Pitchfork

Sing-alongs in the sunshine, yeah, that's why the Hold Steady works so well at a festival. Craig Finn dedicates the Stay Positive title track to an audience member's deceased friend and then gets down to business. His shirt gives some idea of the relative humidity on this afternoon.

Speaking of shirts, Dinosaur Jr.'s drummer Murph isn't wearing one, but that's OK. "Freak Scene" is the anthem, and yeah, the damn hands were up.

Nic Offer attributes !!!'s frequently great live sets to his willingness to "fucking give". Watch "Must Be the Moon" and you be the judge.

It's been noted that Times New Viking live are much less noisy, allowing their garage-pop melodies to escape all that fuzz. Check how scrubbed-up and clean they sound on "Teen Drama".

When it comes to garage-y pop, Apples in Stereo have been doing it for years. "Energy" shows that studio rat Robert Schneider makes for pretty compelling rock frontman.

This one "was written by an obscure proto-punk collective called 'Bob Dylan,'" Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson tells Daytrotter, adding that he does it the Byrds' way. If you've heard Sweetheart of the Rodeo, you know that means a loose, free-wheeling, country-rock take on Dylan's carefree Basement Tapes classic (and if you haven't, why are you still reading this shit instead of typing that title into your preferred music-getting source?). Like another promising young act, New Jersey's Titus Andronicus, this Brooklyn singer-songwriter probably won't be able to escape endless Bright Eyes comparisons until he eclipses Conor Oberst's fame (sorry, David Dondero) or starts to sings in a less shaky voice. Here, though, along with honky-tonk piano and barely-in-tune acoustic guitar, Robinson's quavering vocals add to the song's ramshackle feel, doing credit to its songwriter even if failing to surpass the more definitive past versions.

MP3/Stream:> Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson: "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere

[Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson is out now on Say Hey]

This video is a trip, man. Oxford Collapse are a peppy, melodic rock band, in some ways like classic 1980s indie rock, but the video for "The Birthday Wars", from their upcoming album Bits, is decidedly abstract. Saturated colors, video noise, and color negatives stream by-- but if you look hard enough, you can also see the band in there.

[from Bits; due 08/05/08 on Sub Pop]

This is how you spell "Haha ha, Los Campesinos! destroyed the hopes and dreams of a generation of faux-romantics." Of course, in a good way. On the first single from debut LP Waited Up 'Til It Was Light, Birmingham, England's Johnny Foreigner bring to bear many of the same 1990s indie-rock and indie-pop touchstones that bolstered their Cardiff-based former tourmates' precocious, contagiously giddy Hold on Now, Youngster..., except these dudes aren't that innocent. "Salt, Peppa and Spinderella" is steeped in sexual intrigue; guitarist Alexei Berrow and bassist Kelly Southern trade vocals about alibis and hunger instead of the Los Camp camp's stationery-as-foreplay. Berrow even borrows Gareth Campesinos!' tendency to break off into spoken-word monologues, but production from hard-rock vet Machine in New Jersey helps the bands instrumentals attain a moody emotional intensity that's closer to Braid than Heavenly.

The video is also stylish without being too cute. The lyrics are spelled out, as in the superb clip earlier this year for Mountain Goats' "Sax Rohmer #1", written on Post-It notes on the band members' mouths to illustrate the dialogue between the song's characters. Quick aerial camerawork matches the urgency of the music. "I think I liked you more when you were worse," Johnny Foreigner sing. You! Me! Watching!

[from Waited Up 'Til It Was Light; out now in the UK on Best Before and due October in the U.S. on Nettwerk]

Sort of like a dream? No, walking on one. Australia's Empire of the Sun are dance music duo Pnau and Luke Steele of schizophrenic indie-poppers the Sleepy Jackson. In their first effort floating around online, they're remixed by Sam La More, programmer for Gwen Stefani's "What You Waiting For?", among other production and remixing credits. The result, "Walking on a Dream (Sam La More 12" Remix)", is an eight-minute dance-pop single that's as exuberantly catchy as it is lush and hypnotic, like the shouty, blissed-out pop of the Tough Alliance set somewhere above the clouds of cosmic disco.

Empire of the Sun's vocal hooks build from half-spoken chant-alongs ("We are always running for the thrill of it") to the sweetly euphoric, largely indecipherable falsetto of the chorus. Their spacey electro-pop backdrop starts with a crisp house rhythm and reverby, Italo-informed synth sounds similar to those on Simian Mobile Disco's "I Believe". It's when the beats cut out, though, encircling those laddish voices in swirling programmed textures, then return with a fanfare of synthesized handclaps, that the pacing and structure of the track make its spellbound ecstasy most palpable. Unfortunately, there's no original version of "Walking on a Dream" available for comparison just yet, but it's hard to how imagine how they could improve upon this remix.

MP3/Stream:> Empire of the Sun: "Walking on a Dream (Sam La More 12" Remix)" (you'll be asked to give an e-mail address to download the mp3 but you can stream it here.)

