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Phoenix is Giving Away Live EPAs a grand "merci" for the warm reception surrounding their latest offering Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, Phoenix is offering up a free live EP of their performance in Sydney. Track list: 1 Lisztomania 2 Lasso 3 Fences 4 Girlfriend 5 Armistice 6 Love Like a Sunset 7 Rome 8 1901 Download it via a zip file exclusively HERE and let the dance party begin.
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Simian Mobile Disco : Temporary Pleasure
As proponents of analog synths and drum machines, tech house duo Simian Mobile Disco open their sophomore album with a momentary exploration of sound and texture. Consistent in pace and tone, but varying in overtones until that unmistakable sound comes in - the voice. And not just any voice, but the voice of Super Furry Animals' Gruff Rhys. Thus unfolds most of the album, laden with - and perhaps a bit distracted by - guest vocals.
Only three tracks on this sophomore album feature the duo alone. "10000 Horses Can't Be Wrong," "Synthesis," and "Ambulance" provide a return to the groups minimal techno styling and are the more convincing tracks on the album. "Bad Blood," which features Hot Chip's Alexis Taylor, incorporates a more tropical rhythm and is one of the guest tracks that does not seem to fall as flat. Repetitive but melodic, this track marks what seems to be the better run of the album.
"Turn Up the Dial" is monotonous in tone but varies nicely in form and vocal rhythms, which keeps the vocal line from becoming too disconnected. "Ambulance," the third and last instrumental track follows just before the closer, "Pinball." In the final track, which features Telepathe, the instrumentation is sparse but catchy and effective a la M.I.A. Too often, though, the album drags beneath the weight of the guest appearances and loses sight of the sonic arrangements below.
Simian Mobile Disco - 10000 Horses Can't Be Wrong
Simian Mobile Disco - Synthesize
Simian Mobile Disco - Ambulance
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Mayer Hawthorne: A Strange Arrangement
 On his debut, A Strange Arrangement, 29-year-old multi-instrumentalist Mayer Hawthorne channels Smokey Robinson and Isaac Hayes. This makes Hawthorne a candidate for the original Motown label rather than Peanut Butter Wolf's Stone's Throw imprint. But, Hawthorne's incorporation of the odd breakbeat upgrades his brand of soul into the present time - without turning it into neo-soul. Hawthorne's mostly falsetto/occasional baritone finds its stride on "Let Me Know." The Supremes would do well with the up-tempo horn honks and handclaps on "Your Easy Lovin' Aint Pleasin' Nothin'." And "Maybe So, Maybe No" finds Hawthorne crooning sassily, puncturing honeyed tones with Stevie Wonder borrowed "la-la-las" Mayer Hawthorne - Maybe So, Maybe No Mayer Hawthorne - Just Aint Gonna Work Out
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General Elektriks: Good City For Dreamers
 Herve Salters, the man behind General Elektriks, is known for his keyboard prowess. This is apparent on General Elektriks' 2005 debut, Cliquety Kliqk, and even more so on Good City For Dreamers, where it sounds like Salters has split himself into a five-piece electro-indie pop outfit. Dreamers plinks along pleasantly, Salters' voice soothing and unobtrusive, paying homage to various influences (Sly Stone, Eurythmics). "Cottons of Inertia" is deliciously comforting with its temperate rhythms, and just when you start drifting off, "You Don't Listen" brings you back with squalling guitars. For the most part, Dreamers is a quirky take on The Beatles' white album. General Elektriks - Take Back The Instant General Elektriks - Raid The Radio
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Grizzly Bear: My Long Awaited Homage
 Alright, I know it's past due, but I needed to release a homage to one of my favorite artists at the moment....(I'll keep it short but sweet).
For a band that released no new music in 2008, Grizzly Bear certainly had a busy year. First there was a performance in which the Los Angeles Philharmonic served as the most unlikely opening act in indie-rock history. Then there were five shows at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, where they were asked by Paul Simon to perform a few of his songs for a career retrospective. Previously unheard songs were debuted on The Late Show with David Letterman and Late Night with Conan O'Brian, and the band was the handpicked opening act for Radiohead . But by the end of the year, the Brooklyn quartet remained just as mysterious and indefinable as they had been at the beginning, as if repeated exposure had only added another layer of content to digest for a band whose music already didn't make for easy one-sentence descriptors. Perhaps it's easiest to understand Grizzly Bear by recognizing what they aren't.
