iLiKETRAiNS I do I do I do . . .

"We Go Hunting," the latest single from iLiKETRAiNS' brilliant album Elegies to Lessons Learnt, is the most musically upbeat and pop-ish track from that record. But this, of course, is a bit like saying Linda Kasabian was the happiest and most well-adjusted member of the Manson Family since she only drove the getaway car and didn't really mean to kill anyone. (Side note: She didn't technically kill anyone, just watched.)

Despite a somewhat airier sound than the other tracks, the opening lyric on "We Go Hunting" sets the tone: "I curse the day I ever set foot in this god-forsaken town." And the rest of the song goes on to talk about Samuel Parris, a Puritan minister during the Salem Witch Trials (and morally-incongruent father and uncle to two of the child accusers).

iLiKETRAiNS don't make the mistake Parris did with simplistic, black and white thinking, however. "We Go Hunting" is an empathetic portrayal: a father truly worried about his daughter resorting to the only method he thinks will save her. Conquer the demons before they conquer you.

All of this translates into a taut yet thunderous and haunting song. More than that, however, "We Go Hunting," like so many of iLiKETRAiNS' songs, highlights the tenuous relationship between fear and morality, between authenticity and cardboard selves. Man versus His Own Nature is perhaps the most critical conflict of all, for what could a man hope to accomplish when he himself is mis-aligned? But then it is probably more complex than that . . .

View a timeline and read more about the people and events in iLiKETRAiNS' songs here.

www.myspace.com/iliketrains

www.iliketrains.co.uk

**Edit to post: Silly me, I just now have found out this single release has been pushed back to April 21, to coincide with the band's European tour. Alas. I shall leave this up and repost around that time.

Deerhunter Side Projects (Free Downloads!)

The front-men of Atlantan super-indie bands Deerhunter and the Black Lips have formed a new project together called Ghetto Cross. Bradford Cox (Deerhunter) and Cole Alexander (Black Lips) had talked about collaborating before, and decided to put the idea into production last month.

Ghetto Cross' first release will be the single "Dog Years," on 7" by England's Drug Racer Records. Cox wants to complete recording before Atlas Sound's upcoming tour (more on that below), which begins Feb. 16th. A rough version of "Dog Years" was recorded two weeks ago on Jan. 26th. Listen to it here.

Meanwhile, Bradford Cox's solo project, Atlas Sound, gears up for its debut album's release on February 19th. The album, Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel, features 14 songs which, according to Cox, don't quite fit into Deerhunter's sound. Want to preview that sound for yourself? No need to wait for the album, Cox has posted the Orange Ohms Glow EP on Deerhunter's blog for free downloading.

Recorded just a few days ago from Feb. 2nd - 5th, the EP contains none of the songs From the upcoming album. Stand-out tracks include "Activation" and "Coriander," which Cox says is an "attempt at making a Casino Versus Japan song." While it doesn't sound like Casino Versus Japan, it is an excellent Atlas Sound song. The final song of the album is an interesting take on "Valley of the Saroos," originally by Joe Meek and the Blue Men. Atlas Sound trades in the glassy starkness of the original for a richly warm sound that feels more spaghetti western than it does sci-fi.

www.myspace.com/bradfordcox

http://deerhuntertheband.blogspot.com/

New Single from Blood Red Shoes

A pressing intensity drives "You Bring Me Down," the third single (and the band's first ever CD single) from Blood Red Shoes' forthcoming album. But despite its lyrics, the song does anything but bring you down. Utterly buoyant, the song is considerably less visceral than their last single "I Wish I Was Someone Else," though that song was a bass-soaked savage with hints of mental instability, so comparisons are probably irrelevant.

Still, the things that are similar are inherent to Blood Red Shoes' sound: catchy melodies, crisp and creative rhythms, post-punk guitars, vocals that range from just above a whisper to yells pulled from the gut. The two-piece creates a sound much larger than what you'd expect, and Laura-Mary Carter's lead vocals nimbly toe the edge between vulnerability and aggression in "You Bring Me Down."

