Pitchfork

This week's "One Week Only" installment collects the short films created by director Vincent Moon and producer Chryde of La Blogothèque's "Take Away Show" for Beirut's 2007 album The Flying Club Cup. They follow Zach Condon and his band into corners of Brooklyn both strange and familiar and capture performances from the record in their unique and expressive style.

Vampire Weekend, Ruby Suns, Santogold and others with a taste for African music reportedly make appearances on the forthcoming full-length collaboration between mix-and-matching London dance producers Radioclit and Malawi-born, London-based singer Esau Mwamwaya (we don't have confirmed information yet on the record). Also apparently on hand is M.I.A., who drops some sing-songy verses about "water to clean and baptize me" on "leaked" Mwamwaya demo "Rain Dance". Mwamwaya's translucent vocals bounce over heavy, intricate, and slightly lascivious percussion, along with whistling noises and what sounds like a child's voice. Yes, you can probably dance to it. In the rain, even. 

Also posted today to Mwamwaya's MySpace page is an interesting re-working of Vampire Weekend's "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa" (the original EP version is here), the B-side to VW's single. (via GorillavsBear)

["Rain Dance" apparently from a forthcoming LP on Ghettopop; "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa" available now from iTunes]

"The new Kaki King song is unbelievably good," John Darnielle wrote on his blog early this year. Soon after, the Mountain Goats were busy promoting their excellent Heretic Pride, while King hit the road in support of her latest, Dreaming of Revenge. But Georgia-born, New York-based King, an acoustic guitarist of the percussive and technically accomplished Michael Hedges or Leo Kottke sort, managed to get together with Darnielle in his home state of North Carolina to record the six-song Black Pear Tree EP.

"Thank You Mario But Our Princess Is in Another Castle", part of the fruits of the duo's Pear Tree labor, gives Darnielle some of the warmest, most revealing production in his career, with his bare piano chords, King's gently jazzy drumming, and the Mountain Goats man's exposed, confident vocal. When King's wispy voice comes in to join Darnielle's at the climax, the two sing, "When you came in, I could breathe again," backed only by King's chiming glockenspiel. "The song is sung from the point of view of Toad," Darnielle explains. Any princess who could resist such charms has probably eaten too many mushrooms.

MP3:> The Mountain Goats and Kaki King: "Thank You Mario But Our Princess Is in Another Castle"
[fromt the forthcoming Black Pear Tree EP]

All things in moderation appears to be the modus operandi of both the Bug's "Skeng" and its Anne-Marie Bergeron-directed video. The second single from London Zoo is full of low-end rumble and sharp-tongued lyricism by Killa P and Flowdan, both of East London's Roll Deep grime crew. Paradoxically enough, though, as Martin Clark noted in his The Month In: Grime/Dubstep column last year, "Skeng" is "comparatively constrained in the all-out, sonic assault department." The video is similarly austere, setting London producer Kevin Martin's spare rhythmic thunder to black-and-white images of the MCs rapping against a backdrop of the city skyline. Also, Flowdan is apparently a White Sox fan.

Pitchfork.tv page with embed code is here.

[from London Zoo; out now on Ninja Tune] ]

"There's never been a shortage of thirty and fortysomethings reminiscing about the 'Mats," Mark Richardson observes in his review of the first four Replacements albums' Rhino reissues. Much to my eternal non-cred, I'm not a part of that indiest of generations. That means I heard "Can't Hardly Wait" over the credits of a movie starring Ethan Embry (who?) and Jennifer Love Hewitt (who?), got obsessed with "Alex Chilton" thanks to streaming internet radio, and fell in love with "Kiss Me on the Bus" after the same profanity demon hellride to Des Moines that prompted me to download "Hell Greyhound Bus Ride" by Wesley Willis. It also means I knew the underachieving, beer-soaked Minnesota band's legend from books like Michael Azerrad's Our Band Could Be Your Life before I'd heard big chunks of their discography.

Doesn't matter. If these demos from Rhino's next set of Replacements reissues tell us anything about this band, it's that their songs were sharp and tuneful enough to withstand not just the indignities of studio production, but also their own underdog mystique. Tim's "Kiss Me on the Bus" is considerably faster and rougher on this demo, cut in the summer of 1985 to see how well the band got along with ex-Ramone (and eventual Tim producer) Tommy Erdelyi, but the bittersweet modern kicks that made the song great were already there.