Compare them to other recent NYC buzz bands and the difference becomes clearer. They aren't the head of a stylistic movement like the strokes. They have no outstanding, charismatic member like Karen O of Yeah Yeah Yeahs. They have no unified visual motif like Interpol. But what they do have is one of the most distinctive, transcendent sounds of any band in indie rock, part lush psych-pop harmonies, part avante-garde textural experimentation.
Grizzly Bear - Two Weeks - Live on Later with Jools Holland on the BBC
Grizzly Bear - All We Ask (Black Cab Sessions Chapter 79)
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The Dead Weather: Horehound
 From the moment primary vocalist Alison Mosshart (The Kills) begins to sing "Hang You from the Heavens" from The Dead Weather's debut single, anyone familiar with the last decade of Jack White's musical output will recognize his influence. Horehound, the first full-length release from this supergroup, which includes guitarist Dean Fertita (Queens of the Stone Age) and bassist Jack Lawrence (The Raconteurs, The Greenhornes), rumbles with the dark power that has characterized much of The White Stripes' recent work. Mosshart often seems to be delivering a Jack White impersonation and, shockingly, it's a pretty damn good one. By stepping out from her relationship with her main collaborator, James Hince, Mosshart is no longer the smoldering indie rock seductress, and instead gives us new character, closer in spirit to RTX-era Jennifer Herrema.  Interestingly, this album is at its weakest when Jack White is taking the obvious lead. One example is the funk-infused "I Cut Like Buffalo," with lines such as "You know I look like a woman/But I cut like the buffalo." The otherwise awesome "Treat Me Like Your Mother" is soiled by the "time to manipulate" breakdown where both singers spell out the word manipulate.
Thankfully, White spends most of his time behind the drum kit, providing a blistering , bleak backbone for much of this record. It's the perfect summer album for anyone who was a huge Zeppelin fan in high school (or back in the day for that matter). Check out the rocking blues of "Bone House" or the sweaty opener "60 Feet Tall," which features a nice little solo from Fertita.
The Dead Weather - Their Oral History and Future Plans The Dead Weather - Treat Me Like Your Mother
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Mew: No More Stories Are Told Today I'm Sorry They Washed Away No More Stories the World Is Grey I'm Tired Let's Wash Away
 Don't let the unwieldy album title or the pictographic clown-butterfly composition fool you. Danish trio Mew is certainly impressive, but still a few concept albums shy of bat-shit crazy. In fact, No More Stories is fairly tame in comparison to 2005's sinuous and gloomy song suite, And the Glass Handed Kites. Where Kites stockpiled instrumentation, No More Stories cuts the fat and makes do with the group's new orientation (bassist Johan Wohlert left the band to concentrate on fatherhood).  Jonas Bjerre, Bo Madsen, and Silas Utke Graae Jergensen have forged onward in some remarkable ways. No More Stories starts with the tick of a clock on opener "New Terrain," but quickly reverts to Kites' twisted haze as a din of vocals, cymbal crashes, and guitars come together and strive for our attention. Admission single "Introducing Palace Players," starts largely as an outstanding instrumental breakdown - drums and guitars sway and stutter in unison as murmurs of keyboard fill in the gaps. Singer Bjerre's falsetto is firmly attached to the expectations here. The sensuous space rockers "Beach" and "Hawaii" and the repeated piano on "A Dream," are as simple and straightforward as the trio will likely get. They're all very welcome after Kites' infamous rigidity.
The ambitious "Sometimes Life Isn't Easy" may be the only interruption of ideas here. Compressing an elderly vocalist, a steady handclap bridge, and a choir into a five minute track may be too much for some, but I have to admit, it's a bit catchy. Despite this small shift, No More Stories' closest cousin is Mew's other primary daydream-inducing album, breakthrough Frengers. So when a mesmerizing, fragile song like "Cartoons and Macrame Wounds" references the intricate art of knot decorating, it's also a suitable metaphor for the music Mew creates. No More Stories is the most intricate batch of songs they've produced, but practical enough for daily listening.
