>> The blog Death To Music delivers a nice interview with Johnny Foreigner frontman Alexei Berrow that conveys a lot of useful information for rabid fans of the band (present company included). Most notably, Mr. Berrow believes the brilliant indie trio's full-length debut Waited Up Till It Was Light will be out in June. And he confirms that the next single will be for the song "Eyes Wide Terrified," something an associate of the band had mentioned to us some weeks ago. The funniest line in the piece is when Alexei responds to a question about the importance of the band's hometown -- Birmingham, England -- in its music by explaining he writes about what he knows. And then he delivers the punchline: "By this logic our next album will obv[iously] be about living in a van and playing gigs and only be bought by members of Los Campesinos!" Read the whole thing here. Speaking of the band's singles, we'll post a rant later this week about the how we won't be buying any imports from HMV in the future, as our copy of the new Johnny Foreigner single "Our Bipolar Friends" b/w "The Houseparty Scene Is Killing You" arrived all dinged up and with a sticker permanently affixed to the front of the sleeve. What the hell, HMV? Why could the tiny (and awesome) indie Laundrette get a Johnny Foreigner single to us quickly and in pristine condition, but you can not? Well, we guess we just ranted there, so no need to come back to it.
>> We're excited about the prospect of MTV celebrating the 20th anniversary of the program "Yo! MTV Raps," because we watched it religiously during high school. During the summers when we weren't working (the good summers) we watched "Yo!" at 10 and 10 again, just like hosts Dre and Ed Lover advised. With the release of Public Enemy's amazing Fear Of A Black Planet we lost the thread on hip-hop, but there was a time when we actually considered ourselves knowledgeable. Anyway, more about the celebration of this fine cultural touchstone can be read here at Idolator.
>> Also found at Idolator is this news about a Feelies reunion. Longtime readers will recall we were clamoring for just such a reunion here 370 days ago.
>> The Notwist-Ultras blog is reporting here that German electropop geniuses The Notwist will definitely tour North American in the fall. This is great news. Additionally, Notwist-Ultras here links to what seems like a pretty great video blog. However, the hosts are speaking German, so there is only so much we are able to follow. Still, if you click the video and forward it to about 2:00 you can hear an excerpt from a song on the Weilheim-based quartet's forthcoming new record The Devil, You + Me. It sounds great, and we are increasingly excited for the record's release in June.
>> You have to wait a couple minutes for the payoff, but once New York-by-way-of-Denmark duo The Raveonettes take the gloves off and rock out, the clip below from a recent performance on "The Late Show With David Letterman" is spine-tingling. We were a bit disappointed that they employ so many pre-recorded backing tracks -- we hate that, as folks who read our review of a Blonde Redhead show last year will recall -- but even so, any band that delivers a nice solid section of white noise on a national TV broadcast deserves props aplenty. The Raveonettes played Boston Monday night, and had it not been for :: clicky clicky :: faves Frightened Rabbit playing the same night we would have liked to go check them out. Or maybe not, if they are performing with all those backing tracks recorded, we're not interested. That said, the recently issued Lust, Lust, Lust is one of our favorite records right now. Here's the opener, "Aly, Walk With Me."
The Raveonettes -- "Aly, Walk With Me" -- Lust, Lust, Lust
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[buy Raveonettes records from Vice right here]
>> Speaking of Frightened Rabbit, Pop Cop has a great interview with the band's songwriter Scott Hutchison. Mr. Hutchison addresses a few of the questions we would have put to him Monday night had things not been loud and had we not already monopolized a bunch of his time. Definitely a good read, so check it out here.
>> Finally, we've been meaning to pimp our friends at Echo Nest's new time-waster, ThisIsMyJam.com. It's fairly addictive. Kiss the next 20 minutes goodbye.
"we won't be buying any imports from HMV in the future, as our copy of the new Johnny Foreigner single "Our Bipolar Friends" b/w "The Houseparty Scene Is Killing You" arrived all dinged up and with a sticker permanently affixed to the front of the sleeve. What the hell, HMV?"
ReplyDeleteHMV always do that. Usually it's not a problem as most items tend to be shrinkwrapped. Annoying on other stuff though. I got my JF single through recordstore.co.uk and it arrived quickly and in decent condition, even being signed by the band. Now if only I had something to play it on :/