Following in the wake of Radiohead’s big news this week, Tennessee alt.country rockers Glossary have posted their entire new release, ‘The Better Angels of Our Nature’, up on their website and are inviting fans and skeptics to download the thing for free. And I, for one, would much rather hear this CD than the new Radiohead CD.
Apparently Glossary-hungry fans crashed Glossary.us with the massive amount of downloading going on but as of the time of this post, you should be able to hit the site and grab ‘The Better Angels of Our Nature’. If you dig what you hear – and you will if you like anything on the Undertow label (Milton Mapes, Magnolia Summer, etc.), Two Cow Garage, Lucero, etc., etc. – then maybe do the band a favor and BUY a copy of an older release or a t-shirt or something.
Here’s a preview “commercial” for ‘The Better Angels of Our Nature’.
[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=oAJfW4RpIDs[/youtube]
It’s nice to see artistic vision in videos, something that in a music videoless MTV is hard to come by these days. From Scout Niblett’s forthcoming release, ‘This Fool Can Die Now’, featuring a cameo by Skeletor Will Oldham, here’s a really cool, if somewhat odd, video for “Kiss”.
Now that he’s quit singing for Riders on the Storm (aka The Doors), Ian Astbury has resurrected The Cult along with guitarist Billy Duffy and the band’s new CD, ‘Born into This’, hits store shelves today. It’s a nice time for a comeback and the new CD certainly doesn’t soil the band’s legacy but fans of The Cult pre-‘Sonic Temple’ probably shouldn’t bother with the new one. If you’re on the fence, visit the band’s website where you can preview tracks from ‘Born into This’.
A full-fledged tour starts later this month and is sponsored by (ready for this?) …. Jagermeister.
10/17/07 – Pala Casino – San Diego, CA
10/19/07 – House of Blues – Las Vegas, NV
10/20/07 – Ventura Theatre – Ventura, CA
10/21/07 – Celebrity Theatre – Phoenix, AZ
10/23/07 – Warehouse Live – Houston, TX
10/25/07 – Palladium Ballroom – Dallas, TX
10/26/07 – Diamond Ballroom – Oklahoma City, OK
10/27/07 – Community America Ballpark – Kansas City, KS
10/29/07 – House of Blues – New Orleans, LA
10/30/07 – Jannus Landing – St. Petersburg, FL
10/31/07 – Revolution – Ft. Lauderdale, FL
11/1/07 – House of Blues – Orlando, FL
11/3/07 – The Plex – Charleston, SC
11/4/07 – Tabernacle – Atlanta, GA
11/8/07 – Keswick Theater – Glenside, PA
11/9/07 – Hammerstein Ballroom – New York, NY
11/10/07 – Hampton Beach Casino – Hampton Beach, NH
11/12/07 – Ram’s Head Live – Baltimore, MD
11/14/07 – Town Ballroom – Buffalo, NY
11/16/07 – Murat Egyptian Room – Indianapolis, IN
11/17/07 – Bogart’s – Cincinatti, OH
11/18/07 – Newport Music Hall – Columbus, OH
11/21/07 – House of Blues – Cleveland, OH
11/23/07 – Orbit Room – Grand Rapids, MI
11/24/07 – House of Blues – Chicago, IL
11/25/07 – House of Blues – Chicago, IL
11/29/07 – The Pageant – St. Louis, MO
11/30/07 – Myth – Minneapolis, MN
12/1/07 – The Rave – Milwaukee, WI
12/3/07 – The Fillmore – Denver, CO
12/7/07 – The Warfield – San Francisco, CA
How about a little 1987 Cult? Hard to believe this was 20 years ago!
Years ago when I was interviewing Lauri Kranz she told me about seeing Tim Keegan perform at SXSW and said that if she ever had the opportunity to collaborate with the artist of her choice, it would be Mr. Keegan. I wasn’t familiar with him at the time but after some digging around discovered that Tim had worked with the likes of Robyn Hitchcock and The Blue Aeroplanes and, at the time (this was probably around 2000), was fully engaged in his own project, Departure Lounge.
