Favorites of 2011

This wasn't the best year for new music from my view.

I promise I'm not sliding into a haze of oldster griping about nothing being good anymore (I'm sure that's coming some time). It's just that little of the new music this year held up to last year's best. Nothing, certainly, approached The National's High Violet, far and away the record of the year for 2010.

For me, the year's best records sound like music's future. Not its past. A lot of indie rock this year has felt far too mired in trying to sound like it was recorded in the '50s. That's fine. Some of those records are enjoyable, but I have a hard time getting past the gimmick of that sound being much more than just that: a nostalgia trip. It sounds neither fresh nor particularly like art. What do those bands sound like outside of the studio?

World's hardest working band, The Black Keys, didn't work hard enough on El Camino

The Black Keys are all work. Perhaps they needed a little more time
 for their latest, El Camino, a good record that sounds a little stale.

Is there a harder working band in all of Rockdom than The Black Keys?

No other serious rock band I know of works at the same pace. The blues/garage duo from Akron have released 7 LPs in the last 10 years. In addition, they recorded the superb Chulahoma EP, produced and recorded the Blackroc record, wrote a record for the late Ike Turner and frontman Dan Auerbach had a solo record that very well could have been another Black Keys album.

That work ethic has certainly paid off. If you had told me in 2003 that The Keys would be headlining the Wells Fargo center in Philadelphia in 8 years, I would have said you were nuts. I liked the band a lot, still do, but I never would have guessed theirs was an arena-filling sound.

Coldplay keeps trying to get those U2 shoes to fit

Cold Play is big. But are they U2 big?
And is that even a fair question?

It's been a while since I've written a word about music. I've been really busy and relatively uninspired by new music -- not a good mix for a hobby blog about music. But I thought I'd take a second here to talk about one album that's now a classic and a second one that is brand new and what they have in common.

Lost a little in the discussion of  seminal grunge and alternative records celebrating 20 years -- from Nirvana's Nevermind to Pearl Jam's Ten -- is the 20th anniversary of another record, this one by a super group and, like R.E.M., one of the bands that, like 'em or not, are really responsible for shaping the sound of rock music for the last 30 years.

Wilco find a bit of that old spark on The Whole Love

Wilco today, and, yes, that's a Saturday Night Live shot.

It's been a long time since Wilco turned the musical world on its head with one of the best rock albums of the last 10 years. 2002's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was an amazing work for a number of reasons. It was the perfect sound for the time. It overturned expectations for a band that had cut its teeth on alt-country and breezy pop, thanks to Jim O'Rourke, whose remix of the material evidently led to a complete remake of the band at the expense of songwriting multi-instrumentalist Jay Bennett. And the band's sound was deemed so revolutionary that its label, Reprise Records, refused to release it. It was all the stuff of a perfect rock legend.

VIDEO Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks -- "No One Is (As I Are Be)"

Found this video for the new Malkmus record. Check it out. Hear that Beck?

Stephen Malkmus keeps pace with Mirror Traffic

Mr. Indie Rock: Stephen Malkmus

I was listening to Mirror Traffic, the brand new solo work of Stephen Malkmus, the 45-year-old frontman of the quintessential '90s indie rock outfit, Pavement, and realized that Malkmus epitomizes my generation's real classic rock.

In the world of serious popular music, where the holy grail is to find that new sound, calling something classic can be tantamount to insult. The term "classic" denotes over-ripe records that have topped radiostation turntables for more than 50 years now. Classic is out-of-date bloozerock. It's "Layla" pumping out of the tattered speakers of a riverside purple van. (Is that freedom rock? Turn it up man!)

That's not what I mean with Malkmus. 

Google Music Beta has a blog: Magnifier

Just came across this: Google Music Beta, a service i'm using all the time now, has a blog with free songs, called Magnifier. If you have Google Music (it's still invite-only, though I think anyone who applies will likely get an invite a couple weeks later). Every day, Magnifier will offer free songs from featured artists.

If you haven't heard My Morning Jacket's new one, head over now and get "Holdin' on to Black Metal" and  "The Day is Coming (live)" right now.

