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Priscilla Ahn’s voice is pretty great and I think I’d like her to sing this song to me when I’m hungover on a Sunday morning. Because this is all about her voice, the kind that stays with you and gnaws at you. I’ve been loving the looping technology used here to allow her voice to become yet another musical track in the song.

Canada’s Miracle Fortress is the work of one Graham Van Pelt.  Their 2007 LP Five Roses was one of the best albums to be released last year.  It was a dreamy collection of adventurous sonic pop tunes, heavily influenced by soaring vocals harmonies of The Beach Boys creative peak, the throbbing basslines and ringing guitars of Yo La Tengo, but the album is full of restraint and subtlety.  Van Pelt will never over power, but he will get under your skin and have you wanting to listen again and again.

One of the better track from the album finally gets the video treatment.  “Have You Seen in Your Dreams” features some clever etch-a-sketching.  The song really achieves greatness at about 1:15 into the song when there is that strange fluttering of noise just beneath the surface of the song.

Mp3: Miracle Fortress - “Have You Seen in Your Dreams”

Five Roses is out now via Secret City Records.   [BUY]

Next to “Blast Off” this is the finest song from Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo’s solo album. “Lover in the Snow” is a sweet little ditty, with a nice guitar riff, song tamborines and handclaps. Throw in Rivers lyrics about wondering why some girl loves another man and yeah it woulda made a fine Weezer tune.

Still, the video is funny. We get an opening monologue about Rivers’s absentee dad, their passion for soccer and they Rivers going into Rocky mode, before playing soccer with Mia Hamm.

Either way. It’s a great song and a great video. Together they’ve got an oddball charm to them.

Just one of many cuts off our favorite record from 2007 gets the proper video treatment.  In the Double Triple & Ryan Junell-directed clip for “You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb” the band goes almost retro 80’s with lots of construction paper light bulbs and other things coming and going.

For whatever reason it almost reminds us of Nickolodean during that same time period.  Like the intro to one of their shows we’d watch after school.  Only cooler.

The directors describe the video as “three minutes of stop-motion animation of paper cutouts done by hand and sequenced on a computer.”

Troy, N.Y.’s power rock trio Super 400 have released their first proper video for their tune, “Emergency.”  Sound vaguely similar to Soundgarden and that’s okay in my book.  Few bands attempt to properly melt your face these days.   It’s not subtle music, but they bring the loud abrasive  sound of like early nineties alternative rock.

Mp3: Super 400 - “Emergency”

3 and the Beast is available now.

We still haven’t finished digesting the hyperkinetic video for “Run” and now Cee-Lo and Danger Mouse have dropped yet another video and single.  I actually much prefer this song.  It’s got a great retro-Curtis Mayfield vibe to it.  That sort of 70’s blaxploitation soul, you know the kind of song you listen to while cruising through city streets in the wee hours of the morning, while contemplating the death of your best friend at the hands of the po-po.

That kind of sound.  That it’s being lip synched in the video by The Roots’s ?uestLove is gravy.  Actually ?uestLove goes on to say:

most idiots will probably be on some “scoff…this aint no CRAZY”–well you dumb ass parrots–this to me digs deeper. and what an apt title The Odd Couple: a very dense dark atmospheric moody templet just dramatic enough for the last great living and WORKING soul singer under 40 and the most creative and intuitive producer maniac music has seen in a sec.

thanks fellas for giving me the honor.

We thank you too

The Odd Couple hits streets on April 8 via Atlantic Records.

Justin Timberlake sports a mean jheri curl and channels the ghost of Snow as host of the fictional Dance Party show. But the real deal is that Gnarls Barkley have done it again. Didn’t think they’d be able to top “Crazy” but I think I like this song much more. Danger Mouse and Cee-Lo cue up the nostalgia and get the kids on the dance floor.

Slate has an interesting piece, that’s old news to music lovers, but is nonetheless about Neutral Milk Hotel mastermind Jeff Mangum. Mangum and his band recorded the now legendary album In the Aeroplane Over the Sea a proper decade ago. The album is revered by many (so much so that The ‘Gum refused to do a tribute album for it) and it’s noteriety stems as much from its genius as from Mangum walking away and never being heard from again.

It’s almost as if Jeff Mangum accomplished everything he wanted to with his musical homage to Anne Frank, or simply that he couldn’t figure out how to top himself and he’s suffered from writers block ever since. Anyway, the comparisons to author J.D. Salinger are apt, only that no one really understands why either walked away.

In one sense we all feel blessed to have glimpsed their genius and on the other we all feel a bit robbed. It’s a strange paradox.

