Pitchfork

I've been hoping that a nice and easy embed of the entirety of Radiohead's live webcast from Santa Barbara would show up, but alas, it'll have to be piecemeal for now. There are a lot of YouTubes of varying quality and completeness floating around, of course. A couple of sites have pointed toward a YouTube poster with the handle picadk, who has a batch of solid stuff, but only from the encores. Only two of these are embedable, but you can head over to YouTube for the rest. Some other videos from the set are below; if it all comes together with a single embed or playlist, we'll update. The setlist, nabbed from At Ease, is below the videos.

"Optimistic"

"There There"

"15 Step"

"Cymbal Rush"

"House of Cards"

"Go Slowly"

"Idioteque"

01. Reckoner
02. Optimistic
03. There There
04. 15 Step
05. All I Need
06. Nude
07. Talk Show Host
08. Arpeggi
09. The Gloaming
10. Morning Bell
11. The National Anthem
12. Faust Arp
13. No Surprises
14. Jigsaw Falling Into Place
15. The Bends
16. Karma Police
17. Bodysnatchers

Encore 1:

18. Cymbal Rush
19. House of Cards
20. Paranoid Android
21. Go Slowly
22. Everything In Its Right Place

Encore 2:

23. Videotape
24. Lucky
25. Idioteque

"Sacred Harp is a haunting form of a capella hymn singing that has deep roots in the South. These songs are sung unaccompanied by any musical instrument, save the instrument given by God: The human voice. That is the sacred harp." So says narrator Jim Lauderdale in this amazing documentary, directed by Erica and Matt Hinton, which explores a little-known American musical tradition that stretches back two centuries. For more on this film and this music, be sure to check out Williams Bowers' most recent Puritan Blister, as well as Amanda Petrusich's review of I Belong to This Band: 85 Years of Sacred Harp Recordings.

At one point in the zombie-haunted "Crimewave" video, there's a shot of giant wooden swans. Not that Los Angeles noise-rockers HEALTH's original track on their 2007 self-titled debut was an ugly duckling, but 8-bit Canadian duo Crystal Castles happen to be pretty good at turning musical creatures of all kinds into spooky electro-punk umm gold. (White Lies' "Death" was their most recent beneficiary.) "Crimewave (Crystal Castles vs. HEALTH)", on this year's impressive Crystal Castles, morphs the plodding percussion and wounded-lion guitars of HEALTH's recording into a thing with blippy synths, gothic moodiness, and a precise New Order beat. Singer Jacob Duzsik's voice gets Knife-d into alien oblivion. The video contains images from Bruce LaBruce's film Otto; or, Up With Dead People interspersed with images of the group's live shows.

Video:> Crystal Castles: "Crimewave (Crystal Castles vs. HEALTH)"
[from Crystal Castles; out now on Last Gang]

In retrospect, Mike Skinner always could be uncomfortably earnest-- one of his most overlooked assets and also an occasional flaw. Even on the Streets' 2002 debut, Original Pirate Material, when Skinner wanted us to push things forward, he'd do a song called "Let's Push Things Forward". When he wanted to point out the irony of drunks talking down to stoners, he'd do a track called "The Irony of It All". The literalness of Skinner's earnestness became even harder to ignore with UK #1 single "Dry Your Eyes", from masterful 2004 story album A Grand Don't Come for Free, in which a mate tries to reassure a broken-up Skinner, through chorus lyrics no more or less beautiful than any ordinary person's words in a similar kind of situation: "There's plenty more fish in the sea." That which doesn't kill us...you know, all that shit.

"I wanna speak every cliché but tweak if I see change in the way it could be said," Skinner rhymes on "Everything Is Borrowed", the title track from his forthcoming album. And that's just it: The idea that everything is borrowed-- that, as a female singer explains, "I came into this world with nothing, and I leave with nothing but love"-- may be cliché, sort of like like Celine Dion singing about "The Power of Love". And, much as critic (and former Pitchfork contributor) Carl Wilson has written regarding the Québécoise diva, it would be easy for some to look down on people who respond to such sentimentality. But in this case, the cliché is true.

