Welcome to the first of, oh, let's say, twelve installations of...
The Dial-A-Song Round-Up!*
Dial-A-Song returned this month with four brand new They Might Be Giants recordings, the first of which is a straight up guitar-centric rocker helmed by Mr. John Linnell. It's called "Erase" and is a fabulous start to this Year of Dial-A-Song. It fits with the age old TMBG trope of pairing bouncy, frenetic music with dark-as-hell lyrics ("when darlings must be murdered/when your heartbreak overwhelms your heart", "think of this as solving problem that should never have occured/please don't call it strangulation, that is such an ugly word", "the skeletons that won't stay down/the mercy kill that can't be drowned"). Such a return to form...it's almost too perfect.
Next, is a mellow, piano-driven track led by Flans called "Madam, I Challenge You To A Duel". At their show on January 25th, where this (and every other DAS song, for that matter) was debuted live, Flansburgh revealed that the genesis of the song came from this YouTube clip of Oliver Reed and Shelley Winters on the Tonight Show back in 1975. I'd like to imagine the number of songs with that origin can be counted on one, giant, foam finger.
After that, already breaking from form, is a circusy/balladey type thing featuring Corn Mo as the sole vocalist. It's called "No Cops" and tells the story of a group of people who seem to have taken the band and the audience hostage ("we’ve locked all the doors and please understand/we’ve nailed down the latch so meet our demands/in the time that we permit, or else the band will get it"). They then go on to say that "(they) are here to steal your dreams" and then urge us to "listen and comply". This will serve as the new introduction music for TMBG's upcoming world tour.
Obviously.
And, finally, the crown in this first month's collection, "Music Jail, Part 1 & 2"**.
Part 2 is my favorite and should be yours as well. I'm not even going to explain this, just listen for yourself. Also: how fucking insane is that video?
A wholly excellent offering for TMBG fans for this first month of Dial-A-Song.
It can only get worse from here.
As for that January 25th concert I mentioned earlier...that is to be the first of twelve shows at the Williamsburg Hall of Music that TMBG are having the last Sunday of each month for the entire year. Aside from two or three tracks I could've done without (you can probably guess which ones by now), it was a total blast and I'm looking forward to the rest of my spoiled-rotten-by-They-Might-Be-Giants year. Review of the show can be found here.
Eels
While working on the follow up to The Cautionary Tales Of Mark Oliver Everett, Eels will be releasing a new live album (and concert film), specifically of their performance from June 2014 at the Royal Albert Concert Hall. A little surprised and bummed they didn't put one out for their fantastic 2013 tour, but, knowing E, that's not an impossibility.
Fingers crossed.
Info and pre-orders and stuff here.
In other news, I sifted through some of the "best of" lists from the end of 2014, namely, Rolling Stone's, NPR's, and that of my friend, Will. Most of what I listened to has become a blur except for the following:
- Haley Bonar's The Last War is utterly fucking fantastic (thank you, Will).
- Sia, FKA Twigs and Banks should all tour together and end the evening with a massive, suicide fuck pit.
- Rolling Stone no longer knows anything about music.
The new Manson album, The Pale Emperor, was released earlier this month and I reviewed it. It's the best thing he's done in over a decade, but it's still not very good. One thing I do have to compliment him on is the packaging***; it's minimalist in a way I've never seen from Manson and it's very effective. The requisite photos of Mason are very well shot and tell a story that the album's songs do not. The disc is as close to pure black as one can achieve in this day and age of record label branding, logos and those god damned cocksucking anti-piracy marks****, plus, the front and back of the packaging have a distinct sandpaper texture that I've never encountered before on an album. And, yes, I know that, when one is giving the most praise from an album to its artwork that there's a real fucking problem.
Like I said: it's still not very good.
You can read the full review here.
Finally, it's been over four years since Cake released any new music and, you know what? I'm done with them. So, replacing Cake for the foreseeable future on the End of the Month Music Bitchfest is....
St. Vincent
Annie Clark (who got so many goddamn rightly deserved Best Of The Year awards for her mind-blowing self titled album) will be releasing a deluxe edition of her St. Vincent featuring five bonus tracks; three of them awesome ("Del Rio", "Pieta" (a recent live staple), Sparrow"), two of them not as awesome ("Bad Believer", the Darkside remix of "Digital Witness").
She's expanded her tour again***** and will also be contributing to David Byrne's new project "Contemporary Colors", which, despite both their involvement, is centered around color guard and, therefore, I have no interest in.
And there you are; 2015 is here. I expect those two new TMBG albums, maybe some more Beck, hopefully a fucking peep from Reznor and the announcement of that new Eels by Q3. Otherwise, I'm turning this whole thing around and we're going to try again...until we get it right.
* Shit my dick, am I as bad as ever with titles...
** According to Linnell, it would have been called "Music Jail Parts 1 & 2", except somebody typed the name in wrong.
*** Although I should probably be complimenting the designer who came up with it.
**** LIKE THOSE EVER STOPPED ANYONE FROM PIRATING ANYTHING! AND ANOTHER THING! WHY DO YOU ONLY HAVE THOSE FUCKING ANTI-PIRACY REMINDERS ON THE BLU-RAYS I PURCHASE?! I ALREADY PURCHASED IT! I DIDN'T PIRATE IT, YOU STUPID, USELESS FUCKS!
***** If you missed it the first time, don't make the same asshole idiot mistake again.
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