Mister Heavenly finds the strange crossroads of doo wop and indie rock

Kattner, Thorburn and Plummer are Mister Heavenly.

The idea behind Mister Heavenly's Out of Love sounds both preposterous and pompous. The trio -- a veritable indie rock "super group" composed of Man Man's Ryan Kattner,  Island's Nick Thorburn and Modest Mouse drummer Joe Plummer -- has called the effort "doom wop," a dark indie rock record inspired by vocal doo wop bands of the '50s. Sounds nuts, doesn't it?

After my initial reaction -- "holy crap this is weird" -- I found the songs on Out of Love to be much more than intellectual exercises or sound experiments but actual, enjoyable songs. True to the concept, a lot of the music has some of the indie rock weirdness you'd expect from a band like Modest Mouse or Man Man, but then, after a good verse of thumping, guitar rock, the band will veer into a Phil Spector-style chorus full of background harmonies and swelling, wall-of-sound-sized key accompaniments.

The real crazy thing is it works.

OK, maybe I'm wrong about Deerhunter

I've complained a bit here about "not getting" the indie rock outfit Deer Hunter, whose Halcyon Digest got a lot of attention from critics last year. I've found myself circling back to the record and am really enjoying portions of it. This song, "Desire Lines," performed live on a show called The Interface is a pretty terrific track in my opinion. They're definitely hipster douchebags, but dig these wonderful ambient, cascading guitar lines.

Washed Out's got the theme music to your melancholy summer nights

As far as music taste goes, I like a lot of different things, but I tend to stick with what I know: buzzy indie guitar rock. Greatest rock band ever as far as I'm concerned is Sonic Youth. Rounding out a list of favorites would be Radiohead, Pavement, Pixies and Modest Mouse.* You get the idea.

I try to factor in those preferences when I approach writing about a record like Washed Out's new one, Within and Without, released by Sub Pop on July 12. It's a pretty good  example of where the "dream pop" or "chill wave" wing of indie music is right now: moody and ambient, yet eminently danceable music that owes a great deal to the keyboard-dominated new wave and U.K. pop of the early '80s.

Washed out has been a favorite band of the indie blog tastemakers, like Pitchfork, where the record scored a "Best New Music" tag and a rating of 8.3 (out of a possible 10).  The band -- which is really just a stage name for Earnest Greene and his laptop --  received a bunch of buzz on the release of last year's EP Life of Leisure, which featured a well-played single "Feel it All Around." (If you've watched Portlandia starring SNL's Fred Armisen and Sleater-Kinney's Carrie Brownstein, you've heard "Feel it all Around" during the opening sequence.)

Shit Luck: The Video

Posted this on Google+ last week... Just happened to find this great fan video for an old Modest Mouse song I really love. It's just a great video

Believe the Hype: Spotify is good

The Spotify player

So, I managed to grab an "exclusive" invite to Spotify. Those invites were so "exclusive" that music and tech blogs were posting links to what might best be described as mass invite engines. The service launched last Wednesday and I was trying it out by Friday.

What is Spotify? After Google, which also launched this month, Spotify is the most buzzed about music service since Pandora. It started in Europe, where it gained a ton of users, and had been gearing up for a U.S. launch for the better part of the last year.

Does it live up to the hype? I think so. I've never been a big Pandora fan. I've found it really hard to plug in an artist and not land on a song I really didn't want to hear within 15 minutes. I think I've been around for Pandora hitting that sweet spot for a good hour only two or three times. Generally, a good old-fashioned iTunes genius playlist is better. And the new Google Music instant playlist is even better than that.

Yo alt rap: Where's the love?

Tribe's Phife Dawg, Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Q-Tip

A funny thing happened to me just a few days ago. Well, not funny. Just an unexpected nostalgia trip.

I was perusing my Twitter feed and came across an item on Slate about a new documentary by Michael Rappaport about one of my favorite groups of all time: A Tribe Called Quest. Right after I put the piece down, I got my Tribe all queued up and ready to go: People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm, The Low End Theory and Midnight Marauders.