Because he suffered from night terrors, Mangum often stayed up until dawn working on his songs, sometimes addressing them to the ghosts in a haunted closet. At first, this method produced modest results: His first album, On Avery Island (1996), showed flashes of promise but had its sludgy and spotty patches. One day, Mangum wandered into a bookstore and happened upon a copy of Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl. The book consumed him. After finishing it, he spent a few days crying over Frank’s story. As he told a Puncture magazine interviewer before Aeroplane’s release, “I would go to bed every night and have dreams about having a time machine and somehow I’d have the ability to move through time and space freely, and save Anne Frank. Do you think that’s embarrassing?” The songs and lyrics he started writing about Frank could be so nightmarish in vision that Mangum grew afraid of what was issuing from his brain: verses about “pianos filled with flames” and eating “tomatoes and radio wires.” At times, he seems possessed, singing on Aeroplane’s title track, “Anna’s ghost all around/ Hear her voice as it’s rolling and ringing through me.”

In the Aeroplane Over the Sea is so expansive in its weirdness that one of its 11 songs is a rollicking bagpipe jam—yet it would be wrong to call it a “cult” record, since that would imply it’s some sort of flawed art-school project. Sure, Aeroplane occasionally sounds like a mariachi circus fed through a broken amplifier, but it all weaves together as Mangum guides the proceedings with percussive guitar strumming, singalong melodies, and his booming, emotive voice. The album plays like a document from a parallel-universe version of the 1940s, inlaid with Mangum’s haunting lyrics: “And here’s where your mother sleeps/ And here is the room where your brothers were born/ Indentions in the sheets/ Where their bodies once moved but don’t move anymore.” Aeroplane isn’t about airtight instrumentation or tricky songwriting—most of the songs have just three or four chords—but about a remarkable range of feeling put into melody. (Mangum recorded his part of the song “Oh Comely” in one scratch take, at the end of which you can hear a stunned band member yell “Holy shit!” in the background.)

The praise and hype and kisses (though Dodge’s article was back in 06 still has some great Mp3s) it received this past month were certainly worth it. In the Aeroplane Over the Sea is a monumental work. [Buy]

Mp3: “King of Carrot Flowers: Part 1″
Mp3: “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea”

Damn. Just because we love this album. Here’s another clip of Jeff playing several songs off the record solo.

Has Willie Nelson ever been cooler?  Perhaps.  He was pretty cool in his Half Baked cameo.

But, here he rounds up the Wilson Brothers (Owen, Luke and Andrew), Woody Harrelson and Jessica Simpson for some old timey parlor games, and the bad boy and bad girl lawn mower race.  Oh yeah, there’s also a song too and it’s a nice little ditty that all funny people can relate to.

Moment of Forever is out now via Lost Highway Records.

One of the things I loved about Britain’s The Duke Spirit, was that they seemed to combine the best parts of Sonic Youth, The Velvet Underground and some of that grungy, garage-rock in a way that was uniquely their own. Led by Leila Moss, who shimmies around the stage wailing like a banshee and slapping her tambourine as if it were possessed, the five piece band have a new album coming out Neptune.

So far we’re pleased with what we hear, it’s a bit more refined sound and they’ve taken some nice sonic chances, actually improving upon their sound with horn arrangements, glockenspiel, etc.; it doesn’t immediately leave as big impression upon us as their debut Cuts Across the Land, but it does sound like something we’ll listen to more frequently. The band has gone for brevity and that counts for a lot in this ADD musical times we live in.

The first video is for the song “The Step and the Walk” which isn’t a huge departure from the sound of their first album.

They’ve also got a video out for album cut “Lasso”

Mp3: “The Step and the Walk”
Myspace: The Duke Spirit

Neptune is out 4/8 on Shangri La Music, however you can also buy it right now on iTunes. Go figure.

Portland’s The Shaky Hands pretty much got us through 2007. Their debut album was a solid work of jangly pop tunes, astute observations, hummable melodies and left us with that skipping along upbeat feeling. Not a lot of music can do that and sustain that vibe for 40-minutes.

We discovered their album in the summer and it carried us well into the fall. For whatever reason, they never got the love we felt they deserved around the internets. Maybe it’s because they’re not from New York and all the major publications are from New York and that’s why you’ve got a band like Vampire Weekend being flogged to death from bloggy buzz. But whatevs. We’re content to keep The Shaky Hands to ourselves.

This time they’ve got a new video for the albums lead track “Whales Sing.” The band is playing grown up Teletubbies, with colored sweatshirts and doing the whole beach thing. You know: playing football, early morning Tai Chi, pop-and-lock dancing, prancing in the surf.

Except now that I live in Oregon, I know that the video was shot somewhere else or has been sitting in a can for eight months. Because, ah, it’s rained every single day since I’ve been here and the beaches look more like the beaches in England than they do in this video. Maybe some parallel universe?

I know it’s easy to hate on Jack Johnson’s surfer, easy-going vibe. His music isn’t particularly challenging, which always seems to be a requisite for music critics. But I’ve always found it to be oddly enjoyable background music, the kind you can throw on in the car on the way to the beach, windows down, it’s just listenable, groovable music. It’s got a certain vibe and at the right moment that kind of music can hit you emotionally in the way that not a lot of “challenging” music does.

