The A.V. Club - Music

Playlisted: Archie Powell & The Exports

Marcus Gilmer — Tue, 15 May 2012 23:55:00 -0500

We get a lot of records sent to us here at The A.V. Club. Fortunately, we end up liking some of them. In Playlisted, we share our latest recommendations.

Album: Great Ideas In Action by Archie Powell & The Exports (out now on Good Land Records)

Press play if you like: The Features, Elvis Costello And The Attractions, guitar-driven power-pop

Some background: With an EP and now two LPs under their belts, Chicago’s Archie Powell & The Exports are taking grander strides to achieve success on a larger stage. While the band’s previous LP, 2010’s Skip Work, felt featherweight at times, Great Ideas sounds powerful, with cranked-up electric guitars and heftier production courtesy of Milwaukee-based producer Justin Perkins. “I Need Supervision” starts quietly before a swirling organ and shimmering guitars send the song soaring into a classic pop “na na na” refrain. “Job Fair” begins life as a ...

Newswire: Bret Michaels settles lawsuit with the Tony Awards and CBS over that one time he got hit in the head on national television

Steven Hyden — Tue, 15 May 2012 11:18:00 -0500

Think back to 2009—or roughly five score and several years ago in award-show time—when Poison was invited to perform at the Tony Awards for some reason, and lead singer Bret Michaels was hit in the head by a lowered set piece. (Here's the video to help jog your memory.) Everybody had a good laugh at Michaels' expense, including host Neil Patrick Harris, who made an easy but effective "head-banging" quip in the immediate aftermath. But just as every rose has its thorn, every hilarious pratfall has real-life consequences: Just a year after the Tonys incident, Michaels suffered a life-threatening brain hemorrhage that he claims was at least partially caused by being bonked on the head. Michaels has now settled a lawsuit filed last year against the Tonys and CBS claiming negligence for the accident, as well as blaming the network for airing Michaels' tumble. Details of the ...

Great Job, Internet!: Kids make shot-for-shot remake of Beastie Boys "Sabotage" video, are adorable

Marah Eakin — Tue, 15 May 2012 11:15:00 -0500

As far as cute stuff on the Internet goes, it's hard to beat videos of dogs doing tricks set to the Mission: Impossible theme song. Three kids in Portland have managed to outdo that, though, with their moving, hilarious tribute to The Beastie Boys' late Adam Yauch. Filmmaker James Winters recruited his two sons and nephews to strap on wigs, fake mustaches, and ill-knotted ties in a shot-for-shot remake of The Beastie Boys' super-memorable video "Sabotage." The results are simultaneously bad-ass and adorable, as three little kids struggle to climb over chain-link fences and chase down bad guys. Some of the effects were a little out of the group's reach, like the car explosion, but they did manage to pull off the whole "throw a dummy off a rooftop" trick with flair. The whole thing comes off as a fitting and loving tribute to Yauch, who came up ...

MusicalWork Review: Beach House: Bloom

David Greenwald — Tue, 15 May 2012 00:05:00 -0500

Beach House’s 2010 breakthrough Teen Dream found Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally replacing the peeling floral wallpaper of a pair of bedroom releases with metallic hues and sharp lines. In many respects, Teen Dream was the Baltimore duo’s debut album, the record that revealed its vision as fully formed. Like all great sequels, Bloom takes what worked before and intensifies it, lining up humming synthesizers, luminous guitar tones, and intricate human and digital percussion to create an even more alluring package. Of the numerous bands now revisiting the neon ’80s, Beach House—with Chris Coady, returning on production duties—deserves credit for constructing the most unmistakable sonic identity.

But Bloom has more to offer than textural lushness. “The Hours” shifts with ease from a driving riff to strolling arpeggios, while “New Year” obscures Legrand’s desirous lyrics with a mist of shoegaze guitars. “Troublemaker” reinvigorates the band’s ...

