Although Radiohead has previously asked their fans to create videos for any of their songs on In Rainbows (the contest deadline is over, but voting continues now), they have decided to create one video of their own for “All I Need,” in conjunction with MTV, specifically for its EXIT (End Exploitation and Trafficking) campaign, whose goal is to to combat human trafficking and exploitation. (As you’ll see in this split-screen video, the lives of two children are compared: one is privileged and the other works in a sweatshop.) The video is set to premiere on MTV tomorrow (though is it a “premier” if it’s already on Stereogum?) Check out the Hollywood Reporter for more about it.

Good causes certainly aren’t beyond Tapes ‘N Tapes. Coinciding with their release of Walk It Off, their sophomore release, the band was promoting Making Strides Against Breast Cancer and the Avon Walk For Breast Cancer events in effort to raise awareness and funds for breast cancer research. According to their website, they’re now promoting American Cancer Society’s Relay For Life, the largest walking event in the country, coming up in August. While you get your power-walking stride back in form, check out their new video for “Hang Them All”:

The Shins aren’t so bad either! While they aren’t exactly championing a specific cause, they are providing words (and melodies) of encouragement to kids on the goofy, surreal Yo Gabba Gabba. Here they are with “It’s OK, Try Again”:

Is Scarlett Johansson doing anybody any good covering a whole album’s worth of Tom Waits songs? Judge for yourself. Here’s “Falling Down”:

Always all about causes, particularly those involving the environment, is Cloud Cult. You may remember their request for video participants a couple months ago. They had asked for anyone on willing to stand in a field, saying, “No experience necessary, so long as you can stand and look expressionless, and jump on command.” Watch the intrepid volunteers brave the St. Paul cold (and jump!) in the resulting video for “Everyone Here Is A Cloud”

In a characteristic moment of prescience, blog writer Spike in that same paragraph mentioned the City-to-City challenge during the then-rolling Membership Drive. Guess who won? Ballard again, but guess who’s going to be performing during Ballard Day? Cloud Cult! See how small our words are? Join ours and come down to Ballard Day on May 9.

Greetings. I’m Michele Myers. Every Friday night at 9pm I choose sets of music and spin a show on KEXP called Nite Life. And later on in the show at 12, I do the Midnight Album Spotlight.

This week it’s a new record by The Black Keys called Attack and Release. I’ve been a fan of this band from Ohio for years. Their gritty, organic guitars and vocals just seem so real. Like raw gold hacked from a hillside. On the new record, producer Danger Mouse (who is one-half of the duos Gnarls Barkley and Dangerdoom, two of the world’s best funky outfits) has helped them refine their sound. Somehow Danger Mouse has taken simple layers of the Black Keys’ instrumentation and used those pure sounds to create a new dynamic. The record is still as gritty as their earlier work, but it’s somehow more fluid, more sensitive, and as an album it is more of a whole experience. Attack and Release flows over you, with its rough pulses, its pure drives, from start to end.

This project involving Danger Mouse and The Black Keys was planned as a collaboration with Ike Turner. Yes, the infamous R&B villain Ike Turner (formerly of Ike and Tina Turner. And what DOES love have to do with it?). The band’s members Dan Auerbach (guitars, vocals) and Patrick Carney (drums, percussion) were to write songs and perform them with Ike. But Ike died at the end of last year. And Danger Mouse and The Keys decided to continue the project.

Danger Mouse was the first producer to oversee a Black Keys record. The band had always recorded in basements or factories or the like, but now were in a pro studio. Dangermouse encouraged them to add guests and two members of the Tom Waits band are on this album: guitar-player Marc Ribot and Patrick’s uncle — multi-instrumentalist Ralph Carney.

Attack and Release is, I feel, the most thoughtful, lyrically of the Black Keys albums. It’s so interesting to see these gritty, bluesy rockers at their most poetic. It’s about the personal and the public, the past and the present. Check out the lyrics to the song “Strange Times”:

Kings and sons of god
Traveled on their way from here
Calmin restless mobs
easing all of their, all of their fear

Strange Times
Are Here

The statue in the square
meant so much when it first stood
people come from far and near
bless them if, bless them if it would

Strange Times
Are Here

Sadie, dry your tears
I will be the one
to pull you through the mere
before you come, before you come undone

Strange Times
Are Here

Join Michele Myers for Nite Life every Friday night at 9pm. She also produces KEXP Documentaries, short radio features on KEXP-type musical subjects.

