Band of the Week-ish

so between john mayer new cd that isnt worth buying and vampire weekend’s new cd which is worth paying for twice, here are a few bands/cds that have crossed my radar since the last post.

classic. daft punk. discovery. if you dont already have this cd, you should get it before you die.

this one is just too good to pass up.

i dont think ive posted grizzly bear stuff, yet, so here are some sweet vidshzzz.

also, i feel like there are certain bands that are excellent, but are so big by now, if you havent heard of them, youre lying, and if youve heard of them you should have checked them out already. essentials like radiohead, death cab, etc.

The time is 9:00pm. And I sit here listening to a band that I dont know wether or not I should share. If music is about sharing feelings and mood. Then I would submit a band for your listening but with a word of cation. This band is beautifully sad. I don’t feel like listening to sad music all the time but sometimes it hits the spot. So with that I give you The Antlers. Im not saying you will like them cause i dont feel them all the time, but right they hit the spot. I feel like this is the sound track to movie that takes place in a hospital bed. There are songs about death like the song “Bear”. And there are songs about some sort of victory like in “Wake”. I really like Wake so thats the one im going to post. Its 8min long so be the trooper I know you are and listen to the whole thing.

LETS HAVE A VOTE!!!!

THE AIRBORNE TOXIC EVENT vs Portugal. The Man

THE AIRBORNE TOXIC EVENT

So This is one of my favorite Bands! They have an incredible Bio! But its Summer and I dont want yall to read too much! But If you want to (I want you to) you can read their Bio here.       Here’s a music video

Portugal. The Man

This Band is new to me but my friend likes them.  They are from Alaska! Pretty toot’n cool I must say!                         Heres There Bio —>  ♣

Heres a Video of Portugal. The Man

SO NOW THAT YOU HAVE LISTEN TO THEM THE OXFORD COMMA WOULD LIKE TO KNOW WHAT YOU THINK!

wow. april 11 was the last edition to this page. i have a few weeks to make up for.

David Byrne & Brian Eno.

David Byrne is well known as the musician who co-founded the group Talking Heads (1976–88) in New York. On record and in concert, the band was acclaimed by critics and audiences alike; more importantly, however, they have proven to be extremely influential. Talking Heads took popular music in new directions, both in terms of sound and lyrics, and also introduced an innovative visual approach to the genre. In 2002 Talking Heads were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In 2003, Talking Heads released a lovely boxed set which includes a DVD of all the band’s videos. In 2005 a Brick was released with the complete studio catalog on dualdisc with previously unreleased audio and video material.

During his time with the group, Byrne was involved with several other projects:

• The Catherine Wheel, an evening-length ballet score for choreographer Twyla Tharp
• Music videos, director
• My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, a collaborative record with Brian Eno incorporating “found” voices such as radio preachers, talk show guests and Arabic singers (re-release with additional tracks in March 2006)
• the Knee Plays, a brass band-and-spoken word score for a theater piece, the Knee Plays, directed by Robert Wilson. A re-mastered CD with bonus tracks (with bonus DVD) was released in 2007.
• Stop Making Sense (1984), directed by Jonathan Demme, winner of Golden Globes, best documentary
• True Stories, 1986 feature film directed by Byrne
• The Last Emperor, 1987, DB collaborates on score for Bertolucci film, wins Oscar.
• Luaka Bop, Byrne’s record label, was founded in 1988
• The Forest, 1989, an orchestral score with mostly wordless vocals for theater piece dir by Robert Wilson
• Ilé Aiyé: The House of Life, 1989, a documentary on African religion in Brazil

More records and projects followed:

• Rei Momo, collaboration with 15 of the best Latin musicians in New York
• Uh-Oh, 1992, funk and Latin grooves were combined together
• Between The Teeth, a concert film of that tour
• David Byrne, 1994, a stripped-down record
• Feelings, 1997, collaboration with other bands and artists
• The Visible Man, 1998, a record of re-mixed versions of songs from Feelings
• Sessions at West 54th Street, 1999, a weekly one-hour music show which Byrne hosted
• In Spite Of Wishing And Wanting, 1999 a collaboration with the Belgian Dance Company Ultima Vez
• Look Into The Eyeball, 2001. Subsequently Byrne toured with a six-piece string section.
• Lazy, 2002 David’s collaboration with the DJ group X Press 2 was released in the UK. The song went to number 2 on the UK charts within its first week of release & number 1 on the US dance charts, along with topping the charts in Syria and Turkey.
• Lead Us Not Into Temptation: Music from the Film Young Adam, 2002, a score for the David MacKenzie film for which David gathered together a comprehensive group of musicians from Scottish bands: Belle & Sebastian, Mogwai, and Appendix Out, among others. David also worked with director Stephen Frears composing the song “Glass Concrete and Stone” for his film Dirty Pretty Things.
• Grown Backwards, 2004 album release and tour
• Here Lies Love, a project about Imelda Marcos with musical contributions from Fatboy Slim
• Big Love: Hymnal — music scored for the 2nd season of the HBO series “Big Love”, with other recent compositions — 2008 CD release
• Everything That Happens Will Happen Today — 2008 collaborative album with Brian Eno

ART

David Byrne has been involved with photography and design since his college days and has been publishing and exhibiting his work for the past decade. Like his film and musical projects, his artwork is often described as elevating the mundane or the banal to the level of art, creating icons out of everyday materials to find the sacred in the profane. Byrne’s works are about interiors, both physical and emotional, as much as exteriors.

Museum shows in Germany, Italy, and Japan have mixed these pieces with audio elements, acoustiguides, and sculptural elements. Since the beginning Byrne has mixed exhibitions with public art: billboards in Belfast and Toronto, subway posters in Stockholm, fly posters during the presidential election in NY, LA and Chicago and lightboxes in the streets of San Francisco and Sydney, Australia. He has also created a 215-foot long flow chart covering the 5th Avenue side of Saks 5th Ave, multiple-choice questions on the Tokyo subways, an audio piece in the World Financial Center in NYC, and PowerPoint installations in a building lobby on Times Square. More recent projects include Playing the Building, an interactive installation which turned a building into a giant musical instrument; Voice of Julio / Vox de Julio, a singing robot, and a series of bike racks installed on streets of New York city.

Several books have appeared in recent years, each a kind of piece on its own. The first, Strange Ritual (Chronicle Press, 1995) mixed text and image in a notebook-type format. The second, Your Action World (Edimar, Italy, 1998 and Chronicle, 1999), was modeled after corporate reports and inspirational and motivational literature. The third book, The New Sins / Los Nuevos Pecados, looks like a bible and was created for the Valencia Biennial, where copies were placed anonymously in hotel room drawers. It was published by McSweeney’s in the USA and by Faber & Faber in the UK, and there is a Bulgarian edition as well. Another book project, Envisioning Emotional Epistemological Information (Steidl/PaceMacGill, 2003) focuses on Byrne’s use of the presentation software PowerPoint as an art medium and contains a DVD of five PowerPoint presentations set to music. Byrne’s most recent book, Arboretum, is a sketchbook facsimile of his “tree drawings”; it was published by McSweeney’s in September 2006. Byrne is currently working on Bicycle Diaries, an account of cycling in many cities around the world, to be published by Penguin in 2009.

Byrne is represented by Pace/MacGill Gallery in NYC.

The Avett Brothers.

North Carolina’s Avett Brothers play acoustic music that has roots in traditional folk and bluegrass, but also captures the high spirits and no-boundaries attitude of rock & roll — which is appropriate, since rock is where Scott Avett and Seth Avett cut their teeth as musicians. Although siblings Scott (vocals, banjo) and Seth (vocals, guitar) began making music together as children, their group’s genesis began when they were members of a rock band called Nemo, which gigged regularly in Greenville, NC. Looking for another outlet for their musical ideas, the Avetts began getting together with likeminded friends (most notably Nemo guitarist John Twomey) on Tuesdays for acoustic guitar pulls, where they’d share a few drinks and swap songs. As time passed, the weekly get-together (which was called “the Back Door Project” or “Nemo Downstairs”) became a semi-public event, with the pickers busking for the enjoyment of passers-by, and Seth and Scott felt the new acoustic music they were making was as fun and satisfying as their rock band.

Twomey and the Avetts decided to document their side project in 2000, and “the Back Door Project” was renamed the Avett Brothers with the release of a self-titled album that same year. Nemo broke up before 2000 came to a close, and Seth and Scott decided to make the Avett Brothers their new priority. They amicably parted ways with Twomey and added upright bassist and vocalist Bob Crawford to the combo. After a few months of playing live shows, the new trio recorded its second album, 2002′s Country Was. The Avett Brothers hit the road upon the album’s release that summer, and used the opportunity to break in material for their next studio project, A Carolina Jubilee, which was released in 2003. (A live disc, Live at the Double Door Inn, was sandwiched between the two studio sets.)

Over the next several years, the Avett Brothers maintained a busy and prolific schedule, releasing a lengthy and ambitious studio album, Mignonette, in 2004, another live disc in 2005, and both a full-length album (Four Thieves Gone: The Robinsville Sessions) and an EP (The Gleam) in 2006, all recorded during breaks in the group’s heavy touring calendar. As if this weren’t enough to keep the three men occupied, Crawford also recorded and performed with his side project New Jersey Transient, Seth Avett released albums under the moniker Darling, and Seth and Scott occasionally played shows with their electric band Oh What a Nightmare. In 2007, the Avett Brothers reached a new level of popularity with Emotionalism, their first album to make a dent on the Billboard charts. Rick Rubin took notice and signed the band to American Recordings, his own division of Sony BMG/Columbia, during the summer of 2008. The Gleam II, issued just several months later, was the Avett Brothers’ last release on the Ramseur label.

jj.

0101, 0103, 0107, 0108, 0113, and 0115. Since all jj choose to show of themselves is their music, video, and occasional blood-spattered merch, then those Sincerely Yours catalogue numbers represent the sum total of what we know about them. Hell, we wouldn’t even know jj were a “them” had the group’s Gothenburg, Sweden-based, Tough Alliance-owned label not confirmed that. So… they’re mysterious– but not inscrutable: Despite a brief discography that’s already geekily byzantine enough for anybody who ever bought into the legend of Factory Records, jj’s full-length debut is as easy to enjoy as whatever the last CD was you brought home with a giant cannabis leaf on the cover. They’re as naive as they are cynical– or is it the other stupid way around?– and they manage to be pretty, touching, funny, and motivating, in different ways, in all the right places, for nine songs lasting 28 minutes.

You don’t need me to tell you for the 128th time (320th if you’re at CD quality) how digital file distribution has spread sounds and ideas across the globe during the current decade, and jj have earned a place among the current wave of pop globalization, sharing both the island sounds and sticky-fingered irreverence of their labelmates the Tough Alliance, Air France, and the Honeydrips. Sure, jj still carry traces of iconic twee label Sarah Records, but they celebrate a broader definition of “pop”. Sometimes, as on “Lollipop”-biting slo-mo raver “Ecstasy”, jj do this by borrowing from global hip-hop culture. But they also participate. Never by straight-up rapping, but by expanding the reach of ambient music– defined expansively, as Brian Eno once did, as music that “suggests, a place, a landscape, a soundworld which you inhabit”– to include a whole new kind of swagger. “Of course there is people out to get me,” a female vocalist sings on “My Hopes and Dreams” as hand percussion evokes the Avalanches’ beach blowouts, hypnotic guitar recalls German Kosmiche Muzik, and gusts of winds whistle over high-noon Ennio Morricone strings.

Then again, on the same song, jj’s singer just wants “someone to share my hopes and dreams with”– a humbler goal to be sure, but jj excel just as much at strummy intimacy as they do at lavish blissouts. The lo-fi hooks on “Tell It to My Heart”-biting closer “Me & Dean” suggests TTA’s aching teen-pop cover “Lucky”, only done as an original this time. The pisstake-y giggles also make you wonder if you’re hearing their mixtape outro.

When jj drift closer to early-1990s ambient-house, they still allow emotion to flood through the textures, and they never start repeating themselves. Opener “Things Will Never Be the Same Again” sets almost new-agey strings and Enya-esque sailing imagery to a bouncy Caribbean rhythm: “I close my eyes and remember/ A place in the sun where we used to live.” For all the flickering synths and rainforest percussion of “Masterplan”, we also get Top Gun guitar rocketry, faux-innocent-as-Disney sing-song, and that reporter guy from YouTube going, “I’m dyin’ in this fucking country-ass fucked-up town.” jj n° 2 may be easy on the ears, but it isn’t wallpaper.

At their most ideal, ambient, hip-hop, punk, and the most crassly commercial pop all have in common an “anything goes” approach. Like any ideal, this usually gets fucked up pretty fast. “New Age” harnesses ambient’s chill-out pleasantness to eco-politics and yuppie mysticism; old rappers start dissing younger rappers for not following in their footsteps or being more socially conscious; the punk and indie traditions become as idol-worshiping as the classic-rockers they sought to displace. jj obliterate that bullshit and get back to a place where Lil Wayne can be ambient, and Enya can show up on an album with a pot leaf on the cover.

Free mp3 “From Africa to Málaga”, on some days my favorite track on the album, is almost as suited for a cruise-ship commercial as Iggy Pop’s “Lust for Life”. But it also faces Important Ideas like death and art with the clear-eyed precocity of an adolescent, riding in on trade winds with a message that could speak to middle-school cheerleaders and middle-aged soccer moms and middlebrow-loathing former punks alike: “The thought that you found/ Takes you to town/ Smashes your face/ Burns out your heart/ Then you go home and turn it into art.” Pop’s just fine, too, thanks.

Portishead.

Portishead may not have invented trip-hop, but they were among the first to popularize it, particularly in America. Taking their cue from the slow, elastic beats that dominated Massive Attack‘s Blue Lines and adding elements of cool jazz, acid house, and soundtrack music, Portishead created an atmospheric, alluringly dark sound. The group wasn’t as avant-garde as Tricky, nor as tied to dance traditions as Massive Attack; instead, it wrote evocative pseudo-cabaret pop songs that subverted their conventional structures with experimental productions and rhythms of trip-hop. As a result, Portishead appealed to a broad audience — not just electronic dance and alternative rock fans, but thirtysomethings who found techno, trip-hop, and dance as exotic as worldbeat. Before Portishead released their debut album, Dummy, in 1994, trip-hop’s broad appeal wasn’t apparent, but the record became an unexpected success in Britain, topping most year-end critics polls and earning the prestigious Mercury Music Prize; in America, it also became an underground hit, selling over 150,000 copies before the group toured the U.S. Following the success of Dummy, legions of imitators appeared over the next two years, but Portishead remained quiet as they worked on their second album.

Named after the West Coast shipping town where Geoff Barrow grew up, Portishead formed in Bristol, England, in 1991. Prior to the group’s formation, Barrow had worked as a tape operator at the Coach House studio, where he met Massive Attack. Through that group, he began working with Tricky, producing the rapper’s track for a Sickle Cell charity album. Barrow also wrote songs for Neneh Cherry‘s Homebrew, though only “Somedays” appeared on the record. Around the time of Portishead’s formation, he had begun to earn a reputation as a remix producer, working on tracks by Primal Scream, Paul Weller, Gabrielle, and Depeche Mode. Barrow met Beth Gibbons, who had been singing in pubs, in 1991 on a job scheme. Over the next few years, the pair began writing music, often with jazz guitarist Adrian Utley, who had previously played with both Big John Patton and the Jazz Messengers.

Before releasing a recording, Portishead completed the short film To Kill a Dead Man, an homage to ’60s spy movies. Barrow and Gibbons acted in the noirish film and provided the soundtrack, which earned the attention of Go! Records. By the fall, Portishead had signed with Go! and their debut album, Dummy, was released shortly afterward. Dummy was recorded with engineer Dave MacDonald, who played drums and drum machines, and guitarist Utley, who rounded out Portishead’s lineup.

Both Barrow and Gibbons were media-shy — the vocalist refused to participate in any interviews — which meant that the album received little attention outside of the weekly U.K. music press, which praised the album and its two singles, “Numb” and “Sour Times,” heavily. Soon, Go! and Portishead had developed a clever marketing strategy based on the group’s atmospheric videos that began to attract attention. Melody Maker, Mixmag, and The Face named Dummy as 1994′s album of the year, and early in 1995, “Glory Box” debuted at number 13 without any radio play. Around the same time, “Sour Times” entered regular rotation on MTV in America. Within a few weeks, Dummy and “Sour Times” were alternative rock hits in the U.S. Back in the U.K., the album had crossed over into the mainstream, becoming a fixture in the British Top 40. In July, the record won the Mercury Music Prize for Album of the Year, beating highly touted competition from Blur, Suede, Oasis, and Pulp.

Following the Mercury Music Prize award, Barrow retreated to Coach House to begin work on Portishead’s second album. The self-titled record finally appeared in September 1997. The live PNYC followed late the next year. The self-titled record finally appeared in September 1997. Portishead went on hiatus starting in 1999, and Barrow, Utley and Gibbons worked on their own projects. In 2001, Barrow formed Invada Records, an experimental label that included Koolism on its roster. Barrow and Utley also recorded a cover of the instrumental rock classic “Apache” as the Jimi Entley Sound that was released as a limited edition 7″ single in 2002. The pair also worked as producers, with Barrow working under the moniker Fuzzface on Stephanie McKay‘s McKay album in 2003, and Barrow and Utley co-produced the Coral‘s 2005 album The Invisible Invasion. Gibbons collaborated with Rustin’ Man, a.k.a. former Talk Talk member Paul Webb on the 2003 album Out of Season (Gibbons had also appeared on a few tracks by Webb‘s previous project, ORang).

Portishead reconvened in 2005, performing their first live dates in seven years, including an appearance at the Tsunami Benefit Concert in Bristol, and recording material for their next album. Their version of “Un Jour Comme un Autre (Requiem for Anna)” appeared on 2006′s Serge Gainsbourg tribute Monsieur Gainsbourg Revisted, and in 2007 the band curated the Nightmare Before Christmas All Tomorrow’s Parties festival. In 2008, a decade after their last album, Portishead returned with Third, the trio’s most challenging, unpredictable work yet.

Ra Ra Riot.

Combining indie rock songwriting with chamber pop flourishes (courtesy of a small string section), Ra Ra Riot formed while the band’s six members were attending college in Syracuse, NY. Members Milo Bonacci (guitar), Alexandra Lawn (cello), Wesley Miles (keyboard/vocals), John Pike (drums), Mathieu Santos (bass), and Rebecca Zeller (violin) first came together in January 2006, creating an eclectic sound that allowed them to play alongside the Horrors, Bow Wow Wow, and Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin within a year of the band’s formation. After pulling up stakes and relocating to New York City, the band recorded a self-titled EP and prepared to release it during the summer of 2007. That June, however, Pike died after disappearing one night from a party following a show in Providence, RI. His body was later found in nearby Buzzard’s Bay. Several weeks later, the mourning bandmates issued a statement confirming their continuation as a band. Ra Ra Riot joined the roster at V2 Records later that year before switching their American operations to Barsuk Records, which signed the group in May 2008. Released by V2 in Europe and Barsuk in the U.S., The Rhumb Line marked the band’s full-length debut in August 2008.

Wale.

The self-proclaimed “Ambassador of Rap for the Capital,” Washington, D.C.-based rapper Wale (pronounced “wah-lay”) was able to transcend his local sensation status and become a national rap contender using go-go-inspired hip-hop as the vehicle for his lyricism and clever wordplay. Olubowale Victor Akintimehin was born in D.C. in 1984 to Nigerian immigrants who first arrived to America five years prior. Moving to Maryland at age ten, however, Wale was mostly raised in suburban D.C. He attended both Robert Morris College and Virginia State University on football scholarships, but then transferred a third time to Bowie State. The music bug already had bit him hard, and soon he quit Bowie State to turn towards a recording career.

Wale got his first airplay circa 2003-2004 with “Rhyme of the Century,” thanks to the help of a local radio DJ who believed in his potential. This landed him in the “Unsigned Hype” column in Source magazine the following year. In 2006, Wale signed to local start-up imprint Studio 43, owned by a former VP of Roc-a-Fella Records, and enjoyed a string of hits in the D.C.-Maryland-Virginia area that year. Many of those records sampled from ’80s go-go, a more raw, percussion-driven offshoot of disco originating in D.C., like the popular “Dig Dug,” a tribute to Ronald “Dig Dug” Dixon of go-go band the Northeast Groovers. The use of the Internet and MySpace were big factors for his success, which is how British über-producer and DJ Mark Ronson (Amy Winehouse, Christina Aguilera, Rhymefest) caught wind of the go-go MC in 2007. Wale then struck a production deal with Ronson‘s Allido imprint and released the 100 Miles and Running mixtape that summer. Despite not being signed to any major label yet, tons of press, ranging from XXL magazine to The New York Times, started to cover the D.C. sensation in 2007 and 2008. After a bidding war that included Epic, Atlantic, and Def Jam, Interscope finally grabbed Wale for its roster in early 2008.

Tokyo Police Club

Toronto’s quirky, high-energy indie rockers Tokyo Police Club feature vocalist/bassist Dave Monks, keyboardist/vocalist Graham Wright, guitarist/percussionist Josh Hook, and drummer/percussionist Greg Alsop. The band formed in the wake of the breakup of the foursome’s previous project; after a few months of not making music together, they regrouped as Tokyo Police Club in 2005. They began performing live that summer, and that fall they played the Montreal Pop Festival, where the group’s rousing reception convinced them to make Tokyo Police Club a full-time venture. Monks quit school, and early in 2006 the band signed with local label Paperbag Records and began recording their debut EP, A Lesson in Crime, which was released that spring. Buoyed by blog and MySpace buzz, Tokyo Police Club embarked on their largest tour yet that fall. Around the same time, A Lesson in Crime was re-released with wider distribution, and 2008 saw the release of the band’s full-length debut, Elephant Shell. Its a great little band!

The Next Band is A band some may see as vulgar and inappropriate. Granted they are. All there songs make fun at rappers of this modern day that don’t have any depth. They are hysterical on the movie screen or in the recording studio where they make up lonely Island Records. Most of there songs cant go on our site because i want my mommy to talk to me, but check em out: the lonely Island

Heres a clean copy

here is Some Andrew Bird! I know He’s on the main page but I didn’t want him to feel left out. no vid just music so press play and explore the rest of our site in another tab. OR check out some of Adam’s pics in the flickr bar —>

i kinda just ganked this from a thing on the internet…

Describing their sound as “Upper West Side Soweto,” New York City’s Vampire Weekend mixes preppy, well-read indie rock with joyful, Afro-pop-inspired melodies and rhythms. Ezra Koenig, Chris Baio, Rostam Batmanglij, and Chris Tomson formed the band early in 2006, when they were finishing up their studies at Columbia University. Taking their name from a movie Koenig made during his freshman year, the band started out by playing gigs at the university’s literary societies and at parties. Word spread about Vampire Weekend’s unique sound and lyrics (“Oxford Comma”‘s title refers to comma use in a list of three items), buoyed by the band’s self-released EPs, which they recorded in locations spanning their Columbia dorm rooms to a family barn. The buzz around Vampire Weekend reached a peak in 2007: that summer, the band embarked on their biggest tour yet, made several appearances at that year’s CMJ Music Marathon, and signed with XL Records that fall. The Mansard Roof EP was Vampire Weekend’s debut release for the label, followed by their self-titled first album early in 2008. Heather Phares, All Music Guide