Music Under Fire

You may have seen the loads of Geico commercials with cavemen and such. With all of their catchy songs they feature, particularly the one with Royksopp's "Remind Me", as the caveman walks through an airport on the skywalk, they have no shortage of commercials either.

Most recently, I saw their motorcyle insurance commercial, which Geico titles "Walkin'" on their website. The commercial actually plays the post-punk revival band The Sounds' "Hurt You" from their 2006 Dying To Say This To You album.

MP3: The Sounds - Hurt You (buy)

Video: The Sounds - Hurt You

There are four bands of note, one of whom we already covered this past week. The first and most notable is Ben Folds Way To Normal. Ben Fold and friends are back together as one making another memorable album to go down in the books.

Anberlin is back with their fourth studio album New Surrender since 2007' Cities. New Surrender should have everything a pop punk fanatic is looking for. Also on deck this week is Bayside, who follow a similar path with Shudder. We recommend checking out their first single "No One Understands".

And lastly, Jack's Mannequin is out with The Glass Passenger and from the sounds of it, could be a matchup for his 2005 album Everything In Transit. This album has been in the works for too long and is now finally here!

MP3: Beaujolais - Friday The Thirteenth-The Loft (buy)
MP3: Capricorns - The Bell Rang Backwards (buy)
MP3: Dungen - Satt Att Se (buy)
MP3: Ben Folds - You Don't know Me (feat. Regina Spektor) (buy)

Anberlin - New Surrender (Official) (MySpace)
Bayside - Shudder (Official) (MySpace)
Beaujolais - Love At Thirty (Official) MySpace)
Flecktones - Jingle All the Way (Official) (MySpace)
Ben Folds - Way To Normal (Official) (MySpace)
Capricorns - River, Bear Your Bones (Official) MySpace)
Crime in Stereo - Selective Wreckage (Official) (MySpace)
Dear and the Headlights - Drunk Like Bible Times (Official) (MySpace)
Defeater - Travels (Official) (MySpace)
Dungen - 4 (Official) MySpace)
Energy - Invasions Of The Mind (Official) (MySpace)
Fazeshift - The Everyday Broken Heart (Official) (MySpace)
Innerpartysystem - Self Titled (Official) (MySpace)
Jack's Mannequin - The Glass Passenger (Official) (MySpace)
Joshua Radin - Simple Times (Official) (MySpace)
Kinky - Barracuda (Official) (MySpace)
Les Paul & Friends-A Tribute To A Legend (Official) (MySpace)
Love You Long Time - Party To The People (Official) (MySpace)
Polysics - We Ate The Machine (Official) (MySpace)
The Becoming - Volume 1 (Official) (MySpace)
The Escape Frame - Self Titled (Official) (MySpace)
Tom Morello - The Fabled City (Rage Against The Machine guitarist) (Official) (MySpace)
Porter Batiste Stoltz - MOODOO (Official) (MySpace)
Pete Seeger - At 89 (Official) (MySpace)
T-Pain - Thr33 Ringz (Official) (MySpace)
James Taylor - Covers (Official) (MySpace)
Trivium - Shogun (Official) (MySpace)
William Fitzsimmons - The Sparrow and the Crow (Official) (MySpace)

The Panics are unlike anything we've heard yet this year. They are rhythmically in sync, they've got the vocals, a tightly tuned guitar and an air that I just can't put my finger on. Although the band hails from Perth in Austrailia, their sound on their song below "Get Us Home" comes off with a Western forte, yet remains indie as far as the ear can tell with their strings a la guitar and vocals from Julian Grigor.

Their new album Cruel Guards will drop on October 7th. These guys are one group of Aussies you must check out! If you enjoy these guys, you may also like to check out fellow Australians, The Church, The Go-Betweens, Sleepy Jackson, The Triffids, Augie March, and Nick Cave.

