Good Weather For Airstrikes

Yeah, so a couple of weeks ago I had promised a post previewing the Yeah Yeah Yeahs new album, Show Your Bones (due out March 28th) because I had a few of the tracks, but shortly after I said that the whole album leaked and now you can pretty much find it everywhere (shhh). However, in promising the Show Your Bones preview I mentioned that I’d be posting an exclusive remix of “Y Control” courtesy of The Faint, and many of you expressed a strong desire to hear it. It got lost in the shuffle for a little while, but here it is. This is one of my favorite remixes, and sounds a bit like what you’d expect to hear if The Faint performed the song with Karen O on vocals and maybe Nick Zinner contributing a distorted bassline or two. I especially love how the chainsaw noise that opens the song subtley morphs into the moaning of Karen’s voice, and how The Faint leave the song’s general structure alone but transplant a dancy beat over it and tighten up and polish the instrumentation until it’s ready to take over dancefloors nationwide. Granted, this was released a while ago, so the takeover (if it happened, clubs are still three years away for me… well, legally at least) already occurred, but enjoy it now anyway.

MP3: “Y Control” (Faint Remix) - Yeah Yeah Yeahs [highly recommended]

So I’ve decided to undertake a new project, as the success of my Top 65 Videos project and those of other blogs (You Ain’t No Picasso’s “Now That’s What I Call Indie Covers” post of last year, Information Leafblower’s annual Top 40 Bands in America list, etc.) indicate that you blog frequenters really enjoy a good project feature (for lack of a better term). This time I’d like to focus on the art of the b-side, and I’ll be gathering my favorite b-sides in a Top 15 or Top 25-style list, for posting sometime in the near future. However, the most exciting and intriguing attribute of the b-side is its rarity and obscurity, but as a result many incredible songs go unnoticed or overlooked due to the fact that they’re not formally released or featured on an album. Thus, there have been many great b-sides that I know have slipped past me, not to mention I’ve got a pretty limited knowledge of classic b-sides, so I’m giving you guys a chance to submit your favorite b-sides by emailing them to me at dwd7e@virginia.edu. Keep in mind that I try to keep GWFAS as forward-thinking and current as possible, so it’s doubtful I’ll include many classic b-sides on the list, but feel free to submit them anyway. I tend to view remixes as the lazy b-side approach so they’re less-likely to make the list, but again, feel free to still send your favorites if your so inclined. Also, if you know of a great b-side but only have it on vinyl and not in mp3 form just tell me the title and I’ll do my best to find a downloadable copy of it.

Finally, to clarify, for the intents and purposes of this post I’m defining b-sides as any song not formally released on an album or as a single. So, this broad definition includes single b-sides (obviously), songs exclusively released on soundtracks or compilations, album bonus tracks, and whatnot. Granted, there’s a lot of gray area regarding what exactly qualifies as a b-side, so there may be some questionable choices on the final list, but I’m excited about this and I think it’ll be an opportunity for a lot of people to discover a lot of new songs by some of their favorite bands they otherwise might not have known existed, so start sending those b-sides my way and keep an eye out for the post sometime in the near future.

Guillemots have started getting a lot of love in the ol’ blogosphere of late, and I think it’s about time Good Weather For Airstrikes jumped on the bandwagon. In all honesty, I’ve been preparing this post for weeks, trying to get as many Guillemots b-sides and whatnot to post for all of you, and in my waiting a great number of fantastic blogs beat me to the punch of breaking Guillemots for you. Now that Pitchfork has reviewed their single, “Trains to Brazil”, it seems as if Guillemots have reached their breaking point, and with their album due out in the next few days they seem poised to take over the United States (well, “take over” in the manner that Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and Arctic Monkeys did - that is, take over the US blogging world).

The lead singer and frontman of Guillemots goes by the name of Fyfe Dangerfield, which is certifiably badass as far as I’m concerned. To match his name, Dangerfield has an excellent voice that is equally at home softly warbling over a lone piano or projecting to the masses over the more anthemic Guillemots songs (of which there are many).

