Woah

This from Dead Air Space:

Hello everyone.

Well, the new album is finished, and it's coming out in 10 days;

We've called it In Rainbows.

Love from us all.
Jonny

The album is going to be available for digital download, and it's ON THE HONOR SYSTEM!!! Pay what you want...no, really. Post how much you paid in comments...

[Radiohead.com]

***Update*** Here's the tracklisting (I believe "Open Pick" is now "Jigsaw Falling into Place":

CD 1 AND VINYL:
15 STEP
BODYSNATCHERS
NUDE
WEIRD FISHES/ARPEGGI
ALL I NEED
FAUST ARP
RECKONER
HOUSE OF CARDS
JIGSAW FALLING INTO PLACE
VIDEOTAPE

CD 2 AND VINYL:
MK 1
DOWN IS THE NEW UP
GO SLOWLY
MK 2
LAST FLOWERS
UP ON THE LADDER
BANGERS AND MASH
4 MINUTE WARNING

DOWNLOAD:
15 STEP
BODYSNATCHERS
NUDE
WEIRD FISHES/ARPEGGI
ALL I NEED
FAUST ARP
RECKONER
HOUSE OF CARDS
JIGSAW FALLING INTO PLACE
VIDEOTAPE

Listen to "Bodysnatchers" Live:

[Download the MP3 Here]

***Update #2*** Have Radiohead consciously or unconsciously killed the record industry? Time seems to think so:

Radiohead's contract with EMI/Capitol expired after its last record, Hail to the Thief, was released in 2003; shortly before the band started writing new songs, singer Thom Yorke told TIME, "I like the people at our record company, but the time is at hand when you have to ask why anyone needs one. And, yes, it probably would give us some perverse pleasure to say 'F___ you' to this decaying business model." On Sunday night, guitarist Jonny Greenwood took to Radiohead's Dead Air Space blog and nonchalantly announced, "Hello everyone. Well, the new album is finished, and it's coming out in 10 days. We've called it In Rainbows. Love from us all."

While many industry observers speculated that Radiohead might go off-label for its seventh album, it was presumed the band would at least rely on Apple's iTunes or United Kingdom-based online music store 7digital for distribution. Few suspected the band members had the ambition (or the server capacity) to put an album out on their own. The final decision was apparently made just a few weeks ago, and, when informed of the news on Sunday, several record executives admitted that, despite the rumors, they were stunned. "This feels like yet another death knell," emailed an A&R executive at a major European label. "If the best band in the world doesn't want a part of us, I'm not sure what's left for this business."

[Read the whole article]

Movie Music: "Less Than Zero"The Bangles: Hazy Shade of Winter (Simon and Garfunkel Cover)

Listen:

[Download the MP3 Here]
[Movie Wiki]

Movie Trailer:

Strangeways, There They Came

The Guardian has a nice write-up on The Smiths' final album:

Being a Smiths fan in the 80s meant learning to accept the occasional disappointment. There was none greater than hearing their debut album for the first time.

Those of us who'd fallen in love with their first three singles, and had heard the legendary the Jensen and Peel sessions, were expecting nothing less than brilliance.

But John Porter's poppadom-flat production crushed the life out of their best songs. And only The Smiths could have been so wilful as to leave even better songs off that album (This Charming Man, Back To The Old House).

Meat Is Murder repeated the same tragedy, this time reduced to farce. You should have heard the almost holy hoedown that was Barbarism ... when it was played live. And where was Please, Please, Please?

I hardly ever play those first two Smiths' albums now. But I still love Hatful Of Hollow, The World Won't Listen and Louder Than Bombs - their de facto greatest hits.

The Queen Is Dead also stays stuck to the shelf. The problem is isn't that it's bad. In fact, it's just far too good, far too close to home and near the bone, flipping me right back to being 16 and suicidal. There are too many bad memories there.

The Smiths album I keep returning to, though, is Strangeways, Here We Come, 20 years old today. It's very much Johnny Marr's record - a deliberate attempt to escape the "jangling" indie band albatross round his pretty white neck. Tellingly, there are no guitars on the opener, A Rush And A Push. Elsewhere Johnny laid on synths and saxophones. Musically, it's their most brilliantly realised piece and expansive of work. It just flows.