MusicalWork Review: Tenacious D: Rize Of The Fenix

Steven Hyden — Tue, 15 May 2012 00:04:00 -0500

If 2006’s Tenacious D In The Pick Of Destiny hadn’t bombed at the box office, Jack Black and Kyle Gass would’ve had to invent some other setback to rise (or rize) from on the new Rize Of The Fenix. Black acknowledges the failure of Destiny right in the album’s opening line, as well as the not-all-that-exaggerated assumption that the movie finished off Tenacious D for good. But rather than dwell on Jack and Rage Kage’s bad fortune, Rize posits The Pick Of The Destiny as motivation for Tenacious D to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that it is still the best rock ’n’ roll band on the planet—or any other planet for that matter. Only crushing failure can motivate that level of blinding hubris, and it puts Tenacious D on a furious quest that brings out its best on Rize.

Let’s ...

MusicalWork Review: Cornershop: Urban Turban: The Singhles Club

Noel Murray — Tue, 15 May 2012 00:03:00 -0500

After a long dormant period, Cornershop has lately been making up for lost time by chain-releasing albums. First came 2009’s Judy Sucks A Lemon For Breakfast, which played like a direct sequel to 2002’s beat-driven Handcream For A Generation; and then Cornershop And The Double-O Groove Of, which was the band’s most Punjabi-heavy album yet. Now Urban Turban: The Singhles Club splits the difference, bringing together an assortment of Cornershop’s recent one-offs and collaborations, which as assembled feel a lot like leftovers from the previous two records. Once Cornershop gets past the funny opening song “What Did The Hippie Have In His Bag?”—which is little more than a list of wacky items, accompanied by a children’s chorus and a peppy dance track that sounds similar to Cornershop classics “Staging The Plaguing Of The Raised Platform” and “Sleep On The Left Side”—Urban Turban ventures ...

MusicalWork Review: Killer Mike: R.A.P. Music

Evan Rytlewski — Tue, 15 May 2012 00:02:00 -0500

It’s a sign of how deeply the battle mindset is ingrained in hip-hop that, even decades removed from the heyday of rap battles, listeners consider guest spots not in terms of collaboration but competition. Fans eagerly rank verses and opine on which rapper topped another—a silly preoccupation, given that rappers who share tracks are working together, not against each other. Nonetheless, Killer Mike surely must have known he was making a statement by opening his sixth record, R.A.P. Music, with features from two of the longest reigning kings of the South, Bun B and T.I. On “Big Beast,” each veteran delivers 16 strong, purposeful bars that stand among their best in recent memory, and each is upstaged—and out-shouted—by their host, who fumes his way through two walloping, hell-raising verses.

Killer Mike hasn’t been shy about billing R.A.P. Music as his ...

MusicalWork Review: Hot Water Music: Exister

Jason Heller — Tue, 15 May 2012 00:01:00 -0500

When Hot Water Music’s debut, Finding The Rhythms, came out in 1995, it already sounded familiar. On one hand, the Florida quartet drew from Jawbreaker, Leatherface, and other gruff pop-punk bands of the era; on the other, HWM amplified its simple songs with the wiry, post-hardcore dynamics of Fugazi. That formula became a huge influence on the mainstream emo of the ’00s, and with that wave mostly past, a new generation of gritty-yet-catchy punk groups have picked up HWM’s torch. HWM itself, though, hasn’t released an album since 2004’s solid The New What Next. Singer-guitarist Chuck Ragan has been concentrating on a folkie solo career, and the remaining members teamed up in the short-lived, Foo Fighters-leaning The Draft. Exister is HWM’s comeback—and while it sticks to the familiar elements that made the band so beloved in the first place, it finds far less inspiration ...

MusicalWork Review: Sleep: Dopesmoker

John Semley — Tue, 15 May 2012 00:00:00 -0500

In or out of metal’s seedy musical ghetto, there are few records as epically conceived or grandly ambitious as Sleep’s Dopesmoker. A single-track, hour-plus song about weed composed over four years, it is an enduring curiosity that has been released and re-released several times in the past 13 years, on bootlegs and official albums. The first time was in 1999, with a cut-down, remixed version called Jerusalem that bastardized the record’s conceptual scale by shearing it into nine separate tracks. Then in 2003, Tee Pee Records released a version of Dopesmoker that Sleep bassist-vocalist Al Cisneros faintly hailed as being the “closest” to the song the band originally conceived. Now Southern Lord Records has procured the original studio masters and prepped another authorized release heralded as “a true representation of Sleep’s hour-long Weedian chronicle.”

