DELTRON 3030 RECOMMENDED:Mates of State – Crushes (The Covers Mixtape)
While making my newest mixtape for my friends I thought long and hard about what track to include from the new cover album put out by married duo Mates of State. My mix tape rules don’t allow for me to include multiple tracks from the same artist so I had to pick just one. Would it be their cover of Girls’ “Laura” (now with 1980’s DJ scratching!)…or maybe their altogether different take on the Mars Volta’s “Son Et Lumiere?” I was torn. My confusion would become more exasperated as I went further down the track listing. I <3 Belle and Sebastian something hard so “Sleep the Clock Around” would seem like an obvious choice…but I’ve really been enjoying all the Fleetwood Mac covers that have been popping up around the Internet, so maybe I should have gone with “Second Hand News.” Fuck. Yep these are the serious decisions I wrestle with. I decided to not include any Mates of State on the mix and instead I purchased The RAC’s first piece of original music (from the movie Holy Rollers) to fill the gap.
The Mates of State’s Crush Covers “mix tape” deserved its own…errr….mixtape. You guys deserve it too. I’m a sucker for cover albums and the choices made here are inspired. Besides the aforementioned tracks there are homages to Daniel Johnston, Nick Cave, and Tom Waits. Brave and dangerous selections. Music snobs do not like when you fuck with Tom Waits and Nick Cave. I’ve read reviews of people crapping on the album and questioning the intentions of the MOS. These bloggers, if they really needed answers, could have simply paid a visit to the Mates of State Myspace blog which states:
“There are are so many artists we considered, some for the mere fact that they wrote a perfect song, some for nostalgia’s sake, some because more people need to hear them, some for the challenge, and some to shed a whole different light on a song: Our light… make it a duet, more optimistic or maybe less traditional”
There you have it. They’re fans first and foremost While this album will never be confused with Beck’s Record Club I for one respect their versions and don’t agree with all the bashing that this album has received…but like I said, I’m a sucker for covers. Sure some of their arrangements are a bit canned and they kind of give off a hipster Culps kind of vibe…but who cares! I’d send you William Hung singing Phoenix’s
“Lisztomania” if it existed. I’m glad we live in a world where it doesn’t.
Highlights: “Sleep the Clock Around,” “Second Hand News,” “True Love Will Find You in the End,” “Laura”
Go crush on The Mates of State live this summer when they come to The Echo for two shows on July 2nd and 3rd.
DELTRON 3030 RECOMMENDED: Broken Bells – Broken Bells
- “What Are you Listening to?”
- “The Shins”
-”You know them?”
-”No”
-”You gotta hear this one song. It’ll change your life. I swear”
A bit of a stretch, Natalie Portman. What do you expect from a helmet wearing spazoid who falls for the king of all turd burgers, Zach Braff. That single exchange vaulted The Shins, a fine band, into a stratosphere that far exceeded their talents. Yes I loved “New Slang” and the rest of the Oh Inverted World album, but they were (are) hardly life changing. You know who was(is) life changing? Danger Mouse. Hear me out for a second. If it wasn’t for Danger Mouse’s 2004 The Grey Album we might not be enjoying such things today like Girl Talk, Mike Relm, and The Beatles Never Broke Up. Need more? Just last week multiple people sent me the genius Beatles/Wu Tang “Enter the Magical Mystery Chambers.” It is a fun mix-up that follows the Danger Mouse format and structure to a T. He re-invented the mash up into a sonic art form. Not wanting to be pigeonholed after that initial success w/ the Gray Album, Danger Mouse moved on to “legitimate” production of acts like the Gorillaz, Sparklehorse,and the Black Keys while also working with MF Doom on DangerDoom and with Cee Lo on Gnarls Barkley. All rousing successes. Danger Mouse’s new project w/ Natalie Portman’s favorite troubadour, James Mercer, would appear to be following the stellar track history of his past projects. Broken Bells tracks are full of beautiful synth pop spaciness mixed with the steady vocal stylings of Mercer. It is an interesting blend. At points when you feel like you’ve just been duped into listening to another Shins album (not necessarily a bad thing) a flowing organ or synth will come in to shake you out of your Shingles. Enough Shins bashing. I should really apologize to Mercer. I’ve unfairly punished his band for my hatred of Zack Braff. Did you know that he won a Grammy for more or less (read: more) making a mix CD?! I should have a stockpile of grammys by now..or at the very least a beautiful and quirky epileptic girlfriend.
Highlights: “The High Road,” “Vaporize,” “The Ghost Inside,” “Mongrel Heart”
Deltron 3030 Recommended: Miike Snow – Miike Snow
The Guardian spoke highly of this band, saying Miike Snow’s “coolly emotional pop suggests A-Ha meets Animal Collective.” Can you think of a better compliment than that? I certainly can’t. Amazingly enough these Swedes are the same guys who wrote Britney Spears’ “Toxic” and produced Madonna, Kelis and Jennifer Lopez.