All three albums still sound terrific. They could be brand new.  But in fact Tribe's classics are now 20 years old. The middle record in that trio, perhaps the best, was released in 1991. I had been thinking about doing a series on key overlooked rock records that were released in 1991 in response to what will likely be a great big nostalgia dump for the 20th anniversary of Nirvana's Nevermind this September. But I hadn't until that moment thought about the equally great rap records of that same period. In fact 1991 was as great a year for rap as it was for rock.

Put down that stick: It's time for a new biz model for the RIAA

I've been thinking of digital piracy and file sharing a bunch since I signed up for Google Music about a month ago.

Google Music and a few other new cloud services by Apple and Amazon have raised a lot of new questions about piracy and file sharing, with some Recording Industry of America legal minds calling  such services a way to "launder" pirated songs. Both Google and Amazon, which allow users to upload their music to a cloud locker (a reserved piece of storage on a remote server), launched without first securing license agreements with major record labels. Many observers are wondering when the lawsuits will begin.

The RIAA has spent more than the last 10 years in a all out scorched-earth campaign to try and enforce copyrights and crackdown on file sharing services. Yet 10 years later, there's little evidence that the lawsuits and threats have done much to stop people from downloading whole albums illegally, which for even the least tech savvy users takes a quick Google search and 5 minutes to download a compressed .rar or .zip file. Sales are still really low... so low in fact that Cake was able to top the Billboard Album Charts in the last 6 months. Cake!

Back to the Future: Before grunge there was Dinosaur Jr.

Mascis, Murph and Barlow (in '87 here) had a lot more to do
 with '90s rock than they get credit for.

I'll soon be off to see one of my favorite bands of all time: Dinosaur Jr. They're in Philadelphia tonight to play one of their classic '80s records, Bug, in its entirety. That album, released in 1988, was the Amherst trio's last record together before leader, J. Mascis broke the band up and began recording Dinosaur Jr. as what was essentially a solo act. (Bassist Lou Barlow soon put together another early '90s indie rock powerhouse, Sebadoh).

I mentioned to a friend yesterday, who really didn't know Dinosaur Jr.'s work, that they were basically grunge before there was grunge. There were a lot of indie rock outfits in the late '80s moving from the fast and spartan confines of the hardcore scene and developing a guitar rock that owed more to classic, '60s sounds (Meat Puppets come to mind), but Dinosaur Jr. was creating what would really be a model for a number of loud, guitar bands that were right around the corner. Particularly Nirvana.

Music in the clouds: Two weeks on Google Music

Google Music's main artist page. 

When I'm not obsessing about music, I tend to obsess about technology. I'm a devoted user of Google apps and was excited to give Google Music a try when it was announced last month.

For anyone who doesn't know, Google Music is Google's entre into mp3 storage and playback, but it's all "in the cloud." In other words, it's entirely Web based. You upload your music to Google's servers and play it on anything that can browse the Web.

I got my official invite two weeks ago and uploaded my entire library, a trimmed-down 7,000 songs (just the necessities). The set up was quick and easy. The Mac OSX version adds a music manager application to the OSX system preferences. From there you point the music manager at the file in which you store your music, and it does the rest. Any time I add music to the folder, it's automatically uploaded to Google in the background. I don't even see it happening.

Arctic Monkeys: From 0 to 60 in just 5 years

The Arctic Monkeys have matured a lot in 5 years.

It was only five years ago that all the U.K. music magazines declared The Arctic Monkeys the greatest rock band ever. The band's 2006 debut Whatever People Say I am, That's What I'm Not broke the British record for fastest selling debut album ever. And, unlike a lot of English indie rock (every band not named Oasis), the record did pretty well in the states, too.

The U.K. rock press declares a new Beatles every six months or so, but Whatever... deserved the attention. Arctic Monkeys is a goofy name for a band, but there was nothing silly about the band's obvious work ethic. They blasted through catchy and powerful guitar pop songs with the precision of expert craftsmen. And frontman Alex Turner was a slick lyricist, filling the Monkey's tunes with great observational wit and humor.

Quick review: Givers 'In Light'

Lafayette, La. band, Givers

Lafayette, Louisiana is a long way from New York City, but the small city's biggest band right now, Givers, owe a little bit of their world-wise indie pop sound to New York City band's like Vampire Weekend and Dirty Projectors.

