Industry Watchdog: Insound, Alien8 Recordings

>> Wow, Insound is going to start selling full album downloads this month. Is that going to be sales of an entire album as a single file? We doubt it -- music fans aren't used to consuming music that way any more, for the most part. So it is likely Insound's Save The Album promotion is just that, a promotion that romantically looks back at the time when we all listened to complete records over and over again. Even so, we think the promotion does a good job of distinguishing their offering. Does AmpCamp sell downloads? We just took our first trip over there and it doesn't look like they do. So we guess EMusic is going to be the primary competition here. A race we'll enjoy watching, although we're devoted to EMusic and are unlikely to budge.

>> Alien8 Recordings has launched its own digital music storefront through which it is selling DRM-free, high bit-rate MP3s of albums and single tracks. You can transact business via Paypal and files are delivered as .Zips. Alien8's roster includes electronic music luminaries Tim Hecker and Shalabi Effect, guitarist Harris Newman and dance-punkers Kiss Me Deadly.

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Weekend Hotness: Dinosaur Jr., Clap Your Hands Say Yeah!!

>> Billboard reports here today that resuscitated indie giants Dinosaur Jr. are close to finishing the original line-up's first new set in almost two decades. The band expects the as-yet-untitled collection will be released next spring. The Dinosaucerouses have also set a release date for a much anticipated DVD capturing the band during its 2005 live dates. The video, which was directed by Mascis' brother-in-law, will hit retail May 8, 2007. Perhaps the best news of all? Bassist Lou Barlow reports that bandleader J. Mascis had insurance on much or all of the motherlode of gear that was stolen from the band earlier this year. That doesn't replace the gear, which includes some Jazzmasters from the late 1950s. But it certainly makes paying for replacement gear a lot easier. [Photo credit]

>> Is it not cool to like The Clap any more? After PantsFork's exclusive on Clap Your Hands Say Yeah!!'s forthcoming album details, we didn't notice nearly as much piling on and rehashing as Pfork stories typically spawn. So here's a little: The band plans to issue its anticipated sophomore set on its own label Jan. 30. The band made waves with its self-titled debut, and many of those waves were generated by the band's decision to self-release the set domestically and via a singular deal with distributors ADA (if memory serves). The new set was produced by Dave Fridmann, famous for work on records by Mercury Rev, Sleater Kinney and Flaming Lips.

>> While there is a lot of bad news to speak of regarding the devastating health problems plaguing pop-punk legend J. Church's Lance Hahn, there are a couple recent bright spots. Mr. Hahn recently took an IQ test and it turns out he is a genius. Wild, huh? More good news: his heart is apparently back to normal. Finally, there are some fund-raising efforts in the works to help Mr. Hahn defray his stratospheric medical bills. Perhaps most exciting is a tribute CD featuring covers of J. Church numbers by a number of notable bands whose names we can't track down right now.

>> Hey, there is a new Secret Mommy release, titled The Wisdom EP. Warp has the details here. Fans will be familiar with Secret Mommy proprietor Andy Dixon's penchant for making music with sound samples, and won't be surprised that The Wisdom EP relies on field recordings of Mr. Dixon's wisdom teeth being pulled. Dixon plans a new Secret Mommy full-length for early 2007 entitled Plays. We talked about Secret Mommy's prior full length Very Rec at Junkmedia's World of Sound here last year [if that link doesn't work, click here and scroll down to Oct. 25, 2005].

>> You may recall that we gave New York Times scribe Kelefa Sanneh a bit of static for his piece on "American Hardcore" (which we are excited to see next weekend when it arrives in Cambridge), so on balance we'd like to point out that we greatly enjoyed this sentence from his review of The Hold Steady's triumphant Boys And Girls In America: "They toured, getting sucked into their own songs." Read Mr. Sanneh's complete review here.

>> You might not think of "Miami Vice" when you hear New Order's "Confusion," but maybe now you will. [White Noise Revisited]

From The Admin Cubicle: When Company Comes

Salutations. We have hit upon a double whammy this evening of the season premiere of LOST and intensifying preparations for an impending long-weekend visit from parental units. As such, we're going to only be posting sporadically, if sporadically, between now and Monday. That said, we've got a few different things in various stages of drafting, so maybe you'll hear a peep or two between now and then. We apologize for this interruption in your normal :: clicky clicky :: service. -- The Managment.

