1. Ex-Belle & Sebastian cutie Isobel Campbell teams up with polar opposite Mark Lanegan for a duets album of sea chanteys and ballads. At first listen, not quite as in tune as you'd like: he's a little too haggard, and she's a little too scared. Stream the whole record
here, or just our one-spin faves:
LISTEN: Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan, "
Honey Child What Can I Do" (stream)
LISTEN: Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan, "
Revolver" (stream)
2. OTD is well aware that the vast majority of the audience for this blog is unwilling to entertain the notion of a heavy metal band making the album of the year, let alone two of them. That said, don't be a dumbass: believe the hype,
System of a Down are killing it. If you can't make it out to the store today to buy a weird, smart, funny, pretty Armenian thrash album,
you might be able to find a few tunes online.
3. Jenny Lewis (of Rilo Kiley and
Life with Lucy fame) has a solo album coming out which includes a Traveling Wilburys tune done by Jenny, Conor Oberst, Ben Gibbard, and M. Ward. It leaked.
These people know about it. And if, like us, you find yourself wondering what the hell the Watson Twins are,
now you know.
4. Stereogum posted
a crapload of Gwen Stefani mashups5.
Black Sabbath, Sex Pistols to be inducted into Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Says our pal Sean: "But they still haven't inducted Van Halen. Jerks."
6.
Mark E. Smith reads the local football box scores. No, this is not someone's pejorative description of his latest single. This is actually Mark E. Smith reading the local football box scores.
7. MSTRKRFT, the oft-mentioned-here production duo featuring one half of DFA1979, have
some remixes up at Banana Nutrament.
8. Montreal electro-funk dandies
Chromeo just released a between-albums mixtape of "rare dollar-bin crack funk gems,"
Un Joli Mix Pour Toi, as a Belgian import. Including Michael Jonzun, the Jets, Kleer, and a cult-fave Robert Palmer track. Just thought you'd want to know.
9. Grab some songs by OTD
all-time faves the Oblivians -- unparalleled minimalist Memphis garage-punk played at maximalist volume circa 1995 --
at the unfortunately named blog Suckapants.
10.
Terrible techno remixes of horrible classic rock songs. Wow.
11. Another addition to the genre of blogs putting up old, rare, OOP punk singles:
7 Inch Punk. Where else you gonna find the Touch and Go "
Process of Elimination" comp?
LOCAL NEWS
12. Benzino
busted by (Mass-office) feds for income-tax evasion. In protest, Busta Rhymes cuts off his dreds, and
tapes it for posterity. (Causation there may be completely invented.)
13.
The Acacia Strain may or may not be the next Unearth, but they're from Western Mass, they're on Prosthetic, and Killswitch Engage's Adam D is producing. They just posted a couple new demos, and of course we picked the one with the silliest title:
LISTEN: The Acacia Strain, "
Seacrest Out" (mp3, via MySpace)
14. That
Kudgel single recorded by Bob Weston?
Downloadable online. And a hearty welcome to
Strange Reaction, a new blog maintained by "a dorky 34 year old guy in Boston" with a taste for obscure punk rock. Good show, lad.
15.
I (Heart) Music bucks the trend of mistaking
Aberdeen City for a Canadian band, and instead
pegs them as sounding British, "only good." And
this dude, who I don't even think lives here, proclaims their album
"#1 debut of the year." Meanwhile,
Brooklyn bloggist hearts Bon Savants.
16. Thanksgiving morning was going along just fine until the
Click Five boys showed up in the Macy's parade on a gas station float. "H-E-S-S," spelled one prescient five year old in the room. "Does that spell 'Hives'?" (Not to get all petty, but they were totally upstaged by Natasha Beddingfield singing "These Words" with a grade-A dancing rhinoceros, and by the earlier spectacle of Rihanna rocking the Animal Planet float.) More snark available in
PopJustice's deconstruction of the ridiculous video for C5's "Catch Your Wave."17. Back in
March, Mike Miliard shouted out
cryptic bedroom pop group
Pants Yell!: "If singer Andrew Churchman were a Richman, he’d barely be able to top a line like 'I cried while walking through the Public Garden, because I make things mean too much to me.' And their debut full-length, Songs for Siblings, is a humming, glowing gem of jaunty organ trills, bright and trebly arpeggios, and guileless lyrics for modern lovers." Word finally beginning to filter out: they're opening for the new Unicorns band Islands on December 7, and they've just been blogged by
You Ain't No Picasso.
18. It's been a while since we've seen them, so we kinda forgot that
Isis are doing it, like, really, really big. Reminded because someone's shooting a tour documentary.
Watch the trailer.
CHRISTMAS
19. Just in time for the holidays:
a pseudonymous Christmas tune, circa mid-'70s, by the sleazy protorap R&B great Andre Williams (whom we got to hang out with a couple years ago in a studio above an escort service in Malden. The man is hustle incarnate).
20.
Pas/Cal takes on the George Michael x-mas atrocity "Last Christmas."21. The Sufjan Stevens Christmas albums,
all in three tidy zip files.
COMMERCE
22. Television Commercials Are the New MTV, Part 137: the Argentinian/Swedish singer-songwriter Jose Gonzalez, who in addition to his own tunes performs haunting covers of Kylie Minogue and Joy Division, has a semi-hit with a cover of a remix of a song by a group called the Knife. (
David Day explained this a while back.) Now that cover has become the soundtrack to a quite beautiful, magic-realist advert involving thousands of superballs. The product doesn't indtrude til the very end:
WATCH:
Sony Bravia commercial (plays in Quicktime)