Carl Sandburg Visits Me In A Dream

New Coldplay Track. I feel compelled to post their first new single in 3 years. The song features a sample of Peter Allen’s “I Go to Rio”.

Enjoy.

Listen to “Every Teardrop is a Waterfall“

These come off the Forsaken Cowboy EP, the second single from their latest LP Senior. Enjoy.

Forsaken Cowboy by Röyksopp

British lo-fi outfit made groundbreaking work with their debut Thunder, Lightning, Strike. A blend of hip-hop, pop, electronic, bossa nova, and  70s elevator music, The Go! Team was bringing something fresh and untapped.  The new-found success surely affected their approach to the next critically acclaimed Proof of Youth, as they moved closer and closer towards becoming a one-dimensional hip-hop non-sequitur.  Not my cup of tea, but I will readily admit that The Go! Team’s latest Rolling Blackouts is absolutely wonderful.

Strangely nostalgic in its sound, Rolling Blackouts goes back to what The Go! Team does best: refreshing and modernizing older sounds. Take the short “Lazy Poltergeist”, a delicate piano interlude that seems to long for a simpler time when keyboards were all you really needed. Yet not too much earlier on the album, “Apollo Throwdown” takes a harp, an orchestra of strings, lays a backbeat down, on which TGT drops their signature anthemic rap vocals.  “Bust-Out Brigade” begins with blaring horns more suited for a 80s cop movie, but this instrumental gets more and more intriguing as layers of xylophone and synthesizers get a hold of it. “Buy Nothing Day” sounds like it might have been ripped right out of a mid-90s pop song, but it works. The Beach-Boys-like “Ready to Go Steady” is perhaps the most joyful song on the album, and if the chorus doesn’t stick in your head for days I’d be surprised.

I could go on, but for the sake of brevity I won’t. So go and grab a copy of The Go! Team’s Rolling Blackouts.

Listen to “Apollo Throwdown”

Listen to “Ready to Go Steady“

Terrible band name, yes, but they’ve got an  insanely catchy song “The Golden Age” featured in a Heineken commercial this past week. The song is actually a couple years old, but there’s no time limit on an awesome track.

Listen to “The Golden Age”

I’ll admit I’ve never the biggest fan of TV On the Radio. I thought they were getting accolades for doing nothing but putting out lo-fi esoteric sounds. That said, I’ll never turn down a great song. “Will Do” comes off of TV on the Radio’s 5th LP Nine Types of Light. It begins with a bluesy twinge, as twinkling ivory trickles in ever so slowly, only to be perfectly complemented by a slow pulsating bass line.

Note: Best wishes to Gerard Smith, bassist/keyboardist for TV on the Radio, who was recently diagnosed with Lung Cancer.

Listen to “Will Do“

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So I’m staring at my TV the other day, and bam, another awesome Amazon Kindle commercial comes on.  I’ve got no crazy love for the Kindle, but I have to say that all their adverts are intriguing as they are simple. And what’s this distinctly retro vibe of a single guitar and a cowbell? Why yes of course it’s a track off of Stephen Wilkison’s (penname: Bibio) album Ambivalence Avenue from last year.

Bibio – “Lovers’ Carvings“

Bibio -  “Lover’s Carvings (Catz n Dogz Re-edit)”

Get a copy of Ambivalence Avenue.

It’s pretty crazy to think that The Weepies husband-and-wife duo of Deb Talan and Steven Tannen have already come out with their 4th LP Be My Thrill! What with a rather young child in tow, I would understand how a studio album and a 36-city tour would be arduous. I could wax more about the unexpected prolific nature of The Weepies, but I’d rather talk about other items. Like the fact that I don’t see The Weepies as just music artists. For some reason, there’s this very human, ‘unprofessional’ quality to their music. I get the sense that I am getting an unprecedented, unencumbered, unfiltered look into their lives as a married couple, as parents, as unqiue individuals on their own. I like the transparency, I relish it, I relate to it.

Take the song “Empty Your Hands”, at the end of which Deb Talan sweetly exclaims, ‘Our baby learned to run today / in circles on the grass / His joyful face it radiates / These moments go so fast / let them go.’ What a sweet insightful view on what it must be like to see your child growing up, and the only way to capture these fleeting moments are in your mind.  And The Weepies penchant for playing with words is as bright as ever on the whimsical, country-twinged “Hope Tomorrow”: ‘A windy fitful day in winter / charging toward the Ides of May / The climate now is cling to splinters’.

