Amoeba.com has many of the bands playing at Coachella this weekend and next available digitally. Pick up some of the albums below before your drive out to the desert!

 

Dinosaur Jr. - Chocomel Daze (Live 1987)

Recently released live set from 1987 from the legendary college-rock band, in all their You're Living All Over Me glory.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Divine Fits - A Thing Called Divine Fits

A surprisingly strong side project featuring Spoon's Britt Daniels and former Wolf Parade/Handsome Furs barker Dan Boeckner.

 

Album Picks:

The Knife - Shaking The Habitual

CD $12.98

Deluxe CD $19.98

LP $27.98

As always, The Knife mean to disturb and provoke you, and Shaking the Habitual represents their most adventurous statement to date. They begin the two-disc set with one of the more pop-oriented pieces — of course, The Knife’s defintion of pop involves alien distortion on Karin Dreijer Andersson’s vocals, which are growly and swoop in and out of conventional melodicism to begin with. On “A Tooth for an Eye,” it’s fairly typical, if highly accomplished, fare for The Knife, as Andersson’s warped vocals match her and Olaf Dreijer’s tribal beatwork and synths that bellow and squelch like steam machinery. This in no way prepares you for the set’s second song, the nine-minute “Full of Fire,” whose machine-gun beats are the accessible part of a demonic pop song in which synths bleep atonally like tea kettles and swirl like locusts, while Andersson’s vocals sound like they’ve been run over by tires full of syringes. Even with its mammoth run-time and demanding sound, it never falters in fascinating and keeping a fanged vice grip on the listener. You feel your hair stand on end and you start to sweat with each new turn. “A Cherry on Top” starts with five minutes of wraithlike synths before Andersson comes in with a digitally deepened voice in a sort of gender, culture, genre-bending near 10 minutes that’s both bewildering and bold. Of course The Knife’s freaky sounds can be grating or seemingly unusual for the sake of it sometimes — I opened a hotel website with a man singing in Hawaiian during the flute-laden “Without You My Life Would Be Boring” and didn’t notice for a full minute — and pieces like the nearly silent, nearly 20-minute “Old Dreams Waiting to Be Realized” are more interesting in concept and as a breather than they are in actual sound. But Shaking the Habitual harkens back to a time when albums were meant to be an experience, something puzzled over, abandoned and returned to and studied, not streamed while searching for hotels. It’s anti-pop, but claims that it is “unlistenable” are unfounded. Even at nearly 10 minutes and with truly messed up sounds housed within in, “Raging Lung” is a pop song, with movements and parts that hit you and break through the din — when Andersson keeps coming in with her “that’s when it hurts” line ranks among the best pop moments on the album. “Networking” drops vocals almost entirely in favor of a Kraftwerkian cold synth rave-up, and it ends up one of the album’s catchiest songs in the process. “Stay Out Here” also features guest vocals from Light Asylum’s Shannon Funchess and artist Emily Roysdon that make the song a kind of horror house anthem as the singers’ vocals bounce off one another and come together in eerie harmony in a padded cell of wavelike synths and skittering beats. The Knife make many demands on you — of your time, of your patience and of your willingness to let go of preconceived notions of pop — on Shaking the Habitual. Trust them — you’ll emerge from the experience feeling as though you’ve gained a new understanding of what pop music can be. Few artists alive today can claim the same effect.

#1
Blouse - Blouse (Captured Tracks)
Last year was when I first got obsessed with the label Captured Tracks. Both Wild Nothing and Soft Moon ended up in my top ten last year. This is the year of Blouse, Soft Metals and Craft Spells. This label can do no wrong and keeps putting out amazing albums one after the other. This album continues the Captured Tracks tradition of capturing that early 90's shoegaze sound that I am still obsessed with. This Blouse album fits in more with the soft rock side of shoegaze and dreampop. It is more like Beach House than the darker sounds of label mates Soft Moon. It is a beautiful album and I can't get enough.

Listen to "Time Travel" by Blouse...


#2
Kurt Vile - Smoke Ring For My Halo
(Matador)
This is not his first album but it really is his first album for me. This is the year that I fell hard for Kurt Vile. I could not stop listening to this album for a couple of months. There is just something about it that really got to me. The album is on the more folky side of things. Something that I need in my life every once in a while. He reminds me of Mark Kozelek and the Red House Painters. And listening to this album makes me remember the first time I discoved Mark Kozelek and was hooked for life. It really is that good.

Continue reading...

Kurt Vile has just released his brilliant 4th album called Smoke Ring for My Halo. I am obsessed. He released his 3rd album and his 1st for Matador about a year and a half ago, in October of 2009 and somehow it just passed me by. I just had to go back and see if I even mentioned it in my blog, and I only briefly did but I never got around to really giving it the time it deserved. That album is called Childish Prodigy. I really wish I could go back in time and fall in love with it right there and then but there was a lot going on that week to distract me! The new album from A Place To Bury Strangers had just come out, and new Dead Man's Bones and Gossip albums had just come out as well. I was busy! So when I first heard about the new Kurt Vile album, I really was not that excited and I didn't know what to expect. I had heard some good things about him -- I knew my friend Zack was obsessed, but I really had no idea what he sounded like. From the look of him, I expected him to sound like Andrew WK or Jay Reatard. I had no idea he would sound more like Mark Kozelek or Jose Gonzalez. He is sort of a combination of all your favorite folk musicians: Leonard Cohen, Neil Young, Bert Jansch, and Fairport Convention. I was pleasantly surprised when I first heard Smoke Ring for My Halo. I had absolutely no idea that this would be one of my favorite albums of the year!

The show to be at tonight in the Bay Area is Matador's own Kurt Vile at the Rickshaw Stop in San Francisco. The guy is unstoppably good! Is it wrong to label his songs "bouncy?" They feel somehow bouncy to me... and have beautiful guitar work too. If you aren't in SF, over the next few weeks Kurt will continue his tour down through the South and back up to his hometown, Philly. Check out some songs and dates below.

"Freeway"




Tue-Nov-09 San Francisco, CA Rickshaw Stop
Thu-Nov-11 Los Angeles, CA Echoplex
Sat-Nov-13 San Diego, CA Casbah
Sun-Nov-14 Tempe, AZ Trunk Space
Wed-Nov-17 San Antonio, TX The Korova
Thu-Nov-18 Austin, TX Emo’s (w/ Purling Hiss, The Young, Air Traffic Controllers)
Fri-Nov-19 Dallas, TX Club Dada
Sat-Nov-20 Little Rock, AR Whitewater Tavern
Sun-Nov-21 Memphis, TN Hi Tone
Wed-Nov-24 Washington, DC Black Cat (backstage)
Fri-Nov-26 Philadelphia, PA Johnny Brendas
Fri-Dec-03 Brooklyn, NY Knitting Factory (w/ Metal Mountains)

10/21-11/13, co-headlining with The Soft Pack
10/19-12/3, support from Purling Hiss