Formed in 1990 in San Jose, Sleep made a name for itself ...

A.V. Undercover 2012: Screaming Females cover Sheryl Crow

Josh Modell — Tue, 15 May 2012 00:00:00 -0500

Before you get upset, like you did at And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead, you should know this: Screaming Females understood the rules of A.V. Undercover. We asked the New Jersey band if they wanted to participate and showed them the list of remaining songs. They politely declined, for the very good reason that they didn't think they could tackle any of them properly, having just started a tour. They did, however, offer up "If It Makes You Happy," which they'd already been playing live. Since we damn near included a Sheryl Crow song on the list this year, we figured it was fate, so here's this year's second bonus track. Enjoy it very much, please and thank you.

MusicalWork Review: Norah Jones: Little Broken Hearts

Noel Murray — Tue, 15 May 2012 00:00:00 -0500

Norah Jones is the most fascinating boring musician working today. When Jones’ debut album Come Away With Me became a multiplatinum, Grammy-winning sensation, the moment represented something genuinely welcome: the triumph of the simple over the processed and the packaged. And Jones has continued to sell remarkably well, given that her kind of music is both difficult to classify and unlike almost anything else on top of the charts. Jones is ostensibly a rootsy singer-songwriter who works largely with jazz musicians, and over the course of her five albums she’s resisted any forced contemporizing or shotgun marriages with big-time hit-makers. Her 2009 record The Fall has a slightly rockier edge, and her latest, Little Broken Hearts, is a collaboration with popular producer Danger Mouse, but neither album is a radical break from the relaxed-fit easy-listening of Come Away With Me. It’s an odd phenomenon, really, the way that ...

Newswire: Scott Weiland re-joins Velvet Revolver, but not really

Steven Hyden — Mon, 14 May 2012 14:37:00 -0500

In an interview with ABC News Radio, Scott Weiland announced that he was returning to the band he was kicked out of in 2008, Velvet Revolver, which seemed credible only for its sheer implausibility. After all, we all know revolvers in real-life are the opposite of velvet, so this sort of makes sense, right? Only it doesn't: In another confusing twist, Slash has denied that Weiland is back in the band. “We have no intention of going backwards,” he said in an interview with Minneapolis radio station 93x. Hm, so I guess we should go back to forgetting that Velvet Revolver ever existed? [via Consequence Of Sound]

Newswire: Jay-Z is putting together his own music festival

Sean O'Neal — Mon, 14 May 2012 14:24:00 -0500

Addressing one of the few remaining enterprises without his name on it, Jay-Z will curate and headline a two-day music festival in Philadelphia this September 1 and 2, personally selecting a lineup of over 20 musical acts to perform with him. As of now, the question of who those acts will be and how many of them will just be Memphis Bleek wearing different outfits has yet to be answered, though there are a few details that have emerged: Tickets go on sale May 23, it will be called the Budweiser Made In America Music Festival (which evokes more of a Bachman Turner Overdrive vibe than Jay-Z, but whatever), and some proceeds will go to benefit the United Way. If you're so inclined, you can watch a rather dull video of the festival's announcement below, wherein Jay-Z takes the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art made famous ...

Stream: JBM's Stray Ashes

Steven Hyden — Mon, 14 May 2012 12:00:00 -0500

Canadian singer-songwriter Jesse Marchant, who goes by the name JBM, will release his haunted and very moving second album, Stray Ashes, next week. Marchant has garnered comparisons to Jim James of My Morning Jacket and Justin Vernon of Bon Iver, but Stray Ashes creates its own mood as it slowly unfolds. Before the record comes out, The A.V. Club is streaming it exclusively below.

Newswire: R.I.P. Donald "Duck" Dunn of Booker T. And The MGs

Steven Hyden — Mon, 14 May 2012 10:48:00 -0500

As a member of Booker T. And The MGs, Donald "Duck" Dunn played with one of the best bands in rock, soul, and plain old human history. As the band's bassist, he was buried way down deep in a groove made famous by singers like Otis Redding, Sam And Dave, Wilson Pickett, and countless other greats of the '60s and '70s. Dunn was the one who made songs, and then millions of people, move. This perpetual forward motion was eloquent, undeniable, and sexy, but it was not inexhaustible. After playing two shows at the Blue Note Night Club in Tokyo, Japan, with his old MGs bandmate Steve Cropper once again at his side, Dunn retired to bed late Saturday night and never woke up Sunday morning. He was 70.

