July 22, 2008

Today's Hotness: Frightened Rabbit, TVOTR, Johnny Foreigner

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>> Drowned In Sound reports here that Selkirk, Scotland's finest, the indie rock foursome Frightened Rabbit, will issue a third single to support its superlative sophomore set The Midnight Organ Fight [read our review here]. Due Sept. 22 in the UK is the uptempo rocker "I Feel Better" backed with our favorite track from the record, the infectious and relatively swinging piano-pounder "The Twist." The Midnight Organ Fight, incidentally, has finally been issued on vinyl, although label Fat Cat's web site says the 12" issue is already sold out just via pre-orders. Or at least we think that is what they mean. Hard to say. Either way, getting one bought, boxed up and shipped to the States is likely prohibitively expensive. We reviewed Frightened Rabbit's July 1 Boston show right here. The quartet begins successive tours of Ireland and the UK in early August, and then it plays several European dates in early October. Consult Frightened Rabbit's itinerary at it's MySpace hutch right here. How about a classic?

Frightened Rabbit -- "The Greys" -- Sing The Greys
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[buy Frightened Rabbit records from Newbury Comics right here]

>> NME reported here today that TV On The Radio will release its third full-length Sept. 23 in the U.S. The set is called Dear Science, -- sadly, that comma is part of the title, which puts it on par with names as cool as *NSYNC, in our humble opinion. The Brooklyn-based act's previous record was the highly acclaimed Return To Cookie Mountain, which was released in 2006. TV On The Radio teased the release of that record with a performance at Boston's City Hall Plaza two years ago, which we reviewed here. The quintet is currently giving away for free at its MySpace dojo the jitterfunk track "Dumb Animal," which is new to us but was apparently originally issued as a b-side on the sold-out "Province" single released last year by 4AD. Have a listen.

TV On The Radio -- "Dumb Animal" -- Province 7"
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[by TV On The Radio records from Newbury Comics right here]

>> As of last night, Johnny Foreigner had yet to officially unveil the video for its forthcoming single, the gargantuan "Salt, Peppa and Spinderella." The video clip appeared online briefly about a week ago, and then was pulled just as a MySpace bulletin was circulated by label Best Before saying the video would be released this past weekend. Well, the weekend has come and gone. The single will be issued Sept. 8 as a 10" with three remixes, including one concocted by countrymen Bloc Party. Hear any interesting stories about Bloc Party fronter Kele Okerere? [Oh Lydon, we're so disappointed]. Anyhoo, "Salt, Peppa and Spinderella" is the third and likely final single from the Birmingham, England-based trio's debut full-length Waited Up Til It Was Light, which is available digitally in North America today. Yes, you read that correctly. We checked EMusic, ITunes and AmazonMP3 last night, and no one had the digital files live yet, although Amazon was clearly ready for the clock to strike midnight. A physical release for North America is slated for October; we reviewed the import here last month.

>> According to this blog post, Glaswegian septet Dananananaykroyd will apparently record their debut full-length for Best Before Records in New York, just as labelmates Johnny Foreigner did a year ago. We can only speculate the hotly tipped, Dischord-reminiscent act will also work with The Machine, the Hoboken-based producer who spun the knobs and situated the mics for the recording of Johnny Foreigner's spectacular Waited Up Til It Was Light. When that's confirmed or denied, we'll pipe up.

>> We're certainly no Facebook superuser, but we still feel like it should be patently obvious what the popular Facebook music app iLike does. But either it doesn't really do anything interesting, or we just totally don't get it. This story at Digital Music News refers to iLike as a "profile and discovery platform," which in our opinion means it does the same thing the rest of the Internet does. Most striking is iLike chief exec Ali Partovi's assertion therein that "[i]n some ways, streaming is the new downloading." We've heard this before, from the digital music service Rhapsody, who incidentally provides the back-end for many iLike services through some sort of sub-license. Interesting thing about Rhapsody is it just recently announced it would be selling untethered MP3 downloads. So it would seem to us that downloading is the new downloading, yeh? We just don't get it.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Johnny Foreigner video now up at Vimeo :)

http://www.vimeo.com/1379593

Unknown said...

Hey Eddie -- yeah I saw that come through my RSS when DIS made their post earlier today, and threw the link in my Twitter when I got home. Have to say, the video quality at Vimeo is way better than what I saw before at YouTube -- although I think my settings have gotten sort of wacky. Either way, awesome song, awesome video.

Anonymous said...

you guys are killing me! ;)
I keep trying to put the Jofo vid up in a hidden spot so that 'Pitchfork' can have an exclusive and you keep finding it. I give up!
Anyway, Dananananaykroyd. Yes, we're making the album with Machine. The band will be in the studio recording from August 18th to the 8th of September.
After that they have two cool tours in the UK, one of which is Jofo, the other we can't say yet, but it's much bigger!!
:)

Unknown said...

Looks like we all just wanted it more than Pantsfork did :) -- power to the people. Thanks for the Dananana-info. And puh-leeze send both bands to America for a tour. But not til winter. We're out of commission most of the fall.

SeanDiS said...

thought you might like to read a first reaction to the new TV on the Radio album http://drownedinsound.com/articles/3811437