Good Weather For Airstrikes

I will be posting my holiday mix CD, M3 Holiday Edition, tomorrow or possibly even tonight, but to tide you over until then, I highly recommend you download the angelic Sufjan Stevens’ three holiday albums. I’m not sure if Katrina Kerns, the goddess pictured above by Stevens’ side, is involved at all on Sufjan’s three-volume Christmas album, but I couldn’t bring myself to cut her out of the picture, so you’ll have to deal, though I don’t think anyone’s complaining. But lest this post turn into an essay on the beauty of Kerns’, let me redirect your attention to the Sufjan Christmas CDs, which you can download below as .zip files. The three-volume set contains it’s fair share of Sufjan’s renditions of the Christmas classics, as well as some fantastic original songs, namely, “C’mon! Let’s All Boogey To The Elf Dance!”, which is so incredible I’m making it available for download by itself just to ensure people listen to it. Download below (right click > save target as).

Hark! Noel! Songs For Christmas Volume 1
Hark! Noel! Songs For Christmas Volume 2
Ding! Dong! Songs For Christmas Volume 3 [highly recommended]

MP3: [highly recommended]
“Come On! Let’s Boogey To The Elf Dance!” - Sufjan Stevens

Simply put, omgz. Jenny Lewis, the lead singer of Rilo Kiley and the woman I plan to marry, is releasing her debut solo album, Rabbit Fur Coat, on Conor Oberst’s Team Love record label this January, and in the best news ever, IT HAS LEAKED. I’ve only got four of the songs so far though, and since I’ve only had time to listen to them once each, I haven’t really been able to form an opinion yet, but below are the two that are the most initially pleasing. “Handle With Care” is a cover of The Travelling Wilbury’s classic, and to make it even more amazing, Ben Gibbard, Conor Oberst, and M. Ward all contribute one verse to the song, just as in the original. This is obviously the track everyone’s most excited to hear, so you can grab that below. I’m also posting another track, “You Are What You Love”, which is the song that most immediately appeals to me, but again, I’ve only had time to listen to each song once (because i’m about to go out… what of it?). I can’t give it the [highly recommended] seal of approval quite yet, but I will update tomorrow with more thoughts, and possibly, more tracks. All of these songs are attributed to Jenny Lewis with The Watson Twins, twin gospel singers who apparently sing on nearly every track (notice them to the left and right of Jenny in the picture above). Anyway, I hope you all enjoy and I will update with more tomorrow. Oh… and Happy Thanksgiving.

MP3s:
“Handle With Care” (ft. Ben Gibbard, Conor Oberst, and M. Ward) - Jenny Lewis & The Watson Twins
“You Are What You Love” - Jenny Lewis & The Watson Twins

UPDATE: So after further listening, this is a great album. Or at least it’s an album with some great songs on it, I haven’t listened to it quite enough to make a full judgement on the album, but I love a bunch of these songs. My early favorite though is definitely “Rise Up With Fists”, a truly incredible song in which the Watson twins’ voices harmonize flawlessly with Jenny’s and everything comes together seamlessly. Download below, along with another great track, “Big Guns”; I highly recommend it for everyone, regardless of whether or not they are fans of Rilo Kiley.

MP3s:
“Rise Up With Fists” - Jenny Lewis & The Watson Twinz [highly recommended]
“Big Guns” - Jenny Lewis & The Watson Twins

So the results are in from the last poll, in which you selected the song you most enjoyed from M3 Volume 5, and Bloc Party’s “Two More Years” won in a near-landslide victory, getting 30% of the votes, while Ryan Adams version of “Wonderwall” grabbed second with 12.1% of the votes. Rounding out the top 3, The New Pornographers’ new single “Use It” and Engineers’ Anti-Gravity remix of Bloc Party’s “Blue Light” came out tied for third, each tallying 8.4% of the votes. The poll got a surprising 107 responses, though some of those may have been the same person responding multiple times, but I hope not. I don’t necessarily think that all 107 people downloaded M3V5, but if you’re one of them and you didn’t, it might be the finest accomplishment of my life, so I recommend you do it. To see the rest of the results, go here.

Anyway, there’s a brand new poll up for you to vote for your favorite song from M3 Volume 6 in, so scroll on down the left side bar and vote in it. Also, I’ve added a “highlights” section to the sidebar, where you can get direct links to all of the various volumes of M3, as well as a link to the music video archive, where you can access all the videos I’ve ever posted on the site in one organized location. But anyway, enjoy, and scroll down two posts to listen to the new Jenny Lewis tracks!!