But there's nothing necessarily derivative to the sound of the five-piece's debut LP In Light. A little bit experimental and a little bit world music, Givers have managed to record a really enjoyable 10 songs with what's really best described as a big sound.

These guys have maxed out what five musicians can do with multiple vocal parts -- the star being the group's lone female member Tiffany Lamson, who just has a great voice -- and great arrangements that move from springy afro-pop to big fuzzy riffs of guitar and keyboard. Even when they slow the tempo down, the band never sounds small. Actually, In Light is the audio for one really terrific party. This is a band you'd want to hang out with.

I could ponder big questions about what it means for more white kids to borrow so much from afro pop and wonder, again, why young musicians are so darn happy, but Givers make those sorts of intellectual questions feel strained and stupid. This record is just too good. I liked Vampire Weekend and this band is nearly every bit better. The record sounds great. The songs are fun -- there's not a second on the 52-minute record that doesn't belong. And the musicianship is top notch. Givers are playing this kind of music because they can (and it ain't easy, trust me).

VIDEO: My Morning Jacket extra from Jimmy Fallon

My Morning Jacket was on the Jimmy Fallon show Tuesday night and played "Circuital," the title track of the new record. They did a Web-only performance of "You Wanna Freak Out." It's pretty terrific.

My Morning Jacket less strange but back in form for "Circuital"

Jim James and delightfully strange My Morning Jacket

Everyone I know who likes My Morning Jacket, the spacey Louisville, Kentucky rock band with the curious name, has the same opinion of the band's last two records. Z is a transcendent work of staggering beauty, and its followup, Evil Urges1, is an off-the-rails creative disaster, a runaway train of bad ideas and half-baked sounds.

For fans, that turnaround was tough to take. Therefore I was anxious about hearing the band's new record, Circuital, last week. The band had played the title track live, and it was good. But what would it sound like on the record? And what about the other songs? Would there be any freaky funk workouts? James Taylor easy-listening throw aways?

I'm pleased to report that, while the band has not produced an equal to Z, it has recovered a great deal of ground lost to the goofiness of Evil Urges. Circuital is a controlled, 10-song set of what we have come to expect from MMJ: Good songwriting and great performance.

Fucked Up: Brilliant punks or flawed rockers?

Fucked Up: more than the greatest punks?

If an album is one of the best hardcore punk albums you've ever heard, does that also make it a great album? On the one hand, the record is clearly at the top of its game. But on the other hand, sticking to well-established guidelines is self-limiting.

I can't quite figure out how to answer that question, but it's the essential dilemma I'm facing in writing about Toronto band Fucked Up's new hardcore epic David Comes To Life, which was released on Matador last week.

This much is true: David Comes to Life is about as good and enjoyable a hardcore punk record as I've heard in a while. The three-guitar group has done a lot of growing up (despite a name that ensures they're only going to be taken so seriously). The 18-song, nearly 80-minute long epic is full of terrific riffs and and rhythms. Arrangements on the record are masterfully done. From the haunting piano and guitar build of the first track, "Let Her Rest," you can tell you're listening to something entirely different, something more than a bunch of amped up guitar anthems.

New Beck-produced album coming from Stephen Malkmus

Malkmus and The Jicks

Though it's music critic heresy to say it, I'm going to:  I really don't think Pavement's first record, Slanted and Enchanted, is all that good. In fact, I think Pavement got better with every album, though Terror Twilight might be an exception (it's not quite as strong as Brighten the Corners).

Why is that relevant? Stephen Malkmus, who co-founded the band with a guy named Spiral Stairs, reputedly took more and more control of the band until it was practically his solo project. It was a good move. Malkmus had a lot more talent than the other guys. For further evidence, one only need listen to the four albums he's released under his own name (and alternately with a band called The Jicks).

The Antlers outdo the hipster crowd with Burst Apart

The Antlers: not hipsters or lumberjacks

Readers1 may have figured out by now that I'm not a big fan of hipsters or hip. Every time I listen to something by a Brooklyn band these days, I brace myself for the usual cascade of disappointment, bewilderment and rage. So much of the Williamsburg scene seems like empty posturing and hapless harmonizing.