"Photo" could be familiar to some diehards as "P.O. Box (Empty as Your Heart)"; this work in progress comes from the band's first demo session without guitarist Bob Stinson, in summer 1986 ahead of Pleased to Meet Me, and despite thematic similarities to Let It Be's "Answering Machine" it sounds like it should've been on an album.

"Talent Show", stripped of the overproduction and ringing acoustic guitars of Don't Tell a Soul, takes on a renewed vitality. All of which makes even a person of my non-McCain age wonder whether that's just indigestion, or if the music is making me actually feel something. Better buy some beer just in case.

[the deluxe reissues of Tim, Pleased to Meet Me, Don't Tell a Soul, and All Shook Down are due 09/23/08 from Rhino]

Better known as the drummer for Hella and Marnie Stern, Zach Hill goes it alone (well, plus some guests) on Astrological Straits. But here he's still banging out enough beats for a BoaDrum event. Far from the corpse-painted suburban wayfarer of his recent "Dark Art" clip, the Nate Boyce-directed video for "Stoic Logic" shows Hill assailing the drumset behind a colorfully kaleidoscopic miasma. I guess when your bass-heavy rhythms and clanging cymbals can fill the room with what if you squint and are really hungover could look like something out of a psychedelic Disney movie, who needs anyone else? OK, maybe just some barbed-wire guitars and vocals from Dean Spunt and Randy Randall of No Age.

Pitchfork.tv page with embed code is here.

[from Astrological Straits; out now on Ipecac]

That dirty, no-good, robbin' Maggie need not feel slighted, at least not by Deerhoof. The video for "The Tears and Music of Love", the first single from the unconventional San Francisco band's forthcoming Offend Maggie, is pretty much your straightforward live clip, shot and recorded in Tokyo this past June. In keeping with the arty rockers' rockin' artwork, you might expect each of the band members' faces to be blurred, their tops removed, their torsos muscular, one leg apiece posed inexplicably on a chair. You'd be wrong. Instead, it's frontwoman Satomi Matsuzaki's tough-to-discern coos and shrieks, along with the band's intricate unpredictability, that takes this ordinary guitars-bass-drums setting and makes it something fantastical. So Maggie, whether you're a baby Simpson, a former UK prime minister, or a Gyllenhaal, consider this your Friend Opportunity right here.

Pitchfork.tv page with embed code is here.

[from Offend Maggie; due 10/06/08 in the UK on ATP Recordings, in Australia on Spunk, and in Japan on P-Vine, and 10/07/08 in the U.S. and in Europe on Kill Rock Stars]

Goodbye, sister disco. Watching this, I can't help by think about for Escort's "All Through the Night" and the brilliantly edited clip that wound up being one of last year's best videos. This one obviously pales in comparison but is still fun on its own. And on YouTube, the fan who put it together called it "Sequested in Muppets", which is a nice touch.

[from Stay Positive; out now on Rough Trade in the UK and on Vagrant in the U.S.]

We mentioned this briefly in news yesterday, but it's strange enough to feature it again here. I'm not sure what this is, exactly, or who would have wasted money to film it, but the upshot seems to be that Liz Phair is having a laugh at her pop crossover moment by clumsily riffing on the songwriting/production team the Matrix, who worked with her on her self-titled album, and the film of the same name. If that's the case, some actual laughs would have been nice. 

As heard on last year's Fantastic Playroom, New Young Pony Club's "The Bomb" was a taut, energetic entry under dancefloor post-punk's latest marketing banner, new rave. But isn't a bomb supposed to explode? Los Angeles electro-house duo Villains bring London-based NYPC's little explosion to Justice, or at least the synth-thwomping house-as-rock of those †-worshipers' Parisian Ed Banger and Kitsuné peers. At the same time, the original's twitchy punk-funk guitars become a relentless, floaty pulse. NYPC singer Tahita Bulmer's get chopped up in the usual so-blggble-right-now way, as the programmed snares and handclaps send the track through a series of crests. "Come take a moment with your enemy," Bulmer sings, and although this remix doesn't reinvent the, er, bomb, perhaps it's time to stop worrying and love blasting the dancefloor back to the Daft Punk age.

MP3:> New Young Pony Club: "The Bomb (Villains Xplosive Remix)"
[original track from Fantastic Playroom; out now on Modular]