Booker T. And The MGs wasn't just as studio band, like Motown's Funk Brothers or Phil Spector's ...

Newswire: Now there will be a Freddie Mercury hologram after all

Steven Hyden — Mon, 14 May 2012 09:09:00 -0500

Last month, Queen was among the bands with an inconveniently deceased lead singer that was asked the "to hologram or not hologram" question in the wake of Faux-pac's historic appearance at Coachella. "I don't think I want to," drummer Roger Taylor told Billboard. " Were somebody (else) to use a hologram of Freddie, I would have no objection... It just doesn't sit too well with me. I don't want to appear with a hologram of my dear friend. It's the real one or no hologram for me. But I think it's an amazing effect when used properly—obviously in darkness."

At the time, it was assumed that the most important part of this quote was, "I don't want to appear with a hologram of my dear friend," which was taken as a dismissal of a "Fraud-ie" Mercury scenario. But, in fact, the crucial section ...

Newswire: New Animal Collective album, Centipede Hz, due Sept. 4

Steven Hyden — Mon, 14 May 2012 08:37:00 -0500

Animal Collective has announced its first album in three years, Centipede Hz, in an appropriately alienating way, via a screechy, fuzzy video that appears to flash song titles amid a mostly incomprehensible din. It's the sort of gesture that people are bound to find either brilliant and exhilarating or tiresome and self-indulgent. Either way, the record will be out Sept. 4, and you can see the full tracklist below. (Neither of the songs that Animal Collective recently debuted online are on the record.)

1. Moonjock
2. Today's Supernatural
3. Rosie Oh
4. Applesauce
5. Wide Eyed
6. Father Time
7. New Town Burnout
8. Monkey Riches
9. Mercury Man
10. Pulleys
11. Amanita

MusicalWork Review: Best Coast: The Only Place

Evan Rytlewski — Mon, 14 May 2012 00:00:00 -0500

Best Coast’s sophomore album, The Only Place, is a more mature effort from the California nostalgia-pop duo, but it would almost have to be. On the group’s 2010 debut, Crazy For You, beach brat Bethany Cosentino, then in her early 20s but writing much younger, sang of wasted days spent pining for boys and smoking pot. And save for one stupefying lyric about wishing her cat could talk—a line that her detractors will surely never let her live down—that was just about all she sang about, on song after song. Calling Crazy For You a song cycle about heartache, as some critics charitably described it, was like praising The Tenth Garfield Treasury as a nuanced character study of a gluttonous cat. Even at just over a half hour, it was exhaustingly repetitive, offering only the most minor variations on its very basic theme.

“I don’t ...

Newswire: Whitney Houston's family finally ready to move on and exploit her death for a reality show

Sean O'Neal — Fri, 11 May 2012 17:54:00 -0500

The friends and family that Whitney Houston left behind have already blazed right through the five stages of grief in record time, moving on to the sixth, far more modern stage that Elisabeth Kübler-Ross forgot to add because she was dowdy and poor. Today Lifetime announced that the clan is readying itself for The Houston Family Chronicles, a new reality show revolving around the late singer's family and friends that will find them learning to pick up the pieces and soldier on alone as the children of our future, showing the world all the beauty that they possess inside that might be worth selling to advertisers. This intimate process of healing will, as a total bonus, also make for a fine platform to nurture daughter Bobbi Kristina's own entertainment career, in much the same way that Being Bobby Brown did for her mother.

According to the official ...

Newswire: Hear "Don't Let Me Fall Behind," a song from Jukebox The Ghost's new album, Safe Travels

Steven Hyden — Fri, 11 May 2012 10:11:00 -0500

On June 12, peppy Philadelphia trio Jukebox The Ghost will release its third LP, Safe Travels. We called the group's previous album, 2010's Everything Under The Sun, "remarkably addictive pop," and the new song "Don't Let Me Fall Behind" is another example of Jukebox The Ghost's way with brightly colored, piano-based melody. Check out our exclusive stream of the song below.