^{Kassin+2, Bar Opinião, Porto Alegre 9/20/2007
photo by Felipe Neves}

Every Monday through Friday, we deliver a different song as part our Song of the Day podcast subscription. This podcast features exclusive KEXP in-studio performances, unreleased songs, and recordings from independent artists that our DJs think you should hear. Today’s featured selection, chosen by Midday Show host Cheryl Waters, is Samba Machine by Kassin+2 from the 2008 album Futurismo on Luaka Bop.

Futurismo marks the third album of a trilogy for one of the recent trendsetters in Brazilian music. Kassin, a glorified crate digger, has busied himself outside his own projects by producing for Bebel Gilberto and playing bass with the legendary Caetano Veloso. He is joined again here by his usual bandmates, Veloso’s son Moreno (guitar, cello, vocals) and Domenico Lancelotti (percussion). For those who are new to this trio, the album that began this trilogy was 2001s Music Typewriter written for Moreno+2, which was followed by 2004s Sincerely Hot written for Domenico+2. Catered to Kassin’s tastes, Futurismo is loaded with everything from tropicalia and bossa nova to garage rock and electronica. With a historical knack for the avant-garde, Kassin decided to give melody a bigger say this time around. He also enlisted the assistance of John McEntire (Tortoise) and Sean O’Hagan (High Llamas) who both contribute in the form of production and vocals. Best of all, Kassin+2 has taken an ethnically and culturally diverse art form and expanded it even further. Who knows — maybe they’ll pull a George Lucas and give us a trilogy of prequels, except better. Speculation aside, this really is a video of the band performing back in February:

Why wait for those “distant” dance parties, as prophesied by 65daysofstatic’s EP due out this week, when you could have a dance party of your own? Just check out this week’s new releases: The Roots, Santogold, Jamie Lidell, Portishead, The Constantines, Heloise & The Savoir Faire, Dizzee Rascal (finally in the U.S.!), Wallpaper (not the NW band), and Madonna, should all get your booty shakin’ in your own living room, cubicle, or where ever you might be. Once you’ve chilled, be sure to check out the long-awaited full-length from Langhorne Slim, who will be coming through Seattle with his War Eagles and stopping by KEXP on May 19 (he’s currently working his way through the South, for all of you East Coasters).

As always, before heading out to the store, consult Largehearted Boy’s list and download these danceable ditties:

33 1/3 is a series of pocket-sized books, each book focusing on a single album. This is the tenth installment of one person’s quest to read all 56 (and counting) of these things, and to scribble some impressions of each. As always, please keep in mind that it’s just one opinion, often skewed, and somewhat ill-informed. Accuracy is ensured as time permits. For the full introduction, check out the first installment and read the others here. On to the demi-tomes!

Part 13 of 56: Sign ‘O’ The Times by Michaelangelo Matos (#10 in the series)

The collection of songs that comprise Prince’s 1987 double album Sign ‘O’ The Times went through a few behind the scenes incarnations before hitting the shelves. Prince originally planned to release the songs — along with several more — as a triple album titled Crystal Ball. When the record company shot that one down, he not only pared down the list but tinkered with the sequencing as well. The Sign title cut (and eventual hit single) was originally slated for the end of side five. In his book, author Michaelangelo Matos traces the album from birth to fruition, and places it in context of all things Prince that came before and after — and there was (and is) a lot. Chapters examining the album itself are framed by Matos’ personal recollections of getting the album as a kid in a Minnesota welfare family that somehow always found the money to make sure music was in the house. A quote from the book, one of several favorite passages I could choose from:

“Within two weeks of listening, a couple of things become apparent. One, Sign ‘O’ The Times is completely modern. The synths and production ensure that, of course, but beyond them there’s a connection to a right-now that feels unlike anything in the classic rock I’ve been listening to or the present I’m living in… There’s an open ended-ness, a gaze into the future that hasn’t happened yet, ambition that isn’t wholly tied up in pleasing the elders.”

and continues…

“The other thing I’ve come to realize is that this album is the greatest fucking thing I have ever heard in my life, and that realization has me completely shaken. I live in my head so much that I’ve invented wholly arbitrary rules of conduct for how to like and dislike things, what’s allowed and what isn’t, and in order to allow this opinion I have to shift those rules dramatically. I’m not sure I can do it. There’s something I don’t quite trust about music that doesn’t already seem to have it’s byways mapped out.”