Sleep Through the Static comes out Feb. 5 on Brushfire Records.

Hands down Feist owned 2007, so one would think she may want to chill out in 2008, but apparantly that’s not in her plans for utter world domination.

“I Feel It All” was easily our fav track from The Reminder.  And now it’s got a proper vid, directed by Patrick Daughters.  This time Leslie is standing in front of the camera, but the colorful whimsy is gone.  Instead we get her out in the backyard at night lighting fireworks.

Not exactly what I imagined, but what can you do.  I didn’t imagine blue sequined one-piece jumpsuits either.

Mp3: “I Feel it All”

And a much better performance on Jimmy Kimmel in the back of a bus after the jump.  MORE »

The latest Travis album was one of our unexpected surprises in 2007.  We’ll make no proclamations that it was a “return to form” or what-have-you.  But it was an exceptionally emotional pop-rock album.  Their first video for “Selfish Jean” was a humorous affair with comedian Dmetri Martin.  This time around the lads go for the impressionistic approach, hiring director/artist Gary Rough.

The video shows a New York City that I would want to live in, far more than the one I occassionally visit for a few days every other year or so.  The thing is New York City always gets me down, or just makes me feel clastrophobic after a few days, that I have a hard time thinking about living in the city or staying for an extended period of time.

But this video, well, this is the City as I always imagined it would be.

Is it time to call Chris Hanson from NBC’s To Catch a Predator and set up an intervention with Weez frontman Rivers Cuomo? It might be too early to tell, but judging from this strange video for the single “Blast Off!” from his uneven solo album Alone: Home Recordings of Rivers Cuomo 1992-1997(the highs and high and the lows are pretty low), Cuomo’s choice of facial hair, mixed with his choice of a YMCA-like gym to get himself pumped leaves us feeling a little icky.

Oh well, the song rocks balls and only makes us wish Weezer had released the shelved album Songs From the Black Hole, from whence this song was originally recorded for.

A while back Big Rob told you all about a few commercials that rocked his socks featuring songs with haunting female vocals.  I believe one of them might have been for Ingrid Michaelson singing in the Old Navy sweater’s commercial.

Anyway, the song was “The Way I Am” and it now has an official video starring creepy clowns.  It’s sort of funny in a way that’s counterintuitive to the actual song.  It’s directed by Autumn de Wilde, who’s directed videos for bands like Death Cab For Cutie, Rilo Kiley and Elliott Smith.

Girls and Boys is out now on Original Signal Recordings.

Brooklyn Vegan has a roundup of this year’s snazzy videos.  Not sure I have much of an opinion as the music video seems to be post fodder, very rarely do we see one that gets us totally excited.

Though we have to say, anytime you can use the Muppets effectively like Escort, well you are A-Okay in our book sir.

Escort - All Through the Night

I suppose we’d also be on the road with her band The Nocturnals, which is infinitely more enjoyable, I suspect, than being on the road with a drunken Jack Kerouac, a stoned Allen Ginsberg and Neal Cassidy on speed.

Mostly that’s due to Grace Potter being the new walking embodiment of sex appeal.  Yup, that was the sound of her tossing Jenny Lewis off the cliff.  Also, it should be noted that I have a chance with her since she could be single but she is most definitely legally blind.  Anyway, I digress.

I was searching for some info on Grace Potter and the Nocturnals because it’s high time I featured them for the Song of the Day.  Lo and behold, however, the group has gone out of their way to post seven tour videos for your viewing pleasure through their own film company, Nocturnica Pictures.

Each episode features concert footage and the band goofing around on the tour bus, etc. The first episode came out at the end of October and the second episode is out now, numbers 3-7 will be debuting in the future.  The following is the first episode for viewing pleasure.

Via: HT

Portland’s Blitzen Trapper has dropped an album this year that we can’t stop listening to.  It’s got this cool, psychedilic country vibe to it.  We couldn’t recommend the album Wild Mountain Nation enough.  With that said, they’ve just released a video for the title track off the album, which is indeed one of the stronger cuts off it.  You get a real sense of the band’s sound.

The video is a cool collage in that grand tradition of The Smashing Pumpkins “Tonight, Tonight’ 2-d paper cutouts.  Though, we’re guessing this time around the band is using computer images.  Ah, technology!

Wild Mountain Nation is out now on Sub Pop.

Man, this is an album that has just grown on me since picking it up via band sanctioned leak. Anyway, this has been the de facto first single and though I didn’t know what to make of the song at first, in the context of the band’s exceptional album, In Our Bedroom After the War, the fuzzed out guitars hit just the right notes.

Surprised we didn’t get this video sooner, but I love Fridays when the Arts & Crafts press release drops into my mailbox. This video sees the band sprung to life through photos on a couple’s wall. I wish I could have Amy and Torq on my wall if they acted like the photos from a Harry Potter movie.

Luckily for us, the pictures move and sing.