the lenola

because it's the only footage i've ever found of one of my favorite all-time bands.

r.i.p. lenola, 1994-2003.

velvet express: New Music

For the three people who ever came to this site, I apologize for the lack of activity. Music has sort of sucked the past couple months, so I lacked proper fodder for any posts. However, I have scoured a few sites lately and let's just say my faith in humanity has been restored.

Enjoy the new stuff and, as always, an oldie you should blare loud enough to make old people's teeth pop out.

"Sequestered In Memphis" - The Hold Steady

"Song For" - Earlimart

"January" - Ravens & Chimes

"Gobbledigook" - Sigur Rós

"In Step" - Girl Talk

"Black & Gold" - Sam Sparro

"Leviathan, Bound" - Shearwater

"Paint a Face" - Neil Halsted

"Ease Back" - Amos Lee

"Just Like Heaven" - The Watson Twins

So Velvety Smooth Classic:

"Coming Right Along" - The Posies (1993)

velvet express: New Music

As usual, a few new tunes I'm digging. (Sorry, I just picked up Nada Surf's Lucky-- I'm aware it's not technically "new". Sue me.)

And as always, an oldie you should be shot for not knowing.

"You, Me, & The Bourgeoisie" - The Submarines

"Pork and Beans" - Weezer

"The Golden Age" - Bridges and Powerlines

"Nueva York" - The Coast

"Long Walk Home" - Radars to the Sky

"Inside a Boy" - My Brightest Diamond

"See These Bones" - Nada Surf

So Velvety Smooth Classic:

"In A Room" - Dodgy (1996)

velvet express: New Music

A few new tunes with some buzz (yeah, I just said that) that I'm digging.

Also adding a new feature: an older track you might not have heard that you really should check out (this generally excludes 90s alt-rock, Jock Jams or Intelligent Drum & Bass, but with a couple glasses of wine anything is possible). If you've heard it before, feel free to take a stroll down amnesia lane.

"Fast Blood" - Frightened Rabbit

"Graveyard Girl" - M83

"Think I Wanna Die" - Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin

"For Emma" - Bon Iver

"Nude (Holy Fuck Remix)" - Radiohead

Velvety Smooth Classic:

"Sweet Pea" - Seam (1993)

Gallagher Has 99 Problems with the Jigga

Some day you will find me
In my tricked out pimpin' ride
In a Cristal supernova in the sky

Apparently Oasis' Noel Gallagher is none too happy about Jay-Z being booked for a headline set at this year's Glastonbury Festival. Typically dominated by guitar-driven bands, Gallagher feels the addition of hip-hop into the enormous, long-running festival is "wrong". Seems to me this doesn't reek of artistic differences so much as it does thinly veiled jealousy. Not a big fan of sharing the spotlight much, eh mate?

review: R.E.M. - Accelerate

Wow, what a difference three terrible albums will make. 1998's mope-fest Up, 2001's knob-twiddling Reveal, and 2004's chewed bubblegum Around the Sun all led us to believe R.E.M. had finally morphed into modern day U2. Failed experimentation, middle-aged ballads and calculated mall pop abound on all three. It was almost as if they were scared to plug in their guitars for a decade. So the up-tempo, reverb-driven pace of 2008's Accelerate comes mostly as a complete shock.

Compact and in-your-face (by R.E.M.'s standards), almost every song on Accelerate shares the same genetic make up. Which could be its undoing. While it's fantastic that they decided to plug-in and crank-up, there's only so many three chord rockers one can stomach from a band of such superior talent as R.E.M. Destined to be blared by every modern rock station this side of the sun, "Supernatural Superserious" does have some catch to it, and might even get your foot tapping. The problem here is that any bar band could pull this off (heck, The Toadies made a living off stuff like this). And then there's the disturbing "Horse to Water", which might as well be credited to Green Day; skip this song like your life depends on it.

The other discouraging development is Michael Stipe's delivery; once upon a time his voice played off Peter Buck's brilliantly intricate arrangements. Now it seems that verse-chorus-verse over a 4/4 beat has become his modus operandi. A shame, because lyrics such as "All your sad and lost apostles/hum my name and flare their nostrils /"Choking on the bones you tossed to them" would have some serious gravity if not for textbook diction.

But all is not lost. Toned-down tunes such as "Houston" and "Until the Day is Done" definitely harken back to the R.E.M. we know and love. You might even find yourself playing them on purpose.

Look, this is not your father's or your kid's R.E.M. I couldn't be happier that they remembered the relevance of rocking, but I wish they'd remembered that too much of a good thing could be a bad thing. It's a step, but I'm not sure in what direction.

2 out of 5 stoli vanil & cokes.

video: Bruce Shredsteen

Video of the week: welcome to everything you never saw The Boss do live in 1978. Almost qualifies as guitar porn.