Good Weather For Airstrikes

Thanks Vassar, for reminding me that, hey, college is fucking fun. Sure, it helps when you have one of the best bands in the world rocking your student body to their very core, as TV on the Radio did in brilliant form last week, but yeah, thanks for everything Vassar. I made the beautiful two hour train ride up to Poughkeepsie last Saturday to visit Lizzy and catch TV on the Radio’s show with the Noisettes, and man, am I glad I did. I didn’t really know what to expect from a show that was held in what was essentially a glorified student lounge, but props to ViCE (Vassar College Entertainment) for making it work and also to the Vassar kids for being a ridiculously awesome audience. UVA got great shows all the time (Feist, Jose Gonzalez, Les Savy Fav, Architecture in Helsinki… the list goes on), but the audience was largely comprised of the cooler-than-thou artsy 20-somethings that populate downtown Charlottesville instead of actual UVA students. Last night, on the other hand, the crowd was made up nearly exclusively of Vassar kids, sneaking sips from water bottles full of vodka (just us?) and preparing to have the time of their lives.

When I spoke with Kele Okereke on the topic of great new British bands at the Ed Banger show a few weeks back, he called the Noisettes his “favorite band in England at the moment”. Obviously, I checked them out as soon as I got home and loved what I heard, and thus was thrilled to hear that they’d be opening for TVotR at Vassar. They didn’t disappoint. At all. In fact, think of the exact opposite of “disappointed”, multiply it by 1,000 and you’re only beginning to get a rough idea of how much they impressed me. They even came damn close to justifying the Guardian’s bold assertion that the Noisettes “are the best live band in Britain”, so yeah, they were like real good. Lead singer Shingai Shoniwa is a fucking superstar in the making, and she did an incredible job working the crowd despite the fact that outside of my group of friends, you’d have been hard-pressed to find a single person in attendance who’d ever heard the band’s name, let alone their music. Shoniwa owned the room, prancing around the stage, climbing up on the speakers and working the kids into a frenzy like she was Ninja from the Go! Team and had just overdosed on awesome pills. She’s also like, really really good-looking and a damn fine guitar player as well, so yeah – this one’s the complete package.

They opened with “Bridge to Canada”, perhaps the only dull moment of their entire set, before launching into recent singles “Don’t Give Up” and “Scratch Your Name”. “Don’t Give Up” set the high-energy tone for the evening right off the bat, with a central riff that’s infective and danceable enough to carry an iPod commercial and a huge chorus that was more than enough to make sure everyone in attendance had their eyes glued to the stage for the remainder of their set. “Scratch Your Name”, the band’s most recent single, is an uplifting track with a motivational chorus punctuated by emphatic, stabbing guitar riffs and sounded awesome in the live setting. Debut single “Iwe” was excellent also despite being one of my least favorite tracks by the band on record, but it was “The Count of Monte Cristo”, my favorite song of theirs, that was the true highlight of their set. A departure from the heavier, more rocking sound of the rest of their debut, “The Count of Monte Cristo” is a more soulful, almost jazzy number that almost recalls KT Tunstall at times and makes its money on the call-and-return vocals of its brilliant chorus. They closed in flawless fashion with “Sister Rosetta (Capture The Spirit)” before the proverbial curtain fell on a truly incredible performance that undoubtedly won them an entire room full of new fans. Having just released their debut, What’s The Time Mr. Wolf, on Universal Motown (yeah… Motown) in the US, look for the Noisettes to do big thing in 2007 and for Shoniwa’s star to continue to rise as she dazzles audiences across the globe on a regular basis.

Download two of the many standout tracks from the LP below, along with a sufficiently bangin’ remix of new single “Scratch Your Name” (which sees release for a second time on May 7th) courtesy of the Baseball Furies.

MP3s:
“Don’t Give Up” - The Noisettes
“The Count of Monte Cristo” - The Noisettes ((highly recommended))
“Scratch Your Name” (Baseball Furies Remix) - The Noisettes

TV on the Radio took the stage a bit later than scheduled around 10:45 and had the kids freaking out from the get-go. The sound and stage set-up wasn’t nearly as good as when I saw the band at the 9:30 Club last fall (but I mean, that’s to be expected), but the incredible crowd more than made up for it and the show proved to be my best TVotR live experience yet. “Young Liars” and “The Wrong Way” kicked off the night and the crowd loved every minute of the show from the very beginning. “Dreams” and “Province” provided early highlights, but shit just got absolutely crazy when “Wolf Like Me” dropped five songs in. At the 9:30 show last fall there were a lot of crossed-arms and shifting from foot to foot before “Wolf Like Me” hit and sent a considerable portion of the audience into a frenzy, and while the Vassar kids were way into it from the first note last week, “Wolf Like Me” took everything to a whole new level of high octane out-rocking. We’re talking like, full-fledged floor shaking and shit. “Dirtywhirl”, my original favorite track off of Cookie Mountain, kept the energy up and the kids moving, as did “I Was A Lover” and a rousing rendition of B-side favorite “Dry Drunk Emporer”. “Satellite” capped off the main set brilliantly and made me fall in love with it all over again after largely neglecting the Young Liars EP for the last year or so.

