Reading: Friday August 22, Leeds: Saturday August 23
Main Stage Rage Against The Machine Queens Of The Stone Age The Fratellis The Enemy Biffy Clyro Serj Tankian Dizzee Rascal Taking Back Sunday Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly Anti-Flag
NME/Radio 1 Stage Babyshambles The Wombats Vampire Weekend MGMT
Reading: Saturday August 23, Leeds: Sunday August 24
Main Stage The Killers Bloc Party The Raconteurs Editors We Are Scientists Dirty Pretty Things The Subways
NME/Radio 1 Stage Manic Street Preachers Bullet For My Valentine Justice Foals
Reading: Sunday August 24, Leeds: Friday August 23
Main Stage Metallica Tenacious D Slipknot Feeder Avenged Sevenfold Dropkick Murphys
NME/Radio 1 Stage The Cribs Conor Oberst Pendulum
How cool is the middle day main stage - 7 awesome bands in a row :) Here's three tracks from three headliners - but I skipped Metallica coz Metallica suck.
New Subways song :) And it's free :) As in properly, legally free, not just leaked and illegally hosted and shared by me :) So I'm not going to prison :) Not for sharing this track anyway...
First thought - really heavy... like you expect Zack de la Rocha to start singing after the big riff comes in. Sounds like they've really come along as a band (not get all patronising or nothin' - they're young and all, but still older than me).
And they've announced a new UK tour:
Sun 18-May Wrexham Central Station Tues 20-May Preston 53 Degrees Wed 21-May Coventry Kasbah Sat 24-May Sheffield Foundry Mon 26-May Peterborough Cresset Tues 27-May Portsmouth Wedgwood Rooms Fri 30-May Leicester University Sun 8-Jun Cambridge Junction Tues 10-Jun Reading University Wed 11-Jun London Koko
And look who else is playing Cambridge - on 2 May @ the Barfly, it's the Mystery Jets :)
Well, 'Girls & Boys' is the first track off of the new Subways album (called All or Nothing, out some time this summer), so here's the first track off of the new (and very excellent) Mystery Jets album (called Twenty One, out now). It's really good, the rest of the album is even better. And check out the the previous post on Mystery Jets here.
I dunno whether it has a name as such, but there seems to be a whole folk-ish singer-songwriter-y 'scene' in London - basically artists like Lightspeed Champion, Laura Marling, Noah and the Whale, Emmy the Great, plus the ones who've really hit the mainstream Kate Nash and Adele. I'm hardly new pointing it out - there's an amazing mixtape on Good Weather for Airstrikes, from back in October. Florence and the Machine are on it, and this Beirut cover has been doing the rounds recently: MP3: Florence and the Machine - Postcards from Italy(highly recommended)
I think she's really good at doing the wordless lilty bit that comes in about halfway through (at 1:35 to be precise), the way the last note in the first part of the phrase (at 1:38) is a lower one than in the original. Does that make sense?
My iTunes is ordered by 'Date Added', so that after 'Postcards from Italy' (added 26/03/2008 18:35) finishes, the next song that comes on (added on 26/03/2008 20:29), because I'd just been watching Arrested Development, is this:
I particularly love the way they repeat the word "Venus" in the second verse, and then he enunciates the end of the next line - "seen us" - really clearly so as to draw even more attention to the amazing rhyme.
So the sequence is Florence and the Machine's cover of 'Postcards from Italy', then 'The Final Countdown'. The next word to come out of my speakers is: "Twat". That'd be this song:
Like I say, it's not really very good, and it sounds a little bit like Tubthumping by Chumbawumba, but it's so blatantly bitter at how the music industry has messed him around that it's worth a listen just to marvel at his anger, as well as to wonder why he uses lyrics that don't scan ("'stead of using it to make a twat of yours truly", with a stress on the the last syllable of 'truly'; and in the next line there's one too many syllables too...). OK I've gone all pedantic English student on your collective selves. Apologies. To make up for it, here's the first song I heard from Lightspeed Champion (pictured right - photo by me :) ), waaaay back from February 2007, maybe even earlier. I don't think Dev likes it - I seem to remember he called it his attempt to write a power-ballad on his myspace. But it's really good, a pretty rough demo sure, and somehow the lyric "they make me blue" doesn't feel right, but still. I like the guitar break just over half-way through. Seriously, download it, it's pretty hard to find I think: MP3: Lightspeed Champion - Shower Your Love On Me(highly recommended) (unreleased, but buy the amazing Falling Off the Lavender Bridge)
The word "widget" ain't exactly one that I care for, but here, in the below "widget", is the new Raconteurs video, for 'Salute Your Solution':
I won't post any mp3s, coz the record company seems to have been pretty on-the-ball in taking down as many Raconteurs mp3s as possible in the run-up to the release of Consolers of the Lonely, which you can buy via the "widget". Thoughts on the album may follow, I've only heard it once so far. I don't think 'Salute Your Solution' is anywhere near as catchy as a first single as 'Steady As She Goes', but I dunno if it even is a proper single. Anyways, enjoy.
