The Last Shadow Puppets : My Mistakes Were Made for You

The Last Shadow Puppets is a side project of Arctic Monkeys' front man Alex Turner and Miles Kane of The Rascals. It's a bit of a departure from the pop-punk stylings of the Monkeys, concentrating instead on the bombastic orchestral pop of the late 60's, early 70's, like Shirley Bassey, Scott Walker and early David Bowie.

It's a great album, yet another in a long line of fantastic albums from 2008. The songs are expertly crafted and wonderfully orchestrated, with swooping strings and punching horns. Plus, there's Alex's nifty little South Yorkshire accent, which is endearingly strong, coming through in spades on every song.

With so many great songs, it's tough to choose, but I went with "My Mistakes Were Made for You", because I think it embodies most of what the band claims they were shooting for. The lyrics are dark and moody, there's a groovy little backbeat, and the horns add just a touch of class while the soaring strings expertly propel the drama.  Actually, it reminds me a little of "The Windmills of Your Mind" by Michel Legrand or something from a John Barry soundtrack, both of which are fine things to be reminded of.

You can find "My Mistakes Were Made for You" on The Last Shadow Puppets' excellent freshman release, The Age of the Understatement.  What's really amazing, given the depth and grandeur of the music is that these guys were like 22 years old.  It's one thing to put out a great rock album.  It's another to put together such a phenomenally orchestrated masterpiece.

[You can listen to The Last Shadow Puppets' "My Mistakes Were Made for You" by navigating to the post "Song074" and clicking or right-clicking on the title or the link.]

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Does It Offend You, Yeah? : Epic Last Song/We Are Rockstars

Does It Offend You, Yeah? is a band with some issues. First of all, their name is crazy. It's got five words, two pieces of punctuation, and is a complete sentence on its own. This means it's very difficult, up to the point of embarrassment, to discuss the band with anyone who doesn't already know about them, which is pretty much everyone I've ever met.

Second, they can't seem to decide what kind of band they want to be. On the one hand, half the album sounds like rock-based electronica, along the lines of Justice, and the other half sounds exactly like an 80's revival act, like an upbeat Modern English maybe, or even a little like early U2. So I kind of wanted to explore this dichotomy and post two songs by them, one from each of their sides.

"Epic Last Song" is, appropriately enough, the final song on their album, and while not spectacular, it is a thoroughly enjoyable slab of pop. It somehow manages to sound really, really familiar, and yet I can't figure out who it sounds like. Maybe you can let me know your thoughts in the comments. In any case, there are a few other straight-up pop songs like this on the album.

"We Are Rockstars" is a more dance-oriented tune. It kicks off with a straight-up four-on-the-floor beat snazzed out with some really nice cowbell and slaps you right in the face with some super-intense synth riffs. It hammers on the beat for a while, but then drops into a calm breakdown that sounds like it's straight off an A Flock of Seagulls record, with some vocoder thrown in to really set that 80's mood. That lasts a little while, then it's back to the thrashing synth and rhythm. This switches up a couple more times through the song, until finally the monsoon of sound ends, tossing you up onto the beach in blissful silence.

Basically, whichever side of the road the band feels like traveling, it's a solid record all the way through. Both of these songs can be found on their 2008 release, You Have No Idea What You're Getting Yourself Into.

Also, since I've promised a song a day, this post will cover the next 2 days. Enjoy!

PS: In case you weren't sure about their 80's leanings, one of the songs on their new album is called "Home Is Where The Heart Is (A Song For John Hughes)".

[You can listen to Does It Offend You, Yeah?'s "Epic Last Song" by navigating to the post "Song066" and clicking or right-clicking on the title or the link.]

[You can listen to Does It Offend You, Yeah?'s "We Are Rockstars" by navigating to the post "Song067" and clicking or right-clicking on the title or the link.]

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Los Campesinos! : Don't Tell Me to Do the Math(s)

I'm trying to decide if 2008 was a really great year for music, or if I was just paying more attention.  It's hard to say.  Regardless, here's another great band with a great release in 2008.