The main set was great, but the encore was really something special. Opening innocently enough with “A Method”, the band then invited the Noisettes and company out to join them for the next track, an absolutely ridiculous rendition of “Let The Devil In”. To call the performance “rousing” would be like calling Katrina breezy, the hurricane reference a fitting one considering the sheer unbridled force packed by the band’s penultimate performance for the evening. The Noisettes improvised percussion sections on anything they could get their hands on, Dave Sitek helped out drummer Jaleel Bunton pounded out ship-sinking rhythms on the drum kit and Tunde Adebimpe screamed the chorus through a megaphone to a blown-away audience. But it was closer “Staring At The Sun” that set the high-water mark for excellence that evening. Originally recorded with an electronic drum machine, Jaleel infuses the track with an astonishing vitality not found on record in the live setting. Things even reached “Wolf Like Me”-proportions, with the floorboards pulsating once again under the sheer force of hundreds of jumping kids. All good things must and do come to an end though, and the band hit the dressing room after the songs final notes rang out over a considerably awe-struck audience.

MP3s:
“Satellite” - TV On The Radio
“Staring At The Sun” (EP Version) - TV On The Radio ((highly recommended))
“Dirtywhirl” - TV On The Radio
“Wolf Like Me” - TV On The Radio ((highly recommended))
“Staring At The Sun” (Diplo’s Hollertronix Remix) - TV On The Radio
“Staring At The Sun” - The Subways

After the show I helped Lizzy, our dear friend Kira and the rest of the ViCE crew load out the band’s equipment and take apart the stage. Earlier that day Lizzy had been giving the job of walking TVotR’s drummer, Jaleel, across campus to where he could find a shower. They hit it off quite well - because Lizzy’s fly like that - and before parting ways he expressed a desire to hit up a college party after the show. Lizzy didn’t really take it seriously, but sure enough Jaleel popped out of his dressing room and told us to retrieve him from the tour bus after we were done.

We went out to the bus about an hour later where Jaleel, who proved to be one of the nicest human beings I’ve ever met, was kickin’ it with Gerard (keys/bass/knob-twiddling/auxiliary percussion). We chilled there for a bit and enjoyed some beer and cigarettes, discussing film with the band (unanimously agreeing that Notes on a Scandal was the best film of last year), half-paying attention to The Descent (which was playing on the bus’s nice ass flat-screen… Dave’s two word review: ‘too screamy’) and generally reveling in the company of our idols. Shortly thereafter we rolled out with Jaleel, feeling like the coolest kids on the block (nay, the universe) as countless passersby offered shouts of endless praise for Jaleel and the band in general. After stopping by a fizzled out party or two, we rolled over to the crib of ViCE chair Jeremy Robinson (aka DJ Half Price aka the dropper of hot jams), who kept the party hot on the 1’s and 2’s (how long I’ve waited to use that phrase) well until the early hours of the morning. And so there we were, partying, making hard lemonades and cutting a rug with the drummer of one of the most talented bands in the world like it wasn’t no thing. This just in: it was very much a thing, and it very well just might have been one of the best nights of my life.

While his playlist drew heavily from mainstream hip-hop staples last Saturday, DJ Half Price has also displayed a considerable proficiency for mash-ups, dropping the following jams over the course of the evening. Both are sufficiently ill, with Half Price reinventing Hot Chip’s “My Piano” and New Order’s “Bizzare Love Triangle” with a new hip-hop flavor. I’ll be honest, I can’t say I’d heard either of the hip-hop tracks involved here, but I can tell you these mash-ups are at least 15 different kinds of hot.

MP3s:
“Get Down With My Piano” - Hot Chip vs. Busta Rhymes
“Bizarre Love Panties” - New Order vs. Young Blaze
We capped off an incredible evening sharing a joint with the Jaleel, Kyp Malone and Dave “I smoke a pound of weed a month” Sitek in what was perhaps the single most surreal experience of my life. Suffice it to say, shit was bananas. Sometimes life is good.

In somewhat related news, Lizzy and Kira have their own radio show that airs on Vassar’s WVKR every Tuesday night/Wednesday morning from 2-4 AM. These are some severely awesome girls we’re talking about here, and their playlists are every bit as consistently fantastic as they are. Plus, we’re into like, exactly the same shit and their playlists often draw heavily from GWFAS-approved material, so if you were ever interested in hearing what Good Weather For Airstrikes were like if turned into a radio show, then be sure to hit up the streaming audio at WVKR.org Tuesday nights at 2. I mean, it’s exam week (you need this) and doesn’t everyone love attractive girls with good record collections?

Vampire Weekend are going to be MASSIVE, and with offers beginning to flood in from labels all around the UK, a surprising (but completely deserved) write-up in Rolling Stone and a recently announced opening slot supporting the Mystery Jets on June 2nd at Bowery, it looks like they’re well on their way. No word yet on why every imprint in the US isn’t falling all over themselves to lock these kids up, but it won’t be long before VW are at the top of everyone’s must-sign list, especially if they keep putting on shows like the one last night at Union Hall in Brooklyn.