Please be awesome, Forgetting Sarah Marshall. So Drillbit Taylor doesn't seem to be that great, and Walk Hard flopped big-time (undeservedly imho), but the next Judd Apatow-produced project will be a return to commercial and critical success. Hopefully. Basic plot is: girl leaves guy for other guy, guy goes on holiday to get over it, finds himself at the same resort as girl and other guy. Unlikely? Whatever dude. The marketing campaign is ambitious enough to suggest that the studio is doing its best to get the crowds when it opens in a month's time.
There's a blog 'written' by the film's main character, Peter Bretter (Jason Segel, of the genius TV series Freaks and Geeks, which I unreservedly love and recommend), and a fansite for Sarah Marshall (Kristen Bell, off of Veronica Mars, which I wish wish wish they'd release on Region 2 DVD). Now the band that Sarah Marshall's new boyfriend Aldous Snow (Russell Brand, whom you should already know and love. If you know and hate him, listen to his Radio 2 show or buy his stand-up DVDs - there's much more to him than the hair, honest) fronts - Infant Sorrow - has a myspace page: http://www.myspace.com/officialinfantsorrow (highly recommended)
It's got two tracks, and an amusing video. And it is Russell singing. He played 'Inside of You' on his Radio 2 show last night (listen again here). It's essentially a comedy record, in that it's for the movie which is a comedy, but like in Walk Hard, it's actually a decent song. Matt Morgan, Russell's co-host on the Radio 2 show, semi-jokingly made fun of it, saying that "the sad thing is that you're actually trying really hard." He is, and it wouldn't be as good if he wasn't (well, yeah, I guess that is kinda obvious... but y'know I mean). 'We've Got to Do Something', the second song on the page, is splendidly over-the-top, especially the spoken-word bit. Also - does anyone know anyone other than the author Huxley called Aldous? Note the name of the band's guitarist on the myspace page - Johnny Huxley.
And here are the tracks for you to download - they're myspace rips, so only 96 kbps, but still:
Forgetting Sarah Marshall is out on 25 April over here in the UK, a week after it's US release. Here's the trailer:
And as an extra-special bonus, here's Jason Segel as Nick in Freaks and Geeks singing his song (yeah, he actually wrote it, apparently) 'Lady L', about on-off girlfriend Lindsay, to an audience of a sardonic sixteen year-old Seth Rogen. Ker-azee coincidence: in real life Jason Segel and Linda Cardellini (who plays Lindsay) were together for a a few years; Segel wrote Forgetting Sarah Marshall partly about their break-up. Which rounds off this post in a pleasingly circular fashion. Now watch the clip, it's amazing.
And another extra-special bonus: two songs off of Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. They're both great, maybe especially the second one in that it's not in the trailers, only in the closing credits. That's not reeeeally a spoiler, I mean it's Dewey Cox singing about his own death so it's not even like the character is dead...
Everyone but Alan Partridge seems to pretend not to like Greatest Hits albums. Obviously he does kinda have a point, I mean 'Best of' albums do kinda have a lot of good songs on. On the other hand, of course they're kinda annoying, especially if you buy the greatest hits album first, and then want to get into the rest of the band's work, coz you feel like if you buy one of their 'ordinary'/'proper' [delete as appropriate] albums, then you've kinda got all the best tracks already. This isn't necessarily true of course, particularly on a compilation that's a bit skewed towards recent material like Morrissey's recent Greatest Hits. Anyway, one thing a lot of Greatest Hits albums have in common is that they feature a previously unreleased, specially recorded new song, or maybe even two, one of which is usually a single. In a pre-iTunes age they were really annoying if you had the band's other albums already, coz if there was one that wasn't released as a single, you had to buy all the songs you've already got. It's not so bad now obviously. But all this ignores the quality of the actual songs. Most of them seem to get slated, maybe partly out of that sense of snobbishness that Alan Partridge is so blissfully unaware of. Here's a selection:
'That's How People Grow Up' I don't really like, and I think the general consensus of most fans seems to be the same. That kinda makes me wanna like it, but musically it feels kinda - lazy? A bit standard, verse-chorus-verse-chorus, where the chorus is just him singing the title of the song and that's it. More importantly for me, I don't like the lyrics. Whether it's falling in love or "trying to fall in love" that he's calling a waste of time, it doesn't make me happy. Sure a lot of Smiths/Morrissey stuff is equally pessimistic, but usually in a wittier way. But I do like hearing Morrissey singing the word "sweetie". 'All You Need Is Me' is much better I think. I don't love it, but it sounds so much more focused, angry, driven. Less ordinary lyrics: "There's a naked man standing laughing in your dreams" is at the very least memorable, and at the end there's a rather Wildean paradox-y bit "You don't like but you love me/ Either way you're wrong". THPGU was the single, but AYNIM is much more interesting. From Morrissey - Greatest Hits
