Audience Participation Friday: Pimp Me New Tunes

I’m getting a little sick of the current rotation on iTunes, which means it’s probably time for another shopping spree. I’ve got a couple of albums on my list to buy already (the new Tom Petty, the new Richard Thompson), and I’ve heard a couple of good tracks on KEXP that I’ll check out (new songs by Midlake and the Long Winters), but I’m always interested in new music.

So, what’s new in the music world that I ought to buy? Ideally, these should be tracks available through iTunes, though I will buy physical CD’s if I have sufficiently good reason.

My tastes are somewhat eclectic, as you can see by trolling through the posts in the Music category. Or, if you’d like a more convenient guide, I’ll provide a partial list of recently acquired stuff below the fold:

  • Guster’s Ganging Up on the Sun, because we’re going to see them live next week.
  • Golden Smog’s Another Fine Day.
  • The Replacements’ new best-of package.
  • A bunch of old Springsteen albums, to fill gaps in my collection.
  • Phoenix, It’s Never Been Like That, on the strength of “Long Distance Call,” which is a great pop song.
  • “Ask DNA” by Raju Ramayya and “Gotta knock a little harder” by Mai Yamane, off the Cowboy Bebop movie soundtrack.
  • A whole host of live tracks from KBCO, via jefitoblog, plus two tracks by Chris Knight that I like enough to check out the whole album.
  • “Show Me” by Mint Royale, a catchy little dance/ rap song (featuring one of the guys from De LA Soul) that one of the KEXP DJ’s plays every Friday.

Of course, feel free to recommend stuff that doesn’t really fit with that list, too. I’ll at least listen to the samples on the iTunes store, and maybe take a flier on a couple of tracks.

33 comments

  2. Best thing I’ve bought recently is “Yes, Virigina…” by The Dresden Dolls, but I don’t know if that’s up your alley or not. You might like “The Mysterious Production of Eggs” by Andrew Bird. Or maybe the self-titled album by Clap Your Hands Say Yeah.

  3. I second the Porcupine Tree and Clap You Hands Say Ya recommends. Some others:
    Modest Mouse’s The Moon and Antarctica
    Arctic Wolf
    Arcade Fire
    The Doves

  4. I think you may have already tried all of these, and I know you’re not a classical music kind of guy, but I’ll try again:

    Tchaikovsky, “Symphony No. 5”

    Copeland, “Fanfare for the Common Man”

    Dvorak, “Symphony No. 8”

    Mozart, “Requiem”

    Brahms, “Academic Festival Overture”

    As for music that isn’t classical, consider The Bobs. Here are a few of my favorite Bobs songs:

    Helmet
    Fluffy’s Master Plan for World Domination
    And Then a Week Ago Last Thursday
    Food to Rent

    -Rob

  5. Oh No – OK Go
    Rock and Roll Part III – Ozma
    Red Line – Trans Am

    OK Go is quickly moving up my list of favorite bands, and they’re becoming a little more visible every day. I heard one of their songs on a JC Penney’s commercial last night. You can get a taste of them by watching their video for “A Million Ways” on youtube or google video. simply amazing song, good attitude.

  6. I’ll second the Dresden Dolls and Andrew Bird recommendations, and third the Porcupine Tree (although I like “Stupid Dream” better than “In Absentia”).

    I’d also recommend Vox Vermillion “Standing Still You Move Forward” and The High Violets “To Where You Are.”

    I saw Andrew Bird open for the Magnetic Fields a few years ago in Chicago. I could have left the concert happy just seeing him, and I have pretty much all of “69 Love Songs” and “i” memorized.

  7. I third the Andrew Bird recommendation. Also, Psapp’s new album “The Only Thing I Ever Wanted”. And one of the best new albums in the “wiry rock band with generic name” category is by Editors. Editors are much better than Cities.

