Pitchfork

Re-working an existing track is primarily about listening-- the best remixers hear something inside of a song not being served by the original version. In the case of Animal Collective's remix of Goldfrapp's "Little Bird", they heard something several shades darker than the urban moodscape of the original, something filled with mystery and maybe a touch of desperation. Stripping away most of the music in favor of a slowly accumulating web of percussion and noise, the track becomes a spooky campfire song for a Blair Witch kind of night.

[from the "Caravan Girl" single; out now on Mute]

This Chris Milk-directed video is completely crazy in just the right way. Surreal, funny, disgusting, even a little dramatic. Just watch. It's better than this one. (via Subterranean)

Video:> Gnarls Barkley: "Who's Gonna Save My Soul"
[from The Odd Couple; out now on Downtown/Atlantic]

Dan Frampton, a.k.a. Dusk, and Pitchfork contributor Martin Clark, a.k.a. Blackdown, have been churning out solid 12" singles for a minute. On first listen, the obvious thing to say is that this London-based production team's debut, Margins Music, is for fans of a Burial-style approach. But it's really much less moody than this, though, and the 2-step feel of "Focus" is an example of a different attitude.

A clip from the film 1984 opens the track, saying, "the resistance is very real". Too true. From the outset, it's evident that the tune does resist falling too far into the darkness. There's a definite cinematic eeriness here, as demonstrated by the strings that enter into the mix halfway through, but it's up-tempo enough to make it brilliantly danceable. It deserves to be turned up very loud. 

[from Margins Music; due August 2008 on Keysound]

The video for Hella drummer Zach Hill's "Dark Art", from his forthcoming album on Ipecac Astrological Straits, could be a meditation on the loneliness of the long distance runner, except that Hill is in corpse paint, looking like he's dressed for a Black Metal show, and he's spitting blood now and then while he jogs. We watch as he treks through a very nice suburban neighborhood in his Adidas shell-toes, black trench coat on his back and chain mail on his wrists, and we wait for something big to happen but it never does. Still, the song has an appealing noise-rock grind, with characteristically pummeling percussion and a surprising amount of melody.

[from Astrological Straits; due 08/12/08 on Ipecac]

Just when you thought you never needed to hear "1234" again, here we are: Bikini season. This string- and banjo-decorated song of regret from Feist's fantastic 2007 LP The Reminder has fallen away from the folk-pop tree before (like an Apple, you know?) through remixes by the likes of Van She and Boyz Noize. Montreal duo Bikini, who have a show coming up  in Stockholm with the Tough Alliance later this summer, turn "1234" into lazy summer-day electro-pop by doing a full-fledged cover, rather than remixing it. Humming tones contrast with lo-fi blips and bleeps, beneath a slightly robotic vocal. It wouldn't fair to say that Bikini kill the song-- quite the opposite, in fact. They breathe new life into a great track many of us may have played (or at least posted) a few too many times last year. You can hear other Bikini songs and download their Concerning the Number 7 and Your Love EP on the group's MySpace.

MP3:> Bikini: "1234"
[from MySpace]

If every tune at least vaguely about affection sported the name "Liking You," we'd be cataloguing this blurb with Dewey Decimals. But as the cap for this gorgeous cut from a distantly forthcoming full-length by new Chapel Hill trio Americans in France, "Liking You" is an important sub-textual revelation. Liking someone is a graded loss of innocence, you know, a possible symptom of love or lust, an indicator of life decisions to come. It's a gateway, a stop sign, or both. Liking someone changes things.

You'll first recognize schoolgirl simplicity and charm in Casey Cook's voice, then, a plaintive, sedated coo that recounts a second-person narrative of too many drinks and too little responsibility. Still, she goes on liking the lucky "you," compromising her own logic for something more instinctual. By track's end, she doesn't sound jaded as much as experienced. There goes the innocence, fittingly painted through a farfisa line that sounds lifted from a sunny-day merry-go-round. It's battered by vague electronic ripples and a broken blues guitar line that scrambles notes and garbles tone. Whenever Cook's drums aim for liftoff, they return to metronomic morass soon enough. Don't you see? She's stuck "liking you."