First of all, let me apologize for the slight dropoff in updates over the last week, I’ve been having a lot of computer/internet problems and whatnot, but that looks to be all cleared up now, so everyone can breathe a deep sigh of relief. Anyway, I saw Bright Eyes w/ Feist and The Magic Numbers last Friday, so below is the recap of that.Amazing. Friday night I saw Bright Eyes for the third (!) time this year, only unlike the previous two shows (on January 29th with CocoRosie and Tilly & The Wall, and on April 14th with The Faint) which occurred at the wonderful 9:30 Club, this show took place at the significantly larger and less awesome Constitution Hall. And also unlike the two previous tours, which supported I’m Wide Awake It’s Morning (January) and Digital Ash In A Digital Urn (April), this one was to be a best of show, spanning the entire career and catalogue of Mr. Oberst.Due to some driving/navigating issues that caused us to get hopelessly lost and barely make it to the venue at all, we missed The Magic Numbers, though I wasn’t too upset as I have their debut album and I’m not such a huge fan. However, we did arrive just in time for Feist (thankfully), who turned in a solid, though unspectacular set. However, one of the highlights of the entire show was during “Mushaboom”, my favorite song and the one my ex-girlfriend used to introduce me to Feist with. At the beginning of the song the lovely Leslie Feist said she’d like to bring some friends out to help her, and not only did Oberst come out to help out on lead vocals, but he was accompanied by the one, the only, the flawless/beautiful/stunning JENNY LEWIS. Oberst (remember: the new Bright Eyes live album - Motion Sickness, released last Tuesday - includes a cover of “Mushaboom”) and Feist took turns alternating on the lead vocals, while Jenny and Feist sang the “oh-oh-oh” chorus. All in all it sounded amazing, and due to the worst luck ever, neither me nor the four girls I was with had a camera. Feist turned in a solid set, despite the surprising exclusion of her two other singles from the setlist (”One Evening” and “Inside and Out”), hurt by her seemingly never-ending lame inter-song ranting/”banter”, but I ended up getting a cool shirt anyway (they were all sold out of Bright Eyes shirts in my size - adult large… too much to ask? - by the time we got to the venue… lame).

“Mushaboom” - Feist [highly recommended]
“Mushaboom” (Live) - Bright Eyes

Onto the main event… Though the April show was more enjoyable as a whole (The Faint actually ended up stealing the show, and Bright Eyes’ set was merely solid), this was the single best Bright Eyes performance I’d seen. First of all, Oberst was surprisingly sober (read: not shitfaced as he was at the previos two gigs), and he was even downright playful with the audience. All the songs sounded much better than on record, as is usually the case at Oberst’s shows, and the subtle changes he’s known for live were all there. Probably the most noticeable was in “The Calendar Hung Itself” (the highlight of the show for me, not including the encore) when he changed the lyric to “Does he know that place below your belt that’s your favorite to be touched?” from what was previously “below your neck”… which was awesome. Oberst played even less from his two newest releases (I’m Wide Awake and Digital Ash) than I had expected, playing only four songs from those two releases combined, and even more surprising was his exclusion of all of the new albums’ singles, save for “Lua”. He did play an awesome acoustic version of “Hit The Switch” which was fantastic, and another highlight came during “False Advertising” which Oberst prefaced saying, “this next song’s a bit of a waltz, so feel free to dance”. This resulted in probably a hundred people pouring into the aisles and waltzing to Oberst’s brand of emo-tinged suicide folk-rock. Other pre-encore highlights included the beautiful/amazing harp intro that turned into the opening chords of “Sunrise, Sunset” (his standard opener on the tour), throwback jam “Falling Out of Love” (a song Oberst wrote and recorded at age 15), and the always-wonderful “Old Soul Song (For The New World Order).