First a word about Union Hall, as it’s quite a lovely place. The wall-to-wall, fully stocked bookshelves and library decor upstairs, coupled with the explorer’s club vibe of the place, immediately established it as the perfect venue for Vampire Weekend’s highbrow brand of indie rock kwassa kwassa and frontman Ezra Koenig’s pointedly intellectual lyrics, and there were even two indoor bocce courts for the fifteen people in Park Slope who actually know how to play the game. Fireplaces, leather club chairs and Victorian couches only further add to the atmosphere of stately refinement within the venue’s walls, and I half-expected to see Miss Scarlet murder Colonel Mustard with the candlestick right before my very eyes, though it never quite came to fruition.

Downstairs was where the action was though, and Vampire Weekend took the stage around 9:45 to a packed room of eager spectators. The band got the night started on the right foot with “Mansard Roof”, a retro, keys-heavy number complete with a swelling strings section and serrated guitar riffs galore, but it wasn’t until three songs later when “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa” dropped that all in attendance previously unfamiliar with the band were sonically bitch-slapped into the unavoidable realization that they were in the presence of something truly special. Other highlights included personal favorites “Oxford Comma” and “Campus”, but the huge crowd-pleaser was “A-Punk”, a high energy track featuring sing-a-long-friendly “Hey-Hey-Heys!” and “Oh-ohhh-ohs” that seems destined to be forever immortalized as the band’s debut single proper in the near future.

The unquestionable zenith of the band’s performance, however, was rousing closer “Walcott”, with its ebullient keys section and furious pacing. It was so good in fact, that I may never be able to listen to the current studio version again, as it feels flat and lifeless in comparison its live counterpart, which rounded out a near-flawless performance containing nary a dull moment. Even the three new songs, “I Stand Corrected”, an untitled number and the tentatively-titled “M79″ (”named after a certain [NYC] bus route”), were excellent and incredibly promising, the first sign of what’s to come for the band. Coupled with the 11 excellent demos that currently comprise the bands demo LP, the band looks to have more great songs than they could possibly know what to do with. For now, it sounds like the band will be self-releasing a three-track EP/7″ next month, before inevitably signing a big deal and rocketing to indie rock stardom. So yeah, see them now so you can say you saw them in the basement of a bar when they’re selling out Webster this time next year.

I chatted with the band briefly in passing after the show last night, but it was after their Mercury show at the beginning of the month that I really got to know them a bit and find out some of their background. According to Ezra, Vampire Weekend was originally the title of a “stupid” film they dreamed up back in college, in which vampires from Cape Cod killed the protagonist’s father, whose dying words demanded that his son avenge his death by going to Cape Cod and killing the vampires. Or something. I guess the movie never worked out, but they ended up taking its title as their band name (though apparently they considered shortening it to just “Weekend” at one point), and the Cape Cod focus lives on in their songwriting. None of the members are actually from the region, but Ezra professed a romantic fascination with the area, likely fostered over the course of a few summers he spent in New England as a kid. Keyboardist and sometime backup vocalist Rostam Batmanglij appears to account for a significant portion of the musical brains of the group, having some experience in scoring films, including David Wain’s upcoming comedy epoch, The Ten. Furthermore, his last name prominently features the word “Batman”, which is sufficiently awesome and noteworthy in itself. Just sayin’. Also excellent is the fact that apparently every member of this band looks like me, as I was mistaken for a band member (the drummer twice, the lead singer three times) an incredible five times merely walking from the stage to the exit of the Mercury Lounge after their April 6th show there, which could prove to be most excellent after the band’s inevitable ascent to indie rock prominence in the coming months (”Yeah, I’m totally their auxiliary percussionist, shall we go back to my place?”).

Alright, now I’m just rambling. Long story short: Vampire Weekend are fucking phenomenal, you should do everything in your power to catch them in New York this summer, great live show, they write nothing but hits, etc, etc, hear more songs at their MySpace or get at these mp3s below.

MP3s:
“Oxford Comma” - Vampire Weekend ((highly recommended))
“Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa” - Vampire Weekend ((highly recommended))
“Walcott” (Insane Mix #2) - Vampire Weekend

You guys are awesome. Over $100 dollars in donations in barely two weeks, more than enough to get us back on our feet and even begin to help me make back the some $300 Dreamhost scored for free when they shut our shit down without so much as the slightest hint of a warning (or a refund) two weeks go. So yeah, thanks. A lot. You guys are the best.

We back, y’alls. And what better way to make a triumphant return than with another piping hot exclusive? The Remix Artist Collective hooks us up once again with another exclusive remix, this time for CSS’s “Let’s Make Love And Listen To Death From Above”. I wouldn’t count myself as a CSS fan in the least, but shit, I like this. The original does absolutely nothing for me, but hey, add some massive synth stabs and a huge beat and all of a sudden I’m fully down. The RAC’s most experimental remix to date, it’s as heavy as Justice and as frenzied as SebastiAn, wearing a tangible heavy metal influence on its sleeve the whole way. Throw in some poppy synth progressions for good measure and we’re absolutely golden. Definitely outshines the Simian Mobile Disco remix of the track, and actually makes me able to tolerate the source material, so yeah - high fives all around.