So I was surprised to find that I really enjoy Brooklyn-based The Antlers' new record, Burst Apart. I've only listened a few times through but haven't been able to pull myself away.

The trio -- singer guitarist Peter Silberman, drummer Michael Lerner and keyboardist, etc, Darby Cicci -- has put together a really terrific album of atmospheric songs composed of everything from reverberating guitar chords to shimmering electro-key effects, longing trumpet calls and dance beat drums, churning through a lot of different sounds but never straying far from a key aesthetic that seems all their own. 

Danger Mouse's 'Rome' is a fair tribute to that old Spaghetti Western sound, if you're into that kind of thing...

White, Jones, Danger Mouse and Luppi explore the sounds
of the Spaghetti Western in Rome.

Danger Mouse is arguably the most important producer of the last 10 years. After landing on the map with his Jay Z/Beatles mashup "The Grey Album," Danger Mouse has been the sound behind some pretty big records: The Gorillaz' Demon Days, Gnarles Barkley's St Elsewhere, Damon Albarn's The Good the Bad and the Queen, Beck's Modern Guilt and the Black Keys' breakthrough Attack & Release, not to mention his other projects like his collaboration with Sparklehorse and The Shins' James Mercer, Broken Bells.

What Danger Mouse has excelled at is giving these bands and other projects an amazing sound. Danger Mouse records have an unmistakable cinematic atmosphere -- they sound like big productions that fizzle and pop over the airwaves from some swinging hip time of the '60s of our imagination. In an era of constant nostalgia and digital recordings, it's a sound that lends these records a classic and timeless feel, a sort of audial legitimacy.

Fucked Up grows up?

Just a quick post to share this: Fucked Up, the hardcore punk band, has a new video promoting their upcoming Matador record David Comes To Life. It's 10 minutes long and pretty entertaining. It's clearly trying to make the case to listeners that outgrew punk a long time ago, that the band has done something quite a bit more interesting. I think the video works. I actually find myself eager to hear what the new record sounds like, and I'm not a fan of the band.

Check it out:

RANT: Why Fleet Foxes drive me nuts

Stephen Bishop's guitar is about to get what's coming to it courtesy of Bluto.

It's nothing personal, but I hate Fleet Foxes. To me the Northwest band of bearded bards represents an arm of indie music (no way we can call it rock) that drives me a little nuts.

I've got nothing against beards or acoustic guitars, hippies or harmonizing. But put them all together and it gets a little tedious. From indie darlings like FF to run-away head-scratcher success stories like Mumford & Sons and their Grammy nomination (I mean, WTF?), there's something just plain old fashioned antediluvian about the whole thing. These finger-picking acoustic poseurs are not much more than a museum-piece schtick recycling of the sounds of Alan Lomax.

Beastie Boys: 25 years of the provocative and the pointless

25 years later, The Beastie Boys are still at it.

I like the Beastie Boys. But I have a hard time wrestling with the following question: Why?

A lot of what I like about the band has to do with their place as a constant companion in my junior high and high school years. No one my age disliked the band's 1986 Def Jam debut License to Ill and its anthemic single "(You Gotta) Fight for your Right (to Party)." The Beasties did more to accelerate the rise of hip hop in the suburbs in the late '80s than nearly any other force (Run DMC's Aerosmith collaboration of "Walk This Way" is a close second, though). As a kid, I thought that song -- as stupid as it was -- sounded awesome.

TV On The Radio's Nine Types of Light is 10 good songs

 TV On The Radio

Funk has always been a musical ghetto.

It's an interesting intersection of good (rhythm section, especially) musicians and really bad lyrics. It has its feverish fans and many, many  And I suspect that even the most feverish funk aficionados never really take the music seriously.

I've listened to a good deal of funk. I own Bootsy Collins Rubber Band records and have a pile of Parliament and Funkadelic, too. James Brown? Check. Isley Brothers? Check. Tower of Power? Actually saw them play at warehouse in Waterbury, Conn. (True story!) I've spent time with newer stuff, too: Fishbone and Chili Peppers (almost funk, right?).