The encore was probably the best I’ve ever seen performed by any band though. Oberst returned to the stage solo, and the told the audience that he was gonna play a song he hadn’t yet played on this tour, and to forgive him if he forgot some of the words because he hadn’t practiced it in a while. He went on to explain that he felt the need to play it, considering the fact that the President “sleeps across the street”, before launching into the incendiary “When The President Talks To God” which was even more amazing than when he performed it last January. Oberst kept things fresh by adding “though not that high” immediately after the “but the approval rating’s high” line. He also added a lyrical rant to the end of the song, screaming “We’re coming down the mountain now, we’re coming down the mountain now motherfucker!!”, which was, suffice it to say, AWESOME. Next came an incredible rendition of “Gold Mine Gutted” which I enjoyed immensely more than the album version, which I wasn’t a terribly huge fan of, before Oberst asked for a god damn tympany roll and capped things off with the masterpiece that is “Let’s Not Shit Ourselves”. Oberst told everyone in the audience to stand up and sing along (something he’s not know for), before ripping through “Shit Ourselves”, which lasted nearly ten minutes and was everything I had hoped for it to be and more. Below is the setlist, and you can download the songs that were the highlights of the show, as well as all of Bright Eyes videos, below.

Setlist:
Sunrise, Sunset
You Will? You. Will?…
The Calendar Hung Itself
Arienette
False Advertising
Napoleon’s Hat
Nothing Gets Crossed Out
Falling Out Of Love At This Volume
Hit The Switch
Old Soul Song (For The New World Order)
I Won’t Ever Be Happy Again
Lua

Encore
When The President Talks To God (Live in DC, 1-29-05)
Gold Mine Gutted
Let’s Not Shit Ourselves (To Love And To Be Loved) [highly recommended]

Videos:
“Mushaboom” - Feist
“Lover I Don’t Have To Love” - Bright Eyes
“Bowl of Oranges” - Bright Eyes
“At The Bottom of Everything” - Bright Eyes (most adorable plane crash ever)
“First Day of My Life” - Bright Eyes
“Easy/Lucky/Free” - Bright Eyes [highly recommended]

So apparently people really like the Postal Service, who knew? Anyway, thanks to awesome readers “australiandave” and Gary, I’ve got a little bit more goodness for you from Gibbard and co. Dave bring us the Postal Service remix (which seems a little bit redundant) of “The Dream of Evan and Chan”. Gary hooks us up big time with another track from the Morning Becoms Eclectic live session that I was somehow missing, “This Place Is A Prison”. So you can now download the complete session from their appearance on Morning Becomes Ecectic, and I can’t recommend that you do enough, as it’s worth it if only for the incredible live version of “Brand New Colony” (specifically, the part where he sings “with your collar up, so you won’t catch a cold” and jumps to an even higher register, resulting in an adorable yelp of sorts - for some reason it gives me chills). Their comments on my last post also inspired me to post the rest of the Postal Service rarities I have in my iTunes library. So below you can download their incredible cover of Phil Collins’ “Against All Odds”, “Be Still My Heart” a b-side from the “We Will Become Silhouettes” CD-single, as well The Shins’ cover of “Silhouettes” and all of the band’s music videos.

The videos, one for each of the band’s three singles from Give Up (”Such Great Heights”, “District Sleeps Alone Tonight”, and “We Will Become Silhouettes”) are all great, especially the “Silhouettes” video, which was directed by Napoleon Dynamite director Jared Hess and shares the film’s kitschy 70’s feel. The “Heights” and “District” videos are both of relatively high quality, but the “Silhouettes” video is another one I ripped directly from the iTunes store, so it’s very very high quality. Also, check out this adorable picture of Ben and Jimmy celebrating Give Up’s certified gold status.

I’d also like to thank loyal reader Stephen for having a smash-up affair at the Delta Sig house last night. Spot on.

UPDATE: Jed Maheu, a former Sub Pop (The Postal Service’s label) employee, is selling the aforementioned gold record commemorating Postal Service’s 500,000 records sold on eBay. Follow the link for his entertaining explanation, or go here to read a relatively hilarious article Maheu wrote for Seattle paper The Stranger on the wonder that is the beer bong.

The Postal Service: Live on Morning Becomes Eclectic
1. Intro
2. “District Sleeps Alone Tonight”
3. “We Will Become Silhouettes”
4. “Nothing Better” (ft. Jenny Lewis)
5. Interview
6. “Clark Gable”
7. “This Place Is A Prison”
8. “Such Great Heights”
9. “Brand New Colony” [highly recommended]

MP3s:
“(This Is The Postal Service Remix of) The Dream of Evan and Chan” - Dntel
“Against All Odds” - The Postal Service [highly recommended]
“We Will Become Silhouettes” - The Shins
“Recycled Air” - Ben Gibbard