Good stuff. Let’s talk to the author.

For the 33 1/3 series, did you choose Prince first and choose the album later? Or was it Sign ‘O’ The Times, right from the beginning?

M. Matos: I decided on Sign specifically from the beginning. It didn’t take long to figure out that it was the album I wanted to pitch first. I was also saved partly by the fact that when David Barker was planning the series he’d had someone slated to write about Sign who’d bailed out. So he wanted a book on that album, whoever wrote it; the fact that it’s the most significant album of my life was just gravy as far as he was concerned.

Is Sign ‘O’ The Times your personal favorite, or the Prince album you felt most deserved an in-depth look?

Sign is absolutely my favorite Prince album, and one of my half-dozen favorite albums, period. (My favorite is Sly & the Family Stone’s There’s a Riot Goin’ On; I like Miles Marshall Lewis’s 33 1/3 on that album.) It’s his richest work, the most perfectly formed, the most consistently great, and it’s also got his widest range, tonally and sonically. Too much of the three-hour Emancipation, from 1996, has the same sort of squashed sound quality, though I like it a lot.

One thing about the book is that it’s very personal, which has garnered mixed response, fairly enough. I hadn’t intended to make it so much so until I started writing it; what had been planned to cover about 15 percent of the total text wound up being closer to 35 percent. But in some ways I’m happiest about that aspect of the book, because I’d spent years trying not to write in first-person because it had been drilled into me by writing for certain publications that didn’t allow it. And I still believe to a great degree that anyone writing journalism or criticism needs to know how to do it without referring to themselves, which for most beginning writers is almost an involuntary reflex - one that needs to be avoided if your writing is going to be interesting to a world that has no idea who you are or why it should care.

Anyway, believing that as I did, allowing myself to write about running around in my Spider-Man Underoos while trying to mimic the cover of Dirty Mind was like busting out of jail.

For those who are unfamiliar with Prince (and lots of younger “indie rock only” listeners seem to be)… what would be your recommended starting point?

I remember a party I went to in New York about six years ago, in which I got into an annoying conversation with a younger woman who refused to believe that Prince’s music could in any way be classified as “rock”. Why? Because he didn’t sound like the Pixies.

So yes, I do think I know to what you’re referring. I’d still say Sign is definitive, but so in their ways are Dirty Mind, 1999, and Purple Rain. If we’re talking about people who like dancy-rocky stuff a la LCD Soundsystem, then Dirty Mind, Controversy, and 1999 are all good analogues. Purple Rain, 24 years and zillions of involuntary hearings later, is still inexhaustible. And if it’s someone who loves unexpected sounds popping up all over, Parade and Sign take the cake. I’d also ask “indie-rock-only” people what precisely it is about life and enjoyment they hate so much.

photo by Hilary Harris

Don’t miss local band Grand Archives on Craig Ferguson’s show this Wednesday, but make sure your Tivo is set to record Feist on Conan at the same time. And Stone Temple Pilots? That’s right! They’re back, and you’ll be able to see them at Bumbershoot later this year… or avoid them. Whatever your preference.

Tuesday 4/29 -

David Letterman: Alicia Keys
Late Late Show: Morrissey
Conan O’Brien: The Kills
Jimmy Kimmel: Cinematic Orchestra
Ellen DeGeneres: Def Leppard

Wednesday 4/30 -

Jay Leno: Augustana
Late Late Show: Grand Archives
Conan O’Brien: Feist
Jimmy Kimmel: Def Leppard

Thursday 5/1:

Jay Leno: Avril Lavigne
Late Late Show: She & Him
Conan O’Brien: Was (Not Was)
Last Call: Does It Offend You, Yeah?
Jimmy Kimmel: Stone Temple Pilots

Friday 5/2:

David Letterman: Nick Lowe
Jay Leno: Sleepercar

Every Monday through Friday, we deliver a different song as part our Song of the Day podcast subscription. This podcast features exclusive KEXP in-studio performances, unreleased songs, and recordings from independent artists that our DJs think you should hear. Today’s featured selection, chosen by Midday Show host Cheryl Waters, is Soul On Fire by Spiritualized from the forthcoming album Songs In A&E on Fontana International/Spaceman Records.

