Stranger Than Fiction - Trailer

Stranger Than Fiction


Okay, so it's not exactly a drama. Looks good, though. Buster (Tony Hale) from Arrested Development is in it.

Links
Official Site
Click here for the last Stranger Than Fiction post

New Xiu Xiu Album

Xiu Xiu kind of scares me. Whether or not it's their intention, they represent, for me, a seedy underbelly. The soccer dad, the churchgoer, the mothers, the uncles, the cousins, and all of their savage ghosts, all of their eerie idiosyncrasies. Xiu Xiu are that side of your consciousness that reminds you that you're not a perfect person. It frightens you because its so fucked up and you run away from it. The others that don't run are the murderers, the molesters, the self-mutilators. Then, there are the musicians, like Xiu Xiu, who express it through their music instead of weaponry, etc. Expressing it through both, these days, isn't that far fetched, but Xiu Xiu seem pretty safe.

Anyway, here they go again. According to the official site, Xiu Xiu's next album, The Air Force, is to be released on Sept. 15, 2006. It's produced by Deerhoof's Greg Saunier. I wonder if they experiment at all.

The Tracklist:

1. hello from eau claire
2. boy soprano
3. buzz saw
4. PJ in the streets of london
5. vulture piano
6. saint pedro glue stick
7. save me
8. bishop, CA
9. watermelon vs. the pineapple
10. the fox and the rabbit
11. wig master

This isn't exactly the newest of news, but the post was inspired by some great live footage of the duo from 2004:

Xiu Xiu: Clowne Towne

Xiu Xiu: Crank Heart

Meet The Horrors

The Horrors are a band from London. You will hear from them very soon. There is no word on their full-length debut, but when it hits, they'll be in America shortly after. The buzz is building and building and it will surely climax all over the face of the U.S. Apparently over in London, the lines are around the corner for their performances and fans are waiting outside for five hours prior to showtime.

The Horrors are almost great. The copulation of 60s psychedelia and 70s punk is a captivating proposition, especially since they execute it in a corosive haunted house Birthday Party with Monster-Mash-Misfits in attendance. Their sound is somewhat original, and at the very least it's unlike what we've been hearing recently. Some of the music itself isn't very surprising and just straight up not good, but with time and some scrapping, their full-length could very well be critics' lovebug. Hearing a good, unique band of this decade with a typical lineup and without a broad use of electronics and instrumentation is a rarity, so I applaud them. Their horrorshow shtick is a silly gimmick but the kids will love it so I guess they should stick to it.

So, yes their perpetual-Halloween gothiness is sophomoric and nearly impossible to escape if there's ever a desire for change, but their music video directed by Chris Cunningham is actually kind of frightening. Not a Marilyn Manson frightening, but it's a'good. To be honest, I wasn't crazy about their other songs on their MySpace page, but I liked Sheena is a Parasite:

The Horrors: Sheena is a Parasite

Is Jimi Still Alive!?

Nope. But that's what they said about Tupac every time one of his posthumous recordings was released. Hell, I think I've mused on it a few times myself. I think people just wanted to ignore the logical explanations of how these recordings revealed themselves, and pretend their distant loved one was still pumping and thumping.

The logical explanation for the latest Jimi Hendrix uncovering is plain and simple. Some dude's wife found the reel-to-reel buried in a closet. How could you have possibly stepped over something like that? Well, this closet belonged to Jerry Simon, president of RSVP Music, the publishing company Hendrix signed to in 1966. So, you know that closet is a Manhattan-studio-sized walk-in.

The song was entitled Station Break and was recorded a year before he left for London where he would find stardom. Station Break was part of the 1966 New York session. The other songs from that session, Kato's Special, Flying On Instruments, and No Such Animal, have already been released. The copyright and the reel-to-reel of the newly uncovered piece will be auctioned off in New York on October 26. The Hendrix estate is entitled to half the proceeds of any royalties.

Like fans of Tupac, Hendrix fans never want to let go. It's kinda sad for them, especially for those who've been listening to the guitar-icon since he was alive. That's why Station Break will go for way too much green. Whoever owns it is going to profit incredibly off of fan-sentiment. 'No real fan of Hendrix lives without that new recording.' You gotta keep up, fucker!

So, get your check books out, kids. Don't you want an original Hendrix recording? It could be yours.

Steely Dan Finds Fountain of Youth!!