Newswire: Arcade Fire and Foo Fighters will back up Mick Jagger on Saturday Night Live

Steven Hyden — Fri, 11 May 2012 09:59:00 -0500

As we reported last week, Mick Jagger is going to be pulling double duty on May 19 as the host and musical guest on Saturday Night Live. But he's not going to do everything himself on the musical side: Arcade Fire and Foo Fighters will be joining him as his backing band. Finally, the deep cuts from SuperHeavy will get the proper live airing that they deserve. [via Pitchfork]

Playlisted: New music we like: Nick Waterhouse

Steven Hyden — Thu, 10 May 2012 23:55:00 -0500

We get a lot of records sent to us here at The A.V. Club. Fortunately, we end up liking some of them. In Playlisted, we share our latest recommendations.

Album: Time’s All Gone by Nick Waterhouse (out now on Innovative Leisure)

Press play if you like: That brief period in the ’50s when rock and R&B were synonymous

Some background: Nick Waterhouse is an L.A.-based singer-songwriter-producer who’s been playing ’50s-inspired R&B and greaser rock ’n’ roll since he was in high school. Not that high school was all that long ago—Waterhouse is only 25, though there’s no discernible trace of music made during his lifetime on Time’s All Gone. Waterhouse bears a passing resemblance to the crop of retro-soul artists who emerged over the last several years. But what separates him from the Sharon Joneses and Mayer Hawthornes trying to ...

Gateways To Geekery: ’90s electronica

Scott Plagenhoef — Thu, 10 May 2012 13:30:00 -0500

Pop culture can be as forbidding as it is inviting, particularly in areas that invite geeky obsession: The more devotion a genre or series or subculture inspires, the easier it is for the uninitiated to feel like they’re on the outside looking in. But geeks aren’t born; they’re made. And sometimes it only takes the right starting point to bring newbies into various intimidatingly vast obsessions. Gateways To Geekery is our regular attempt to help those who want to be enthralled, but aren’t sure where to start. Want advice? Suggest future Gateways To Geekery topics by emailing gateways@theonion.com.

Geek obsession: ’90s electronica

Why it’s daunting: Seemingly created and foisted onto an indifferent American public by major labels and the music press, “electronica” was a catch-all phrase used for album-centric, producer, and DJ-based music in the 1990s. The pseudo-genre’s succession of primarily British ...

Newswire: This limited new Iron & Wine single includes the band's Undercover track

Josh Modell — Wed, 09 May 2012 13:15:00 -0500

It feels great when bands are excited enough by their A.V. Undercover performances to give them an official release. You may have seen the Wye Oak 7" in the past, or the They Might Be Giants compilation that included "Tubthumping." Iron & Wine is the latest outfit to join that illustrious club: Available for pre-order today is the "Two Sides Of George" single, which includes I&W's cover of George Michael's "One More Try" (from their Undercover session) as well as a cover of Little Feat's "Trouble" (by Lowell George, hence the title of the single). The record is limited to 750 copies worldwide, and is available for preorder right here. Below you'll find "One More Try" in all its video glory. Enjoy!

Great Job, Internet!: All of Adam “MCA” Yauch's opening lines from every Beastie Boys song

Marcus Gilmer — Wed, 09 May 2012 12:00:00 -0500

In the five days since he passed away, tributes have been rolling in for the Beastie Boys’ Adam “MCA” Yauch. And rightfully so. Besides the music the band created, Yauch was also an indie filmmaker and a respected human-rights defender. (That the previous sentence could even be typed after the girls-in-cages shenanigans of the License To Ill era is also a testament to the group’s willingness to own up to its youthful ignorance and make amends.) At the center of it all, though, is the music. And MCA’s distinctive rasp was a solid balance to Ad-Rock’s hyperactive yelps and Mike D’s bouncy delivery. Here, then, is a collection of every single opening line by MCA from every Beastie Boys song. It’s maddening in a way; these single lines are a tease, mere glimpses that still manage to hook the listener before the mix moves on ...