Los Campesinos! is a band from Wales that I think the hip kids would call 'indie'.  They remind of a more pop-oriented Mae Shi.  I know that doesn't mean much to you, as you've probably never heard of the Mae Shi (although if you'd been paying attention since January, you'd have read a little about them).  What I mean by this is, they're very noisy and have an overdriven sound, much like the Mae Shi, but they have a strong pop sensibility and aren't as interested as much in deconstructing the pop sound as celebrating it.

"Don't Tell Me to Do the Math(s)" is a joyous, rambunctious pop song with a great hook, driving guitars, a little violin, and goofy, overly literary lyrics that still manage to sound endearing rather than pretentious.  It's got a nice sense of dynamics and flow and is quite danceable, if you're a little adventurous.  Also, it doesn't rhyme, though I don't think you'd notice right away.

This song comes from their first official release, 2008's Hold On Now, Youngster....  The rest of the album is just as good, verging into more progressive and/or singer-songwriter territory, but staying true to their ensemble sound.

[You can listen to Los Campesinos! "Don't Tell Me to Do the Math(s)" by navigating to the post "Song061" and clicking or right-clicking on the title or the link.]

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Hot Chip : Out At the Pictures

There's not much to say about Hot Chip that hasn't been written by someone else. They are clearly indie music media darlings, stars of the "genre", along with the likes of MGMT, Animal Collective, Bon Iver or Bright Eyes (none of which I particularly like, oddly enough). That being said, I'll just say they are an eclectic, primarily electronic, rock band. "Out At the Pictures", from their 2008 album Made in the Dark, is a pretty typical offering.

The whole thing starts with a long but cool synth intro that builds in speed and is clearly live (or extremely well faked), as you can hear the audience screaming in the background. This intro is welded to the front of a speedy little dance rock number, chock full of buzzing, overdriven synths and aggressive, rocking, but still danceable drums. The lyrics are pretty simple, concentrating more on the sound of the words as an instrument rather than deep meanings, to the point where they repeat the word "whether" sixteen times in a row in the chorus. Yeah, I know that sounds like it might be annoying, but it's used to good effect. I like that the song has all the trappings of a techno number, but the band has used them to create a real rocker instead.

The rest of Made in the Dark is mostly more of the same, which is why it's so good. There is the occasional acoustic ballad and even some songs that might fall along the 'soft rock' side of the spectrum. Still, they know their strengths and play to them well. It's a very good album.

[You can listen to Hot Chip's "Out At the Pictures" by navigating to the post "Song054" and clicking or right-clicking on the title or the link.]

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The Ting Tings : Fruit Machine

I love the Ting Tings. Why? I cannot really say, but this was one of my favorite albums of last year; possibly the favorite. It's fun, poppy and raucous, like the good songs from No Doubt. And they really, really know how to craft a hook.

You've probably heard "Shut Up and Let Me Go" as that was a minor hit here in the states. It's a great song. They also had a hit in their native Britain with "Great DJ", which is also a great song. And you might have heard "That's Not My Name", which is another raver that makes you want to shake it like a dancer on Hullabaloo. But I think my favorite might be "Fruit Machine".

First of all, 'fruit machine' is British for 'slot machine' (you know, like 'lorry' for truck or 'loo' for the toilet). So, the song is all about a poor sucker who has it bad for the singer. He's addicted, feeding her money, looking for the payout that only comes sporadically. And she seems pretty happy about it, asking him where the money is. So it's got a sort of snotty vibe to it from the get-go. This is backed up by the driving dance beat and her chanting vocals which crescendo throughout the whole song, building a sort of happy tension that finally breaks in the end with her manically shouting "Ka-CHING!! Ka-CHING!!" You get the most out of the song if you holler it along with her and punctuate the shouts by yanking an imaginary lever. Ka-CHING!

"Fruit Machine" is off the Ting Tings' debut effort, We Started Nothing. It's a great album, as the first side is amazing and the second side holds its own. At 9 songs and 38 minutes, it's exactly the right length too.

[You can listen to The Ting Tings' "Fruit Machine" by navigating to the post "Song031" and clicking or right-clicking on the title or the link.]