Songs in A&E marks the sixth studio record for Spiritualized and finds Jason Pierce, the band’s only original member, still holding onto the minimalist aesthetic he established with Spaceman 3 over 30 years ago. Pierce decided to leave much of his famed studio tinkering on the sidelines this time around, forcing the songwriting to do all the talking. Through all 18 tracks, including 6 half-minute gospel harmonies, it’s clear that there is nothing to hide. At times troubling and tremulous but always piquant and spellbinding, you’ll find that 18 tracks isn’t enough.

Songs in A&E takes its title from Pierce’s lengthy stay in the Accident and Emergency ward while battling a near-fatal bout of pneumonia. It’s easy to listen to the album’s themes and connect the two, but much of the recording was finished when the illness occurred. Regardless, the man is back to business, not only releasing the first Spiritualized record in 5 years but also contributing to the soundtrack of Harmony Korine’s (Kids, Gummo) movie Mister Lonely, the story of a Michael Jackson look-alike lost in Paris. Songs in A&E will be released May 27 in the US, although you can buy a live session from iTunes now! A deluxe edition of the album on vinyl arrives June 17. While you wait, enjoy this performance of Soul On Fire from last weekend’s Coachella festivities:

Hot Chip, The Vic Theater, Chicago, 4/17/08

review and photos by Gina Pantone

Metallic spandex and hot pink leotards were plentiful at Chicago’s Vic Theater last Thursday. Kids from all walks of town lined the street in their Olivia Newton John-best for a sold out evening with London’s palest electropop soul brothers, Hot Chip.

Dressed in Don Johnson white, singer/multi-instrumentalist Alexis Taylor led his band onstage single file in an aural wave of droning keyboard A band where synthesizers almost outnumber its members, Hot Chip immediately started off with their latest Made in the Dark material, the riled up “Shake a Fist.” Maintaining a classy countenance, Taylor casually pounded on his mini-bongos — enclosed in a circle of his own musical devices — barely breaking a sweat.

Without as much as word to their adoring crowd, they began fan favorite, “Boy From School” from 2006’s The Warning. Arguably one of Hot Chip’s most moving tracks, Taylor began its instantly recognizable melody to a line from Peter Gabriel’s romantic “Your Eyes.” His voice soared as he sang, “When I want to run away, I drive off in my car.”

The draw to Hot Chip is that they’re unabashedly modest. Each member has a spotlight — beaming them up like Star Trek cast members — and remain in their designated areas, only venturing out for special occasions. Not to say the band has banal tendencies, for it is quite the opposite. Less is more here. Though their music is highly energetic and, at times, the embodiment of a dance party, Hot Chip keeps their composure. They reserve their spasms for compositional climaxes, as if not to cheapen their performance with unnecessary enthusiasm when the music speaks for itself.

Particularly charismatic is fellow vocalist/synth player Joe Goddard. He slouches behind his tiny keyboard, lending his boisterous voice to counter Taylor’s smooth tones. This combination fused together perfectly in the evening’s best moment, the underappreciated Made in the Dark highlight “Bendable Poseable.” Goddard growls the title over and over again as Taylor channeled Les Claypool on his bass for the quirky nature of the track. Strobe lights flickered over the hyper crowd as the controlled chaos winded down for the synth outro.

By mid-set, Hot Chip blew through their most anticipated tunes. 2006 single “Over and Over” and Made in the Dark opener “Out and the Pictures” created an expected frenzied audience, with Taylor stretching out the intros and beat breaks while guitarist Al Doyle dove into his onlookers after a feedback solo. Goddard rapped until his face flushed with red pigment on “Wrestlers,” and closed the set with a refreshingly harder version of “Ready for the Floor.”