Foo Fighters: Don't Waste Your Time With Wasting Light

I like Dave Grohl. I really do. I also think it's neat that the goofy drummer of Nirvana is now the front man of the biggest standard bearer of mid-'90s modern rock. Who would have thunk it?

Grohl showed early promise with the Foo Fighters' self-titled debut: a fun, if generic, upbeat blast of nitty gritty power punk. But since then, it's been a long slide into dull, arena rock that sounds like it has a lot more in common with late '70s bands like Foghat and Thin Lizzy than the indie bona fides of Grohl's early '90s work. He hasn't managed to record more than half a decent album (as a front man) since, including, as far as I'm concerned, The Colour and the Shape (which has the best Foo Fighter Song: "Everlong").

Press reports leading up to Wasting Light's release offered a bit of promise. Grohl, apparently, eschewed his big, private studio to record the album in his garage... After listening to Wasting Light a few times, it's pretty clear Grohl has a really expensive garage.

Several Shades of Why I Can Get Into an Acoustic Record by J. Mascis

The indie rock guitar god J Mascis is pretty good unplugged, too.

When I saw the Dinosaur Jr. reunion show a couple years ago -- this was just before the band released the second record with the reunited lineup,  2010's Farm --  frontman J. Mascis had half the tiny Lancaster stage  filled with four towering full Marshall stacks.

Even more remarkable than the site of half a (albeit small club) sound stage filled with that much firepower was the fact that all four amps were not aimed out at the crowd. they wrapped around the right side of the stage so that will were pointing directly at Mascis.

You see, for anyone unfamiliar with Dinosaur Jr., J. Mascis has consistently set the bar for volume. On the band's early records the level was set so high, that the guitar sound just absolutely bleeds. That's how Mascis wanted it to sound. And this was in the late '80s. If Kurt Cobain was the "father" of what would be called grunge, Masics is the form's grandfather. It was Mascis, really, who first nailed a formula that merged sloppy shoe-gaze with '60s psychedelia and loud-as-hell guitars.

Angles: The Strokes' early '80s Frankenstein's Monster

Remember rock music in 2001?

Alternative rock had been nearly strangled into oblivion by jock rock and rap rock. Bands like Creed and Nickelback and Linkin Park were the staples of rock radio. It was a bad, bad scene.

Then the Strokes debuted a simple, gritty record called Is This It, was a light, easy antidote to all the garbage on the radio. The Strokes recalled the 1977 art rock scene -- from Blondie to Television, the Cars to Talking Heads.  But it also sounded new. It sounded like Manhattan in 2001. It sounded like what was going on. It may have been derivative, but the simplicity of that sound was a welcome change from what was going on in rock at the time

It's been a long time since The Strokes and The White Stripes led a garage rock revival that brought early blues and post punk sounds to a wider, mainstream rock audience. The Strokes have been on hiatus since about 2005 and their third album First Impressions of Earth. They are back now with a new record, Angles. do they have another revival ready? Unfortunatley, no. Instead of a breath of fresh air, Angles sounds like a band that hasn't learned anything new at all.

TV On The Radio: Caffeinated Consciousness

Want a cool free song? Go to TV On The Radio's website here.

Give 'em your birthdate and e-mail and you'll get a link to download an mp3 of "Caffeinated Consciousness," a very cool song from the upcoming album Nine Types of Light set for release on April 12.  It's the perfect song for a warm spring day like today.

The eclectic Brooklyn band has been making very cool music now for the last decade (and then some). Based on this sample, I'm expecting some pretty great things.

Feel free to tell me what you think in the comments. I'm eager to your hear reactions.

R.E.M., Monster or Dinosaur? Talking about 'Collapse Into Now' and the greatest rock of my generation

R.E.M. was a blast of fresh air for rock in the '80s.
They were full of great melodies and energy.

I've been thinking lately about a grand musical question: What is the greatest American rock band of my generation? By my generation, I'm thinking of music made after the punk revolution of the late '70s successfully dislodged blues as the necessary foundation of rock music and opened up the musical palate of  rock music since at least 1980.

