Britt Daniel (Spoon), Sam Brown (New Bomb Turks) and Dan Boeckner (Wolf Parade/Handsome Furs) are Divine Fits.
Umm... yeah. This should be good.
Fresh off the announcement that Handsome Furs are no more, Dan Boeckner shows good reason why that (and the less recent break up of Wolf Parade) is not such a bad thing. Enter Divine Fits, the new collaboration between Boeckner and Spoon's Britt Daniel. Throw in New Bomb Turks' Sam Brown, and it looks like Merge Records has another indie supergroup on their roster.
For having released only two albums, ska pioneers The Specials have had an influence on modern music that is both deep and wide. 30 years later, the rude boys are back together and touring North America, including a performance at the Coachella Music Festival later this week -- joining freshly reunited acts Pavement and Faith No More shepherding us down memory lane.
Jerry Dammers, besides being keyboardist and chief songwriter for the ska pioneers, also founded the indie label 2 Tone Records, home to not only The Specials, but also Madness and The English Beat (or, as their known back home, the Beat). When the band plays on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, it will also mark the 30th anniversary of the act's memorable appearance on Saturday Night Live back in April of 1980. Besides the skinny tie fashion, worth watching for Neville Staple's machine gun entrance.
Elsewhere, singer/songwriter/guitar goddess Kaki King has come a long way since her days busking in the New York subway. She releases her fifth album, Junior, this week, and will be promoting it with an appearance on Fallon the night after The Specials. Besides performing with her band, it's rumored that King will also be sitting in with The Roots, playing several songs with the greatest band in late night (an added treat, to say the least).
Now that the Winter Olympics are in the past for NBC, the late night lineup is back in nearly full strength. One Coco casualty notwithstanding, I for one am glad to have the talk shows back from break, along with some new SNL (that doesn't feature J-Lo), and this weekend Vampire Weekend returns to 30 Rockefeller Plaza with a number one album under their designer belt.
I've already profiled the Columbia grads twice in the past two months, but having seen their mind-bending recently released video for "Giving up the Gun," we might as well go to that well again. Featuring funny cameos from Jake Gyllenhaal, Joe Jonas, Lil' Jon and the Wu-Tang Clan’s RZA, their hasn't been a video with this many celebs since Jamie Foxx's ridiculous video for "Blame It," which appropriately enough also featured Jake Gyllenhaal. Fitting in with Vampire Weekend's Ivy league sensibilities, the video centers around a tennis tournament that looks like it was staged inside an Apple Store. RZA officiates, Lil' Jon coaches and Gyllenhaal hams it up playing with a fifth of whiskey in hand. Verdict: advantage Vampire Weekend.
Meanwhile, Jay Leno is back in his old familiar Tonight Show slot. Putting aside the fact that I don't find the chin very funny at all, I'm mourning the loss of music discovery that Conan (and Max Weinberg) at least tried to bring to the show. To wit, the best this week has to offer is overexposed artists Adam Lambert and Avril Lavigne (yawn). Music director (and laugh-at-anything) Kevin Eubanks has a foot out the door (staying on briefly for the re-launch, then moving out of the spotlight), so maybe they'll bring on someone to better for the job. But this is NBC, so consider expectations adjusted.
Elsewhere, Spoon makes it back to Letterman just ahead of their annual SXSW visit, and The Partridge Family is reuniting on the Today Show as part of the morning show's week long TV family reunions. While they're likely not performing (not a real band, only David Cassidy and Shirley Jones contributed to recordings), it's worth mentioning if only to point you to the Detroit-based "Soul Club" episode featuring Richard Pryor and Louis Gossett, Jr.
LATE ADDITION: Joanna Newsom was added to Friday night for Jimmy Fallon.
Coming off their most commercial effort to date in Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, Transference feels like a retreat back to basics, going all the way back to Drake Tungsten, Britt Daniel's now defunct alter ego/solo lo-fi project. A Series of Sneaks, Spoon's only major label release from 1998, is the album I'd compare it to, as its collection of rough sketches hint at something great and rely in the listener to finish. The album is Spoon in its rawest form, with nearly half the album remaining in demo form, which works well with a common Spoon theme of break-up. It's the sound of a heart refusing to break, yet breaking all the same. Lead single "Written in Reverse" has Daniel writing himself out of a relationship, which is an act both of defiance and depression. Similarly, another standout track, "Is Love Forever?", juxtaposes parental love with that of "some ex-girlfriend, call her Heather." Since the album title is defined as a "redirection of feelings and desires towards a new object," if Daniel is using the album (and, in turn, us) as part of his psychotherapy, slap a beard on me and call me Sigmund Freud.
