Pitchfork

In Ear Park, the new album by Department of Eagles, comes out officially this week. It's pretty much the definition of a grower. The songs of Fred Nicolaus and Grizzly Bear's Daniel Rossen are immediately arresting and pretty, but it takes a few listens for all of their subtly odd twists and turns to really take root. Here they are performing a couple of them in the first of a two-part "Don't Look Down". The album's lovely title track is below, and head on over to Pitchfork.tv for "Around the Bay". 

Pitchfork.tv page with embed code is here.

Hell hath no fury like a... Beatle scorned? No, that's definitely a stretch, but Paul McCartney still howls like he's mighty pissed off about a lover who's done him wrong on new track "Nothing Too Much Just Out of Sight". This vamping, Zeppelin-esque scorcher is from Electric Arguments, Sir Paul's third album collaborating with producer and Killing Joke bassist Youth as the Fireman, and the UK press is already calling it an attack on Macca's ex-wife Heather Mills. I have no idea if that's true, but I know how to find out: Ask, ask Paul McCartney.

MP3:> The Fireman: "Nothing Too Much Just Out of Sight"
[from Electric Arguments; due 11/17/08 in the UK and 11/18/08 in the U.S. on MPL/ATO]

"I've always been schizophrenic musically," Jay Reatard told Nitsuh Abebe in a recent Pitchfork.tv interview. The Memphis rocker's next album may or may not be informed by all the kiwi-pop listening he's been doing lately, but "See/Saw"-- the first A-side from the monthly series of 7" singles collected on his brand-new Matador Singles '08 compilation-- captures Reatard speeding through the Buzzcocks- and the Damned-style punk rock that helped make his name. Flying V guitars are in full effect as Reatard and the rest of his hirsute three-piece make short work of the song in this performance for the Spinner blog show "The Interface", culminating in a boldfaced, Weezer-esque guitar solo played while kneeling on the ground. When it's all done, Reatard declares, "That was a song called 'See/Saw'." Don't blink.

Video:> Jay Reatard: "See/Saw" (Live on "The Interface")
[from the "See/Saw" 7"; out now; also from Matador Singles '08; due 10/07/08 on Matador]

TV on the Radio are set to kick off a series of U.S. dates Friday night in Philly, but the New York art-rockers' first gigs since the release of a little album called Dear Science have been in Europe. They recently took Science out of the lab for UK TV show "Later... With Jools Holland", performing both Kyp Malone-fronted first video selection "Golden Age" and the fast-talking, Tunde Adebimpe-led second video selection, "Dancing Choose", which the band also showed off for David Letterman. Your move, Axl Rose.

"Golden Age"

"Dancing Choose"

[original versions from Dear Science; out now on Interscope/4AD]

Last night Fleet Foxes played Webster Hall in New York and their show included an unreleased song called "Silver City", which has been popping up in sets on this tour. Here's a YouTube with pretty decent sound, clear enough to tell that "Silver City" is a nice one, anyway. (via Stereogum; shot by Jason at One for the Good Days)

Who's down for a little sax on the beach? Love Is All take to the sands of Ravenna (Italy, not Ohio, judging by the presence of beach) in this fun, frolicsome lo-fi video for "Wishing Well". Opening with a roll of the drums and a hazy keyboard line with a striking resemblance to the main riff on the Clean's brilliant "Tally Ho", the track appears on the Swedish indie-poppers' recent Wishing Well + 5 EP as well as their forthcoming A Hundred Things Keep Me Up at Night, follow-up to 2005's superb Nine Times That Same Song. Lead singer Josephine Olausson explains: "Yes I know it's silly and out of sync. And that there's a band aid on my nose from hitting the wall the previous day." Great, another worry to keep her up at night: walls, the stationary menace. (via Gorilla vs. Bear)

[from A Hundred Things Keep Me Up at Night; due 11/11/08 on What's Your Rupture?]]

Kanye West shows up at T.I.'s release party for the sporadically triumphant Paper Trail and gives the crowd a sneak peek at some of his own new material in this shaky video by Consequence. Fast-forward to around the four-minute mark-- after the backstage footage, Yeezy's verse from "Swagger Like Us", and a rendition of "Love Lockdown"-- to hear Kanye announcing that his next album, 808s & Heartbreak, is now due Nov. 25. Then check him out doing some of "Heartless", a deceptively upbeat song expected to appear on the new record. Sound quality isn't great, but it's new Kanye, so for now we'll settle. (via 2dopeboyz)

Video:> Kanye West: "Heartless"
[original track expected to appear on the forthcoming 808s & Heartbreak]

A band called Japanese Motors couldn't be from Detroit, let alone Japan, but this Southern California four-piece sounds more like a band from New York than from their native Orange County. "Spendin' Days", off of Japanese Motors' forthcoming self-titled debut LP, is an upbeat garage-rocker with brittle guitars and vocals of the Julian Casablancas school. But there's a sunniness to it, too, in the shout-along chorus and rollicking little guitar solos. "Too hippie to be punk/ Too punk to be a hippie," Japanese Motors declare, as if even they can't figure out what they're supposed to be. The self-awareness and little details like the singer's quasi-ironic "dig it!" or laughter after the word "funny" are closer to the goofiness of Brooklyn's Cheeseburger than the pranks of Vice labelmates the Black Lips, and no, this sounds nothing at all like Fujiya & Miyagi.

MP3:> Japanese Motors: "Spendin' Days
[from Japanese Motors; due 10/07/08 on Vice]

From the time we first heard about Cornelius in the 1990s, we've always known that this wildly creative dude had an interesting visual aesthetic. Now here's an extended argument. Sensurround is the visual component to his album Sensuous, and it finds him collaborating with directors and animators including Tsujikawa Koichiro, Japanese art/design collective Groovisions, and the incomparable Takagi Masakatsu. Watch it all week at Pitchfork.tv, and the DVD is available at the Everloving Store.

Also, if you've never heard the Books' fine remix of "Fit Song", which is included on a bonus CD with the Sensurround DVD, well, you should. A stream appears below the image.

What has Chicago's Andrew Bird been up to? Well, I can tell you that he's got a new album coming out on Fat Possum in January, called Noble Beast. "Oh No" is the album's first track and, speaking here as a casual fan, it certainly sounds like quintessential Bird: whistling, violin, a loose, airy groove that keeps his words and melody front and center, and lyrics about heady subjects like calcified minds, calculator blows to the head, and sociopaths. It's smart as a whip but with its gentle shuffle and warm, tasteful production, it goes down easy. "Oh No"? Oh yes.

[from Noble Beast; due 01/27/09 on Fat Possum]