Review: Mahogany | Connectivity! [New MP3s!]

Prior to Darla issuing it this week we had the privilege of access to a pre-release stream of Mahogany's almost deliriously lush new set Connectivity! We can report that the record is gorgeous (actually, even the Brooklyn-based octet's press kit is gorgeous). Imagine some of the best parts of '80s New Order and Cocteau Twins all manifested within the same band, and you are close. Notably, three tracks on Connectivity! were produced by Cocteau Twins' Robin Guthrie, and Guthrie's daughter (with other Twin Liz Frasier) sings on the record to boot. Lest you think Mahogany dropped out of the sky just now, Connectivity! is its sophomore set. Previously, the Ulrich Schnauss-approved act released The Dream Of A Modern Day in 1999; a number of singles and EPs were compiled as Memory Column and released by Darla last year.

The new set's "Neo-plastic Boogie-woogie" follows the bounce of the most arresting Belle And Sebastian material through warehouses filled with iridescent curtains of sonic gauze. "Domino Ladder Beta" is anchored to bass guitar that evokes The Cure's early epic "Carnage Visors." "Tesselation, Formerly Plateau One" nods at vague sections of a few Lilys tunes (perhaps "The Sammael Sea" -- we're having a hard time pinning it down). A second disc of Connectivity! features four alternate mixes and three video clips. Mahogany is doing a record release show with :: clicky clicky :: faves Relay and another with twee-revivalists Voxtrot in coming weeks; we've listed those dates and others below. Pre-orders of Connectivity! shipped earlier this week, although the two-disc set doesn't see worldwide release until Oct. 30. Mahogany was kind enough to allow us to offer an MP3 of the dreamy anthem "Supervitesse," which we've linked below.

Mahogany -- "Supervitesse" -- Connectivity!
Mahogany -- "My Bed Is My Castle" -- Connectivity!
Mahogany -- "Springtime, Save Our Country" -- Connectivity!
[right click and save as]

[Stream the entire record for free at Rhapsody here or, for a limited time, via the Philebrity player here!]

10/13 -- Room Service @ Rock And Roll Hotel -- Washington, DC
10/21 -- Johnny Brenda's -- Philadelphia, PA
10/22 -- Brooklyn Peace Fair -- Brooklyn , NY
11/07 -- Bowery Ballroom -- New York, New York

[buy Connectivity! from Darla here]

Oh yes, we just found the video for "Supervitesse" at YouTube. Check it out:

Coming To Your Local Bandstand: The Twilight Singers

Greg Dulli's Twilight Singers are taking a second lap around the U.S. in support of the band's most recent release Powder Burns, and somewhere along the way Mr. Dulli has picked up former Screaming Trees fronter Mark Lanegan. Last we heard from Mr. Lanegan he had made that countrified record with Belle And Sebastian ex-pat Isobel Campbell. As a big fan of the Screaming Trees tune "Dollar Bill," we are pretty interested to hear how Lanegan fits into the overall Twilight Singer arsenal.

Actually, you can hear how it sounds right now, as we are doing, by streaming a new cut at the Twilight Singers' MySpace lean-to. According to the Summer's Kiss web site, The Twilight Singers are prepping for release later this year a new EP called A Stitch In Time, whose lead tune "Live With Me" is streaming at the aforementioned MySpace. In addition, as we first read over at The 'Nac, Dulli recently disclosed plans to record new tracks for an Afghan Whigs hits package to be titled Unbreakable [more info here]. Anyway, The Twilight Singers' forthcoming U.S. tour dates are listed below:

10/24 -- San Francisco, CA -- Great American Music Hall
10/25 -- West Hollywood, CA -- House of Blues Sunset Strip
10/27 -- Tucson, AZ -- Club Congress
10/28 -- Albuquerque, NM -- Launchpad
10/30 -- Omaha, NE -- Sokol Underground
10/31 -- St Louis, MO -- Mississippi Nights
11/01 -- Chicago, IL -- Double Door
11/02 -- Chicago, IL -- Double Door
11/03 -- Newport, KY -- Southgate House
11/04 -- Nashville, TN -- Mercy Lounge
11/06 -- Orlando, FL -- The Social
11/07 -- St Petersburg, FL -- The State Theatre
11/08 -- Atlanta, GA -- The Loft
11/09 -- Athens, GA -- 40 Watt Club
11/11 -- Norfolk, VA -- The Norva
11/13 -- Philadelphia, PA -- Theatre of Living Arts
11/14 -- Boston, MA -- Paradise Rock Club
11/15 -- Washington, DC -- Black Cat
11/16 -- Brooklyn, NY -- Warsaw

Rack And Opinion: Release Date 10.03.06

This week's new release bin will be crammed with quality, as the industry seems to be hitting what it must consider an annual pre-holiday sweet spot: a release date close enough to the holidays, but not too close, that might allow a record to break through to a wider audience and peak by the time folks are out acquiring gifts. One of the better gifts one can give in our opinion is the superlative third set from The Hold Steady: we streamed it over the weekend and it was almost too good. With all the hype from the Pfork, in particular, we were almost hoping the set would be a dud. But it is about as far from dud as a record can get. Buy a copy Tuesday. You won't be disappointed.

Other big releases include major label Capitol's double-barrel indie assault of Sean Lennon and The Decemberists. Cognoscenti may get a bit more of a charge out of new releases from IDM standard bearer Clark and indie pop stalwart Joe Pernice's latest Pernice Brothers set. All of these are listed below, with links going to relevant commercial opportunities courtesy of our former game wardens over at Insound. We linked to album streams for a lot of these records over the weekend, so scroll down to have a listen.

Clark-- Body Riddle -- Warp
The Decemberists -- The Crane Wife -- Capitol
The Hold Steady -- Boys and Girls in America -- Vagrant
Sean Lennon -- Friendly Fire -- Capitol
Pernice Brothers -- Live a Little -- Ashmont

That Was The Show That Was: Yo La Tengo

[We are pleased to welcome to the electric pages of :: clicky clicky :: friend and former editor Ric Dube, a man who critiqued our writing into the good shape it was in six years ago, a shape we continually strive to regain. Dr. Dube is the most devoted Yo La Tengo fan we know (this is a man who convinced the band to move "Shadows" from the key of A to A-flat), and as such we solicited his assistance in the form of this review of the band's Sept. 28 performance at Boston's Avalon. -- Ed.]

Subtitle: An Evening of Music and Cleaning Up After Themselves

There’s an episode of "The Simpsons" where Principal Skinner greets an auditorium full of families by saying, "Welcome to an evening of theatre and cleaning up after yourselves!" Whether the band would ever admit it or not, Yo La Tengo’s third show in support of I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass, carried the air of a band eager to 1) welcome the crowd to an evening of music and 2) pretend 2003 never happened. The immediate post-9/11 world, the thick of the Bush era, disastrous Mets and Knicks teams -– who really knows why Summer Sun was such a disappointing record? But when a band’s record is bland it affects its performances -- especially if they draw heavily from it to build a set.



In contrast, ...Beat Your Ass is a fine record, and promises to support current shows well, as it did in Boston, beginning logically with the monstrous "Pass the Hatchet, I Think I’m Goodkind" [MP3 -- right click and save as]; when being joined by guest horn players on "Mr. Tough" and "Beanbag Chair" [MP3 -- right click and save as]; when weirdly revealing a Sticky Fingers essence to "I Feel Like Going Home;" when breezing through the easygoing "The Race Is on Again" and "The Weakest Part;" when tearing through the instant classic punk anthem "Watch Out for Me Ronnie;" and during the 12-plus minutes of "The Story of Yo La Tango" as part of the stretch of noisy tunes Yo La Tengo has used for years to comprise the second half of its show.

This performance was similar to ones following Summer Sun in that it emphasized a lot of piano-based songs and gentler guitar tunes. But this time out the songs are stronger and the band seems happier and more confident. “Now that’s edu-tainment!” -- Ric Dube

[You can view :: clicky clicky's :: pics of the Yo La Tengo show here]