In the (fabulous) spirit of David Bowie's Pin Ups comes this great collection of covers from bands that have inspired Supergrass' Gaz Coombes and Danny Goffey. The Oxford lads play it mostly straight on the selections, only re-imagining Beastie Boys' "(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (to Party)," while the production of Nigel Godrich (Radiohead) unfortunately keeps it from getting too raucous. But you can still hear the glee in their rendering of Bowie's "Queen Bitch," and Elvis Costello's "Pump it Up." And just about any cover of The Kinks' "Big Sky" (I miss you Flop) is sure to please, in my book.
Legend has it that once upon a time the idea was floated that Captain Awesome would turn out to be a spy. But in that scenario, the character (played by Ryan McPartlin) would have to meet an early end. McPartlin's "Awesome" was just too...well... awesome for that to happen. Knowing that, seeing Captain Awesome mistaken for a spy in this episode it's like coming full (inverse) circle. Of course, outside of the abandoned idea from the writer's room, why would anyone think he was a spy? Nobody's confused about whether Shaw is a spy, thanks to the Superman looks of Brandon Routh (who kind of looks like a goyish model version of Josh Schwartz, no?).
A case of mistaken identity as theme sort of crosses over to the Buy More, kind of, with the Fight Club references. The intersect in Chuck's head is kind of like his Tyler Durden - a romanticized version of himself that Chuck (as Narrator) has little control over. Notice, though, that with Awesome, he has little or no problem flashing when he needs it? With Fight Club, guest Angie Harmon (Baywatch Nights), and the flair on Morgan's vest (Office Space) it appears 90s pop cultural references have won the day over the usual 80s allotment.
To underscore the Fight Club scenes, they even employed The Dust Brothers' "Space Monkeys," from the soundtrack. But, like the first season, nothing sells action like Spoon, even if the new album (Transference, out tomorrow) doesn't have the same amount of metronome pounding rhythm of past albums. "Got Nuffin'" does the trick, though, even if the lyrical content has no relation to what's going on the screen whatsoever. And yes, Josh Scwartz is a fan.
Congrats to the new Ass Man for stopping Fight Club before it turned in to Project Mayhem.
Breaking up is hard to do. Just ask Conan O'Brien and NBC, or, better yet, the band Spoon. The Britt Daniel-led quartet has written a lot of songs on the subject, including a good chunk of their latest release, Transference, which is out this week. So it's appropriate that the band plays what might be Conan's last hurrah on The Tonight Show Tuesday* night, part of the host's send-off week.
*At the time of publish, Tuesday night was the last scheduled night for The Tonight Show. NBC is expected to make an official announcement today on as to the details of the talk show's future, with O'Brien's departure all but set for this week.
As a follow up to their biggest selling album, 2007's Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, Transference will probably confuse a few of those new fans as it's Spoon in the raw, with a couple of the songs even remaining in demo form and only a few others that recall the band at their catchiest. The band will likely be playing one of those songs, "Written in Reverse," Tuesday night on The Tonight Show, and if you look at the song through the right lens, you could pretend it's about NBC's Jeff Zucker: "No nothing was planned / You just can't help yourself / Some people are so easily shuffled and dealt." (Of course, they've written the ultimate vindictive song about a corporate glad hander with "The Agony of Laffitte," blistering written about A&R man Ron Laffitte, then with Elektra, featuring the lyric, "It's like I knew two of you, man / The one before and after we shook hands.")
Meanwhile, Spectacle's second season is winding down, when it seems it had just begun. The final two episodes are an edited down version of the four-hour love fest Bruce Springsteen and Elvis Costello put on last year at the famous Apollo Theater. The two spent so much time talking and playing the music they love, that there was just no way to edit all the magic down to one hour. At one point, Spingsteen posits "The greatest rock ’n’ roll musicians are desperate men," but the only thing desperate on this night was the need to hear more from these two legends of rock.