The video is, befitting Skinner's style, a matter-of-fact depiction of a house being repossessed: a real-life example of the fallout from the global financial crisis. Like "The Escapist", also set for the new album, the song has a tone of moist-eyed reminiscence, perhaps because the end of the Streets is in sight. Six years ago, Skinner spit, "I'm 45th-generation Roman"; on "Everything Is Borrowed", he imagines a day when "I'll have had it with roamin'."

[from Everything Is Borrowed; due 09/15/08 in the UK on 679]

Aw, man, I used my lazy "lose your lunch" quip too soon today. Dizzying colors mix with dizzying, combustible guitars-- and plenty more fake blood-- in this video for Fiasco's instrumental "Oh You Horny Monster", from the Brooklyn band's upcoming debut LP, Native Canadians. Like the Ventures covering Rachmaninoff, Fiasco let their guitars buzz and sting, although the drums are more mathematically precise, and the whole thing is more inclined toward herky-jerk tempo changes and volatile outbursts. Director Carlos Charlie Perez concentrates on colorful comic-book graphics and some blood-spattered, motionless dudes, and he also gives us glimpses of a couple of familiar comic-book heroes. If this makes your monster horny, do a better job chaining him under the bed.

[from Native Canadians; due this fall on Impose]

Independent Film Channel (IFC) (Pitchfork.tv partnered with them for "Pitchfork Airwaves on IFC", as reported earlier this month) has started an interesting series of panels devoted to discussion of issues related to intersections of music, technology, and media. A segment about the ethical and cultural implications of entrepreneurial websites like Muxtape and Hype Machine went up a couple of days ago, and today there's a two-part show probing "What Does Independent Music Mean in 2008?". Hosted by Jim Shearer, panelists include Bill Crandall from AOL Music/Spinner, Adam Farrell from Beggars Group, Maura Johnston from Idolator, and Pitchfork's own Ryan Schreiber, all talking about what, exactly, that slippery term "indie" might mean at this point.

Part 1

Part 2

It's stupidly reductive to compare the late, great Arthur Russell to Nick Drake, but it's also the best way I can think of to convey the massive gap between the number of (average!) people who have heard his music and the number of people who would love it. My favorite description of Russell's career still comes from former Pitchfork writer Andy Beta, who in reviewing retrospective The World of Arthur Russell observed that it's more accurate to talk about the worlds of Russell. He was a disco innovator whose aqueous echo and explorations of Afrobeat and Indian percussion prefigured the ongoing Balearic and cosmic disco movements. He was an earnestly romantic pop songwriter who has been covered by the likes of Jens Lekman and Taken By Trees. He was a classically trained cellist, a minimalist avant-gardist, a rocker, a hip-hopper, an Iowan, a New Yorker.

With help from Grizzly Bear's Chris Taylor, Audika-- the label that started dusting off Russell's catalog four years ago-- has assembled a 21-track album of Russell's folk, pop, and country demos and home recordings, to be called Love Is Overtaking Me. Two songs from the project are up now on Audika's MySpace, both showing different worlds of Russell. "Close My Eyes" is as direct and sweet as Lekman-covered classic "A Little Lost", but it's based on down-home acoustic guitar rather than ethereal cello. With the comforting wobble of analog tape, it's a humble, lovely, morning-dew meditation that could expand Russell's appeal to people who might not usually go in for disco or minimalism, but can certainly rally behind good Americana. Next, "Eli" evidences Russell's training with Indian musical virtuoso Ali Akbar Khan, devoting an incantatory melody and trance-like cello to a disobedient dog. Following a recent documentary film and covers EP, the songs come as one more step toward giving Russell the audience he has always deserved, but never got before his death of AIDS in 1992. Hey, he's already popping up in commercials.