MP3: “Let’s Make Love” (RAC Mix) - CSS [exclusive]

In other CSS news - and possibly the last time you’ll ever hear CSS come up on this site - the band just remixed Lily Allen’s latest single, “Alfie”, and what do you know - they did a pretty great job. Again, all violent synth stabs and whatnot, but who knew “Alfie” could be re-worked into a legitimate dancefloor banger?

MP3: “Alfie” (CSS Remix) - Lily Allen

SIMIAN MOBILE DISCO, WHERE YOU AT? /// PART DEUX
My inbox is full of emails from people wanting me to check out (typically) shitty music on a daily basis. Every once in a while, however, something completely unexpected arrives to make my day and remind why I keep sifting through miles upon miles of e-correspondence everyday in the first place. Ladies and gentlemen, meet “Sleep Deprivation”, a new track off Simian Mobile Disco’s up coming full-length debut, Attack Decay Sustain Release. Basically a crash course in dropping the motherfucking pressure, the track is 100% instrumental and 1000% bad-ass. This album cannot possibly drop soon enough.

MP3: “Sleep Deprivation” - Simian Mobile Disco

Alright, Dreamhost just has it out for us. You may remember a few weeks ago I got my account shut down without any advance warning whatsoever and without any kind of formal complaint ever reaching me. Thanks to one Mr. Nicky Berger, who donated his entire server to us, I was able to get shit back up and running in no time, but hey guess what - Dreamhost shut us down again. I’ve spent too much money on this shit to afford to pay for the bandwith and server space it takes to keep this place up and running and will definitely not be working with Dreamhost EVER again, so for the foreseeable future we’ll be kicking it old school around these parts, using external hosting (mainly zShare, MediaFire and MegaUpload). It sucks, I know, but there’s nothing I can do about it. Discobelle’s been making it work for them for over a year now, though, so I guess it’s not the end of the world.

That said, there is something you can do to help. See that DONATE button right over their on the sidebar? Well, for one, you could donate if you wanted to. I’d like to take this time to thank the nine people who have donated money since this site started in two years ago, but yeah, it’s going to take a little more than nine minimal (though greatly appreciated!) donations to get things back up and running around these parts. I’ve never been one to use external hosting and have always loved being able to provide direct downloads for you guys, so if anyone has any brilliant ideas be sure to let me know in the comments, hit me up on AIM (screen name = DerekDavies) or email me at DerekDavies@aol.com. Sorry about this, hopefully we can get this resolved sooner rather than later.

The Rapture’s Pieces of the People We Love was more or less an album that lived and died on the strength of two exceptional singles, so while it’s logical considering the popularity of the Rapture in the UK, it hadn’t even occurred to me that a third single would be on its way before too long. It’s arrived now in the form of “Pieces of the People We Love”, the title track off of the band’s aforementioned 2006 LP, and well, it’s a farrr cry from “Get Myself Into It” and “W.A.Y.U.H.”. That said, it’s just pleasant enough to get your fingers snapping and your feet tapping, and it just might make you break into an involuntary strut if you find yourself rocking this on a metropolitan side street. It’s a classy track, you see - all steady, languorous drums and plodding basslines - nearly as classy as the video that accompanies it, one of the band’s best to date (see below). Then those “na na na”s hit and your destined to have this one bouncing around your head for at least a week’s time. You may return to “Pieces” a few times more after that, but coming from a band that’s made their name on effortlessly fun, disco-friendly dance tracks, it’s a bit of a head-scratcher. Neither terribly original (haven’t we heard those na na na’s at least a million times before?) nor terribly, y’know, fun, “Pieces of the People We Love” is still a good way to pass the time, even if we’re all aware that New York’s favorite dance-rockers can do much better than this.

MP3: “Pieces of the People We Love” - The Rapture

Alright, I’ve said it: the song’s not much to write home about. But damn, the video sure as shit is. In the band’s third collaboration with Waverly’s Ben Dickinson, whose teamed up with Jon Watts on this occasion, they manage to capture the perfect video. It’s so perfect in fact, that it achieves the rare feat of actually making the song more enjoyable and even manages to eclipse Dickinson’s previous two clips for “Get Myself Into It” and “W.A.Y.U.H.”, the latter of which was my #3 video of 2006. Having seen the video, I can’t hear the song without smiling and picturing Matty Safer swirling a glass of brandy in his sharpest suit and wishing I was doing the same thing. The whole thing is executed beautifully. It’s flawlessly composed, and the desaturated coloring is wonderful, the subtle color tones of the clip taking the whole venture to new heights. Hell, even Luke Jenner’s glitter suit dancing breakdown is fantastic, reminding you that no matter how classy the Rapture may come off as in this clip (and they come off as very classy), they still know how to have a good time. Furthermore, the choreography is excellent as well and the climbing-from-the-shadows effect is an interesting idea that’s just icing on the cake here. Loving it.