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Blitzen Trapper : Furr

Another band I don't know much about. (The truth is, I don't know a lot about these bands. I just know what I like.) Blitzen Trapper is an 'indie' band, which I think means you don't get to use Auto-Tune, except maybe ironically, and they hail from Oregon, which you can actually hear in their music, if you can believe that. What all that means is they play rock that ranges from 'folk-informed' to ... 'grunge-informed,' I guess. Think: the Byrds or Bob Dylan to a less whiny Nirvana.

This particular song is very Dylan-esque, from the surrealistic lyrics, to the musical delivery (including punctuating harmonica), even down to the vocal style. It's a folk-rock number, with a dark, mysterious feel, dabbling in the supernatural, like an early twentieth-century fairy tale set to music. In it, the singer describes his transformation into a wolf. Not like a werewolf, but like, he wanders around until he's adopted by wolves. Then he grows fur, runs with the wolves for a while, and then wanders back to humanity and settles down and gets married. Really, I don't know what it means, but it sounds good when he sings it, and that's the important part.

This was another example where it was tough to decide which song to pull from an album. The band does a great murder ballad called "Black River Killer", which is like "Folsom Prison Blues" without any of the repentance, and I waffled back and forth, trying to decide which to post. I think "Furr" is probably the better tune, but if you have some way to check out the other one, give it a listen.

Furr tends to lean more towards the folk-rock end of the spectrum, but they do have some harder numbers as well. It was released in 2008 on SubPop records.

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The Lost Fingers : Careless Whisper

The Lost Fingers are a gypsy-jazz band from Quebec, which is in Canada. You may not have heard of them, but in 2008, they sold the second most records of any Canadian band (in Canada), right after Nickelback, who you probably have heard of. Named after Django Reinhardt's missing digits, the group models their sound after the same sort of acoustic jump-jazz Django was so great at.

Armed with two acoustic guitars and a stand-up bass, they attack 80's standards (?) with gusto and a Quebecoise accent. They do fantastic takes on "Billie Jean" and "Straight Up" among others. Here, with a little funk and the singer's strained vocals, they nail the raw frustration coursing through this classic Wham! confessional and take it from the dancefloor to a dark, smokey coffeehouse where it belongs.

You can find this tune on their 2008 debut album, Lost in the 80's. It is truly a fun, fabulous album.

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Foals : Mathletics

This was a tough one. One of the problems with these posts is that often there are so many good songs on an album, it's tough to pick just one. You want it to be one of the better ones, but not one that maybe lots of people have heard, assuming they've heard of the band at all.

The members of Foals (not The Foals; try not to be so gauche...) all previously members of obscure British math-rock bands before they decided to "have more fun" and put this record together. And that's exactly what it sounds like: a couple of angry prog-loving musicians who decided to cut a dance-rock album. It's something along the lines of Talking Heads meet King Crimson, if you can imagine that.

"Mathletics" (the other songs up for consideration were "Hummer" and "Red Socks Pugie") is probably the strongest rocker of the bunch. It's got a driving rock backbeat that's just littered with the Frippiest guitars you've ever heard this side of, well, Robert Fripp. It hammers along through verse and chorus until it can barely stand, groaning under the collected weight of all those notes, and it crashes into a cathartic, pounding bridge with no fewer than three guitars (plus bass) noising it up. It's like a rock reduction, with all the rest of the crap boiled away, leaving just the pure thick essence of rock. Delicious!

"Mathletics" comes from Foals' first album, Antidotes. It's listed as a 'bonus track', except it seems to be on every version of the album. I guess it was originally a non-album single. Regardless, the album is great, if you like this stuff, but it is not particularly varied, so you need to really like it. I do. One of my favorite albums last year.

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Mirrorkicks : Bleeding Love

Don't know much about Mirrorkicks, except they are from Britain (I think) and they have a website and a myspace page and a facebook page and a youtube channel and all the accoutrements of a new millennium band trying to make it these days. What they don't have is an album in the stores. I think they've released a single, but that's not this.

This is a cover of "Bleeding Love" by Leona Lewis. It's from CokeMachineGlow's Fantasy Covers of 2008. Apparently this site rounds up a bunch of up-and-coming indie bands and gets them to cover popular songs from that year. Somehow Mirrorkick ended up with this one.