[from WalkingonaDream.com]

OK, this video is pretty old-- but so is Thurston Moore! I joke, see, because he turns 50 years old today, so we just wanted to wish him a quick happy birthday. Happy birthday, Thurston! You are indeed a radical adult. Hopefully someone gave you a few cool records and you enjoyed a nice cake. And you, Forkcast readers, enjoy this video from the 2002 Hultsfred Festival.

[original version from Murray Street; out now on DGC]

It's been three years since a song about lollipops kept The Game's highest-charting single to date, The Documentary's "Hate It or Love It", out of the No. 1 spot. Another rapper with a chart-topping "Lollipop" track guests on Game's latest, expected to appear on the West Coast MC's oft-delayed L.A.X., only now he's not here to "run rings around rap's MVP," as Pitchfork's Mark Pytlik once put it, and inevitably, this isn't another Documentary-level artistic triumph. Lil Wayne's Auto-Tune job here basically positions him as another T-Pain or Akon, a hook-singer-for-hire, and it follows other recent singing guest spots (Drake's "Brand New (Remix)", Gorilla Zoe's "Lost") amid Weezy's usual glut of new verses. Elsewhere, Kanye West croons the hook on Fonzworth Bentley's "Everybody" and does the Auto-Tune thing on Young Jeezy's "Put On". As Nas complains on his album-trumping mixtape with DJ Green Lantern, "Used to rap, now they all wanna sing."

Back to "My Life". Barking dogs, cinematic string swells, and angry gunshots lead into slow, melodramatic keyboards, giving Wayne a chance to combine his usual megalomania with a weird sort of social consciousness: "Hey Lord, you done take so many of my people/ I'm just wondering why you haven't taken my life." Wayne's people, alas, appear first and foremost to be other rappers-- not exactly a beleaguered group, unless you count years of declining CD sales. Game, name-dropping as always, invokes Kurt Cobain, condones Kanye's Jesus stance, calls Biggy's death a "crucifixion," praises Beanie Sigel, and makes a puzzling John Lennon reference, all in the first verse. Horns join, then Game quotes Wayne and gets a good dig in against Eminem (since clarified and recanted) before big-upping Yeezy again (and Common, and Compton, and 2Pac). To make it in L.A., after all, you gotta know how to network. (via Nah Right)

MP3:> The Game [ft. Lil Wayne]: "My Life"
[apparently from L.A.X.; due 08/26/08 on Interscope]

Slide guitar brought a touch of the blues to many of the rock songs it graced in the 1960s, but Beach House more often use the technique to add silvery textures to their languorous dream-pop torch songs. Covering "Master of None", arguably the defining track from the Baltimore duo's excellent 2006 self-titled debut, Canadian quartet Young Rival bring back some of the Southern twang that will probably be forever associated with slide guitar ever since Duane Allman ate peaches with the Allman Brothers. Hamilton, Ontario-based Young Rival turn Beach House's gorgeously conflicted lament into a down-home rock'n'roll rave-up, with chugging downstrums and loose, frolicsome slide licks. Lead singer and lead guitarist Aron D'Alesio's vocals, however, stay deep in a 1960s psych-pop-informed reverb haze, recalling post-Oscars Elliott Smith. It's all a contrast to Tory y Moi's "Master of None" cover last year, and it further demonstrates this song's staying power.

MP3:> Young Rival: "Master of None"
[original track from Beach House; out now on Carpark]

More videos from this past weekend's Pitchfork Music Festival are up over at Pitchfork.tv. The first performance is from Les Savy Fav. You know you're in for a good time when Tim Harrington has a Sherlock Holmes cap on and is crowd-surfing in a trashcan. This version of "We'll Make a Lover Out of You" does not disappoint.

Fleet Foxes will probably never perform half-naked or spit beer into their fans' mouths, but damn, they sure do sound nice live. Those harmonies! "English House" comes alive in Union Park.

Dizzee Rascal performed directly after FF and made clear off the bat that he was going to be delivering a different kind of live experience. Here he is wailing away on "Sirens".

It ain't easy being a band of just a few people all alone on the big stage, but San Francisco-based acoustic rockers the Dodos rose to the occasion. At least Meric Long had two microphones to choose from for "Fools".

And finally, it was mid-afternoon, we were in the mood for a melody, and Dan Snaith's Caribou gave us "Melody Day".

Pitchfork.tv spent a fun-filled evening with GZA and his son a short while ago, but now it's back to business for the Wu-Tang's resident Genius. Pro Tools, his forthcoming album, features some production assistance from the RZA, but "Alphabets", the record's first official single, owes its murky mood and bell-like guitar/piano loop to producer True Master. The music is raw, straightforward, and simple, a functional backdrop for dense rhymes that touch on hip-hop, spirituality, and the creative process.

MP3:> GZA: "Alphabets"
[from Pro Tools; due 08/19/08 on Babygrande]