The single was originally released in a different version on 7" back in November of 2006. This newer version is, like the band claims, "heavier and louder." And, in an era where bands can form, tour, put out an album and disband in less than a year, "You Bring Me Down" gets a fitting release just before the debut album's release in April.

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"You Bring Me Down" will be released tomorrow in the UK, and Feb. 6th in the US, on CD and also on two different 7" pressings. If you pre-order in time from RecordStore, you can get a limited-edition signed 7".

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New "You Bring Me Down" Video:




www.bloodredshoes.co.uk

www.myspace.com/bloodredshoes

Need to Know: Nelson

No, not the bleach-blonde, heavy metal Brothers Nelson of the early 90s. But the French post-punk quartet Nelson of Now. They put out their debut, Revolving Doors, in 2006, but I heard them for the first time just a few weeks ago.

Nelson channels Gang of Four with their rhythmic intensity, overlapping vocals and lyrical depth. But they add to that electronic embellishes, heavier bass and a denser sound overall. It's comparable to the Norwegian electro post-punk of 120 Days, but Nelson is tighter with more pop and less post-rock -- you won't find any 7 minute songs here.

No news of a sophomore follow-up yet, but the band is touring central Europe as I type, so here's hoping a new album is on the horizon. In the meantime, here's a sample MP3 and video:

Hear and download "The (Over) Song."

"You Can't Stop Thinking About It" vid:



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www.myspace.com/nelsonrock

Charlatans to Release New Album for Free

Brit rock masters The Charlatans will release their new album, You Cross My Path, for free beginning March 3rd. The album will then be available in CD and vinyl formats starting May 19th, on Cooking Vinyl records.

Ever prolific, this is the band's 10th studio album since releasing their epic debut, Some Friendly, back in 1990. Europeans will get first crack at hearing the album live as The Charlies jet from Portugal to Belgium throughout the month of February.

To download the album, simply go to xfm.co.uk on March 3rd. But to get you in the mood, the first single from the album, its namesake, is already available to download. Dig it at The Charlatans website, in the bottom right corner of the home page. Here's the album's full track listing:

1. Oh! Vanity
2. Bad Days
3. Mis-takes
4. The Misbegotten
5. A Day for Letting Go
6. You Cross My Path
7. Missing Beats (of a Generation)
8. My Name is Despair
9. Bird
10. This is the End


Preview lead single "You Cross My Path" right now:

The Naked Truth About Vampire Weekend, Or, Nice Boys Playing Banal Music

Vampire Weekend
Vampire Weekend
XL Recordings

Armed with a song Rolling Stone listed as one of the 100 best of 2007, Vampire Weekend are poised to invade hearts, music stores and all mediums of media with this week’s debut of their self-titled album. Every member of the Brooklyn-based band is a Columbia University grad, and, aside from their degrees, they’ve got both the fan base of rabid college students and the steadfast support of hipster indie blogs to prove it. They’ve been featured in The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Boston Herald and Nylon Magazine. Fader.com interviewed them. They recorded a session with NPR. Countless blogs are already heralding their debut as one of the best records of 2008, and the tides of January have yet to die. So does the album live up to all the hype? Much like Vampire Weekends’ music, the answer is quite simple: no.

It’s frightening what monsters a cursory knowledge of music and an indiscriminate sensibility can cook up together. For all the hype, Vampire Weekend offers nothing new, nor exciting, nor even musically-interesting. Their self-described “Upper West Side Soweto” sound is really just simple, accessible pop, lightly tinged with African rhythms and reggae melodies.

Because of this, their music bears more than a passing resemblance to Paul Simon’s sonic-fusion on Graceland. I have to assume that this is the reason fans and critics alike have bought a seat on Vampire Weekend’s bandwagon. What they seem to be forgetting is Paul Simon could pen a song about doing his taxes and it would be ten times more lyrically imaginative and emotionally evocative than anything Vampire Weekend could ever write.