I am confident in saying that Guillemots are well on their way to becoming my favorite band of 2006. First single “Trains to Brazil” is easily (EASILY) my favorite song so far this year, and the diversity of the Guillemots songs I’ve heard lead me to believe that their album should be an early front-runner for my year-end best of list. I’m not about to make comparisons such as “Guillemots are the next Radiohead”, but they are absolutely a unique band that I feel is just, to be blunt, incredible. Guillemots have a fascination with extraneous sound, exemplified by the concord of laughing children and ringing telephones in “Trains To Brazil”, which gives their decidedly pop-based songs a refreshingly experimental feel.Below, I have given you tons of downloadable content to begin to appreciate Guillemots. I do not yet have the Guillemots full-length debut album, but I have collected as many b-sides as I can and am treating you all to them now.

First off, I would recommend you pay a visit to Guillemots web-site, over at www.guillemots.com. Under the ‘Sounds’ tab at the top of the home page, you can stream the music videos for singles “Trains to Brazil” and “We’re Here” as well as watch a live, improvised set from The George. Below the videos section there is a “Songs” section, with two songs (”Through the Windowpane” and “If The World Ends”) that Guillemots performed at an Xfm Session. Both of those receive the [highly recommended] stamp from Good Weather For Airstrikes and both are downloadable as mp3s, so rather than use our own hosting we decided to send you over to the bands official website to grab them for yourself. Also [highly recommended] and downloadable from that same page are two demo’s, “Cold Cool Moon” and “Sea Out”, which you should definitely look in to. I prefer “Cold Cool Moon” of the two, but both are definitely great songs worth having in your music library.

The first three songs, entitled “Woody Brown River”, “Blue Would Still Be Blue”, and “Over The Mountains”, are ballads that showcase Dangerfield’s voice over sparse arrangements. To my knowledge, these songs have not yet found a home, though Dangerfield has mentioned that they will be kept in the band’s back catalogue for release as b-sides for the upcoming album’s singles. These three songs can be downloaded below:

Guillemots, Woody Brown River [highly recommended]
Guillemots, Blue Would Still Be Blue [highly recommended]
Guillemots, Over The Mountains

The next two songs are tagged with the album name Of The Night. For a sort of Valentines Day present, Guillemots posted four songs on their website for free download (unfortunately, the download system was needlessly complicated and the songs were only available in a PC-only, WMA format). I was able to acquire the four songs by other means so that they would play in iTunes on my PowerBook, and have uploaded the two songs I believe to be the best of the four-song set. The other two songs, “She’s Evil” and “Bay Boyfriend”, definitely highlight how unique Guillemots can be when they choose to, and the results are mixed. If you have any interest in the other two songs, however, send me an email at EverettCase@gmail.com or IM me at Duder987v on AIM and I’d be happy to send them to you. Anyway, here are the two Valentines Day songs, available for download in easy-to-use mp3 format below. [UPDATE: due to an overwhelming unforeseen demand for the other two Valentine’s Day songs, I have uploaded them and included them in this post. Enjoy.]

Guillemots, The Rising Tide
Guillemots, By The Water
Guillemots, She’s Evil [just added]
Guillemots, Bad Boyfriend [just added]

Next up for our downloadable content, Guillemots released a four-song EP in September of 2005. Entitled I Saw Such Things In My Sleep, the EP was most people’s first exposure to Guillemots. The songs are all pretty different from each other, and they are all excellent. Many people are going crazy over “Made Up Love Song #43″, so that would likely be a good place to start for those of you who are new to Guillemots. If you haven’t gotten the impression from me already, as far as I’m concerned you can’t go wrong with a Guillemots song, so all of the songs I’ve made available for download in this post are recommended.

