Video: Yo La Tengo – “Here To Fall”
Directed by John McSwain. Cool song with psychedelic strings, electric piano, and flanged vocals. “I know you’re worried / I’m worried too / But if you’re ready / I’m here to fall with you / What else is there for us to do?” From Popular Songs, due September 8 on Matador.
The Matablog says there will be a new Yo La Tengo video every week until the release date. All five will be collected here.
Sonic Youth – The Eternal (Matador)
There was a time when I would buy Sonic Youth albums without even hearing a note. For me, they were a band that deserved this kind of positive reinforcement, an epitome of how bands with major label deals should act, progress, and influence.
A pair of albums—A Thousand Leaves and NYC Ghosts & Flowers—abruptly ended that blind adulation. It seemed that one of my favorite bands had simply run its course and run out of ideas in the process. They had become pretentious and boring, oblivious to the fact that rock music should contain a bit of humor, or at least a wink towards it. Sonic Youth appeared to have grown up, no longer deserving their ageless band name.
Around this time I purchased Murray Street only out of Trade Center guilt, and I skipped Sonic Nurse altogether.
MP3: Yo La Tengo – “Periodically Double or Triple” from Popular Songs, out September 8 on Matador.
“Never read Proust…” Me neither! But this features the bounciest organ I’ve year in a while. Fun!
MP3: Jay Reatard – “It Ain’t Gonna Save Me” from Watch Me Fall, due August 18 on Matador.
“All is lost, there is no hope / All is lost, you can’t go home.” Not sure why people refer to this guy as “garage rock.” Sounds way more like the more rocking Shins stuff (“So Says I,” etc.). Regardless of what genre you cram it into, it’s still good.
MP3: Sonic Youth – “Sacred Trickster” from The Eternal, out June 9 on Matador. Pre-order now and you get a bunch of extra booty.
“I want you to levitate me / Don’t you love me yet? / Press up against the amp / Turn up the treble / Don’t forget!” This is the kind of Sonic Youth I like best: short, fast, loud, and melodic (kinda). Matador says it’s a salute to “French painter Yves Klein and Western Massachusetts noise artist Noise Nomads,” but who cares? It rocks.
Sonic Youth: iTunes, Amazon, Insound, wiki, web.
Via the Matablog.
Video: God Help The Girl – an introduction
God Help The Girl is a musical film written by Stuart Murdoch of Belle and Sebastian. The album of songs from the film is due June 23 on Matador with a total of nine different singers (including Neil Hannon from the Divine Comedy and Asya from American teen trio, Smoosh) joining the members of Belle and Sebastian over the course of a few months of recording in Glasgow.
If you’re willing to enter an email addres, you can download the first single, “Come Monday Night,” sung by Catherine Ireton at the album’s website. It’s as lovely as you’d expect.
Video: Jay Reatard – “See/Saw”
From Matador Singles ’08, which is a really good collection of poppy lo-fi messy garage punk songs. The fact that he comes from Memphis makes sense. I hadn’t heard anything by him before this album, but now I’m pissed I missed seeing him this summer.
Shearwater – Rook (Matador)
If I coyly hinted that Shearwater‘s last album, the great Palo Santo, sounded an awful lot like a lost Talk Talk album, then let me make it abundantly clear that the new Shearwater album sounds even more like a lost Talk Talk album.
Two points addressing this: Talk Talk’s leader Mark Hollis was an unheralded performer who straddled brilliance on a few occasions. He was also a slow creator, spending as much as three years in between Talk Talk albums and a full seven years before releasing his own solo album. Shearwater’s Jonathan Meiburg should not be chastised for wanting to pursue Talk Talk’s lead, as that band left only a handful of clues to begin with. And the time is ripe for further examination and exploration, particularly considering that Mark Hollis is all but retired from music anyway.
After being on Geffen Records (now part of UMG) since 1990, Matador Records has signed Sonic Youth for what sounds like a one-album deal:
After rampant speculation, Matador Records can confirm the label will be releasing a new studio album from Sonic Youth sometime in 2009. Having fulfilled their contractual obligations to the Universal Music Group, Sonic Youth recently reached an agreement with Matador to release the band’s 16th album of new material in all worldwide territories, save for Japan. […]
For Matador, the opportunity to work in partnership with a group who’ve made such an profound impact on our roster/hometown/collective consciousness was one to jump at. Kim Gordon, Thurston Moore, Lee Ranaldo and Steve Shelley will commence recording the new Sonic Youth LP/CD this autumn and we look forward to sharing further details in the very near future.
Good for them. Seems like a perfect fit. Funny to think that Sonic Youth indirectly kicked off the entire “major labels scooping up alternative bands” things in the early 90s. There was a Kurt Cobain quote where he said something like, “If Geffen is good enough for Sonic Youth, it’s good enough for Nirvana.”
Via Billboard.
MP3: Sonic Youth – “Youth Against Fascism” (courtesy of Protest Records)
I think it is important to begin this review by admitting that I have more jpeg images on my hard drive of Chan Marshall than I do of my wife. Now before you label me as a creepy fanboy, understand that I’ve only been married a year now, had my laptop for nearly four years, and been a fan of Cat Power for even longer. I would also like to point out that pictures of my kids trump the jpeg totals of my wife and Chan by a long shot.
After this, you’re probably assuming that I’m going to loft a heapin’ helpin’ of praise on Marshall’s second collection of covers, Jukebox, and my friends, you’d be absolutely correct. However, I do believe that I’m able to discern my infatuation with the aural reality that Jukebox is a brave collection of remakes that continues to reaffirm how Marshall has become one of the consummate voices of her generation.