  8. As far as not-necessarily-new things go: Everyone could use more Calexico records.

    As far as new things… The new Futureheads album (News & Tributes) isn’t bad. Favorite songs from it: Yes/No, Cope, Burnt and Skip To The End.

    However, my current favorite for album of the year isn’t actually out yet. It won’t come out in the US till September, but when the new TV On The Radio album drops, I cannot recommend it highly enough. The title is rather lame, but the songs, oh, the songs.

    There’s a lot of promising stuff coming out in the next month and a half or so. In October, new Decemberists, and a new Hold Steady album, and a couple others come out.

  9. Not the newest thing out there but you should pick up John Scofield – A Go Go. He’s a jazz guitarist that used to play with a number of big boys, Miles Davis in aprticular now has quite a following. As an added bonus the band is Medeski, Martin and Wood on this disc. Its funky, jazzy and well worth whatever you pay for it.

  10. Hm… I pimp the Weakerthans to everyone, but I think I saw some of their stuff in your playlist. Other stuff I’d suggest:

    Arctic Monkeys, Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not
    Grand National, Kicking The National Habit
    The High Strung, These Are Good Times
    (the new one, Moxie Bravo, is probably good too but I haven’t heard it all yet)
    Pinback, Summer In Abaddon

  12. I think all right-thinking people should enjoy Belle and Sebastian, but they don’t really fit with what you have listed.
    Arcade Fire? Gorillaz?

  13. Go listen to everything that Jonathan Coulton has at http://www.jonathancoulton.com/ . You can listen to everything on his site for free and if you look far enough back on his blog can download nearly all of his songs for free too. Granted, you could also give a few bucks for the songs too, but it’s your call. He has lots of nice science-y songs about things such as the Mandelbrot Set, DNA, mad scientists, giant squids, various cyborgs and robots, and of course about computer programmers.

  15. I’ll fourth the Andrew Bird and second the Belle and Sebastian. For indie guitar strumming, I enjoyed when the tour for the compilation The Sound the Hare Heard and picked up a couple of albums from folks on that. And with your pop-punk love, you can’t go wrong with the buy-for-the-name-alone We Are Scientists latest album.

    I’m also mad for Hello Saferide but that’s neither available on iTunes or in U.S. stores.

  16. Not to discuss when I should be recommending, but are those two new “Replacements” songs terrible or are they terrible? I can’t decide. And it’s a shame you’ve already found Phoenix, as they’ve been on heavy rotation in my head of late.

    As has the new Walkmen and the odd new Sleepy Jackson album, for that matter.

    Oh, and lest I forget, but the new Sonic Youth is beyond brilliant. I’m not really even a Sonic Youth fan and I love it.

  18. Here are a few things I like lately:

    Les Savy Fav – “Inches”
    Thom Yorke – “The Eraser”
    The Pink Mountaintops – “Axis of Evol”– But also “Tourist in your Town” off their first album.
    Wolf Parade – “Apologies to the Queen Mary” – “I’ll Believe in Anything” is on my Top Five songs of the last year.
    Chad VanGaalen – “Infiniheart” – not “Skelliconnection” which comes out later this month and is disappointing.

  19. So, it looks like I should definitely buy the Andrew Bird record…

    Bands that have been named whose albums I already have: Arcade Fire, Arctic Monkeys, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, OK Go, Wolf Parade.

    Belle and Sebastian are kind of hit-or-miss for me, as are Gorillaz. The Thom Yorke song that’s getting airplay (I don’t recall the name, but he says “It’s fucked up” about eighty times) is kind of annoying. I’m not a big Sonic Youth fan in general, and the Dresden Dolls would be responsible for the worst song I’ve heard on the radio in the last five years or so (“Coin Operated Boy”), were it not for the existence of the Streets (“Fit But You Know It” is bleed-from-the-ears awful).

    Is Jonathan Coulton the guy who did the singer-songwriter take on “Baby Got Back”? That was pretty entertaining.

    Thanks for the recommendations. Keep ’em coming.

