The Round Table

Maybe it’s a good thing Spoon thinks they got nuffin to lose. With so many critically acclaimed albums and recent word that their seventh (!) album, Transference, is on the way, it seems they will continue to subtly evolve and tighten (or perhaps loosen?) their sound and style, while still keeping that Pavement-esque oomph that attracted me to them in the first place. As Britt Daniel put it on their website, “this is pure Spoon.” When compared to the produced, semi-gloss of Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, Daniel told Spinner, “it’s an uglier record.” Unless it leaks, we’ll have to wait until January 26, 2010 to see what’s what.

But I digress –track list, previously released track (and possible lead single from Transference) “Got Nuffin”, PLUS the excellent video for “Don’t You Evah” featuring the adorable Keepon after the cut.

P.S. I just love this picture of the band. It’s like the coolest, yet most ridiculous AT&T commercial I’ve never seen.
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This is totally making my Monday: Spinner.com is streaming violin prodigy Patrick Wolf’s latest album, The Bachelor. Said to be half of a double album (The Conqueror, will drop sometime in 2010) originally titled Battle, The Bachelor features a seemingly random assortment of guest musicians: Atari Teenage Riot’s Alec Empire, folk musician Eliza Carthy and avant-garde electronic pioneer Matthew Herbert. I’m only on the 6th track, “Thickets” –which features the second of three spoken word cameo appearances by actress Tilda Swinton of The Chronicles of Narnia fame– and I’m liking it so much I had to share. Based on the first few tracks and the cover, it seems like Wolf is going for a futuristic, post-apocalyptic concept album.

Go to Spinner and check it out for yourself.

Be sure to check out the trippy, technicolor video for “Hard Times” after the cut. (more…)

Here to prove they’re more than a single-EP-yielding-One-Hit-Wonder, Passion Pit deliver on their full length debut. “Sleepyhead” is still very much the breakout hit, but that doesn’t mean the other 10 songs are filler (okay, maybe “Swimming in the Flood”). Oh, and it’s good to know that recent blog faves “Little Secrets”, “The Reeling” and “Moth’s Wings” sound better in the context of the album. Plus, I gotta give ‘em props for closer, “Seaweed Song” –with lyrics like these, it will be used on “The Hills”:

nobody knows you the way you know you
but I think I do
when I thought I knew
yeah, I thought I knew

Damn you, JustinBobby. I thought I knew you.

As a big fan of Los Campesinos! and having recently gotten into Empire of the Sun, I consider Passion Pit somewhere in between: some will consider the vocal range verging on intolerable where I find it endearing (LC!), but the electronic instrumentation is generally accessible enough to please the New Wave lover in all of us (a la EotS).

Stream the entire album at Spinner and let us know what you think. In stores and on iTunes now.