The song itself is interesting to parse. At first it sounds like a paean to the self-sacrifice sometimes necessary for true love: I'm so in love, it just bleeds out of me, I can't even help it. But on further reads, you notice the singer's friends are trying to pull these two lovers apart, and you realize that maybe the cuts and bleeding might not be metaphorical. There's definitely a "He Hit Me (and It Felt Like a Kiss)" vibe going on here.

Did I mention it was co-written by Jesse McCartney? Weird.

Madam Leona's version is somewhat plaintive. It's got a nice modern soul vibe to it, but it's wrapped in a swath of modern production and it ends up being a little glisteny, a bitter pill, but sugar-coated.

Mirrorkicks grabs hold of the song though and bruises it up, dragging it back into the real-life grimy world we all live in. Their track is heavy, loaded down with thick guitar and a loping, tom-heavy 6/8 drum beat. The singer nails the vocal: ragged, raw, pleading, but hopeful. They do such an amazing job, they actually made me like the original more. Give it a listen.

It's not available on any album that I know of, but you can grab it from the CokeMachineGlow website, along with some other great covers. There's a good cover of MIA's "Paper Planes" up there too.

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Tilly and the Wall : Pot Kettle Black

I have no idea who Tilly and the Wall are, but they seem sufficiently angry. From their 2008 album awesomely titled, O. This is a rockin' stomper, borrowing somewhat from the White Stripes, until the chorus hits and it breaks into a straightforward very pleasant pop-based hook. All is cruising along just fine, it's a fine song, and then...

Then they break into a funky clap-stomp breakdown that gives me butterflies and puts a smile onto my face every time. Oh yeah ... Clap it up, baby.

Anyway, as I said, I don't know anything about the band, or what their other stuff sounds like. But if you like it, grab a copy for your mom.

[You can listen to Tilly and the Wall's "Pot Kettle Black" by navigating to the post "Song014" and clicking or right-clicking on the title or the link.]

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Vampire Weekend : Campus

Yeah, I'm gonna kick this thing off with Vampire Weekend. "Vampire Weekend?!" I hear you say, assuming you are a follower of the indie scene and read Blender or AP or Pitchfork or whatever else the hip kids are reading these days to get their musical views. "They totally suck, because they're, like, indie wannabes and posers and everybody who likes cool music hates them."

Or, maybe you have no idea who they are and actually what I heard you say was, "What?"

Vampire Weekend has this weird cachet as the indie band that everyone loves to hate. See, if you like "indie" music, then you're not allowed to like this band. I'm not sure why. I think because they are from well-off New England families. Or maybe it's because your mom and little sister can stand them. Or maybe it's because you should hate everything that even remotely smacks of potentially being related to Twilight. Or maybe it's because they were in an Apple commercial... No wait, not an Apple commercial, but a Verizon commercial mocking iPhones... even worse.

But the problem with this whole "sell-out" line of thinking is that it completely ignores the music. How can you say a band sucks just because they were used in the credits for Step Brothers? How does that change the quality of the music? I mean, if they were good before, then they end up on the cover of Rolling Stone, how can they suddenly be bad?

That's stupid. Almost as stupid as the whole concept of "Indie" music. I mean, if it's coming out on a subsidiary of a subsidiary of a subsidiary of Sony Megacorp, it's still not really 'independent' is it?

Regardless, the entire album is excellent, and finding a single representative song is an impossible task. I picked "Campus" because it's a great song, it sounds like them, and it's in the middle of the album. So if you've heard them, you've probably heard "Mansard Roof" and "Oxford Comma" and "A-Punk" and "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa". If not, go buy the album, or maybe borrow it from your indie-music-loving friend who has a copy, whether or not they claim to despise the band, because frankly, it's just a great album.

"Campus" can be found on their first, eponymous album. They've got another album coming out in a week too. How serendipitous! (No, really, it was. I only learned about it today!)

* For the record, I prefer the oxford comma in lists of phrases (see above), but I dislike it in simple lists. Just so you know where I stand.

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