[Read the whole article]

Listen to "I Won't Share You":

[Download the MP3 Here]
[Band Wiki]

Babyshambles: French Dog Blues (Promo)

Up On The Ladder?

AtEase reports on the latest goings on in Radiohead world, including the possible return of "Up On The Ladder":

The latest post on Dead Air Space features a photo of Thom Yorke in front of a microphone… with the lyric ‘im stuck in the tardis’… Yes indeed… the first line of ‘Up On The Ladder‘. Even the photo’s file name is “upontheladder.jpg“. So, may we state here that the track is back on the map and actually one of those tracks that have been mastered recently for LP7?

It’s quite a surprise to see ‘Up on the ladder’ as a contender for Radiohead’s new album, as we haven’t heard anything about it since it was dropped for Radiohead’s 2003 album ‘Hail to the Thief’. The band were already working on the track during their Kid A sessions in 2000 and was performed live on their Iberian tour in 2002 and one of the few songs that didn’t make it to LP6. Good to see that ‘Up on the ladder’ isn’t dead and buried after all.

And we might have a release date:

The latest image on Radiohead’s Hodiau Direkton has been encoded as ‘MARCH WA X’. This whole Worm Buffet icon coding has been taken up a notch. ‘MARCH’ can be interpreted as the month of the release of Radiohead’s new album. Then the X could be a 10. March 10th?

[AtEase]

Listen to "Up the Ladder" (Live in Salamanca):

[Download the MP3 Here]
[Band Website]
[LP7 Wiki]

Blur: Parklife Demos (Part V)

"Peter Panic":

[Download the MP3 Here]

"Badhead":

[Download the MP3 Here]

"Trouble":

[Download the MP3 Here]

"One a Minute":

[Download the MP3 Here]

"Debt Collector-Waltz"

[Download the MP3 Here]

[Part I]
[Part II]
[Part III]
[Part IV]

Ida Maria: Oh My God

Listen:

[Download the MP3 Here]
[Artist Myspace]

Drip...Drip...Drip

The Rolling Stones: Dead Flowers (Alternate Version)

Well when you're sitting there in your silk upholstered chair
Talking to some rich folk that you know
Well I hope you won't see me in my ragged company
For you know I could never be alone

Take me down, little Susie, take me down
I know you think you're the queen of the underground
And you can send me dead flowers every morning
Send me dead flowers by the mail
Send me dead flowers to my wedding
And I won't forget to put roses on your grave

Well when you're sitting back in your rose pink Cadillac
Making bets on Kentucky Derby Day
I'll be in my basement room with a needle and a spoon
And another girl to take my pain away

Yes

Take me down, little Susie, take me down
I know you think you're the queen of the underground
And you can send me dead flowers every morning
Send me dead flowers by the U.S .mail
Say it with dead flowers at my wedding
And I won't forget to put roses on your grave

No, I won't forget to put roses on your grave

Listen:

[Download the MP3 Here]
[Band Website]
[Band Wiki]

The Teardrop Explodes: Sleeping Gas

Listen:

[Download the MP3 Here]
[Artist Wiki]

Carry On Up The Morning (Glory)

NME has an interesting, if purely speculative, post about the connection between Pete and Oasis:

There’s been a lot of talk about the influences behind Babyshambles’ new album ‘Shotter’s Nation’. Does ‘Delivery’ rip off The Kinks (maybe a little). Was it really Graham Coxon’s guitar playing that encouraged Pete Doherty to recruit producer Stephen Street (it was).

However one massive influence seems to have been missing in discussion of the album, and Pete’s career so far – Oasis.

The stadium-filling Mancs might seem to jar with the surprise gigs at The Boogaloo Bar favoured by Babyshambles and The Libertines, but from the bigger sound of their new album, to the anthemic qualities of songs like ‘Albion’, ‘Don’t Look Back Into The Sun’ and ‘Time For Heroes’, the hand of Gallagher has never been to far away...

