Pitchfork

Reviewing a reissue of the band Love's immortal third album, Pitchfork's Stephen M. Deusner noted, "Already veterans of the local scene when they released their third and best album, Love captured the city in all its grizzled glory on Forever Changes-- or, rather, Arthur Lee did. A charismatic black singer/songwriter in a mixed-race band but a generally white scene, he had soured on the hippies and sunshine mentality, and instead saw the Vietnam War, his friends' drug addictions, and the end of the world." The 2006 documentary Love Story offers a detailed portrait of the legendary band, and includes extensive interviews with the late Arthur Lee, as well as words from his former bandmates and observers like John Densmore of the Doors and Bobby Gillespie of Primal Scream. The DVD can be purchased from Start Productions.

Videos added to the Pitchfork.tv archive this week include a few newer ones. The clip for Anathallo's "Bells", a song from their upcoming album on Anticon, begins with a pattern of the titular sounds and sets them flashes of color in a dark space. Centro-Matic performs "Rat Patrol and DJs" on a gritty porch, and then Drag City band Faun Fables get a whole lot weirder in the video for "With Words and Cake", as a deranged scene in a nightmarish kitchen plays out. Finally, we have some vintage footage of Chicago's the Sea and Cake doing their classic "Parasol".

Anathallo: "Bells"

Pitchfork.tv page with embed code is here.

Centro-Matic: "Rat Patrol and DJs"

Pitchfork.tv page with embed code is here.

Faun Fables: "With Words and Cake"

Pitchfork.tv page with embed code is here.

The Sea and Cake: "Parasol" (live)

Pitchfork.tv page with embed code is here.

"May you live in interesting times," goes the saying traditionally attributed to a Chinese curse. Mos Def has a better idea. On Election Day digital single "Life in Marvelous Times", from forthcoming Downtown record The Ecstatic, he argues that "we are alive in amazing times," backed by martial horn fanfares and widescreen blip-swoops aiming (I guess) for something marvelous. First the Brooklyn rapper takes us back to "the pre-crack era... Bed-Stuy '82... Bucktown...", with simple, effective storytelling. "Great heavens, good grief"? Not so marvelous. The sung chorus I'll have to percolate for a while. As Mos Def looks to bounce back from the 2007's embattled True Magic, though, he can take comfort in the fact that he's not cursed. AS FAR AS WE KNOW. Over to you, News. (via RCRD LBL)

Stream:> Mos Def: "Life in Marvelous Times"
[from The Ecstatic; forthcoming on Downtown]

Bonus: Posted this video a while ago, but the mp3 is available now, so dig in.

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. 

MP3:> Love Is All: "Wishing Well"

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

You asked for it-- um, didn't you?-- and now Massive Attack (well, members 3D and Daddy G under the 100 Suns alias they use for soundtrack work) and Snoop Dogg have created the collaboration you've all been waiting for. No, not M.I.A.'s baby, it's a stormy, groove-governed new song about Mumia Abu Jamal, "Calling Mumia" (from the soundtrack to In Prison My Whole Life, opening in the UK this weekend). Snoop's delivery is, as usual, smoothly emphatic, even if he can't always avoid the kind of stupidly obvious lyric required of this whole "Hurricane" genre of protest song: "It's sad, cause a man lost his life/ Family's cryin', witnesses lyin'." Sort of, like... are you even tryin'?

Overall, though, Snoop somehow shows more cultural awareness and linguistic nimbleness than he spread across almost all of Ego Trippin' (I kind of love "Sexual Eruption", though). "I got a lot to say," he says, and know what-- he does. Wha? ...Snoop Dogg?? Hey, his little quasi-ad libs are pretty nice, too: "Tell my homey Jamal/ Whattup, whattup man."

100 Suns' arrangement surrounds a throbbing bassline with Return to Cookie Mountain guitar squall. Snoop starts shouting, but backing vocals about being back against the wall stay soft and stoned. Man, if I had any ideas of my own maybe I could do something other than quote Jonathan Richman lyrics this CMJ week: "So join Nelson Mandela and Susan Sarandon/ Join Harry Belafonte, yes, the list goes on and on/ And protest with a letter, or maybe a phone call/ For there on death row stands Abu Jamal." Hey Mumia, Snoop called. He says whattup.

