Today's Hotness: Darker My Love, Shannon McArdle

>> We give a resounding "yes" to the new Darker My Love video, despite the frustrating tempo. The song would be much more forceful with heads-down, four-on-the-floor drumming, but instead -- and somewhat surprising, in a good way -- DML's drummer lays down a loping mom-ma dad-dy with paired snare strikes on the twos and fours. That coupled with the echo on the vocal and a somewhat unsynchronized playback of the audio and video of the stream above makes the song somewhat disorienting. We just streamed "Two Ways Out" again with headphones on and realized that we must have had a bad stream before, because everything synchs up and makes a lot more sense. Weird. And we haven't even discussed the visual shtick, which takes that great Doors album cover, pulls it apart and reconstitutes it as a loose mobile of faces, hands and instruments. It's particularly neat-o when the band suddenly looks as if it is falling (reminds us of the great Cars video). As we reported here late last month, the L.A.-based quartet will issue its second set 2 Aug. 5 on Dangerbird. Between now and then the band has lined up a smattering of tour dates on the west coast. Darker My Love commences a tour supporting The Dandy Warhols Sept. 9. The acts play The Wilbur Theater in Boston Sept. 16. All tour dates are posted at the band's MySpace hacienda right here.

>> As we are still eagerly awaiting official word from Bar/None Records about the purported reissues of The Feelies catalog, we excitedly scanned an email from the venerable label this morning. Alas, there was no Feelies news. However, we were surprised to read therein about a forthcoming solo set from former Mendoza Line principal Shannon McArdle, whose debut long player Summer Of The Whore will be released Aug. 5. The set was realized last summer in the wake of Ms. McArdle's split from The Mendoza Line and ex-husband/bandmate Timothy Bracy. Bar/None characterizes the set as emotionally raw, which is really saying something, as the final Mendoza Line release 30 Year Low [our review here] was widely received as a "break-up record." Two tracks from Summer Of The Whore are posted here at McArdle's MySpace dojo and they sound terrific. Mendoza Line collaborator Adam Gold engineered the project and collaborated on arrangements, and so there's no big shift in tone or style -- the tracks sound, for lack of a better term, Mendoza-esque. The strident strummer "This Longing" is, however, relatively lush, and "Poison My Cup" hinges on some nice reverbs and murmured vocals. Brooklyn-based McArdle's set will be heralded as part of a triple record release party Aug. 19 at Mercury Lounge in Manhattan; Bar/None acts Starling Electric and Hotel Lights will also be celebrating new records.

>> You can get two things done today. You can buy the new Camper Van Beethoven set Popular Songs Of Great Enduring Strength And Beauty, which concatenates hits, near-hits and should-have-been hits including re-recorded versions of classic numbers from the band's Virgin Records releases. And then you can also write your congressman or Sir Richard Branson or EMI or whoever it is that won't return to the band the rights to said Virgin records. And when you write or call or email you can tell them to get their crap together and make it so that Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart and the crucial (CRUCIAL) Key Lime Pie get reissued. Preferably expanded, too. Anyway, if you do those two things you'll have had a pretty full day. Anyhoo, one of the re-recorded jams was "When I Win The Lottery." Here's an MP3 of a great version of the number from the Live Music Archives at Archive.org.

Camper Van Beethoven -- "When I Win The Lottery (Live)" -- Live At Pipeline, Oct. 4, 1990
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[buy Popular Songs Of Great Enduring Strength And Beauty here]

>> Wow.

Today's Hotness: Lilys, Robert Pollard, Camper Van Beethoven

>> [UPDATED AGAIN] What you are looking at above is the Holy Grail. More precisely, it is a picture of a vinyl version of Lilys' 1992 masterwork In The Presence Of Nothing. We think you can tell it is the vinyl version because the cover art is different from the CD. In fact, 1992 being 16 years ago, we can't definitively say whether we've ever actually seen this cover art before now (even the official Slumberland Records discography only shows the art with which we are exceedingly familiar). Needless to say, this record is rare, having only been issued in an edition of 500 copies on vinyl (although the Slumberland site makes an ambiguous reference to a later vinyl edition from Spin Art that had "a normal LP picture sleeve;" according to Discogs.com this may have been a 1998 vinyl reissue -- did that actually happen?). And needless to say we are torn about whether we should bid on this or not. This may be our only chance to ever aquire this record, for which EBayer Mr--Morgan currently stands to reap USD$61, plus $4 for shipping. And currently, we twiddle our thumbs and watch and wait. Here's a marvelous track from the set below; you can download the amazing track "Claire Hates Me" at the Slumberland page here. [UPDATE: This ended up selling for USD$76 plus at least $4 shipping. Dang...][According to commenter Mike -- perhaps it is even Slumberland Mike? -- this cover above was from the 1998 reissue, so that must have been what the chap was selling. The original 1992 issue was a numbered edition of 500. And if anyone has one in good condition to sell us, you know where to reach us].

Lilys -- "Elizabeth Colour Wheel" -- In The Presence Of Nothing
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[out of print. perhaps you can get a copy at MusicStack here?]

