Steven Drozd Hospitalized, Flaming Lips Cancel May 1 Performance
Flaming Lips multi-instrumentalist Steven Drozd has been hospitalized according to reports in the Palm Beach Post, forcing the cancellation of the band’s appearance at Sun Fest in West Palm Beach, Fla. Thursday and an additional date on May 1.
There are no current reports on the reason for the hospitalization. We will update as new information becomes available. StaticBlog sends its best wishes to Steven and to his family for his speedy recovery.
UPDATE: Kev pointed out the vague but ominous Tweet that Steven sent about his hospitalization. We’re left to infer what it all means, but Steven has a great support group — friends, family, band and the StaticBlog community. We are all sending you the best, Steven.
Video of the Day: Gorillaz feat. Bobby Womack live on “The Colbert Report,” “Stylo”
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Womack truly gets to blow out the dust on this live version from last week. AAAAAAAAAH!!!
Static: Cami Stinson
Interview
“In the Morning”
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Music Review: MGMT, “Congratulations”
Rating: 88
MGMT’s “Congratulations” is a musical act of bravery in which Ben Goldwasser and Andrew VanWyngarden cast aside expectations of groovy indie dance rock and get deeply, deliriously psychedelic. There’s very little modernism on “Congratulations” — MGMT circa 2010 has more in common with Syd Barrett, Love or the Zombies than it does with Passion Pit or Hot Chip. But this is hardly an ill-advised wig flip: MGMT might not retain the fair-weather friends who loved “Kids” or “Time to Pretend,” but the beautiful strangeness of “Congratulations” will earn them long-term relationships.
Driven by pounding surf drums and harpsichord, MGMT comes booming forward with “It’s Working,” a wild-eyed flurry of love and madness, and continues with the bold-as-brass tribute to the British neo-psychedelic band Television Personalities, “Song for Dan Treacy.” The quickly changing “Flash Delirium” delivers with spot-on “Aladdin Sane”-era David Bowie affectations, setting up for the MGMT’s opus, the 12-minute “Siberian Breaks.”
“Siberian Breaks” is a collection of fragments that fit together beautifully as a suite, and to MGMT’s credit, its dozen minutes don’t feel pretentious — there is a natural flow here. As produced by Sonic Boom of the Spacemen 3 and engineered by Dave Fridmann, “Congratulations” pulls from a broader sound palette than 2008′s “Oracular Spectacular,” but VanWyngarden and Goldwasser wrote melodies that fully earn what is done on their behalf. “Congratulations” are definitely in order here.
Music Review: Foxy Shazam, “S/T” (Sire)
Rating: Hell, I don’t know.
Foxy Shazam’s second album, a self-titled monument to rock ‘n’ roll played at Roman Empire levels of excess, achieves that rarest of feats: music that is simultaneously extraordinary and borderline intolerable. This is sledgehammers over subtlety, and Jim Steinman over Brian Eno. The Cincinnati sextet lives in a paradise permanently illuminated by the dashboard light, pounding out bohemian rhapsodies with an insatiable appetite for destruction.
Eric Sean Nally’s pipes project the unmistakable flair for operatic overreach that made Freddie Mercury both wonderful and lovably ridiculous, and guitarist Loren Daniel Turner alternately channels Brian May and Slash — “Count Me Out” begins with towering tones that evoke “Sweet Child o’ Mine.” Speaking of Queen, “Unstoppable” is such a ready-made, stomp-the-bleachers sports anthem that it was played during this past Super Bowl telecast. Yes, if “Foxy Shazam” is not the most derivative album of 2010, one might reasonably cower in fear of the one that beats it.
But for all the obvious Meat Loafing taking place — “Second Floor” is a second cousin to “You Took the Words Right Out of My Mouth (Hot Summer Night)” — credit must go to Nally for apparent fearlessness when stupidity stares him down. After all, the asthmatic beat-boxing, echo-laden piano and gospel choir accompanying “Connect” all sound like a nightmare in which Trevor Horn and Teddy Riley co-produce a New Jack Swing-flavored Mercury solo album in 1988. It’s just as terrible and embarrassingly enticing as it sounds, much like the rest of this hilarious, nervy, hot mess of an album.
Video of the Day: LCD Soundsystem, “Drunk Girls”
Director Spike Jonze sics a bunch of guys in panda suits on James Murphy and company, and what begins as gentle teasing soon turns hilariously violent in this first clip from “This is Happening.”
Video of the Day, No. 2: Hanson, “Thinking ‘Bout Somethin’”
Hanson is on a mission from God, Blues Brothers-style: shake-it-shake-it-shake-it-shake-it baybay!
Thinking 'Bout Somethin'
HANSON | MySpace Music Videos
Stream LCD Soundsystem’s “This Is Happening” Now
James Murphy’s latest LCD Soundsystem disc doesn’t drop until May 18, but you can stream “This is Happening” at the official LCD Soundsystem site right now.
Guru, 1966-2010
Guru, the pioneering MC who performed with DJ Premier in Gang Starr and was instrumental in forging a hip-hop/jazz bond with his “Jazzmatazz” series of albums, died yesterday after an extended battle with cancer. He was 43.
Gang Starr were essentially underground heroes, not really in step with the movement of hip-hop in the early ’90s. When gangsta was exploding on the West Coast at that time, Gang Starr was more interested in a kind of documentarian/social commentary approach, with Guru (Keith Elam) delivering in a low-key approach notably free of drama. This approach is found at its best on two back-to-back classics, 1991′s “Step in the Arena” and the following year’s “Daily Operation.” In 1993, Guru released his first “Jazzmatazz” volume, featuring such luminaries as Roy Ayers, Donald Byrd, Branford Marsalis and Brand New Heavies singer N’Dea Davenport.
Flaming Lips and Stardeath Perform Pink Floyd’s “Breathe” on “Late Night”
I loved the Lips/Dwarfs version of this on New Year’s Eve, but it sounds more muscular and unhinged in this version performed Friday on “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.”