Video:
“Such Great Heights” - The Postal Service
“District Sleeps Alone Tonight” - The Postal Service
“We Will Become Silhouettes” - The Postal Service

By now it’s time to just face the facts that we won’t be a getting another Postal Service album until about late 2006, but that’s just how it has to be. Ben Gibbard’s currently busy touring in support of Death Cab’s new album and Jimmy Tamborello is occupied writing (programming?) the next Dntel record and readying it for a first-quarter 2006 release. There is some mystery as to whether or not Rilo Kiley’s Jenny Lewis actually sang on the last album (I’ve heard from many reputable sources that it was actually Jen Wood of Seattle’s The Jen Wood Trio whose angelic vocals we hear on “Nothing Better”, though the interview in the middle of this session claims otherwise), but regardless, she too is occupied until early-to-mid 2006 releasing and supporting her debut solo album, Rabbit Fur Coat, due out January 23rd on Conor Oberst’s Team Love label.

But to make the wait easier, here is a gem of a live session, recorded on Seattle’s Morning Becomes Eclectic radio show in 2003. I acquired this last summer in the still pre-GWFAS days, and while I listened to it solidly for about a month, I forgot about it until now. Fortune struck though when it came on my iTunes yesterday (oh, the wonders of the “shuffle” feature), and I remembered just how fantastic it is. So I created album artwork for it (because, y’know, that’s just what I do) and I’m posting it here for you today, and hopefully it will help make the never-ending wait for a new album more bearable.

The actual set itself is fantastic; the band plays all of the highlights from Give Up (but let’s be honest, the whole album was a highlight in itself), and Jenny Lewis, who as I mentioned before may or may not have actually sang on Give Up, reinvents the female vocals and breathes a new life in to the tracks, especially when she shines on “Nothing Better”. What makes this live session great is that Tamborello and company take these songs that were already incredible on Give Up, and add new touches and elements, which in some cases (”District Sleeps Alone”, “Brand New Colony”, and “Nothing Better” especially) make these live versions actually eclipse their original counterparts. However, the immaculate “Such Great Heights”, my favorite song of all-time, unfortunately sounds relatively lackluster in this live recording, namely the stale-sounding guitar solo near the end. Even so, this is definitely worth downloading. I know we’ve all heard and love Give Up (seriously, I don’t think there’s a single person ever that doesn’t love that album), but I still highly recommend that you download this, so at the very least you can maintain your sanity waiting for their 2006 follow-up. “Mid-to-late 2006″ can’t come soon enough.

I’ve also included the song that got everything started, “(This Is) The Dream of Evan and Chan”, which was the initial collaboration between Gibbard and Dntel’s back in 2001, from Dntel’s album, Life Is Full of Possibilities. There’s a slight chance that some of you haven’t heard this, but it’s an indie classic so if you haven’t I kind of demand you do so now.

The Postal Service: Live On Morning Becomes Eclectic
1. Intro
2. “District Sleeps Alone Tonight”
3. “We Will Become Silhouettes”
4. “Nothing Better” (ft. Jenny Lewis)
5. Interview
6. “Clark Gable”
7. “Such Great Heights”
8. “Brand New Colony”

Bonus:
“(This Is) The Dream of Evan and Chan” - Dntel (ft. Ben Gibbard

Thanks to Pitchfork for the heads up on this. Sigur Ros has announced their next batch of US tour dates in support of their new album Takk…, though it’s less of a “batch”, per se, and more of a full-fledged US tour, in which they hit most of the cities they forgot on the last tour, and some of the major east coast stops (NYC, Boston) again for a second time. However, in the worst news I’ve heard all day, they’re not coming back to DC, officially qualifying my not getting a ticket to see them when they were here on the 11th of September as my biggest regret of the year. I still haven’t seen them ever live, and I allot at least fifteen minutes of every day to lament about it. Anyway, go here to see the new dates. I’m strongly considering making the trek to New York to see them on February 9th, but we’ll have to see how things go.