MP3: The Panics - Get Us Home (buy)

Official - http://thepanics.com.au/
MySpace - http://www.myspace.com/thepanicsmusic

From their website:

“we wanted to keep things fresh and we thought the fans would be more excited to get a new song rather than something off the album. Talons is one of the last songs we recorded during the Intimacy sessions and I always had it in mind to be one of the extra tracks we promised for the CD if it turned out well. It turned out great so we decided to make it the next single. I’m enjoying this way of working, not over-thinking things, just make a decision and get on with it! It’s quite liberating in a way, I’m sure it’s going to be the way things happen more and more in the future”

Its that time again when we get to see one of our favorite groups reunite and put out some damn good music. Ben Folds Five are back and will release their album Way To Normal on 9/30/08. This will be the band's latest album since Songs for Silverman back in 2005.

You can check out the band's myspace page or official site for more details. As for the song below, it looks like this album will be yet another stellar attempt. You can always rely on Ben to put out some great music.

MP3: Ben Folds Five - You Don't know Me (feat. Regina Spektor) (buy)

Video: Ben Folds Five - You Dont Know Me (featuring Regina Spektor)

Its time for us to get spammed out of our minds with every possible remix the Internet can handle. This time around, the remix contest will be held for In Rainbows' "Reckoner" (our favorite from In Rainbows) hosted by... you guessed it, Radiohead themselves.

Once again, remixers who opt to buy each separate track are able to remix it however they please. If you recall, the previous winner was by 'Spor', but should have been the "Nude (Holy Fuck) Remix".

So in the next month, prepare yourself for facebook and Myspace madness. This should be an even bigger turnout than before, especially since they're using a standard 4/4 measurement track. Directions in the message below. Good luck all!

You can download each intrument 'stem' right here on iTunes.

Message from Radiohead:

To coincide with asking radio stations to think about playing Reckoner we are breaking up the tune into pieces for you to remix.After the insane response
we got from the Nude remix stems and the site that was dedicated to your remixes...

Unique visitors: 6,193,776, Page Views: 29,090,134, Hits: 58,340,512, Bandwidth: 10.666 Terabytes, Number of mixes: 2,252, Number of votes: 461,090, Number of track listens: 1,745,304...

We thought it only fair to do the same with a tune that at least is in 4/4. You can get the stems (the different instruments/elements) from here. Sample, cut, take the sounds, whatever. Play it in a club. Or your room. Then if you want you can upload your finished mixes to www.radioheadremix.com and be judged by everyone else.

You can create a widget allowing votes from your own site, Facebook or MySpace to be sent through too.

Have fun.
X

This week has some of the most music in one seven day stretch than any other week we've stumbled upon this year... but it doesn't make much of difference if there isn't some good music contained in that list to begin with, so let's get started. Cold War Kids, whose Loyalty to Loyalty is the one we're looking forward to the most. This is the Fullerton, CA group's follow up to their much acclaimed album from last year Robbers & Cowards.

Also on our fingertips is Thievery Corporation's Radio Retaliation. This is the DJ duo Rob Garza and Eric Hilton's seventh full length album since their beginnings back in 1997. Could this be better than our favorite The Cosmic Game?

Blitzen Trapper makes some noise for SubPop and French Kicks reveal their Covers EP, which we talked about last week. Covers EP is available digitally this week. Let's not forget Kings of Leon, whom we mentioned could be out with their best yet this time around, or Peter, Bjorn & John, who's single "Young Folks" made them infamous last year - they're newest, Seaside Rock, should be worth checking out.

Lastly, Mogwai and TV On The Radio arrive this week with a new album each. Need we say more? Get listening!

