thus spake drake: tapes n tapes

If some were worried that 2008 wasn't going to have the same share of great albums we've seen in recent years, a slew of this week's releases should alleviate most (if not all) of those concerns. Last week I poached Foals great debut on Sub Pop and yesterday I wrote about Tapes n' Tapes' sophomore release, which is fortunate, since I probably wouldn't even be able to get to either this week with all the rest of the riches that dropped. To wit, we have the latest from Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Man Man, The Breeders, Clinic, The Long Blondes, Jason Anderson, Cloud Cult, Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin, Richard Swift, Neva Dinova, Peter Moren, The Duke Spirit, Robots in Disguise, full-length debuts from Wye Oak, New Bloods, The Old Haunts, and new EPs from Spoon and the much hyped Fleet Foxes. In fact, there's so much good music, I'm breaking up this post into two parts, one today and a continuation tomorrow.

Playlist: New Releases 04.08.08

Album: Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!

If the garage rock of Nick Cave's Grinderman project last year served as a cathartic exercise, then Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!! is a refinement of that midlife Christ-kick. Cave hands the guitar back to Mick Harvey and mans the organ, hammering out an album that infuses some of Grinderman's noise and bravado into songs that often recall the power of '97's The Boatman's Call. At age 50, Cave is now releasing some of his most vital work, and he seems to be having more fun while doing it, taking himself a little less seriously. In the stomping title track and opener "Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!" Cave re-imagines Lazarus (calling him 'Larry') crossing America before ending up "back in the streets of New York, in a soup queue, a dope fiend, a slave." Meanwhile, with "We Call Upon the Author," Cave eschews Bukowski ("a jerk!") preferring the works of John Berryman ("the best!") but still calling upon the author to explain his suicide. Prolix, of which I often suffer, provides another humorous take. "I say prolix! Prolix! Something a pair of scissors can fix." And then there's the line "our myxomatoid kids spraddle the streets." Colin Meloy's thesaurus just got green with envy. It's not all fun and diction, though, as Cave still has time for one of his patented murder ballads in achingly beautiful "Jesus on the Moon." The album ends with eight minutes of Cave saying 'c'est la vie' to the unstoppable force of time with "More News From Nowhere." "Don't it make you feel so sad, don't the blood rush to your feet, to think that everything you do today, tomorrow is obsolete? Technology and women and little children too. Don't it make you feel blue?" As long as it's backed by the Bad Seeds, it don't feel so bad at all.

Full Album Stream from AOL

Album: Man Man - Rabbit Habits

When Philadelphia's Man Man released Six Demon Bag back in 2006, it was if someone had blended all my Tom Waits, Captain Beefheart and Frank Zappa albums as into one delectable shake. But both live and lyrically, the songs took on more than just a rehash of music's marginalized past. Rabbit Habits, whose title comes from the practice of rabbits eating their young, doesn't stray too much from their Waits/Zappa/Beefheart junkyard ethos, but this time around, there's an underlying darkness amidst all the vaudevillian tomfoolery. Frontman Honus ruthlessly hunts down the title character in "The Ballad of Butter Beans," and then calls out a vacuous lover in "Poor Jackie." "I don't see what everybody sees in your sexy body. All I see is a shallow grave, trapped inside a pretty face." "Whalebones" brings it's own dark heartache, with the line "but she holds him like an infant, though it breaks her in half to know he'll wake like a man -- sold on cold indifference." All this lies underneath tremendously fun (re: great live) songs, full of crazy instrumentation. Pitchfork TV launched yesterday, and the first ~~video~~ time-waster you should check out is the behind the scenes look at Man Man recording this album, recording falling junk, dogs in the bathtub, and of course fireworks ("Mysteries of the Universe Unraveled.") All in all it's a great rock album, even though there's nary a guitar in the mix.

