The Strange Boys - “Laugh At Sex, Not Her”There’s an intimate, conversational quality to this song that makes it seem like the singer is sitting right next to you, babbling on about his friends fucking in the next room and why that’s totally cool with him. You probably don’t know him very well, but he’s kinda oversharing, especially when he mentions that he’s been with that girl too. He’s almost certainly drunk. You don’t know whether you should laugh at his theories about sex, or if you should just humor him and nod meaningfully. It’s also unclear whether he wants to wallow in self-pity, reflect on his friends’ happiness, or if this is his way of trying to bone you. It’s a clever, vivid little moment rendered in song.

Buy it from Amazon.

Time interviews Charlotte Gainsbourg about her new album IRM, a collaboration with Beck.

A lot of the songs on IRM are tinted with sadness and longing. Did filming Lars von Trier's graphic thriller Antichrist in between sessions with Beck influence your music?

I was in quite a desperate mood after the shoot. I had been isolated in Germany filming for two months. To suddenly go from a place where I had the right to be hysterical and in a full crisis to being normal again was a weird change. It was fun for me to be able to talk to Beck about the shoot and how extreme it had been. At the same time I felt very lonely. Los Angeles is a weird city to be in when you're not in a perfect state. I spent nearly three weeks there without my children and my children's father. That's very heavy.

The Austin American-Statesman profiles Girls' Christopher Owens.

It's to Owens' credit that you don't need to know one iota of that backstory — nor anything about the band's drug use, the other centerpiece of their public image — to appreciate 'Album,' which is loaded with simple, relatable stories of heartbreak, summertime antics and the redemptive power of music. For all of Owens' cachet in the world of indie music, he views his work as simple, accessible pop music.

Magnetic Fields frontman Stephin Merritt talks to Metro Weekly about his new album, Realism.

The band has just released Realism, its latest concept album – Merritt prefers working around themes – this time exploring folk music. ''There are thousands of definitions of folk,'' says Merritt. ''I was trying to go with more or less all of them, a Whitman Sampler of what peoples' ideas of folk are – with an actual concentration of what I thought folk was when I was 3.'' Specifically, the music of Judy Collins and Bob Dylan.

The Chicago Reader reviews two new documentaries about indie rock show poster artists, Died Young, Stayed Pretty and American Artifact: the Rise of American Rock Poster Art.

The Philadelphia Citypaper interviews Ozzy Osbourne about his new book, I Am Ozzy.

CP: There’s plenty going on in the book besides just the drug use. What I was surprised to see was when you talk about recording [Sabbath Blood Sabbath] and being frightened of working in Clearwell Castle. You mention seeing The Exorcist and being scared shitless. How do you feel about showing that part of yourself that isn’t this totally fearless, badass rock god that we’re so used to seeing?

OO: [Unintelligible] Well with the [band mates] you always play tricks on each other. I implore anybody to spend the night in an old haunted castle — you wouldn’t do it unless you had to. Things that you don’t understand, they scare you I suppose. I mean, I’m not going to go, “I’ll save you, darling, give me the sword.” I’m not the guy to climb up the f**king ladder to rescue the chick — the damsel from the burning castle. She’s up there, she burns.

SEE discusses the future of album art with artists.

The National Post examines the revival of the ukulele in popular music.

PopMatters gives its best music scribing awards for 2009.

The Santa Barbara Independent profiles Bowerbirds.

It sounds like a hippie’s idea for a short story: boy meets girl (at a Whole Foods, of course), they fall in love, and eventually they shack up in an Airstream trailer in the woods of North Carolina. They do everything together—even design Web sites, oddly enough—as they build a cabin in the wilderness with nothing but hand tools. Meanwhile, the boy crafts eco-friendly folk songs and the girl learns accordion to accompany him. Now meet Phil Moore and Beth Tacular of Bowerbirds. With an indie-folk sound as organic as the produce among which they met, the duo has won the admiration of everyone from the Mountain Goats’ John Darnielle to their friend and fellow Midwesterner Justin Vernon of Bon Iver—praise that does not come cheap.

