Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins fame, eat your heart out bro. Mew is everything you ever wanted to be and never got to – and Mew hasn’t even plateaued yet as their latest album professes. Danish pop sorcerers Mew reveal their fifth studio album “No More Stories…” and much like the two stanza story-like title, it’s an enigma wrapped in a riddle as the old cliché goes. Jonas and the gang lifted the album’s moniker from the stirring “Hawaii Dream”. The album is so intense, so glorious, and so gifted that it is beyond words. Indeed, the album was recorded with such intensity and attention to detail that the song “New Terrain” if played backwards is an entirely different song called “Nervous”. The first single, “Introducing Palace Players” has a frenetic and kinetic approach with pop harmonies and giant overtures. Stunningly melodic vocals once again spotlight the tremendous talent that this now trio – bassist Johan Wohlert left the group to spend more time with his family and girlfriend (Swan Lee’s vocalist) – from Denmark. “Repeaterbeater” is the second single and promises that the band will not abandon their harder-edged tunes for pure pop opuses. Rhythmically this album is extremely challenging, offering up challenging percussion that oddly still manages to be pretty danceable. Though I was unfortunate enough not to be able to see them, it would prove to be very interesting to see how their tour with industrial-strength dynamos Nine Inch Nails went over with the decidedly NIN-fan-heavy crowds. Anyone silly enough to dismiss this group because they don’t feature “the yell” on vocals would be mistakenly. Indeed some of the epics that Mew pens on this giant rocker could easily be distinguished as the soundtrack to the apocalypse (see: two minutes into “Reprise” as a healthy example). “Beach” is extremely approachable with verses of guitar and bass right out of The Cure’s early to mid career. “Hawaii” follows the shorter intro track “Hawaii Dream” with sparse tropical instrumentals peppered into a backdrop of hushing harmonies and gorgeous soundscapes. Mew may be the very first band ever to use a xylophone instead of a synth effect within their vocoded vocal effects. “Vaccine” is bubbly and smart with a danceable dream popsicle seemingly licked and nibbled from the magical land of Candyland. Sugary vocals traverse the majority of the album with off-kilter English language lyrics that while written in my native tongue, seem foreign and exotic with romantic and tantalizing awesomeness. In addition to the main vocals, there are children choirs and brief other vocal noises and samples mixed expertly with piano and keyboard.
Folks this is the most important Album of the Year, yes capitalized because it should win that award from everyone giving it out in 2009. Note: if you purchase the album on iTunes, you can grab up the three b-sides, “Owl”, “Start”, and “Swimmer’s Chant”.
Electro Pioneers, living legends and globally revered masters of electronic sound, celebrate the 35th anniversary of their landmark 1974 hit ‘Autobahn’ by releasing a special collector’s CD boxset featuring remastered versions of eight astounding albums on October 6th, 2009. Rolling back musical barriers with every forward-thinking phase of their career, Dusseldorf’s Zen masters of electronic minimalism laid the foundations for four decades of computerised pop and dance music. By chain reaction and mutation, they have influenced generations of artists in all genres, mapping musical futures yet to come. From Bowie to Daft Punk, Aphex Twin to Portishead, Dr Dre to LCD Soundsystem, and almost everyone in between, the mark of Kraftwerk is endless, endless.
In 2009 Kraftwerk have upgraded their Kling Klang masters with the latest studio technology and these eight magnificent recordings still sound like nothing else in the history of music. Kraftwerk are unique, pristine, profound and beautiful. Decades may pass, but their streamlined synthetic symphonies stand outside time, as fresh as tomorrow, transcendent and sublime.
12345678 The Catalogue
will be released across the following formats:
CD Boxset containing 8 x CDs in ‘mini-vinyl’ card wallet packaging, plus individual large format booklets.
Due to licensing restrictions in the U.S., only five of the eight albums will be released as separate CD editions: Autobahn, Radio-Activity, Trans Europe Express, The Man Machine and Tour De France (2003). As a result, the only way for fans to own the entire catalogue on CD is to purchase the Box Set.
5 x individual CDs in special O-card slipcases featuring newly expanded artwork, including many previously unseen images, all of which have been reproduced to the highest technical standards
5 x individual heavyweight vinyl LPs with large format booklets
Lounge pop gems from a trio of teenagers (none of whom are older than 17 mind you) known simply as The Da Vincis that sound as if they are grizzled veterans of the music industry with intelligent lyrics, piano melodies, ukulele pop, and even some kalimba. How many bands would be brave enough to write about getting a friend request ignored on Facebook and not sound like a bunch of kids? “50’s Film” is bouncy pop crystallized with cheeky lyrics and fun kitschy harmonies. Intelligent indie pop from such a young group of kids that is actually damn talented and worthy of its underground buzz? I think the universe is about to implode!
Despite the new singer Jason Woods, It Dies Today still sounds as tight as ever, as if this group who formed originally in 2001. Their hybrid brand of metalcore, screamo, and hardcore remains solid despite the over-arching clichés that blot the genre. After all, how many bands that brush their hair back the wrong way would still have the balls to cover Duran Duran’s classic “Come Undone” and actually make it sound pretty damn good. Mike Hatalak not only plays in the band but recorded and engineered “Lividity” and churned out a damn fine sound. While It Dies Today may not be a band that writes memorable or awe-inspiring classics, they do write energetic classic metallic-edged tunes. And hell that’s worth something these days.