Full Album Stream from AOL

Album: Wye Oak - If Children

This album is already destined for my Best of the Year (That's Really Rrom a Previous Year) list, as it was originally self-released last summer by the duo from Baltimore. If Children is a great debut, one that relies quite a bit on the shoegaze of the nineties, along with the dreamy folk pop of Yo La Tengo, but without sounding entirely derivative. Jenn Wasner's vocals are a bit like a laid back Kim Deal, dry and double-tracked, but lyrically a bit more like Jenny Lewis, smarter than you give what you're hearing credit for. The duo easily move from the controlled feedback of first single "Warning" into the gentle acoustic pop of "Regret," a nice demonstration that the band isn't reliant on the shoegaze angle. Meanwhile, "I Don't Feel Young" is a joyous number, where Phil Spector's wall of sound meets Crosby Stills and Nash, by way of lots of distortion, of course. It's an album that I've had on repeat all week now, and only through the incredible depth of today's haul will it (temporarily) slip out of rotation.

Stream the album from Merge Records
Download: "Warning" [mp3]

Minnesota's Tapes n' Tapes self-released their debut album back in 2005, building a strong internet buzz on their lo-fi energetic smörgåsbord of indie rock sounds. For their sophomore release, Walk It Off, they've moved from the bedroom to the studio of producer extraordinaire Dave Fridmann (Flaming Lips, Sleater-Kinney, Low,) who again pushes the limits of my speakers with this latest production, employing his signature intentional clipping distortion (hear it streaming for free at AOL). Wednesday night, the band takes the stage to play their lead single, "Hang Them All," on Conan, so set your tapes n' DVR's.

Meanwhile, music power brokers Simon Cowell (American Idol) and Clive Davis are betting the farm that America's going to love the UK's 2006 Idol (called X Factor over there,) Leona Lewis. She's taking hitting nearly every daytime television show possible this week, in an all-out marketing blitz. Consider her inclusion here more a curiosity than a recommendation, however. Kelly Clarkson still reigns the only Idol I can get behind.

Playlist: Picks for the week
Monday, April 7
CBS: Late Show With David Letterman: The Mars Volta (REPEAT)
CBS: Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson: Bell X1
FUEL: The Daily Habit: The Circle Jerks
FUSE: The Sauce: Leona Lewis, Perry Farrell, American Idol Finalists
NBC: The Tonight Show with Jay Leno: Jimmy Eat World
NBC: Late Night With Conan O'Brien: Hot Chip
Tuesday, April 8
ABC: Jimmy Kimmel Live: Phantom Planet
CBS: Late Show With David Letterman: Kenna w/ The Neptunes (REPEAT)
OVATION: Old, Weird America: Harry Smith's Anthology of Folk Music: Beck, Elvis Costello, Lou Reed, Sonic Youth (REPEAT)
SYNDICATION: Live With Regis and Kelly: Leona Lewis
Wednesday, April 9
CBS: The Early Show: Leona Lewis
FUSE: The Sauce: Moby
NBC: Late Night With Conan O'Brien: Tapes n' Tapes
Thursday, April 10
CBS: Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson: Del Tha Funky Homosapien
FUEL: The Daily Habit: Pinback (REPEAT)
NBC: The Tonight Show with Jay Leno: The Redwalls
NBC: Late Night With Conan O'Brien: They Might Be Giants
NBC: Last Call With Carson Daly: Ben Harper
OVATION: Music by...: Gabriel Yared (REPEAT)
Friday, April 11
CBS: Late Show With David Letterman: Steve Martin (REPEAT)
FUEL: The Daily Habit: Rogue Wave (REPEAT)
NBC: Late Night With Conan O'Brien: A.A. Bondy
OVATION: Music Behind the Scenes: The Independents: Spike Lee, Jim Jarmusch and David Lynch talk soundtracks (REPEAT)
RAVEHD: Later with Jools Holland: Dion, Duffy, Manu Chao, Kano & Damon Albarn, Orchestra Baobab
Saturday, April 12
NBC: Saturday Night Live: Gnarls Barkley
PBS: Austin City Limits: John Prine, Amos Lee

thus spake drake

Tuesday, April 08, 2008

Now Downloading: New Releases 04.08.08

Monday, April 07, 2008

Ear on TV: The Week of April 7