YEAH YEAH YEAHS (live at First Ave.)

One of the best shows of my life. I only recently got It's Blitz!; but after just one listen I got goose bumps thinking about going to this show. We weren't the only people holding our breath--when we showed up it was already half full, and by the time Grand Ole Party finished people were pushing and yelling at each other trying to move up. In those 30 minutes of waiting you could feel the crowd's anticipation. They opened with "Heads Will Roll" and right away people were off their feet, more like an airplane taking off than a rock band. It was like that for an entire set that felt like it passed by in a matter of minutes.

Karen O has spectacular stage presence and everything she did made the people scream. She had a button on the floor that shot off y-shaped confetti, which was just as exciting in-show as it was when we discovered it littering the floor afterward. It was such a great show it's hard to pick out the highlights, but I especially loved "Cheated Hearts," "Zero" and "Y Control."

Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Faces (on HypeM)




Grand Ole Party opened, and although it's a name I can't figure out because it seems so straightforward (GOP right?), they were great. They were a perfect opener for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and had a similarly charismatic lead singer in Kristin Gundred. We couldn't resist buying their album when she was behind the merch table signing them in person. Looking through the liner notes (I miss those), Blake Sennett is on a few of the San Diego-based group's tracks, which explains why some of you may have seen them opening for Rilo Kiley in the past.

Grand Ole Party - Bad, Bad Man

I've had Fever To Tell and Show Your Bones forever, but I'm now sure that if you haven't seen them live, you don't really know what's on those records.



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The thing about all ages shows is that they tend to suck. No drinks on the floor, but plenty of middle-agers (as in they were alive when feudal systems existed). I don't really mind anyone on the floor unless: they have a good spot and don't give a shit or if they're assholes. Why are you parents assholes at shows? Isn't Chris Cornell playing nearby?

SANTIGOLD/AMANDA BLANK @firstave

I had been looking forward to this show for a couple of weeks--it didn't disappoint. The First Ave. crowd was great, everybody was really into it and it only took four songs to make us all stinky and sweaty. It was empty during Trouble Andrew, but people seemed to know what was up when Amanda Blank came up.

I knew Amanda Blank would be fun. It was hearing Diplo's endorsement, seeing that he was producing her debut album featuring a few of our favorite artists at Chucks?, and it was hearing the remix of "I'm A Lady." There's not a lot of white rapper girls that I like; I hadn't heard many tracks of hers before, but she put on a great set. She came out without any pants, and somehow by the end of the set she was wearing less. Just her CHUCKS and a shirt.



Amanda Blank - Might Like You Better

One of the reasons I've loved Santigold's album was its versatility. It's not crossing genres but most songs can stand on their own. Half of her play list feels like singles and the others fill in around them. It kept things interesting and there were only a couple of brief moments where I could stop to think about being sweaty or tired. Santigold mentioned her mixtape with Diplo a few times during the set so I got really excited late in the show when she called Amanda Blank back on stage. They did "I'm A Lady" together and Trouble Andrew (who is on the original track) came out for the end of it. The highlight of the night for sure.





Santigold featuring Amanda Blank - I'm A Lady (Diplo Remix)



Here's a post I did a couple months back with another track from the Diplo mix tape.

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Stillness Is A Move

Holy awesomeness. I had heard this a while back and it somehow slipped under the constantly-falling snow of new-music Tuesdays. I find myself trying to hum, or worse, sing this incredibly highly pitched melody, and it always ends badly. But what a hook! I'm entranced by the repeated guitar hammers that fit perfectly under the start/stop vocal lines.

Look for their newest--Bitte Orca--to drop on June 9th.

The Dirty Projectors - Stillness is a Move

Throwback Thursday: The Knife

It's that time of the week again when we take a look back at songs that you forgot your affection for, and we grasp backwards into time to remember what has outlived its hype. So stop hitting refresh on elbo.ws and take a minute to look back, but not too far.

This week's selection is perhaps the most true of this segment's intention; the mostly meteoric rise and fall of Girl Talk remixes and his attention-deficit recordings has become so 2008. While mash-ups and electronic remixes are the dominating medium of Hype Machine tracks today, we've started to move away from the name-as-many-samples-as-you-can ephemeral novelty of Girl Talk. They're fun, but did you really expect to still be listening to Feed The Animals with the regularity of last Fall?

The hundreds of remixes of "Lisztomania" and "The Reeling" are great for squeezing more juice out of already great summer tracks, but will these archetypes outlive their originals?

Grizzly Bear - The Knife (Girl Talk Remix)

CSS - The Knife (Grizzly Bear Cover)

Manners, Where Are Yours?

I've been intentionally side-stepping the Passion Pit craze that's been going on for the past few months, trying to avoid hearing the endearing story about how Chunk Of Change was written as a Valentine's gift, but sometimes you have to just give in. I enjoyed "Sleepyhead" and "I've Got Your Number" ever since they appeared in podcasts, but even after two songs I was already nervous about all that falsetto.

Enough. We know who they are, and today via @amazonmp3 I learned that the new album is on sale for a pittance of $3. I should have posted this a bit earlier in the day, but I wanted to make sure I'd heard it all before I went off and recommended it. I'm digging it; it may get old quickly, and it's not worth raving over, but it's a fun summer sound that you'll probably hear even if you don't buy it.

It's ONLY 3 DOLLARS! That's almost as good a deal as the dollar the first Bat For Lashes cost me on Amazon.

Not sure? At least it's a better value than your morning coffee.

Passion Pit - The Reeling

Two Weeks, and an Homage to Le Ballon Rouge

Just came across this beautiful, yet unofficial, video to the new Grizzly Bear single "Two Weeks." It reminds me of my own dusty memories of Le Ballon Rouge and makes me want to find the box that the book is buried inside. The images of the extraordinarily rotund red balloon, and its fat rope for a string, are so familiar that they feel like a part of my own childhood. Plus, I used to dress like that.

Wait... I still dress like that.

Pitchfork says: "It's not afraid to be pretty; unapologetically retro and baroque, "Two Weeks" sort of crawls by like a gloriously ornate float in an Easter parade."

I wouldn't compare it to an Easter float, but I would say I've never enjoyed Grizzly Bear this much.

And now a remix featuring Dead Prez.

Throwback Thursday: Maps

Recounting each particular one would only bring back self-disgust and embarrassment so putrid it makes me shiver, like I’ve just put a lock of hair dripping with curdling and rotten milk on my tongue.

Damn, Thursday is halfway over! Another photo of the same Santa Monica beach to go with another old favorite. I know you've got it too.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Maps

The Similarities Between Kung Fu and Porno

I was watching a very disappointing Kung Fu movie this past weekend when I realized how strikingly similar the format is to that of a porn. Obviously like any good movie, all scenes should be necessary and important to the plot action; but in both of these genres the dialogue in between "action" sequences serves merely as filler. Practically though, we just can't watch 90 minutes of non-stop ass-kicking or... ahem... ass-pounding. Crappy horror movies work in the same way, the string section can't be playing at a fever pitch the whole time, we need breaks.

I'm no movie expert, but this seems analogous to the structure of pop music. Radio-ready hits usually lead with the hook to keep you interested, and then follow with underdeveloped verse melodies that become banal and again, serve as filler. In looking at the Billboard Top 100, a lot of the songs do this, the best example of which are T.I. and JT's collab "Dead and Gone" and the painfully repititious "Boom Boom Pow". In addition to the excessive use of hummable hooks, they all use the same verse-chorus-verse-bridge-chorus (x2) structure.

So in conclusion: Kung Fu, porn, cheap horror, and American pop music are all being written by the same person.