For 90 days starting Tuesday, November 27th, the Causes 1 charity album will be available on iTunes. Three relief organizations — Doctors Without Borders, Human Rights Watch and Oxfam America — will receive 100% of the proceeds, earmarked for relief in Darfur, Sudan. The album is the inaugural edition in a Causes series offered by Waxploitation; the brief window of avilability, according to the label’s founder Jeff Antebi, is designed “to create a sense of urgency – to mirror what is a dire situation in Darfur.” Participating artists: Animal Collective, The Black Keys, Bloc Party, Bright Eyes, Cornelius, The Cure, David Sylvian, Death Cab for Cutie, (International) Noise Conspiracy, The Shins remixed by Clint Mansell, Spoon, Teargas & Plateglass, Thievery Corporation and Travis. A limited edition CD can also be pre-ordered at the Waxploitation website, listed below. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.
Freezepop
What do 80’s electronic dance popsters Freezepop have in common with the Dead Kennedys and the Sex Pistols? They’ve all been included in the video game Guitar Hero!
Life has been good for Freezepop since we first posted about them on 3hive in July of 2004. They’ve been included in said Guitar Hero game that the kids love so much, and they’ll soon be in some MTV game (I’m not so good with reading to the end of press releases), but they sure keep pumping out the 80’s inspired electronic pop. So let that be a lesson to all you young bands and kids just playing Guitar Hero out there; keep doing your own thing, and maybe you, too, will someday be featured in Guitar Hero XXVII.
Original post July 7, 2004:
In their own words, Freezepop is “hip enough for hipsters but nerdy enough for nerds.” That pretty much says it all.
Chris Walla
It’s a rare day that this kind of pop is considered a threat to national security, but then, these are strange days we live in. Apparently, a “data hard drive containing critical album files was detained by US Customs. The drive was held “to be analyzed” for several weeks on its way back into the US prior to final mixing of the album.” Well, as a mention of the band Death Cab for Cute simply hurls me backwards to my collegiate days of angst and Chuck Taylors–I’m glad the music pulled through. Chris Walla, DCFC guitarist/producer, despite some strange customs officer’s sentiments, is not making “contentious” music, its true. But I’m always ready to don my Chucks, emote a little and listen to something perty.
Service Group
Service Group songs start like any other indie pop song, then suddenly the ’70s era Top 40 guitars and choruses come roaring in, and its awesome, like when Datsun became Nissan. Service Group remind me of Boston the same way Ben Folds might remind you of Elton John, and that’s a good thing.
-Pei Yen (guest 3hive writer)
Kate Tucker & The Sons of Sweden
By the time I’ve published a post I’ve probably listened to the song(s) I’m reviewing around twenty times. But it only takes about twenty seconds to decide whether or not I like the song enough to post it. This was not the case with the present artist. As soon as Kate Tucker parted her lips to release her rich, dulcet voice I was gathering rope and beeswax to avoid following her to my inevitable destruction (forgive my allusion to the Odyssey; I’m deep into the Rouse translation…). You’d hear no complaints from me if this was the last voice I ever heard. Tucker herself journeyed from her home in Ohio across the country to Seattle and settled in with a couple Swedes and a young man obsessed with the Cocteau Twins. Tucker’s folk-influenced picking patterns (I stole that one straight outta the bio) sumptuously melt with her band’s ethereal programming and reverberating guitars. The result of their meeting should be ringing brightly in your ears now. If not, get your click on! With the WGA strike entering its second week, the music folks over at Grey’s Anatomy will have extra time to discover this siren’s songs.
The Teenagers
A downright spunky meditation on a young man’s obsession with Scarlett Johansson, thinly veiled in the title as “Starlett Johansson.” Start/stop guitar bursts interspersed with spoken word factoids about Ms. Johansson make up the verses (the line I’ll find myself dropping as a non-sequiter [accent and delivery included] into future conversations: “I’m scared by spiders too”). The chorus explodes into a synth-pop romp, with Weezer-like hooks. This track is filled with the youthful, giddiness I expect even my old man experiences when he sees his starlett crush on-screen, or on the streets of Barcelona, arm-in-arm with Woody Allen, as he did on a recent overseas trip. Speaking of tripping overseas, this Parisian trio is scheduled to play the U.S. early next year.
Brad Laner
Add father, restorer of modernist architecture, and solo artisit to Brad Laner’s lengthy resume. Laner’s always been somewhat of a DIY kinda guy as he’s practically steered such fine musical vessels as Medicine, Electric Company and Amnesia single-handedly. Maybe it’s because he’s a father now, or maybe it’s because he’s got a place, a self-restored a 1964 mid-century modern Eichler home, to proudly call his own that Brad Laner has finally shed his many masks and is releasing his first proper solo record, Neighbor Singing. At least his son and home have both inspired and restrained him, allowing him small windows of recording time which helped him keep an objective view on the album. These two tracks hint at a sunny, summertime pop record, a loopy-Beach Boys kind of sound. A sound, Laner says, that has emerged not from his record collection, but from his own biological self: “I wanted to shamelessly utilize all of the different skills that I’ve built up over a lifetime of musical experiences.” No shame necessary. Dig this.
The Evens
To quote my friend Rick, “The best band ever.”Ian MacKaye and Amy Farina made this wonderful lo-fi pop (in punk rock style, of course), and frankly, we at 3hive have never featured a Dischord band until now. It was time to right this wrong.
Shelter Two [MP3, 3.6MB, 160kbps]Pushed Up Against the Wall [MP3, 3.3MB, 128kbps]
[ingenting]
File under: Better Late Than Never. [ingenting] may mean “nothing” in their native tongue of Swedish, but this wonderful single, a favorite of mine since Labrador offered it for free, oh, about 11 months ago (see first sentence), is anything but. The post-punk guitar, the keyboard-driven simple melody, the disco bass, and the crisp drumming are awfully catchy and do not deserve to be horded by me any longer.
Tulsa
Things are always bigger in Texas, right? And Tulsa’s in Oklahoma, which is next to Texas, and thus things should be a little bit bigger there too. Um, yeah. This Tulsa’s actually from Boston, but they’ve got some big sound, and lots of it. The three songs below, from the recently released album I Was Submerged offer up a good idea of what the band’s all about. Some shimmer here and some crunching guitar there, understatement in one track (“Shaker,” which might be my favorite of the bunch) and a little 1990s Brit-rock swagger in another (“Mass”) — good stuff to fill the wide open spaces.