We All Fall Down, There’s Not Enough Hours In A Day

This will be the last Coachella-related post, I promise! Here is a set of bands I took a great liking to when we were there, and I am currently busy pumping my iPod with their tunes:

Electric Touch - what nice, polite boys, and they have a solid repertoire of foot tapping-worthy numbers as well. An Austin-based foursome with an English frontman, a piano, and the good sense to do a lot of interacting with the mosh pit, they score high on charisma and catchy tunes.
Holy Fuck - their live performance was amazing, and from gig reviews I’ve been reading, ‘amazing’ is pretty much a word used constantly to describe their performances. But would you expect any less from a troupe that employs toy phaser guns to generate some sweet electronica beats?
VHS or Beta - when we sat down on the grass for lunch to dine to what we thought was Minus the Bear, I look up at A after a few minutes into the set to ask if she was sure it was Minus the Bear we were listening to. She checks her watch and says oh no, this is VHS or Beta. A fab accidental find, I think!

If anyone is at all interested in going to the fest next year, contact me and I can hook you up with Abid, the Best Taxi Driver in Southern California. He will try his best to get you into accommodations that do not cost an arm and a leg during festival weekend. Now if everything goes as planned, A and I should be hitting Austin City Limits come September for more great music and catching up with Caleb. Roll on Texas!

Coachella Pics

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Not Walk, Just Rock Hey!

In a few short hours, I will get on a plane to sweat it out at Coachella! As excited as I am for this, I think I’m also already exhausted just thinking about the hassle of flying into and living in the desert for three days, drinking overpriced campground water and eating expensive junk food. And don’t even mention the toilets! Ignorance is bliss, ignorance is bliss.

I’m going to bring along some homework to put me to sleep when drunken revelers are going to keep me awake, so let’s see how well organizational theory, Emperor Hirohito, and Portishead mix together. Hah! Check out this week’s Muxtape for a selection of artists whose music I will be enjoying the hot southern Californian desert sun to. I would put in some Goldfrapp, but Muxtape won’t let us upload .m4a files yet.

Tent, check. Cameras, check. Composure—uh, rain check on that. I am so nervous! If internet cafe prices are decent, I’ll work on letting you all know I am alive and having a good time, maybe put up a couple of pictures on my Flickr stream. Or maybe I won’t, because who has time for the internets when you are stuck in the desert with a boatload of wonderful musicians and interesting characters?

On that note, I bid you adieu, and let’s put in another exclamation point to stress just how jacked up my nerves are!

P.S. Dear SP crew: I really meant it when I said bring on the welcome wagon on my arrival; nothing like rambunctious fanfare to welcome a girl back home and wish her a happy birthday with! Have I mentioned how much I love you all?

Cause You’re My Tenderoni

My darling sister and I will be at the Coachella Music Fest on the weekend of my 21st birthday! Look at this lineup:

Roger Waters, Portishead, Jack Johnson, Kraftwerk, The Verve, The Raconteurs, Death Cab for Cutie, My Morning Jacket, Justice, Cafe Tacvba, Fatboy Slim, Gogol Bordello, Rilo Kiley, Chromeo, Dwight Yoakam, The Streets, The National, M.I.A., Metric, Hot Chip, Cold War Kids, Kate Nash, Danny Tenaglia, Pendulum, DeVotchka, Simian Mobile Disco, Flogging Molly, Mark Ronson, Midnight Juggernauts, The Cool Kids, Minus the Bear, Sia, Cinematic Orchestra, Junkie XL, Jens Lekman, I’m From Barcelona, Vampire Weekend, Architecture in Helsinki, The Bees, Yoav, and more, much more!

Excitement is one of those emotions I have a harder time curbing. Whoo!

I Love Beirut.

I’m sure the Lebanese capital is wonderful (I plan on paying it a visit someday), but the Beirut I am enamored with is the band. Good grief! They sound like a mellow Gogol Bordello, and their vocalist does that sexy, effortless, lazy drawl singing voice thing. I found them on eMusic a few weeks ago and have both albums on constant replay since. Highly highly highly recommended.

The end.

Decision ‘08

Instead of fretting over who you will be lending your support to in the U.S. Presidential elections, why don’t you vote on this instead: which version of Valerie tickles your fancy, the original Zutons version, or the tweaked Mark Ronson-Amy Winehouse collaboration?

And yes, the fate of the free world depends on your vote.

Wonderful Electric

I’ve been binging on plenty of electropop lately because it mirrors how I have been feeling: strange, upbeat, and strangely upbeat. A band that has me standing at attention and listening attentively is Brooklyn-based The Epochs, who marry sensible pop with catchy synth beats. Dreamy and addictive, you will set their tracks on replay without knowing what hit you. They play New York city on February 12th, so if you are within range of their loudspeakers (Alamak!), I suggest you draw closer to the source of the music that has you nodding along to its bassline.