The Weepies have mastered the art of the delicate, achy ballad: From the waltzy “Please Speak Well of Me” to “They’re in Love, Where Am I?”, Talan and Tannen seem to express a certain confidence in their relationship — enough so to talk about past loves, their own love, and all that that entails.

The golden AM radio “I was Made for Sunny Days” is as bright and shiny and American as a Chevy Camaro, while album highlight “Hard to Please” is an edgier sound (for the Weepies, at least) that sees the duo expanding their horizons. I give credit to the Weepies for broadening their sound, with the B-52 bass heavy “Be My Thrill” that really propels the middle of the album forward. Tannen’s vocals are somewhat hidden on this record, but his solo work in “Be My Honeypie” and his harmonious stylings on “Hummingbird” are simply beautiful. If there’s one complaint, I’d like to see Tannen contribute more vocals.

Anyway, enough. Go get a copy of Be My Thrill.

HEY CHICAGOANS! The Weepies are coming to Space in Evanston, IL (just north of the city) on October 30th.

Listen to “I Was Made For Sunny Days”

Listen to “Hard to Please“

Things you may have noticed lately:

1. My RSS feed was hijacked for some reason. No worries, all is fine now. The RSS for CSVMAD can be accessed at http://feeds.feedburner.com/SandburgDreams. Or, you can just click on the link to the left in the sidebar.

2. Time has been a luxury these days, but I’m going to try to keep the posts coming as best I can. Your readership is always appreciated!!! Get ready for some great material coming your way.

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Peace and Booty Grease,

Benji

Never back Sufjan into a corner. Never try to stereotype him. Don’t even think about creating a new genre so you can describe him and his music.

Why?

Because he’ll disappoint you. He’ll tell you that he’s going to play catch with you, and he stands you up. He’ll blow your mind and he’ll frustrate you beyond comprehension (I suppose you would comprehend the frustration). Either way, the point is, never back Sufjan into a corner.

Case in point: his new album The Age of Adz. This is Sufjan’s first full-length release since 2005′s magnum opus (yeah, it’s looking like that will be the peak of his career) Come on fell the Illinoise, Sufjan has lived in relative obscurity. He has seemed to enjoy all the press, all the assumptions, all the glitz and glamor. He’s opted for small, unsung projects such as The BQE and rereleasing The Year of the Rabbit. Perhaps that was foreshadowing for what was to come, as The Age of Adz is a return to the esoteric electronic idiosyncratic drones of his youth. Perhaps you can tell that I’m not entirely satisfied with The Age of Adz, and sadly my days as an unabashed Sufjan fan have abruptly come to an end.

The highlights: The delicate but deceptive lullaby of “Futile Devices” has a melancholy tinge that is a perfect exercise in discretionary emotive folk.  The idiosyncratic mantra of “Vesuvius” is not only crazy catchy, but the introspective comparison between Sufjan and the destructive Mt. Vesuvius that laid waste to the great city of Pompeii are cryptic yet well-received. It combines 2 great things: (1) play on words (Vesuvius and Sufjan) and (2) random historical references. I get the sense that when he says “Sufjan, follow your heart”, The Age of Adz is exactly what he’s talking about. This is partially shot at both critics and lionizers alike. I know, I just blew your mind with that.

The lowlights: I’m all for experimentation and playing with sounds. But you know what? When the only adjective I can think of for a song is ‘grating’, that can’t possibly be a good thing. The listener of The Age of Adz is inundated with a hodgepodge of ridiculous juxtapositions of sounds, from the incoherent “Get Real Get Right” to the Frenchman-meets-twisted orchestra “All for Myself” to the impossibly long and insufferable “Impossible Soul” that clocks in at a measly 25 minutes.

I have to cleanse palate after this effort. I’m going to queue up The Avalanche, at least these are B-sides I can deal with.

That said, I’m going to hear Sufjan this week in concert, so here’s to hoping that his effusive stage presence changes things!

Take a listen to The Age of Adz for yourself.

Listen to “Futile Devices”

Listen to “Vesuvius“

Consider yourself saxrolled.

I mean, it’s just amazing to me. Fake playing the sax and gyrating. Awesome, Moldova, awesome.

Listen to Sunstoke Project & Olia Tira – “Run Away“