Category Archives: Shorties

Shorties

Steamy new White Stripes video: City Lights

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YouTube: The White Stripes – “City Lights”

From the description on YouTube:

Third Man Records is pleased to share the genius surprise gift they received from their friend MICHEL GONDRY. On his own and without anyone’s knowledge, the legendary filmmaker shot a video for “City Lights,” which he sent them the other night. The video is Gondry’s fifth visual collaboration with The White Stripes.

It’s a cool video and a good song. I’ve been a little skeptical of Jack White’s Acoustic Recordings 1998-2016 compilation. At first it seemed like a cheap cash-grab built around the discovery of one newly uncovered White Stripes outtake (“the first new, worldwide commercially released song by The White Stripes since 2008”). I mean, come on, right? Everything else on this comp has been previously released in one form or another.

Plus, even “City Lights” — which was apparently written for Get Behind Me Satan “but then forgotten until White revisited the 2005 album for Third Man’s Record Store Day 2015 vinyl reissue” — is a little dubious. White admits “the track was finished in 2016 with help from collaborator and childhood friend Dominic Davis.” Where’s Meg? How much of this recording is White Stripes and how much is solo Jack White? Were any vocals recorded back in 2005? Were lyrics even written for it at the time? (Third Man Records did not immediately respond to our query.)

But.

There’s something to be said for recontextualizing the work of an artist. And this is the first collection of Jack White’s songwriting that covers multiple bands and projects. And it presents a different angle than just “Jack White, guitar hero.” This side has been there from the get-go, for anybody paying attention and actually listening to the albums, but I can see the value in putting all the pretty stuff together in one spot. So there we have it.

And there’s more rare stuff than just “City Lights.” There’s the acoustic mix of the jingle White wrote for Coca Cola (“Love Is the Truth”) plus a handful of remixes of other songs. And one of the songs he did for that Renée Zellweger movie. So I probably shouldn’t be such a grump about it. And hey: new White Stripes song!

Continue reading Steamy new White Stripes video: City Lights →

Shorties

New DJ Shadow video featuring Run The Jewels

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YouTube: DJ Shadow feat. Run The Jewels – “Nobody Speak”

This is awesome. The video is so well acted. I don’t know if they give best acting awards for music videos but Igor Tsyshkevych and Ian Bailey deserve some serious recognition for their performance here. Truly amazing.

And what a brilliant idea to hook up Run the Jewels with DJ Shadow for a collaboration. The guitar break is super dope and proves what a brilliant crate digger DJ Shadow continues to be after all these years. It samples “Ol’ Man River” as performed by Italian singer Caterina Valente with the Heinz Kiesling Orchestra off a 1968 record that looks like something you’d find at Goodwill. It’s the type of album I would’ve picked up on a lark in the 90s to see how awful her cover of “We Can Work It Out” was. I would’ve been pleasantly surprised. But that’s the genius of DJ Shadow.

You’ve gotta love Run the Jewels. El-P has the best lines in this one. “Picture this / I’m a bag of dicks / Put me to your lips.” I mean, come on. How can you not love that? Later he boasts, “Claim your crew quicker than Trump fucks his youngest.” Better watch out, Peter Thiel might fund a lawsuit to put you all out of business.

Until then, I’ll be listening to this on repeat through November. Remember everybody: register to vote. Don’t boo. Vote.

From The Mountain Will Fall, out now on Mass Appeal Records.

Continue reading New DJ Shadow video featuring Run The Jewels →

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Dawes – When The Tequila Runs Out

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Dawes have released a new single ahead of their fifth studio album, which is titled We’re All Gonna Die. The video, and the single, show our boys fully embracing much of the “we’re all fucked so let’s party” attitude that dominates the Top 40 these last few years. It’s a pretty catchy tune too with a chorus that alerts us to the fact that “when the tequila runs out we’ll be drinking Champagne.”