[Read the whole post]

Young Pete waiting to buy the Oasis album:

Listen to "Baddies Boogie" (Radio Rip):

[Download the MP3 Here]
[Band Website]
[Band Myspace]

Visa Woes

This from The Guardian:

As reported yesterday a new threat to hinder the current British music invasion are the ever-tightening US immigration and work visa laws. Lily Allen this week had her visa revoked and missed a potentially career-making MTV Awards appearance, while 12 months ago Klaxons cancelled their crucial CMJ performances because the press clippings they submitted suggested they hadn't been going very long. Which, of course, they hadn't. But then this is pop music - no one goes for very long. And if longevity is the criteria by which incoming touring artists are judged, then the US can have nothing but the boring white rock of Elton John and The Police tours to look forward to for the next - ooh - decade, when they could have the pan-international flavours of MIA. It's not just the hip young guns suffering either - Holly Golightly, New Model Army and Mystery Jets are some of the artists whose tours have been nixed by the authorities.

It's a Catch-22 situation. To guarantee an easy passage stateside artists have to fill a P-1 visa, requiring acts to prove that they have been "internationally recognized" for a "sustained and substantial" amount of time. But can someone really be internationally recognized if they have never performed in the US?

Such red tape is standard practice for a country run by lawyers, but it will surely have a detrimental effect. America will be deprived of new foreign culture from abroad, an existing suspicion that the US government are not very nice will fester even further and everyone from venues to concert promoters to merchandise vendors - people who thrive on live shows rather than record sales - will lose out if tours are cancelled at the last minute.

It's no conspiracy to say that this is all a by-product of the paranoia, fear of outsiders and strict border control that has been present since the white man first took over the country, and which has permeated deeper since September 2001. Any non-famous person who has attempted to enter the US either for a short stay or under the guise of work will likely have similar stories.

As it stands, anglophile US music fans are facing government-endorsed rock 'n' roll.

On the upside, though, they may be spared Razorlight.

[Read the whole article]

Blur: Parklife Demos (Pt IV)

"Never Clever":

[Download the MP3 Here]

"Seven Days":

[Download the MP3 Here]

"Jubilee":

[Download the MP3 Here]

[Part I]
[Part II]
[Part III]

The Smiths: Soundcheck Rarities

"How Soon is Now" (Instrumental):

[Download the MP3 Here]

"Purple Haze" (Jimi Hendrix Cover):

[Download the MP3 Here]

"Asleep":

[Download the MP3 Here]

"There is a Light that Never Goes Out" (Instrumental):

[Download the MP3 Here]

[Band Wiki]

Severed Alliances

Here's a good piece from the Guardian about musical partnerships:

The announcement last week that Jimmy Page and Robert Plant had decided to reform Led Zeppelin for One Night Only, despite years of simmering resentment and the suggestion that hell would have to freeze over before they once more bestrode the stage like corkscrew-haired colossi, got me wondering: is rock'n'roll really just a history of men's love affairs with their other halves - their male partners in the band? And, without those love-hate relationships and the desire, in US shrink parlance, to complete unfinished emotional business, would rock'n'roll have ever sounded the same?

Most of the biggest bands ever have been dependent on a co-dependency, the sort that makes the most dysfunctional marriage look healthy and sane. From the hyphenated to the ampersandy, there have been Page and Plant, Lennon and McCartney, Jagger and Richards, Morrissey/Marr, Strummer/Jones and Wilson/Love... Think of a great band and it usually contains two warring partners who might otherwise, at least if Freud had his way, be copulating wildly on the studio floor; think of an all-time classic rock song and it's more likely than not the result of friction between two rampaging egos who are secretly vying for each other's love.

And it's still going on: in the 90s, Suede's Brett Anderson and Bernard Butler loathed each other with a vengeance, publicly so, making their recent reunion all the more weird ("Actually, not that weird." - Anderson and Butler's accountants), while Carl Barat and Pete Doherty's entire output as the Libertines would appear to be based on unresolved issues between them, blurring the line between creative and sexual tension. The rivalry that seems to spur on the Gallagher brothers is, of course, something else entirely, but even there the conflict between two artistic (term used advisedly) individuals would appear to be the motor driving the band.