Impose previews the best new music of 2010.

The Village Voice profiles Dan Lynch, the man behind one of my favorite music blogs nyctaper (and one of my bloggers to read in 2009).

Memphis, TN popsters Magic Kids have signed to True Panther; a full-length is due later this year

Tomorrow, In A Year is The Knife‘s opera score, a collaboration with Mt. Sims and Planningtorock, and is due for release on 3/1. Pre-order it here.

NonesuchI recently finished reading Our Noise, the book about Merge Records’ 20th anniversary (which is excellent and highly recommended, by the way), and was struck by three of the bands covered in-depth, and the paths they’ve taken. There was Spoon, who despite becoming more successful with each album have chosen to stick with the label that got them there; Neutral Milk Hotel, who retired after crafting their masterpiece; and The Magnetic Fields, who used their own career-defining work as a stepping stone to the majors, and a deal with Nonesuch. And much like the problem of a sports team signing a free agent player after a career year, there was no guarantee that they’d ever be able to repeat the feat.

While hardly idle in the past decade – Stephin Merritt has tried his hand at soundtracks and musicals – the output from the formerly prolific Magnetic Fields has slowed down considerably, with this week’s Realism only their third release in the past decade and, perhaps more importantly, the final part of their self-declared “no synths” trilogy. Important not so much because it represents the climax of another creative masterwork, but because the return to synthesized sounds on the next record will hopefully mean a return to form for the band.

This is not to suggest that the problems with The Magnetic Fields’ 21st century output have been chiefly tied to their choice of instrumentation or their choice of label. It’s just that since the concepts behind their albums switched from thematic to aesthetic, they’ve been consistently less memorable...

Continue reading at Chromewaves.Net →

MP3: The Magnetic Fields – “Everything Is One Big Christmas”
Video: The Magnetic Fields – “We Are Having A Hootenanny”
Stream: The Magnetic Fields / Realism
MySpace: The Magnetic Fields

Exclaim and NPR have interviews with Spoon.

Paper and The Baltimore Sun have feature interviews with Beach House, whose Teen Dream was finally released this week. Of all the videos they briefly premiered last week, the one for “Silver Soul” has stuck around. The others can be seen on the DVD component of the album.

Video: Beach House – “Silver Soul”

Prefix talks to Wye Oak’s Jenn Wasser and Andy Stack.

Shearwater frontman Jonathan Meiburg has penned a piece for The Huffington Post on the topics of climate change and population explosion. Their new album The Golden Archipelago is out February 23.

Dallas Observer has a huge feature on Midlake while The Line Of Best Fit and QuickDFW interview frontman Tim Smith. Their new album The Courage Of Others is out next week but streaming at NPR now, while The Guardian will be giving away five studio session tracks from the band this Saturday.

Stream: Midlake / The Courage Of Others

Pitchfork has some details on and a stream of a new song from Joanna Newsom’s forthcoming triple – you read that right – album Have One On Me, out March 23.

Tulsa World interviews Yo La Tengo’s Ira Kaplan.

Sterogum gets a progress report from School Of Seven Bells on their second album Disconnect From Desire, due out this Spring.

Spinner talks to Rogue Wave’s Zach Schwartz about their new record Permalight, due out March 2.

MP3: Rogue Wave – “Good Morning”

Black Book talks to Steve Earle.

Buddyhead are being generous with the new Dios stuff! They’ve just followed up their recent free single with a brand new one, this one for “See How They Run” b/w “Feather In Yr Cap:”

Grab the tracks and don’t forget that the new Dios full-length, appropriately titled We Are Dios, is due out on 2/16 (pre-order here). And note too that, along with the album’s release also comes a big FREE release show at the Troubadour in West Hollywood.