>> Seriously, how many hooks are in the newish Robert Pollard jam "Weatherman And Skin Goddess"? Every line is a hook. It's ridiculous. We were (obviously) taken with "Gratification To Concrete," which we posted last weekend. But "Weatherman And Skin Goddess" is like a five-and-a-half-minute-long concept record. It was initially issued on the eponymous EP as the first release of Mr. Pollard's newly minted Guided By Voices Records, but we didn't hear the track until digging into the promo of the forthcoming full-length Robert Pollard Is Off To Business on Thursday night. That full-length will be issued June 3. Brilliant, brilliant stuff. We uploaded "Weatherman And Skin Goddess" to our sadly neglected Imeem profile, so you can click here to catch a stream of the song. For those of you in the mood to download, RobertPollard.net has a whole sack of MP3s, including the very good "Supernatural Car Lover" from last years solid release Normal Happiness. If you missed it the first time around, check it out now.

Robert Pollard -- "Supernatural Car Lover" -- Normal Happiness
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[buy Robert Pollard releases from Rockathon right here]

>> Legendary "college rock" band Camper Van Beethoven is marking a quarter century of existence by releasing a hits collection called Popular Songs June 24. The set includes original and re-recorded versions of classics including "Take The Skinheads Bowling," "All Her Favorite Fruit" and "When I Win The Lottery," among others. Five songs originally released on the Virgin-issued sets Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart and Key Lime Pie were re-recorded because Virgin refused to allow them to be included in the set, which will be issued by Cooking Vinyl. We sure wish some agreement could be reached regarding those Virgin titles, because if any two albums (well, besides the two My Bloody Valentine sets that will be reissued next month) were screaming to be reissued, it is those two. We promise we'll buy them, Mr. Branson. Here's our favorite CVB jam as offered by Archive.org's Live Music Archive.

Camper Van Beethoven -- "All Her Favorite Fruit (Live)" -- Catalyst, Santa Cruz, CA, July 20, 1989
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[get the whole set from the Live Music Archive here]

Review: Johnny Foreigner | Arcs Across The City EP

Arcs Across The City -- which could have just as easily been titled Six Clattering Explosions And One Soft One -- is the new gold standard in indie rock. After more than a decade of our comparing the merits of new recordings to monumental releases including Archers Of Loaf's Vs. The Greatest Of All Time EP; Lilys' A Brief History Of Amazing Letdowns EP; Haywood's Men Called Him Mister; The Lemonheads' Lovey; Camper Van Beethoven's Key Lime Pie; et cetera; Johnny Foreigner's mini-album sets a bar for this decade and -- based on our proclivity to peg our affections to certain albums for inordinate lengths of time -- perhaps some of the next.

The band professes a love for Kinsella-spawned music and generally anything "Chicago in 1997," although it isn't much of a stretch to peg the trio of Alexei, Junior and Kelly as simply less wacky than Minus The Bear but more damaged than Treepeople, either. Despite a reverence for bygone records, Johnny Foreigner's songs convulse with a markedly contemporary and granular dissection of the lives and failed romances of wage slaves and hangers-on. Miles and miles of self-aware lyrics proffer incisive commentary on young scenemakers, their decaying scenes and the desperate longing that more often than not combusts therein. After months of rocking out to MySpace rips of much of the record, we are freshly blown away by the fully realized productions -- with clean layers of slashing guitars, airy keys, thundering bass and chanted "doo doohs" -- contained on the proper release.

Johnny Foreigner's roots in England's second-largest city, the hyper-industrial and (when viewed on Google Maps) amazingly grey Birmingham, contextualize each song on their first two singles and Arcs Across The City in a drunken underdog's fighting stance: backed into a corner, probably in the wrong and with nothing to lose. The corollary to this is that we don't believe Johnny Foreigner could have come from London, or Los Angeles, or even New York, because an outside-looking-in perspective is both present in and inextricable from the band's music.

No matter the geography, the band's captivating amalgamation of scrambling tempos, breakneck changes, big melodies and clashing vocal lines earns Arcs Across The City critical raves. But more important than the copious kudos is Johnny Foreigner's rescue of British indie music from a contrived necessity to cater to dance-floor denizens. From this American's perspective, British indie music has been hamstrung and flattened by an oft-referenced proscription in UK blogs that new music must move people on the dance floor. We chalk this zealous viewpoint up to the broad success of bands like Arctic Monkeys and Scotland's Franz Ferdinand. The fits and starts in the verse of "The End And Everything After," by contrast, angularly proclaim Johnny Foreigner's independence from many UK bands' 4/4 fixation, while acknowledging great indie rock's innate need to pogo.

Arcs Across The City was released Nov. 26 on Best Before Records, the label arm of a London-based live entertainment and artist management concern. As we suspected, the set has made a sidelong entrance into the U.S. market via EMusic's digital storefront. Unless you just don't like music you should hit the link below and run over to EMusic and download the EP forthwith. As we noted as part of last week's review of the band's U.S. debut [review here], Johnny Foreigner expects to issue its first full-length recording in mid-spring. In the meantime, here is an MP3 of the second and quasi-title track of the EP.

Johnny Foreigner -- "The End And Everything After" -- Arcs Across The City EP
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[buy Arcs Across The City from EMusic right here]

Johnny Foreigner: Interweb | MySpace | YouTube | Flickr