[Read the whole article]

Listen to "Europe is Our Playground" by Suede:

[Download the MP3 Here]

The Frames: Finally

Listen:

[Download the MP3 Here]
[Band Website]
[Band Myspace]
(Thanks Peabs)

Acoustic:

The Cure: In Between Days

Listen:

[Download the MP3 Here]
[Band Website]
[Band Myspace]

Pete Doherty and Wolfman: "Darksome Sea" (Rough Version)

Listen:

[Download the MP3 Here]

Recording Session:

[ Video Link from NME]

How Come You Taste So Good?

The Guardian has a great piece on what might just be the greatest song of all time, "Brown Sugar":

Sympathy for the White Devil

Brown Sugar falls into that spellbinding category: Jagger-Richards songs least likely to be covered by Paul McCartney. This is not merely because the Rolling Stones' 1971 single embodies rock at its most primordial, but because the lyrics are intensely controversial, and to many people, offensive. Yes, despite its throbbing, upbeat tempo and exuberant getaway chorus, Brown Sugar is a song about slave owners having their way with nubile young black women. This is not very nice. It is so not very nice that when the Stones scheduled their 2003 trip to China, the heirs of Mao Zedong, that paragon of cultural sensitivity, singled out Brown Sugar as one of four numbers they were forbidden to play. One can only wonder what the commissars would have made of David Bowie's China Girl or George and Ira Gershwin's flamboyantly condescending Porgy and Bess. Whatever the case, nobody in Chicago, Los Angeles or Leeds ever suggested banning Brown Sugar. Well, at least not any white people.

The emotional apex of virtually every Stones concert, Brown Sugar is an unusual song, in that it is has horns and a bridge and is exquisitely crafted but doesn't end up sounding like Steely Dan schlock. It kicks off with a catchy intro that immediately modulates into a completely different riff, gathers steam with Mick Jagger's sassy vocal, careens off into Bobby Keyes' festive saxophone solo and concludes with one of the most beloved sing-along refrains in the history of rock. A hit single off Sticky Fingers, whose controversial cover was designed by Andy Warhol, Brown Sugar captured the Stones at their apogee, when Mick Taylor was driving the band away from Jones' psychedelia and mysticism and back into blues-based rock. After Taylor made the catastrophic decision to leave the band in 1974, and Ronnie Wood replaced him, the Stones never made another great album.

[Read the whole article]

Listen:

[Download the MP3 Here]
[Song Lyrics]
[Band Website]
[Band Wiki]
[Read my piece on Stones' producer Jimmy Miller]

On "Top of the Pops":

It Just Gets Better and Better

From The Onion:

Pitchfork Gives Music 6.8

CHICAGO—Music, a mode of creative expression consisting of sound and silence expressed through time, was given a 6.8 out of 10 rating in an review published Monday on Pitchfork Media, a well-known music-criticism website.

According to the review, authored by Pitchfork editor in chief Ryan Schreiber, the popular medium that predates the written word shows promise but nonetheless "leaves the listener wanting more."

"Music's first offering, an eclectic, disparate, but mostly functional compendium of influences from 5000 B.C. to present day, hints that this trend's time may not only have fully arrived, but is already on the wane," Schreiber wrote. "If music has any chance of keeping our interest, it's going to have to move beyond the same palatable but predictable notes, meters, melodies, tonalities, atonalities, timbres, and harmonies."

Schreiber's semi-favorable review, which begins in earnest after a six-paragraph preamble comprising a long list of baroquely rendered, seemingly unrelated anecdotes peppered with obscure references, summarizes music as a "solid but uninspired effort."

"Coming in at an exhausting 7,000 years long, music is weighed down by a few too many mid- tempo tunes, most notably 'Liebesträume No. 3 in A flat' by Franz Liszt and 'Closing Time' by '90s alt-rock group Semisonic," Schreiber wrote. "In the end, though music can be brilliant at times, the whole medium comes off as derivative of Pavement."