Video: “Pieces of the People We Love”
Artist: The Rapture
Director: Ben Dickinson & Jon Watts
Watch: [YouTube]
Download: [Quicktime • 49 MB]

MOTHAFUCKA’S GONNA DROP THE PRESSURE
So thanks to reader Nathan, I’ve now got the Feeling’s cover of “Doctor Pressure” (the Miami Sound Machine vs. “Drop The Pressure” mash up) and I must say I’m both pleased and disappointed at the same time. For the most part, I like it. But then they hit the chorus and… “bidi-bidi-bidiii drop the pressure”? BIDI-BIDI-BIDI?! Seriously, what the fuck? I mean, I guess they can’t say the actual lyric on air, but then why cover the song if you’re going to remove its most integral part. Bummer. Decide for yourself below.

MP3: “Doctor Pressure” - The Feeling

SIMIAN MOBILE DISCO, WHERE YOU AT?
“It’s The Beat” has surely been in heavy rotation on all y’all’s pods since it dropped earlier this month, but it’s been a minute now since the SMD broke us off with a new remix to shake our collective stick at. Worth the wait though, as their brand new remix of Muse’s “Knights of Cydonia”, off the band’s new single release for “Invincible”, is at least three or four different kinds of ill. And it’s a good thing too, as “Invincible” by itself certainly isn’t worth your hard-earned dolla dolla bills. Sure, they’ve done better (see: “Magick”), but you’ve got to admit you got a little hot and bothered when you heard that “No one’s gonna take you aliiiiiiive” burst forth from the electronic mish-mashery in all its epic glory. You feel me?

MP3: “Knights of Cydonia” (Simian Mobile Disco Remix) - Muse

To the top of the charts then, shall we? It’s hard to imagine this going anywhere else, as “I Still Remember” - while nowhere close the band’s best song (or even best single) - is far and away Bloc Party’s most chart-friendly product to date. A tale of the unspoken sexual tension between young heterosexual boys disguised as an anthem for young people wrought with nostalgia for lost love and missed opportunities, the track lives and dies on a monumental riff that stands out as the single most commercially viable thing Bloc have created to this point in their career. Sure, it could be construed as a bit vanilla and overly melodramatic - hell, you wouldn’t be too far off if you described it as a more energetic Snow Patrol track - but it’s easily the most universal track on A Weekend In The City and an obvious single choice. Good, but nothing terribly life changing.

But as is often the case with Bloc Party single releases (that weak-ass US-only release of “Helicopter” aside), the B-sides take it to a whole new plane of excellence. Of all the great B-sides that surfaced when AWITC was released in February, “Selfish Son” gets the call here, and it’s by far Jacknife Lee’s best work for the band to date. The biggest difference between Lee’s work for Snow Patrol and Bloc Party, I’ve found, is that Bloc’s tracks are still songs if you remove Lee from them and strip away his production work. But Lee might as well be Snow Patrol’s six member, as it’s fairly impossible to imagine a Snow Patrol track not drenched in the electronic flourishes that Lee brings to the table, and that’s pretty much the case on “Selfish Son”. Not that that’s a bad thing - I still regard Final Straw as not only one of the best produced albums I’ve ever heard, but one of my favorites as well. “Selfish Son” is all electronic drumbeats, rumbling, ominous synths and twinkling production flourishes, over which Kele delivers dark lyrics in another excellent vocal performance, and it’s easily in the top three AWITC B-sides to surface so far.

Elsewhere, the remixes are also impossibly good. First up, we’ve got SebastiAn’s rework which is just all kinds of ridiculous. It’s hard to even know where to begin, but one thing’s for sure - SebastiAn has just established himself as the force to be reckoned with in the remixing game; he’s operating on a whole new level right now. I mean, just look at this remix. “I Still Remember” is arguably the safest and most vanilla track on A Weekend In The City and SebastiAn turns it into an absolute MONSTER, drawing you in gently with some seductive spiraling synths before dropping the motherfucking beat at the 0:50 mark, like Zeus himself raining thunder and lightning down on the unsuspecting masses below. Things carry on like this the rest of the way out, as Kele’s “I should have kissed you!” yelps, punctuated by SebastiAn’s massive, bass-heavy synth surges, recall all the desperate urgency of Silent Alarm that’s sadly absent on the new record. SebastiAn, I bow before you.

There are a few other mixes on the release that follow the SebastiAn root and reinvent the track as a club-eligible dance edit, but Lull’s aptly-title “Music Box & Tears” mix outdoes them all by going the opposite direction, slowing things down and turning the melodrama up to 11. Heavy on strings, twinkly sounds and cinematic melodrama, Lull does for “I Still Remember” what Engineers did for “Blue Light” back on 2005’s Silent Alarm: Remixed - that is, he removes any semblance of guitars or percussion, shuns even the slightest notion of Rock ‘n Roll and puts the track in ethereal mode and goes full speed ahead. Kele’s original lyrical template remains completely intact as synthetic strings wash across the mix in undeniably epic fashion and twinkling keys tug at your heartstrings like their name was Audrey Hepburn. So yeah, it’s quite excellent, and just might be the best non-dance remix of a Bloc Party track since Engineers’ aforementioned masterpiece made our Top 10 Songs of 2005 two years ago. All in all, the single release of “I Still Remember” is the complete package, and even if the track itself doesn’t quite warrant the 8 out of 10 I’ve given it below, the brilliance of the B-sides cannot be denied as I’m once again reminded just how good it is to be a Bloc Party fan.

