Good Weather For Airstrikes

I’m taking a short break from the Year-End List extravaganza as I finish up work on my two grand finale posts (Top 65 Tracks and Top 65 Music Videos of ‘06) to bring you up to speed on what I’ve been spinning lately and to recap Cold War Kids’ brilliant performance at Piano’s last week.

[photo courtesy of The Village Indian]

Last Wednesday was my first night as a resident in the city (not including the month and a half I spent in Brooklyn this past summer), and to celebrate my arrival I went out to dinner with my friend Alex, my Dad, his wonderful girlfriend Kay and her son Syd (Les Savy Fav bassist/Frenchkiss Records founder and owner/nicest human being alive) and his girlfriend Amy at Orchard on the Lower East Side. Dinner was unbelievable, but our post-dinner activities were even better, as Syd suggested we make an impromptu stop down the block at Cold War Kids’ sold-out Piano’s show. I’d written off seeing them this month despite their status as one of my favorite live bands ever, as all of their shows are sold out, but Syd - being the absolute baller that he is – got us in the side door with the band just as they were about to take the stage.

I’d seen them twice now, once at Bowery Ballroom opening for Tapes n’ Tapes and a second time at VICE’s CMJ party at Cakeshop, the former standing out as one of my favorite live performances of all time. The show this time around was excellent as usual and fell somewhere between their two previous shows despite being the first full-length set I’d seen them put on, though you could see they’d really been honing their skills since I first saw them last April. That first show was but a half-hour opening slot, meaning they made sure that every track they played was one of their best, and for that reason their wasn’t a dull moment and their performance was one of the most purely-enjoyable sets I’ve ever seen. This time around they rocked for nearly an hour and a half and while their standout tracks were as brilliant as ever, the long set made for some definite lagging sections, taking away from my enjoyment of the show as a whole. Plus, it didn’t help matters that I just really (really) am not all that into Piano’s as a venue, but I can’t hold that against the band.

They raced out of the gates hard, front loading their set with UK single “We Used To Vacation”, followed closely by fan-favorites “St. John” and “Hospital Beds”. The rest of the set was destined to have difficulty living up to the incredible first half-hour, but show-highlight “Hang Me Up To Dry”, which sees release as a single in the US this month, provided a much-needed energy boost after a few slow-burners in the second half of the set. “Tell Me In The Morning” was another highlight, and the Kids also treated us to some new material in the form of new tracks “Golden Gate” and “Every Valley Is Not A Lake”, the latter of which is the better of the two (get it below) and is featured as a b-side on the aforementioned single release of “Hang Me Up To Dry”. An unexpected highlight came in the show’s final minutes with “Heavy Boots”, before the band slowed things down and closed things out with “Quiet Please”, both tracks taken from the bands under appreciated and often-overlooked debut Mulberry Street EP.

For now, Cold War Kids don’t quite have the catalog to sustain the brilliance and energy of that first performance for the duration of a full-length headlining set, but frontman Nate Willet is one of the best vocalists in the game and the band have an energy unrivaled by any band this side of the Arcade Fire. 2007 sees the band primed to blow up both in the US (if Downtown Records – those crazy kids who brought you Gnarls Barkley – play their cards right) and the UK, where the BBC gave CWK the #4 slot on theit Top 10 Artists To Watch in ’07 (and they generally know their shit). 2007 will hopefully bring a new album as well, which isn’t an unreasonable expectation considering their 2006 debut LP, Robbers & Cowards, is almost entirely culled from previously-released material. If the new album lives up to the expectations set by R&C, the Kids should have enough rousing material to become one of the best live bands in the business by 2008. Thus, you better believe you should keep an eye out this year for the band’s potential rise to international stardom, and don’t be surprised if Cold War Kids are being hailed as the new White Stripes in the not-too-distant future.

MP3s:
“We Used To Vacation” – Cold War Kids ((highly recommended))
“Hang Me Up To Dry” – Cold War Kids ((highly recommended))
“Every Valley Is Not A Lake” – Cold War Kids
“Heavy Boots” (New Version) – Cold War Kids

MORE HOT FIRE FROM SEBASTIAN
Klaxons new single “Golden Skans” should be enough to get them to the top of the charts in the UK when their album is released at the end of the month, what with those heavenly “ooh-ooh-oohs” and that undeniable chorus, and as if the track itself wasn’t incentive enough to buy the single, it comes complete with two incredible remixes as well. Erol Alkan and SebastiAn are two of the most highly sought-after remixers in Europe right now, and both live up to their names with incredible reworkings of Klaxons’ pop masterpiece. Erol goes the ambitious route, turning the track into a sprawling, 8+ minute epoch, though I think I might prefer the instrumental dub version to the official remix found on the single. Get the Ekstra Spectral Rework (the officially-released remix) at Discobelle here, while the Instrumental Dub is available exclusively at Fluokids. It’s the SebastiAn remix, though, that really gets me all hot and bothered. It’s like “My Love” on ecstasy, what with that synth line that sounds like it was lifted directly from Timbaland’s flawless production work on the Justin Timberlake megahit, and it just might be the greatest thing you’ve ever heard.