[Read the whole article]

"This is Music" by The Verve:

[Download the MP3 Here]

What will the new Wes Anderson sound like?

Alan McGee writes in the Guardian:

The release of the trailer for the new Wes Anderson film, The Darjeeling Limited has set tongues wagging about what he's going to do with the soundtrack: Who will be on it? What will be the theme? Is he going to use Mark Mothersbaugh, lead singer with Devo and all-round genius to compose the score?

Whatever the answers to these pressing questions, the discussion around the next Wes Anderson soundtrack makes me reflect on the terrible fate that has befallen pop soundtracks. The golden era was in the late 60s to the mid 70s; think Midnight Cowboy, The Graduate and Easy Rider through to Shaft and Superfly. When you put the record on, you're transported straight back in to the world of the film.

Then soundtracks lost the plot. I remember purchasing Batman Returns because of Mazzy Star's inclusion on the album. The liner notes said that the song was there because it provided "inspiration" but didn't actually feature in the film. When did soundtracks become clearing houses for music publishers and tools for marketing men? It would seem the great days have passed us by, leaving us with bargain bins of nu-metal guy rock "inspired by" superhero movies.

While promoting The Life Aquatic, Anderson talked about his favourite soundtracks: Mean Streets, Toby Dammit (the third movie of Fellini's Spirits of the Dead trilogy), The Graduate, Harold and Maude and Woody Allen's films. Yet it seems that Anderson didn't fully realise the importance of a soundtrack to his own work until his first film Bottle Rocket was released to a terrible reception. It was pulled and he was told to retake the film with music, a fortunate move as it began the partnership between Anderson, Randall Poster (an infamous synth guy) and Mark Mothersbaugh.

The partnership of Anderson and Mothersbaugh is comparable to Fellini and Nino Rota, both in the symbiotic way the partnerships work and the spacey, kitschy sounds they often employ. However, it's Harold and Maude and The Graduate that both used pop music to demonstrate the deepening alienation of the main characters - who could forget Benjamin's ennui and despair set to Simon and Garfunkel's Scarborough Fair?

[Read the whole post]

Listen to "This Time Tomorrow" by The Kinks:

[Download the MP3 Here]
[Movie Wiki]

"The Darjeeling Limited" Trailer:

Blur: Parklife Demos (Pt III)

"Tracy Jacks":

[Download the MP3 Here]

"Far Out":

[Download the MP3 Here]

"Bank Holiday":

[Download the MP3 Here]

[Part I]
[Part II]

The Babyshambles-Shotter's-Nation- Poor-Quality-Web-Rip Extravaganza

"French Dog Blues":

[Download the MP3 Here]

"UnStookieTitled":

[Download the MP3 Here]

"There She Goes (A Little Heartache)":

[Download the MP3 Here]

[Band Website]
[Band Myspace]

WANTED: Rock Journalist(No experience required)

The Big Takeover, that font of indie wisdom, has taken a swipe at Pitchfork:

The Sins of Pitchfork #1

by Steve Holtje
8 September 2007

In Friday’s Pitchfork review of Budos Band II, JOE TANGARI’s heart is in the right place, and he’s praising a band I like, but shouldn’t music critics know something about, you know, music? He writes, “Checking over the songwriting credits, I was initially surprised to see SMOKEY ROBINSON’s name in the credit for ‘His Girl,’ but listening closely, it is, in fact, based very loosely on ‘My Girl.’ It’s so thoroughly altered that they could have gotten away with calling it an original, especially at this breakneck tempo….”