NME gave the Manics' Greatest Hits, Forever Delayed a zero out of ten. The sentiment is fair enough, given that they (I think I'm right in saying this) said back in the early 90s that they'd never release a greatest hits album. 'There By The Grace Of God' is a decent tune, though nothing to make someone who'd lost interest in them rediscover their passion for the band. I remember liking it at the time. '4 Ever Delayed' is good too, but it was on Lipstick Traces, their b-sides and rarities album that came out the following summer. NME gave it an eight for music, and a ten (!) for looking inside themselves and seeing what was wrong or something like that. Then they released Lifeblood and everyone hated them again, and then came Send Away The Tigers and everyone decided that they were cool after all, perhaps mostly coz Nicky Wire decided to wear a skirt again. From Manic Street Preachers - Forever Delayed: The Greatest Hits Red Hot Chili Peppers: Fortune Faded
Yay!! Undislikeable. Being 'the pop band that it's ok for indie people to like' kinda makes me wanna dislike them, but they're just undeniably amazing pop, on the fast ones like this anyway. The ballads are distinctly 'meh'. Also, this has FOUR 'o's in "ooooh" - not for Girls Aloud the simple double-o of Mark Ronson's 'Ooh Wee' or 'Ooh La' by The Kooks. From The Sound of Girls Aloud
Ooh, it's a bit political... Pretty good imho, but R.E.M. haven't really made me excited for a while. Is Accelerate any good? That's a genuine question, not a rhetorical one; I haven't heard it yet. Low bit-rate again, apologies. Also: my opinion is that Reveal is a really good album. Discuss. From In Time: The Best of R.E.M. 1988-2003
I kinda prefer the original actually, but I've only got it in low bit-rate. Yeah, U2 pretty much suck nowadays, but this ain't bad. Window in the Skies or whatever it's called off the new greatest hits (U218) is kinda cool, or the video is worth watching anyways. It's basically an excuse to show off their musical taste, but with Beck and Patti Smith in there, at least it's good taste. And besides, I'm writing a music blog, so to criticise the showing-off of musical taste might be a liiittle bit hypocritical :) From U2 - The Best of 1990-2000 (P.S. - wasn't this track from 2002, making the album's title a bit a of misnomer...?)
Yay, everyone loves Supergrass's greatest hits, coz they're an awesome singles band. Or were anyway, I'm not sure anyone's that fussed anymore sadly. This album got ten out of ten in NME - it kinda deserves it too, actually. This is great, kinda U2-meets-Midnite-Vultures-era-Beck. Low bit-rate yet again, sorry (it's 80 kbps - not thaaat bad...). From Supergrass is 10 - The Best of 1994-2004
Well, that's it. Comments are obviously totally completely welcome, indeed I'd be unendingly grateful if anyone did comment coz that means that someone's come across this blog, which is a good thing.
So, more than a year later... A year?!?! Yeah, so the last post was on 4th February 2007, and now it's 22nd March 2008...eek.
Anyways, this is kinda a test, seeing as I'm all inexperienced and naive and all, unlearned in the ways of blogging (*represses urge to put inverted commas around any variation on the word 'blog'*). Hoooopefully, if this works, you (the imaginary reader) will be able to download files - specifically mp3s in this case at least - from this website. Yay...
When I first heard it, on a five-song sampler for their new album Twenty One (out Monday) it was called 'Girl Next Door', which though it fits with the general sentiment, if you wanna be pedantic, I guess it should be 'Girl Next Door But One' if it's the girl who lives two doors down... Anyways, it's a lovely sweet amazing pop song, and it includes this line: I hear that she likes to dance around the room to a worn-out twelve-inch of 'Marquee Moon' It also includes a Smiths-y middle-eight bit which makes me think of that moving-your-head-side-to-side dance that Jay and Silent Bob do... So basically it's totally awesome dude, download it. :)
And the album - I really like it. It makes me happy when a band who got loads of hype first time round come back with a second album that's actually good (better than the first - yeah, probably). OK so it would have been nice if their Dad was still in the band, and one of them does have very silly hair, but still. What d'you think of the cover? D'you think they hired someone who has different-looking feet. If so, do you think he or she is divided straight down the middle, maybe stitched together, Frankenstein-style... If it's just two people - WHERE ARE THEIR OTHER LEGS?! Those mysterious Jets, eh? Eh?
Any music posted here is for preview purposes only. If you like it, support the artist: buy the record, go see them, tell your friends. If you own the copyright to any of the songs I've posted and want them taken down, let me know and I'll obviously oblige. Email me at: silverese@live.co.uk
*What are you doing here?* Blogging, apparently...
*Why?* Why not? Quit with the aggressive questioning, a'rite?
*What d'ya like?* Umm, music, movies and TV, literature, life most of the time.
*What music?* Right now, Mystery Jets, Elbow and LCD Soundsystem are making me happy. Also stuff like bright eyes, libertines, sufjan stevens, arcade fire, beck, pj harvey, pulp, the smiths...
*What movies?* eternal sunshine of the spotless mind, lost in translation, almost famous, magnolia, the big lebowski, edward scissorhands, pan's labyrinth, the royal tenenbaums &c; TV-wise, I'm thinking Six Feet Under, The Office (UK and even moreso US), The Sopranos, The Wire, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Firefly, Arrested Development, Spaced, Extras, Peep Show...
*What literature?* Been mostly reading my university reading list. At the moment, it's Shakespeare. If held at gunpoint, favourite book ever is 'Underworld' by Don DeLillo.
NME/Radio 1 Stage
