May 20, 2008

Free Range Music: Spiritualized, The Futureheads, The Cure

jasonspaceman_spiritualized
>> Hey, remember when we'd do all those Free Range Music posts listing off worthwhile album streams and such suchness? Those were good times, right? Let's endeavor to resuscitate that, shall we? Jason Spaceman fans will be pleased to know that they can stream the new Spiritualized set Songs In A And E at the band's MySpace apothecary right here. It is funny, the little ways in which Mr. Spaceman -- or his label's marketing department -- trades on the man's past. For example, said MySpace page describes the act as Psychedelic/Experimental/Rock. And while we wouldn't quibble with that last genre, until the third track "Death Take Your Fiddle" the new record sounds like a straight, slightly overblown Britpop record, with the accent on pop. Thankfully, the proceedings get a lot more interesting very quickly, but are we over-generalizing if we say that Songs In A And E sounds like it could have been written and produced by Damon Albarn? This is not a slag; longtime readers will recall The Good, The Bad & The Queen's self-titled set was one of our favorites of 2006. But back to Spiritualized: as we are starting to come back around about saxophone in rock music, we're pleased to hear some bumping up the close of "I Gotta Fire." Songs In A And E will be issued in the U.S. by UMG May 27, and we think we might actually buy this one.

>> By supplying MTV.co.uk with a fake name and email address (call us Karl) one can gain access to streams of all the songs on the forthcoming set from fidgety Brit indie quartet The Futureheads. Unfortunately you will be forced to stream it in the relatively intolerable Windows Media Player, but what are you going to do, right? Anyway, we heard this morning on WMBR the second track from the forthcoming set, "Walking Backwards," on WMBR as we were shuttling to work and we were pleased to hear some of the vim and vigor of the 'Heads of old. Well, 2005 or so. So going through all the trouble of defrauding MTV and launching your Windows Media Player is worth it just to hear this song, although the title track with its waltz time pummellation in the chorus may eclipse it as the best number on the record. The Sunderland-based act issues its third set This Is Not The World on its own Nul Records on May 26 in the UK; not sure of the U.S. release date. The set was preceded by the single "Radio Heart," which of course you can stream at the same web site. Here's the link.

>> Don't feel bad if you are not among the cool kids that already know Bradley's Almanac is hosting here the entire three-hour live set performed by legendary alternative act The Cure in Boston earlier this month. It's filled with highlights, not the least of which is a scorching "From The Edge Of The Deep Green Sea." The epic-length set list is filled with gems. Anyway, in case you didn't know you can download the whole shebang right here. But if you are like us and are sick of downloading stuff unless you actually need to, let it be known you can also just stream the whole set at Hype Machine right here. Radical.

>> Speaking of free, we still have one copy of the forthcoming Julie Ocean record Long Gone And Nearly There waiting to be given away to the first person who emails us with the phrase "Ghost In The Mirror" in the subject line. C'mon, people, this isn't hard, and the disc is sitting on our desk at work waiting to go in the outbin. You can do this. Our email is in the sidebar.

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