4.29.11
4:31 pm
Catchy title, eh?
I'll put some work in...
Anyway, I'm sick.
Which blows.
I've lost the Neil Gaiman voting thing (mathematically speaking, I lost it the day I started).
Which double blows hard.
And I'm going away for a wonderful weekend in upstate New York with Christina.
Which triple-dog-dare blows because I'm sick.
But I'm an optimist.
And it's in this optimistic spirit that I embody that I launch the first official "feature" of my journal thing: a monthly update on the handful of bands I enjoy and what they're up to/what I'm looking forward to etc.
Not that I've never done this before, but now I'm just going to try to do it at the end of the month.
Or maybe it'll be bi-weekly.
Or whenever Trent Reznor tweets something mysterious.
My hope is that, by setting a specific time frame for bitching about music, it'll let more time pass in which something might actually happen.
Smart, eh?
Anyhoodle.
First off: the Five Big Ones (also working on that title)
Nine Inch Nails
Every time I see the unchanged frontpage of nin.com (my homepage, naturally), I get this feeling of "something big is about to happen".
I have had this feeling for the past three months.
The only thing I know for 100% sure is that the score to "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" (which is being created by ACADEMY AWARD WINNERS©® Reznor and Ross) HAS to be out by December...because that's when the movie is coming out and I don't think Hollywood would look too kindly upon their new baby shitting the bed by not finishing it on time.
Aside from that, Reznor has said that the long, long, LONG awaited Fragile Ultimate Deluxe Xmax Edition will be out this year as well as a full length How To Destroy Angles album AND new Nine Inch Nails music.
But he's also just had a baby so...yeah.
Here's hoping the 2nd half of 2011 is just packed with NIN, HTDA and other acronymic shit involving Trent Reznor.
I pray to have something to talk about in a month's time.
They Might Be Giants
After almost three years of unimpressive kids stuff, They Might Be Giants has finally nailed down their new album: title, tracklist and release date.
It's called Join Us, has eighteen tracks (not fourteen, as was previously reported by the music haters at Pitchfork) and is coming out July 19th.
And, based on the first four tracks, which were released Tuesday, it is comprised of unimpressive adult stuff.*
Over the past decade, their "adult" albums have been spaced years apart because of their children's releases, the first of which, "No!", was brilliant; a return to the ingenious, dark weirdness that endeared TMBG fans to TMBG, just aimed at a different age group, but since the filthy evil of Disney Money stepped in, they've become far less interesting.
Some songs sound like encyclopedia entries set to music, which, while educational at times is not very enjoyable.
In general, all the "Here Comes " kids' albums feel a bit phoned in.
And I understand that one of these guys has a kid and the other likes food, and these albums are officially earning them a whole new generation of fans, but what about the fans that were here first?
What I'm dancing around is that, now that the adult albums are spaced farther apart, more is riding on them, because fans know yet another kids' album, along with two and a half years of kids' shows are right around the corner, and, so far, Join Us doesn't look like it's going to be a winner.
Obviously, I can't know the quality of the thing until it's out, but, unless the other fourteen tracks take some of these "sharp left turns" John Flansburgh has been talking about since this album was announced, fans look to be in for some disappointment.
Eels
After releasing three fair to good albums in the space of about sixteen months (Hombre Lobo, End Times and Tomorrow Morning), Eels gets a pass.
No rancor, no snark.
They did what I'd love for all my favorite bands to do: drop three albums in a year and a half, then do a huge world tour to mix and match the best songs from each.
I was so content with what E had done that when he announced another world tour starting June 2011, I was just tickled pink.
They'll be coming to the Williamsburg Music Hall at the end of July (the 29th and 30th, to be exact) and I will happily brave the Hipster Scum to see them perform.
Maybe I'll even wear my "This Is What Cool Looks Like" shirt to show these black-clad cock-pads a thing or two.
Or maybe I'll just punch one in the dick.
Whatevs.
And, although I'd love new music from Eels, I completely understand if he just toured and didn't release another album until mid or late 2012.
See? I'm not always a grumpy, greedy asshole.