Guillemots, Who Left The Lights Off Baby? [link removed]
Guillemots, Cats Eyes [link removed]
Guillemots, Made Up Love Song #43 [link removed]
Guillemots, Over The Stairs [link removed]

As I mentioned above, Guillemots first single release was “Trains to Brazil”, a song I am officially hopelessly in love with. “Trains” is a breath of sheer fun and exuberance, an absolute joyride that clocks in at just over 4 minutes and is unrivaled in it’s brilliance by any other song this year. I have also made available for download the two b-sides from that single, “Go Away” and “My Chosen One”. Though both of those songs are fantastic and both (if “Go Away” were a little shorter than it’s 7:47) could easily be hit singles for any other band, I cannot help but feel that when compared back-to-back with “Trains to Brazil” they fail to match up. What I am basically trying to say is that if you download one song from this post, or even one song from this website, I would strongly recommend that song by “Trains to Brazil”.

Guillemots, Trains to Brazil [link removed]
Guillemots, Go Away [link removed]
Guillemots, My Chosen One [link removed]

And finally, Guillemots are preparing a second single release from their upcoming full-length debut, entitled “We’re Here”. Though it is no “Trains to Brazil” (no other song this year is), it is an incredible song in it’s own right, and coupled with “Trains to Brazil”, the Guillemots debut should surely have the punch to take over the American music scene. “We’re Here” can be downloaded below. [UPDATE: At the request of the band, “We’re Here” is no longer available for download.]

Guillemots, We’re Here [removed]

I apologize for the unwieldy length of this post, and if you are a Guillemots band member or representative and you would like any or all of these songs removed do not hesitate to let me know by emailing me at EverettCase@gmail.com or sending me an instant message at Duder987v, my only goal is to expose the glory of Guillemots to the public. Thanks for sticking with me on this post all the way to the very bottom, and I hope you all enjoy the above songs. Let me know how you feel about Guillemots in the comments.

So I recently sold out and saw Coldplay at the MCI Center and I loved it; the hipsters are just going to have to deal with that. That said, Coldplay were amazing, and while it certainly wasn’t my favorite concert of all time or even in the top ten, it was easily onae of the best-produced and more enjoyable shows I’ve ever been to. Everything about the show was over the top, from the giant yellow balloons filled with gold glitter that descended from the ceiling during “Yellow” (which Chris Martin proceeded to tear apart with his guitar - you know, because Coldplay’s so hardcore), to the Chris’ sprint down the aisle all the way to the back of the arena during “In My Place”. Another special element of the show was the fact that it was Chris’ birthday, and though it was impossible for this to go unnoticed due to the thousands of “OMG Happy Birthday Chris!” signs throughout the audience, he made sure you didn’t forget by changing the words in “God Put A Smile Upon Your Face” to “I just turned 29 today”. Anyway, this isn’t going to be much of a concert review, as a) I’m sure most of you don’t come here to read about Coldplay and b) all of the shows on this tour are more or less the same, following the same rigid setlist (for the most part), and will instead serve more as an outlet for me to post some great Coldplay-related mp3s and rarities that otherwise might have gone unnoticed. As for the aforementioned setlist, it didn’t leave much to be desired (and even featured an unexpected Johnny Cash cover) and went something like this (NOTE: this is more or less accurate, with the possibility that some of the songs might be slightly out of order, but all of these were played):

Setlist
1. “Square One”
2. “Politik”
3. “Yellow”
4. “Speed of Sound”
5. “God Put A Smile Upon Your Face”
6. “X & Y”
7. “How You See The World No. 2″
8. “Don’t Panic
9. “White Shadows”
10. “The Scientist”
11. “Ring of Fire” (Johnny Cash cover; acoustic)
12. “‘Til Kingdom Come” (acoustic)
13. “Trouble”
14. “Clocks”
15. “Talk”

Encore
16. “Swallowed In The Sea”
17. “In My Place”
18. “Fix You”

Below are an assortment of Coldplay-related mp3s and b-sides many of you may enjoy, as well as the three new remixes of their latest single “Talk” from the Talk EP, released last month in the UK. Definitely download Johnette Napolitano’s incredible cover of “The Scientist” (which was featured on M3 Volume 5), the excellent Parachutes b-side “See You Soon”, and Petra Haden & Bill Frisell’s cover of “Yellow”, which was featured on The OC a couple months ago.