Further, it is insulting to bands that play Afro-centric rock extremely well. Bloc Party, Dragons of Zynth, and TV on the Radio (the latter two of which are NYC-based bands themselves) are especially active and relevant right now. And though people like to cite African music and Paul Simon as Vampire Weekend’s musical forebearers, their music just as often sounds like your neighborhood ice cream truck circling amiably around the block.

Lyrically, the band fares a bit better. The imagery they carve is sometimes even poetic: I see a mansard roof through the trees/I see a salty message written in the eaves/the ground beneath my feet/we are garbage and concrete [“Mansard Roof”]. The songs are peppered with obscure references: Oxford commas, Dalai Lamas, mansard roofs, cancer center Sloan-Kettering, Pueblo huts . . . the boys of Vampire Weekend are obviously well-rounded in their educations. Still, when these references are used as mere ornaments in the band’s recurring themes of unrequited love with keffiyeh-wearing, Louis Vuitton-clutching compulsive liars, it’s hard to take the intellectual-depth of these Ivy Leaguers very seriously.

“Mansard Roof” is Vampire Weekend’s least offensive song, perhaps because as the opening track, the listener has not yet grown weary of the the band's cloying and tedious sound. Lead singer Ezra Koenig’s vocals strike an interesting balance between Rufus Wainwright and Paul Simon, and tagging along are a basic reggae melody and sharp drums. Sure, it’s catchy. So is Tuberculosis.

Despite being Rolling Stone’s 67th-ranked song of 2007, “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa” is derivative tripe. Its three-note guitar line is so prosaic and irritatingly repetitive, it is difficult to imagine a person being able to sit through the full track even a few times; putting it on a “best-of” song list is truly laughable.

By far, the best pieces of instrumentation on the album are the orchestral chamber sounds that open “M79” and weave throughout the album’s prophetic closer, “The Kids Don’t Stand a Chance.” Even so, these deviations are too few and too slight to wipe away the muck of monotony surrounding them. Similarly, in “One (Blake’s Got a New Face)” the band introduces Atari electronic tones into their entrenched reggae pop. It’s a commendable idea to experiment with sound, but the result is truly horrific. It is forced and gimmicky, a prefabricated plastic nightmare pretending indie rock sentiments.

Still, as the hype suggests, there is a definite market for this kind of pop punk. Saccharine though Vampire Weekend is, many people will be sold for precisely that reason. Also important in today’s culture: the band presents an appealing image. They are good-looking boys. They wear dress shirts and khakis. And not only do they wear dress shirts and khakis – they wear them while playing gigs. And they’re Ivies. So they’ll procure support from a decent subsection of consumers, namely preppy university students and teenyboppers stuck in that weird limbo between Hannah Montana and Green Day. Not exactly the sort of fan base most rock musicians want. But, hey, they’ve hoodwinked a lot of people so far. They might not even have to get real jobs for another few years. Which was probably the point of the band in the first place, because in the end, they just sound like a bunch of frat boys pretending to be Paul Simon.

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You can slag off to Spin if you want Vampire Weekend mp3s. These two are much more worth your time, however:

Dragons of Zynth - "Breaker"

TV on the Radio - "Providence" (feat. David Bowie)

In the Shadow: Hatcham Social's "Jabberwocky"

So so so so. No no no no, "So So Happy Making," is not a phrase Japanese strumpets whisper into the eager ears of foreign businessmen and American soldiers. Although, I suppose it could be. But, for our purposes, it is Hatcham Socials' second single -- to be released on February 18th by Loog Records. It's a charming ditty, and, as they say: "twee as fuck." Paired with gutteral explosion "Berlin" as its b-side, the single makes for quite an excellent record. It is available on 7" or cd, and I really can't recommend it enough.

Still, going quietly unnoticed whilst nestled snugly between other songs on their myspace profile is "Jabberwocky," a song that has been an IV to me in recent days. In a stroke of genius, Hatcham Social decided to record the famous Lewis Carroll nonsense poem in spoken word, but backed with an addicting melody and perfect rhythms. The result is two minutes of senseless bliss. Check it out for yourself here.

To buy the "So So Happy Making" single, head over to Loog.