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August 6, 2008
Shorties
The 2008 Lollapalooza music downloads page has been updated with mp3 downloads of the Rage Against the Machine, Wilco, and Radiohead performances as well as bittorrent downloads of lossless audio from the Rage Against the Machine show and the set by Rogue Wave.
Popmatters reviews Alina Simone's new album, Everyone Is Crying Out to Me, Beware (my favorite album of the year).
There’s a good chance you probably don’t know who Yanka Dyagileva is. Heck, you might not even know who Alina Simone is yet. And you might not be fluent in Russian. So, can you still enjoy an album where Alina Simone covers nine Yanka Dyagileva songs and sings them all in Russian? You sure as hell can. Everyone Is Crying Out to Me, Beware is a solid collection of songs with a heartfelt emotion behind it that translates no matter what the language.
The Washington Post's Express interviews Simone.
» EXPRESS: So how did you get into Yanka's music? Why did you want to cover these songs?
» SIMONE: I'm Russian. I was born in then the Soviet Union, in what is now the Ukraine, and she's really the only equivalent to solo indie-rock singer. She's pretty much the only example of that kind in Soviet rock history. Right now, of course, there are a lot of women making music in Russia, but the trend is toward this very glossy pop sound.
Aimee Mann talks songwriting with JamBase.
"What I've been getting a lot in the U.K. is that I'm a writer chronicling drifters and the broken American dream. It makes me come across as someone who talks exclusively about the American Experience of drifters and losers and outsiders. That's not necessarily untrue but I would never have thought of [my work] as specifically American," continues Mann. "Maybe just having a couple details or place names like 'Phoenix' or 'Columbus Avenue.' I don't think it takes much in a song to make a certain impression. That's why songwriting is so great because you don't need to have long pages of description. You just have a couple of references to put a picture in somebody's mind."
Sound Affects looks back on the short, sweet career of Georgia James.
OEDb lists 100 places to connect with other bibliophiles online.
The Financial Times reviews a Drive-By Truckers show.
Rumpled of shirt, the ursine Hood sings through a grimace, jabbing at the higher notes. His growling suits "Lookout Mountain" and Hood can also muster a pseudo-simpleton style, staggering from one woozy verse to another on "The Company I Keep".
Bob Dylan is sharing a free mp3 of "Dreaming of You" from the upcoming Tell Tale Signs: Bootleg Series 8 album.
Billboard reports that the next Morrissey album, Years of Refusal, has been pushed to an early 2009 release date.
The Harvard Political Review reviews Howard Zinn's graphic novel adaptation of A People’s History of American Empire.
Zinn’s work, though emotionally charged, is still history. He presents events in a manner meant to fit his interpretation of the past, with greater attention than standard history textbooks on subjects such as torture and war casualties. Zinn’s view of history is the view of an activist, a view that at times seems too biased to be credible. But Zinn believes every historian is an activist and a selective editor of events; in that sense his intellectual honesty is refreshing.
The Washington Post's Book World hosts an online chat with Andrew Davidson, author of The Gargoyle.
NPR's All Things Considered profiles Cambridge's legendary Club Passim.
Ever since then, Club Passim has been the place to play for folk musicians in the Boston area. The place has a storied history: The greats of the 1950s and '60s — Baez, Tom Rush, Bob Dylan — all played the room when it was called Club 47. Later, the club gave rise to singers such as Shawn Colvin and Suzanne Vega.
Clickmusic interviews Scott Devendorf of the National.
What classics are there that all the band agree on?
Well there are classic rock things we all like such as Pink Floyd or The Grateful Dead that are fun but have a nostalgic appeal for us. There's also a lot of classical stuff and new classical stuff that Bryce and Padma bring into the mix because they like that sort of thing and work in that sort of mode when they're outside the band. There are things like Phillip Glass, you know minimalist stuff, I mean it's not new but... And we definitely like 'classic indie rock' - Guided By Voices, Pavement, things like that which we're fans of, and singer songwriters - Nick Cave we're all massive fans of. Also Aaron and Bryce have been working on producing a compilation for 'Red Hot' which is an Aids charity and there are going to be a lot of current indie rock bands on there such as Bon Iver and Cat Power, so it's interesting to hear new stuff from those guys. It's meant to be this massive two or three disc thing and it'll be out maybe in the Fall or maybe early next year.
amNewYork examines how video trailers have become an integral part of book marketing.
Since their first appearance in 2002, these trailers -- similar in every way to their movie counterparts -- have been used to sell all variety of upcoming novels. The term "Book Trailer" is currently trademarked by Sheila Clover English of Circle of Seven Productions, a Kentucky-based company that has been producing "book videos," as they are also called, for the past six years. Their target demographic is online, with hundreds of trailers on video-sharing sites such as YouTube. They state that their production partners are "trained to create video that inspires readers to buy books, yet entertains the public enough to create an atmosphere that says: 'Books are entertainment.'"
Rolling Stone interviews Hold Steady frontman Craig Finn.
Growing up in Minneapolis, you were obsessed with the Replacements. Did you dress like them?
When you're in eighth grade, you can't look as cool as Tommy Stinson, you know? With the creepers and the flannel and the jeans. They had that perfectly disheveled look. Of course we couldn't pull it together, but that's what we wanted to be.
Drowned in Sound has Deerhunter's Bradford Cox interview Liars.
NPR is streaming an intimate performance by singer-songwriter Randy Newman.
Minnesota Public Radio's The Current features the Los Angeles duo Bitter:Sweet with an in-studio performance and an interview.
also at Largehearted Boy:
daily mp3 downloads
Try It Before You Buy It (mp3s and full album streams from this week's CD releases)
this week's CD releases
tags: music books popculture indie news
