New York City-based rock band The Secret Machines have released a new song entitled “Like I Can.” This is the first of new material since their 2008 self-titled release. Vocalist Brandon Curtis describes the song as “a conversation between me and myself.”
There is no news yet of a new album release.
Here is a free download of “Like I Can” via NME:
This is a guest blog post from Dane Nordine. He frequently posts on nosiecake and we hope you enjoy his posts as much as we do.
The Kings of Leon’s album Use Somebody may have taken top honors as Record of The Year at the Grammys last week, but their influence is growing in other areas as well. Last year, they went into a joint venture establishing a new record label allowing them some leeway in signing and promoting bands they favor. First up was fellow Tennesseans The Features.
Some Kind of Salvation is the second full-length album by The Features and was originally self-released before getting backing from The Kings of Leon’s new label, 429 Records. The album also shares KOL’s Grammy-Award winning producer, Jacquire King.
Check out their latest:
Now with a stronger backing for their latest album, hopefully the band will get some extra light shown on their incredible portfolio of older material as well.
Wooden Heart remains my favorite.
I was originally going to title this article “The new revenue model for the music industry,” but let’s face it the title I gave was much more interesting and just as applicable. Simply put, bands should give away their music for free.
As I explained in a previous post, bands are in competition with hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of other bands. They are competing first and foremost for attention and ultimately for money. This does not include the written news and entertainment, the movie industry, the television industry, the video game industry, sports, etc. The reason there are so many great bands out there is because the market demands it; there simply is not time for bands that do not appeal to people.
You might find this information irrelevant to the argument that bands should give away music for free since, well, musicians have to put food on the table too! Here’s the question you should ask yourself, though: Is a consumer more likely to purchase a band’s album or song if they have limited access to their music until they purchase it? Or, if the music is readily available to the consumer, are they more likely to purchase a ticket to their concert and buy merch while they are there? I think in this age of internet and instant downloading, the clear answer is the concert.
Dark. Cold. Depth. Unsettled. Mysterious. These are the words that come mind when describing “Atlantic” from Thrice’s Vheissu, the opening track for this week’s playlist, Atlantic. Thrice has done a remarkable job portraying the sea (the Atlantic Ocean in particular) on this and other songs, such as “Open Water,” also found on this playlist. Their unique artistry is the pattern for the rest of the songs, whether they are songs written about the sea or not.
Another notable feature of this playlist is the more extensive showcasing of music from my local scene, the Twin Cities. In Harbour, The King And The Thief, and Weaver At The Loom each have quality, 5-song conceptual EPs. Because they are concept albums, I highly recommend listening to them from start to finish for their full effect.
The mix comes to a close with one of my favorite songs of all time, the title track from Death Cab for Cutie’s Transatlanticism. This song has one of the longest, slowest, most driving builds of any recent music I’ve heard, making for an incredibly moving ending.
Thank you for listening to this week’s hand-crafted playlist.
This is a guest post from Dan Nimlos
Think about some of your favorite artists. This doesn’t have to be a conclusive, for-all-time sort of list, but something like what you’d see John Cusack do in High Fidelity – just a quick set of standouts. That should be easy; for example, off the top of my head, five of mine would be U2, Coldplay, The Normals, Wilco, and The Avett Brothers. Simple. Humor me and do this right now.
Who is easy; we musicheads name-drop all the time. The more thought-intensive question is why. What drew you to list those artists? Just what you’ve been listening to recently, or something bigger? Usually, when you have those standout artists that instantly come to mind when you think of favorites, there’s a particular song that puts them in the list. This song could represent all that you love about an artist (U2’s “Where The Streets Have No Name” always does it for me), or it could be the turning point between that band just being something you have in your library to something you find yourself searching for. As listeners, we do this because that song speaks to a part of us, or it often helps us deal with something going on in our lives currently.
The last artist on my list, The Avett Brothers, is a recent addition to my favorites. They’ve gotten a lot of airplay on The Current in the past year with several songs from their latest album, I and Love and You. Admittedly, I’m not the first to get hip to these guys – Relevant Magazine wrote a very loving article about them a few months back as well. That wasn’t what did it for me, however – it was only when I felt lower than I’d felt in a long time that I was able to appreciate their music. I was in a funk much of this past fall, feeling rejected and depressed, for a dream I’d had for a long time was shapeshifting into something I didn’t recognize at all. This was the song that spoke to me:
See if any of these new releases from February 2, 2010 float your boat:
Lil Wayne – Rebirth
Nick Jonas & The Administration – Who I Am
V. V. Brown – Traveling Like The Light
BT – These Hopeful Machines
Midlake – Courage Of Others
Bruce Kulick – BK3
The Soft Pack – The Soft Pack
Vedera – Stages
Album Leaf – A Chorus Of Storytellers
Satellites & Sirens – Satellites & Sirens
The Soft Pack
Jónsi will be setting out on tour starting in early April to promote his upcoming solo release Go. U.S. dates include Denver, Minneapolis, Chicago, Boston, and New York, among others. A fan-only tour presale will begin a week from today, February 9th. The tour will feature a new band, as Jónsi’s Sigur Rós bandmates are apparently all having babies. Which, in turn, has given Jonsi time, as he put it, “to have his music babies.”
The tour will be designed by 59 Productions. It sounds like it will not be far from a bland setup. Jónsi says in a recent newsletter:
“The idea of the stage collaboration with 59 Productions is to bring together the worlds of theatre and music in a new and hopefully unique way, in order to create something other than the hoary old cliches that pass for innovation in rock’n'roll… Anyway, we wanted you to know we are going for broke on this and it ain’t in any way going to be Jónsi alone on stage with an acoustic guitar, no sirree. Wish us luck.”
Jónsi provides fans with constant photo and video updates on his official website. Also, here is a a streaming in-studio performance Jónsi did on WNYC (New York Public Radio).
Go, for which you can see the album cover here, is now set for release on April 6th in the U.S.
The Cab’s debut album Whisper War, which was released April 29, 2008, was just the beginning of what looks to be a long and prosperous career for the band.
The band was signed to the Decaydance/Fueled by Ramen label in 2007 with the help of Panic at the Disco’s Spencer Smith. Smith was impressed after hearing a demo of the band and most certainly influenced their sound, along with bands such as Fall Out Boy. They will be touring heavily in 2010 including March 1st through May 8th, then jumping on board with The Vans Warped Tour from June 24th through August 15th.
If you watch The Real World on MTV, you probably saw the recent episode where The Cab play a show and house member Erika gets a chance to play a song with the band. Check it out here and fast forward to ten minutes in where The Cab’s appearance begins.
Their most recent work was the remix of “Take My Hand” in collaboration with Cassadee Pope of Hey Monday. The song can be found on The Lady Luck EP.