New Prince: “Cause and Effect”
This is possibly the most energetic P.R. Nelson has sounded in 20 years — as if he had a dozen good musical ideas and instead of spreading them over one album, decided to cram them into five minutes. Enjoy, courtesy of Minnesota Public Radio:
Video of the Day: Tegan & Sara, “Alligator”
Alligator
Tegan and Sara | MySpace Music Videos
Synchronized dancing and woolen hoodies! Can a Quin Twins/Dirty Projectors project be far behind?
Video of the Day: Rox, “My Baby Left Me”
ROX - My Baby Left Me
ROX | MySpace Music Videos
As I frequently say, the British generally have more of a taste for good soul than we do here in R&B’s birthplace. Face it: whatever happened to Lauryn Hill, it looks to be permanent, and most of the charters are AutoTuning themselves so much they’re about to disappear into their hard drives. Rox is an example of Northern Soul at its best. Great song.
Video of the Day: Vampire Weekend, “Giving Up the Gun”
As he is in life, RZA is the line judge in this second video from Contra. Meanwhile, a Jonas gets clobbered and Jake Gyllenhaal gets his drink on.
Video of the Day: Kanye West, “Coldest Winter (Remix)”
KANYE WEST "Coldest Winter" Directed by: NABIL "ITUNES link below" from nabil elderkin on Vimeo.
Yes, “Coldest Winter,” as in it’s late freaking February and normally we’re getting half a break right about now with some 60s, maybe even a stray 70, but all the weathermen/women are predicting 30s and low-40s through early March. Sick of it. Sick. Of. It. Last summer, we bought a new house with a nice back porch that I can’t really sit on without dying right now.
And now this, which will give you a brain freeze without touching the ice cream. Okay Mr. West, imma let you finish.
Video of the Day: Caribou, “Odessa”
Personally, I’d prefer sandy beach imagery, but a new Caribou single is worth celebrating, so be careful on those icy patches. Swim is due in April.
“Shutter Island” and the Cinematic Novels of Dennis Lehane
Leonardo DiCaprio in “Shutter Island.”
BY GEORGE LANG
When readers pick up Dennis Lehane’s novels, they are transported into a world where the grimiest details come so thick they can smell the mildew in the row houses of South Boston. But when a director picks up a Lehane, as Martin Scorsese did with “Shutter Island” or Clint Eastwood did with “Mystic River,” he sees a shooting script, and a movie unspools in his head before a single frame is developed:
They all lived in East Buckingham, just west of downtown, a neighborhood of cramped corner stores, small playgrounds, and butcher shops where meat, still pink with blood, hung in the windows. The bars had Irish names and Dodge Darts by the curbs. Women wore handkerchiefs tied off at the backs of their skulls and carried mock leather snap purses for their cigarettes. Until a couple of years ago, older boys had been plucked from the streets, as if by spaceships, and sent to war. They came back hollow and sullen a year or so later, or they didn’t come back at all. Days, the mothers searched the papers for coupons. Nights, the fathers went to the bars. You knew everyone; nobody except those older boys ever left.
Those passages from “Mystic River” look like opening scenes. Images come fast and furious of late afternoons and early evenings in S0uthie, of working class people with rough hands who drink in the same bars with the same neon signs that their fathers did, and might have even inherited the old man’s stool when he died, too young.
For more of this story, go to Planet46.com.
Video of the Day: Michoacan, “In the Dark of the Night”
Art-damaged disco from the DFA labs gets a “too much cough syrup on the dance floor” visual treatment.
Video of the Day: The Pipettes, “Our Love Was Saved By Spacemen”
StaticBlog fave-raves circa 2007, The Pipettes originally had an early 1960s girl group/Petula Clark thing going, but then Rosay (sigh) and Riot Becki left, replaced by lead singer Gwenno’s sister Ani and two turnstile spinners, Anna McDonald and Beth Mburu-Bowie, both of whom left the group after microscopic stints.
So now we have Gwenno and Ani, danced-up and partially Auto-Tuned on “Our Love Was Saved By Spacemen.” Shockingly enough it’s a good pop song, produced by Martin Rushent of Buzzcocks/Human League fame, but this has almost no stylistic correlation to what they were doing before.
It’s more than a little like when Bananarama gave Two-Tone the heave-ho in the middle 1980s in favor of the dut-dut-dut-dutdutdut of Stock-Aitken-Waterman for “Venus” and “I Heard a Rumour.” But more likeable.
As for Rosay, enter Rose Elinor Dougall and The Distractions:
Video of the Day: Neon Indian Performs “Terminally Chill” and “Ephemeral Artery” on “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon”
This is absolute Moog heaven from the Austin band led by Alan Palomo and featuring Leanne Macomber of the Denton shoegaze duo Fight Bite on the keys.
