I think I need it. Do you need it? You can listen to a track (“Girl, I Need You”) at the Massive Attack site.
Due out February 8. I believe there'll be a review of this in an upcoming issue of Stereophile, as well.
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It’s been awhile since I last hooked up with Massive Attack. Heligoland is the unit’s fifth full-length studio release and, with collaborations from Damon Albarn, Hope Sandovol, Tunde Adebimpe, and Martina Topley-Bird, it has to be good. Right?
Wild Nothing is 21-year old Virginian, Jack Tatum. Last year, he released a 7" single on Captured Tracks, another one of those labels that just knows what I like. Gemini, his full-length debut, is scheduled to be released on May 18. You can listen to a few tracks at the Wild Nothing Myspace page.
I’m not sure if I need this one, or if I just really want it. But I do love the massive collision of pop hooks.
Yeah, I need it.
Photo: Annabel Mehran
Jeez, what’s up with the suggestive album title, Joanna Newsom?
Whatever. I definitely need this one. Every audiophile’s favorite harpist releases her third full-length masterpiece, Have One On Me, on February 23. It’s already on Art Dudley’s 2011 “Records To Die For” list.
Oh: It’s going to be a three LP package. You can listen to a track called “’81” at the Drag City website. It’s very good. Joanna's having a little party in the Garden of Eden, and she's naked as a trout.
And, dang it, just when I thought it was safe to check my e-mail, it turns out that Gang Gang Dance’s long out-of-print 2005 release, the highly acclaimed God’s Money, is available again—and on vinyl, hallelujah. A note from The Social Registry, another one of my favorite labels:
The album's initial vinyl pressing all but sold out on the band's first tour and has been only available in scant numbers or from ebay-based price gougers ever since.
We are happy to be able to offer this music to you, the fan, on vinyl again at a reasonable price. Pressed on a 140-gram…
The Jazz Loft Project is one of the most fascinating documents of multiple obsession—an obsession about an obsessive’s obsession—and it’s worth checking out in multiple media.
From 1957-65, W. Eugene Smith, who had been one of America’s most successful photojournalists, retreated to a 4th-floor walk-up on 6th Avenue and 28th Street in Manhattan and took pictures from his window—over 1,000 rolls worth—of life’s spontaneous carnival out on the street.
Next door, the composer Hall Overton was running a late-night rehearsal studio for jazz musicians. Smith started photographing them…
Here's the video for 2009's "Single of the Year" (as determined by me), the undeniably catchy "Life Magazine," by Cold Cave.
Directed by Focus Creeps.
Yes. If you have a television, you might have also heard this song in a certain Radio Shack commericial. There was a time in my life when that kind of thing would have bothered me. I'm okay with it now. (I gotta say, though, this Acura ad is killing me.)
Wild. Peacocks and stuff.
The triple-LP is scheduled to be released on February 23, and can be pre-ordered from Drag City now.
Just this morning, I was thinking about the Magnetic Fields, and specifically about how I haven’t really enjoyed their work since 1999’s inspired 69 Love Songs. While i had plenty of fine moments, I can’t stand to listen to it anymore. It strikes me as mawkish and false. Distortion bothered me from the very beginning. There was nothing to hold on to. And though I’m mildly interested in the new one, Realism, I'm not excited enough to add it to “the list.”
69 Love Songs, however, is something else. “If it were reissued on vinyl,” I thought to myself, “I’d just have to buy it…
Might as well add this one to the list.
While kicking around the Merge website, I learned about the upcoming album, Volume Two, from She & Him. M. Ward and Zooey Deschanel make some beautiful music together, and Zooey hypnotizes me with her voice and her big blue eyes. The album is scheduled to be released on March 23, and is available for pre-order now.
The Grammy Awards are that one Sunday night every January, when for a few brief hours, I try to imagine what people on other continents (in not other planets) think of America when they watch this silly, frivolous, super glam display of Las Vegasness come to the Staples Center. How incredibly ridiculous we must look to the rest of the world. During the telecast, I’m liable to claim I’m from Canada. By the end, I want to take a shower and scrub off the sleaze. The whole thing is so bad, so not about music, that I have to change channels throughout the telecast if only to cleanse my palette…