When I consider the question, I have something in mind like a great big March Madness bracket. There would be middle seed bands like Modest Mouse, The Minute Men, Fugazi and Dinosaur Jr., scrappy upstarts with higher seed looking for a their Cinderella turn like The White Stripes, The Black Keys, Interpol and The Strokes. And, of course, lets not forget the sole Ivy League contender: The National. Top seeds favorites would be those bands that were successful and influential: The Pixies, Pavement, Wilco, Flaming Lips and Nirvana. All worthy of discussion -- all capable of making the Final Four, but not capable of winning the title

The King of Limbs and why Radiohead can do no wrong

OK. It's been a while since I've posted. I've been busy. And I've been taking my time to digest the latest Radiohead record, The King of Limbs.

Before I say anything about why The King of Limbs is a terrific record, one deserving the heaps of accolades it's already getting from the music press, let's talk about why Radiohead really is the best rock band in the world.

Music nerds like me love to heap platitudes on our favorite bands -- high praise that's impossible to prove and often meant more as provocation than anything else. When you say something's the best, or the worst, you're setting yourself up for vigorous debate.  I think Radiohead, though, is as close to an honest-to-god perfect rock band as any in the history of rock and pop music.

Get your Radiohead fix a day early: New video for "Lotus"

Just found this: A crazy little video for "Lotus" off of the new Radiohead, which, again, drops tomorrow.
The song is pretty digital. Sounds a little more in line with Kid A to me on first listen. But who cares? This is new Radiohead!

That's some freaky boogie, Mr. Yorke.

Telekinesis' nice new piece of power pop

Telekinesis' Lerner

Telekinesis, the one-man band of Michael Benjamin Lerner, released a new record this week, 12 Desperate Straight Lines. The good news for fans is that it's more of the same power pop that made Lerner's debut so enjoyable.

Lerner's an interesting guy. He eschews the star-wattage most songwriters shoot for at the front of the stage. He's primarily a drummer, one who stays behind the kit when he hits the road with a backing band -- bassist Jason Narducy and guitarist Cody Votolato.

The position -- the lack of swagger -- fits with his music. Lerner's music is power pop seemingly made by the shy guy you never new had it in him. His lyrics aren't complicated, just plaintive and personal. He's not above a slow, sappy turn about lost love, but he never wallows for long. Most of 12 Desperate Straight Lines is up-beat stuff. It's a near pitch-perfect balance between the "Blue Album" Weezer and Summerteeth Wilco. It's straight ahead power pop which is not afraid to get loud or to get quiet, when needed.

At his best, Lerner is melodic and fun. He's not the kind of musician blazing any new trails in sound or inventing new forms of song craft. But he does power pop about as well as anyone else. Like the self-titled debut, also on Merge records, 12 Desperate Straight Lines, is well-composed, power pop that might actually be just the tonic needed by anyone who feels Weezer left an irreparable hole in the fabric of American music by becoming one of the worst bands in the world.

Telekinesis will play Johnny Brenda's in Philly on March 11. Check them out on Merge here.

What a Valentine! Radiohead announces new album for this Saturday

The King of Limbs: New one from Radiohead!

There's no better way to be musically redeemed from this weekend's Grammys debacle than the announcement that the worlds greatest rock band will release a new record, The King of Limbs,  this weekend.

Yup. The band had said it would release new material this year, but I don't think anyone expected it to be so soon.

From what little I've read, the band recorded the record with Nigel Godrich and spent time at their home studio in Oxford and another studio in L.A.

Pre-orders are being taken at on the band's website here. Unlike In Rainbows, there won't be a choose-your-own-price option. An MP3 digital version will be $9. A WAV file version is $14. There's also an option to get a "Newspaper" edition, you get one of the electronic versions plus a CD and double vinyl versions with lots of extra artwork.

I can't wait to get this record.

Grammys: Is there anything left to care about?

If the Grammy's were worth it, The Black Keys
would be up for best rock record.

This weekend, CBS will air that great big musical farce we call The 53rd annual Grammy Awards. It is a glitzy, silly show that seems to get more and more cosmically distant from actual music making with every passing year.