MP3s:
“I Still Remember” - Bloc Party
“Selfish Son” - Bloc Party
“I Still Remember” (SebastiAn Remix) - Bloc Party ((highly recommended))
“I Still Remember” (Music Box & Tears Mix) - Bloc Party ((highly recommended))

I’m also trying to work music video content into as many of my single reviews as possible now, as I’ve recently begun to receive monthly DVD’s of each month’s top music videos, so I can now offer videos in higher quality than you can find them anywhere else on the internet. The “I Still Remember” video has been circulating for a while now, but only as a fairly low-quality MTV Online rip, so I’m here rectify the situation and offer it in beautiful hi-res for all you perfectionists out there. The video itself capitalizes on a brilliant treatment and concept for the most part, but falters thanks to a rather cringe-worthy acting performance by one Mr. Kele Okereke. The whole thing’s quite pretty and certainly puts the large budget to good use, but I’ve much preferred Bloc Party’s past videos. That said, this is the perfect treatment for a band trying to make it big in the US, as it manages to get the band as much face time as possible through performance footage and emotive close-ups while still providing an interesting plotline and concept to keep viewers entertained.

Video: “I Still Remember”
Artist: Bloc Party
Director: Aggressive
Watch: [YouTube]
Download: [Quicktime • 50 MB]

In the spirit of heightened music video appreciation, I highly suggest (nay, I demand) that y’alls check out Obtusity sooner rather than later. If long-winded (in a good way), hyper-academic analysis and all-over-it music video coverage are your thing, then Obtusity is your new homepage. Get on it.

It’s Klaxons. It’s Studio B. Do I even need to write this review? You already know it was an awesome time.

It had been over a month since I last got ridiculous at Studio B when Simian Mobile Disco came to town on March 6th, and I’ve spent the last few weeks in legitimate withdrawal from the venue. Suffice it to say, I was jonesin’ hardcore to get back there, and news that Klaxons would be bringing their neon-flavored jams to the venue had me in line the day tickets went on sale back in February. So yeah… I was fucking ready.

Apparently so was everyone else though, as the venue was packed before the clock even struck 11 and almost unnavigable when we returned just before the band went on at 12:30. Opening was Bonde de Role and Surkin, but I made an executive decision and decided that getting supremely fucked up was a better way to spend my time than checking out two bands I wasn’t all that into, so we rolled out to The Palace to work on that with a few (read: seven) $1.50 brews before heading back over to Studio B just as Klaxons we’re about to take the stage. Things got a bit intense as we tried to make our way towards the center of the dancefloor, as the crowd was PACKED, and we began the show in a less-than-ideal spot way off to the left of the stage, conveniently situated directly behind a large concrete column. Things opened up once the band began to play though, and a brutal one-two punch of “The Bouncer” and “Atlantis To Interzone” threw the kids into a frenzy and got the crowd moving right from the get-go. Shortly thereafter came blockbuster singles “Golden Skans” and “Magick”, with solid album tracks “As Above, So Below”, the “She’s Hearing Voices”-esque “Two Receivers” and “Hall of Records”, which I hadn’t really given the time of day until now, but sounded awesome with its incessant “Come and dance with me!” refrain.

Finally, just as that unimpeachable bassline from “Gravity’s Rainbow” began to blare out over the speakers, the pit opened up for a fleeting moment and I was able to squeeze in and get in on the frenzied fist-pumping and glowstick-waving. “Gravity’s” proved to be the highlight of the evening to that point, but it was straight-up GAME OVER when “Not Over Yet” dropped immediately after it, and shit was just bananas in the pit. Honestly, I’d be surprised if I didn’t bloody at least six people in the process of rocking out harder than I’ve ever rocked out before, and I can honestly pinpoint the song as perhaps the most awesome four minutes of my life to this point not involving Bloc Party, sexual intercourse or that quesadilla I ate in Mexico that one time. And while it definitely should have ended there, as the high-water mark for excitement had clearly been reached for the evening, it curiously continued for two more songs. The always decent “Isle of Her” and the somewhat dreadful “Four Horsemen of 2012″ were fine and all, and the live setting did allow me to enjoy “Horsemen” for the first time to date, but the fact remains that the band blew their load a bit too early in a big way. Come on now, Klaxons, you can structure a setlist better than that. All in all though, I can’t complain, those kids know how to put on a phenomenal show and they worked the crowd at Studio B like no artist I’ve seen there since Girl Talk brought the place to its knees back in February. Below you’ll find an assortment of Klaxons’ hotness including brand new B-side “Electrickery” and Soulwax’s MASSIVE remix of “Gravity’s Rainbow”, both off the track’s brand new single release, as well as two flawless live recordings to give you an idea of just how out of control the live experience is. Enjoy.