Streams:> Arthur Russell: "Close My Eyes" / "Eli"
[from Love Is Overtaking Me; due 10/27/08 in the UK on Rough Trade and 10/28/08 on Audika]

Just in time to lose your lunch, Kool Keith returns in his Dr. Dooom persona to re-kill his Dr. Octagon persona. It's a bloody business. Joined by such characters as "the Funky Redneck," Keith dons blue scrubs to knife the shit out of a (hopefully animal) heart in this Odin Wadleigh-directed video for latest single "R.I.P. Dr. Octagon". Thus answering the immortal question posed on 1999's First Come, First Served:"Who Killed Dr. Octagon?". There are also some green-lit scenes fit for a zombie movie, as Keith squeezes in more grim observations than economist Nouriel Roubini, all set to spooky-stoned 90s-esque production by Kutmasta Kurt. "Drowned him in the water till he was gone/ Then he came back alive/ I stabbed him 17 times," Keith recalls. So, the Doctor is in. And completely out of his gourd. (via Nah Right)

[from Dr. Dooom 2; due 09/23/08 on Threshold]

If Stars want to save you, they're sure doing it quietly. New song "Why I Want to Save You" has been streaming, with little fanfare, on the swoonsome Montreal indie poppers' MySpace for a few weeks. Now the band has also-- quietly-- unveiled a forthcoming EP, Sad Robots, to follow last year's In Our Bedroom After the War. But even though "Why I Want to Save You" is listed as a Sad Robots track on Stars' MySpace, it's not on the official track listing. Hmm. Life is full of mysteries.

There's nothing much mysterious about another romantic and tuneful Stars song, though, as the whispery vocals and gentle grooves stick to the quietude theme. "I want to touch you, kid/ If you want to touch me," Torquil Campbell and Amy Millan harmonize, against a bed of gauzy 3 a.m. synths, lightly funky bass, and Talk Talk-esque percussion. On the chorus, the drums cut out and cleanly strummed guitars come in to support the overlapping voices. With cooing falsettos and murmurs of "don't stop, don't stop," Stars can have their cake and avoid pissing off the neighbors, too. Quiet like a fox.

Stream:> Stars: "Why I Want to Save You"
[from MySpace]

German label Trikont doesn't release albums. Rather, compilations like Cheatin' Soul and the Southern Dream of Freedom and Queer Noises 1961-1978: From the Closet to the Charts are musical essays each with a thesis, argument, and conclusion. That might suggest they're dryly academic endeavors, but the soul, r&b, funk, pop, dance, and rock songs the label collects are typically so good-- and the context so compelling-- as to preclude such criticisms.

Following Dirty Laundry in 2005, More Dirty Laundry is the label's second collection of "the soul of black country", as the subtitle describes, gathering country-inspired soul songs and covers to explore the porousness of these genres. Both have roots in the blues and rural church music, but their branches extend in different directions, which makes the intersections more intriguing.

When James Brown covered Roy Drusky's 1961 hit "Three Hearts in a Tangle", he retained the song's lyrics, general melody, and waltz foundation. But in speeding it up he funked it up (or vice versa), adding staccato horns and wailing the verses. What makes his cover so powerful-- besides the fact that Brown is singing it-- is that it's nearly impossible to discern where the country ends and the soul begins.

MP3:> James Brown: "Three Hearts in a Tangle"

Like its predecessor, More Dirty Laundry collects more than merely country covers. Further revealing the give-and-take between the two styles, the 24-song tracklist also includes soul originals written in the country vein, such as Ike & Tina Turner's "Don't Believe Nothing". The guitars and strings subtly imitate the drawl of pedal steel, and the fiddle solo making those connections even more explicit. "Don't Believe Nothing"-- only a minor hit, but damn-- is ostensibly a duet between the then-husband-and-wife team, but Tina's vocals are so powerful and prominent that Ike becomes little more than a back-up singer.

MP3:> Ike & Tina Turner: "Don't Believe Nothing"
[from More Dirty Laundry; out now on Trikont]