Finally, the Baltimore dream pop duo Beach House make their network television debut on Fallon Friday night, performing their lead single "Norway" in support of their third full length release, Teen Dream (out January 26, 2010). Awareness of the band has risen on the heels of singer Victoria Legrand's collaboration with Grizzly Bear and participation in the soundtrack to Twilight Saga: New Moon, but the majestic sound that is Teen Dream should make a splash all its own.
My top album of the decade is likely not even in many others' top ten, but I have to stand by The Meadowlands as my pick. The Wrens are notoriously uncompromising, which lead to their showdown with Alan Meltzer after Secaucus (1996), but the seven year wait was well worth it. Up to that point, The Wrens' noise rock was merely exhilarating, but then songwriters Charles Bissell and Kevin Whelen added heartbreaking to the mix and the result is devastating. The overarching theme throughout is failure, but the album is anything but.
Considering this is their only album they released this decade (their motto is 'Keeping folks waiting...since 1989'), perhaps their long awaiting follow up will top the next decade. They have to finish the album first, of course.
Wilco's last album with the late Jay Bennett was a war. Much of the conflict both in the recording and with the record label was captured in the great documentary I'm Trying to Break Your Heart. By the time the album finally got a proper release, 9/11 happened, adding serious levity to a song like "Ashes of American Flags" and more. And the release still holds up to this day, while should be noted that no other Wilco (Bennett-less) follow up makes this list.
With Kill the Moonlight, Britt Daniel and drummer/producer Jim Eno peeled away the layers and boiled the Spoon sound down for a minimalist feel. It's an approach that served them well on this release.
If OK Computer changed the game for Radiohead, then Kid A made the word 'game' no longer relevant to the conversation. Like Spoon, Thom Yorke & co. rebuilt their sound from the ground up, leaving a more minimalist approach. But where Spoon retained the essential elements of 'indie rock,' Radiohead reached over to electronic music and Krautrock for inspiration.
More in no particular order... Portishead - Third Mclusky - Mclusky Do Dallas Deerhunter - Microcastle The White Stripes - Elephant Burial - Untrue Fugazi - The Argument Kanye West - Late Registration Iron & Wine - The Creek Drank the Cradle Sufjan Stevens - Greetings From Michigan: The Great Lakes State Grizzly Bear - Yellow House Neko Case - Blacklisted Interpol - Turn on the Bright Lights Queens of the Stone Age - Songs for the Deaf Joanna Newsom - The Milk-Eyed Mender Art Brut - Bang Bang Rock & Roll Sleater-Kinney - The Woods Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend No Age - Nouns Justin Timberlake - FutureSex/LoveSounds The Shins - Oh, Inverted World Antony & the Johnsons - I Am a Bird Now Band of Horses - Everything All the Time Joanna Newsom - Ys The Mountain Goats - The Sunset Tree Califone - Roots and Crowns Yo La Tengo - And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out Battles - Mirrored Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart LCD Soundsystem - LCD Soundsystem Ted Leo and the Pharmacists - Hearts of Oak Sleater-Kinney - One Beat The New Pornographers - Twin Cinema My Morning Jacket - Z Andrew Bird - Andrew Bird & the Mysterious Production of Eggs Hot Chip - The Warning The Microphones - The Glow, Pt. 2 Phoenix - It's Never Been Like That M.I.A. - Kala Clipse - Hell Hath No Fury Radiohead - Amnesiac Beck - Sea Change The Postal Service - Give Up The Walkmen - Bows and Arrows Jens Lekman - Night Falls Over Kortedala Devendra Banhart - Rejoicing in the Hands My Morning Jacket - It Still Moves Hercules and Love Affair - Hercules and Love Affair Low - Things We Lost in the Fire Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Fever to Tell The Streets - Original Pirate Material Belle and Sebastian - The Life Pursuit Kanye West - Graduation The Flaming Lips - Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots
It's Independence Day this week and Wilco's one of only a select few feeling patriotic with their releases. Meanwhile, while it's only a three-song EP, it's been awhile since we've heard from Spoon, so it's definitely welcome news. Not a whole lot else, but there are interesting new releases from Moby, Wu-Tang Clan, Levon Helm and Amy Speace.