“See You Soon” - Coldplay [highly recommended]
“Clocks (Acoustic)” - Coldplay
“The Scientist” - Johnette Napolitano [highly recommended]
“Yellow” - Petra Haden & Bill Frisell
“Shiver (Jo Whiley Lunchtime Social Mix)” - Coldplay
“Talk (Junkie XL Remix)” - Coldplay
“Talk (Francois K Dub)” - Coldplay
“Talk (Thin White Duke Mix)” -Coldplay

Stellastarr* (asterisk required) is beginning a month-and-a-half long trek across the country in support of their latest album, 2005’s Harmonies for the Haunted. The album’s single that stellastarr* is planning to take the world by storm with, “Love And Longing”, features excellent uplifting instrumentation and a rousing chorus, and is available below for public consumption. Also noteworthy is the band who will be opening stellastarr*’s shows on this tour, Editors. A Good Weather for Airstrikes fave, they have already been profiled on this site (read it here) and any opportunity to see them live would surely be well worth it. Some particularly strong tracks from Editors are available for download below. Here is the full list of tour dates for stellastarr* and Editors, I plan on attending the Washington, DC date.

3.20.06 - Boston, MA (The Roxy)
3.21.06 - South Burlington, VT (Higher Ground)
3.22.06 - Montreal, QC (Cabaret du Musse Juste Pour Rire)
3.24.06 - Toronto, ON (Phoenix Concert Theater)
3.25.06 - Cleveland, OH (Agora Theater)
3.26.06 – New York, NY (Bowery Ballroom) – only stellastarr*
3.27.06 – New York, NY (Bowery Ballroom) – only stellastarr*
3.28.06 - Brooklyn, NY (Warsaw)
3.29.06 - Washington, DC (9:30 Club)
4.01.06 - Philadelphia, PA (Trocadero)
4.02.06 - Baltimore, MD (Sonar)
4.04.06 - Norfolk, VA (The Norva Theatre)
4.05.06 - Carrboro, NC (Cat’s Cradle)
4.06.06 - Athens, GA (40 Watt Club)
4.07.06 - Orlando, FL (The Social)
4.08.06 - Miami, FL (Studio A)
4.09.06 - St. Petersburg, FL (State Theater)
4.11.06 - Nashville, TN (Exit/In)
4.12.06 - Columbus, OH (Newport Music Hall)
4.13.06 - Detroit, MI (Magic Stick)
4.14.06 - Covington, KY (The Mad Hatter)
4.15.06 - Columbia, MO (Blue Note)
4.16.06 - Chicago, IL (Metro)
4.18.06 - Minneapolis, MN (Fine Line Music Cafe)
4.19.06 - Lawrence, KS (Granada Theatre)
4.21.06 - Denver, CO (Bluebird Theatre)
4.22.06 - Salt Lake City, UT (TBD)
4.25.06 - Vancouver, BC (Richard’s On Richards)
4.27.06 - Seattle, WA (Chop Suey)
4.28.06 - Portland, OR (Dante’s)
4.29.06 - San Francisco, CA (Mezzanine)
4.30.06 - Indio, CA (Coachella)

[NOTE: access stellastarr*’s website at http://stellastarr.com for more information on the band]

And now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for: the downloadable content!

stellastarr*, My Coco (from 2003’s stellastarr*)
stellastarr*, Love And Longing (from 2005’s Harmonies for the Haunted)
Editors, Munich (from 2005’s The Back Room)
Editors, Bullets (from 2005’s The Back Room)
Editors, Dust in the Sunlight (B-side from the Bullets single)

If you all don’t mind, I’d like to break from the usual “indietastic” postings here on Good Weather for Airstrikes and honor the passing of Ali Farka Toure. His music earned him a Grammy in 1994 (for Best World Music Album) and in my opinion he is one of the more talented musicians the world has known. Toure was pronounced dead earlier today, March 7, as he lost his ongoing battle with cancer.

