R.E.M.’s new album, Collapse into Now, has been intentionally leaked on YouTube since late last year (see below). This week it began streaming in its entirety on NPR’s First Listen (click to hear) and they released its first video, “ÜBerlin” (watch it here).
For the next six weeks, My Morning Jacket will release a series of free downloads promoting their upcoming release, Circuital. The first five will be from last year’s Terminal 5 run (where they played each of their albums in full, a different album each night) and the sixth will be a new studio track. Sign up at MyMorningJacket.com.
Parts & Labor’s Constant Future, out next week, is streaming at 3VOOR12…
…listen to Dodos’ No Color before its March 14th release (via Hype Machine)…
…hear Kurt Vile’s new album Smoke Ring For My Halo in its entirety (via NPR)….
…or The Mountain Goats’ All Eternals Deck (via NPR)…
…or Wye Oak’s Civilian (via NPR).
The first preview of White Denim’s upcoming album D (due May 24) came this week, “Drug”:
Mike Watt’s Hyphenated-Man was released March 1st on his new label Clenchedwrench. He describes it as “my third opera… it has no standard narrative (libretto!) meaning no regular beginning-middle-end and is as it were “simultaneous” in the way a mirror from just inside my head – right in this middle-age moment of mine – was then shattered into thirty pieces and then each piece stuffed in the head to show a piece of my state of mind (or out-of-mind) as of now. “thirty tunes?” yes, they’re little ones… actually they’re “thirty parts” of one big tune.” Here is the opening track, “Arrow-Peiced-Egg-Man”:
In November 2010 Wild Flag started gigging and now they’ve released their début track “Glass Tambourine” – listen here, or in the video below. It will be officially released on the “Future Crimes”/”Glass Tambourine” single for Record Store Day (April 16). Both sides were produced by Spoon’s Britt Daniel.
Watch two new music videos – Wavves’ “King of the Beach” and The Strokes “Under Cover of Darkness”:
Watch Of Montreal’s “Black Lion Massacre Is Coming” from their upcoming thecontrollersphere E.P. (out April 26), and if you fancy it, download it here.
Kevin Barnes had this to say about thecontrollersphere, “Here’s your folk record, I hope you like that I’ve carried on the tradition of such folk luminaries as Abu Bakr Khairat, Benny Moré and Nawal Al Zoghbi. These songs were written in Sunlandia, that’s where most of the folk songs are written now a days, and they were recorded up there, as well as in LA with Jon Brion, with no small contribution from Matt Chamberlain (drum du lum and yerba matte enthusiast) and K Ishibashi (my most modern classical friend). It is my hope that you can tolerate listening to this short EP in one sitting and appreciate it like a fine dining experience. Furthermore, the force that threw the green fuse anointed this protest album. It is a protest statement against the pneuma possessive. In fact this album is the voice of a desirous spirit that is aware of its positive zero chance of fulfillment or salvation or respite. There are many noisy moments that represent my attempt to communicate, in a sub human language, all that cannot be expressed with our earth tongue and all manners of mouth mechanisms. This little EP is a freak out record, have you ever seen anyone dancing to folk music? Well, like my fellow folk singing brother Bob Dylan once said, ‘I’d dance with you Maria, but my hands are on fire.’ Though, in this case, the world is roughly one year from extinction…or not.”
Below are more tracks from three highly anticipated albums (The Strokes’ “You’re So Right” from their upcoming LP Angles, TV On The Radio’s “Will Do” from upcoming Nine Types of Light and Arctic Monkey’s “Brick by Brick”) plus a recently surfaced left-over from MIA’s /\/\/\Y/\ (out-take “Zig Zag”).
Finally, here’s “Hands in the Sky” from Here We Go Magic’s new 6-track The January EP (due in May) which can also be downloaded from Stereogum.
BONUS VIDEO: PS22 Chorus sings Ariel Pink’s “Round And Round”
In other news…
Interpol is again without a bassist – Dave Pajo, who replaced Carlos D last year, has left the group.
From Rolling Stone: “Yoko Ono has overcome the likes of Rihanna, Britney Spears, Lady Gaga and Katy Perry to score her sixth consecutive Number One on the Billboard Hot Dance Club chart with “Move On Fast.” The song is her eighth Number One dance hit overall, and the latest in Ono’s series of remix singles. The original version of “Move On Fast” was issued as the B-Side to her folky 1972 single “Now or Never.”
Wayne Coyne on Charlie Sheen
Watch Wayne Explain Flaming Lips’ “Gummy Bear Skull”
The Flaming Lips Perform “Two Blobs Fucking” in Bathroom During Rehearsals for Carnegie Hall Tibet House Benefit
Iggy Pop’s Last Stage Dive: The Legacy of Carnegie Hall’s Tibet Benefit Concert
Flaming Lips Play With String Quartet and Philip Glass at Carnegie Hall
After the Grammys, marketing executive Steve Stoute took out a full-page ad in the Sunday Styles section of The New York Times criticizing the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences for awarding lesser-known artists: “I have come to the conclusion that the Grammy Awards have clearly lost touch with contemporary popular culture.” This week, Stoute and NARAS president Neil Portnow signed to a joint statement agreeing to talk about how the Recording Academy can “evolve in an ever-changing cultural environment.”
Solid Sound 2011: Wilco (Fri. & Sat.), the Levon Helm Band, Thurston Moore, Syl Johnson & the Sweet Divines, Here We Go Magic, Dave Douglas & Brass Ecstasy, Pillow Wand (Nels Cline/Thurston Moore duo), Handsome Family, Liam Finn, Sic Alps, JC Brooks & the Uptown Sound, Sarah Lee Guthrie & Johnny Irion, Glenn Kotche, Pronto, the Autumn Defense, Comedy Cabaret curated by John Hodgman featuring Wyatt Cenac, Eugene Mirman & Morgan Murphy
The Future Heart 