Newswire: Licensed To Ill returns to the Billboard Top 20 as Beastie Boys sales skyrocket in the wake of Adam Yauch's death

Steven Hyden — Wed, 09 May 2012 11:27:00 -0500

Ever since the untimely death of Adam Yauch last week, tributes of all kinds have been poring in from all corners of the media and Internet. This has also, not surprisingly, tremendously helped out sales of Beastie Boys albums and songs, which are up an incredible 1,235 percent and 949 percent respectively. Seven different Beastie Boys albums are currently in the Billboard 200 albums chart, with Licensed To Ill ranking highest at No. 18 with 19,000 sold (up 802 percent from the previous week). Solid Gold Hits (at No. 51) and Paul's Boutique (at No. 56) also placed in the top half of the chart.

Song-wise, the biggest seller was "Brass Monkey," which lands at No. 48 with 14,000 downloads, followed by "(You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party!), "No Sleep Till Brooklyn," and "Sabotage." [via Billboard]

Newswire: Tom Gabel of Against Me! comes out as transgender, will eventually be known as Laura Jane Grace

Steven Hyden — Wed, 09 May 2012 09:19:00 -0500

The Florida punk band Against Me! has been defined, until now, by its politically and socially charged songs and lead singer Tom Gabel's gruff vocals. But it's a safe bet that news coming from an upcoming issue of Rolling Stone is going to overshadow everything else about the group. According to a story set to hit newstands this Friday, Gabel plans to start living as a woman with her wife, Heather, under a new name, Laura Jane Grace. While Gabel has dealt with gender dysphoria for years, she is finally set to make a physical transformation, and will soon start taking hormones and undergoing electrolysis treatments.

"I'm going to have embarrassing moments," Gabel tells Rolling Stone, "and that won't be fun. But that's part of what talking to you is about—is hoping people will understand, and hoping they'll be fairly kind."

What this ...

Playlisted: New music we like: Circle

Jason Heller — Tue, 08 May 2012 23:55:00 -0500

We get a lot of records sent to us here at The A.V. Club. Fortunately, we end up liking some of them. In Playlisted, we share our latest recommendations.

Album: Manner by Circle (out now on Hydra Head)

Press play if you like: Hawkwind, Faust, trances, transcendentalism, Finnishness

Some background: Finland’s Circle has been spinning a heady fusion of exploratory rock and hard-edged psychedelia for 20 years. Its latest album, Manner, is a departure—but only in the sense that every Circle album is a departure, mostly from this plane of existence. During its many celestial crusades, Circle has become a cult band that seems to be perennially rediscovered, just about every time it puts out a new album. Then again, it isn’t fishing for fame; there’s a monastic intensity and joyful purity to Circle’s alchemical rock that begs for a certain, shall we ...

Newswire: CBGB now a festival, could reopen in new location

Marcus Gilmer — Tue, 08 May 2012 17:00:00 -0500

It’s been six years since the legendary New York club CBGB shut down, but there’s new life in at least the club’s spirit with the announcement of a four-day festival this July. The New York Times reported today that a group of new investors—including some with ties to the original club—will launch the festival this July, featuring film screenings, panels, and over 300 bands performing across dozens of small clubs in Manhattan and Brooklyn. The music portion of the fest, happening July 5 and 6, will culminate in a large concert at Summerstage in Central Park on July 7. The initial lineup includes, of course, plenty of punk (Rocket From The Tombs, Cro-Mags) but also The Baseball Project, Pains Of Being Pure At Heart, Craig Finn, and Guided By Voices. If the festival seems a bit like SXSW, well, that’s because the organizers have ...

Newswire: Today in ill-timed lawsuits: Beastie Boys sued for copyright infringement

Marcus Gilmer — Tue, 08 May 2012 14:00:00 -0500

Beastie Boys fans continue to mourn the death of Adam “MCA” Yauch, who died last week after a three-year fight with cancer, but not everyone is being quite so respectful. According to AllHipHop, the group has been hit with a new lawsuit by Tuf America for copyright infringement stemming from samples used on the group's first two albums, License to Ill and Paul’s Boutique. The label claims the group used the samples illegally and are continuing to profit off of them thanks to recent reissues. The lawsuit was actually filed in United States District Court for the Southern District of New York on Thursday, May 3, the day before Yauch died, but its timing is still unfortunate, rubbing a bit of salt in the Beasties’ wounds.

Tuf America claims the Beasties allegedly used samples from Trouble Funk’s “Drop the Bomb” on “Hold It Now Hit It,” “The ...