Another interesting electro-leaning team is Balkan Beat Box, whose members are actually alumni of Gogol Bordello and Firewater. As their name suggests, they weave electronica beats with traditional Balkan-inspired (imagine that) riffs, which brings about very surprising results.

(Speaking of Gogol Bordello, it appears they’re set to embark on a transatlantic tour of magnificent Gypsy punk proportions. Rar, they play Chicago and Detroit early March. Road trip, May?)

eMusic and FreeIndie are two portals that provide super access to artists that rock the same boat. Also look out for Goldfrapp’s fourth studio album Seventh Tree, with a UK release date of February 25th and lined up for release in the US on February 26th. Can’t wait!

(Last post of the day, I promise)

Still Cannot Sleep

Jakarta synthpop outfit Goodnight Electric has made it big Time (heh heh, get it). Keep at it, boys!

The Charter guy is coming tomorrow to upgrade our analogue receiver to a digital one. We also upgraded our cable subscription so we will be receiving wonderful things like BBC America and the incredibly important Boomerang. Success! My housemates have made the mistake of leaving the Charter guy alone with me when he will be doing the installation. Who will be there to make sure I do not asphyxiate the poor man out of happiness once he has completed the necessary wiring?

Undercover Of The Night

When a fresh-faced band or singer performs a cover version of a much-loved hit from a bygone era, people either join the camp that appreciates the new interpretation or join the scowling horde of listeners who take great offense at the idea of trying to re-interpret something that was perfect when it first came out. The following is a list of covers that should not invoke the wrath of music purists, as well as a suggestion of a song that could use a revival over the airwaves (or fibre-optic cables, or whatever crazy contraption it is we use to promote music through nowadays).

a) In 1968, five-piece British band The Zombies released an album called Odessey and Oracle. It had pretty psychedelic cover art, a misspelling of the word “odyssey,” and a catchy little ditty called This Will Be Our Year.

In 2004, McSweeney’s—a publishing company that caters to the lo-fi listening, sweater-wearing, painfully hip hipster population the world over—published The Future Dictionary of America. Every copy of this witty book was accompanied by a CD called The Future Soundtrack of America, a compilation album spearheaded by an OK Go cover of This Will Be Our Year.

Featuring more bass drum and less crash cymbal, the OK Go take on the single challenges the universal versatility of Coldplay’s Clocks: from the tearful goodbyes of a mother who sees her son off to war, to the bittersweet sentiment of college graduation, to the slow, deliberate paces of smitten teenagers walking into the sunset, this is more than just the soundtrack of America, or of the future, or of the future of America for that matter.

b) In 1981, Soft Cell released two versions of music videos to accompany their hugely popular dance anthem Tainted Love. Thankfully for us, the eighties were a very strange time in human history, and out of this strangeness came strange music videos. Look out for random comets that defy the laws of astrophysics, and generous servings of anachronisms.

In 2006, Bajan darling of pop radio Rihanna sampled the bassline of Tainted Love in what would become another dance floor filler, SOS. Like her disco-going predecessors, she released two music videos for the same song, but unlike them, her videos are not very entertaining. She looked fabulous in them, this I do not deny, but there was a desperate shortage of renegade blue comets and Victorian-era ladies having tea with Roman emperors.

c) Do you remember Freiheit? Two people I have asked this question to do not, and neither do they remember the track that made them the kings of inspirational music. Solang’ man Träume noch leben kann is better known to the world as Keeping The Dream Alive, and has humbly served countless times as backdrop to montages of the photo and video variety that show people suffering for their art form of choice (e.g. athlete collapses in the middle of race, but stands back up and limps to the finish line last despite the obvious pain in his leg as a testament to his inner strength and commitment).

A quick mental check tells me this single has yet been covered by any contemporary songbirds, and as much as a part of me worries the tear-jerker value of this song will be dissolved when transposed onto a formula for a Top 40 hit, wouldn’t it be interesting to see how things turn out should painfully hip folks like Portishead or Sondre Lerche decide to resuscitate its popularity?

Far From Dead

Antiguit encourages your visiting deadmediafm, a neat little niche on the web that exposes the Indonesian indie music scene. If you can get past the Indonesian text on the webpages and banter at the podcasts, you will be treated to a treasure trove of fantastic twee pop. Bands featured on the website offer the combination of wonderful ditties and cheesy tongue-in-cheek humor, first made officially cool across the archipelago by Mocca. Am especially enjoying White Shoes & The Couples Company and The Monophones. Fab!