Earlier this year Trustkill Records inked Italian metallic hardcore outfit Awaken Demons to a deal and launched upon a PR campaign online to promote the launch of their full-length “The Mirror”. With guest vocal slots filled by the likes of Karl Buechner (Path of Resistance, Earth Crisis, Freya) and The Acacia Strain’s Vincent Bennet, “The Mirror” was sure to garner some attention regardless. The album is riff-heavy with firm nods towards the late ‘90s era of metal-edged hardcore. Blasting through the confining walls that the hardcore label can sometimes bring, the group sludges guitar slams with energetic and passionate screams and yells alongside an amalgam of thrashy drumming and gut-wrenching bass slaps. The band is set to embark on a tour with labelmates It Dies Today as well as Century Media’s own Arsonists Get All the Girls. You can stream the album online at Trustkill’s site.
Earlier this week, a new Radiohead MP3 was leaked…its title is “These Are My Twisted Words” off of their upcoming “Wall of Ice” EP which is set to hit via the Internet virally at first, or so goes the rumors. Also check out the riveting charity track, “Harry Patch (In Memory Of)“.
Produced by Casey Bates, he of Portugal The Man, A Skylit Drive and Chiodos fame (wow doesn’t he feel ashamed, but I guess everyone needs a paycheck, right?), “Sleepwalking” is the debut of this Texas hardcore outfit. Memphis May Fire fires off a double combo of melodic vocals, pinch harmonic guitars with screamo and aggro-rock velocity. Their singer left in the middle of their recording with the band “forced” to do a publicity stunt, err, an open audition on MySpace. The result wasn’t a bad choice as Matt Mullins can certainly punctuate a tune with fierce precision but you have to wonder how much is auto-tuned and how much isn’t in this day and age of mall-punk melodies and clone-core. While this band is a cliché and their sound a dime-a-dozen now-a-days, it still has its merits, just not worthy enough to really mention outside of a yawning cast-off comment. Okay I am just kidding, the only merits it boasts is that they are being paid to make music while we are not. Want to run down the list of clichés? Here’s your bulleted list:
1.) “Funny” song titles that have nothing to do with the lyrics – “You’re Lucky It’s Not 1692” and “North Atlantic vs. North Carolina”
2.) Obligatory mention of God/Jesus – Liner notes thank God while lyrics say idioms like “We are the chosen, and we claim your life tonight. Breathe in the light that surrounds us. Can you feel it?”
3.) Screamo/post-emo vocals and pinched harmonics with plenty of generic “breakdowns” – Album weeps of this tired cliché
4.) Packaged sound – You could listen to this blindfolded and not hear a single iota of Texan hardcore influence, in fact this is as packaged and mall generic as it gets.
Filling up your innards with oodles of their fiery brand of hardcore, Dead Swans float to the surface amid a flurry of percussion, throaty screeches and yelling, slashing guitar anthems, and mid-range melodies. Oddly enough they were awarded a nomination as the Best British Newcomer for Kerrang! Awards ’08. But while that may be their biggest brush with fame, as they pulled in their heads like a turtle into its shell they concentrate of working harder and earning their demerits the right honorable way; instead of pursuing bigger and better commercial success, Dead Swans reverted to melting faces at hardcore and metal shows. Earning the respect of the majority of the hardcore scene, Dead Swans then faced their biggest test: to record a full-length. Bridge Nine Records would be the host for what would soon become an infectious plague of hardcore. “Sleepwalkers” is the fruit of that labor (or as they’d say “labour”). Crunchy guitars that awake your adrenalin glands form a vicious combo with their brand of precision-based punk’ed hardcore and chaotic songwriting. Ya nailed it guys.
Simon Joyner’s twelfth record, “Out into the Snow” is a Bob Dylan-esque nod to Americana, alt-country, and indie pop. His vocals scream of Dylan’s influence so much that one would think that he lend his pipes to the record. Like his predecessor, Bright Eyes, Joyner journeys into the more pop regions of the world. Except his vocals are so goddamn awful that it makes listening to the album as enjoyable as a good fingernails-to-chalkboard event amplified through a loud PA system.
Eccentric music for eccentric listeners. That would be the byline that I’d postulate if I was a member of Tribecastan’s PR team. Indeed, “Strange Cousin” is a strange bastard stepchild red-headed cousin whatever of varied and sundry musical styles ranging from Middle Eastern to Croatian to Swedish to even elements of punk rock. Utilizing instruments as varied as the mandolin, steel drum, yayli tambur, Jew’s harp, fujara, hurdy gurdy, Bulgarian gaida, box fiddle, Uilleann chanter, chromatic tambourine, bender, mandocello, tupan, nyckleharpa, Kelhorn, and Pakistani taxi horn. Mixing up folk music from various region across the world with urbanized pop and cross-cultural ethnic jams, Tribecastan finds its roots in a small neck of the woods of Manhattan which is a cross-roads in of itself. Inventive, energetic, and vigorously different, “Strange Cousin” beckons to the world-traveled listener that is weary of standard pop fare.
Produced by Casey Bates, he of 