We’re All Gonna Die, will be released via the band’s own HUB Records on September 16. Preorders taken now.

Shorties

Noel Gallagher Remixes Oasis Track for Reissue

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On second thought…

Be Here Now was the 1997 follow-up to Oasis’ massive hit, (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? To say the former met with mixed reviews given the bar set by the latter is an understatement. In hindsight, everyone seemed to just be confused. Lots of people initially praised it as “bold” and “ambitious,” only to turn around and poo-poo it as “self-indulgent” and “bloated.” Noel Gallagher himself adding to the chorus. As The Chief said in Live Forever: The Rise and Fall of Brit Pop:

“It’s the sound of … a bunch of guys, on coke, in the studio, not giving a fuck. There’s no bass to it at all; I don’t know what happened to that…And all the songs are really long and all the lyrics are shit and for every millisecond Liam is not saying a word, there’s a fuckin’ guitar riff in there in a Wayne’s World style”.

Of course, they say hindsight is 20/20 and with 20 years of reflection, maybe we can give Be Here Now another look…another listen.

Posting on Facebook, Gallagher said, “As the years went by I’d started to accept that the songs on Be Here Now were in fact insanely long… too long! Someone (I can’t remember who) had the idea that we re-visit, re-edit the entire album for posterity’s sake.”

A total album remix? Now that’s interesting. And this might not set off the shit storm George Lucas faced when he revisited the original Star Wars trilogy. No, this was not tampering with a beloved title, but the opportunity to right some wrongs. Han will always shoot first.

Alas, “We got as far as the first track before we couldn’t be arsed anymore and gave up….it does sound fucking mega though!”

Oh well. Here then is the remix of the lead-off track, “D’you Know What I Mean,” which hilariously is only one second shorter than the original. Also, where’d those big ass NWA drums go?

And the original…

Shorties

New Belle and Sebastian song: “Olympic Village, 6AM”

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YouTube: Olympic Village, 6AM

“Belle and Sebastian dig the Olympics, love the Olympic ideal, love that the world gets together for a big ‘sports day’ once every four years. We can’t be part of it, though we’d like to be. So we recorded a piece of music with Rio in mind: specifically the Track and Field. Here it is.”

It’s a fun little instrumental that makes you want to chuck a javelin or attempt a pole vault. Or something. Stuart Murdoch and co. are no strangers to the topic of track and field, having previously recorded a song about its stars being beautiful people.

Shorties

Who The Fuck Is Julie?

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I spent a week or so with my grandparents in the spring of 1977 when my sister was born. I was very close with my grandparents and loved getting to stay with them for a WHOLE WEEK. As a bonus, my aunt secured permission from her principal to let me attend a day of classes at her high school.

If you’ve seen Dazed & Confused, you have a good idea of what my experience that day was like…with a rural flair. There were a lot of muscle cars mixed in with non-ironic overalls and cowboy boots. Of the many memories I have of that time what I remember most clearly is the music. There was one song in particular…

Jessi Colter wrote “I’m Not Lisa” and recoded in 1975 (I guess it took a while to catch on in the Midwest) with her producer and husband, Waylon Jennings. On its surface, it’s a pretty standard country tune about a woman lamenting the fact that her man isn’t over a previous lover. The first verse of the song is:

I’m not Lisa…
Lisa left you years ago
My eyes are not blue
But mine won’t leave you
‘Til the sunlight has touched your face

Who can’t relate to that? Competing with the ghost of a lost lover is frustrating, if for no other reason than having to answer the phone with, “No, I’m not Lisa. Can I take a message?”

But then things get weird. Because I left out part of the first line of the song.

I’m not Lisa, my name is Julie

Wait, what? Colter made it clear she’s not Lisa, we understand that. But guess what? She’s not Julie either! She’s Jessi! Who the fuck is Julie?

We know she’s not Lisa, because Lisa was “your morning light/Her smile told of no night/Your love for her grew/With each rising sun.” Lisa sounds pretty awesome. I wonder what happened to her?

