Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse – Dark Night Of The Soul

So, it’s been busy lately and now I’m in Chicago…which is an awesome city BTW and you should go there if you have a chance.  But now I have heartburn and I’m tired and my feet hurt.

I think it had something to do with me leaving my sneakers at home.  Of course I did not notice this until I got here, so I figured I would wear my flip flops around until I found a shoe store and everything would be cool

Wrong.

First day out downtown the top leather part of my sandal (the part that actually holds your foot the the sole) rips off two block into my adventure.  Luckily an kind hearted parking attendant saw this happen and tried to fix them with a needle and thread…until he saw the damage.

“This…” he says “I cannot fix.”

Great, but he did hand me a fist full of rubber bands and I was able to walk with some normality with the sole rubberbanded to my foot.  I just looked like a crackhead.  So by sheer luck I find a sneaker store and use the excuse to grab a new pair of Nikes.  “It’ll be hell breaking those in!” says Maria.  I wave her off like a dummy because who needs to break in sneakers?  Apparently I do…especially when I’m walking my ass all over town.  My feet feel like 20lbs of hamburger right now and I think I’m gonna burn these shoes out of revenge.

But what makes me feel much better right now if the new collaboration between the always awesome Danger Mouse and the always awesome Sparklehorse called “Dark Night of the Soul.”

I think it was John Lennon who said “Music belongs to everyone…it’s only the record companies that think they own it.”  I think that’s pretty right on but I want artists to get paid somehow…which is why I just link to sites you can buy the music from.  But sometimes I come across great music that I think people should hear only to find it’s out of print, ridiculously expensive, or simply has never been released.  When that happens, you might find a link buried somewhere that could possibly lead you to said music. Because I believe not making these things available does no one any good.  And it looks like Danger Mouse feels the same way.

Word began to filter down about the album back in March…and I was stoked to hear it.  I mean, you had me at Danger Mouse and Mark Linkous from Sparklehorse.  Then I heard more names…like Iggy Pop, The Flaming Lips, Julian Casablancas…and David Lynch!

David Lynch???  He did the art work for the liner notes, which just ups the awesome by 100%.

But then the ass hats at EMi had some sort of beef.  What with?  No one is saying, but they decided not to release the album for legal reasons.  But Danger Mouse wasn’t gonna just sit and take it.  He wanted the music to be heard.

So he makes a website! He makes a website you can go to and buy the jewel case and all the Lynchian artwork and it comes with a blank CD-R.  On the inside is a little label that says: ‘For Legal Reasons, enclosed CD-R contains no music. Use it as you will.’”

If thats not an album that everyone should own, I don’t know what is.  I listened to it the other day and I’m pleased to report it is awesome.

If you click on the top link, it’ll take you to the NPR site where you can hear the stream of the entire album…or you might want to browse a P2P site or two.  Who knows, “someone” may have leaked it!

The Strokes – Is This It

Sadly, I was never very popular in junior high and high school.

In junior high I got beaten up a few times, I was teased relentlessly, and only had a few friends(the same best friends I still have today, though!)  I remember one day having a remedial gorilla named Kyle run past me in the hall and spit an huge loogie on to my arm.  Thinking about it now makes me kind of ill but at the time it seemed so natural that I had simply walked over to a fountain, washed it off, and went about my day.

High School was a little better, but only because the beatings stopped and people tended not to say so much to your face. ( At least I kept the same friends from grade school.)

Anyway, the years of enduring this unpopularity led to my lifelong quest to one day become “cool.”  I don’t think I ever cared if I was popular, I couldn’t stand most of the popular kids anyway, but I figured I would settle for just being considered cool. That would be enough.

Whether or not I ever succeeded in this remains to be seen, but some people have.  And a few of them are called The Strokes.

Initially formed in 1998, the band began picking up members as the original trio of Julian Casablancas (vocals and songwriting), Nick Valensi (guitar) and Fab Moretti (drums)attended different schools.  Soon, with the addition of Nikolai Fraiture on bass and Albert Hammond Jr on guitar, the band began playing New York’s Lower East Side.  They made quite an impression.

Such an impression that Ryan Gentles, who booked the act at the Mercury Lounge, soon quit to manage the group. After working hard on a twelve song set, most of which would eventually become “Is This It,” the band released ‘Last Nite’ as an mp3 download on NME.comas part of a build up their their first release “The Modern Age EP” in early 2001. The bidding war that ensued soon ended with the band signing on to the RCA label. 

“Is This It” was actually released in August 2001 in the UK with this cover:

According to sources the gloved woman’s hand was a nod to Spinal Tap which, if true, would be totally awesome because who doesn’t love Spinal Tap. (I actually know a few people who don’t, but I don’t really associate with them.)  The band released the US version in October with a new cover that you see on top, and the omission of the anti-authoritarian track ‘New York City Cops,’ which if you’ve heard it would have been in extremely bad taste after 9-11.  The song does rock though and you should track down a copy.

This album rocks, and when I first heard it, it held the same energy and promise that I had felt when Nirvana’s ‘Nevermind’ was released.  Full of catchy hooks and rocking pop sensibilities, it’s easy to see why the group had exploded onto the scene with such ferocity

and earned reviews that christened them the new kings of garage rock.  ‘Last Nite’ is the kind of rollicking raucous pop hit most bands would die to have as a single…as are ‘Take It Or Leave It,’ ‘Hard To Explain’ and the awesome ‘Modern Age.’ 

The album simply wastes no time.

Unfortunately, the band seemed to kind of fizzle a bit after it’s release.  Their follow up, “Room on Fire” felt like a retread of previous material, but their last album “First Impressions of Earth” did give me hope though.  Even though it has been the most criticized of their works, it displayed a certain courage that only comes from trying something drastically new.  The band is on hiatus now, but plans on releasing a fourth album in 2009.

Let’s hope that it’s just as cool.