All the Departure Lounge CDs are available used on Amazon.com at very reasonable prices so I’d definitely suggest picking up the whole catalog if you’re into bands like Mercury Rev (later period), The Pernice Brothers, Galaxie 500/Luna. If you’re looking for a single CD choice, I’m partial to ‘Out of Here’ but only because it was my introduction to Keegan and his work.
Check out this awesome cover of Motorhead’s “Ace of Spades” (it’s in RealMedia format; I haven’t been able to find an MP3 of it), available on the “What You Have is Good” single.
I recently discovered that Keegan put out a solo album earlier this year called ‘Foreign Domestic’ (available as an import through Amazon) and I’m burning up iTunes credit right now downloading it! The songs I’ve heard on MySpace are similar to the stuff Keegan did with the Departure Lounge, as you might expect.
Here’s a video from the new album for the gorgeous track “On a Good Day”.
Usually I’d recommend picking and choosing the songs you download, but this week I think all the songs are worth checking out. iLiKETRAiNs may fill the hole in my heart left by the breakup of Aereogramme. Holy Fuck is an apt name and not at all what I was expecting. A Pavement cover by Cassettes Won’t Listen? AWESOME. The Cure provide loads of influence for A Shoreline Dream. Nice to see Longwave is still around. A lot of you keep coming for the new Division Day downloads so here’s another one. Viva Voce is re-issuing some of their earlier work and to get you in the mood has provided some tunes for you to check out. I don’t know who or what Reykyavik or Dikta is but I like the songs. And ex-Soul Coughing singer Mike Doughty continues to put out great and weird and normal pop songs.
iLiKETRAiNS – “Deception” (MP3) Holy Fuck – “Lovely Allen” (MP3) Cassettes Won’t Listen – “Lunch for Breakfast” (MP3), “Cut Your Hair” (Pavement cover) (MP3) A Shoreline Dream – “New York” (MP3) Longwave – “It’s True” (MP3), “No Direction” (MP3) Division Day – “Reversible” (Ginormous Remix) (MP3) Viva Voce – “Fashionably Lonely” (MP3), “Free Nude Celebs” (MP3), “Wrecking Ball” (Tunng Remix) (MP3) Reykyavik – “Flybus” (MP3) Dikta – “Breaking the Waves” (MP3) Mike Doughty – “Bottom of a Well” (MP3)
BONUS: There are a number of .RAR blogs out there dedicated to ’70s hard rock. These blogs post links to entire album downloads of bands that are so obscure that even their grandmothers didn’t know about them back in the day. The albums, in many cases, were printed up in very limited quantities and though some 30 years later the bands still don’t have any name recognition, their music is incredible.
Something tells me that 30 years from now there will be websites dedicated to posting full length CDs in MP3 format by heavy rock bands from the 2000s in the same boat as those ’70s bands – great music but released in such limited quantity that it’s easy to have missed the bands the first time around.
One of those bands that I think will be more appreciated 10, 20 or 30 years down the road is Columbus, Ohio’s Murder Your Darlings. Made up of members of bands that you don’t know, MYD put out their first album, self-titled, back in 2005 with the help of Reptilian Records. It’s loud, abrasive, a marriage of metal and punk along the lines of the Jesus Lizard, Alabama Thunderpussy, early Nirvana, Black Flag, The Stooges, The Means, etc., etc.
The band’s new album, ‘Modern Man Blues’, is available right now through CDBaby and will be available through other resources (iTunes, Amazon, etc.) sometime in October or November. Buy a copy now so that you can be the one to start the blog 30 years from now and post this album that’ll make the kids of the future go apeshit and question why Murder Your Darlings was a band they had never heard of.
Download 4 songs from the first album, 4 songs from the new one and then go out and buy multiple copies of both to give to your whiskey-drinkin, tattooed friends.
