic drone of “The Rip” and “We Carry On,” which is way too long anyway.  Portishead mixes it up, though – “Deep Water” skips along on a gently strummed ukelele while lead singer Beth Gibbons assumes an old-timey warble that’s utterly charming.   After that interlude, the samples and scratches kick in again with the abrasive “Machine Gun.”  Here we have the new Portishead – moody, icy and capable of leaving one more than little cold.

MP3: No Sunlight by Death Cab For Cutie

MP3: The Rip by Portishead

Death Cab For Cutie official website

Portishead official website