The Democratic Music

There was a plan. It was to share a new group, and a new single coming out on an album due out soon. So much for that plan, because Phoenix, a band no one has ever I have never heard of dropped this smoking hot track for free on their website. Since when is free music awesome?.. since it was free.

Go here to hear it and download it, and to see the OP.

Put it on repeat until the teeny boppers steal it for their GG commercials. An aside: it's only a matter of time, until popularity makes anything mainstream. All the bloggers that call themselves independent, may one day be just as mainstream as your top 40 station. At what point does Stereogum lose its indie-street cred? Should it matter? And that is the democracy of music.

The New Music Videos

[vimeo 3257230 w=480&h=360]
Man did I feel like an underachiever when I found out that Lykke Li is a young 22. For indie artists, making a video is expensive and dollar for dollar they're usually not worth their weight in promotion--at least not in the way that Beyonce and Soulja Boy use them. Who would have thought that making a one-take video could be so sweet? We hear what an artist actually sounds like, and improvised choreography is more personal and less imitable than "Single Ladies." There's no other artist for me that watching is so closely intertwined with hearing.

A lot has been on our minds at Chucks?. In particular I've been discussing with myself the Apple "endorsement curse" mentioned previously. I've been thinking through recent music, looking for the track most likely to be used in a commercial. It reminded me that plenty of indie artists (I mean this literally) have let their music be used for advertisements, and it's not just Apple. Santogold Santigold's "L.E.S. Artistes" was in a Ford Flex commercial, and Sea Wolf's "You're A Wolf" was used in a Honda Hybrid commercial. The same people that hate on Apple music, usually forget to bash these two songs.

Cat Power's cover of "Space Oddity" used in a Chevrolet commercial has seen mostly praise and requests across the blogosphere. After all, what fan of hers isn't immediately entranced by hearing "ground control to major tom." We seem to understand that soundtracking a commercial doesn't necessarily mean selling out. People just seem to be Apple haters.

I've got my money on "Breaking it Up" for next-song-to-make-it-big-on-a-Nano-or-Touch-commercial. Can't you see it already? This is seriously enough posts on her for the month, I'm giving her a break, until she records something new at least.

Thanks for the clip from whoever you are.

Heroes on TV or on the Radio?

A new compilation is out today, and in the spirit of 2009 and awesome compilations, comes another one boasting a solid line up. Dark Was The Night was so blogged about that I tried not to mention it, but be sure it will eventually be given it its due.

For the compilation, 15 music icons were asked to choose a song from their back catalogue and to pick the artist to cover it. It's called War Child, and it includes tracks from Hot Chip, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Beck, Lily Allen and others. It's not often we get a track from music royalty covered by a band with the chops to actually do it. It's cool just to know that Bowie actually asked TV On the Radio to cover his song, unlike a certain other band named after walls and flowers. This interpretation is explicitly TVOTR, they've added a pulse and changed the groove of the song while maintaining Bowie's melodic integrity. Good stuff.

TV On the Radio - Heroes

Got My Mind Made Up

No dialogue for now, too much confusion:
Santigold - Icarus

This is just a bad ass remix to one of my favorite songs of the last year.
Santigold - I'm A Lady Featuring Amanda Blank (Diplo Remix)

And another [unrelated remix] that had gotten buried. This one has some dust on it.
Jay-Z - Dance, Sunshine (Ratatat remix)

Coming up next: my favorite for the next artist to blow up (in a good way) over a commercial.

I'm appalled by the terrible-ness of the Real Santo Gold, this is hilarious. If someone writes like this, do they really expect to be taken seriously?

Flosstradamus? huh...

A band that hit it [semi] big with an Apple commercial, is usually one in grave danger of falling prey to the one-hit-wonder hawks. I used to download all of iTunes' free tracks, but I've been realizing lately that being endorsed by Apple has somehow become a mark of shame. Like the Madden curse that ruined so many football careers, a song featured in a commercial for Apple is now a discrediting blemish.

Example: I was at my friend's place an evening several weeks ago, when I wanted to play CSS. Since this friend had a limited selection of the group I thought it would be okay to play "Music is My Hot, Hot Sex." It was not. I was instantly ridiculed as something derogatorily Apple.

This is the normal way of mainstream endorsement though; how much more did you love "Time to Pretend" and Feist's "1234" before they turned up in Urban Outfitters and your city's easy listening radio station? I still love both, but it's hard to ignore the dulling of my snobbish sword--you know, the one I use to slay tasteless and cookie-cutter music fans*.

To the point though, Chairlift is the band I'm talking about. And with songs like "Evident Utensil" and "Planet Health" I'm letting them out of the one-hit-wonder dog house. Add to that the irresistible Caroline Polachek and I start to think that maybe these guys could be legit. If you're not sure that they deserve such [mild] praise, check out the track below. If you're not sure that Caroline Polachek is irresistible, check out this track she's featured on with the Chicago DJ duo known as Flosstradamus.

Chairlift - Planet Health
Flosstradamus - Big Bills: hear it, see it.

*I am often slayed as well. For example, the video I have linked to in this post is nearly four months old.

Lykke Li at the Varsity

What is happening to live music? In just the last week, the E Street Band mimed their Superbowl performance, and TV on the Radio performed as a washed-out mess on SNL. SNL is notoriously bad on sound, and TVOTR seems like an impossible act to mic properly, but that doesn't make it less awesome to see someone put on a great-sounding live show.

Lykke Li is an enthralling stage personality. While some acts are miming, lip-syncing and doing rehearsed choreography it's refreshing to see someone do a good show and a good concert at the same time. A couple of simultaneously hilarious and sweet covers to go with a well-timed Southern Baptist Preacher impersonation brought her only full-length release to life.



A few songs sounded better in person than on the record: "Breaking it Up" was definitely the highlight of the show, and "Let it Fall" was great. The sample skipped during "Complaint Department" but the band adroitly got back on stage to play it through, while Lykke Li sung on like nothing had happened. Li did the swell covers she's been doing throughout this tour, A Tribe Called Quest's "Can I Kick It," Lil' Wayne's "A Milli" and Kings of Leon's "Knocked Up." Altogether she's just a fantastic performer.


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It's been too long since I've seen a show. It's time for spring to begin and hibernation to end. While several friends bailed on this show, I met some cool people who shared my affection for small Swedish singers that purse their lips.

Here is probably my favorite Lykke Li video: Breaking it Up.

Breaking it up – alternative live video. Filmed by: Christian Haag from Lykke Li on Vimeo.

Fantasies Out April 14th

There's never a lack of new stuff to be discovering, so it's uncommon for me to get excited over a release that's not in the very near future. These days it seems that I don't even catch on to the best stuff until months after it has gained its own momentum. This is pretty standard for debut releases, obviously, since no one knows who the hell they are.

You know that long break after the second season of Weeds? Before anyone knew if they would be picked up for a third season. What a dreadful prospect that was; we would never find out what would happen to Nancy Botwin in the middle of a three-way dealer war.

After seeing the "Give Me Sympathy" video from around the time of Coachella and then the early leak of "Help, I'm Alive," I haven't been able to stop thinking about them. And I'm upset that I won't be hearing any of their new stuff for two more months.

Today's song is an acoustic version of "Help, I'm Alive" which is free on Metric's website. Go there and download it (or listen to it here), it's nice. There's also a swell video of Emily doing some soul searching in Buenos Aires. I'm thinking that sounds like a good idea about now.