Steely Dan are pissed. Wa-wa-watch out. I've seen 'em get violent with their 2000 Grammy award -- wackin' folks over the head with undeserved hubris, embodied. Apparently, the lionized, but aging, sparkless musicians have it in for Owen Wilson. Damn, I love cross-medium feuding. It's nice to see every once in awhile.

So apparently, Steely Dan are under the impression that the film, You, Me, and Dupree's plot is directly nabbed from one of the band's song, Cousin Dupree off 2000's Two Against Nature.

"some hack writer or producer...like, took our character, this real dog sleeping on the couch and all and put him in the middle of some hokey 'Down and Out in Beverly Hills' ripoff story," Steely posted on their official band site, "THEY DIDN'T EVEN BOTHER TO THINK UP A NEW FUCKING NAME FOR THE GUY!"

This came from a letter posted on their website. Who was the letter addressed to? Owen's bro Luke Wilson. I'll give you a quick, first person synopsis:

Remember us? We won Grammies. We liked Bottle Rocket, but now most of your parts suck, but you're cool. Cooler than Owen, the hack. We won Grammies. We want to complain about Owen, and not to Owen about his stinky movie. He has ruined his career by selling out and fucking with "pretty heavy artists like us." We're not whining about the idea, but that we didn't benefit from it. "No muffin basket, no flowers, nothing." Tell your brother to come down to one of our shows and apologize to our audience. There's some Steely Dan merch in it for him if he does. He's still going to hell, though, along with his "hollywood gangsters." If he doesn't comply and fucks with us, one of our huge, Vin Diesel-type fans is going to beat the shit out of one-a-yahs.

Age is a precise cycle. You're born with diapers. You die with diapers, sort of thing. I think the nearly 60-year-old Steely Dan members have reached the regression point of elderly prepubescence. They whine to someone about that someone's brother stealing their macaroni to make a new macaroni picture. Even though the 'victims' don't like either of them, they like the brother better, because he's pretty cool in the playground. And it's not even that the thief stole the 'roni, it's that he took it without asking. All the victims want from the thief is an apology professed in front of the class room. Oh yeah, and if it doesn't go down, the victim is going to get his friend's older brother to kick his ass.

Anyway, I'm sure You, Me, And Dupree chews on pubes, but don't make yourself out to be a fool in an effort to clobber it. At least it's not a shitty remake.

Links
The Steely Dan Letter 'o Hating

Spencer Krug - The Next Hardest Working Man in The Biz?

Spencer Krug is a songwriting-powerhouse, and we just can't get enough. Wolf Parade's popularity has allowed the band's co-writer to fire off his creative juices in places he just couldn't reach if it weren't for the Parade. Sunset Rubdown was Krug's songwriting showcased and distilled in fallen angel sing-alongs. The result was a disquieting work that matched, if not surpassed Wolf Parade. And, let's not forget Krug was one of the founding members of Frog Eyes, who he recently performed with during a Rubdown/Eyes tour.

Now, Krug brings us Swan Lake, a supergroup made up of the man himself, Daniel Bejar of Destroyer, and Carey Mercer of Frog Eyes. Three of pop rock's most mutated and delightfully disturbing songwriters couldn't possibly present us with anything short of breathtaking. We all know the supergroup is always a swell idea in theory, but usually stutters with a clash of ideas. VH1's favorite reality show produced the great supergroup model, Damnation. When an idea is the birth child of the dollar bill, whether it’s conscious or not, the music is the first to suffer, and then the listener (as is the case with Damnation). We can all comfortably say that Swan Lake is nothing of the sort, but will their visions clash? Sure, their music lives in the same village, and, though their houses are made of similar materials, they are structured differently and come in different colors. I guess we'll have to wait to hear.

Not for too long, at least. The album, Beast Moans is said to be released on November 21 by label, Jagjaguwar. Three songs have already been tagged with the songwriter. The tracklist goes somein' like this:

1. Widow's Walk
2. Nubile Days (written by Krug)
3. City Calls
4. A Venue Called Rubella
5. All Fires
6. The Partisan But He's Got To Know (written by Mercer)
7. The Freedom
8. Petersburg, Liberty Theater, 1914
9. The Pollenated Girls
10. Bluebird
11. Pleasure Vessels
12. Are You Swimming In Her Pools?
13. Shooting Rockets (written by Bejar)