MP3s:
“Not Over Yet” - Klaxons ((highly recommended))
“Electrickery” - Klaxons
“Gravity’s Rainbow” (Soulwax Remix) - Klaxons ((highly recommended))
“Golden Skans” (Live in Manchester) - Klaxons
“The Bouncer” (Live in Manchester) - Klaxons

MORE! HOT! FIRE!
We’ve been loving Does It Offend You, Yeah? ever since we first got our hands on “We Are Rockstars” way back when, so it’s my pleasure to present to you this simple, yet mad effective re-edit of the track from Australian DJ extraordinaire WOODIE!. Does It Offend You, Yeah? are set to do massive things in the UK this year, mark my words.

MP3: “We Are Rockstars” (WOODIE! Remix) - Does It Offend You, Yeah?

Also, DIOYY?’s XFM radio mix is the best DJ mix I’ve heard in a minute. Get at it here.

Nick Reiner is a good dude. I met him at Vice last summer when we interned together, and he was the first to tell me about Girl Talk wayyy before any of the blogs began to catch on later in the summer, so I knew he was mad decent from the get-go. We saw some bomb-ass shows together, had an awesome time at Vice and generally hit it off quite well. And then he’s all, “Oh yeah, I’m the lead singer of this band called Goodnight & Goodnight“, and I’m all, “Awesome, I remember downloading your tracks from Gorilla vs Bear a while back and enjoying them immensely”, so that was just icing on the cake. Then later I found out dude was the touring keyboardist for Union of Knives in 2005, which I find to be at least 1000% bad-ass, considering they’re maybe my favorite electro-rock act in the UK and “Evil Has Never” is like, MY JAM.

So naturally, I was sufficiently pumped when I heard that he’d started DJing in Philly under the name DJ Tanner with a party night called Full House because, I mean, anything referencing Full House is pretty solid in my book. After the realization that there were a shitload of like-minded, musically-inclined kids with a penchant for irony calling themselves DJ Tanner out there, he changed his name to DJ Battlecat and started to get serious. Below you’ll find his masterwork, “Bump It”, an incredible mash up of Spank Rock’s “Bump” and Salt-N-Pepa’s “Push It”, along with a seriously ill dance edit of Grizzly Bear’s “Knife”, the original of which I’m just now starting to wake up to as one of the best tracks of last year. “Bump It” falters a bit once or twice towards the beginning with a few minimally awkward moments, but once that synth line from “Push It” drops it’s just game over. Feel it below.

MP3s:
“Bump It” (Spank Rock vs Salt-N-Pepa) - DJ Battlecat ((highly recommended))
“Knife” (DJ Battlecat’s Can You Feel The Beat Remix) - Grizzly Bear

I don’t like the Kaiser Chiefs. One bit. So why did I go see them at Roseland Ballroom tonight, when they rolled through NYC on their current NME-sponsored tour with the Walkmen and Annuals? Because I think Annuals just might be America’s most talented and promising young band, even if it was kind of curious seeing them on a tour put on by the NME. Plus, having seen them put on two lovely in-store acoustic performances (which is two more in-store acoustic performances than I’ve seen of any other band), I was jonesin’ for a taste of the real thing. And what a taste it was.

Unfortunately, since the band had told me last night that they’d be taking the stage at 8, I arrived at 7:45 only to learn that they in fact went on at 7:30, and that I had missed the first half of their set. Color me bummed. That said, I was still able to catch four songs, and what I did hear was fucking phenomenal. “Dry Clothes” was fantastic, as was “Carry Around”, which was my original favorite song of theirs, but it was a mind-blowing performance of “Brother” complete with a four man drum sesh and all sorts of maniacal screaming on the part of frontman Adam Baker that let everyone in attendance know just how special this band is.

With the clock hitting 8 and their 30-minute opening slot dwindling, I expected the band to hit the showers after “Brother”, but in an awesome turn of events, they transitioned smoothly from “Brother” into an absolute incredible closing number that’s currently unavailable, but I’m told will be on their next record. The largely instrumental track opened with a stirring piano riff that kept feeling like it was only seconds away from turning into Vanessa Carlton’s “1,000 Miles” (though I’m pretty glad it didn’t), before the drums roared to life and square-danced with some electronic meanderings for a bit, gradually building in intensity and threatening to strike at any moment. The coup de grace was finally delivered shortly thereafter when the drums dropped out for a moment to allow guitarists Kenny Florence and Mike Robinson to step into the spotlight and lay down some monumental riffage that stood out as the singular highlight of the entire evening. Eventually the drums returned to their former glory, some vocals were laid down and the piano returned to close things out, and the lights dimmed on the set of the obvious stars of the evening, no matter what the marquee read. Despite catching only four (albeit phenomenal) tracks, Annuals showed me an incredible display of passion and raw energy not seen from a new band by me since Cold War Kids last April and the Arcade Fire in January of 2005 before that, which is some pretty decent company to be in if you ask me. These kids are going to do huge things.