You don’t have to listen closely to this song to hear the relationship; I heard it the first time I played it, at Sound Fix, and immediately (before the first chorus was finished) remarked to Sound Fix’s owner, James, on what BUDOS BAND had done—so I’ve got a witness. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a clever, imaginative arrangement, and I like it; my criticism is of Tangari, and of Pitchfork for using such an obviously deficient writer. (Nor is he the only example.) Anybody who says this song is “based very loosely on ‘My Girl’” and is “thoroughly altered” and taken at a “breakneck tempo” is ignorant of the most basic aspects of music. “His Girl” is “My Girl” played in minor instead of major, which from a compositional standpoint is not “based very loosely” at all, it’s “based very closely.” As far as that “breakneck tempo,” by my calculations THE TEMPTATIONS’ version is 106 BPM, while Budos Band plays it at 116 BPM. Yes, that’s noticeably faster, but not by a lot (just two and a half bars of music over the course of a minute), and certainly not “breakneck.”

[Read More]

New Order: Regret

Listen:

[Download the MP3 Here]
[Band Website]
[Band Wiki]

The Arpeggi "Leak": Pitchfork's 'Aluminum Tubes'?

The Radiohead 'LP7' leak is the holy grail for Radiohead fans and music bloggers everywhere. The anticipation for Radiohead's last album, "Hail to the Thief", was so great that an unfinished mix of the album made its way on to the net, much to the band's chagrin. One could expect that the result of this would be increased security surrounding the new album. So imagine this writer's surprise when "Arpeggi", a track long designated for 'LP7', "leaked" c/o Marc Hogan at Pitchfork:

Oh my god oh my god oh my god. Few things are big enough to distract our attention from singing, animatronic bears, but a new Radiohead studio recording just happens to be one. Just after we told you Radiohead apparently wouldn't be bringing you a new album in 2007, they've given us something to tide us over. The band's many obsessives will already recognize "Arpeggi" from previously Forked live versions, but a Radiohead MySpace fan site has now posted this studio rendition. Thom Yorke's haunted vocals are choked off by drifting electronics and repetitive strings, with nary a trace of rock instrumentation-- a minimalist contrast to some of the song's sweeping live iterations. Enjoy! Thanks to Kory Jones for the tip

But when is a leak not a leak? When it's a cleaned-up version of a widely available live performance, that's when. Hogan (the Judy Miller of this tale) and Pitchfork (the New York Times), along with their numerous sycophants in the music blogosphere (the mainstream media), were quick to run with the scoop, provided by an unverified source (the Ahmed Chalabi).

The embarassing part of this story is not that Hogan was unfamiliar with Thom and Jonny's performance at the 2005 Ether Festival with the London Sinfonietta and the Arab Orchestra of Nazareth--that's the sort of knowledge only Radiohead obsessives are privy to. One can even forgive him for not having heard the entirely different full-band arrangement of "Arpeggi" performed throughout the band's 2006 tour.

No, what's truly disappointing is the basic lack of fact-checking that went into the story. All journalistic integrity apparently went out the window in the vain search for hype. Before posting the 'leak', the writer could have sought out previous live versions of the song, a variety of which are widely available (and even reviewed elsewhere on Pitchfork). Likewise, any leak of "LP7" material would have set the Radiohead AtEase board alight, yet on the board all was quiet. Although it would have diminished the buzz a bit, the Pitchfork writer could have uploaded the track there to get feedback: AtEasers would have said the obvious and saved the writer the embarrasment.

Then again, this sort of thing is just the latest chink in Pitchfork's armor. In 2004, I attempted to read Pitchfork regularly on a friend's suggestion. The smug, self-satisfied tone of the reviews was off-putting enough, but even more abhorrent were the obvious factual errors I came across in high-profile reviews. The most egregious example was in a review of "The Libertines", where the reviewer confused Pete for Carl on "The Narcissist".

These sort of mistakes might be acceptable for a small web outfit. But not for a high-profile 'authority' like Pitchfork. When you're sponsoring festivals and patting yourself on the back for discovering overrated bands like Broken Social Scene and Arcade Fire, you should be held to a higher standard...or at least be expected to google things now and then.

Listen to "Arpeggi" (Live 2006):

[Download the MP3 Here]

Ether Performance:

Richard Hawley: Run for Me

Listen:

[Download the MP3 Here]
[Artist Website]
[Artist Myspace]

Babyshambles: The Lost Art of Murder (Web Rip)

Listen:

[Download the MP3 Here]
[Band Website]
[Band Myspace]