Please don’t hold that against them…but definitely still be pissed at the way Swedish companies choose to handle instruction manuals. Sure I’m generalizing here but just about the last thing you want to see when you’ve run out of wooden dowels and your stupid Expedit bookshelf is about to collapse like a house of cards is that smug Swedish cartoon’s wavy mouth. How is that helping anyone? I wish he’d choke himself on that phone chord.
If you’re going to Lollapalooza be sure to check them out..and if not go to RCRDLBL for some free remixes.
Highlights: “Animal,” “Burial,” “Silvia”
DELTRON 3030 RECOMMENDED- Discovery – LP
As I hear countless stories of idiots hitting the internet attempting to pay obscene amounts of money to celebrate the life and times of Michael Jackson today I can’t help but question their sanity. Do you REALLY want to hang out with hardcore Michael Jackson fans? They are a scary lot. STAY AWAY from downtown LA today! I’m picturing the tailgate @ a Jimmy Buffet concert w/ less drinking, more leather and NAMBLA members, and just about the same amount of tears. I thought I couldn’t be more disgusted w/ the coverage of this nonsense till I heard Stacy Brown, Jackson’s biographer, say “This is going to be Princess Diana’s funeral times 20. Michael Jackson was Elvis and The Beatles rolled into one!”. People paying into this feeding frenzy and treating it as some sort of cultural watershed moment that needs to be ranked makes me sick. Mind you if it were somehow possible for me to go see a reunited Beatles w/ a Zombie Lennon and a Zombie Harrison ripping through Helter Skelter I’d be be hitting eBay w/ the quickness. Lucky for me I don’t live in a glass house.
The only plus about all of this nonesense is that because of the MJ hype I came across ear gold! After the news broke people began writing up countless tributes to MJ. Desperate to be heard in a sea of mourners they needed to guarantee traffic to their little sites….and what better way than to add a remix or a cover version of one of Jackson’s songs . After hitting The Hype Machine.com* and sifting through some crappy remixes I came across an amazing auto tuned enhanced cover version of “I Want You Back“. As it turned out it was done by Discovery, a side project for Vampirekeyboardist and producer Rostam Batmanglij and Ra Ra Riot lead singer Wes Miles. These geniuses, whose album releases TODAY of all days, must have been in cahoots w/ MJ’s doctor for months as the cover was announced back all the way on May 20th. That can’t be a coincidence. Let the conspiracy theories begin. That’s right, I said it, MURDER. I’ll send this theory to my ex-girlfriend who doesn’t believe that astronauts landed on the moon. Plant the crazy seed in some fertile soil and let her run with it.
Weekend
Along with the autotuned cover of the Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back, The album features guest vocals from Vampire Weekend’s Ezra Koenig and Dirty Projectors’ Angel Deradoorian.
*The Hype Machine is an MP3 blog aggregator. It’s pretty much the best site for experiencing new music…once you get past the countless remixes of MGMT’s “Kids”. Enough already, people!
HIGHLIGHTS: “I Want You Back,” “Osaka Loop Line,” “So Insane”
Deltron 3030 Recommended:Metric ‘Fantasies’
What do you get when you take Jenny Lewis, remove the ginger hair and skin and add some synthesizers? You get Emily Haines and Metric. She’s part of the Canadian Indie pop rock brat pack, which really needs a clever name by now. I’m taking suggestions. Emily Haines is a workhorse. She splits time with Broken Social Scene and Metric while guesting on albums by Stars and The Stills. After two solo acoustic albums she’s re-joined her Metric mates to return to do what they do best: hooky new wave pop rock.
In “Gimme Sympathy” she asks a deep deep philosophical question that has tortured mankind since the early 60’s: “Who would you rather be The Beatles or The Rolling Stones?”
Feels like a no brainer to me: The only way I’m picking the Stones is if its a battle between Ringo Starr and Charlie Watts. Watts always looks pissed off and annoyed to still be touring. I’ve always liked that. His face screams, “I’m 70 for f*cks sake, why am I still behind this bloody kit!“. A famous anecdote relates that in the mid-1980s, an intoxicated Mick Jagger phoned Watts’ hotel room in the middle of the night asking where “his drummer” was. Watts reportedly got up, shaved, dressed in a suit, put on a tie and freshly shined shoes, descended the stairs and punched Jagger in the face, saying: “Don’t ever call me your drummer again. You’re my fucking singer!” There’s no shot Ringo would ever punch John or Paul.
Advantage: The Stones.
Highlights: “Help I’m Alive,” “Gimme Sympathy,” “Twilight Galaxy”
Catch them on tour in June:
June 8th, 2009 in Los Angeles at the Wiltern (tickets)