MP3: Blitzen Trapper - Furr (buy)
MP3: TV On The Radio - Golden Age (buy)
MP3: Peter Bjorn & John - Needles and Pills (buy)

Akimbo - Jersey Shores (Official) (MySpace)
All Girl Summer Fun Band - Looking Into It (Official) (MySpace)
Astronautalis - Pomegranate (Official) (MySpace)
Bang! Bang! - Industry Box (Official) (MySpace)
Blitzen Trapper - Furr (Official) (MySpace)
Brightblack Morning Light - Motion to Rejoin (Official) (MySpace)
Casiotone for the Painfully Alone - Town Topic (Official) (MySpace)
CAW! CAW! - Wait Outside EP (Official) (MySpace)
Cold War Kids - Loyalty to Loyalty (Official) (MySpace)
Conifer - Crown Fire (Official) (MySpace)
Cotton Jones Basket Ride - River Strumming (Official) (MySpace)
Donovan Quinn & The 13th Month - Donovan Quinn & The 13th Month (Official) (MySpace)
Dynamite Club - Fusion Era (Official) (MySpace)
Eleh - Floating Frequencies (Official) (MySpace)
Elvin Bishop - The Blues Roll On (Official) (MySpace)
Everlast - Love, War and The Ghost Of Whitey Ford (Official) (MySpace)
Faun Fables - A Table Forgotten EP (Official) (MySpace)
French Kicks - Covers EP (digital release) (Official) (MySpace)
Friendly Fires - Friendly Fires (Official) (MySpace)
Ghengis Tron - Board Up The House Remix (Official) (MySpace)
Girl Talk - Feed The Animals (physical release) (Official) (MySpace)
High Places - High Places (Official) (MySpace)
Holy Sons - Decline of the West (Official) (MySpace)
House of Heroes - The End is Not the End (Official) (MySpace)
I Heart Lung - Interoceans (Official) (MySpace)
Jackson Browne - Time For Conquer (Official) (MySpace)
Jenny Lewis - Acid Tongue (Official) (MySpace)
Karl Blau - Nature's Got Away (Official) (MySpace)
Kid Sister - Dream Date (Official) (MySpace)
Kings of Leon - Only By The Night (Official) (MySpace)
Kiss the Anus of a Black Cat - Nebulous Dreams (Official) (MySpace)
Koufax - Strugglers (Official) (MySpace)
La Dusseldorf - La Dusseldorf (Official) (MySpace)
Left Spine Down - Fighting For Voltage (Official) (MySpace)
Mamiffer - Hirror Enniffer (Official) (MySpace)
Marmoset - Record in Red (Official) (MySpace)
Max Richter - 24 Postcards in Full Color (Official) (MySpace)
Mogwai - The Hawk is Howling (Official) (MySpace)
Old Crow Medicine - Tennessee Pusher (Official) (MySpace)
Paul Flaherty - Aria Nativa (Official) (MySpace)
Peter Broderick - Home (Official) (MySpace)
Peter, Bjorn and John - Seaside Rock (Official) (MySpace)
Signal Hill Transmission - Starting Gun (Official) (MySpace)
Sing It Loud - Come Around (Official) (MySpace)
Tecumseh - Avalanche & Inundation (Official) (MySpace)
Ten Kens - Ten Kens (Official) (MySpace)
Terry Lynn - Kingstonlogic (Official) (MySpace)
The Mojomatics - Don't Pretend That You Know Me (Official) (MySpace)
The Morning Light - The Morning Light (Official) (MySpace)
The Pink Spiders - Sweat It Out (Official) (MySpace)
The Pretenders - Break Up The Concrete (Official) (MySpace)
The Week That Was - The Week That Was (Official) (MySpace)
Thievery Corporation - Radio Retaliation (Official) (MySpace)
Tracy Shedd - Cigarettes & Smoke Machines (Official) (MySpace)
TV on the Radio - Dear Science, (Official) (MySpace)
Woven - Designer Codes (Official) (MySpace)

Kings of Leon's Only By The Night will be out tomorrow (9/23/08) and we can already tell you its their best work to date, despite their 3.8 rating from Pitchfork (you know how they love halting a band's momentum like a brick wall). At least it beats out any Louis XIV review I've ever read.

They've certainly drummed up a good amount of press for themselves, and its not going to dissapoint those pressing for a better, deeper album from the foursome. Afterall, you have to be a great band to put out a good album, and to be hand-picked touring partners of U2 and Bob Dylan says a lot as to where this band is headed, right?