Stream:> 100 Suns (Massive Attack) vs. Snoop Dogg: "Calling Mumia"
[from the In Prison My Whole Life OST; movie opening this weekend in the UK]

For a song that deals so directly with indecision, "Which Way to Go" hardly sounds wracked. ECSR, belying Brendan Suppression's paralytic stammer, surge forward, never bothering to settle on a destination, let alone ask for directions. And for raw power, these Melbourne-based Aussies aren't afraid to go straight to the source as they channel the Stooges back catalogue. Beneath the Motor City roar, there are subtler nods to the Fall and Sonic Youth, but "Which Way" hardly lends itself to careful scrutiny-appealing instead to more instinctual pleasures.  "As easy as it can be, hand it on over to me," demands Brendan S. Pity those who would dare resist.

MP3:> Eddy Current Suppression Ring: "Which Way to Go"

Bonus: Here's a video of the track.

[from Primary Colours; out now on Goner]

Yes, there's more than enough room in your life for another sensitive Swede reviving early-1980s new romantic sounds, especially if said Swede has heart firmly clasped to sleeve and hand reaching so valiantly to heaven as Jonathan Johansson. On "En hand i himlen" (which translates to "A Hand in Heaven"), the Stockholm-based electronic artist, whose debut is slated for February on Hybris, harnesses soft vocals and dreamy synths (think A Flock of Seagulls' "Wishing") to a particularly dramatic electric drum and a pulsing bassline (think New Order's... any song). The son of a preacher, Johansson spent three years recording songs in a bunker to get the right sound. "In hand i himlen" is nothing you'd call new, but damned if he doesn't make it all sound freshly autumnal, another ideal song for another overcast day.

MP3:> Jonathan Johansson: "En hand i himlen"
[from a single, out now, and forthcoming album; both on Hybris]

Oh, what a place for My Brightest Diamond to play "From the Top of the World". Fronting a string quartet and strumming the guitar, Shara Worden looks looks like a pretty commanding figure singing this particular song on a rooftop. For "Black & Costaud", she slips into her Lotte Lenya mode and transforms the setting into a Weimar Republic cabaret. No mean feat. In case you missed, it, here's Part 1.

"From the Top of the World"

Pitchfork.tv page with embed code is here.

"Black & Costaud"

Pitchfork.tv page with embed code is here.

[A Thousand Shark's Teeth is out now on Asthmatic Kitty]

Photo by Kathryn Yu

Alexis Taylor of Hot Chip snuck out an album called Rubbed Out and, as Pitchfork news reported, it's a low-key affair all around, created in "places, planes, hotel rooms, and at home" by Taylor. The blog Slutty Fringe has an mp3 of "Coming Up" (<--be sure to check that vid), the Paul McCartney cover found on the record. The gold standard for re-workings of this particular song is Max Tundra's unhinged version, found on his Remixes & Interpretations 1998-2005 CD-R, but Taylor opts for a completely different approach, turning the tune into a warmly sweet ballad with some fuzzily overdriven electric guitar serving as virtually the only accompaniment. Great song any way you slice it. (Slutty Fringe, via Fader)

MP3:> Alexis Taylor: "Coming Up"
[from Rubbed Out; out now on Treader]

A few sites are reporting that "Everyone's At It", now streaming at Lily Allen's MySpace, will be the first single from her forthcoming album It's Not Me, It's You; I can't confirm that, but I can say it stacks up very well next to recent MySpace streams "I Don't Know", "I Could Say", and "Who'd of Known". There's a punchy beat here and finally a bit of energy, as she sings about the perils of a self-destructive lifestyle ("I'm not trying to say that I'm smelling of roses/ But when will we tire of putting shit up our noses." Uh..., never?) The lyrics are preachy, but I guess that's where she's at these days. A video for the song was apparently shot recently. "everyones at it ............... except for me," she adds on her MySpace blog.

Stream:> Lily Allen: "Everyone's At It"
[expected to be on It's Not Me, It's You; forthcoming from Capitol]