Cake
These fucking hippy fucks...
Just kidding.
After having seen them last week and having come to fully appreciate the seven good tracks on their latest album, Showroom of Compassion, I can confidently say that I'm ready for a new Cake record.
Here's the deal...while the seven good tracks on Showroom are good...seven good tracks after seven years is really not enough for me.
Maybe after three, three and a half years, but not after seven.
Some good news, John McCrea (lead singer) says the band doesn't really like touring (but they're certainly willing to grudgingly choke down our awful fast-food-and-carbon-monoxide-stinking money) and, now that their solar-powered-circle-jerk studio is complete, they plan to record and release a new album soon, maybe even this year!
And I'll certainly buy it when it comes out later this year in 2018.
You fucking hippy fucks.
Honestly guys, release that double live album you were talking about back in 2008 and we can be friends again...
P.S. I expect the remainder of this year's Cake updates to be old school, hate-and-fury-fueled fuckrants.
Jonathan Edwards style.
You have been warned.
Beck
Yeah, where the fuck has he been?
I had forgotten just how long ago his last proper album, Modern Guilt, came out.
2008.
Jesus.
And what has he been doing since?
- Beck's Record Club (where him, his band and some musical friends (Sonic Youth, Nigel Godrich, Wilco, St. Vincent, B.B. King etc.) all get together and, in a day, record an entire album by someone else (The Velvet Underground, INXS, Leonard Cohen, Yanni) then release it for free, accompanied by an in-studio video of the recording, track by track
- The score for Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, including all the music for Sex Bob-Omb, Scott Pilgrim's band
- Producing/co-writing/co-singing/et cetera on a bunch of shit like Charlotte Gainsbourgh's IRM (amazing), Jamie Lidell's Compass, Tobacco's Maniac Meat (weird), Thurston Moore's new album (meh) and (perhaps the one I'm most looking forward to) The Lonely Island's Turtleneck and Chain (I'm hoping the track he's on, "Attracted To Us", is pure, sweaty Midnite Vultures)
- Writing songs for vampire related movies and TV shows like "Let's Get Lost" from the Twilight: Eclipse soundtrack and "Bad Blood" from the True Blood season 3 soundtrack
- Interviewing famous people about, literally, nothing on his web site. People such as Will Farrell, Dimitri Martin, Caetano Veloso and others.
- Making crazycool and massively eclectic mix tapes, also on his web site (they're in a section called Planned Obsolescence and there are about twenty so far, each forty five minutes or so)
- Some art thing called "colorspace" (which I know very little about) also on his site
Does all this stuff equal about three years of no new Beck album? Yeah, I guess, except that, in an interview last year, he said he had a brand new album ready to go. It was called Rococo and was going to be released "I don't know, maybe just for free on my site" (as his record contract had ended) in the summer of 2010, but then some other band (The Hives? The Killers? The Streaks? The Stains? One of those guys...) released an album with a song called "Rococo" on it and Beck changed his mind. He's another one who, I feel, is about to drop some science on us.
Strangely, I'm most looking forward to the new Beck, as everything this guy does has a lot of pure gold on it.
Next to David Bowie, I maintain that Beck is the funkiest white man alive.
So, those were the big five, as it were.
I'm also looking forward to some new Garbage (Manson says there should be something by summer, and it's about fucking time), the new Other Lives (coming out May 11th), the new Lonely Island (also May 11th), some new St. Vincent (apparently she has been doing an album with David Byrne as well as writing a follow up to "Actor"), the new Marilyn Manson (I'm a glutton for punishment, what can I say? Manson says "it's death metal" and Twiggy says "it's a punked out Mechanical Animals", both of which are far too tantalizing to pass up) and...hm, that might be everything.
Hopefully, I'll have some more info on each of these as more info appears and reviews of the new Other Lives (Tamer Animals) and the new Lonely Island, although I could probably review it now: very funny the first dozen times, then, slightly, less so.
All right.
This bitchfest is over.
Go in Peace to Love and Serve Skeletor.
* See my bitchy, scathing review for more details.**
** Probably more than you want.
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