I often use the word 'effortless' to describe songwriting in a positive matter, so when I use it here to describe Wilco (the Album), it should be taken as mostly positive. But there's something about the 'effortless' here that's also negative. Wilco, and as principle songwriter Jeff Tweedy, have made a living swinging in and out of effortless songwriting, but their albums have had at least a portion of the album aim for something more ambitious than where they've ended up here. The name of the album and the opening track, "Wilco (the Song,)" even underscore the comfort and ease with which they're working here. It works to their advantage with the aforementioned opening track and the George Harrison-referencing first single "You Never Know." It's hard not to think of the recent death of ex-Wilco member Jay Bennett and put in context with this release. Bennett is often credited with sparking Wilco's experimental side, and with Wilco (the Album), that part of the band feels as dead as it's ex-guitarist.
Placed within Spoon's rich discography, Got Nuffin feels kind of insignificant, just a song and two "f*ckin' around in the studio" tracks. But considering how long it's felt since the last new release from the Austin (and now also Portland) band, the EP/Single is a most welcome event. "Got Nuffin'" may not rank with the best songs Brit Daniels has written, but it's what we've got for now, so love it I must.
While most actors won't cross the picket lines for Jay, Conan, Carson and Jimmy, music artists aren't as beholden to unions, so it's a bit surprising that they're not leaning on music guests more than the late night shows are this week. Thankfully, there's more than just the usual late night talk shows to pluck from this week.
Austin City Limits, now in it's 33rd year, finally nabbed Texas rock & roll legend Roky Erickson (13th Floor Elevators) for a performance, and the result airs this coming Saturday*. His battle back from the effects of shock treatment were painfully documented in the 2005 film You're Gonna Miss Me, and now he's appearing on television for the first time since American Bandstand over 41 years ago. Backed on stage by The Explosives along with ZZ Top's Billy Gibbons, Erickson deftly runs through much of the sci-fi garage rock days of his solo career, and sets the house on fire with crowd favorite "You're Gonna Miss Me" from days with 13th Floor Elevators. Opening the evening are Kings of Leon, the southern Strokes U2.
Also make a return to television is former Beatles drummer Ringo Starr, who plays all week on the newly revamped The Early Show. Starr's new album Liverpool 8, much like McCartney's latest, is his first in a long time to take a look back at those days long gone. Apparently CBS is thinking in the past as well, since the revamp was done in part to expand their younger audience. Aside from narrating early seasons of Thomas and Friends, Starr's audience is more gray then Grey's Anatomy.
This episode of Reaper started and ended with some intrigue, but like this week's errant soul, the middle was mostly an amorphous blob greased up to distraction. With news that timeshifted ratings have given the show a The Office-like boost, it looks like the show has a chance to get picked up for the season, and as a result, I'm pleading for for an episode that has Satan's Scooby gang doing more then the formula of catching a soul each week.
With House back from it's baseball break, Reaper's next day ratings report today didn't look so good, but given it's timeshifted audience, I'm sure the TIVO/DVRs were in full force again last night. Those watching it today, take note of the two Battlestar Galactica guest appearances. First up was Cheif Galen Tyrol (Aaron Douglas) as the demon messenger delivering Sam's ginormous contract to sign. Then later, Andi's mom was played by Sergeant Hadrian (Jill Teed,) making me wonder if this might just be some desperate geek call to arms. I'm surprised we haven't gotten any Buffy vets to step in yet, given the creators' pedigree on the show.
Musically, the show pulled a couple indie punches, first with the use of Spoon's "The Underdog" to underscore just how out of his league Sam is with Andi. Then later, while the new Scoobies prepare to enter the sewers, Imperial Teen's "Shim Sham" plays, providing zero subtext, as much as I could tell. I'm pretty sure there was another song in there, but it's pretty obscure -- and for all the wrong reasons. All told, the choices this time felt more like an 18-49 demo ratings grabs than actual soundtracking.