MP3:> Americans in France: "Liking You"
[from MySpace]

Well, it's here, and it does not disappoint. Check the Pitchfork news story that ran last week for details on how this thing was made, then check the video itself-- it's something.

Update: This weekend, while we were busy at our festival, Thom Yorke posted this to Dead Air Space:

"so as you may know we have completed a video for the song- it has been in the land of google, and now also if you want to download a higher quality version without the internet streaming pixellation squash and enjoy it on whatever screen appliance, click here to download.

it was a strange experience, sitting in front of a lazer in the dark, then emailing back an forth with James the director as he sat in front of computers for a whole month with the amazing technicians who processed the data etc.. but it says something about the song and came out better than i had dared hope.

[from In Rainbows; out now on ATO in the U.S., MapleMusic in Canada, XL in the UK, and Hostess Entertainment in Japan]

Founded as an experimental duo, Calexico has been known as a primarily instrumental band, blending southwestern music with indie rock mood. "Two Silver Trees", from their upcoming Carried to Dust, doesn't rewrite that equation so much as it adds a few new variables: a soft synth fanfare as simple-complex as a haiku, a guitar that arpeggiates in and out of existence, a lurking snare-and-bass groove that is becoming something like a band signature. In colliding these two worlds, Calexico have discovered endless musical possibilities.

But over the years Calexico has become a strong vocal band, and not just due to their collaborations with Sam Beam and Neko Case. Since their first release, Joey Burns has grown increasingly ambitious as a songwriter and much more comfortable as a singer, turning his shortcomings-- limited range and force-- into assets that make his songs instantly recognizable. He whisper-sings as if conspiring with the listener, and his breathlessness gives "Two Silver Trees" the ominous quality of ransom demands. As the song explodes into its chorus, he reaches into his upper register and turns the subtle strain into another instrument in the band's arsenal.

MP3:> Calexico: "Two Silver Trees"
[from Carried to Dust; due 09/09/08 on Quarterstick]

In which the fallout from the subprime mortgage crisis hits hip-hop. Though not, apparently, the lavish feel of big-time summer hip-hop singles. Young Jeezy's new one with an Auto-Tuned Kanye West, "Put On"-- peaking so far on the Billboard Hot 100 at #36, a couple of slots above New Kids on the Block (?! etc.)-- is a grandiose, cruising-ready anthem built on a mix of horn-like synths and UFO-like synths, an eerie keyboard riff, and stuttering bass drums. The producer, Drumma Boy, invests the track with some of the sweeping urgency he gave The Inspiration's "The Realest", though with more of that recent trancey Florida feel than its predecessor's rock-flavored instrumentation.

"I'm high as a satellite/ I see those flashing lights," sings West in his cybernetic guest spot, after Jeezy rasps about his jewelry, his car, his gun, his weed. Though it's a great-sounding track, the duo's "man the top sure lonely" stance contrasts with the video's focus on foreclosures and unemployment-- the unglamorous side of the inner cities romanticized in clips like DJ Khaled's star-studded "I'm So Hood"-- all symbolized here by a Raiders black-and-silver American flag. But really, hip-hop videos should be more controversial than New Yorker covers

[from The Recession; due 09/02/08 on Def Jam]

This is sort of how I picture Man Man living their lives-- wandering around the city streets, instruments in hand, beating on metal things and basically just making a racket. La Blogothèque has posted five videos for this "Take Away Show". The first four are identified as "warm-ups" and this lengthy bit is borrows titles from Queen and is called "A Day at the Races and a Night at the Opera". For the first bit they're doing their thing in the Paris streets, then there is a live performance in a club, and then they play out on the street again afterward. Looks like a splendid time. The rest of the clips are up at the site.