MP3s:
“Golden Skans” – Klaxons ((highly recommended))
“Golden Skans” (SebastiAn Version 1.2.0 Remix) – Klaxons ((highly recommended))

And shit, did I mention that SebastiAn remix isn’t even the official version?! Looks like we’ll have to wait until next Tuesday (when the single is officially released) to hear that one, but if it’s any better than this one I just might implode. In other SebastiAn news, I threw his remix of Kelis’ “Bossy” up on my Top Remixes of ’06 post as a bit of an afterthought, but it’s since become my favorite mix of his by far, a remarkable feat considering how much I loathed the original track.

MP3: “Bossy” (SebastiAn Remix) – Kelis ((highly recommended))

YOUR COVER’S BLOWN: LILY ALLEN, GUILLEMOTS AND MORE
Holy shit, I love this song. And I fucking hate the Kaiser Chiefs, which I guess is kind of odd considering how much I loved the rest of the British dance rock takeover of 2005. But Lily Allen’s cover of “Oh My God” is just… unbelievable. Obviously, the fact that the esteemed Mark Ronson is working the boards on the track doesn’t hurt - in fact, it’s probably the main reason it’s so amazing to begin with - but Lily Allen just sounds so perfect singing the track that it’s hard to imagine she didn’t write it in the first place. My favorite song at the moment.

MP3: “Oh My God” – Lily Allen ((highly recommended))

Lily’s proven her proficiency for covers before, recording this beautiful version of the Kook’s “Naive” at her last appearance on Jo Whiley’s Live Lounge on BBC Radio One. I definitely prefer “Oh My God” (but let’s be honest, I’d prefer it to just about anything right now - it’s that good), but the original “Naive” is one of my absolute favorite songs of ‘06 and Lily’s version does it justice and more.

MP3: “Naive” - Lily Allen

Speaking of Live Lounge, the new Guillemots single was released today and it’s all kinds of wonderful. The band’s latest run at chart success (which has curiously evaded them so far) rides on the shoulders of an updated version of “Annie, Let’s Not Wait”, and while I can’t say I prefer the new version to the album version, I’ve come around to it, thanks in part to the brilliant shadowbox-animation video by director Corin Hardy (which you can [and should] view here). The real treat on the single, however, is the ‘Motts frantic, rollicking cover of Franz Ferdinand’s modern classic, “Take Me Out”, recorded on the Live Lounge and available for download below.

MP3: “Take Me Out” - Guillemots

Finally, the Blag Party remix/cover project that’s underway over at Blog Party has produced pretty mixed results so far (though the acoustic “Banquet” cover is awesome), but this electro-pop cover of “Like Eating Glass” is pretty great.

MP3: “Like Eating Glass” – Tempera[mental]

AND EVEN MORE REMIX HOTNESS
We’re only two weeks in and 2007 is already shaping up to be an even better year for remixes than ’06 was, which is no small feat to say the least. We’ve already got those Erol Alkan and SebastiAn remixes of “Golden Skans” sitting at the top of the pile, but Hadouken!’s indie-grime reworking of “The Prayer”, South Central’s obliteration of the Maccabees “X-Ray”, and Girl Talk’s mashtastic remix of Grizzly Bear’s “Knife” ain’t nothin’ to fuck with either.

MP3s:
“The Prayer” (Hadouken! Remix) – Bloc Party ((highly recommended))
“X-Ray” (South Central Remix) – The Maccabees
“Knife” (Girl Talk Remix) – Grizzly Bear (via P-Fork)

And as long as we’re on the topic of Hadouken! (as in Ryu’s signature move in Street Fighter – I know, awesome band name), I might as well throw up their bomb-ass take on “Atlantis To Interzone” as well, though the quality leaves a bit to be desired.

MP3: “Atlantis To Interzone” (Hadouken! Remix) – Klaxons

Yeah, that’s all for now. Stay tuned though, I promise these lists are almost done.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 15th, 2007 at 6:19 pm and is filed under Live Review. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.