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Justice: A Cross the Universe CD/DVD
 This is a live album and documentary DVD from everybody's favorite French house duo. The live set was captured in San Francisco's Concourse Design Center last year, with Justice performing alternate versions of tunes from their Cross album, along with some other goodness. The recording illustrates the grandiloquent edge that separates Justice from their Daft Punk forefathers - the last track, "Final," samples Metallica's "Master of Puppets," and one imagines fans head-banging to the climax of their night of dancing.
The DVD is an entertaining tour documentary from the duo's U.S. visit last year, and proves that the arena rock lifestyle of yesteryear remains a valid lifestyle choice. The band stumble through the U.S. with their aggro, gun-obsessed tour manager and eccentric Sam Elliot-voiced bus driver, taking in America's strange landscape, along with a mountainous share of its sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Oh, and incarceration. "Enfants Terribles" is the phrase I believe.
Justice - A Cross The Universe DVD Preview
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Eels: Hombre Lobo: 12 Songs of Desire
 Rather critically eluded to at times as "a poor mans Beck," Eels, created by Mark Everett, aka E, has primarily been denied his due, despite crafting a damn impressive body of work. Be it the rambling, infectious life-cycle production of 2005's Blinking Lights and Other Revelations, or 1998's Electro Shock Blues, a dim deliberation on the death of his mother from cancer, he's constructed fine concept albums, intensely personal without submitting to cheesy sentimentality . Here, E abandons the openly personal, and takes on the character Hombre Lobo, meaning warewolf in Spanish, and apparently rejuvenates the suffering of "Dog Faced Boy," the so-called protagonist of a song from 2002's Souljacker. The story picks up when Lobo enters adulthood as an erratic outsider, desperately wanting for love and human connections, hence the record's subtitle, 12 Songs of Desire.
Lobo abandons the orchestration and experimentalism that saturated Blinking Lights, stripping tracks down to a primal base, similar to Howlin' Wolf (coincidence?) in the bluesy starkness of this back to basics rock and roll record, one that alternates between slashing rockers and crippled ballads. "Id rather be alone than try to be someone I'm not," Everett confesses with resignation on the tremendous blues of "Ordinary Man." Some might say he's assumed a character here, probably in large part to deflect much of the attention attracted to his personal life via his previous albums and recent autobiography, but this record is still pure E - invigorating in it's obsession, desperation, vulnerability, and brilliance.
Eels - Tremendous Dynamite: Making of HOMBRE LOBO Trailer
Eels - Prizefighter from HOMBRE LOBO
Eels - In My Dreams from HOMBRE LOBO
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Bishop Allen: Grrr...
 Bishop Allen have made great strides since their Modest Mousey beginnings on 2003's self-released Charm School LP. Much of that progress, the result of growing and maturing as a band, in large part came out in 2006 with an ambitious EP-a-month project. This was later condensed to make up most of the 2007's The Broken String, Bishop Allen's first for Dead Oceans.  The band (at its core a duo of Justin Rice and Christian Rudder) is at its peak on Grrr..., sticking to basic guitar pop with the occasional embellishment in the arrangements. Nearly every song is a tightly wound pop construct in a similar vein as Spoon, and in just a few releases the band has gone from barely notable to indie-pop's Little Band That Could. (It also doesn't hurt that The Broken String's "Click, Click, Click" was featured in a Sony camera commercial, and the band made an appearance in last year's teenage hipster mash note, Nick & Nora's Infinite Playlist, and Rice himself has made the rounds in a number of films over the past few years). The infectious, bouncy one-two punch of "Oklahoma" and "The Ancient Commonsense of Things" is as good as anything the band has done, and if those songs weren't both so hooky, the fact that they're nearly identical to one another might be a major complaint. Any band can write lyrics, but the "la la las" and "oh oh ohs" are just as important, and Grrr... is filled with 'em, especially on the latter track. Meanwhile,"True or False" has a summery, boozy shuffle, while the galloping "Rooftop Brawl" and the Spoon-esque "Cue the Elephants" show the band sticking with what makes great rock - taking a few chords and a good hook and driving them into the ground. Each Bishop Allen release has been a vast improvement over its predecessor, so here's hoping the trend keeps up. Bishop Allen - The Lion & the Teacup Bishop Allen - The Ancient Commensense of Things Bishop Allen - Click, Click, Click (live on the Street of NYC)
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