  20. So I should probably preface this recommendation by saying that I liked both “Coin Operated Boy” and “Fit But You Know It”.

    But this one is totally unlike them: Howe Gelb, “‘Sno Angel Like You”. Excellent.

    Slightly older: Califone, “Quicksand/Cradlesnakes”. Also excellent.

  21. Based on your occasional mentions of the Old 97’s, you might find some of the older Neko Case (with Her Boyfriends) stuff good. Furnace Room Lullaby is her best, IMHO, The Virginian is a bit more hit-or-miss, and Blacklisted and Fox Confessor Brings The Flood are too much like Tori Amos for my liking. But Furnace is some good shit.

  22. I had a feeling Dresden Dolls might not be your thing, but “Sex Changes” is the best thing off the new album (which is much better than their first album) if you want to give them another shot. Another one that occurs to me is Sia, “Colour the Small One”. “Breathe” is probably the best song off that album.

  23. Good gravy, I feel out of touch when it comes to all these artist names!

    But what the heck. How about something with a physics bent. Take a look for the Mighty Stephen Hawking, M.C. Hawking. No, not really Stephen Hawking but very funny stuff.

  25. Yes, Jonathan Coulton’s the one who covered Baby Got Back. If you want specific recommendations, try I Feel Fantastic, That Spells DNA, and Skullcrusher Mountain. But really, there’s a lot of good stuff there (and most of it’s funny for one reason of another).

  26. Second Dresden Dolls, Islands, Weakerthans, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, B&S etc.

    I’m shocked that people listening to that song set have yet to mention the New Pornographers and their contributors’ work from Destroyer and AC Newman. Some of my favorite stuff ever and I overlap a lot with the suggestions so far.

  27. I think I’ve been to dozens of Dresden Dolls gigs… and cringed through “Coin-Operated Boy” at just about every one of them. “Dirty Business”, “Gravity”, “O Mrs. O”, “Delilah”, and “Truce” are the sort of things that keep me coming back. Live recordings of these (and most of the rest of their catalog) available here or here if you don’t feel like putting your money down on spec. (They’ve got a pretty free taping policy, though there are a few songs that are slated for future releases that they don’t want circulating too freely in the meantime).

  28. With all the seconding going on, I’ll throw in a second for the New Pornographers and all its constituents — AC Newman, Destroyer, and Neko Case.

    For something more laid-back, anything by M. Ward.

    More great indie music I’ve been loving lately: The Books, Calexico, The Magnetic Fields, Songs: Ohia, Tapes ‘n Tapes.

  29. Have you been to last.fm? It’s a social music thing. It can catalog what music you listen too and suggest new stuff. It also points you to people with similar tastes. Very interesting.

  30. New Pornographers are great– I spent a month or two earwormed with “Sing Me Spanish Techno” a while back. The most recent Neko Case album (Fox Confessor Brings the Flood is also very good. I’ll check out one of her older things.

    Regarding the Dresden Dolls, I should also note that I’m not really loving “Sing,” which turns up now and again on EQX and MusicChoice. I think they’re just not my thing.

  31. “Sing” just isn’t very good.

    From the first album, I really liked “Girl Anachronism” and “Bad Habit”. Haven’t heard the new one yet, except for “Sing”.

  32. Oh, and I’ll second Jason’s plug for last.fm. It’s not only a music-oriented social network, it also uses that data to power great streaming radio.

    Maybe we should set up a ScienceBlogs group on last.fm…

  33. Ah yes, “Sing”… a worrisome sign of Bad Taste in Singles. It was the one song on “Yes, Virginia” that they hadn’t played at all before its release, and when it showed up as the single, the general reaction on net fan forums was “what the hell was that?” I think Sex Changes is probably a bit more representative.

    (I tried to link directly to http://automaticjoy.com/mp3/Unreleased/The_Dresden_Dolls-Sex_Changes_(2004-10-16_Atlanta).mp3 but the antispam features blocked the link…)

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