So out of touch are the Grammys when it comes to rock that it's getting difficult to distinguish Grammy nominees from their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame counterparts. Consider the nominees for "Best Solo Rock Performance": Eric Clapton, Paul McCartney, Robert Plant, Neal Young and John Mayer. If not for Mayer, you'd swear you were looking at a list from 1973.

With all the mewling and caterwauling about the death of the music industry and the culpability of file sharing in its demise, The industry fails to see its own role in all the destruction. It seems oblivious to the fact that it has been completely ineffective at promoting new and interesting music for more than 20 years now (a generous estimate) and nowhere is the evidence of the growing gap between the music industry and the music listening public more evident than at the Grammys.

Waking up to new material from The Veils

I don't know about you, but a lot of the new releases in January have put me to sleep. Iron and Wine, The Decemberists, yes, even destroyer... Too sleepy.
Cake put out what must be its 15th album of songs that all sound just like "The Distance" and indie fans were rejoicing over a record by Chicago popsters The Smith Westerns.

In fact January has been so tired that on the album charts, The Decemberists displaced Cake last as the number one record in the country according to Billboard. That's right. The number one record title actually belonged to Cake...  The only thing this could mean is that the only people actually paying for music anymore are Gen Xers whose tastes stopped evolving in 1995.

I don't know. I like my rock to rock. I like to hear movement. Long-haired bearded dudes on acoustic guitars -- I'm just not in the mood for you.

More fanfare for the downfall of the music biz

Interesting story in the New York Times today about the fizzling music biz. Seems Apple iTunes sales are not making up for billions of dollars in lost CD revenue.

In th piece, titled Music Industry Braces for the Unthinkable, analysts see digital music sales as coming to a halt. From the story:

In each of the past two years, the rate of increase in digital revenue has approximately halved. If that trend continues, digital sales could top out at less than $5 billion this year, about a third of the overall music market but many billions of dollars short of the amount needed to replace long-gone sales of compact discs.

"Music’s first digital decade is behind us and what do we have?" said Mark Mulligan, an analyst at Forrester Research. “Not a lot of progress.”

Gorillaz and the future of the mobile app electro-music sketchbook

This fall, while Damon Albarn was on a U.S. tour with his animated super group The Gorillaz, he was experimenting with his new iPad and boldly blazing a new trail in music making.

Check out a video from the new record here.

With a dozen or so mobile apps -- from software emulators of the Korg Electribe drum machine to a goofy app that translates line drawings into sound -- Albarn composed 15 songs (or 14 songs and one bizarre yodeling track) that he mastered and released as a free Gorillaz album, The Fall, available on the Gorillaz website. (Albarn lists the apps he used to create the album here, too)

The result -- the first record I've heard of done entirely on a single mobile device --  is an album that is much smaller scale than a regular Gorillaz affair. There's not a revolving cast of special guests -- no De La Soul or Snoop Dog -- though one song features Bobby Womack singing and playing guitar.

There are other minimal contributions from a few guest musicians -- Damon's pals Mick Jones and Paul Simonon (both of the Clash, in case you don't know) add guitar and bass to a couple tracks* -- but The Fall maintains a much more intimate feel. Mostly, it's Albarn's voice and his iPad.

I'm pinning rock hope for the new year on REM

Finally. Something to be excited about.

As far as I'm concerned, the first album to really get excited for this year is the new one from REM, Collapse Into Now, due on March 8.

Before you read any further, go to remhq.com and send the band your e-mail to get a link to download a new single, "Discoverer,"an even-paced, mid-tempo rocker with a good dose of distortion that's got a little of that old Monster sound. If you've followed the band, the it's a sound that would sound at home on the band's last one, Accelerate. 

If you haven't been following the band recently, Accelerate was a really great album. A return to the early '90s for the band -- a period when they were comfortable kings of the newly commercially viable alternative rock world. In fact, a case could be made that REM invented alternative rock with their first single "Radio Free Europe" and album, Murmur, a watershed record that would influence every alt and indie rocker after. Go back and listen to Murmur and Reckoning, perhaps the best 1 and 2 punch by a brand new rock band ever.