You may have heard their first single "Sex On Fire"; the vocals of Caleb Followill are stunning, as they are in my favorite song from this album "Manhattan". But rather than rant on and on and on about these guys as so many have already done, there are quite a bit of well done write-ups on Only By The Night already. Here are a few reviews from fellow bloggers:

Culture Bully Swear I'm Not Paul Chewing Gum For The Ears The Score Magazine State Magazine Pitchfork Semifiction There Goes The Fear Count Me Out Audio Scribbler

That should do for now... looks like reviews are all over the place once again, which is par for the course for KOL.

MP3: Kings of Leon - Manhattan (buy)

Official - http://www.kingsofleon.com/
MySpace - http://www.myspace.com/kingsofleon

I find myself going back to Subpop time and time again looking for my next favorite band. It never fails. We discovered possibly our most favorite band all year through The Helio Sequence and possible co-front-runner for the year, Fleet Foxes. Giving Subpop another shot to see what we could find and possibly dive head-first into, sure enough, we discovered Daniel Martin Moore from Cold Spring, Kentucky... he has to be good since he's using his middle name, right?

Moore's album is endeared with a lighter singer/songwriter touch. Not that we're head over heels for singer / songwriter types, but this one sounds quite thoughtful and more or less, plain old relaxing for the fall season as the leaves turn yellow and orange. You can check out a few more of his songs on his MySpace page.

We don't know enough about Daniel Michael Moore yet, since his only material was discovered by the Subpop guys back in January 2007 through a demo. Since then, things seem to be looking up for Daniel. His debut album, Stray Age is available for preorder through Subpop.

Daniel Martin Moore also got some help on this album with co-producing with Joe Chiccarelli (The Shins, U2, The White Stripes) and recording and mixing with Justin Meldal-Johnsen (Beck, Tori Amos).

From Subpop: "If you pre-order Stray Age by October 7th, we’ll include, at absolutely zero extra cost to you, hyper-intelligent onsumer, a bonus CDR featuring four songs currently unavailable anywhere else!"

MP3: Daniel Martin Moore - Stray Age (buy)

There's a slew of other people who worked on this album, which includes an upright bass and french horn:

dmm - vocals, guitar, piano, ukulele
earl moore, jr. - piano
eric solomon - drums
victor indrizzo - drums
matt sherrod - drums
justin meldal-johnsen - upright and electric bass
frank coglitore - upright bass
petra haden - violin
steve aho - vibraphone
jesca hoop - vocals
lee thornburg - french horn, euphonium, trombone
george doering - mandolin

Official - http://www.subpop.com/artists/daniel_martin_moore
MySpace - http://www.myspace.com/danielmartinmoore

Its worth mentioning them again since our 300th post, but Ra Ra Riot have already made a big impression on music this year. Perhaps its the similarity of Wes Miles' vocals to that of Vampire Weekend's Ezra Koenig. The similarity is unmissable, maybe even obvious, yet Ra Ra Riot seem to be the sleeper here. Already sitting on top of this years greatest albums, many music critics have marked Vampire Weekend's self-titled debut a must have, but have they spoken too soon?

If you're like me, and like to kick the popularity to the side, lift the cover and see who else has a great shot at it, perhaps you should give Ra Ra Riot's The Rhumb Line (released on Aug 19th) a sip and see how it swallows. The vocal similarity is there, yes, but if I had to match any of VW's songs to Ra Ra Riot's "Can You Tell Me", I would have to choose the latter.

The group, who hails from Syracuse, NY is yet another band to veer away from the norm in terms of band setups too. Not only do they work the guitar, drums and vocals angle, but they've consist of two more string intstruments a cello (Alexandra Lawn) and violinist (Rebecca Zeller). I can't say enough how much depth this adds to their sound, which is one reason The Rhumb Line could be a late surprise this year to top many other favorites we may have already had.

MP3: Ra Ra Riot - Can You Tell Me (buy)
MP3: Vampire Weekend - Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa (buy)

Official - http://www.rarariot.com/
MySpace - http://www.myspace.com/rarariot

Forming in 2005, Volcano!'s free-jazz /electronic music / experimental rock is a refreshing style of music. The band, who reing from Chicago, Illinois are now on their second album, Paperwork, which is their follow up to their 2005 well-acclaimed Beautiful Seizure (10/10 - Drowned In Sound).