In more Ros news the band will be releasing their next single, “Hoppipolla”, my second favorite song off of Takk…, in the US and the UK in the coming weeks/months/soon. Also, P-Fork reports that “a video is imminent” for the single, which has me writhing around on the ground at the mere thought of a new Sigur Ros video. The band’s most recent video (which I received on a DVD when I bought the album the day of its release) for “Glosoli” is basically what makes my life worth living and is the recent I wake up every morning. It’s mind-blowing, flawless, cinematic gold. If there were a Best Music Video category at the Oscars it would win, no contest. And since it’s very unlike me to go on ranting about something like this and not hook you all up with the opportunity to download it, you may download the video for “Glosoli”, in shimmering high-resolution widescreen format, below. Please do so. I could never recommend anything more. Also available for download below are the band’s other two videos, both amazing in their own rights (but not quite as life-changing as the “Glosoli” video), for “Untitled #1 (Vaka)” and “Viðrar vel til loftárása” (from which this site gets its name), as well as the band’s new single, “Hoppipolla”.

If you’re ever going to download anything I recommend, please make it these three videos, or at the very least the clip for “Glosoli”, as they are all life-changing experiences, on par with seeing Garden State for the first time or losing your virginity.

MP3:
“Hoppipolla” - Sigur Ros [highly recommended]

NOTE: Unfortunately, the video for “Vidrar Vel” refuses to upload properly, so just click and follow the link to the streaming version of the video (Windows Media Player required).

Video:
“Glosoli” - Sigur Ros [highly highly recommended]
“Untitled #1 (Vaka)” - Sigur Ros [highly recommended]
“Viðrar vel til loftárása” - Sigur Ros [highly recommended]

That’s a lot of highly recommended.

In an interesting turn of events, Franz Ferdinand have decided to release two new singles to follow “Do You Want To”, one for release in the US and the other for release in the UK. The US gets the more upbeat and danceable “The Fallen”, while our British counterparts get the morose goodbye ballad, “Walk Away”. Head Ferdinand (or as Pitchfork once dubbed him, “the franziest of the ferdinands”) Alex Kapranos explained the decision to NME saying, “in the States they’re more up for a bit of rock and roll”. Not sure whether or not he’s calling us out as being the less sophisticated of the two international powers, but just to be safe we should probably declare war on his homeland. Anyways, the first of the two songs to get the music video treatment is “Walk Away”, and, with director Scott Lyon, the band created a beautiful clip that harkens back to Hitchcock’s glory days and the height of film noir. Definitely one of the better videos of the year, and you can download it in beautiful high-resolution, along with Franz’s two new singles, below.

MP3s:
“The Fallen” - Franz Ferdinand
“Walk Away” - Franz Ferdinand

Video:
“Walk Away” - Franz Ferdinand [highly recommended]

Blog Party, the cleverly-named unofficial blog of Bloc Party and the go-to place for all things Bloc Party, brings us an absolute gem today, a video of Final Fantasy covering Bloc Party’s “This Modern Love”. Final Fantasy is the solo project of violinist Owen Pallet, who performs with and co-writes all of the Arcade Fire’s arrangements. As a solo-performer, Pallett creates a surprisingly-layered sound based on multiple violin riffs looped over one another on the fly.

The video is very high quality, as is the audio, though the vocals are a little bit low. As for the quality of the cover, “This Modern Love” translates perfectly into a violin arrangement, and Pallett’s vocals are serviceable, save for the shrieky “Jump left!” and “Jump right!” part of the song. But download the video below in MPEG format (if people want I can record it as an mp3 and post that, just leave a comment), as well as his excellent cover of Joanna Newsom’s “Peach Plum Pear”, and original song “Your Light Is Spent”. I would describe these songs as dainty. NOTE: Video must be viewed with Windows Media Player.

“This Modern Love” (Live @ Spitz Club, 10-24-05) - Final Fantasy
“Peach, Plum, Pear” - Final Fantasy
“Your Light Is Spent” - Final Fantasy

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Finally, P-Fork kind of caught me off guard last Friday when they gave Test Icicles’ (omgz that’s almost “testicles”) new album, For Screening Purposes Only, an 8.1 in their review. While I immensely enjoy Test Icicles first single, “Circle, Square, Triangle”, I got a definite screamo/hardcore vibe from it, which to the best of my knowledge wasn’t exactly Pitchfork’s thing (this was before I saw the 9.1 they gave out to Blood Brothers’ Burn Piano Island Burn two years ago). However, Pitchfork seemed quite enthused aboutt the UK trio’s acid-rock sound. The band themself is pretty awesome: three guys, all play guitar (pink guitars, actually) and share vocals, nacked up by a drum machine. Anyway, here is that aforementioned single, along with it’s accompanying (somewhat lame) music video.

MP3: “Circle, Square, Triangle” - Test Icicles
Video: “Circle, Square, Triangle” - Test Icicles

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