And then one winter day
His hand led hers away

Of course! It was…HIM! But maybe Lisa wasn’t so awesome if she could simply be led away by some dude in the middle of a winter day. It wasn’t even under the cloak of night!

I’m still wondering though: WHO IS JULIE? Did Jessi Colter have a breakdown of some sort? Was she in witness protection and just blew her cover in a highly successful MOR country ballad in heavy rotation?

I don’t have any answers, I don’t even have a conclusion to this post. But this song has baffled me for years.

Shorties

Perry Farrell changes his tune on EDM at Lolla

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Good old Perry Farrell has changed his tune on EDM at Lollapalooza. Back in 2011 he told USA Today:

“My mission is one day there’ll be live music on one side and electronic music on the other side,” Farrell says. “It looks like the world is really going in that direction where dance music is the new punk rock. I’m going to tell (event producer C3 Presents) next year it should be half and half. So expect it in three years.”

But this year Farrell told the Chicago Tribune:

“When they said they wanted to name a stage after me (when the festival relaunched in 2005), I was honored,” he says. “I like the adulation. But now you say, ‘Perry, what’s going on with your area here?’ Believe me, I’ve got questions myself. I hate EDM. I want to vomit it out of my nostrils. I can’t stand what it did to what I love, which is house music, which was meditative, psychedelic — it took you on a journey. … I sometimes cringe at my own festival.”

I can’t say I disagree. Back in 2011 Perry’s stage was very obviously the most exciting part of Lollapalooza. That was the year I suggested that “Perry’s made the rest of Grant Park feel like a tired twentieth-century throwback to a place where bearded old cavemen rubbed pieces of wood together hoping to make fire.” It was the same in 2012 and 2013, but Perry’s stage has been going downhill since then. I’m no expert on dance music, but maybe it’s just not that cool anymore? I guess we’ll see this weekend…

Shorties

Winaloto – A Song and Video for Trump’s America

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It happens in every election cycle: Some candidate tries to co-opt a popular song to punctuate a message in a rally or other live event, only to raise the ire of the artists who created the song. It usually happens to Republicans, because…well…they suck. And really, who can they turn to? Ted Nugent?

This week, Republican presidential nominee and human bag of spoiled Orange Julius sludge, Donald Trump took heat from the Rolling Stones, Queen and George Harrison’s estate for playing their music during live events. It seems nobody wants to be associated with the Donald though the Internet is having a field day with suggestions.

And I have my own: TOMMY CASH – WINALOTO

Continue reading Winaloto – A Song and Video for Trump’s America →

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Don’t be a sucker. Register to vote.

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This is a reminder that it’s important to register to vote if you haven’t already. It’s not hard to do, and it really does matter. Even if you live in a very “safe” state, the national popular vote determines how big of a mandate the winner has received. You can’t vote if you’re not registered, so please register to vote.

If you’re paying any attention at all, you might have noticed that we are approaching some very dark times in this country. Things are getting more and more weird and ugly and mean. Let’s all do what we can to make it better. Elections matter. Don’t fuck this one up, America.

Main image by Thomas W. Benton. And follow @poljunk on twitter.

Shorties

New Handsome Family video: Gold

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YouTube: The Handsome Family – “Gold”

A great new Handsome Family song from their album Unseen, due September 16. It’s crazy to realize they’ve been putting out spooky, heartbreaking music for over twenty years now. I’ve been a fan for almost that long. In the very early days of GLONO we did an interview with Rennie Sparks. She gave better responses than my goofy questions warranted, which just goes to show how cool she is.

I was elated when the HBO drama True Detective chose their song “Far From Any Road” as its theme song for its first season. They were finally getting the attention they deserved. Hopefully all those new fans continue to dig what Brett and Rennie Sparks are whipping up in their Albuquerque home studio.

I also love that the Handsome Family still maintains their own web site. It’s awesome.