The one glimmer of hope for the non-existent over-arching mystery was the bit where Sam's father tears a page out of his contract and burns it. Seems there's something in there he wants to protect his son from knowing. Does Mr. O and Satan have more of a past then we were first led to believe? Was there an Indecent Proposal involving Mrs. O with Sam the byproduct? Of course I'm grasping at straws here, but Lord (and the Devil too) knows the show needs something to justify this all going on and on (and on). At least next week we'll have Patton Oswalt to kick around.
More: I can't go without calling out the great prank that Andi pulls on Ted -- leaving a note on his car apologizing for (not) hitting it. See for yourself:
Meanwhile, two dance-oriented duos make their network television debut this week. First up is the Austin electro-dance rock duo Ghostland Observatory who appear on Conan Tuesday night, and when they perform "Sad Sad City" the studio audience won't be able to stay in their seats. Same goes for Chromeo when they appear on The Jimmy Kimmel Show Wednesday night, as their electro-funk, while sometimes ironic, is always irresistable. They claim to be "the only successful Arab/Jewish collaboration since the beginning of time," so there's that as well.
Elsewhere, Spoon is becoming nearly ubiquitous, hitting Conan Thursday night. Thank goodness Spoon are at a point where they can dictate which songs they play, as they have yet to play the same song twice, to my knowledge. One can only guess which song from Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga they'll play this week.
So I guess my worries about Chuck not having any title sequences has been answered, as this week, a snappy title sequence makes an appearance. Created by Imaginary Forces, the same group that brought you Mad Men's opening, the credits are a fun mix of James Bond interspliced with the the worker icon from Buy More's Nerd Herd logo -- and it's all done creatively to Cake's "Short Skirt/Long Jacket.".
Meanwhile, they're breaking down another Spoon song ("Don't You Evah,") which makes Chuck a bit like the film Stranger Than Fiction, where bits of rhythmic Spoon was everywhere. But the anchor to this weeks show was the use of updated tango from the masters Gotan Project. You may remember the band's music was used often in the past couple seasons of Nip/Tuck, but here it fits in even more within the context of the action (and the episode title,) as Chuck dances the tango to GP's tango "Santa Maria (del Buen Ayre)".
One thing that The O.C. always liked to do was have a song was about to be released, and now that Chuck is into the season I expect it to happen more, especially considering Tuesdays, the morning after the show, is new release day. This time out, they threw Band of Horses' "The General Specific" into the mix. It really didn't seem to serve much of a purpose then to give the album Cease to Begin a leg up on it's release today.
And finally, in what can only by now be called a show template, the final scene of reflection was backed by The National's excellent "Slow Show," focusing in on the lyrics:
You know I dreamed about you for twenty-nine years before I saw you You know I dreamed about you I missed you for for twenty-nine years
Mmm... Chuck's about 29 years old, wouldn't you say? The song is about making a fool of oneself to impress his true love, and is a nice allusion to the unspoken geek love Chuck has for Sarah.
To that end, I'm beginning to realize that Chuck has no real theme, or discernable opening credits. Instead, they seem to be taking a different song each week (this week is "Lust for Life,") and using it to introduce the characters and such, which is a trend in television that I find kind of annoying. Not only are we robbed of what is often an art form (see intros for Dexter, The Sopranos, John From Cincinnati, The Simpsons, etc.,) but also we're subjected to a rehashing of what's already been established in the pilot. I realize this for those who missed the pilot, but if you have a great intro, you can hit many of those points as well -- and continue that art form.
Meanwhile, has J.J. Abrams been moonlighting on the Chuck set, or is the series just a series of sloppy kisses to the man? They've already got his Alias angle down, but then in last night's episode, Chuck nearly divulges the secrets to the downing of Lost's Oceanic Flight 815, in the midst of reeling of sequence of secrets locked in his head. The audio trails off at the end, but he seems to say "Oceanic flight 815 is downed by a surface-to-air missile...." If it were a Lost episode, viewers would've already done some audio analysis done and posted large HD screencaps to decipher the message. Since it's just Chuck, we'll just laugh and move on.
, 
feels like a retreat back to basics, going all the way back to 
, Britt Daniel's now defunct alter ego/solo lo-fi project. 
, Spoon's only major label release from 1998, is the album I'd compare it to, as its collection of rough sketches hint at something great and rely in the listener to finish. The album is 
comes this great collection of covers from bands that have inspired 
