Monday Music News

06/03/2013

Katherine Humphreys

Did you know about the current infestation of pythons that Florida is facing? Yeah! They're eating all the small animals and slowly squeezing the biodiversity out of the region - but there is a different python at work in Surfer Blood's new album, Pythons. It's a surf rock kind of slippery happy sunny python - and yet this sophomore album is definitely (I'm going to disagree with NPR) a bit darker than their first. Even the titles reflect this - from "Demon Dance" to "Gravity" to "Squeezing Blood" - even if they are filled with pop based riffs and happy reverb. Starting with "Demon Dance," the album has a kind of cloudy day at the beach sincerity that will definitely put it on my heavy rotation this summer.[NPR]

Vampire Weekend has collected quite a group of celebrities in their video for "Diane Young" - you'll recognize Chromeo, Santigold, Sky Ferreira, Dave Longstreth, and Hamilton Leithauser. While the group parties in the weirdest of ways at a table set like the last supper, Vampire Weekend also dance and scream and make very odd music along with the others. [Pitchfork]

Sharon Jones has had to push back this year's Sharon Jones and The Dap-Kings: Give The People What They Want release and tour due to stage 1 cancer. Sharon had this to say: "We just found out that I have a stage-one tumor on my bile duct. Luckily we caught it really early and fast and the doctors say it’s operable and curable!I will be having surgery very soon and will have to rest and recover. I’ll be staying in touch and keeping my fans and friends updated on my progress. I’m looking forward to getting back on the road to give the people what they want!" [Pitchfork]

KEXP's own Don Slack has announced the line-up for this year's Slack Fest! Held on August 24th in Standwood, WA, this year includes The Moondoggies, River Giant, The Comettes, Country Lips, The Fixers, The Valley, Dude York, and Keaton Collective. Can't wait to see you there!

If you're waiting for an album to drop right now it probably is the anticipated Killer Mike and El-P free album Run the Jewels - and on the 31st they gave fans the full track "Banana Clipper." It's everything you wanted it to be - simple beats and fast hard raps, as well as a closing verse by Big Boi. [Fool's Gold]

Have you met your Neighbors? Yeah, the kind of loud ones who sit on the stoop all day and you hear playing hyper guitar riffs all day from their kind of run down house. Now might be a good time to introduce yourself - Seattle band Neighbors has an electric-attention-deficit new track "Sexy Prison". Voices garble and jump and harmonize and wine and guitars jangle and bounce around this so called "Sexy Prison" - not quite what you would imagine from a track by this title. But hey, don't judge your neighbors 'til you've been to their house show! [Impose]

Spooky scary film director and cult figure David Lynch has released a track from his upcoming album The Big Dream - "I'm Waiting Here" can be streamed via Spotify and features Lykke Li. Most of the album is "modern blues" and the track listing includes one cover of "The Ballad of Hollis Brown" by Bob Dylan. [Pitchfork]

Hot Chip just released "Dark and Stormy" (apparently not a reference to the drink of this same name), which features glitchy synth pop with a strong and clear voice singing over, "Are we living with disease?", as the guitars spiral in and out of the track. [Pitchfork]

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