Ali Farka Toure was born in the African nation of Mali in 1939, the tenth son born to his mother but the first to survive infancy. A renowned singer and guitarist, Toure combined influences from his native Mali with the blues that were popular in North America as he was growing up. Toure’s first album, entitled Farka after his nickname (translated to English, it means “donkey”, a nod to his tenacity as a child), was released in 1976. His self-titled follow-up album came over a decade later and put Toure firmly on the world music scene, though it was not until his fifth album that he was honored with a Grammy. That album, Talking Timbuktu, is possibly his most famous work to date; it was recorded over a two-week period with legendary guitarist Ry Cooder with many of the songs going to tape in only one take. For songs of such length (all but two are over five minutes, with four clocking in at over seven minutes) and featuring such complex guitar improvisations, this is truly a testament to the undeniable talent of Toure, Cooder, and session musicians Gatemouth Brown (renowned session guitarist who plays fiddle on Talking Timbuktu), John Patitucci (fusion bass), and Jim Keltner (drums).

Toure recorded four albums after Talking Timbuktu, with his final album, a collaboration with Toumani Diabate entitled In The Heart Of The Moon, seeing release in September of 2005. Toure was honored with the second Grammy of his thirty-year career for In The Heart Of The Moon. For Ali Farka Toure fans such as myself, some consolation for this sad death can be found in the information released recently by Toure’s record label, World Circuit, who stated that Toure had recently completed work on a new solo album, which will likely see post-mortem release in the relatively near future.

The three downloadable tracks below are all featured on Ali Farka Toure’s first Grammy-winning album, Talking Timbuktu. I realize that world music may not be easily embraced by much of the readership of Good Weather for Airstrikes, but I implore you to at least download these songs and give them a chance. I am confident that you will be moved by the beauty of Toure’s voice and the interplay of intricacy and simplicity found in the instrumentation by Toure, Cooder and company. “Soukora” is my personal favorite Toure track, but apparently “Ai Du” is featured very prominently and sexily in the movie Unfaithful; I have not seen the movie but from the reviews I’ve read I gather if you have seen the movie you will be thrilled to add “Ai Du” to your music library.

Ali Farka Toure, Soukora [highly recommended]
Ali Farka Toure, Lasidan
Ali Farka Toure, Ai Du [highly recommended]

Okay, so midterm hell is behind me, I’m back in DC on Spring Break, posting can now return to normal, and we’ve got some great stuff lined up for you in the next couple of days/weeks. Everett and I both saw Coldplay from the floor (3rd and 8th rows, respectively) on Thursday and were sufficiently blown away, and we’ll be seeing Belle & Sebastian with The New Pornographers, one of the best tours of this or any year, on tomorrow night, so we’ll have write-ups of those up shortly as well as a couple surprises for you all. But onto the body paragraph:

Good Weather For Airstrikes (Everett and I) and (almost all of) All Things Go (Zack, Austin, Adrian, and Alex) had a lovely little retreat to the cold, desolate beaches of Delaware this weekend, where we imbibed quantities of alcohol and pontificated about music, shutting each others’ opinions down like the elitist assholes we are. Needless to say, hilarity/intoxication/nudity/cuddling ensued and we all went home no longer boys, but men. Anyway, this brings me to ATG’s excellent “Themed Thursday” post from last week, in which each adorable writer posted a song that fit the “Under The Sea” theme. Everett and I thought we’d live vicariously through them for a second and contribute a two more songs to the mix, one from each of us, so check out our contributions, available for download below:

DEREK: “Dayvan Cowboy” - Boards of Canada
I’ve really never gotten into BoC’s brand of ambient, sprawling electronica, but I’ve loved “Dayvan Cowboy”, the first single off of the duo’s recent The Campfire Headphase, ever since it first made love to my ears last fall. However, it’s one of those songs that I can’t help but envision an elaborate visual for, and I’m taken to a mysterious world of deep sea exploring everytime I listen to it. Try it out for yourself: imagine your piloting one of Steve Zissou’s submarine pods, moving slowly through underwater caverns around bends and turns with no knowledge of what lays before you. All of a sudden (at the 2:07 mark in the song) you navigate a bend and emerge from the dark caverns and into a lush, colorful, metropolis of underwater flora and fauna, with life and color everywhere. It’s pretty upsetting there isn’t a music video out there depicting this, I’d really like to see that. But if you had a hard time visualizing that, stop, alter your consciousness/get high (if that’s your thing), and repeat, with the lights out or maybe driving along a dark road where all that’s illuminated is in the path of your headlights and there are no other cars on the road. Then get back to me, as I’d like to hear if this is a listening experience unique to me or if it can be shared collectively.

EVERETT: “Alone In Kyoto” - Air
This beautiful instrumental by Air, which some may recognize from the movie Lost In Translation, perfectly captures the feelings of under-sea living on a slow day. The background features crashing waves, and the foreground is light piano and softly strummed guitar. 3:22 in to the song, the main part of the song is stripped completely, leaving only the crashing waves and a lone piano to which the guitar is slowly added back; the last thirty seconds is solely the sound of the ocean softly lapping at a serene shoreline.

That’s right, you read the headline correctly, I’ve officially sold my soul to the scene and created a MySpace page; Good Weather For Airstrikes is moving into the 21st Century! I spent an unreasonable amount of time late last Wednesday night creating the best MySpace page I possibly could (unreasonably large logos! pretentious quips! fabricated biography!), so all you scene kids should run, not walk, over to MySpace.com and send a friend request to your dear friends at Good Weather For Airstrikes. I’ve pretty much been against MySpace since I gave it a test run in 11th grade, but by joining not only will I have the opportunity to discover more bands and great new music for you all, I also get the bonus ego boost of seeing how many people care enough about GWFAS to actually extend a friend request to us. The page is accessible at www.myspace.com/airstrikeweather, so check it out and feel free to leave your thoughts, comments, disparaging remarks and so forth in the comments (either here or at the MySpace page). If you’re way too cool for MySpace and want to tell us how lame it is, you may as well save your breath as we’re well aware and I already hate myself a little bit for joining MySpace in the first place. But alas, it had to be done. If you happen to visit the page and all the pictures are replaced with little red x’s then that means ezarchive is down and the fruits of my creative labor cannot be fully realized, so be sure to check back again.

AND, to be sure that this post is not completely bereft of downloadable mp3 goodness, I’m including a very special MP3 of the day for you all. As you may have intuited by the lack of posts this week, it’s midterm week once again (four-page essay and two huge midterms, alllll tomorrow), and pretty much the only thing that’s been keeping me going has been Wolf Parade’s incredible “I’ll Believe In Anything”. For the longest time I refused to by into the hype and enjoy Wolf Parade’s music and I just couldn’t figure out what people liked about them, and as a result I received many (alright, like maybe two or three) objections in response to “I’ll Believe In Anything” being left off of my Top 25 Songs of 2005 list. However, official friend of Good Weather For Airstrikes Andrew “Vanderslice” Van der Vaart has forced the Parade on me in recent weeks and I’ve finally warmed up/fallen in love with the song. While the rest of the album is yet to grow on me, I can officially say I was wrong in leaving this off of my Top 65 list, and maybe even erroneous in excluding it from the elite company of the Top 25. Anyway, I’m sure all of you cool kids already have the song, but for the few of you who don’t, this is definitely worthy of the [download or die] tag. Oh wait, sorry, I forgot I don’t write for All Things Go and use violence to threaten my readers into downloading songs*. A simple [highly recommended] will do.

UPDATE: Man, this song is fucking epic.

MP3 of the Day:
“I’ll Believe In Anything” - Wolf Parade [highly recommended]

* just kidding… love you guysssss.