Composed of Mark Cartwright (laptop, synths, bass, melodica, tuba), Sam Scranton (drums, percussion) and Aaron With (guitar, vocals), the band's percussion and vocals do not follow that of a defined trend. I particularly enjoyed their song "Africa Just Wants To Have Fun", which takes on a square synth bass about 4:30 into the song, accompanied with With's flurry of vocals matching a breakdown of sorts. If party rock could be a genre, this would be their genre. Their unhibited, rowdy style of rock is unmatched to my ears this year.

If you enjoy this track, go to iTunes and listen to some more samples of Volcano!'s latest album, which hit stores this month. Check out their MySpace page for their tour dates beginning the 25th of this month in their hometown, Chicago.

MP3: Volcano - Africa Just Wants To Have Fun [buy]

Official - http://www.volcanoisaband.com/
MySpace - http://www.myspace.com/volcanoisaband

The Courteeners will be releasing a non-album single on Oct 6th "That Kiss". This is their first single since their song "No You Didn't, No You Don't". back in June of this year. The Courteeners continue to grow their fanbase as well as they hook up with Stereophonics, whose "classic UK rock" has grown exponentially over the years, The Stereophonics are basking in the glory of their compilation album Decade In The Sun: The Best of Stereophinics, which includes work from their last six albums, five of which debuted at #1 on the UK charts, and 25 Singles reaching the top 40. This should give our buddies The Courteeners some more exposure, eh?

"That Kiss" can currently be bought on preorder right here.

MP3: The Courteeners - Not Nineteen Forever [buy]
MP3: Stereophonics - It Means Nothing [buy]

Upcoming Tour Dates:

Tues 02 - Glasgow SECC - www.ticketmaster.co.uk
Weds 03 - Glasgow SECC - www.ticketmaster.co.uk
Thurs 04 - Aberdeen AECC - www.ticketmaster.co.uk
Sat 06 - Cardiff International Arena - www.seetickets.com
Sun 07 - Cardiff International Arena - www.seetickets.com
Tues 09 - Liverpool Arena - www.gigsandtours.com
Weds 10 - Manchester MEN Arena - www.gigsandtours.com
Fri 12 - Newcastle Metro Radio Arena - www.gigsandtours.com
Sat 13 - Nottingham Trent Arena - www.seetickets.com
Mon 15 - Birmingham NIA - www.seetickets.com
Tues 16 - Brighton Centre - www.seetickets.com
Weds 17 - Bournemouth IC - www.seetickets.com
Fri 19 - Sheffield Arena - www.gigsandtours.com
Sat 20 - London the 02 - www.gigsandtours.com

Update: We had previously posted the album would be out on October 20th from a message listed under one of The Shore's pictures on their site, until we had realized much sooner that it had been released digitally via an update on their MySpace page. If you would like to support The Shore, you can buy it on iTunes right now right here! We highly recommend "When Tomorrow Comes".

We can't add enough exclamation points into this post!!! The Shore have added two more songs onto their MySpace page and it looks as though they have an album name as well. So far The Shore have four new songs in total to listen to on their MySpace page. You can listen to them here.

Light Years will be out October 13th! 20th!

They also have a solo show coming up (below), so if you're out near L.A., and not in Philly like us, you'll be missing out if you don't catch them play. Stay tuned for more news...

MP3: The Shore - Coming Down [buy]


Upcoming Show:
Oct 19 2008 - 9:00PM - SPACELAND - LOS ANGELES, California

The French Kicks, the melodically, downplayed suprise of the year with their Swimming album back in early April, have arose again, this time with nothing but covers. That's much easier than putting together an ace album again, right? Sure it is, but they didn't do it for those reasons. As quoted on Stereogum:

We've always loved the Beach Boys' Party! record where the Beach Boys went into a studio room with some friends and played really loose and live, mainly cover songs, and then put it out ...