Riddled with slow jams, the encore was a bit underwhelming — despite an impressive performance of “No Fit State.” Though it would have been ideal to save some definitive songs for the end, the crowd was in awe and yearning for more — tight pants and all.

[photo source]

By DJ El Toro

This weekend, my partner asked my opinion about some decisions concerning flora for the garden in front of our home. I balked. My thumbs are barely opposable; asking them to be green would be too much. “I don’t pick plants,” I quipped. “But if you need help picking music for plants, I’m your guy.”

Of course, after that wisecrack, my brain starting whirring. What sort of selections would compliment our little patch of greenery? Names of songs, albums, and artists began to flood my brain: “Gardening at Night” by R.E.M., “Garden in the Sky” by Martha and the Muffins (it always comes back to M+M with me…), “In the Garden” by Adam Goldstone, John Foxx’s swoon-worthy 1981 solo album The Garden. What about the Skinny Puppy side project Tear Garden? Probably not a good idea. Playing something Skinny Puppy-related to a crop of budding plants just seems like the opening for Little Shop of Horrors 2.

Then I thought of it: From Gardens Where We Feel Secure, the 1983 full-length by Virginia Astley. Rock listeners might, maybe, know Astley as Pete Townshend’s sister-in-law (she played tickled the ivories on All The Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes), but her own style owed more to pirouettes, not windmills. While she made a few records with vocals (including “Some Small Hope,” a duet with David Sylvian), those discs tended to pair bucolic arrangements with biting lyrics. New age with a bad attitude, as it were.

Gardens…, on the other hand, is a pastoral masterpiece of eleven instrumentals. No frills, just piano, a few woodwinds, a discrete tape loops. And not Cabaret Voltaire-style loops, either. (Although, oddly enough, both artists appear on the 1985 Some Bizarre comp If You Can’t Please Yourself, You Can’t Please Your Soul.) The succinct, curlicue credits say it all, with samples cited including lambs, a creaking swing gate, an owl, church bells, and “rowing on the river.”

Listening to Gardens… (which was reissued on CD by Rough Trade a couple years back) while my beau plunked down his new euphorbia and coleus plants, it was difficult to tell where Astley’s compositions ended and the bird chirps and gentle breezes filling the spring air outside began. And isn’t that how is should be? Gardens probably don’t need a DJ anymore than nightclubs need ferns.

DJ El Toro is the host of the overnight show In Between Sleep & Reason, Wednesday mornings from 1 AM to 6 AM on KEXP 90.3 FM Seattle and kexp.org. His column, Weird At My School, appears every Monday on the KEXP Blog.

photo by Meqo Sam Cecil

Every Monday through Friday, we deliver a different song as part our Song of the Day podcast subscription. This podcast features exclusive KEXP in-studio performances, unreleased songs, and recordings from independent artists that our DJs think you should hear. Today’s featured selection, chosen by Midday Show host Cheryl Waters, is Call It A Ritual by Wolf Parade from their forthcoming album, yet to be titled, on Sub Pop.

After being appeased by the numerous Wolf Parade side projects, particularly Spencer Krug’s Sunset Rubdown and Frog Eyes, and Dan Boeckner’s Handsome Furs, it’s great to have a new WP record coming down the pipes. The band’s debut, Apologies to the Queen Mary, was released somewhat hurriedly in 2005. Any haste went unnoticed as fans quickly jumped onboard and the album was nominated for the Polaris Prize (best full-length Canadian album). This time around, a more premeditated approach was used, taking advantage of Arlen Thompson’s (drummer) engineering capabilities and the acoustics of the church adopted by Arcade Fire. That premeditation has landed the band a more cohesive album and a better translation of thoughts to paper, or rather notes to record. Unfortunately, it hasn’t yet landed them an album title; the original title, Kissing the Beehive, was called into question when it was discovered the title already existed in the form of a 1997 Jonathan Carroll novel. They can call it Second for all I care. Of course, they’ll run into a problem the next time around. No matter its title, you can get your hands on it June 17th after which WP will strike out on a month-long North American tour. Right now, check out this performance from the Metro in Chicago: