Yesterday Kirby posted about the 13-year-old girl who killed herself. "Emo" is being blamed for the death, as she was "obsessed" with the band My Chemical Romance. And, as Kirby posted and as the Telegraph reported, "She had secretly chatted to 'emo' followers online all over the world, talking about death and the glamorisation of hanging and speaking about 'the black parade' - a place where 'emos' believe they go after they die."

The Black Parade is, of course, from the My Chemical Romance record, a concept album based on a cancer patient who died and went to the Black Parade (you know, instead of going to heaven or hell or wherever).

So anyway today, following her death, the band announced details for their upcoming CD+DVD boxset called The Black Parade is Dead.

The special edition will be released with death certificates for each member and "Day of the Dead" masks. It'll be packaged in a pinewood coffin.

Just like that 13-year old girl.

Sometimes--either by mistake or because someone doesn't understand what the "Book" in "Books Editor" stands for--CDs land in my box of incoming to-be-reviewed books. I usually listen to them, if just to see what's passing for new musical acts these days.

Today, I got a copy of Rockferry, by Duffy. Thanks to her freakishly detailed Wikipedia page, I now know that Duffy is Welsh and once, when she was a child, she was put in a safe house because a hit man was called out on her famliy. Also, she was elected president of her Students' Union.

But I really, really like the album. It's kind of got a Dusty Springfield feel to it, with some wall of sound and some R&B mixed in. A couple of the songs echo older songs--"Hanging on too Long" is only a note or two away from "I Heard it Through the Grapevine," for example--but the whole thing feels like a nice late-sixties groove. It makes me glad that it's kind of shitty outside today. Here's the title track:

I just listened to Dizzee Rascal's latest CD, Math and English, and was stimulated by one track, "World Outside," mildly stimulated by another, "Sirens," and cold to the rest. The problem? Like much of Rascal's work, it lacks an aesthetic or creative program. The CD goes all over the place in a restless search of a hit single. His hunger for a hit has grown. The substance of his raps has shrunk. The genre he channeled to America is more and more looking like a dead end for hiphop. Let's return our attention to dubstep. It has a real hero with a real program.

The successful "stealthy" release of the last Raconteurs album has, in typical music industry fashion, been co-opted by people who have no idea what they're doing. Apparently, the next Beck album will be "stealthily" released in the next month or so. Take that, illegal music downloaders!

Strategy aside: Beck. You know, I was kind of fond of Guero. It felt like a nice, poppy summer album. And Guerolito, the remix album, was, you know, okay. It reminded me of how the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion used to release remix albums that were supposed to be "fucked-up" chopped and channeled versions, but really were just kind of aurally challenging messes. The Information, with its DIY cover, seemed irrelevant from the moment I opened the package. I think that, if Beck wants to have a future, he should stop trying to be Bob Dylan and start trying to be Neil Diamond. His creepy Scientology-issued sincerity would be the perfect breeding ground for the "Sweet Caroline" of the new millennium. And, whether you acknowledge it or not, the new millennium desperately needs a new "Sweet Caroline."

No Age Nouns (Sub Pop)

Eric Grandy has had nothing but great things to say about this band lately--he reviewed their Sub Pop debut in his column this week. An excerpt:

A lot of influences ricochet and echo around on this record, but a few echo loudest. There's Sonic Youth, of course, both in the band's melding of slanted pop and digressive experimentalism and in their shared penchant for age-defying monikers. There's a little bit of Built to Spill's sloppier, poppier side in Spunt's wide-eyed vocals and Randall's fragile driving melodies. Most exciting though, are the unexpected, though eagerly welcomed, traces of Sam Jayne's teenage trio Lync, whose fractured, fuzzy indie rock deserves greater credit for presaging countless bands. These last two reference points are especially pronounced on songs like "Sleeper Hold," "Here Should Be My Home," "Ripped Knees," and "Brain Burner."

Throughout, No Age mix noise, punk, and pop in unusual and deeply satisfying ways, dressing up by-the-numbers pop structures with peripheral chaos, hiding hooks under deep layers of lo-fi squall.

Listen to No Age:
"Eraser"

Try before you buy; stream the whole record on the band's MySpace: www.myspace.com/nonoage.

Russian Circles Stations (Suicide Squeeze)

From this week's paper:

Russian Circles
Station
(Suicide Squeeze)

If Chicago instrumental combo Russian Circles founded a school, their curriculum would ditch the "three Rs"—who needs language arts when your discipline forgoes words?—in favor of a trio of Gs: geography, geometry, and geology. Studied closely, their music revolves around exploring diverse terrain, measuring spatial relations, and stratifying layers. And, yes, Russian Circles rock: at times, quite hard.

On their second full-length, drummer Dave Turncrantz and guitarist Mike Sullivan are joined by Brian Cook (Botch, These Arms Are Snakes) on bass, with Matt Bayles (Mastodon, Minus the Bear) handling production. Randomly sample a segment of any of the six tracks, and a listener could be forgiven for thinking Station was the work of myriad bands. But no, the skittish percussion fills, headbanging bursts of staccato guitar shredding, unsettling dissonances, and extended ambient passages were all crafted by the same players. (The bowed bass and organ drones on "Versus," however, come courtesy of Past Lives' Morgan Henderson and Bayles, respectively.)

What holds everything together, across 43 minutes that seem shorter, is judicious overlapping pitched somewhere between tectonic plate movement and a rapid-fire game of Tetris. Russian Circles don't deal in verses, choruses, and bridges in the traditional sense, instead building songs around succinct melodic cells, elongated textural passages, and mathematical counter- point displays. On the opening "Campaign," repeated guitar figures ripple over sustained notes, like an edgier update of Eno and Fripp's seminal collaborations. The core components of each track are sometimes embarrassingly simple—during one chunk of "Station," Cook plays the same bass note past the point of mind-numbing and straight on till mesmerizing—yet their array changes so quickly and fluidly that boredom is never a concern; this is stoner music with ADD appeal. KURT B. REIGHLEY

Hear the song "Harper Lewis" at Suicidesqueeze.com.

Also in stores today: Elvis Costello and The Imposters Momofuku, Neil Diamond Home Before Dark, Matmos Supreme Balloon, and uh... Clay Aiken.

Suicide Squeeze is proud to announce the signing of Seattle-based, quartet, THESE ARMS ARE SNAKES!

The band will begin recording their new album on May 9 at Red Room Recordings in Seattle, WA, recording with Producer/TAAS drummer Chris Common (Mouth Of The Architect, These Arms Are Snakes, Minus the Bear), for a (yet to be titled) release on October 7th courtesy of Suicide Squeeze.

Speaking of Suicide Squeeze, tomorrow the local label will release the new Russian Circles record, Station, which got a three star review from Kurt B. Reighley in this week's paper:

If Chicago instrumental combo Russian Circles founded a school, their curriculum would ditch the "three Rs"—who needs language arts when your discipline forgoes words?—in favor of a trio of Gs: geography, geometry, and geology. Studied closely, their music revolves around exploring diverse terrain, measuring spatial relations, and stratifying layers. And, yes, Russian Circles rock: at times, quite hard.

On their second full-length, drummer Dave Turncrantz and guitarist Mike Sullivan are joined by Brian Cook (Botch, These Arms Are Snakes) on bass, with Matt Bayles (Mastodon, Minus the Bear) handling production. Randomly sample a segment of any of the six tracks, and a listener could be forgiven for thinking Station was the work of myriad bands. But no, the skittish percussion fills, headbanging bursts of staccato guitar shredding, unsettling dissonances, and extended ambient passages were all crafted by the same players. (The bowed bass and organ drones on "Versus," however, come courtesy of Past Lives' Morgan Henderson and Bayles, respectively.)

Read the full review here.

I reviewed No Age's new album, Nouns, in my column this week:

Forget Weirdo Rippers, this is No Age's proper debut: an unexpected blast of an album that totally fulfills every scrap of hype these guys have accumulated over the last year and then some. Its songs are oddball anthems, oblique sing-alongs busied by swarms of sweet noise and punctuated by moments of reflective quiet.

In a response to a Line Out post below, Me Too says:

Yo Grandy: No Age is streaming the whole new album on its MySpace

Everybody, thank Mr Me Too:

http://www.myspace.com/nonoage

What made Portishead a prominent band in the triphop period (between Massive Attack's Blue Lines and Alpha’s Come From Heaven) was its successful blending of the new, (modern hiphop) with the mature (jazz cinema; the post-rock of 4AD). Each of these parts was brought into the mixture by one of the band’s three members. With Beth Gibbons came Bauhaus, Cocteau Twins, Throwing Muses; With Adrian Utley, the jazz of Elevator to the Gallows, The Samurai, Taxi Driver; With Geoff Barrow, the beats of Prince Paul, DJ Premier, RZA. When the trio began working on it’s second record, Portishead, Barrow’s was in his early 20s, Gibbons in her early 30s, and Utley was heading to his 40s. Portishead was the meeting point of three generations (waves) of music—its base in the present, hiphop, and its melodies and moods drawn from the near and distant past. Dummy and Portishead are defined by this order (hiphop, cinematic jazz, late-rock); the new record, Third, is not. What’s gone is the hiphop, the base of the earlier recordings. Gibbons brought to the new album her sorrows, suicidal loneliness, gothic longings, Utley brought his cinematic and after-hours textures, but Barrow brought almost nothing. He seems to have junked his turntables and MPC2000 and not bothered to replace them with something else, something different, something that’s happening right now on the streets of London and New York. And a lot is happening these days—dubstep, grime, new variations on hiphop (Jay Dee, Timbaland, Just Blaze). The beats on Third are not its foundation. You almost don’t notice them. What commands your attention is Gibbon’s pain and Utley’s soundtrack to that pain.

For those who are fans of Atmosphere (I'm excluded from that group--Slug's type of senstive hiphop does not move or enlarge me in any significant way), the duo's new album When Life Gives You Lemons, You Paint That Shit Gold has reached number five on this week's Billboard Top 200. The Rhymesayers label, and the underground in general, is alive and well.

My brain's a little scattered today, and there are a lot of records hitting shelves, so I left a few of the list--as mentioned earlier, there's a lot of stuff in stores today (Madonna, Jamie Lidell, Boris, Portishead), but should you still want to buy (or steal) more (or should you think--based on the first single--that the new Madonna album isn't actually worth your money or effort [true]) here are more options:

The Roots Rising Down

The Roots - "Get Busy" featuring Dice Raw, Peedi Crakk, DJ Jazzy Jeff

Santogold Santogold

Santogold - "L.E.S. Artistes"

And, while we're talking about new records, I should add that there will be a full review of Jamie Lidell's Jim in Thursday's paper. To tide you over, here's a sample of what Larry Mizell had to say:

Multiply’s insanely on-point combo of warm, beat-happy underpinnings and lover-man crooning merely set the table for the steamin’ stacked plate that is Jim, an album you’d better just get now so you can digest it before the radio, the TV, and everyone else plays it out for you. Jim finds Jamie still further from his experimental roots, going whole hog on an instant-vintage Motown kick—and killing it.

And there you have it.

It's Tuesday, the day new records appear in record stores. Brian Cook already gave you a couple recommendations, here's a rundown of what else you'll find on the shelves:

Portishead Third

In this week's paper, a bunch of writers (Miranda July, Sherman Alexie, Charles Mudede, Stephen Elliott, Grant Cogswell, Laura Albert, etc.) shared their stories of gettin' it on to Portishead.

There was a time when we were at it like bunnies. The "modern rock" station played Portishead nonstop. It was the time of roommates and thin walls, and radios turned up to mask. And Portishead were more to mood than the Sundays (too cute) or My Bloody Valentine (too noisy) or Blur (charming beat and accents become annoying during sex, like someone playing with your nipple post orgasm). Portishead were a good indicator that I was knocked up. Suddenly I could not bear that repeating dunda-dah dun-dun. Morning sickness and Portishead were one. Trying to quickly twist the radio knob away from the sound was like trying to scratch an itch while hang gliding. My arm was stretched out as if in petition, my fingers grazing the globular button, when something came shooting out of me, an ooze of warm spittle that bubbled over my swollen belly as the song played on. Now they are back and my son is a 10-year-old drummer. Long may they both play on. LAURA ALBERT

Click here to see the new video for the first single, "Machine Gun." Don't forget to pop a breath mint.

Madonna Hard Candy

Here's the first single, "4 Minutes," featuring Justin Timberlake:

Jamie Lidell Jim

Here's the first single, "Little Bit of Feel Good":

Mudcrutch (featuring Tom Petty) Mudcrutch

Here's the official video for Mudcrutch's "Lover of the Bayou":

There's more! The Roots, Def Leppard, Nerf Herder, Robert Forster, and uh... Dweezil Zappa. Pause & Play has the full list.

Boris
Smile
(Southern Lord Records)

When it comes to heavy metal, my favorite bands tend to be the ones that are more interested in the genre’s sonic heritage than its accompanying Satan-and-leather aesthetic. I will always prefer Melvins to Maiden. This may be the reason that I am so fond of Boris. Through the course of the past 12 years, the Japanese trio have mined the landscape of hard rock, extracted the best elements, and blended it with an unceasing creative spirit. Pink, their last proper studio full-length, managed to house their wide array of influences in the confines of an accessible heavy rock album. But in the three years since, the band detoured from that template and returned to their more adventurous leanings by releasing a series of collaborations, including three records with noise artist Merzbow (Rock Dream, Sun Baked Snow Cave, Groon/Walrus), one album with psych guitarist Michio Kurihara (Rainbow), and the highly acclaimed pairing with funeral droners Sunn (Altar). In the process, they continually demonstrated their willingness to extend their artistic boundaries outside the realm of conventional metal.

With Smile, Boris has once again exploited the clichés of loud rock music, stripped it of camp and irony, and reminded us of everything that is great about our favorite obnoxiously abrasive records. The band concedes that ‘80s hair metal was a strong guiding force this time around, but the band’s signature in-the-red production makes the simplified power-chord riffs translate more as an homage to early punk than to peroxided Reagan-era rock. Even the solos, the classic metal indulgence, have a particularly gnarly edge to them. The paint-peeling leads have a pleasantly painful sound that gives one reason to conclude that Merzbow’s treble assaults left their mark on Wata’s guitar technique.

The Headbanger’s Ball demographic might find tracks like the early-CAN-esque “Flower Sun Rain” or the restrained pop of “My Neighbor Satan” a bit pretentious; a blasphemy in the unbridled and primal school of metal. But when paired with the wild abandon of rockers like “BUZZ-IN” and “Statement,” the contrast serves to make the divergent approaches that much more effective. Such wide dynamics aren’t typically employed in these circles, and Boris’ use of this musical device inadvertently exposes its deficit in the larger realm of hard rock.

I find these deviations from the standard metal formula intriguing. The album title alone indicates that the band is more fascinated with satisfying their own creative curiosity than living up to some sort of sinister and evil image. As with their previous releases, Boris transcends the stigmas of their dual-necked guitars and Orange full-stacks to attain the position of one of the most engaging rock bands operating in this day and age.
*****

Langhorne Slim
Langhorne Slim
(Kemado Records)

The first time I heard Langhorne Slim, I was waking from a nap on the bench seat of a van. A voice roused me from my slumber. It was not the voice of the driver or a fellow passenger; rather, it was a bold but wavering timbre singing a modern country song. It was one of those tunes that strikes the perfect balance between melancholy and triumph. Those are my favorite kind of songs. They somehow remind us of our hardships, but offer us a beacon of hope. On that dark mountain drive, I laid in the backseat and quietly listened to this stranger sing his songs through the tape deck.

It wound up that the record was the latest offering by this Langhorne Slim gentleman and his backing band, The War Eagles. I was shocked to learn that he hails New York; I didn’t think heartfelt sincerity made it from the Big Apple these days. This is the kind of stuff that comes out of rural Texas or the Great Smoky Mountains, not the land of skyscrapers. I had to remind myself that even old Robert Zimmerman needed that big city to transform into Bob Dylan. I don’t think Langhorne is too hung up on locations anyway; neither his rabble-rousing two-steps nor his bluegrass ballads seem desperate for backcountry affirmation. The music is distinctly American, and that’s about as region-specific as one needs to get.

The novelty of revisiting ol’timey music in the modern age is boring if it lacks quality songs and charm. Fortunately, Langhorne Slim has plenty of both. The songs are memorable, if not downright infectious, and there’s a general air of hope throughout the record that makes listening to it a life-affirming experience. He reminds us that “you can have all the diamonds you can have all the gold, but someday you’re still gonna get old. You gotta learn to get happy along the way.” It’s almost a reply to Dylan claiming “life is sad, life is a bust, all you can do is do what you must.” Slim also tells us that “someday, my friends, it’s gotta make sense in our heads: can’t make up our minds til we wake up and make our beds.” Let Conor Oberst keep his depression and collegiate turn of phrase. There’s something in this kind of simple wisdom that makes a grump like myself want to clap my hands and stomp my feet for the barn-burners or get glassy-eyed over a beer for the melodic laments.

Yes, that's absolutely the cover, it's what they chose. They looked at a bunch of mockups, and that's the one they decided to go with. It's not a joke.

See the artwork here.

This came out yesterday, via local mom'n'pop record shop Sub Pop:

To add to the chorus: It's funny. And cute. It's also lovingly faithful to the musical genres it parodies. It's all songs that you may have seen on their HBO show of the same name—"Bowie," "Business Time," "Inner City Pressure," etc. The packaging is nice.

This is possibly the only Sub Pop act beloved by my girlfriend's mom (sorry, No Age). Will I listen to this album while washing the dishes or walking to work? Probably not. Will I watch old episodes of the show at my girlfriend's mom's house on DVD? Probably.

Like this:

Spinner has the supposed art work for the new Weezer album. And here it is:

Are we being Punk'd?

But the album's first single, "Pork and Beans" has grown on me more and more... so that's something. You can hear that at weezer.com.

There are a lot of influences echoing and ricocheting around on No Age's upcoming album, Nouns (out May 6th on Sub Pop), but one (awesome) echo in particular struck me this morning. Don't be surprised if you hear it (or at least hear me ranting about it) in the coming weeks.

In this:

Traces of this:

Update: Just announced today, No Age will be playing Seattle July 23rd with Mudhoney (details TBA) as part of the Free Yr Radio concert series, in which synergies with a car company and a retail chain will benefit KEXP and other independent radio stations. To freedom!

Full of sex:

Lacking sex:

Why does the image for Ophelia not have the sex that overflows from the image for Motherland? For an answer we must turn to Diotima in the Symposium. What she says in that short book can be applied here: Ophelia is about the present; Motherland is about the eternal. Sex is nothing else than our access to immortality. We are drawn to Motherland because it is charged with the infinite.

Why must one listen to this album when its cover says everything and more? We know before the needle hits the groove (before we press play) that no tune by Merchant could ever come close to the cosmic power of her pose, her bowl, her lovely knees, and all of those summer leaves. The image will forever amaze me.

I just wanted an opportunity to put these two album covers next to each other. Last night, my boyfriend and I were sitting around our living room, where this California Love LP, Reaping the Whirlwind (2006), is presently leaning up against a bookshelf. We kept staring at it and laughing at how ridiculous and hilarious it is, since it includes so many metal and punk-rock artwork clichés: in other words, how amazingly awesome it is. This is a small image, so let me explain a bit:

1. The grim reaper, with sickle.
2. A plane crashed into the iconic Capitol Records building.
3. A huge pile of skulls, with a few still-alive arms and hands reaching up through them.
4. Some of the skulls have the names of major record labels printed on their foreheads.
5. A vulture carrying away some kind of tiny corpse.
6. Metal lettering.

This of course brought to mind a favorite LP of mine, Government Warning’s No Moderation (also 2006). At the time, we were too cozy to get off the couch to dig this record out and put the two side by side. No Moderation’s album artwork includes:

1. A skeleton patient in a hospital bed who has just died.
2. The skeleton patient is holding an American flag and a bible.
3. A skeleton nurse holding a syringe.
4. A graveyard.

Being into punk rock lo these many years, I love this kind of album art, no matter how silly it is. And these are both really great albums, by the way. I’ve spoken enough about No Moderation in the past, but I don’t think I’ve mentioned this California Love LP. One word: grindcore. It is seriously rocking—just classic, straight-up grind. It’s my number-three favorite music to copyedit to when the office gets too loud here at The Stranger. And California Love include members of Look Back and Laugh, the Bay Area’s premier thrashy hardcore straight-edge band. You can’t go wrong there.

Nouns just arrived on my desk, and it is exactly what I needed today: A glorious, rainbow-colored, sun-drenched, fuzzed-out blast, all hopeful and energetic and inspired. The exact opposite of sitting in a cubicle on a gray day drinking diet coke and pulling out hair. More on this one soon.

Or, get the new Gnarls Barkley album for free.

The only catch is, it's backwards.

Their top five artists/albums on "Too much, too soon: 20 respectable rock and rap acts that peaked with debut albums":

1. Rage Against The Machine, Rage Against The Machine (1992)
2. 50 Cent, Get Rich Or Die Tryin' (2003)
3. Richard Hell And The Voidoids, Blank Generation (1977)
4. The Strokes, Is This It (2001)
5. The Modern Lovers, The Modern Lovers (1976)

They also included Nas, Kanye, Television, Taking Back Sunday, Black Flag, Sunny Day, Snoop, and Wu-Tang.

See the whole list (and their reasons for including them) here.

It's called Stay Down and it's being released on Flameshovel. The CD release party is happening in Chicago on June 7th, but that's all the info there is to know right now.

Now please enjoy one of my favorite Smoking Popes songs, "Need You Around," which is especially delightful on a beautiful day like today:

You're welcome.

Music from the Center of the Universe is a brand new compilation of Bellingham bands--Cicadas, No-Fi Soul Rebellion, the Russians, the Mission Orange, the Love Lights, Megatron... it's a pretty good comp, as far as comps go. There are 20 songs total. The Cicadas track slays, the Russians' song is killer, the Black Eyes & Neckties love them some Murder City Devils (and so do I). There are some singer songwriters, some dance tracks, it's mostly fine. I do not like the 10 Killing Hands song, though. There's an annoying synth that's constantly buzzing and it makes me feel like bugs are eating away at my brain. I couldn't listen all the way through.

But the part I love, love, love is the artwork. I love cute things, especially cute animals. I also like flowers and shit like that. I'm a girl. I had a canopy bed when I was a kid. Fuck you.

Anyway, look at this!

In the middle of all the flowers are cute little animal heads--pandas, ducks, kitties, raccoons, elephants, dogs in hats, walruses, bunnies, baby cows, etc.... this print is all over the front, back, and inside. It's the best album art of 2008. I want to wallpaper one of the walls in my apartment with it.

Well done, Scott Rickey of feraldesigners.com!

You can buy your own copy at www.clickpoprecords.com.

George Strait took the #1 slot, but REM managed to debut at #2 on this week's Billboard chart--it sold 115,000 copies in the first week.

It's the highest position that band's ever held.

R.E.M.'s previous studio album, "Around the Sun," debuted at No. 13 in 2004 with 59,000 copies. The band last made a big impression with 1996's "New Adventures in Hi-Fi," which opened with 226,500 units, narrowly missing out on the No. 1 spot.

Mogwai is hopping on the reissue train; the band will celebrate the 10th anniversary of their debut Young Team with a double disc reissue in May.

Punknews.org says it's "due out May 26, 2008 in the UK and May 27, 2008 in the US, the record will be remastered and feature eight bonus tracks as well as new liner notes."

The S is about to drop that ol' robotic, futuristic, George Jetson, crazy shit...
The album, Green Lover, continues the "more dusty than digital" program that Specs One has refined and elaborated over the past decade. His voice: raw; his beats: beautifully faded.

And listening to it is making me want to do karaoke.

There's a lot of good bands releasing records today. Pick of the litter is Torche, the Hydrahead riff giants Brian Cook expounded on last week. Meanderthal can be be streamed in its entirety here.

Other notables: Boredoms, Capsule, Clinic, Colin Meloy of the Decemberists, Dark Meat, Man Man, Nine Inch Nails, No Age, No Kids, Richard Swift, Tapes and Tapes, and The Oh Sees.

The Glow Pt. 2 by the Microphones is being re-released today by K Records. Pitchfork isn't blowing smoke up your ass, it is an album for the ages. Phil Elverum will be at the Vera Project on Thursday the 17th, and he will most likely not play a single song off this record.

Even though their record only had one week's lead time, the Raconteurs' latest Consolers of the Lonely, debuted on the Billboard 200 as the number seven record this week. That's exactly where their first release, Broken Boy Soldiers, landed its first week on the charts back in June 2006.

That's all.

Torche

Meanderthal

Hydra Head Records

I’ve never gotten into Queens of the Stone Age. Seen ‘em live. Certainly heard more of their music than I ever cared to. Funny, because it seems like I’m in their target demographic of older folks who still want to listen to something heavy, but need a little more substance than just loud distorted guitars. But despite being touted as some sort of accessible pop variation of the stoner rock template, I’ve always thought they were just sort of uninspired. I want either more pop or more heaviness in their sound. Even better: they could be poppier AND heavier. Or they could just sound like Miami’s Torche.

Torche is what I always thought Queens of the Stone Age should sound like. Legions of stoned guitar aficionados cite Josh Homme’s desert rock band as some sort of crucial hybrid of Sabbath’s bluesy doom with the sounds of America’s early New York and Midwest punk pioneers. I, however, would argue that Torche is the first band since the pre-Nevermind grunge bands to blend those disparate approaches so successfully. Indeed, it’s a risky marriage that countless bands have attempted, and all too many have failed. Just look at the thousands of dumb metalcore outfits too inept to appropriately mix heavy riffs with pop vocals without awkwardly stumbling through bad transitions or coating their songs with sugary over-production. But four dudes from Florida have found that sweet spot. The riffs are still huge and mean, but they always provide a solid base for strong and memorable melodies. The geography of their home state seems to have worn off on their music: it’s simultaneously swampy and sunny, and occasionally besieges you like a hurricane.

Granted, it’s a formula singer/guitarist Steve Brooks has employed since his tenure in the Florida sludge band Floor. Even back in the ‘90s, he was using a little trick often referred to as “the bomb string” (or “the floppy string” and “the brown note”). By tuning the bottom string down to a non-pitch, and thereby slacking the tension to the point that the string simply flops around instead of resonating a note, Brooks has taken the heavy guitar sound to its ultimate conclusion. When plucked, it literally sounds like a bomb going off. It’s a secret weapon used sparingly. Whereas Torche’s self-titled debut came crashing out of the gate with the bomb string showcaser “Charge of the Brown Recluse,” they’ve held back this time around, teasing their old fans by waiting until the album-closing title track before hitting that gut-shaking frequency. And when that note starts the song, you can almost envision the hordes of Torche fans wetting themselves. Like Spielberg hiding the shark until the final reel of Jaws, part of the enjoyment of the experience is the tension resulting from the anticipation of that one moment.

Lest I paint Torche as a one-trick-pony, this album would be a complete ass-kicker even if they decided to abandon the brown note altogether. Meanderthal opens with “Triumph of Venus,” a busy high-energy instrumental tune that wouldn’t feel out of place alongside Mastodon’s Blood Mountain material, and launches straight into “Grenades,” a heavy mid-tempo tune that scales back the guitar dexterity to provide a foundation for a big rock anthem chorus. The remaining duration of the record finds the band walking the spectrum between their heavier inclinations and their pop sensibilities. Perhaps no other song on the album thoroughly demonstrates Torche’s range than “Amnesian.” Combining classic stoner rock riffs with psychedelic guitar solos and big vocal harmonies, the song serves as an appropriate centerpiece to the album by displaying the band’s full arsenal within one epic six-and-a-half minute track.

Let me state for the record that I certainly don’t want to bag on Josh Homme’s endeavors. The man aims to make respectable music. I’ll even concede that Kyuss was pretty awesome. But at the end of the day, for me personally, it simply doesn’t compare to the racket made by four dudes from the swamps of Florida.

Seriously?

Their debut was called Weezer. Because of the bright blue cover, it's known as The Blue Album.

Then their "comeback" record, the first release since Pinkerton, was also called Weezer. Because of it's bright green album, it's known as The Green Album. That was cute.

Now, their June 17th release, is also going to be called Weezer. Apparently this one will end up being known as The Red Album.

Via Rolling Stone's Rock Daily:

The new Weezer album will be called… Weezer. For the third time in six albums, the band is going the eponymous route, except this time around the band are referring to their new one as the “Red Album.” Comprised of sessions produced by Rick Rubin, Jacknife Lee and themselves, frontman Rivers Cuomo says, “We put a lot of emphasis on blowing our minds with creative freakouts,” as evidenced by the probable first single “Pork and Beans.”

It's not that cute anymore. But mostly because I haven't liked a whole Weezer record since the Green Album.

^{Photo by Brian O'Shea}

"We're not trying to be like Radiohead or something," they say. "It's just really expensive and tiring to keep releasing/promoting albums outselves. So we're giving it away."

Curse is their fourth full-length album. You can get it at www.theturnons.com.

Via Punknews.org:

Seattle, Washington's Melvins will be releasing a new album on July 8 via Ipecac titled Nude With Boots. The lineup will remain the same, with constants Buzz and Dale holding down guitar and drums, respectively, and Big Business' holding down the bass and more drums. The album will be eleven tracks.

The group has released only one album with this incarnation, A Senile Animal, released in 2006. The label will also be releasing The Fantomas/Melvins Big Band Live from London 2006 DVD featuring audio commentary from Buzz, Danny DeVito and Ipecac co-owner Greg Werckman.

It accidentally leaked a few days early last week, but for those of you who wanted to play nice and not (illegally) snag the album off the numerous peer-to-peer services it popped up on, your (week long) wait is over. The Consolers of the Lonely is now available for real.

Starting at 12 am Eastern (so, five minutes ago), the new record will be available for download at www.theraconteurs.com. Have at it.

Not sure if you care about R.E.M. headlining the first night of Sasquatch? Me either. Asking around, it would seem I only know one person who "really likes" R.E.M., the rest of us just sort of tolerated them throughout the nineties (and were too busy being 5 to listen to them in the eighties). As a child, my opinion of Michael Stipe did rise after I saw him in the "Mr. Tastee" episode of Pete and Pete. It dropped right back down after seeing the video for "Everybody Hurts" 10,000 times. I am currently indifferent. The buzz around their new album Accelerate seems initially positive - now you can decide for yourself by streaming it here. Accelerate comes out April 1st.

DJ Raahan - Edits Vol. 1 12" (KAT Records)
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This week there was alot of great new records to choose from including Big Bear Records new 12" edit record entitled, Eebay City from Lexx, Tirk's new release from Chaz Jankel, as well as great new records from Diskjokke, Putsch '79, and Wild Rumpus. However, if I have to choose just one record to highlight, I'm going with the new KAT Records released disco re-edit 12" from DJ Raahan. This re-edit label has already given us some amazing re-edit 12" from some of today's hottest disco producers including Danny Krivit. Greg Wilson, and Sasso. Here we have Chicago's disco master, DJ Raahan, bringing some heat with his edits of La Pamplemousse's "You Can Get Off On The Muzik", Bent Boys' "Walk the night", Two Tons of Fun's "Make Someone Feel Happy", and my personal favorite, Eddie Kendricks' 1976 classic Thanks For The Memories. Overall, this is another great re-edit 12", and a must have for disco lovers. Chalk up another great release from the crew over at KAT!

DJ Raahan - Memories (Sample Clip)
Buy Record

Like anyone else, Megan Seling is not perfect.

The Saturday Knights get some shine from Pitchfork today, hyping their forthcoming debut long player, Mingle and its host of guest appearances (Kim Thayil, the Dap Kings, Chris Ballew, Jack Endino, Muscle Shoals Horns, etc). Mingle comes out June 24th on Light in the Attic, and the early word on it is pretty promising. The tracklist:

01 45
02 Count It Off
03 Dog Park
04 Foreign Affair
05 Mutt
06 Private School Girl
07 Motorin'
08 Patches
09 Surf Song
10 Nobody Beats Us
11 Ass Kicker's Haircut
12 I Go
13 The Gospel

Update: The ever-vigilant Lar notes, "yo, their myspace has a new song up too called "Dog Park" and it's fuckin brilliant." Woof.

It continues to be the best album to be playing during, as Borat would say, sexy time.