MP3s:
“Brother” - Annuals ((highly recommended))
“Carry Around” - Annuals

Despite my lack of enthusiasm for both the Walkmen (”The Rat” aside, of course) and the Kaiser Chiefs, I stuck around because I paid thirty fucking dollars for my ticket and have heard from countless respected sources that regardless of my negative feelings towards le Chiefs, their live show was not to be missed. The Walkmen, whose attire suggested they came straight from the office, provided the sedatives of the evening in the form of one of the more boring sets I’ve seen recently. To be fair, though, I left the crowd to grab a comfortable seat and kind of stopped paying attention after they mercifully graced the audience with “The Rat” three songs in. Suffice it to say, they weren’t much fun. They did, however, have the littlest drummer I’ve ever seen. Seriously, dude looked like he’d just gotten back from his bar mitzvah. Shit was adorable.

MP3: “The Rat” - The Walkmen ((highly recommended))

Anyway, after the Walkmen sufficiently lulled everyone into a state of peaceful tranquility it was time for the Kaiser Chiefs to take the stage, and after keeping us waiting around for quite some time with those huge NME.COM spotlights soaring all over the place, they finally did. And you know what? They put on a pretty good show. But they were certainly twats about it. I mean, it’s remarkable how much I dislike them, which really bothers me considering I loved pretty much every other band to emerge from the dance-rock movement of 2005 (except Kasabian. Fuck Kasabian). I’m pretty sure they’re all older than they should be, and referring to themselves as “The World Famous Kaiser Chiefs!” didn’t help them much in my book either.

Furthermore, Ricky Wilson was quite the d-bag himself, demanding that the audience sing all the words to every single song and saying things like “Obviously everyone here knows all the words to this one” and so on and so forth. But yeah, I guess he can work a crowd pretty well, and he does a pretty impressive job of pogo-ing maniacally about the stage whilst simultaneously maintaining a rhythm on his tambourine. And the part when he put his microphone in the mic stand and then threw the stand up in the air, catching only the microphone when it landed was kind of cool. But yeah, whatever, they put on a good live show, I said it. I even found myself getting into tracks I previously loathed like “Every Day I Love You Less And Less” and “Nananana”, but hey - I wasn’t happy about it. I will, however, relent that “Ruby” is catchy-as-shit and sounded awesome live, but how can you not enjoy a track with a chorus as ruthlessly addictive as “Ruby-Ruby-Ruby-Ruby-Ruby!”, as insultingly simple as it may be. So yes, in conclusion: the Kaiser Chiefs put on an impressive live show and did a solid job of working the crowd, but I still wish they would go away, and sooner rather than later.

MP3: “Ruby” - Kaiser Chiefs

OH MY GOODNESS
This makes me about as happy as anything I’ve ever heard. Thanks to GvB for this one.

Yeah that’s all. Klaxons tomorrow night. At Studio B. YES x 1,000,000.

Alright. I know. I’ve been posting on Bloc Party a lot recently. And by “a lot”, I mean the last four posts have all prominently involved the band in one way or another, my bad. But they’ve got a huge new single out that should be their biggest commercial success to date, “I Still Remember”, and there’s just a lot going on for the band right now. So forgive me if I make one more post dedicated to the band, but come on, it’s Bloc Party covering Nelly Furtado! I mean, fuck, does it get any better than that? Answer: No.

The band performed yesterday on Jo Whiley’s morning show on Radio 1, the best part of which is always the Live Lounge sessions, in which Whiley’s guests head into the lounge and perform a song from their catalog as well as a cover of a hit by another artist. This routine has seen Snow Patrol covering “Crazy In Love”, Arcade Fire covering “Maps” and a number of other memorable performances, including my personal favorite of the bunch, Guillemots’ incredible rendition of “Take Me Out”. Bloc Party’s performance, however, is one of their best ever, featuring another acoustic performance of “I Still Remember” and a brilliant take on Nelly Furtado’s “Say It Right” that led Whiley to comment that “it made it sound like Nelly had nicked it from the lads themselves”. Right, then - here are the tracks, only available for download on Good Weather For Airstrikes.

MP3: “Say It Right” (Live Lounge Session) - Bloc Party

Interested in hearing the full recording? It’ll be available for streaming here until next Wednesday and includes an insightful interview with the band and better music than you’ll ever hear on any popular American station (*sigh*). And since I’ve been collecting these Live Lounge covers for quite a while now, I figured I’d upload some of my favorites here for your enjoyment. Check it below.

MP3s:
“Crazy In Love” (Live Lounge Session ft. Zane Lowe) - Snow Patrol
“Maps” (Live Lounge Session) - Arcade Fire
“Take Me Out” (Live Lounge Session) - Guillemots ((highly recommended))
“Sweet Child O’ Mine” (Live Lounge Session) - Mylo
“Smile Like You Mean It” (Live Lounge Session) - David Gray

Anyone have The Feeling’s cover of “Drop The Pressure” that I know is floating around out there somewhere? I’ve been trying to track it down for ages, but it’s been the one Live Lounge cover that’s consistently eluded me. Any help would be much appreciated, get at me in the comments.